The Temptation Of The Buddha
A fictional study in the history of religion
and of aesthetics.
by Sonny Saul
Copyright 2013 Sonny Saul
This book is available in print by contacting
[email protected] ©2012 by Sonny Saul . All rights reserved.
“Art! Who comprehends her?
With whom can one consult concerning this great goddess?”
Beethoven, in a letter
Table of Contents
Prelude
Introduction
Program Notes: first set
Coda
Chapter 1: Kama Mara and his daughters
Chapter 2: A Very Brief Consideration of the General Nature of Ritual and an Attempt to Explain the Present Ritual in This Light; Reflections and Further Program Notes Postpone the Narrative.
Program Notes: Second Set
Chapter 3: Gotama—the narrative resumes
Chapter 4: The Ritual—Gotama and Desire
Chapter 5: A Turning Point for Gotama
Chapter 6: No Longer a ‘Life Denier’
Chapter 7: The Tree—Kama Mara and Gotama
Chapter 8: Beyond Fear, A Magical Interlude
Chapter 9: The Pleasures of an Intelligent Conversation
Chapter 10: Kama Mara’s Song
Chapter 11: Beneath the Tree with Desire
Chapter 12: Siddhartha’s Song
Chapter 13: Siddhartha’s Song Continued
Chapter 14: Desire’s Response
Chapter 15: Taking Up Where Desire Left Off
Chapter 16: The Song of the Earth
Chapter 17: Regret
Chapter 18: A First Disciple and Some Advice From a Master
Chapter 19: Like a Novel
Chapter 20: Historical Realities; Did the Principles of this Fantasy Exist?
Chapter 21: On the Road; the Happiest Man Alive
Chapter 22: “You Are the Buddha!”
Chapter 23: An Early Sermon—Setting the Wheel in Motion
Chapter 24: Reunion with the Sisters
Chapter 25: Like a Fairytale
Chapter 26: Desire Considered
Chapter 27: One Day Many Years Later
Chapter 28: Death of the Buddha—the End of the Story
Afterword
Immanuel Velikovsky’s Hypothesis: Venus as a Comet
Julian Jayne’s Book: The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
The Aryan Question
L.A. Waddell’s Aryan Theory
The Archaic Revival and the Return of the Goddess
Zecharia Sitchin’s Annunaki Hypothesis
Rudolph Steiner’s Reading of Indian History
Postlude: Part One
Postlude: Part Two
Acknowledgements
P R E L U D E
Absorbed …
in that V e n e t i a n g l o w…
golden a n d warm,
everything perfectly natural,
S O L I D a n d convincingly real,
structurally,
in combination with light,
color led
(cascading melodically)
… to …
harmonious, moving rhythms/
s w e e p i n g dynamics;
fluid patterns of dramatic contrast.
Swirls;
of lines
and of light,
wove themselves into such unconventional, yet masterfully
ordered,
D E E P S P A C E .
… This supreme merging of effects held me in awe/ … everything within the frame/ …
diversified and harmonized to yield magnificent results/
… all elements contributing to that peace which aesthetic satisfaction always affords.
A detail (intrinsically pleasing)
—accentuated by individual curvilinear brush strokes—
a l u s t r o u s purple cloth…
internally illuminated and radiating light—
caught my attention…
Conceptual thought—
until then suspended—
intruded.
In that moment,
I turned… or was turned away from,
a realm of lyric,
idyllic charm,
of b e a u t y, and of m a j e s t y…
— The untrammeled offing fading …
immediately;—the sense of a fall, broken contemplation …
Wishing to get back up / recover /
to return to the “surface”,,, to breathe again,
and …. to reclaim
this deep mysticism,
I was unable.
THOUGHT was the barrier.
Reflections became the advance party of my descent and were quick to set up camp.
INTRODUCTION
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“Faster than spring time showers of rain
comes thought upon thought”
Shakespeare (Henry the Sixth part two)
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My own thoughts—which I knew were responsible for ending this out-of- the-ordinary experience and had nothing to do with initiating it, meanwhile, felt invigorated and raced on, compelling me to give them my full attention.
What’s the relationship (I felt the pleasure of thought deepening through generalization) of this type of sudden awakening, (through the aesthetic, to a new order of reality), to a religious experience?
The technical term; “aesthetic arrest” is used in the literature of the philosophic study of art and beauty to describe what happens when the sublime shatters your ego system, when the radiance of the transcendent breaks through into your field of space-time. Isn’t that, at least part of how, or similar to how a religious enlightenment or experience is understood, for example, Buddha under the tree? …
And … what did happen … that I became so “lost” in the painting?
