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Desecrating the art of music

Buddhist Mirror by A.G.S.Kariyawasam

(This article is based on the Sakkapanha Sutta, the 21st discourse of the Digha Nikaya)

We thought of engaging ourselves in a brief discussion on the subject of music as an art form in relation to Buddhism because this interesting form of art, like many other forms of fine art, has been getting desecrated as has been proved by the fights and fisticuffs with which several "musical shows" were concluded in the recent past in the island.

First and foremost, any form of fine art is not alien to or unwelcome in Buddhism although certain puritans might disagree with us regarding this claim. We would like to open the discussion by reproducing briefly an incident from the Buddha's life wherein He Himself has appreciated and 'enjoyed' (not in the mundane sensual aspect) a musical performance of the higher variety.

The Buddha was once staying in a cave named Indasaala attached to a mountain named Vediya close to Rajagaha. Hearing about the Buddha's presence there Sakka, the king of the gods, decided to pay him a visit along with his retinue.

As the Buddha was rapt in jhana (trance) inside the cave He had first to be aroused from it, if Sakka's visit were to be a success because there would be no point in visiting Him when in trance. Here, Sakka sought the help of Panchasikha, the celestial musician, to attract the Buddha's attention by awakening Him from his trance. Panchasikha accepted the mission on condition that Sakka helps him to win his unrequited love to the Gandharva maiden named Suriyavacchasaa ("she whose body was lustrous as the sun"). She was a 'professional' dancer in the celestial realms and once when she was performing a dance in the Sudharma hall before Sakka, Panchasikha had seen and fallen in love with her.

However, his love was not reciprocated as she had already committed it to Sikhaddi, the son of the heavenly charioteer Maatalie. However, Panchasikha was ever hopeful and composed a love-song connecting the Buddha, Dhamma and the Arahants with his pangs and hopes of love to the lady of his heart. It went as follows (selected):

"Lady, your father Timbaru I greet
Oh, Suriyavacchasaa, I give him honour due:
By whom was sired a maid fair as you
Who has become all my heart's delight.

Delightful as the breeze to one who sweats,
Or on cooling waters to the thirsty,
Your captivating beauty is dear to me
As Dhamma is to the Arahants.

Just as medicine to him who is ill,
Or nourishment to the starving,
Bring me sweet release, oh dear,
From my pangs with cool water of love.

Come, embrace me, maiden fair
Seize and hold me with your lovely eyes:
Take me in your arms, it's all I ask.
My desire was slight at first, my dear
But it began to grow
Like the gifts Arahants receive.
As the Sakya sage in trance rapt
Intent and mindful, seeks the immortal goal

Thus seek I your love, or Suriyavacchasaa." (Translation by M. Walshe, slightly altered)

When Panchasikha sang this to her she was greatly taken up by the song because it contained references connecting the Buddha, Dhamma and the Arahants with his deep love to her, who herself had developed a strong desire to see the Buddha about whom she had heard much during her dancing sessions before the gods. Hence Suriyavacchasaa's desire to see the Buddha and Panchasikha's desire to receive her love became mutually complemented when Suriyavacchasa agreed to marry the musician.

When Sakka sought Panchasikha's help to arouse the Buddha from his jhana so that he can go and meet him, it was this love-song that he sang playing his lute. His purpose was achieved when the Buddha arose from his jhana and praised the Panchasikha's music and singing in the following terms: "Panchasikha, the sound of your strings blends so well with your singing and your singing with the strings so that neither prevails excessively over the other. When did you compose these songs on the theme of the Buddha, Dhamma, Arahants and Love?"

To this query Panchasikha replied thus "Ven. Sir, it was when you were staying on the banks of the river Neranjaraa under the Ajapaala banyan tree, just prior to your enlightenment: at that time I had fallen in love with Surriyavacchasaa, the lovely daughter of the Gandharva chief Timbaru: but this lady was in love with the son of Maatalie, the celestial charioteer: when I found no other way of winning her over I took my beluva-pandu lute, went near her house and kept on singing this composition of mine, and playing the lute: after hearing it she told me that although she had heard much about the Buddha she had not seen him and therefore as I was praising the Buddha in my song she decided to marry me."

The foregoing dialogue between the Buddha and Panchasikha shows that while the musician gave a super performance of vocal and instrumental music combine, the Buddha too appreciated and gave his reasons for doing so like a true connoisseur.

There is no reason for the Buddha to do otherwise because any form of artistic expression, whether it be music, art of drawing, poetry etc., can have its supra-mundane dimension in the unconditioned Nibbanic freedom where a person who has personally realised that condition can appreciate and "enjoy" it in the supersensual state. The Buddha has quite meaningfully referred to this "unconditioned condition" as visarikhaaragata.

This is how he "enjoyed" Panchasikha's great performance. This high quality music has also been extensively described in the musician Guttila's performance as delineated in the Guttila Jataka. If the artistic heights attainable by music be that great why should such a noble art form be desecrated by the participants engaging in fisticuffs at the conclusion of modern-day so-called "musical shows"? Let any form of art not be commercialised resulting in this type of degeneration of the medium from its lofty heights to low levels. People should learn to be connosseuric so that the quality of life also gets ennobled.

Leaving aside puritans to their puritanism, it can safely be said that any form of art is acceptable in Buddhism within the framework briefly delineated in the above story.

