mara

i felt uneasy and sad walking into work this morning. most of the piled up snow had melted,exposing the dirty brown soil underneath and whatever snow there was, was dirty. maybe it is global war{m,n,p}ing; may be not but it was sad to see the thermometer read 40F in early january. let me be clear. i am not a big fan of 0F days, which it was early last week before the mercury jumped up abruptly or rather mercurially.

etymological aside: the adjective mercurial is used to refer to people born under the planet mercury (roman mercurius, greek hermes) and supposedly of a volatile temperament. the metal mercury was alchemically associated with the planet mercury probably through the association of quick silver. it is not clear whether mercurius himself possessed these qualities but his greek counterpart hermes is depicted with winged feet and is a messenger of the gods. interestingly, mercury was god of tradesman and thieves, an association that survives in words like merchant and mercantile ultimately from the latin merx.

part of my un-ease was also mental (from dealing with some personal issues) not to ignore a painful boil on the side of my hip which whilst less than 5mm was causing an awful lot of pain and preventing me from sleeping on my left side. maybe it is all mara's doing.

reading a book by stephen batchelor called living with the devil (subtitled, of course, a meditation on good and evil), where he presents a different take on mara, the classical tempter of the buddha. he makes the argument (probably not the first one as he acknowledges someone) that buddha and mara are entwined and one has to face them both, at all times, everywhere. he extends the metaphor further and compares them to birth and death and ultimately to nirvana and samsara. the prose is exquisite as always but the logic is a bit strained at times. it leaves the reader with a feeling that buddhism is much more monotheistic in the sense of having absolute good and evil (of course, in judaism, christianity and islam, they are diametric opposites and cannot coexist which it does in all eastern traditions- hinduism, taoism, buddhism) and closer to christianity and more problematically equates buddha to the opposite of the devil. true, jesus and buddha had a lot in common and were both tempted by the devil. i have not finished the book so i should not comment. but i am not sure if i buy the argument completely; it seems out of context considering the milieu in which it developed where nothing is absolute. not even god. not even brahman according to the buddha. of course, one can go down the nihilistic path and say if nothing exists, then does that statement itself exist (and is true), thereby entering a russelian paradox. nagarjuna, arguably the greatest (buddhist) thinker since the buddha, dealt with these questions brilliantly and walked truly on the razor's edge; his unparalleled work mUlamAdhyamikakArika has been brilliantly rendered in verse by stephen in his verses from the center, earlier.

anyway, stephen's main point is to emphasize the coexistence of these opposing principles and suggest ways of dealing with it. it is also yet another attempt to disabuse notions of what enlightenment means (or what it does not). while the prose is beautiful for the most part, there are stretches of verbal diarrhoea on the origins of life and evolution and the big bang and such. most zen literature stress that the only way to get rid of duality is to transcend it- to enter a realm which is beyond duality. how to enter it is obviously and deliberately avoided. stephen also skilfully avoids suggesting formulae (despite a glowing review in the back cover which promises enlightenment as one reads the book. well almost. okay v, hyperbola is my favourite curve.) at least none 2/3rds into the book. he quotes milton, baudelaire and pascal extensively including that famous quote of pascal which strangely the incomparable chatwin also quotes in songlines-

All mankind's troubles are caused by one single thing, which is their inability to sit quietly in a room

postscript: mara in hindu mythology is kama, the god of love. i suppose to a meditator, eros could be thanatos.