The Temptation of the Buddha: A Fictional Study in the History of Religion and of Aesthetics
Page 16
CHAPTER FIFTEEN:
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“We call ‘beauty’ that which pleases us
without evoking Desire.”
Leo Tolstoy, “What is Art?”
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Taking up where Desire left off
When, upon the evening following Desire’s morning scene, Kama Mara’s middle daughter, Fulfillment, in a glow of golden light, made her entrance, already Gotama had felt her approach and, remembering her from that inner vision referred to at the beginning of this text, recognized her before she appeared
Magically; in the same manner that Kama Mara had first appeared to him; as a projection of his own fears, and Desire; as a projection of his anima (Is Jung’s term comprehensible in this context?), Fulfillment appeared as his own image of feminine beauty.
In his current frame of mind the entire focus of his being absorbed in the exploration of the depth and peace of an all absorbing, expansive inner realm—the shock of her sudden appearance in this character was overwhelming.
Maestoso. Assuming a grandiloquent posture, right away she sings,
“Nature tries always to adorn herself, to not be herself… yet
in each thing we may read the signature of all things.
Behind …
within …
embodied …
A universal soul …
continually finds its own self again in all being.
You are it, and, it is you.
We see ourselves in all being, and all being in ourselves.”
Assuming a grandiloquent posture, right away she sings.
It seemed to Gotama as if the surfaces of her body were curved mirrors in which everything was reflected. Her tongue, like an hibiscus petal, caressed the sounds which echoed in the air from each of her consonants and vowels and then echoed again inside him as he felt and observed his own mind sorting her richer meanings and contexts.
“What is the role of beauty in nature?” She read his thoughts. “Doesn’t the apprehension of beauty, attracting its object by an urgency of contrast, sometimes come to us with such a vigorous blow just to try to awaken our consciousness from its lethargy?”
“Learning from the beauty in nature, we strive to express the beauty in our own selves, each according to his own individual temperament.” She bowed, signaling the end of her rather formal prelude and exposition. Stepping back, frankly studying him, obviously aware of the impression she was making, she stood opposite him awhile, hands on her hips.
She stood opposite him awhile, hands on her hips, frankly studying him, obviously aware of the impression she was making.
Insinuating many meanings, she teased him. “Sitting quietly doing nothing: spring comes and the grass grows by itself.”
Fulfillment seemed to take up where nature left off. Her self conscious artistry multiplied her impact so that she spoke and appeared past herself, so that she became, to Gotama, transparent to the transcendent, like a window, opening up and carrying the divine radiance into the field of time.
Concepts flowed for her, and catching the spirit, without thinking, Gotama, surprising himself, said, “Beauty is no accident. Your father is right.”
Fulfillment was ready and said, with a sparkling laugh, “I’m more beautiful than you. Anyone who knows me will tell you that.” Her sense of time, and the soft, ululating rhythms of her perfectly chosen words cast a spell. Gotama felt as if, from a rapturous sleep, he were emerging into an even more dazzling reality.
I’m more beautiful than you. Anyone who knows me will tell you that.
“Listen; my name is Fulfillment, but we won’t adorn our metaphors with the stars. My sister is in love with you. It’s not like her at all. One thing is certain,” she said, and now assuming an ironic tone, “Desire cannot offer fulfillment. Don’t sacrifice yourself. It’s what I told her too.”
At first when Fulfillment had appeared, so radically different from everything else was she, that the shock her beauty produced upon Gotama was profound. But, as she spoke things transpired within him. Gradually a greater, but unassuming, emancipating harmony unfolded, expanded, and provided context to include her appearance. As his acquaintance with this living goddess of beauty ripened, the apparent discordance of her startling singularity was resolved into modulations of rhythm. A greater recognition of the beauty in all things, great and small, opened for him and became easy. Beauty became a matter of course… revealing the radiant glorification of the eternity of all phenomena… a triumph over the suffering inherent in nature.
Only the most subtle shifting of countenance and posture expressed Gotama’s inner experience, but his revelations were not lost upon Fulfillment.