What was it that had released me from the usual constraints of conceptual thought?
Giorgione’s The Judgment of Paris
Knowing the impossibility of re-experiencing that initial sense of “sublime” and expanded awareness on purpose, eventually I did, anyway, return, nostalgically, to what I had been looking at; an approximately 3” X 4” image in a small book called “All the Paintings of Giorgione”. Specifically, I had been studying a black and white photograph of a presumed copy (now in a museum in Dresden) of a lost original by that widely and profoundly influential, that most musical and poetical of painters.
What has been called “the school of Giorgione” or “the Giorgionesque” has come to stand for the exemption from all stress contingent upon conceptual thought or sentiment, for the independence from mere intelligence, and for the renunciation of responsibility to subject matter. What Giorgione (1477 -1510) painted stands on its own, requiring no (and in some cases, admitting no) explanation of narrative content.
Later, unconsciously trying to integrate the experience, I made a watercolor based on that little photograph (adding the purple cloth—and all the other colors). Still later, when I happened to read its title I began to consider what Gior
gione’s painting was “about”; its subject; “The Judgment of Paris”.
Involuntarily, I began to re-view and to imagine and interpret the painting as both an illustration of, and a fresh take on, a very key moment in classical mythology. I could see Giorgione’s handsome youth reclining under a tree as Paris, the brother of Hector, the great warrior and hero of Troy. Famed for his own good looks, as the story goes, he has been selected to judge a “beauty contest” among Goddesses (trouble stirred up by Zeus). The contestants held together pictorially by that swirling, luminous purple cloth are three nude women who primp and pose for him; the three most famous Goddesses of the ancient Aegean; Hera, Athene, and Aphrodite.
I remembered that each of the Goddesses attempted to influence Paris’ decision and that Paris’ reward for his choice of Aphrodite—Helen, acknowledged to be the most beautiful woman in the world, but already married to a Greek king, Menelaus set off a chain of events that led to the Trojan War.
And then I remembered an important idea I think first articulated, in the early 20th century, by archaeologist/ historian Jane Harrison; that this myth of Paris ought to be understood as propaganda, in which the values of an apparently still vital, much older Goddess-oriented society are suppressed and reversed.
What Jane Harrison convincingly pointed out was that the archaic Greek world view, which included the concept of an awe inspiring living goddess, a principal informing power of the universe, capable of imposing a fate or destiny upon men, is completely turned around by the classical age’s retelling of the story, and that clear political message of this later version is the thorough minimization of the feminine.
Two millennia later, re visualized and presented in Renaissance Italy, with such intense, yet restrained human feeling; gracefully and delicately, Giorgione’s manner recalls the aesthetically sophisticated, and stylistically prophetic Roman, Ovid (whose version of the story of Paris, it happens, is the most complete that has survived).
Whether her analysis is correct or not, Jane Harrison seems likewise a prophet.
Still mentally invigorated, and feeling a kind of awe, I kept on contemplating the painting. A powerful creative idea came over/occurred to me. With only some changes in costume (by Paris), Giorgione’s picture could be used to illustrate another key moment in world cultural and mythological history: the Temptation of the Buddha. A like patriarchal dominance in the culture of India, and perhaps a like need to suppress, has mythically imagined exactly the same image.
Whenever I returned to the painting, slowly, again trying to learn through artistic activity, I began to re-imagine it as if it really did represent this important moment in the Buddha story.
Longer each time, with my eyes on the picture, and then later, sometimes with eyes closed, I began to look back, in imagination, to the “space-time” of a “country” which would be better to call Aryavarta than India—lest present day associations confuse… Gradually it came alive.
Eventually… Paris was gone… instead… there was the Buddha! Actually he hasn’t quite yet become the Buddha. It is Gotama Siddhartha who is sitting there under the tree… cross-legged, in meditative posture… absorbed in the bliss of inner experience. As he approaches perfection, I know it will be harder and harder to imagine him.
And there are the three Women/Goddesses! Drying or scrubbing themselves with that cloth already noted, given to them by the Italian painter… Though I actively imagine them, it seems like I am remembering a dream. Dark skinned, with slim backs and long legs, graceful and slender, they stand nude by a clear, stream-fed lotus pond where they have been bathing. Though each exemplifies a distinct type, yet, the resemblances are such that one can tell they are sisters.
In the context of the story that I have begun to imagine, the sisters are not “really” present in the scene along with Gotama Siddhartha. Rather, it is with the eye of inner vision that he is beholding them, we becoming aware through him.
