They say it’s not the size that counts but the quality, and this little book certainly falls into that category. Divinity School is not a long read, because that’s not its function. We could move through author Elizabeth Pyjov’s 44 poems very quickly, but to fully ingest what these carefully pared-back lines imply, and then allow them to metabolize for a while, could make this a read that lasts considerably longer—perhaps even a lifetime.
Published by Happiness Sangha Printing Press, which describes it as a “Buddhist reinterpretation of Judeo-Christian theology,” Divinity School is the first volume of poetry by a woman whose polymathic brain and range of accomplishments may leave many of us feeling as if we are still dragging our knuckles in the dirt. Elizabeth Pyjov is a poet, graduate school professor, meditation teacher, scholar, theologian, and lawyer. She holds three Harvard degrees, speaks five languages, and has lived in seven countries. Through Happiness Sangha she has also designed more than 250 programs intended to guide people toward greater happiness and fulfillment.
Russian-born and raised in California, Pyjov began practicing mindfulness at 16, and was involved with Stanford’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education by her early twenties. Her studies and professional life have encompassed Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, ancient Chinese philosophy, neuroscience, theology, literature, and law, while her work has included human rights at the United Nations in Geneva and serving as a translator for Nobel Prize-winning Italian playwright Dario Fo. There is a tremendous amount of information and experience behind this deceptively little book.
The title could be considered a little hook-ish, but it is really more of a play on what it means to be divine, and whether divinity need always be confined to something institutionalized or apotheosized. Many of us have moments or encounters that feel divine, although they remain subjective. Coupled with the idea of being at school, this places those experiences and inherited beliefs somewhere that should involve learning, questioning, and doing some of the mental work for ourselves, rather than simply accepting what we are given as truth.
My grandmother used to talk about people who had what she called a “blotting-paper brain.” It was possibly less an observation than an accusation, but that was my grandmother. She meant a brain capable of mopping up enormous amounts of information without necessarily being able to comprehend any of it. And she was right. Many people amass vast amounts of information without ever becoming particularly wise, while others intellectualize less yet understand considerably more. A school ought to be a place where we ask questions, not somewhere we are simply indoctrinated. And if this is a divinity school, God is not going to place all the answers neatly in front of us.
The collection moves deliberately from “God” to “Buddha,” passing through Eve, Gabriel, Joseph, Christ, St. Thomas, Judas, Mary Magdalene, Pontius Pilate and Mary, before widening into language, art, religion, dogma, truth, compassion, non-duality, and the infinite. We are taken from creation and the concept of being God, through figures and teachings belonging largely to Judeo-Christian traditions, and gradually toward a Buddhist-inflected understanding of uncertainty, compassion, liberation, and the limitations of belief.
The standard declaration on the copyright page that a book’s contents are a work of fiction, and that any resemblance to actual persons is coincidental, does become quite amusing when the characters under discussion include God, Christ, Mary, and the Buddha. Obviously, I have no idea whether or not this was intentional, but it made me chuckle. As a reviewer, we read what we read, and, intentional or otherwise, it plays its part within the larger scope of a book that asks us to question those familiarities we have stopped thinking about, and what they really imply.
Eve may not have been expelled from paradise at all, but may have left willingly after recognizing that paradise offered no room for growth. St. Thomas’s doubt becomes resistance to blind obedience. He wants to see and touch, to experience something for himself rather than believe simply because everybody else does. Pyjov is not overturning a regime, nor is she subverting these inherited meanings merely for the pleasure of overturning them. She is encouraging us to reconsider certain givens from a new perspective, which is an important life skill.
This questioning of dogma is one of this book’s strengths, because when teachings are accepted without reflection, they are not necessarily knowledge. And entering into a spiritual tradition is not the same as allowing ourselves to be willingly indoctrinated by it. Even within Buddhist schools, debate has long been used to test arguments, stretch the mind, and encourage participants to think sideways. Doubt, when held intelligently, does not have to be the enemy of the spiritual life. It may be one of the things that prevents it from becoming stagnant.
I have long been drawn to archetypes and to reconsidering inherited narratives through our modern cultural sensibilities. Many of us, for example, have reimagined Persephone as being with Hades willingly, perhaps negotiating a life that allowed her to move between the upper world and the underworld. I rather like that possibility, but it is a considerable departure from the older myth, in which Persephone is abducted by Hades and longs to return to her mother, Demeter. Perhaps this is also part of what myth should be, with room for these stories to grow and be reconsidered through the sensibilities of another age. Yet we need to remember what the older story actually said, and the culture and social structures from which it emerged, before we replace it with the version we would now prefer it to be.
What I appreciate about Divinity School is that Pyjov does not simply replace one fixed interpretation with another, or insist that she has arrived at a final meaning. Instead, she allows a little poetic widening and lateral thought. In “Ancient Greece,” many gods allow for many truths, creating greater nuance and possibility, while elsewhere it is belief itself that becomes the thing most likely to get us into trouble.
Poetry of this brevity leaves room for the brain to conduct its own search. Neurologically, we enjoy some element of problem-solving, the gap we are able to close for ourselves and that little braingasm of recognition when a connection is made, a puzzle is solved, or we finally discover who did it. We are also more likely to retain something when we have participated in arriving at it, particularly when that discovery carries some emotional engagement. Poetry can deliver concepts in a way more akin to painting, with the mind searching for association, interpretation and meaning rather than simply receiving a literal transcript.
Pyjov’s poems are concise—sometimes only four lines long—but they are not quite pith poetry, nor do they give us the abrupt thump on the head of a Zen master. Their simplicity works more gently. The book’s physical size also lends itself to a more occasional form of engagement, because it could sit neatly on a coffee table or bedside table, ready to be picked up, opened at a poem, then put down again, allowing the ideas held within those lines to drift into the recesses of the mind, waltzing with the thoughts and memories they find there.
To be fair, the final pages do become something of an advertisement for Pyjov’s programs through Happiness Sangha, and readers can make of that what they will, particularly when many independently published books also serve as an introduction to an author’s wider body of work. It does not take away from the poems themselves, nor from what they may offer readers interested in practicing spirituality with a Buddhist arc while retaining room for other traditions, other questions, and the many overlaps that are part of the human story.
Rather than asking us to abandon inherited teachings, these poems prompt us to pay attention to them again, reconsider what we have taken as given, and do some of the mental hard work that genuine learning requires. If this is a divinity school, its lessons are not found in absorbing the correct answers, but in questioning, comprehending, and discovering what, if anything, we can actually do with what we think we know.
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Divinity School by Elizabeth Pyjov (Happiness Sangha)
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