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CONFERENCE OF THE BIRDS
CONFERENCE OF THE BIRDS
I am not a religious person, nor do I have any strong spiritual beliefs; I probably best define myself as being agnostic. Growing up in a Chinese household, I only got exposed to Buddhism, but only to practices and traditions rather than any religious beliefs or ideas. Only brief mentions of religion would pop up around in class, and some bits of Christianity were learned in recent years when classes started to focus more on the Bible in literature or history. But this quarter was my first intensive dive into texts/sources heavily influenced by religion and spirituality, and the one work that fascinated me the most was Dick Davis' translation of Farid ud-Din Attar's The Conference of the Birds (a long poem about Sufism, a Persian spiritual belief). It was a daunting text, but the content was beautiful in its complexity and the ideas presented were mind boggling.
A synopsis: birds from all around the world gather to find their sovereign, and the Hoopoe (considered the wisest bird) suggest that they go on a journey to find their true ruler, Simorgh. Once they are about to begin their quest, the birds make excuses on why they should stay behind, but the Hoopoe puts down each excuse, providing insight and advice on why they should go on. Ultimately, they have to cross 7 valleys to reach Simorgh—the Valley of Quest, Love, Knowledge, Detachment, Unity, Wonderment/Awe, and Poverty and Annihilation. By the end, only 30 birds survive, and they see that Simorgh was actually within themselves all along. Ultimately, the text explains the Way (or the path to finding God or a higher being within your soul) by way of abandoning your Self/Ego (your human, material desires and concerns).
Though, personally, the images employed in The Conference of the Bird reminded me a lot of the plot from one of my favorite shows—The Good Place (warning, major spoilers ahead). A closer look finds that these works can sometimes closely parallel each other since they discuss ideas concerning the path to become a better human. More specifically, there are similarities between the journey (the Way) the characters take and the ocean imagery in both sources.
THE WAY: BURNING THE SELF/EGO
THE WAY: BURNING THE SELF/EGO
In The Good Place, Eleanor finds herself mistakenly placed in the Good Place after her death (similar to the concept of heaven). Throughout the series, she tries to reform herself to become a person who deserves to be in the Good Place, but there are challenges and difficulties along the way. In her character development, she goes through her personal journey with its 7 valleys. Here are some brief comparisons between the valleys and Eleanor's journey.
1, The Valley of Quest: The Good Place. At the beginning, Eleanor's initial behavior is to hide her mistaken identity for her desires to stay in the Good Place, which causes havoc and chaos within the neighborhood. She continuously faces risks that potentially could expose her identity while trying to become a better person by taking ethics and philosophy lessons from her soulmate, Chidi. But her bad behavior and personality continuously impede her journey to redemption. Similar to the Valley of the Quest, both Eleanor and the Wayfarer face multiple trials and tribulations to shed off their self and ego.
2. The Valley of Love: Good Comes Naturally. Eleanor starts getting a hang of doing good deeds, and she starts doing them out of the kindness of her heart rather than from selfish reasons or vain purposes. She also continues to watch the neighborhood be torn apart by her presence. Her good deeds culminate to an ultimate act of redemption when she reveals that she was the factor causing all the destruction and chaos in the neighborhood, sacrificing herself to save Michael, the neighborhood's architect (creator of the neighborhood, but not at the same level as God; perhaps similar to an angel). Within the Valley of Love, the Wayfarer sheds away
3. The Valley of Insight into Mystery: Relapse. Once Eleanor admits her true identity, Michael searches to find the "true" Eleanor who should be in the Good Place. It is revealed that they ended up switching places due to their exact death time and name, with the "true" Eleanor suffering in the Bad Place instead of her. But Eleanor tries to find a way to save them both without sending either of them back to the Bad Place. At one point, she is even willing to sacrifice "true" Eleanor once she thinks about the immense loss of the Good Place, her soulmate, and the eternity of torture. In this valley, Eleanor and the Wayfarer are in risk of becoming obsessed to the source of their insight and become susceptible to their ego/self.
