by Sonny Saul
CHAPTER NINE:
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“Everything has been thought of before;
the task is to think of it again.”
Goethe, quoted often by Stravinsky
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With these words Kama Mara’s whole aspect shifted.
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The pleasures of an intelligent conversation
From the position of his deep squat, Kama Mara began, “In some ways you haven’t changed. You remind me now of the boy prince. Let’s understand each other. Outward circumstances have altered, but once again, you are simply too comfortable, maybe too comfortable even for vice. If everyone were as comfortable as you, all deeds would die out, good and bad.”
With these words Kama Mara’s whole aspect shifted. He began to appear to Gotama as a great and venerable wise man—a guru. His words carried fresh power. “When you destroy passion and desire in yourself, even as a preventive measure against their stupidity and likely unpleasant consequences, that’s just another form of stupidity! It’s the recipe for decadence. When life is in the ascendant, one inclines towards and follows the instincts.”
“‘Vice and virtue are likewise chains.” The guru was mocking… and then declamatory, “Whatever enlightenment is, it has nothing to do with an increase of virtue, or with its opposite.”
Without taking thought (this would be his modus operandi from now on), quietly, almost off hand, as if Kama Mara had inquired after his health or mentioned the weather, Gotama replied. Words, starting very slowly, gathered resonance and rhythmic momentum. “The concern of the strongest and purest heart is only that the flame of truth which it keeps alive should burn most intensely. It doesn’t trouble about the distance to which the brightness may penetrate.”
Gotama had never said anything like this. He had never been in a conversation like this. Words, together with the flow of thought tasted sweet to him, as did his breathing, so well practiced. He savored the essence of the moment and the expression of its fulfillment, but even before he finished the thought, Gotama saw that Kama Mara was losing some of his character as guru and taking on the aspect of friend, one from whom he might gain, not only knowledge and perspective, but also other pleasures of companionship he had so long denied himself.
With renewed warmth, he resumed the conversation. “Isn’t the deepest thinking always the most humble? At last, I have begun to learn with your daughter the art of self forgetting, as a bird flies through the air, as a fish swims in the water.”
“Before one can breathe deeply, the lungs must be emptied … ” he tried to continue, but the thought trailed away. Kama Mara waited, and after some silence Gotama began again, saying, “Aren’t all things generated out of their opposites? What is inexpressible, perhaps, may provide the background against which whatever I am able to express will acquire meaning.”
Kama Mara was pleased. Not only had this former prince and forest hermit been able to match his powers of magic, but now he was showing the charm of his re emerging intellect and personality. He said, “You are on the way. Let’s get you there! You must know superiority in man is shown by the virtue of his work or of his actions. This is power. You have been doing too much meditation. When you meditate you fix your mind on something. That’s something artificially put upon the mind, so it doesn’t belong to the mind’s native activity.
“Life, do you say, should resemble the flight of a bird? So upon what do the birds of the air meditate? Don’t they simply fly? And the fish? They swim! That’s enough. Who wants to fix his mind upon something? You’ve always had it backwards.”
“Here’s the point. You’ve learned it for yourself; first one must train the body to the desired effect. It’s not about a mere disciplining of thoughts and feelings. One must convince the body. Strict maintenance, perseverance in select and significant gestures, and then, all this becomes inward.”
“Ha! Had I known what fire was, I would have cooked my rice much sooner!” Gotama burst out with a laugh.
Kama Mara wasn’t smiling yet. “You must have known that the origin of all acetic practice had nothing to do with any metaphysical view of the world. It was always, practical. The great Vedic Rishis of earliest times taught awareness and demonstrated that through technique they could become like the gods.”
“You were a fool! Your ascetic ideals were an hibernation, a slumber in nothingness combined with lust for glory. Insanity! Desiring to achieve mastery over not something in life but over life itself, you attempted to seal up the walls of the life force and its deepest, most powerful and basic conditions.”
“You disdained health most particularly the natural outward signs of well being: beauty and joy. Instead, you sought pleasure and triumph and felt it too in misery. Your sufferings have all been self-inflicted.”
Gotama was silent a long while. Relaxed and patient, like a chess master, he allowed thought to gather and assemble. “How had this strange Magician achieved this surpassing understanding?”
Kama Mara felt the silence. Still squatting, he placed the palms of his hands on the ground by his heels. He locked his arms, elbows slightly bent. In the manner of a modern gymnast, pulling his hips up and then rocking back, he extended his legs straight out just above the ground. Balancing, he held that pose and then, gracefully, lowering his hips back down and just off the ground, alternately and leisurely, stretching each leg out in front of him he said, “Because natural laws govern the human personality, one’s natural tendencies have great importance and must be considered and developed. One force may govern the others, but none can conform the others. Natural tendency is the key.”
With the trace of a smile, Kama Mara finally pulled his legs back in, and copying exactly the manner in which Gotama was sitting, centering himself around his lungs and heart, his feet up upon his knees, he continued, “Your yearning for harmony took the form of a craven retreat, a withdrawal before the contradictory problems thrown up by life. Seeking inner balance you cut yourself off from society’s struggles. But, such a ‘balance’ could only be superficial, illusory, vanishing at any serious contact with reality. Harmony for the individual presupposes his harmonious integration into his environment, into his society.”
“And let me tell you now… he who has followed these things to their conclusions, and is his own man, can, with impunity and without danger, enjoy and participate in everything that life offers. Indeed he is best served by the things that are believed to be most dangerous.”
“Your inheritance is fatal. That’s why I’m here. You must realize that you still belong to the number of those who suffer from disease. It’s a sort of sleeping sickness, which has its roots in the past. Once you realize this, fresh insight will flow and with it, fresh power and freedom; not from any bondage, not from anything; but for something.”
A long silence rose between them, completely comfortable, but Kama Mara had more to say. “For the whole of your life”, he began, “from even before your birth, always unknown to you, I have been your guru, watching, providing the needed impetus at the right times, conspiring, so that the necessary events might unfold.”
“The only real satisfaction in life is to work—and not from compulsion. This is what distinguishes man from an ass. With regard to my own work, when it began, initially it was not the whole of me, but only my mind, though I loved the work the moment I conceived it… I set myself the task of being able, through dedication and persistence, to accustom my whole nature to love this work I had chosen, and not my reason alone.”
Gotama focused more closely, but Kama Mara raised his hand. “Don’t wonder at it”, he said. “All things in time… The guru’s role is not to avoid error, but to guide the misguided… and to allow error, even to the full. One who only samples an error may long husband and delight in it like a rare pleasure, but he who exhausts it completely is bound to recognize it.”
“Now, in order to understand and to go forward, you must consciously persevere and assimilate—and at last yo
u are able. There is a mass of information concerning objective truth and real events that have taken place and you must also be able to bear it within yourself as well as all the results of all kinds of voluntary and involuntary experiences.”
“Do you see and understand the importance of what I am talking about? Not everyone can receive it. If my own beloved father were to come to me here at this moment and urgently entreat me to give him merely the tenth part of this understanding, and if I wished with my whole being to do so, yet I could not, in spite of my ardent desire, give him even the thousandth part, as he has neither the experience nor the knowledge which I have purposely lived and acquired through my life. ”
“Understanding is the essence obtained from all kinds of personal experience and from information intentionally learned. It cannot be taught after the fashion of an automatic remembering of words in a sequence. Only understanding can lead to being, whereas knowledge has only a passing presence in it.”
Let the reader pause a moment before the next scene begins, and try to imagine the figure of Kama Mara as he stands and prepares lungs to receive air which will make voice swell, as if he were about to sing an aria.