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INTERVIEWS KEITH DOWMAN
November 5, 1999
Christen-
The first question I would like to ask Keith is, Keith, when did you first become
interested in what you're doing now? And why don't you tell us a little bit about
how you feel, about doing what now is of primary interest to you, about being
actively engaged in what you love because I know you have many interests?
Keith-
When did I become interested? I suppose what you could say is that I made a
career of who I felt I was, rather than going outside and looking for something
quite separate and distinct from myself. And that has sustained my interest for
most of my life. It's obsessive, you can say. It's something to do with the nature
of being a human being itself.
Christen-
I am fascinated by what you say because what I like about your response is that
one doesn't have to settle for anything less. That one can go after what is true
to oneself, one's purpose, and the compelling reason to be. So, my second question
to you...What was your biggest obstacle in achieving or getting where you are
at today and how did you overcome it?
Keith-
Obstacles. I suppose in general the nature of obstacles is unwelcome additions
to one's set course. Specific obstacles, to speak about the absence of obstacles
first of all in so far as I identified my spiritual life with the life of a Buddhist,
specifically a Tibetan Buddhist and Tibetan Buddhism has become increasingly popular
over the last 20, 30 years or since I started application to translation and commentary
on yoga and meditation and theory and practice, that was 30 years ago...it has
become increasingly popular. This always helps. If in your chosen career there's
a progressive interest in that career. Obstacles, yes. No single obstacle comes
to mind...unless you talk about...some kind of implicit entropies, a tendency
to laziness, I suppose. Can you elaborate on the question again?
Christen-
Yes, what I think is interesting, the fact that you're a Tibetan Buddhist, the
fact that you practiced for so many years, 30 years, probably for you, you have
a different attitude about obstacles, because for Tibetan Buddhists, there really
are no obstacles. Tibetan Buddhists work to transform and transcend whatever they
are facing. So perhaps for somebody else, the concept of an obstacle is different
from someone like you and perhaps when you use the word "laziness", in a sense
that could be the obstacle, in the sense that what we have to go forward with
when we are faced with this feeling of laziness is exertion, enthusiastic exertion,
which will help one go forward with whatever one wants to achieve. So do you think,
to overcome "laziness", what would come to mind is "enthusiastic exertion"?
Keith-
Yes, "enthusiastic exertion" is the antidote, no doubt, but you need some source
of spontaneous arising of enthusiasm. You need some stimulation, in other words.
You need incentive.
I don't think necessarily that the concept that obstacles can be used on the path,
can be transformed into energy makes them less of an obstacle in their initial
arising. I think it's very important to find the one, the thread of one's life
that can be developed without too much obstruction. In other words, what is good
is what is natural and what is natural and good is probably going to be successful.
The obstacles which arise, like a lack of inspiration or lack of energy or lack
of what it takes to walk through what appears to be some kind of implacable obstruction
on the way. Obstacles...lack of confidence, lack of self-esteem, lack of the feeling
that you're on to a winner...these are the kinds of obstacles that arise in any
kind of career or life progress. It's human nature. It comes and it goes. So you
can also see obstacles as occasional or inevitable. I think that the most important
thing about obstacles is that they will go away. That certainly as they arise
they will certainly dissipate. Sometimes that what appears to be obstruction goes
away in a flash and other times it lasts longer...there's different cycles there.
Christen-
Well that's really fascinating, because what I sense with you is a wisdom about
obstacles in the sense that everything is temporary, everything is impermanent,
so what other people would find as an obstacle because they solidify it and they
think that it stops them, for you, you have this wisdom, so that when you look
at an obstacle you understand that it's not going to last forever. And it's almost
like waiting it out, that it'll disappear and eventually go away like an unwelcome
guest, that it won't stay with you forever.
Keith-
If one is looking at one's life or career or at the course of, of a long-term
course, then it's easy to see obstacles in a positive light. If you've got a deadline
and you need to...and something apparently concrete is obstructing it, then you've
got a different kind of situation, although the wisdom may be to just relax into
it and wait and it will dissipate, if there's an imperative then, it can appear
as a major anxiety. Relax, I suppose is the answer.
Christen-
This brings to mind that perhaps you talked about incentives. Incentives that
can help transform the obstacles, or that you can transcend the obstacles with
an incentive...but my impression of you, have you always done what you love? Because
you strike me as somebody quite unconventional, someone although I haven't known
you for 30 years, someone who set out just to do what he loves. You followed that
unconventional path.
Keith-
Unconventional, I don't think it's necessarily unconventional. I think one
should do only what one loves. Otherwise one is wasting one's life and worse than
that, one is prostituting one's life. And this inevitably brings dissatisfaction
and since time is very short and you don't know whether you're going to wake up
in the morning it's best to concentrate on what is desirable and lovable and brings
some immediate satisfaction...this does not obviate the necessity for learning,
for training and for preparing in the qualifications for proficiency in any career.
Christen-
What is your favorite
work that you've accomplished in the body of work that you've achieved in this
lifetime so far, what do you consider your favorite work and can you elaborate
on it and why it is your favorite work? I know that you've written many things.
