The Element Of Calm

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Title:     The Element Of Calm
Author: Henry W. Nevinson [More Titles by Nevinson]

All are aware that we have no abiding city here, but that, says the hymn-writer, is a truth which should not cost the saint a tear, and our politicians appear to lament it as little as the saints. Their eyes are dry; it does not distress their mind, it seems hardly to occur to them, unless, perhaps, they are defeated candidates. One might suppose from their manner that eternal truths depended on their efforts, and that the city they seek to build would abide for ever. Could all this toil and expenditure be lavished on a transitory show, all this eloquence upon the baseless fabric of a vision, all this hatred and malice upon things that wax old as doth a garment and like a vesture are rolled up? One would think from his preoccupied zeal that every politician was laying the foundation stone of an everlasting Jerusalem, did not reason and experience alike forbid the possibility.

May it not rather be that the politicians, like the saints, keep the tears of mortality out of their eyes by contemplating this passing dream under the aspect of eternal realities? In months when the heavens at night are filled with constellations of peculiar beauty, may we not suppose that the politician, emerging from the Town Hall amid the cheers and execrations of the voice that represents the voice of God, lifts up his eyes unto the heavens, where prone Orion still grasps his sword, and Auriga drives his chariot of fire, and the pole star hangs immovable, by which Ulysses set his helm? And as he gazes, he recognises with joy in his heart that the stars themselves, with all their recurrent comets and flaming meteors and immovable constellations, hardly cast a stain upon the white radiance of eternity, under which he has been striving and crying and perpetrating comparatively trifling deviations from exactness.

It is a consolation which a large proportion, probably more than half, of mankind shares with our politicians. Like them, the greater part of mankind is aware that there is peace somewhere beyond these voices, that life with all its unsatisfied longings and its repetition of care is transitory as a summer cloud, and that the only way of escape from the pain and misery, the foulness and corruption, of this material universe is by the destruction of all desires, except the one engrossing desire for non-existence. That is why the majority of mankind has set itself to overcome the unholy urgings of ambition, the pleasure of selfish and revengeful purposes, and the deeply-implanted delight in cruelty and unkindness. Such conquest is the essential part of the Fourfold Path by which the bliss of extinction may be attained. Let him cease to be ambitious, let him purge himself of selfish aims and revengeful or unkind thoughts, and a man may at last enter into Nirvana, even a politician may slowly be extinguished. Life follows life, and each life fulfils its Karma of destined expiation, working out the earthly stain of previous existences. "Quisque suos patimur manes." The sin that most easily besets us fixes the shape of our next incarnation, and, did not a politician strictly follow the guidance of the Fourfold Path, the first election after his death might see him re-appear as a sheep, a cave-dweller, or a rat.

Never to have been born is best; never to be born again is the hope and motive of all good men among the greater part of mankind. It is not only the teaching of the most famous Buddha which has told them so. A Preacher more familiar to us has said the same, and our Western churches do but repeat an echo from the East. "I praised the dead who are already dead more than the living who are yet alive," he wrote; "yea, better is he than both they which hath not yet been, who hath not seen the evil work that is done under the sun." Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery? asked Job. From age to age the question has been asked by far more than half the human race, and yet the human race continues, miserable and unholy though it is.

But the widest expression of this common cry is found in Buddhism, and therein is found also a doctrine of peace that seeks to answer it. From the turmoil of the street and market-place, from the atomic vortex of public meetings, ballot stations, and motors decked with flags, let us turn to the "Psalms of the Sisters," those Buddhist nuns whose utterances Mrs. Rhys Davids has edited for the Pali Text Society. In this inextricable error of existence--this charnel-house of corrupting bodies wherein the soul lies imprisoned too long--time and space do not seriously matter. Let us turn from Haggerston and Battersea and the Parliamentary squabbles of to-day, and visit the regions where the great mountains were standing and the holy Ganges flowed within two or three centuries before or after the birth of Christ. Somewhere about that time, somewhere about that place, these women, having in most cases, fulfilled their various parts in wives, mothers, or courtesans, retired to the Homeless Life in mountains, forests, or the banks of streams where they might seek deliverance for their souls. With shaven heads, and clad in the deep saffron cloth such as the ascetic wanderer of India still wears, furnished only with a bowl for the unasked offerings of the pious and compassionate, they went their way, free from the cares and desires of this putrefying world. As one of them--a goldsmith's daughter, to whom the Master himself had taught the Norm of the Fourfold Path--as one of them explained to the tiresome relations who tried to call her back:

