Real Life with Ryuei

Buddha vs. Thomas Hardy's The President of the Immortals

On another message board someone wrote: "No matter how hard I try to practice and believe Buddhism, reality forces me to the conclusion that the universe is run by devils."

That reminded me of a time back when I was in high school. My class was assigned to read a truly horrible novel by Thomas Hardy (late 19th century writer) named Tess of the D'urbervilles. When I went to the library to get this boring 19th century novel the librarian looked at it and shook her head saying, "Ah such a sad story, it' a shame that Tess gets hung in the end." Thanks a lot - the worst spoiler I've ever heard in my life - I didn't want to read the book in the first place, and now I knew the awful ending before I had even started it!

The book was, of course, as grim or perhaps grimmer than promised. Here is an online summary and overall comment on the novel from the following website

http://www.bibliomania.com/0/0/26/56/frameset.html:

"Tess of the D'Urbervilles was subtitled A Pure Woman and published in 1891. It is one of Hardy's saddest tales of rural troubles. Tess is the daughter of the poor John Durbeyfield who learn from the village parson that his family is related to ancient nobility, being the last of the family the D'Urbervilles. In trying to make use of this connection, Joan - John's wife - suggests that Tess pursue the son of the local family of Mrs D'Urberville. As it turns out the Mrs D'Urberville has merely taken the name for convenience but Tess becomes involved with her son Alec nonetheless who gives her employment but takes advantage of her and in unpleasant circumstances seduces her. They have a child together who dies early and cannot be baptised because he is illegitimate. The second stage of the novel concerns the family of the Reverend Mr Clare and his son Angel. Angel and Tess marry but when she admits the incident with Alec their relationship is torn apart leading to Angel's departure for South America and Alec's second attempt to ensnare Tess. This leads to murder, escape and superficial impurity on the part of Tess who is finally brought to "Justice". This is an exceptionally bleak novel that offers little relapse from the persistent cruelty of fate (or as the novel would have it the President of the Immortals) against Tess. At the time the novel was considered pessimistic and immoral, and Henry James though it thoroughly poorly conceived which reminds us of a certain conversation between a pot and a black kettle."

One of the final sentences in this novel is Hardy's commentary on the nature of "God" or the "President of the Immortals":

"`Justice' was done, and the President of the Immortals, in Aeschylean phrase, had ended his sport with Tess."

Nice. An omnipotent but malevolent God who messes with us for his entertainment. Come to think of it, watch the movie "Jason and the Argonauts" and you'll see pretty much the same idea. The gods are just playing with us like a game of chess. In 1912, Hardy wrote a poem about the Titanic disaster called "The Convergence of the Twain":

I

In a solitude of the sea
Deep from human vanity,
And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.

II

Steel chambers, late the pyres
Of her salamandrine fires,
Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.

III

Over the mirrors meant
To glass the opulent
The sea-worm crawls -- grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.

IV

Jewels in joy designed
To ravish the sensuous mind
Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind.

V

Dim moon-eyed fishes near
Gaze at the gilded gear
And query: "What does this vaingloriousness down here?". . .

VI

Well: while was fashioning
This creature of cleaving wing,
The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything

VII

Prepared a sinister mate
For her -- so gaily great --
A Shape of Ice, for the time fat and dissociate.

VIII

And as the smart ship grew
In stature, grace, and hue
In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.

IX

Alien they seemed to be:
No mortal eye could see
The intimate welding of their later history.

X

Or sign that they were bent
By paths coincident
On being anon twin halves of one August event,

XI

Till the Spinner of the Years
Said "Now!" And each one hears,
And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.

http://www.melodylane.net/ianwhitcomb/twainpoem.html

Again, the maleveolent deity who pulls the cosmic strings in order to bring about a disaster for his own amusement. Come to think of it, I think we studied this in the same English Lit class in high school that we had to read the Tess book in. Is it any wonder that I became such a fan of Goth music? I blame it on the teachers who made me read Thomas Hardy. LOL!

Anyway, thank Buddha for Buddhism, as it kept me from succumbing to the grossly bleak outlook of Thomas Hardy. Instead of a malevolent deity, a "President of the Immortals" sporting with peasant girls (or classical Greek adventurers) or an"Immanent Will" making icebergs to smash ships, Buddhism teaches the rather more impersonal though organic law of cause and effect.

In college I used to go around glibly saying, "Karma means that everything really is your own fault." Actually, I wasn't just being glib, I was just being a smart ass - giving a kind of Hardyesque spin to thing just to tweak people. But Karma doesn't actually mean that - even in the traditional Buddhist teachings about it - though it is about our own personal responsibility in shaping the causes and conditions of our life to a great extent. In any case, better to live with the compassionate and awakening view of life from the Buddha's point of view rather than Thomas Hardy's, though I have to admit that kind of pessimism is so hyperbolically bleak as to become almost funny - a kind of self parody. That may in fact be how Hardy intended it, though I don't know enough about him to say for sure.

Namu Myoho Renge Kyo,
Ryuei

Posted by Ryuei at October 18, 2007 09:38 AM