by Sonny Saul
CHAPTER EIGHT:
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“We all know that art is not truth.
Art is a lie that makes us realize truth.”
Picasso
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Beyond Fear, a Magical Interlude
Henry Fielding, near the middle of his novel Tom Jones, in one of the philosophical prefaces that he wrote before each chapter, felt it worthwhile to make explicit his concern when presenting “matters strange and surprising” which he imagined would be possibly difficult for readers to believe. Some, he wrote, “are ready to allow that the same thing which is impossible may be yet probable, while others have so little historic or poetic faith that they believe nothing to be either possible or probable the like of which has not occurred in their own observation.”
This present chapter, being an account of, at once the most outlandish and of the most private character, which searches out the most retired recesses, places the reader in like difficulty. We have no concurrent public testimony or records to support or corroborate our imagination.
I can though, in good humor, cite the literary precedent of Karl Popper, who, generalizing from a suggestion about Goethe, and the source of his strange theory of colors (that all colors were derived from white and black) imagined that Parmenides too was color blind.
And I love Fielding’s citing of an unnamed “genius of the highest rank” to whom he credits the remark that, “the greatest art of all poetry is to mix truth with fiction in order to join the credible with the surprising.”
Being thoroughly aware that great artists, by convincing us of the truth and reality of what they see, feel, and express, create a world richer, fuller, and more meaningful than that of our commonplace perceptions, and feeling, particularly at this point, a certain lack of imagination, I wanted to imagine how a great visual artist might have presented the next scene; Kama Mara’s imaginative attempt to break the concentrated state of Gotama’s attention through FEAR… to “freak him out?” The 19th century French painter, Eugene Delacroix—a great discoverer in the realm of the sublime, including also the ugly and gruesome—usually referred to as a ‘romantic’ came first to mind.
Nietzsche considered Delacroix to be comparable to Wagner in his use of “virtuoso effects” and in his “uncanny access to everything that seduces, allures, compels and overturns”.
The following description of a Delacroix painting (the “death of Sardanapolos”) by the 19th century French poet, Charles Baudelaire, gives some of the idea of the relationship of beauty and horror (which so interested both men) … and begins to set our own scene.
“Everywhere we see desolation, massacres, fires… everything testifies to the eternal and incorrigible barbarity of mankind. Smoke rises from cities razed to the ground. The throats of victims are cut, women are raped and children hurled beneath horses’ hooves or pierced by the daggers of their raving mothers; the entire corpus is a hymn in praise of suffering inevitable and unrelieved,”
Though the “romanticism” of Delacroix is well adapted to a visualization of Kama Mara’s “temptation” of Gotama—which certainly must have employed convincing, colorful, and dramatic effects—finally the more well ordered visual field characteristic of the 19th century Spanish painter Francisco Goya, sometimes called the “father of modern art” may better suit our purpose.. In illustration he may never have been surpassed.
This is the moment I would like to imagine that Goya might have chosen to represent. Here Goya’s great sense for the compositional relation of objects to each other would have found full expression.
Kama Mara, with a sweeping gesture,
drawing upon his mastery of the ancient powers of illusion,
transforms himself into…
Gotama Siddhartha’s own most fearsome image of death; the dreaded twins Dimul and Mrityo,
A two headed giant thousands of feet tall,
around whom the Four Corners crystallize
an army of horrific forms.
One-eyed, three-eyed, beaked, clawed, with tusks, some camel faced,
bearing headless bodies, mutilated, monstrous ogres, reeking of goat,
advance to attack.
With fabulous immediacy, black storm clouds gather.
The temperature falls sharply along with all wrath upon him there beneath the tree.
The monstrous twins pull arrows from their shoulder quivers
without hesitation fixing them to their bows,
and aim straight at him …
Great facility in the use of paint, and powerful, short broken lines give fluidity and movement. The color, arranged in pleasing patterns, is luminous and skillfully blended with light, giving everything solidity. Individual colors are all harmoniously related to each other in color masses, which make up designs of considerable plastic significance. The forceful lines and the irregular placing of the figures give everything a sparkling animation and expressiveness.
The fearsome twins dominate the pictorial space, but rather than the awesomeness of their sheer size, rendered beautifully and with convincing simplicity, it is their psychological characterization that communicates a tone of frightening hideousness. The relationship of the two-headed giant to the background army of horrific forms is accomplished by an ultimate economy of means.
Despite the most gruesome characterizations and subject matter, an airy, delicate, light, floating tone prevails. The contours of the bodies are softened by lines of light, which help the transition of space from the figures to the background.
Now, in order to imagine what legend tells us became of those arrows shot toward Gotama, I am going to have to ask the reader’s indulgence to attempt a thought experiment of a different kind.
1. Conceive the possibility that a point of balance exists in the mind from which the all that exists can be perfectly regarded—a still standing point or ‘hub of disengagement’ (as it’s called in the technical literature of Eastern religion). Like the axis around which a body rotates, it is not fixed in the sense that anything holds it fast, rather the movement around it determines its relative immobility.
2. Imagine the forms of that movement as representing symbolically the multiple and overlapping discreet infinities of our representational systems.
3. Imagine that from the point of view of our hypothetical hub, or ‘nucleus’ (all suggestive of a ‘Bohr atom’) should the (mental) spinning ever cease—(as it has for Gotama) that in whatever direction one looked, each distinction would still be expressive of an underlying unity. And imagine that every distinction would emerge, especially, and most obviously, the apparent opposites.
4. Let this concentrated point represent the vantage from which Gotama now occupied the unchanging unity of vast space and time.
5. Now from this unique state of arrest, imagine Gotama grown conscious of the illusion of the movement of arrows when the evil warriors aimed their weapons at him.
Later Indian statuary takes up the theme of Gotama’s response. Extending his arm and touching the ground with his right hand, a gesture replete with poetry and symbolic meaning, expressive of the most perfect calm, he calls upon the Earth to bear witness.
His countenance, at first evincing only the most benign acceptance, warmed towards a smile of friendliness as he acknowledged the supposed threat for what it was: the dramatic poetics of a masterly creative power originating from within a source of boundless love.
As when he’d seen (in inner vision) the three dark skinned Goddesses wrapped together within the purple cloth, and marveled at nature expressed in such transcendence, these hideous and frightening projections of Kama Mara pleased him well. He felt the powerful expression and admired the aesthetic significance (though he did not stop to consider any of this).
Cascading gently into a laugh… out loud… a smile begins to spread on Gotama’s face.
A rippled reflection as in a thousand mirrors…
Surprise, laughter, and surprise;
; laughter, surprise, laughter…
The magic formula! In a state of joy and wonder, Gotama watches as all the weaponry of an army of ogres transforms; turning into lotus blossoms falls to the ground around him as if in tribute.
If the reader can imagine the flash of Siddhartha’s recognition of the same eternal consciousness passing through Kama Mara as was filling his own being, and the spontaneous expression of love—indistinguishable from compassion towards all that existed, he may perhaps fathom, metaphorically, the falling of flower petals all about him. as the transformation of the weaponry of an army of ogres. .
Gotama’s voice entered the cleansed atmosphere with a sense of ironic deference. Knowing the role which might be expected of him, he gently mocked that expectation. “The same old story, as if another illustration of it were necessary.” he said.
Shaking his head to show some measure of the pleasure he felt at this exhibition of Gotama’s powers which included, apparently, humor, Kama Mara athletically—almost magically dismounted from his elephant and approached him, positioning himself in a restful but determined squat, ankles under his thighs, elbows locked around his shins, directly opposite his still seated peer.