4. The Valley of Detachment: Sacrificing the Good Place. Eleanor soon has an epiphany and figures out that the Good Place is actually the Bad Place. Everyone there with her are either humans that are also being tortured or demons who are there to torture them. To escape, she gives up the facade of the Good Place, always recognizing the truth Michael tries to trick her into believing that she is in the Good Place with every new reboot of the neighborhood. Eventually, she runs away from this fantasy and escapes to the Middle Place to finally find a concrete solution to their predicament. Eleanor and the Wayfarer give up their attachment to insight into the mystery of their world with the Valley of Detachment, and thus destroys their ego/self once more.
5. The Valley of Unity: Soul Squad. Once she escapes, she manages to come up with a plan to meet the Judge, the ultimate being/decider of the universe. Chidi, Jason, Tihani, and Michael (who has a change of heart) tags along, but once they meet with the Judge, they receive an ultimatum. The only way to redeem themselves is to relive their human lives with their memories wiped to see if this second chance would be enough to change their fate. In the real world, they find each other once more and establish an ethics group to become better people, but they accidentally find out about the existence of the Good Place, voiding all their effort to get into a better afterlife. Rather than abandon all hope, they decide to help as many people as they can to get them into the Good Place instead. In Unity, Eleanor and the Wayfarer finds truth in diversity within the world. With Eleanor, though she invalidates her own position in the Good Place, it does not stop her from trying to help everyone else get into the Good Place, even if a friend or relative seems unredeemable.
6. The Valley of Bewilderment/Awe: The Real Good Place. Time skip and a bunch of key events later, the group manages to enter the real Good Place after all their difficulties, but they see that everyone there are like zombies, slow and lifeless. The Good Place is not the paradise everyone has imagined it to be but a haven that has made everyone's brain into mush. With an eternity without death or any punishment, sickness, or sadness, the people of the Good Place have become unresponsive after experiencing constant pleasure without any price or negative consequences. They approach their biggest struggle of the season after achieving what they wanted, it turns out to be the opposite of what they expected. Now that Eleanor and the Wayfarer has reach the Valley of Bewilderment/Awe, their Path is taken away and now they are left again in the unknown.
7. The Valley of Poverty and Annihilation: Beyond the Afterlife. The group finds a solution to fix this flaw in the Good Place by finding a place beyond the afterlife. At the end of the series, Eleanor finally reaches peace and satisfaction in her afterlife. With nothing holding her back in the Good Place, she walks through the gates beyond the afterlife and becomes a part of the universe as a particle that causes good deeds. She becomes the thoughts and emotions that drives people to act with kindness and charity in the world. With the Valley of Poverty and Annihilation, both Eleanor and the Wayfarer finally reach resolution and become absorbed into the universe and becomes one with the ocean.
JOURNEY OF MULTIPLE
JOURNEY OF MULTIPLE
Though her journey does not always fall in line with the journey formatted in The Conference of the Birds—often falling victim to her ego over and over throughout the series— it is completely justified. Just like how Eleanor has her own unique struggles, the poem defines in the Valley of Insight into Mystery that each person would have their own unique Path, and no one path would be alike: "Here every pilgrim takes a different way, / And different spirits different rules obey" (Attar 152). Just like the other characters within the show, Eleanor has her own challenges with her journey. Her struggles mainly focus on addressing her gluttony and selfishness, mostly focusing on her own desires and pleasure at the beginning of the series, but each character has their own Ego/Self to deal with. In Chidi's situation, his biggest issue was indecisiveness, too overly concerned about the outcomes of each decision and choice. Tihani's hubris was her egotistical nature, all her good deeds being driven by vanity. Each character begins with their worldly Ego/Self, which all lands them in the Bad Place disguised as the Good Place. Even though their journeys and qualities are different, but they all end up reaching the 7th valley by the end of the series, just like how the 30 birds finally find Simorgh by the end of their Path.
WAVE IN THE OCEAN
WAVE IN THE OCEAN
Next is Chidi's wave speech, which occurs at the end of the series before he steps into a realm beyond the afterlife. While we don't see what occurs with him beyond the gates of the afterlife, nor does he know what awaits him, Chidi at least foreshadows the fate of Eleanor at the end of the series. In a similar fashion, just as the wave returns to the ocean, Eleanor's soul returns to the world as a good deed.
