Literature’s Role in Freedom and Knowledge
Reading and the thoughts that it stimulates are more powerful than we can imagine. For centuries, literature has fueled the knowledge that has lead to revolution and rebellion in the pursuit of freedom. The mental stimulation that occurs through reading is undoubtedly comparable with the Buddhist journey to selflessness. Azar Nafisi, renowned professor and devote promoter of the development of democracy and human rights in the Muslim world, has recently written the book Reading Lolita in Tehran: A memoir in Books . In this book we are introduced to a group of women who are seeking truth, humanity, and knowledge in literature while facing the oppression of both education and women in their country. These women are an illustration of how literature helps to shed the veils of repression. Understanding literature cultivates independent thinkers who find not only intellectual freedom, but political, and spiritual freedom as well. We can learn from this example, by opening our minds to great literature we are expanding our knowledge and learning from the thoughts and experiences of others. Taking away a greater knowledge about our selves, our world and shattered beliefs that we felt comfortable with but were untrue. This self-knowledge on the quest to selflessness that Robert Thurman, author and America’s leading voice on Buddhism addresses in his piece about Buddhist philosophy and psychology “Wisdom.” Thurman sheds even more light on the importance of knowledge on the quest to selflessness, which equates to spiritual freedom. By finding truth in who we are and what we believe in it will free our minds to become more accepting. With acceptance comes compassion and with compassion comes the power to change. If we can begin to understand that intellectual freedom, spiritual freedom, and political freedom are interconnected and that knowledge really does equal power than we can use that power to rid the world of oppression and discrimination. Then for the first time we will have succeeded as a free global community.
It is no secret that this world is not a perfect place. People in countries all over the world are being persecuted and punished everyday under stringent and brutal regimes. This political oppression filters into every part of life in these countries, subjecting its people to arbitrary rules. In the Islamic Republic, of Iran Nafisi notes that “female students were being penalized for running up the stairs when they were late for classes, for laughing in the hall, for talking of members of the opposite sex.” These women are living in a country where “all gestures, even the most private, were interpreted in political terms.” The only way to free the world from this tyranny is to infuse the culture with knowledge just as Nafisi has done on a smaller scale with her group of students. The knowledge found in literature has transformed their lives. They are allowing themselves to let their minds go wherever their imagination takes them. Creating words like “upsilamba” which evoke thoughts of happiness and have become “symbol, a sign of that vague sense of joy.” Nafisi states their one room of freedom became “a place of transgression” “we took every opportunity to flaunt our insubordination: by showing a little hair from under our scarves, insinuating a little color into the drab uniformity of our appearance, growing our finger nails, falling in love, and listening to forbidden music.” Through interpretation and analysis these women have experienced a self transformation; just as Buddhists experience transformations through mediation. Thurman describes his own transformation in “Wisdom” as “I felt like I was slowly but surely loosening my self-centered perspective on life and the world. In a useful way, a strengthening way, I was beginning to experience the great Buddhist mystery that is the selflessness of subjects and objects.” Thurman explains that to understand our own selflessness we must look by “introspectively, trying to grasp exactly what your essence is.” That is precisely what these young women have done. Through the “magic eye of fiction” these women “imaginatively articulate these two worlds and, through that process, give shape to our vision and identity.” To the women of Tehran the readings of Nabokov and the emulation of Lolita is their mediation their release. It is the only time when they can remove their veils; explore literature, and even themselves. It is the only time when they are truly free to express themselves. A meditation that just as Thurman describes is the “practice used to discover the true nature of the self” through the understanding of literature they have begun to discover the true nature of themselves free from the political repression they endure in their country. This is the most incredible example of how powerful literature can be in order to evoke change.
The women of Nafisi’s group have done something so many people only dream of in places like Iran, they have reached intellectual freedom. In the Islamic Republic like so many other places even education is subservient to politics, often banning literature because of its inappropriate themes. By disobeying the laws of their country and opening their minds to literature the women found that they were “instinctively related” to their readings and “grasped the possibility of a boundless freedom.” What a tremendous concept for people living in fear and forced to conformity to grasp. Their confusion and apprehension about their identities and disobeyment of Muslim rules was the “fundamental misunderstanding” of the self that Thurman explains as the “key to liberation, the gateway to enlightenment.” With out knowing it through literature these women have stumbled upon the journey to finding themselves and possible a way to liberate their nation. They are the example that should be followed throughout nations facing the struggle for democracy. The connection they felt to Nobokov’s emotions and his text about revolution is just one example of how literature can spark the plan for freedom. As Nafisi states “what we search in fiction is not so much reality but the epiphany of truth.” It is the knowledge and the truth that these women have taken from literature that have freed their minds, and it is the knowledge that they can spread to free the city of Tehran, to free the Islamic Republic, to free all the countries facing the same oppression.
Meditation, Selflessness, and the intellectual journey these women have embarked upon goes hand in hand with spirituality. Not spirituality in the religious sense, but spirituality in the sense that Thurman addresses. This spirituality is in relation to how we see ourselves. As Thurman states by “identifitying this habitual, certain self-knowledge as the core of misknowledge” these woman are going to be able to “give birth to wisdom, truth, and liberating enlightenment” and that is just what they have done. They have freed their minds to embrace the human spirit, and found the spirituality that knowledge can create. By shedding their veils and opening up their minds through literature these women are boldly taking the steps toward freedoms that they have never known. Each woman that is part of Nafisi’s group has a spirit that is unique to her self, but at the same time relates to Thurman’s seven virtues of wisdom, generosity, justice, patience, creativity, contemplation, and making art in the service of others. These virtues are an important part of realizing what each women can contribute in the quest for freedom. The most intriguing of the women is Sananz “who is pressured by family and society, vacillated between her desire for independence and her need for approval” the conflict she is experiencing is the same conflict that the Islamic Republic is facing; a tug of war between the desires for independence in the midst of authorization.
If we can begin to understand the power that can be found in knowledge than we can truly begin to understand how to solve the world’s most pressing problems like discrimination and totalitarian regimes. Through the appreciation and analyzation of literature we will eventually find truth in who we are and what we believe in. Our minds will become more accepting and the compassion that comes from acceptance will be the greatest catalyst for change. Freedom and knowledge are connected and you can not achieve one with out the other. Knowledge is the power that will help places like the Islam Republic reach freedom. With the compassion and knowledge we will gain we will be able to free the world of ignorance and discrimination but we first need the tools to do it. These tools come from learning and understanding different cultures and religions, points of view and opinions and taking that knowledge and applying it to our real problems our planet and the people living on it are facing today. We can give freedom to the oppressed, find comfort in equality, and can succeed as a global community.