Piercing the thrall of awe and fascination, conceptual thought—until then suspended (likewise for him) intruded. The detail of the lustrous purple cloth catches his attention, turning him away from his idyll.
Intuition, and then a happy absorption, in a way kept secret from consciousness, let me know that I had struck a rich vein. Like a prospector, I felt the potential and began making preparations to mine. And like a sailor who heads out to sea on a small ship, I knew I would require a significant ‘ballast’: an adequate supply of historical and other background information.
To present a summation of that effort, which became a major research project occupying the spare time of nearly two decades, I will use the literary form of program notes the sort sometimes provided to an audience in the theater. As is the custom in this medium, the minimum information possible to enable the imagining of the scene, setting, character, and story will be provided.
And, as is the custom, the reader may skip these notes altogether, save them (perhaps) for later, or if time and inclination permit… read them next.
PROGRAM NOTES: first set
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“Our notions of the future have something of the significance which Freud attributes to our dreams. And not our notions of the future only; our notions of the past as well. For if prophecy is an expression of our contemporary fears and wishes, so too, to a very great extent, is history—or at least what passes for history among the masses of unprofessional folk.
Utopias, earthly paradises, and earthly hells are flowers of the imagination which continue to blossom and luxuriate even in the midst of the stoniest dates and documents, even within the fixed and narrow boundaries of
established fact.”
Aldous Huxley (Essays Old and New)
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TIME: Likely the greatest difficulty the reader will experience is to imagine the space and time in which these fictitious events occur. The date to think of is approximately 530 B.C.
To help place the ‘present’ of the late sixth century BC within a greater chronological setting, let the reader recall that it now has been 300 years since the Iliad and the Odyssey were written, and another four or five hundred since the events those epics describe. The Aegean lands are in the hands of Greek speaking peoples and are organized into city-states of varying size and influence. Rational explanations of the physical world are, for the first time, being attempted. Philosophy has been born. Heraclitus, Parminides, and Pythagoras may still be alive. Solon has been ‘elected’ leader of Athens. The birth of tragedy, and also the Persian invasions lie directly ahead.
Cyrus the Great, the King who unified Persia, has recently crossed the Tigris River into Babylon and freed the Judean exiles, permitting their return to Jerusalem. As many as 40,000 will walk the thousand miles. After Cyrus’ death Darius will consolidate and extend the Empire of Persia to the Indus River.
In the Levant, following the restoration of the Temple, the first five books of the Bible, the Books of Moses, are being revised and edited to their present form. It has been almost two hundred years now since the kingdom of Israel has come to an end. The prophet Daniel has recently died and Malachi, the last in the line of inspired prophets, has spoken his final words.
In ‘Aryavarta’ (the Aryan country) society and culture are in transition, but it is clear that the age of ‘classical poet warriors’ recounted in the early Vedas is past, likewise the set of circumstances and the world view that originally inspired the ‘Yogic quest’, the mystic sacrifice, and the soma cults. This is the period of the Upanishads and their profound psychology.
Though it will be called “The age of Confucius” in China—where a moral and philosophic revolution is about to begin—Lao-tse (also in China) with equal impact, will begin to teach the Tao. Like the Buddha, neither Lao-tse or Confucius expresses concern with ‘religion’. Their teachings, focusing on the life and understanding of man, are not concerned with gods, or life after death, or with the supernatural.
Throughout the world, mankind and society h
ave undergone, a shift. The times when the gods resided in sacred precincts, when a Pharaoh claimed that a god was riding along in his chariot, when an Assyrian or Aegean or Hebrew king boasted of help from the skies, clearly, are over.
SPACE—the scene: society, politics, culture
Very broadly speaking, the whole geographical region appears to be recovering and repopulating following destruction and devastation of still unknown cause. Societies are beginning to reconfigure themselves through new divisions of labor. Usefulness in these societies will increasingly require the cultivation of isolated talents, specialization, and an attendant fragmentation of personality. Already it is assumed that there is not, nor can there be, any useful expression of the inherent broader harmony in man’s nature.
In Aryavarta, though the more settled life gives rise to new social roles and customs, still, many cling to tribal or clan identities. A reactionary movement arises. A radical movement of Brahmans retreats from society altogether. Dwelling away, among the shudras (outcasts), austere, independent men wander naked through the forests, denying themselves food and drink, lying on thorns.