Even though The Conference of the Birds and Chidi's speech are based in two different beliefs and religions, it is interesting that they employ similar ocean imagery to convey a "part" being or becoming "whole" again. In the case of Attar's text, the Hoopoe describes "The Truth we seek is like a shoreless sea, / Of which your paradise is but a drop" (43). The world and universe is merely a particle, a mere spec, in the vastness of "Truth" (or any higher being, power, force, etc). The image provides a solid, metaphorical conception for something beyond knowledge and comprehension, a basis that everyone can recognize and understand. Anyone can see the vastness of an ocean from its shore, and the seemingly infinite depth of its volume. Making a direct comparison between the materialistic world and desire, or "paradise," to just a drop in the ocean conveys the insignificance of these concepts to the "shoreless" Truth. Thus, Attar believes that a soul's purpose is in pursuit of the "Truth" rather than a fixation on the Ego/Self. This image also contributes to Sufism's belief of the human soul as something derived from God or a higher being. The drop and ocean imagery may compare a human's existence to an all-powerful being, but it also presents humans as a part of that higher being. A drop of water being consumed by the ocean is the ultimate goal of the Sufic belief, reaching a path to be absorbed by the God within the soul.
In Chidi's speech, the ocean imagery seems to be in opposition to Attar's words. He directly compares a human being and soul as a wave that can be "definitively measured," rather than something that is insignificant in the scheme of a higher power or being. However, their fundamental messages are similar. Even though for a moment it exists, the wave will always return to the ocean, eventually dissipating and leaving no hint of its existence behind. Likewise, a human soul will return back to the universe, as displayed with the show's ending. In both analogies, the human soul will always end up absorbed by another more-powerful force or being. The means of the message varies though due to the different purpose of their analogies. While The Conference of the Birds uses the ocean to help describe a spiritual journey to connect with God (or a higher being), Chidi's speech focuses on changing one's perspective of death. But even in the two different objectives, the rhetorical techniques are similar.
WHAT NOW?
WHAT NOW?
While The Conference of Birds and The Good Place are completely different in their content and purpose, there are still similarities in their fundamental, conceptual ideas. The Conference of the Birds provides a timeless framework that can apply to multiple religions and beliefs, and that characteristic helps it stay relevant to contemporary issues and topics. A lot of the rhetorical choices also make the work enjoyable to a modern audience and it is still is an important piece of historical literature. Compared to The Conference of the Birds, The Good Place is not a piece of historical text nor is it even a piece of literature to begin with. But they are works that still hold some weight in shaping what people choose to believe in—socially, culturally, and perhaps even politically. Wether it is a text discussing the existence of God or some higher being, or just a comedic sitcom about a woman's experience in the afterlife, it is undeniable that any type of information consumed can influence the way people behave.
Ultimately, both sources also demonstrate the human ability to change and improve on themself and both present different ways and advice on how to do that. There might be times of deviation, where one strays back to their ego/self and makes mistakes on their Path, but it is also considered a part of Way or journey. Just like how Eleanor sometimes goes back to how she acted in her previous life throughout the show, she always comes back on track with the guidance of Chidi and her friends. There is a sense of fitting closure for both stories—the birds finally finding the truth behind Simorgh and Eleanor returning back to the universe as a sign of more kindness and charity in the world. With that, despite any religious or spiritual beliefs, the audience gain hope that they too can reach peace and satisfaction with themselves by the end of their journey.
While I am still not any more religious or spiritual, reading the The Conference of the Birds definitely altered the way I see the world. Now I am a bit more hopeful that perhaps something deep within me somehow knows what is right for me, if it is due to a higher being or just my own rational soul.
REFLECTION
REFLECTION
Throughout this fall quarter, my main focus was to improve and polish the way I write and perhaps change the way I see the world around me. And though this website project is not the most formal piece of writing I did this year, it was still an amazing platform to explore my ideas, and, in-turn, dig deeper into what the world has got to offer. With the addition of pictures, videos, formatting, fonts, and all that goes into web design, I find that these features punctuate the messages I convey and generally make it more enjoyable experience than reading an essay I wrote. Similar to Attar's rhetorical and comedic flair, and every translation of we have read, we too incorporate elements of appeal in these assignments—our own little modern touch. Though you, dear reader, might be one out of the few that have seen this site develop, I'm glad that this was given at least some thought and attention. Thank your for reading from the bottom of my heart, from one drop to another in this shoreless ocean.
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