Secret Lives of Words

Mendicant – The One who gave up crown, queen and child April 4, 2009

Few words in the English language affect me, warm the cockles of my heart,  as does this sublime word Mendicant. The look and the feel of the word itself, to me anyway,  exemplify the austerity and the asceticism that the word conveys.

Usage of the term Mendicant is steeped in antiquity,  and as it stands today the word finds equivalent expressions  in almost all cultures. That’s  how familiar mankind  is  with  the practice of austerity, and vows of poverty. In fact, the word is as old as begging itself,  and if online definition is to be trusted, it is as old as human physical deformity itself!

The word comes to us fairly unchanged from the Middle English, via Old French, whence it traces back to Latin:  mendum means physical defect. Mendicant, in the original sense,  is someone physically defective, and hence incapable of earning a livelihood, is cast out, and who resorts to begging.

Mendicant seems to have become synonymous with begging very early on.  In subsequent centuries a vow of poverty and a life of voluntary begging became an added meaning. It was in that sense that we have religious Order of Mendicants, the legendary St. Francis of Assisi being one. Mendicancy is also a recognized aspect of Hindu asceticism, Buddhist monastic life, and certain strains of Islam such as Sufi Dervishes.

In the case of the Siddhartha Gautama, The Lord Buddha, mendicancy was anything but a defect – physical or otherwise. For verily he was a man perfect in all ways. Even if he was deficient in an earthly way. He gave up, abdicated, the throne he was to sit upon. He gave up a wife that loved him. He gave up a son that he begot.  His abdication of earthly life was complete, while he meditated on the meaning of attachment. He was, indeed, the complete mendicant!

Siddartha Gauthama - The Buddha

Buddhist lore has it that the prince Siddhartha Gautama spent decades as a mendicant, having given up crown, queen and child. Eventually he became The Buddha, the Awakened One, while meditating under a banyan  tree. The purported tree is located in the village of Gaya, in  Bihar State of India. The village came to be known as Bodh Gaya, the tree  was known as Bodhi tree. The actual tree claimed to be the One,  receives millions of visitors a year.

Buddha’s teachings spread far and wide, mostly to the east if India. In the lands of  its birth and early growth, Buddhism is virtually synonymous with mendicancy. Religious cannon aside, the Buddha is beloved of  all Asians.  I don’t know what  language the following video is in  but  it is a tribute to the embodiment of mendicancy:

Religious mendicants are given a variety of names such as Sadhu in Jainism, Sanyasi or Bairagi in Hinduism, Friar in Christianity during the Middle Ages,  Bhikkhu in Buddhism,  Takahatsu in Japanese, Fakirs in Islam of the East, and so on. Whatever, mendicants motivated by the religious impulse are the same: simple living, disavowal of property, seeking alms and a contemplative existence. Here is an interesting cultural artefact.

In England, the abolition of debtor’s jails and the Poor Laws, led to a new form of mendicants flooding the urban areas in search of food, shelter and clothing, as depicted in these stark images.  But we live in a democracy now,  contemplative idlers are not that well tolerated. Everyone must work first, and then hope to retire. Mendicancy is out of style, or is it?   The noble practice of high thinking and low living now masquerades as something else in our post-industrial age.

Beatniks,  hippies, the modern day Road Scholars, Starving Artists  and Hell’s Angels,  the Hobo and the Rastafarian,  all belong to the mendicant tradition. One might even argue that the waitresses waiting for the casting call, and the cabdrivers with film scripts under the seat, in a way all are mendicants in search of a personal Nirvana.  No wonder Tolkein said, Not all those who wander are truly lost. After all, not all human beings can set out on a journey of epic caliber as did Ulysses or Rama.

Mendicant of Modern Times

An absolutely wonderful little poem called  Let me no more a Mendicant by Arthur Colton can be found in The Little Book of Modern Verse, read it here.

I stumbled upon this image of palm-writing as part of an uncredited collage at a terrific site, a group blog on art called The Selector. Give that site a visit, it’s super!

Over the years, aided by some quiet meditations upon Our Kind Lord Buddha, I  gained an insight into my own affinity for words, and believe that I now understand my love for the word Mendicant. It is the short vowels, the gentle non-harsh consonants, the easy roll of uncluttered syllables, they all combine to result in a certain ease of pronunciation.  Austerity of sound and structure derived from a brevity of breath.  A subliminal consonance of form and function, whereby the word conveys  in the means of  its utterance what it connotes in the spirit of its meaning.  Possibly I am reaching, but then what else does one do with words, if not meditate upon them and their affect on you?

Peace!