The Temptation of the Buddha: A Fictional Study in the History of Religion and of Aesthetics
Page 26
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE:
--- --- ---
“Of all lies, art is the least untrue.”
Gustave Flaubert
--- --- ---
Like a Fairy Tale
In begging the reader’s indulgence for all the rather obviously fictive elements of this narrative, I can cite a relevant precedent: the general class of stories known as Tales of the Buddha and its sub class; the Mara Tales! No one thinks these stories happened. “They are not like Carl Sandburg’s ‘Life of Lincoln’,” Joseph Campbell once joked.
Psychologically the Buddha and Mara tales (and incidentally their parallels in the early alternative Christian literature) function in many of the same ways as the familiar genre of stories known as ‘fairy tales’. Also, they invite retelling and invention, like certain melodies that lend themselves to variation. The present author has felt unconstrained, and even inspired to improvise upon such a rich lore.
One might imagine other volumes in a series of stories; “Kama Mara and His Daughters”. A prior one might have chronicled their activities prior to arrival in Aryavarta, when they traveled in Hellas (what we now call the Greek Isles)—and encountered some of the men who became the pre-Socratic philosophers. (Heraclitus, Parmenides, Pythagoras?) A later one might depict their journey to China and their adventures with Confucius or perhaps Lao Tse.
There is much of the ‘life of the Buddha’ still to relate, but the story of ‘Kama Mara and his daughters in Aryavarta’ draws to an end. Explaining elaborately, carefully, even ritually to Gotama that the source of his own inspiration and dedication is the patriarch, Manu, and the Seven Great Rishis, (those progenitors of mankind who journeyed to remote places after the Great Flood, founding, settling, and supporting outposts that would make possible the continuity of man’s development), Kama Mara announces his intention to depart.
“One of our tasks as the disciples and descendants of these Rishis”, Kama Mara confides, “has always been the preparation of successors to whom knowledge, and all that is connected with it, may be handed down. In this way what has been attained is preserved from age to age, passed even from one civilization to another.”
“Traveling the length of Aryavarta, as I have, one might have thought that all traces of Manu’s influence had long ago vanished. Many have heard nothing of him. It would appear that every attainment of this remote period has been utterly lost. But, I myself, am living testimony that these have been guarded, protected against persons who might mutilate and distort. It is only carefully chosen pupils, only those who have undergone prolonged and difficult preparation, who have been entrusted with the ancient lore and wisdom.”
“Our aim—especially when mankind has regressed to a barbarous state of one kind or another—is to promote and to assist the difficult emergence from that state to a new civilization, to a new life. Though hidden from the eyes of ordinary humanity, our influence persists uninterruptedly.”
“You must know, no civilization ever begins of itself. There exists no progress which begins accidentally and proceeds mechanically. Civilization never starts by ‘natural growth’, but only by cultivation.”
“When we think of the great majority of the ideas we encounter, they are nothing like what I am talking about. Nor are they the product of cultivated development, but they are the product of the degeneration of ideas which existed at some time or are still existing somewhere in much higher, purer, and more complete forms.“
“Later it will be obvious, but only now is an important truth becoming apparent: mankind is passing through a transitional period.”
Mara stepped back. With legs straight and arms extended out from his sides, he bowed more deeply than Gotama had ever seen anyone bow, and spoke from that position. “It is not contrary to enlightenment to be in possession of knowledge concerning the essential nature of man and his destiny in the world. You were chosen, and you have been prepared through your own experience, to inherit Aryavarta’s most ancient and most profound understanding” he said.
Then, straightening and rising to his full height, Kama Mara declared,
“A truly existent Brahman, a Unity, is divided against itself…
and so, is continually in need of salvation.
What Brahman is always in need of… what saves or restores Brahman…
and grants the achievement of its perpetually attained goal…
is non-Brahman; the world of Maya,
(including the laws of cause and effect)”
More prosaically, he went on, “One needs to be clear. What is really being talked about? If there existed parts of the infinite Brahman, Brahman would cease to be infinite. We cannot conceive parts in what is neither in time nor in space. Likewise, Atman, the individual living soul, cannot be a modification of a greater divine self, for Brahman is eternal and not changeable and there is nothing outside of Brahman… There is nothing that could cause a change in it.”
“Atman, the living self cannot, cannot be anything different from the divine self because Brahman, if it is anything, has to be All in All so that there cannot be anything different from it. The divine self and the human self are one and the same. If Atman is not Brahman what can it be? In Brahman there is no room for what is not Brahman. TAT TVAM ASI, thou art it.”
“What we experience of the world is a double process. At one time, expanding, it grows apart so as to become many out of one, at another it contracts so as to be a single one out of many. All the elements run through one another, becoming different things at different times, and never being continuously the same.”
“In small we never find least, but only lesser, for it is impossible that what is should not be. And in great there is always a greater—and it is equal in number to the small so that each thing is to itself both great and small.”
“When you sat with the other bikkhus, the drama my daughters performed for you expressed and called into relief a division within Maya; a sphere of beauty always opposes a co relative sphere of suffering. Only as an aesthetic phenomenon, may existence and the world appear justified. And it is only through love that all the limbs which the body has as its lot can come together into one in the prime of flourishing life.”
This exposition of Kama Mara’s philosophy—which ranged broadly in this manner and explored considerable detail—I dwell now no further upon, nor upon Gotama’s reactions and replies. Nor will I dwell much upon the leaving taking of Kama Mara and his daughters from Siddhartha except to characterize the attending poignancies as brightened with anticipation, and with the feeling of conviction—rightness and necessity.
They all knew that Desire would remain with the Buddha.