ON THE PUBLIC ROAD: – walking the last few days, wet through from the rain and spattered with mud. Everywhere leaks. Waterlogged.
But we walk on, as city vagabonds in HOPE (hope of the ‘non-delusive’ kind – as defined by Vaclav Havel: see ak’s last week’s post). One of the things we are hoping for is STABILITY.
STABILITY – acyutta (Sanskrit) : "not dripping, not leaking, not perishable". One of the exemplary stories, the myth of STABILITY, is the one that describes the life’s journey of the sage Saubhari (The Vishnu Purãna, tr. H H Wilson, 1840 – Jo Campbell tells the story in The Masks of God, Chapter 4 of his volume on Oriental Mythology). This is a story all about leakage, dripping, leaking and the perishable. Saubhari, a holy man of great age and wisdom, has lived his solitary life for many years immersed in the waters of a lake, where he watches a large fish happily playing with all his offspring. Dripping all over from the splashing of the fish, Saubhari is so impressed by the happy life of the fish that he decides to abandon his solitary life. The story goes on to tell how he marries all fifty of the beautiful daughters of the local king, using his spiritual powers so that they all live together in perfect harmony and happiness, and how, in time, he bears them one hundred and fifty sons… However, in the end the happiness runs out. This is a story of leaks and leaks, of leaks everywhere. Stability, the state of mind that Saubhari finally reaches, only comes at the very end.
ak has just reminded us of the story of King Canute, somebody else who was very wise but, along the way, gets dripping wet in the sea. HERE on the weblog (it is the nature of this ‘instant’ publishing) we also continue to leak and leak. STABILITY as a state of mind is over and beyond us.
But it is something that makes sense to us, in other words we live in hope… and we have now heard of the exhibition of the literary journeys of WG Sebald at the Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery. Squelching along, we are on our way. The exhibition is called – ‘Waterlog‘.
mmj