Āryāvarta (Sanskrit: आर्यावर्त, “abode of the Aryans”), the ancient name for northern and central India, where the culture of the Indo-Aryans was based is the land that Buddha knew. Nine hundred miles from the delta of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, Aryavarta, was restricted to the basins of the Sindhu (Indus) and the Ganges; the heartland of Indian civilization.
All sorts of streams and tributaries criss-cross this relatively small area, rural and mostly settled, with innumerable hamlets and valleys dotting both plains and slopes to the north. Villages consist of clusters of huts with small herds of cattle and goats. The major settlements—some now large enough to be called cities—are linked by growing networks of trails and river roads that support a lively traffic.
Fruits and nuts from trees, domestic water fowl, and many varieties of fish provide a free diet, yet the increase in population requires systematic agriculture. Most farmers are free men and each village has its own council of elders. Though obliged to pay taxes, they are pretty much left in peace.
Aryavartra maintains the ancient class distinctions. Kshatriyas, Brahmans, Vaisyas, Sudras; warriors, priests, peasants, workers/slaves—as elaborated in the Vedas.
Brahmans (priests) are the elite, completely free of the law and well paid. Local kings and strong men, generally supporting the Brahmans, live on vast estates tended by peasants. A class of merchants has begun to grow in power. In some cases kings and princes compete for their favor, in other cases, merchants become strong enough to rival them in power. This change in the social order coupled with the rising and falling of the fortunes of kings and merchants, and along with the general growth in population brings out old conflicts within the Vedic pattern and gives rise to new ones.
Within ‘Aryavarta’ there are more than a dozen autonomous kingdoms in the Ganges region alone. Larger rival kingdoms, with powerful military forces, and with rulers related to each other, are coming to the fore, swallowing up older, smaller, tribal confederacies and their rajahs.
To the South, below the Ganges is Magadha—showing signs of becoming a significant empire. Its king, Seniya Bimbisara, during Buddha’s lifetime, will be deposed by his son, Aiatasahu, and executed.
To the north is Kusal, ruled by another king, Pasenadi—who also during Buddha’s lifetime will be overthrown and killed by his son, Vidudabha.
Further north, along the Rohini River, which flows along the southern foothills of the Himalayas, above the Gangetic Plain, are the clansmen of the Buddha, the Sakyas. The Buddha will be referred to as Sakyamuni—the sage of the Sakyans. The Sakyans fall within the kingdom of Kosala, which is second in power only to neighboring Magadha, soon to be taken over and destroyed by the king referred to above, Vidudabha.
To the northwest lies the Achamenid Empire of the Persians, from which, two centuries later, Alexander the Great will enter Aryavarta via Gonhara, modern Kandahar (in Buddha’s time an independent kingdom ruled by a local chieftain, Pukkusati).
The East and Far South are unknown territories.
CLIMATE: We have to consider the weather. Although the climate of the subcontinent has not been entirely stable, evidence does not suggest any radical departure during this period from present conditions. There are two prominent seasons; hot and cool, corresponding generally to European summer and winter. Each season has its own pattern of rainfall.
The heat is legendary and oppressive. With bright sunny skies already the heat is extreme beginning in March and peaking in May or June when thickening clouds lower the temperatures. During this season buildings and walls are hot to the touch. Daytime winds blow dust giving the sky a brassy color. Humidity increases proportionately making even sedentary activity uncomfortable. Concentration becomes difficult. Nerves are easily frayed. Intensive work is not a possibility.
Midday hours are times of peace and quiet as most people seek refuge from the sun. Night time and early morning are more conducive to activity. Late evening is the time for socializing. Virtually everyone sleeps out of doors.
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CODA
Imagination fortified, I invite the reader to now return to the copy of Giorgione’s painting, to re visualize, and to re imagine it, as it appeared to Gotama in his inner vision…
In the distant background we’ll place the great Sindhu River. Like the plain below, it seems forever ancient. Above, and outside our framed image are the Himalayas—two and a half millennia younger and fresher then… Set off to the left of center, within the frame… sitting beneath the tree … is the would-be Buddha.
Drawn, irresistibly, to the foreground—as the next scene opens—the eye of imagination lights upon the three young women. Their individuality and extraordinary beauty is of such intensity that the idea of Goddess is suggested.
Charged full of that same hidden energy welling from within that constitutes one of the most characteristic features of classic Indian art, each blossom with a gentle, yet rich, vitality.
Reflecting upon the course which has led me to this scene, the combination of forces… in the manner and spirit that leads a composer to call for a repeat of a movement of music, I invite the reader before moving on to the first chapter to consider rereading, repeating the prelude.