Continued (4) — The Tantric Vision: Living Without Condemning Life
Part Two — The Songs of Saraha

There is another beautiful story with a similar meaning. Three Buddhist monks reach a river where a woman, terrified of the water, is standing on the bank. One of the monks lifts her onto his shoulders and all four cross the river. On the other bank he puts her down and continues his journey with his companions. Yet as they travel, the other two monks repeatedly reproach him: what you did—touching a woman—was contrary to the principles of our monastic life and our detachment from the world, and it has made you impure. Finally, when their reproaches do not end, the monk calmly tells his companions: I put that woman down on the bank of the river, but it seems that you are still carrying her on your shoulders.

This is precisely why the Tantric interpretation of being “without desire” is detachment from desire, not its destruction. For this reason Tantra is centred on remaining open to the wholeness of the world, living with love, acting in the world rather than retreating into inaction, refusing to condemn life, and living both the heavenly and earthly dimensions of life in their fullness.

To live life intensely and completely, without becoming severed from heaven and without clinging to earthly desires, gives a new meaning to the Buddha’s Middle Way—one different from avoiding life or seeking a moderate compromise. For this Middle Way is the path travelled by an arrow with strength, sharpness and speed until it reaches its target.

The story of Saraha and the woman who becomes his final teacher continues. The two go to a cemetery and make their home there. Every day, those who visit the cemetery see that, in the midst of a place ruled by death and filled with grief and sorrow, these two spend their days dancing and rejoicing from morning until night.

Saraha’s joy, dancing and songs, overflowing with life in the middle of the cemetery, prove so contagious that others soon join them. Then groups of people begin joining this joy at the very heart of the dominion of death and sorrow. Many, of course, call them mad, while Brahmin and Buddhist monks become angry with Saraha, accusing him of deviating from the path of truth, abandoning the book, and singing and dancing among ordinary people.

Under pressure from these influential monks, King Mahāpāla sends a group of trusted envoys to Saraha to persuade him to end this madness, which they regard as beneath his dignity. But Saraha composes a song for the envoys and recites it to them; by the end of it, they too join his dancing and celebration.

When none of the envoys returns, the queen, who has always loved Saraha, asks the king for permission to go to him herself and ask him to leave the cemetery and return to the court and to his rightful station. This time Saraha composes an even shorter song. By its end, the queen too has joined their celebration and does not return from the cemetery to the palace.

Finally the king, seeing no other solution, goes himself to Saraha. Again Saraha composes an even shorter song, beginning with the same poem that appeared at the start of this piece. By the end of the song, the king too forgets what he had come to do and joins the celebration and dancing in the cemetery. The story continues by saying that, slowly over the years, more and more people listen to these songs until the world is finally filled with love and joy and emptied of suffering and sorrow. Saraha is an arrow released from the bow toward the future of human thought.

The symbolic meaning of Saraha and the woman who became his teacher living in a cemetery is the image of living in a world ruled by grief and death. If one can be joyful in such a cemetery and refuse to stop dancing, nothing will be able to overcome that joy, because even death itself has been overcome by it. This joy begins with accepting and refusing to condemn suffering and death, and continues through freedom from clinging and attachment to life while embracing all the beauty of living.

Whatever religion, tradition or even philosophy we choose for our life, in the final reckoning each of us either approaches the Self, other people, life and the world without fear, with an open heart filled with love and acceptance and empty of aversion and condemnation, or we choose to live with fear, a closed heart emptied of love and acceptance and filled with aversion and hostility. The person who follows the path of Tantra chooses the first path.

Aydin Areta
August 2019