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Solitary Man: HARRY DEAN STANTON
SS: Were you in the South Pacific when the war ended?
HDS: No. I’m trying to remember. I took a test when I was in the Pacific. I don’t know whether it ended when I was there or when I got back. But I took a test for the Naval Air Corps — jet training — and passed it. I came back to the Case School of Applied Science in Cleveland. I was there three months, but I didn’t want to be a pilot. I took drum lessons and didn’t study or anything. I just wanted out of the Navy.
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SS: Khrishnamurti said, “Relationship is the mirror in which the self is revealed.” How have the relationships in your life helped you to learn about yourself? Are there any that stand out?
HDS: There have been hundreds. I learn about myself. There is no self. You learn you’re not a self. You learn you’re nothing. Ultimately. Hopefully.
SS: The individual is nothing.
HDS: Scientific fact. It’s not my opinion. [Laughs]
SS: When did you begin to look at the events of your life as really just a part of one event of no particular importance?
HDS: It’s an obvious fact. It’s all Eastern concepts, from Buddhism, Taoism. Ultimately the atomic physicists — Einstein, Niels Bohr, Heisenberg — all agreed that science couldn’t answer the mystery of the universe. So I was impressed with all that. Once it gets organized — even if it’s Buddhism or Taoism or Kabbalah — I’m not a member. Einstein said Buddhism was the only religion that could cope with modern scientific needs. So they arrived at the same place the Buddhists did 2,500 years ago. There’s no answer to any of it. That’s liberating. It’s an enlightening concept.
SS: Einstein said it was a true miracle that anything at all exists.
HDS: It’s all a miracle. And inexplicable. No answer to it. It’s just what it is.
SS: When did Eastern philosophy start to change the way you view the world?
HDS: It started when I was about 23. I found a copy of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essays. He was into the Eastern mode, too. That’s when I started examining all the belief systems and religions and philosophical concepts from the Greeks and everybody.