Dear Steven Michael,
My congratulations to you on the happy event of your birth. Though you have received prior attention from relations less distant, and shall certainly receive future attention from others (particularly, you will find, from those who want to convince you that your happiness is dependent upon owning their product), my congratulations are sent to you as an uncle's to his first nephew. As such, I await the day when you will be able to reply.
It's fitting, perhaps, that this letter, written at the end of a year eventful for both of us, should be sandwiched between the messages of others, for your birth was similarly sandwiched between two other events. The day following it was the second wedding anniversary of your parents (and I hope you will give them my congratulations), while the day preceding it was the day I was ordained as a monk of the Buddhist Order -- also a sort of birth, if you care to look at it that way.
I have no concern for your future success, Stevie (is that what you will be called?), for I know that that will be difficult enough for you to avoid. My concern, and what I shall be watching for, has not to do with what you will make of yourself, but of what you will not make of yourself, for this must be a guideline to life in your
Live a life that is praiseworthy, not merely praised. Remember that there is no quantity of things that can be possessed that can bring about a real and stable satisfaction. The only way to that lies within us, and we know -- don't we? -- that desire (one of the dominant factors on which American civilization literally depends), which arises from ignorance, is the source of that dissatisfaction you/we see everywhere around us, but which you -- and I -- know how to avoid.
Finally, question most closely those ideas which are most frequently and insistently presented to you.
I introduce myself to you with this subject because of my own present happiness, and because that happiness is the most basic thing that can be achieved. Since I've spent all my years before your birth in discovering its source, I wished to inform you at once: You can achieve happiness to no greater degree than you can extinguish ignorance, craving and egotism.
Now, with the completion of this little lecture, and before the completion of this little aerogramme, let me offer you an exchange. If you'll ask your parents to send me a photo of you I shall, in return, send you a photo of myself as a monk. My robes will be saffron-color rather than white and a bit larger than your diapers, but of the same material, of the same squarish shape, and for the same purpose. We are, I expect, equally bald. All of us, then, begin in the same Order.
May your achievements in that Order be of a high degree.
With fondness and hope,
from your uncle, Bob
1 comment:
Hi,
I am the Steve, the newborn nephew that Bob writes this letter to. I am sure my mother had the letter at some point, and then, through the journeys of time, it ended up in the hands of Hum. I met Hum a few years after my uncle’s death, more precisely, one year after the death of my grandfather, Bob’s father, Alan Smith. Hum and Alan had struck up a correspondence after Bob’s passing, and, though my memories are hazy, I’m fairly certain my Papa told me about Hum and how he was Bob’s best friend since the mid 1960s. I picked up the correspondence with Hum after Alan’s death. Hum invited me to come stay with him at his shack in the hills of south western Vancouver Island. A year later I did just that.
Hum was energetic, silly, playful, wise and extremely fit. The closest market to his home was a 45 minute walk, though Hum preferred to run. Hum regaled me with stories about Bob/Samanera Bodhesako. He gave me two letters my uncle had written me when I was just born and when I was around 3 years old.
I could go on and on. Meeting Hum was like getting to meet my uncle by proxy. Though I did see Uncle Bob twice when I was about 9 years all, I never knew him as a person other than through his letters.
I am so grateful Hum has supplied the Stringhoppers and Rabbitholes letters to you for sharing on this blog.
With great metta,
Steve Goldberg
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