Roberto Calasso - Ardor

The first reference, in the Ṛgveda , was clear, blunt: “The gods seek someone who crushes soma ; they do not need sleep; tireless, they set off on journeys.” Even if men cannot say what “journeys” the gods endlessly devote themselves to, their duty is clearly indicated: to remain alert and, with their labor, to prepare the intoxicating drug.

But what is the relationship between the Buddha and the Veda? It is a difficult, delicate, and intricate question. However much we may emphasize their opposing positions, there remains a vast, obscure common background on which every contrast is laid out. We can see this background in the name of the Buddha himself, in the verb budh- , “to awaken,” “to pay attention.” The primacy of awakening over every other mental action was not an innovation of the Buddha, who simply offered a version of it that was both radical and by and large destructive of all that had gone before. The concern for awakening and its centrality had always been present in the Vedic texts. Awakening was embedded in the ritual, in the moments when it was more vulnerable, more likely to fall to pieces. Deep attention (ours toward what is happening, and of the god toward us) is the support the officiant needs, even when he is obliged to perform “that which is incorrect”—and this occurs at various times, since life itself is incorrect. One instance arises when the sacrificial ashes are thrown into the water: “When he throws Agni into the water, he performs that which is wrong; now he apologizes to him so as not to harm him. With two verses connected to Agni he adores, for it is to Agni that he apologizes, and they will be such as to contain the verb budh -, so that Agni can pay attention to his words.” The gesture with which the ash is thrown into the water is nevertheless an offense to the fire, since it interrupts a desire that is total. In fact, “it is for all his desires that he has prepared that fire.” Here again, a healing gesture is also needed, which “rejoins and recomposes,” in a perpetual labor of reconstruction and restoration. But what is needed to attract the benevolence of Agni, the injured party, in such a delicate situation? Only upon awakening can help be sought, at the crucial moment. And the first awakening is directed to Agni, at the moment when the fire has become ash and is scattered on the waters. The fire has been “all his desires.” Awakening happens as soon as his desire is extinguished and returns to its watery abode. It alone can now act. It is as though this ceremonial conduct toward Agni contained, prearranged and prefigured within it, the whole of later history culminating in the awakening of the Buddha, under a tree that no flame could harm.

Awakening is the decisive act in life. We can see this from the passage in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad where it is said that in the beginning there was only brahman , and brahman “was everything.” Then “it [ brahman ] became the gods, as they gradually awakened [ pratyabudhyata , where the root budh - follows the prefix prati- , which indicates a movement forward , as if rousing from sleep].” But the gods are only the first category of beings, those who set the example. They are followed by the ṛṣis , and lastly mankind: “So also [did] the ṛṣis , so also men.” If becoming brahman is the target, then awakening is the appropriate instrument (the only one named: in this passage, for once, there is no reference to sacrifice). But this establishes a worrying proximity and affinity between mankind and the gods. And for this the gods use all possible means, even the lowest, to prevent man from reawakening. The text is abrupt. He who thinks that “divinity is one thing and I another,” that person “does not know.” The presumption is that men and gods are fundamentally one and the same thing. Nothing is more insidious and disturbing for the gods than this: “So they are not pleased that men know this.” It is no surprise that the authorities in the Castle ensured that a torpid haze fell upon K. as soon as he came close to discovering their secrets.

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What appears under the name brahman is arcane, far more so than the gods. If seen as a group, and not each in their own dazzling singularity, the gods appeared as beings who had been fortunate: they had succeeded in passing from the earth to the sky, they had succeeded in becoming immortal. And yet they were obliged perpetually to fight and continually defeat the Asuras, their elder brothers before being downgraded to demons. And this is already a diminution of their supremacy, which ought to have been continually protected and maintained. The Devas had to be allies of the ṛṣis , though not always regarded by them with benevolence — or even with mere respect.

But brahman is neuter, untarnished, untarnishable. The seven suggested translations of the word listed in the St. Petersburg Lexicon are all inadequate. But so too are more recent attempts, such as those of Renou and Jan C. Heesterman, which show keen insight but also end up in a disastrous paraphrase: “connecting energy compressed in enigmas” (Renou); “the link between life and death” (Heesterman). In the end, it can be said only that brahman is the peak from which everything else follows.

And yet brahman is also a “world,” brahmaloka —and it is a world that can be entered (“he enters brahman ”). But what allows access? Not power, nor piety, nor good works. But simple consciousness, contact with perpetual wakefulness: “He who is wakeful among sleepers, the mind that edifies the various desires, this one is pure, this is brahman , this is what is called the immortal. All worlds rest on it: no one goes beyond.” At last, in this passage in the Kaṭha Upaniṣad , we discover — under the name of brahman— what constituted from the very beginning the Knowledge, which is the Veda. Though the Upaniṣads explain it (indeed: they are described as texts that seek above all to explain it), this secret of brahman as wakefulness and consciousness is already present, “unspoken,” throughout the Ṛgveda. In a hymn such as 5.44, for example, which Geldner describes as “the most difficult hymn in the Ṛgveda. ” Here “divinity is everywhere unspoken ( anirukta ).” Here, according to Renou, “the phraseology, the esoteric intention, undeniably indicated the Viśvedevāḥ character” (meaning: this type of composition places the hymn among those to the Viśvedevāḥ, All-the-gods, a peculiarly Vedic entity). No single god is named, apart from Agni in stanza 15, at the end of a hymn where, wrote Geldner, “the final verses seem to be the solution to a riddle,” adding: “and this is undoubtedly all it seeks to be.” To a large extent it remains a riddle: Oldenberg, the father of all Vedists, had already laid down his arms in the face of such a tough obstacle (“Both the explanation and the textual analysis of this hymn remain for the most part doubtful and without solution”). And yet, even though the exposition of the riddle remains largely impenetrable, the “solution” speaks with marvelous clarity — and refers to the supremacy of wakefulness over everything. With these words: “He who is wakeful, the stanzas love him; he who is wakeful, the ritual chants also go to him. He who is wakeful, soma says to him: in your friendship (I feel as if) at home.” Since the hymns are the very formulation of brahman —in other words the expression of brahman as a “word of power” (Kramrisch) — the nexus that connects power to the word is already acknowledged here in wakefulness.