Her reaction was immediate. A general rippling in the atmosphere around her announced it, and then, a slight raising of her chin, and the sharpest smile. A quick turn—whole body at once—and her long hair was flying. The near violent arching of her back alluding to an urgent impatience, her arms straightened out, rising up above her head. The focus became her fingers, dancing, both hands at once.
But before she had really begun, suddenly, breaking time altogether, she moved up very close to him she said, “Well then, is there nothing to be done? Aren’t you going to become the BUDDHA?”
No one had ever spoken of that. “Buddha”- an awakened one. Had he, in fact, still to wake up? Feeling again as if his innermost thoughts and feelings were being directly read and spoken to, an increased sense of the breadth, scope, and power of what he had just now understood to be an improvised ritual drama revolving about him… began to dawn.
But this perception and train of thought were not long lived. Just as when Desire had sat on his lap, powerful and pressing inner sensations, impossible to ignore, were demanding his attention. Since he had first seated himself beneath this tree, he had felt something opening within himself. Gradually, at a distance at first, he had experienced its attraction, but rather suddenly now an image crystallized; a distant and open door toward which all energies trained. Overwhelming, like a psychic whirlpool, it began to draw him in.
Absorbed, as he so thoroughly was at that moment, and about to lose his identity completely, his mind produced and presented the strongest sensations he had ever experienced of the awareness of a universal and raging desire for existence and for beauty and joy in existence. But his mental training directed and carried him beyond even this …
Meanwhile, Fulfillment, passionately and sonorously, went right on to the heart of her own message, “In the world of art every thought has a symbolic form. And it’s the forms that make expression possible. Now that you’ve prepared yourself so thoroughly, have made yourself so intensely aware, so enlightened, aren’t you inclined to your own formal and beautiful fulfillment… nirvana?”
Gotama did not react or speak. She went on, “Having grown up among powerful men and women, I can tell that you have the power… but even the bravest of us rarely has the courage for what he really knows.”
“All that we are,” she said, articulating, without pause precisely, what was occurring within him—but all the while in another different context, “is a result of our thoughts, founded and compounded in proportion with necessity. You aspired beyond fear, beyond desire. Now, are you beyond Fulfillment?”
“Nirvana: ceasing; blown out … a beautiful word …” Fulfillment was both whispering and beginning to sing, her face close to his as she shaped each word into a broad crescendo..
“I imagine nirvana as a beautiful activity.”
She let these words go into the air, and then, after following their echoes, she became very quiet. Not being afraid to give stillness its rhetorical, musical, and dramatic place, added profundity to what she had said and to the moment.
Appassionata: a slow circling walk became an extended prelude for a final movement, con moto. In this brighter tempo and key she said, “I’m right and so was your father. Isn’t that what he was afraid of… that you would become a great religious teacher? Wa
sn’t he right? Hasn’t the world has had enough of those?”
Accelerando: She was beginning to cook. “BUDDHA! Imagine your disciples? Can’t you just picture them! Already they are holding their begging bowls. They have misunderstood everything. They are not genuine, not even actors but imitations of actors. And they stink, too! Think this through. Generations, for thousands of years, sitting around not doing anything because of you! And the CULTS!”
Fulfillment brought herself to a halt. Placing herself opposite him, without the use of her hands, she sat and folded her legs. Pressing the palms of her hands together, she looked hard at him. “People will like you. There’s no doubt that you will be accepted. But, such acceptance is not without its problems. What might seem to give genius greater scope, so often winds up, actually, vulgarizing it. Authentic spirituality, like authentic beauty, is not for the masses.”
She spoke now without movement. “Your discoveries are deep, intimate, delicate, hidden even. No matter how great your effort, it will be impossible to communicate them. The state at which you have arrived was not reached by logical reasoning. Besides, in our country it is Vedanta that will always be sacred. Don’t sacrifice yourself.
Breaking the rhythm, Fulfillment stopped, and in a broad ritardando she spoke her concluding words of the scene.
“But…are you the kind of man who ought to be free?
Or will you be casting off your final value
when you cast off your chains?”