Keith-
Yes...The creative work of writing is undoubtedly the most pleasurable
aspect of work and here we're not talking about a product, we're
not talking about satisfaction at producing a...book...a body of
work...we're talking about the actual creative process and in so
far as that satisfaction, an almost sensual satisfaction, a total
satisfaction of creative expression and the statement of what is
in a way that in the moment is, fully satisfying. This is perhaps...most
essentially in life and in career...creative expression, we're talking
about creativity, creative expression and that is not necessarily
only in art, although in fine art is where it is most quintessential,
but you can find that creative expression in any kind of work whatsoever.
It's different strokes for different folks in terms of attaining
that satisfaction.
Christen-
You mentioned to me the other day, one of the books that you had written, that
you loved, or that you had found...when I had asked you, what was your favorite
piece that you've ever written?
Keith-
I don't know that it's possible to say what is the favorite...there are certain
kinds of writing specifically on a mythological level, on a mythic level that
engages the level of the mind which is beyond the moral or ethical discriminatory
level, considerations and actually addresses the nature of being or the nature
of humanity and the parables, the legends of the tantric yogis of India perhaps
took me to that level most effectively.
Christen-
...and of the works that you've written, what's your favorite work?...that
you've written...the books Keith, that you put your name to.
Keith-
That translation is what I'm talking about. That. Masters of Mahumadra or Masters
of Enchantment is another edition of it.
Christen-
Masters of Enchantment, Masters of Mahumadra?
Keith-
The Masters being the tantric, the Indian tantric yogis, the Buddhist tantric
practitioners.
Christen-
What wisdom would you like to share with aspiring writers that you haven't already
shared with us so far, that comes uppermost to your mind?
Keith-
Find yourself a situation where you don't need commercial success to continue
to write what gives you the most satisfaction. In other words don't commercialize
the art and write what you need to write, write what you love writing.
Christen-
What do you think is the most pressing issue humanity faces?
Keith-
I was in India when the world population passed the 6 billion mark and it looked
like most of those 6 billion were Indians and undoubtedly this population pressure
given the whole ecological disaster that faces us if present trends are not turned
around is perhaps the most pressing issue for humanity in general, but this is
on a relative level. I am tempted to leave that alone and talk about the problem
of unawareness or the problem of failure to live on a level of mind where judgements
are not transcended where the tendency to criticize and to look at things in terms
of black and white and get on one train or another that leaves half or part of
the rest of humanity out in the cold and demonized. It seems that while we have
such massive control over the environment, over nature, over the elements, in
other words, while we have this technological facility, that we are mesmerized
by it and that we lack the incentive to look into the mind which is the source
of this stuff. In other words we're losing the wood for the trees. We're failing
to concentrate on the issue which is going to solve all problems rather than the
issues which solve just a few of the infinite number of the constantly multiplying
problems in the relative world and that is the concentration on the nature of
mind itself, the nature of being what we are rather than what we can do.
Christen-
That's interesting. So you consider that really the most pressing problem of what
faces each human being...facing their mind as being the utmost task or so to speak,
the challenge of being human.
Keith-
Yes and it's an introvertive process that is facilitated by meditation and
by yoga and by actually, a host of it's own different techniques that turn the
mind in on itself so that nature is realized and in that understanding of the
nature, all problems whatsoever are solved so that, that meditative process is
the universal panacea.
Christen-
Fascinating. So that's your vision on how to address the most pressing issue that
humanity faces. Is there anything else you would like to share with us Keith?
Keith-
Yes, just in so far as this audience is a student audience and in that student
milieu it's ambition that is perhaps the driving force, I would like to say that
whatever ambition holds up to you as attraction to live, to life, probably in
so far as you put energy into attaining these goals at the end of the path, you
will be denying yourself the satisfaction of the here and now and there is nothing
greater than simply relaxing into the nature of the moment, to bring the satisfaction
that you think actually is only going to be attained at the end of the path.
Christen-
It is just so wonderful to hear you say that Keith. So many of us get on this
fast track of thinking that after we make our million or after we get that career
or after we get that degree, that's when life begins. So, I'm really happy that
you were our first person that we interviewed and thank you for sharing the wisdom
with us. I just want you now before we end though, to tell us, how you would describe
yourself?
Keith-
How I would...in what...
Christen-
Career wise or whatever...you know, how do you think of yourself, a writer, whatever
words you want to say as far as a...a depiction of who you are objectively...I
mean if somebody says, well who's Keith Dowman?
Keith-
Well, probably the answer there is that he's a writer, because people know
me primarily from published works. In terms of work, a description, then that's
the best way to go, but I would just as well be known as a yogi. There's no way
to translate yogi into English. It doesn't have any translation, but if you want
to describe it discursively, then it means somebody who is mostly concerned with
the inner life and the harmony of harmonizing that inner life with the environment
and attaining the goals of meditation that, I spoke about earlier.
Christen-
Thank you Keith.
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