by Sonny Saul
CHAPTER FOURTEEN:
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“Then I shall tell you,” she said,
“Love’s function is giving birth in beauty;
in body and mind.”
Diotima, as related by Socrates in Plato’s Symposium
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“To work through love is Nature’s Way.”
Pamina, in Mozart’s The Magic Flute
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But something had already come over Gotama that signaled to Desire, even before she kissed him, that their scene was concluded.
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Desire’s Response
Gotama’s story, which has been told and retold for two and a half millennia, did not fail to move Desire, the very first hearer of it. Spontaneously, and contagiously, she laughed. Not knowing why, Gotama followed her with smiles and laughter of his own.
Exuberantly, ebulliently, she grasped his shoulders, shaking him and said: “I told you! It is in our original, our own wild nature that we find the best recreation for our un-nature, from our spirituality. Well, at last, at least, it’s obvious that sitting alone in the forest and not eating is no solution.”
Affectionately, and teasingly, Desire placed her palms one at a time up against the soles of his feet, which were, as he was once again sitting cross-legged, resting up on his knees. With a little giggle she began, “At last! You’ve discovered it! The powers of the healthy, unbound, friendly mind! For its own sake! And as a means to higher states.”
She sat back, placing her hands on the earth behind her, and smiling to herself, began again. “Yes, you are like me. As youths we both exerted ourselves in the service of beauty, in doing what came naturally to us. I can discern in you the distinctive marks of a prince. Your eyes are clear and beautiful, your features are noble. You are, despite all you have gone through, despite your own most strenuous objections, radiant still, shining like the sun.”
Inclining her head towards him, turning her eyes up to meet his, she let her long hair brush against his hands and knees.
“Here’s how I see it,” she said, “you’ve always had a presentiment that underneath this reality, in which we live and have our being, is concealed another and quite different reality. Your aversion, your hatred of the transitory life, maybe at first stemmed from this natural, philosophic attitude… but the course your life has taken is also a consequence of your so-extreme capacity to suffer.”
“Apart from this… your austerities, you’ve never found meanings. It might appear that you’ve had no feeling for others… but it is not hard for me to see that you didn’t want to be touched because you felt every contact so deeply…”
She touched his face with hers, held it there, and then kissed his cheek.
Gotama accepted what she had said, along with her kiss, saying, in a tone that did not make her draw back, “I thought: only voluntary suffering will have value. When one is falling, you know…dive!” Signaling her complete acceptance of this reply, Desire pressed her lips against his and held them there, softly, then whispered, “Cultivating a horror of happiness and beauty, of reason and of the senses,” she laughed, “you had come to hate what is human. Even more, you hated what is animal. Your wish, your resolve, was to get beyond Maya; the world of appearances and measurements. To accomplish this,” she laughed again… “you put aside … desire.”
She put her fingers upon his lips. Scolding, she mocked, “A full scale rebellion! Against the most fundamental propositions of life! Like a tortoise, you drew your senses back in towards yourself.” Kissing him again, she laughed, “Here’s what my father says: ‘Pure spirit is pure lie!’” She affected Kama Mara’s voice.
“The senses don’t lie.” she clasped now his two hands within her own. “Where the lie comes in is what you were making of them. What is apparent; here before us; is the only world.”
Then, letting go, she leaned back again, this time placing her elbows upon the ground behind her. Tilting her head forward as if to get another perspective, she allowed him to consider her. Finally she said, “That which is in opposition is in concert. From things that differ come the most beautiful harmonies. Cold things become warm. A warm thing becomes cold. A moist thing becomes dry. A parched thing becomes moist.”
Now Desire was close to him again, her hands once more upon the soles of his feet. She whispered, “I know the kinship, the close and common tendency of spirituality and sensuality, and of cruelty, too.”
Desire stood and moved closer to him. Placing one leg after the other up and over Gotama’s knees and feet, she pulled herself up and onto his lap. With her mouth almost touching his, she delivered the final lines of the scene, “What opposes us, unites us. The finest attunements come from things bearing in opposite directions… the embrace of the male and female… Opposites act in absolute harmony, in unbreakable continuity of relation.”
Saying this, as she kissed him, she became quite still. Something had signaled, even before she kissed him, that their scene was concluded. Instantly and gently she moved back to make allowances, sensing that Gotama was overpowered, compelled urgently to attend to some inner workings of his being.
Wordlessly, and very gracefully, she lifted herself and, stepping back, helped him to gather himself, pulling his feet back up, higher, over his thighs. She straightened his shoulders, kissed his forehead so lightly, and straightened his shoulders a second time. For a moment, bending over him, she held his head in her hands, closed her eyes, and kissed his forehead. He, also wordlessly, let his own eyelids close.
As Desire stood looking at him, she thought to herself, “If a stone won’t budge and it is wedged in, one must move some of the other stones around it first.”
My only explanation for this behavior of Gotama is to imagine that he could, at that point, literally, no longer identify with his own temporal ego. Perhaps just then he had begun to experience, with intensity, the overwhelming living power and immediacy of an eternal consciousness which he saw passing through Desire as well as through himself and of all things. Maybe it was the proximity of Desire which precipitated this. In any case, picture Gotama’s metaphoric “doors of perception” opened wide—all the way and now, rather suddenly, he finds himself overwhelmed, held in thrall by the display of a rush of a radiant power. Beyond fear and desire, there is, for him, no turning back now.
Jean Genet observed in an essay about Rembrandt, that “the erotic quest is only possible when one can recognize the individuality of every being: when that individuality is irreducible, and the physical form only attests to it.” This, as Desire could see, was the opposite of Siddhartha’s present state.
Having already observed in relation to him, as her father had likewise done, a proper mode of compassionate charity; Desire, displaying again the same self possessed swirl of easy grace which we have imagined Tintoretto to have captured so well, stepped around behind him and, placing her hand upon his shoulders, bent and whispered into his ear, “Nothing succeeds in which high spirits have no part. Stay cheerful. Don’t forget to get some sleep.”
Desire was caught up in the drama. Without doubt, she thought, Siddhartha was a man capable of being the initiate her father sought. But, she sensed about his person possibilities beyond what she had learned from her father, and then she remembered that her sister, fulfillment, had a role to play in the drama and that the next scene would belong to her.
