J.D. Salinger
The obituaries and tributes to J.D. Salinger, the seminal novelist who died in January at the age of 91, have tended to ignore one important feature of his life and work: for many readers, especially young seekers of truth in the sixties and seventies, he was a kind of guru figure. I was one of many who turned to his work for not only esthetic pleasure and insight into modern existential dilemmas, but also for spiritual lessons. Like the Somerset Maugham of The Razor’s Edge and Herman Hesse (Siddhartha and others), Salinger’s fiction made explicit references to Eastern spirituality. And, because he was American, contemporary and wildly popular, he had a much bigger influence than the other authors in introducing readers to yogic teachings.
A determined seeker and a practitioner of the spiritual arts, Salinger studied Zen after his traumatic service in World War II, and segued to the Vedanta stream of Hinduism in the early fifties after publishing The Catcher in the Rye, that masterpiece of youthful yearning for higher meaning. He was a regular at the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, where the great mythologist Joseph Campbell also absorbed seminal lessons early in his career.
“Teddy,” the last short story in the famous collection Nine Stories, introduced thousands of Salinger’s readers to reincarnation, nonattachment, and other concepts that the author was imbibing from Swami Nikhilananda at the Vedanta Center. In that tale, the ten-year-old title character says the only reason he was incarnated again was because, in his previous life, “I met a lady, and I sort of stopped meditating.” (According to his daughter Margaret’s memoir, Salinger himself was relieved to find out that married life could be a legitimate pathway when he read Paramahansa Yogananda’s classic Autobiography of a Yogi.) The story ends, famously, with Teddy calmly, even cheerfully, walking to an accidental death that he’s foreseen – clearly Salinger’s attempt to depict his understanding of an enlightened soul’s attitude toward death, based upon the Vedantic comparison of discarding a body to the shedding of a garment.
Eastern mysticism – and to some extent the Western variety – becomes more explicit and more sophisticated with each subsequent Salinger work, beginning with Franny and Zooey. The sibling stories about two siblings, originally published in the New Yorker and then together in the 1961 book, introduce Salinger’s immortal Glass family and foreshadow the journey that thousands of baby boomers would soon embark on: a smart, precariously sensitive college student sinks into an existential crisis, tries to unlock the secrets of an esoteric text, and climbs out of her dark night of the soul with the help of Eastern wisdom delivered by a representative of a guru lineage. In this case, the “ashram” is the Manhattan apartment where Franny grew up, and the spiritual guide is her older brother Zooey, who imparts the teachings of the next oldest sibling, Buddy, who in turn is the chief “disciple” of their late brother Seymour, the family sadguru. Along the way, readers learn about karma, Atman, chakras and various yogic imperatives, such as acting without attachment to the outcome and seeing everything, even the remedial chicken soup of a fussbudget mother, as consecrated.
Franny and Zooey was followed in 1963 by Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction, two stories that round out Salinger’s portrait of Swami Seymour – the author’s attempt to portray an enlightened being negotiating life in the modern world – and his sibling disciples. The Glass offspring don’t run off to ashrams in India, as many of their fans did in the 60s and 70s; they are karma yogis, trying their damndest to live authentic spiritual lives while performing their dharmic duties with dignity. They may be precocious kids, ridiculously sensitive adolescents and bizarrely eccentric adults, but they speak in modern vernacular and struggle with the same neurotic concerns as anyone who’s ever wondered what it’s all about or why the world is filled with phonies and sleepwalkers. Salinger’s answers, delivered mainly through Seymour, are invariably lifted from Vedanta or a sister school of perennial wisdom.
Salinger completed his Glass chronicle with a prequel in the form of a letter from camp by the seven-year-old Seymour. Published in the New Yorker in 1965, the story with the weird title (“Hapworth 16, 1924”) was the last work the author made public during his long famous seclusion. It contains repeated references to past lives, which the character calls his “appearances,” instructions for a yogic breathing technique, allusions to tantric sexual practices, and an homage to Swami Vivekananda, founder of the Vedanta Society, whom Seymour calls “one of the most exciting, original and best-equipped giants of this century.”
I have learned that a surprising number of serious spiritual practitioners found early inspiration and direction from Salinger’s post-Catcher work. And it still has the power to illuminate. A few years ago, I was asked to contribute to You’ve Got to Read This Book, a collection of essays about books that changed people’s lives. I wrote about Franny and Zooey’s impact on me as a young seeker. When the book came out, I received a thank you e-mail from a woman whose eighteen-year-old daughter had been wallowing in a Franny-like spiritual funk. My essay led her to Franny and Zooey, which showed her daughter that she was not crazy and not alone.
A Los Angeles-based spiritual counselor and interfaith minister, Philip Goldberg is the author or coauthor of eighteen books, including Roadsigns on the Spiritual Path. His new book, American Veda, will be published by Doubleday in October: philipgoldberg.com.
By Philip Goldberg
Philip Goldberg has been studying the world’s spiritual traditions for more than 50 years, as a practitioner, teacher, and author. An Interfaith Minister, public speaker, and workshop leader, his numerous books include Roadsigns on the Spiritual Path; American Veda: From Emerson and the Beatles to Yoga and Meditation, How Indian Spirituality Changed the West; The Life of Yogananda: The Story of the Yogi Who Became the First Modern Guru, and his latest, Spiritual Practice for Crazy Times: Powerful Tools to Cultivate Clarity, Calm and Courage. He blogs on Elephant Journal and Spirituality & Health, cohosts the popular Spirit Matters podcast, and leads American Veda Tours to India. His website is www.PhilipGoldberg.com.