The Householder

The household still figures in a meaningful way in modern statistical measurement (e.g., household income, number of households, etc.), but it has never carried any kind of spiritual connotation. Not so in the East. In Sufi circles, for one, at least in the tradition that I know a little something about, the Naqshbandi, to be a householder is deemed to be the minimum qualification for higher learning, thus for the spiritual path.

This stands in contrast to the Western and some Eastern traditions where higher forms of dedication appear to demand that the seeker abandon the usual life occupations, take up a celibate or ascetic style of living, and devote him- or herself entirely to the pursuit of God. The life of the artist, similarly, is viewed in the same way. Above all, as an artist, do not be bourgeois, for God’s sake! You must pursue a life in garrets, unattached, eccentric, and unpredictable. The nine-to-five is a definite No-No. I’ve always found this amusing in that—as secularization has spread like a brushfire over the last couple of completed centuries—the scribbler, painter, sculptor, musician, dancer, or actor have been required, in an odd sort of way, at least outwardly, to imitate the saint. Only sexual freedom—but to be enjoyed strictly outside the constrictions of marriage—has been granted these not-quite-volunteers to be the secular saints of the West.

When I came across the householder dictum in the writings of Idries Shah—and his writings are, above all, traditional Sufi teachings presented in varied and carefully selected assemblages to the modern Western reader—I felt a sense of confirmation. I’ve always subscribed to idea that hierarchies exist, but never to the notion that you could join them by merely conforming your behavior to some set pattern. Similarly I’ve considered the notion that the artist may be (or to be genuine even must be) an unreliable, unpredictable, irresponsible, and destructive rebel simply ridiculous: as if there is something magical in poems, novels, paintings, etc. that balances out a man fertilizing women at a whim, abandoning them and their children when another whim arises, and his body to alcohol and drugs because spontaneity trumps everything else. Pure, ignorant baloney.

I have always had difficulties with priesthoods—and this despite the fact that I believe in real hierarchies among the living and beyond. Priesthoods are the institutionalization, in effect the reification, of something much more dynamic and mysterious. Priesthoods have a certain functional role to play, alas. This comes home to me looking at the Muslim world. There the Prophet expressly forbade the forming of a priesthood, yet ranks upon ranks of lawyers came to represent that functions, and we have a priesthood there, too, in all but name. I bow to necessity. I’ve no objection to priests as functionaries. I oppose priesthood as the presupposition that a priest has a higher status than, say, a carpenter.

Why the focus on the householder in Sufism? In functional terms the householder is a responsible person who has managed the basic adaptations to the world and to society. One thing at a time. Before a person aspires to a higher level, she or he ought to be mistress or master of the fundamentals. This is very good doctrine, it seems to me, and equally pertinent to the would-be artist.