"Why herewithal, my kinsmen--nay, my foes--
Why yoke me in your minds with sense desires?
Know me as her who fled the life of sense,
Shorn of her hair, wrapt in her yellow robe.
The food from hand to mouth, glean'd here and there,
The patchwork robe--these things are meet for me,
The base and groundwork of the homeless life."

Some sought escape from the depression of luxury, some from the wretchedness of the poor, some from the abominations of the wanton, some from the boredom of tending an indifferent husband. One of them thus utters her complaint with frank simplicity:

"Rising betimes, I went about the house,
Then, with my hands and feet well cleansed I went
To bring respectful greeting to my lord,
And taking comb and mirror, unguents, soap,
I dressed and groomed him as a handmaid might.
I boiled the rice, I washed the pots and pans;
And as a mother on her only child,
So did I minister to my good man.
For me, who with toil infinite then worked,
And rendered service with a humble mind,
Rose early, ever diligent and good,
For me he nothing felt, save sore dislike."

Others sought freedom of intellect, others the free development of personality; but, in the end, it was deliverance from earthly desires that all were seeking, for it is only through such deliverance that the final blessedness of total extinction can be reached. Then, as they cry, they cease to wander in the jungles of the senses, rebirth comes no more, and the peace of Nirvana is won. A poor Brahmin's daughter who had been married to a cripple, thus exults in a multiplied redemption:

"O free, indeed! O gloriously free
Am I in freedom from three crooked things:--
From quern, from mortar, from my crook-back'd lord!
Ay, but I'm free from rebirth and from death,
And all that dragged me back is hurled away."

But more truly characteristic of the spiritual mind is the joyful advice of one who, having perfected herself in meditation, could thus commune with her soul:

"Hast thou not seen sorrow and ill in all
The springs of life? Come thou not back to birth!
Cast out the passionate desire again to Be.
So shalt thou go thy ways calm and serene."

Thus only by the recognition of the sorrow of the world, by the conquest of all desires, and by the exercise of kindliness to all that breathe this life of misery, is that Path to be trodden of which the fourth stage enters Nirvana's peace. Thus only can we escape from this repulsive carcass--"this bag of skin with carrion filled," as one of the Sisters called it--and so be merged into the element of calm, just as the space inside a bowl is merged into the element of space when at last the bowl is broken and will never need scrubbing more.

It is thought that Gautama, the great Buddha, whose effigy in the calm of contemplation is the noblest work of Indian art, fondly believed that all mankind would seek deliverance along the path he pointed out, and that so, within a few generations, the human race, together, perhaps, with every living thing that breathes beneath the law of Karma, would pass from sorrow into nothingness. Mankind has not fulfilled his expectation. The task of expiation is not yet completed, and, in the midst of anguish, corruption, and the flux of all material things, the human race goes swarming on. I suppose it is about as numerous as ever, and, though something like half of it accepts the teaching of the Buddha as divine, they seem in no more hurry to fulfil its precepts than are the followers of other Founders. We cannot say that mankind has gone very far along the Fourfold Path, for there are still many of us who would rather be a mouse than nothing; yet it remains an accepted truth of the Buddhistic doctrine, that above this fleeting and variegated world there abides the element of calm. As the final Chorus "Mysticus" of _Faust_ proclaims: "All things transitory are but a symbol," and if any politician during the storm of worldly desires has for a moment lost sight of truth's eternal stars that guide his way, let him now turn to the "Psalms of the Sisters." Even if he has been successful in his ambition, he will there find peace, discovering in Nirvana the quiet Chiltern Hundreds of the soul.

[The end]
Henry W. Nevinson's essay: The Element Of Calm

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