America needs more Eastern influence because Western culture is rooted in practices that will result in hellish, karmic revenge, author David James Duncan said at a lecture Tuesday night in 180 PLC.
“A wretched energy policy or war on the poor is inexorably bound to earn you, say, reincarnation as an orphaned nine-year-old paint-huffer living in a cardboard box in Tijuana,” Duncan said.
Duncan is the author of two novels, “The River Why” and “The Brothers K,” two essay collections, and most recently “God Laughs & Plays: Churchless Sermons in Response to the Preachments of the Fundamentalist Right.”
During his speech, Duncan explored the importance of Eastern influence on Western culture and its role in his novels, and he also shared anecdotes about how he developed a passion for an Eastern school of thought.
Born into a Seventh-day Adventist family, his upbringing was strict and religious, but the doctrines didn’t “stick”, he said.
For Duncan, his time as a Christian ended when, as a 13-year-old, his brother lay on his deathbed in the hospital.
A seminarian graduate in a suit and tie toting a “big black bible” told Duncan, “If you pray hard enough with a pure enough heart, you can save your brother’s life,” Duncan said.
“He might as well have stuck a knitting needle in my heart because I had been praying,” Duncan said. “I went home and prayed some more, but despite my efforts, my brother died a few days later. It was now my spiritual weakness and imperfections that cost my brother his life.”
Duncan rejected the church and began searching for answers elsewhere. Obsessed with deep questions about faith and morbid realities of life, Duncan looked for a way to articulate his feelings and look for the truth, he said. He found truth in authors and poets such as Hermann Hesse, Jack Kerouac, Gary Schneider and D.T. Suzuki. He turned to all male authors, Duncan said, because he lost the primary male in his life.
Spending time in nature also helped to cope with his brother’s death, Duncan said.
“Standing in rivers and hiking high altitude ridgelines, despite the state of the world, made me feel literally loved,” he said.
Influenced by a love for wilderness and Schneider’s prose, Duncan took a trip to India – a trip that worked miracles, Duncan said.
“I returned home with a palpable interior center, a major case of reverse culture shock… and a spiritual method,” he said.
With an “Asian interior,” Duncan gravitated toward mystic poets and read the entire world’s religious scriptures – not just Christianity. He made countless friendships with people he met in Eastern Asia and described them as “spiritual partners.”
Duncan incorporates personal experiences and knowledge of the Eastern world into his literary works.
“That knitting needle is still in my heart so I’m going to take it out and write with it,” he said.