Love and death, kiki and bouba

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Spiritual types frequently discuss awakening, spirit, energy, and related topics, so from a distance, it seems like they’re all the same weirdos. However, get a bit closer, and there tends to be a sharp divergence between two groups. On the one hand, the love and connection people, who gush about authentic communication, embodiment, tantric sex, and opening the heart. On the other hand, the death and eternity people, who gush (stonily, in a stony gush) about equanimity, spaciousness, facing transience, and giving up personal desire to obey a greater intelligence.

Let’s call them Bouba and Kiki spirituality. We could also call them mommy and daddy spirituality. The alert observer notices that they map onto the anxious/avoidant attachment dichotomy. Bouba spirituality charges fully into the lusty swelter of biological existence, urging union as a recipe for the disappointments of life. Kiki spirituality sees restraint and perspective as the recipe for contentment, stepping back from the wheel of samsara rather than spinning it better.

Bouba spirituality’s poet laureate could be Wallace Stevens: “Beauty is momentary in the mind, the fitful tracing of a portal, but in the flesh it is immortal.” Kiki spirituality doesn’t necessarily venerate poets, but might admire this line of Robert Lowell: “The Lord survives the rainbow of His will.” The mascot of Bouba spirituality is a sexy earth mother who makes a mere glance feel like a deep embrace. Kiki’s mascot is a white-haired ascetic who composes the chaos around him via his unflinching nature. Bouba says: the universe is built on love, so would you like a hug. Kiki says: sure, but the Godhead’s love is quite unlike your temperamental longings.

My favorite teachers straddle the two categories. Stephen Snyder, for example, instructs his students to meditate on both the Manifest and Unmanifest Absolute — the former is love and light, the latter is potential and stillness. I wish I’d followed him when I was 20, instead of following my own stupid inclinations. These inclinations ran me right into the dead end of Kiki.

Like so many other young men, I saw the Zen path as a sure method of wiping out that loathsome inconvenience, my personality. I believed that I could rise above my own messiness if I practiced inner deadness. This works, ish; if you steadily furrow your brow against your impulses, they eventually become sluggish. If you’re as chaotic as I was, this might even be an improvement over your baseline mental state. The issue is that this forced equanimity typically doesn’t last — the indignities of life will eventually break you open.

I spent some time soaking in the dead end of Bouba spirituality more recently, after I’d returned to meditation with a healthier attitude. I discovered the sumptuousness of loving-kindness, the deliciousness of walking around the world in a state of uncontracted appreciation. But, ultimately, I wasn’t falling in love with all of life — just the portion of it wearing my favorite lipstick. I was trying to avoid the appreciation of solitude and separateness, which are inescapable parts of the human condition. I was accepting creation so long as it consented to be my vending machine. Existence tends to resist this approach, either by upping your pleasure tolerance or cutting you off through a bereavement.

As a practitioner, if you go full Bouba, you will ingest a garden of delights, discover the orchestral complexity of emotion, and learn that the recommendations of your gut are often surprisingly effective. This will be a revelation if, like so many bright children, your whole personality was built on shame and self-censorship, and progressive estrangement from everything below the neck. But if you follow the logic far enough, you will become a self-indulgent baby. You will reject sensible thoughts just because they don’t feel good, endlessly entertain your tantrums, and wonder why another intimacy workshop has left you dry. In the end, you really can’t out-grasp the pain of grasping.

Meanwhile, if you go full Kiki, you will float above the vibratory diversity of consciousness, perceiving how all phenomena are movements of the same energy. This will give you tremendous clarity of mind, along with a robust appreciation for awareness as such, regardless of its contents. But if you follow the logic far enough, the self you’re trying to master will burst out sideways, in petty grudges and abrupt violations of your vaunted ethical code, and you will also be a dead-eyed weirdo with a stick up your ass, unable to engage with the reality you’ve sworn to redeem. You’ll fail to notice that you’re just trapped in another kind of grasping: vibhava-tanha, the craving for non-existence.

I notice that, often, people have breakthroughs on the spiritual path when they switch sides. The analytical vipassana nerd one day plays with “remember that God loves you” as a meditation prompt, or realizes that it’s nice to break down crying in the arms of a lover. On the other hand, perhaps the connection-loving hippie, weary of all the fun they’re having, runs smack into the question of “who is really having these desires.” Those who are Kiki-biased can learn that passion is a form of vision. Those who are Bouba-leaning can learn that peace is more pleasurable than the covetous can possibly imagine.

Bouba spirituality is more affable and relatable, and it’s the one I’d pick, if I had to just pick one. It will make you a lovely cocoon for your self-structure, filled with scented cashmere throws, stacks of well-inscribed journals, and the echoes of sincere conversation. But without the Kiki side of spirituality, you will find that when your simple yearnings are catered to, they will only be replaced by more fanciful yearnings. You won’t realize that the cocoon is actually a deathbed for your ego, and while it’s nice to decorate your deathbed, eventually you have to lay down and die.

Thank you to Wystan for your input on this piece.