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Appelboom

appelboom schudt
sneeuw af opent
       één blad
       één bloem
buigt in zon en regen
geur van appels
vult de lege lucht die
door de takken schijnt

Creatures from the deep

A few nights ago, looking at the thangka of Chenrezig above my altar in the light of single candle, I was suddenly reminded of a quote I read years back. Don't remember who said it, but I think it was an early western "asiologist". He compared hindu and buddhist deities to horrible creatures from deep ocean trenches, hauled up by unsuspecting fishermen, snapping at them with monstrous appendices on supernumerary limbs.

Now, I would not liken Chenrezig, the bodhisattva embodying the compassion of all buddhas, to a mutant lobster. But this guy was right in pointing out the "otherwordlyness" of much of much of buddhist iconography. This is, I feel, intentional, saying: "Look, nirvana is very different from samsara. Just count the arms."

Buddhism by no means monopolizes this effect, nor has it invented it. It is common as muck, found in most religions but also in politics and especially in advertisement. I remember one recent commercial depicting a boy walking around a city and growing up en route. After reaching adulthood he transforms into a car. Just like Chenrezig, this boy does not belong to this world.

The effect is used to create hierarchies of meaning. Depiction is crucial: it is not enough for the creatures to stay in the deep. Airing the commercial, unrolling and hanging the thangka springs a leak between worlds. The creatures in the net fill the boat of the fishermen with new meaning.

But, rather uniquely, Buddhism derails the standard effect. Ultimately it denies the difference between the surface world and the ocean trenches. It breaks the mythological fourth wall by denying it's own mysteries. "There can be no liberation, since there never has been bondage", Longchen Rabjam, the great systematizer of the Nyingma teachings said, denying the whole point of the buddhist teachings.

The amazing thing is that buddhism does this without descending into a protopostmodernist nihilistic depression. Longchenpa most likely wrote the above in a temple with the thousands of pages of the Kangyur and Tengyur (the Tibetan canon) and numerous polydactyle enlightened sea monsters behind lavish offerings on an altar, celebrating the use of uselesness.

Another way of saying it. A Zen master wrote in his traditional death poem, congratulating himself on a job well done:

For forty years I sold water on the banks of the river.

image sources:
Chenrezig Tsatsa, from Himalayanart.org
Fossil Trilobite, from Wikimedia Commons