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Idea of rebirth in English poetry

by Andrew Scott

Throughout the centuries Buddhist ideas have been expressed by well- known English poets. Although Christian by birth these poets have expressed lucidly, in their numerous thought- provoking works, the Buddhist idea of life such as Anicca, Dukkha and Anatta. These poets saw into the heart of things and expressed clearly the truths of life and its state beyond death.

Being a professional Sri Lankan teacher of English language and literature and a writer on Buddhist themes for a considerable period of time, I found the intensive study of the Buddhist ideas expressed in English poetry quite interesting and spiritually rewarding. In this article I propose to draw the attention of readers to the idea of rebirth or reincarnation expounded by some of these English poets from time to time.

Webster, in the Duchess of Malfi wrote:

I know death hat ten
thousand several doors
For men, to take there Exits,
and its found
They go on such strange
geometrical hinges
You may operate them both
ways

The following stanza from Milton's On the Death of a Fair Infant, hints on the idea of rebirth:

Wert thou that just Man
who once before
Forsook the hated earth,
O tell me sooth,
And cam'st again to visit
us once more
Or wert thou that sweet smiling Youth?
Henry Moore hinted on the idea of rebirth when he wrote:

I would sing the pre-existency
Of human souls, and live
once over again
By recollection and quick memory
All that is passed since
first we all began,
But all too shallow be my
wits to scan
So deep a point, a mind too dull to clear
So dark a matter.
In the Visions of the Daughter
of Albion, William Blake wrote:

Tell me where dwell the
thoughts forgotten till
then call them forth?
Tell me where dwell the days
of old? and where the
ancient loves,
And when they will renew
again, and the night of
oblivion past,
That I might traverse times
and spaces far remote and
bring Comforts into a present
sorrow and a night of pain?

Thomas moore, the Irish poet, too expresses the idea of rebirth when he says:

Though new the frame
Thy soul inhabits me,
I've tracked its flame
For many an age, in
every chance and change
Of that existence, through
whose varied range -
As through a torch-race,
where, from hand to hand
The flying youths transmit
their shining brand -
From flame to flame the
unextinguished soul
Rapidly passes, till it reaches
the goal!

Dorothy Wordsworth had an idea about rebirth and the following lines from

'Addressed to an Infant' bears ample testimony to this.

Oh, sweet new-comer
to the changeful earth,
If, as some darkling seers
have boldly guessed,
Thou hadst a being and
a human birth,
And wert erewhile by
human parents blessed,
Long, long before thy
present mother pressed
Thee, helpless stranger,
to her festering breast.

P.B. Shelley in his works Helles, Aerial and Miranda and Queen Mab, accepted without reserve the idea of rebirth and said:

Worlds on worlds are
rolling ever,
From creation to decay,
Like the bubbles in a river,
Sparkling, bursting, borne away,
But they are still immortal
Who through birth's
oriental portal
And death's dark chasm hurry
to and fro,
Clothe their unceasing flight
In the brief dust and light
Gathered around their
chariots as they go;
New shapes they still may weave,
New gods, new laws receive,
Bright or dim are they
as the robes they last
On Death's bare ribs had cast.

Did not William Shakespeare too express some idea on rebirth when in Henry IV he wrote:

I am but a shadow of myself,
You are deceived, my
substance is not here
For what you see is
but the smallest part.

Sir Edwin Arnold, the celebrated author of the universally acclaimed "The Light of Asia" refers to the Buddhist thoughts of Karma and Rebirth in the following stanza:

Who toiled a slave may
come anew a prince,
For gentleness and merit won,
Who ruled a prince may
wander earth in rags
For things done and undone.

John Masefield referred to the idea of rebirth in the following lines:

I hold that when a person dies,
His soul returns again to earth,
Arrayed in some new
flesh disguise,
Another mother gives him birth,
With sturdier limbs and
brighter brain,
The old soul takes
the roads again.

Dante Gabriel Rosseti refers to the idea of rebirth in the following stanza:

I have been here before,
But when or how I cannot tell,
I knew the grass beyond the door,
The sweet keen smell,
The sighing sound,
the lights beyond the shore,
You have been mine before,
How long ago I may not know.

Alfred Lord Tennyson in a poem titled Two Voices hinting on the idea of rebirth says:

Or of through lower lives came,
Tho' all experience past became,
Consolidate in mind and frame
I might forget my weaker lot;
For is not our first year forgot?
The haunts of memory echo not.
Walt Whitman in
'Leaves of Grass' says:

As to your life, I reckon you
are the leavings of many deaths:

No doubt I have died
myself thousand times before.

Another English poet, Francis Crankford, couches the idea of life after death in the following words:

And as my dreams began
how all these had been before,
How ages far away
I lay on some forgotten shore,
As here I lie today.
I have forgotten whence I came,
Or what my home might be,
Or by what strange
and savage name,
I called that thundering sea.

H.W. Longfellow, a popular English poet, believed in the idea of rebirth and said:

Thus the Seer,
With vision clear,
Sees forms appear
and disappear,
in the perpetual round
of strange
Mysterious change,
From birth to death,
From death to birth,
From earth to heaven,
From heaven to earth.

The references made here are only a very few from the vast collection of English poetry containing the idea of rebirth.

In a brief discussion such as this it is possible only to give a general idea of such thoughts in English poetry.

The monumental works of great English poets such as Walt Whitman, Edmund Spencer, John Donne, John Dryden, Andrew Marvel, Alexander Pope, Samuel Coleridge, Robert Browning, Mathew Arnold, George Eliot, Oscar Wilde and Walter de La Mare expound the idea of rebirth.

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