The Barely Prayable
II
There is no end of it, the voiceless wailing,
No end to the withering of withered flowers,
To the movement of pain that is painless and motionless,
To the drift of the sea and the drifting wreckage,
The bone’s prayer to Death its God. Only the hardly, barely prayable
Prayer of the one Annunciation……
The backward look behind the assurance
Of recorded history, the backward half-look
Over the shoulder, towards the primitive terror.
Now, we come to discover that the moments of agony
(Whether, or not, due to misunderstanding,
Having hoped for the wrong things or dreaded the wrong things,
Is not in question) are likewise permanent
With such permanence as time has. We appreciate this better
In the agony of others, nearly experienced,
Involving ourselves, than in our own.
For our own past is covered by the currents of action,
But the torment of others remains an experience
Unqualified, unworn by subsequent attrition.
People change, and smile: but the agony abides.
Time the destroyer is time the preserver,
Like the river with its cargo of dead negroes, cows and chicken coops,
The bitter apple, and the bite in the apple.
And the ragged rock in the restless waters,
Waves wash over it, fogs conceal it;
On a halcyon day it is merely a monument,
In navigable weather it is always a seamark
To lay a course by: but in the sombre season
Or the sudden fury, is what it always was.
— excerpt, The Dry Salvages by T. S. Eliot
I have been revisiting concepts and the POV that was taught by The Buddha in 5th century BCE India. Siddhattha Gotama was born to privilege, a prince, the fortune of birth guaranteed a life of luxury, no desire beyond reach. Then at the age of 29 on tour outside of the palace grounds he saw for the first time an aged individual, then one sick with disease, and finally a dead body. His final view was of a wandering ascetic, one doing without the amenities for sustaining body and soul, in order to discover the cause of human suffering. The prince felt obligated to follow the ascetics example, to get to the root of the cause of unending rebirth, suffering over and over which never ends. And that is the beginning of the simple, the difficult analysis of the Buddha’s teaching, as well as the solution that he proposes.
A revisit of the material presented in essays rekindles my admiration of the basic truth of the Buddha: everyone suffers, the mind greatly adds to our trauma, and there is a way to minimize the damage.
I was reminded of T. S. Eliot’s meditation upon our collective suffering in his poem, The Dry Salvages. I am sure that you will agree with me that Eliot’s words are weighty, to the point.
