Gates of the Sun
How, in practice, will the integration of Buddhism and Western culture come about?
Bodhivajra describes his own experience.
In the summer of 1986, on a solitary retreat in a cottage on the Yorkshire moors in northern England, I read Carl Jung’s Memories, Dreams, Reflections, an extraordinary, powerful book which I found so exciting I could hardly put it down. This book, this journey into the unconscious, suddenly presented me with a verse about someone called Telesphoros.
This is Telesphoros, who roams through the dark regions of this cosmos and glows like a star out of the depths. He points the way to the gates of the sun and to the land of dreams.
I had never heard this name before, as far as I knew, but it made a very strong impression on me. Immediately I had a desire to create some music based on those words. It didn’t seem enough just to receive what Jung had said; I wanted to create Telesphoros in a musical form. Because the image of Telesphoros had appeared within me, I wanted to pay honour to it.
I wasn’t satisfied with the music I wrote then, and it wasn’t until 1990 that I found another opportunity to bring Telesphoros into a musical work. I began to write Carpe Diem, a choral piece which started life as an exploration of the theme of impermanence, with words from the Odes of Horace as a starting point. But then Telesphoros reappeared in my imagination, and although I couldn’t yet see how it would tie in with the existing Carpe Diem music, I was determined to find a much more satisfying music than my earlier attempt.
Although I was using as text just two sentences, this expanded into three musical sections. The first is an improvised invocation to Telesphoros using wordless sounds from the choir which gradually turn into the syllables of Telesphoros’s name. During this section Telesphoros appears, brought into being by the repetition of his name. The second section shows Telesphoros ‘roaming through the darkness’ and ‘shining like a Star’. In the third section, a jazz-based instrumental piece leads into the ‘Gates of the Sun’ and the ‘Land of Dreams’.
These three musical sections effect a movement from the depths to the heights. The heights cannot be experienced without having established roots which reach right down into the depths. Telesphoros symbolizes this movement because he is both darkness and light, both death and life. lie appears from the depths in a dark, hooded cloak, his face hidden from view because it is a face of death, while at the same time his light dispels fear and he points upwards to the sun-drenched heights. He is equally at home in the depths and the heights, and is thus a symbol of integration, a ‘marriage’ of heaven and hell.
This, of course, is my own vision or experience of Telesphoros; unsurprisingly, the picture I have of him in my mind’s eye doesn’t completely tie up with traditional Greek images. Traditionally he is depicted as a child, wearing a hooded cloak and carrying a light. One account describes his connection with Asklepios, the god of healing: Asklepios dies at winter time and is reborn as the child Telesphoros in the spring.
Telesphoros and his new music became for me the most important part of Carpe Diem, to the extent that I considered renaming the whole work (which was performed on FWBO Day 1992). The rhythmic energy, vitality, and freedom expressed in Carpe Diem in the later sections through the words of Walt Whitman come directly from the power of Telesphoros the Healer, whose season is the spring.
‘Telesphoros’ can mean ‘the one who brings to an end’ or ‘the one who brings to fulfillment’. As a god of healing, he brings sickness to an end; by restoring health he brings about a fulfillment, making whole someone who has been ill. In his lecture The Archetype of the Divine Healer, Sangharakshita makes the point that the Greek cult of Asklepios was both a system of medicine and a religion. A doctor was also a priest, a patient also a worshipper.
Telesphoros has also been described as the personification of the hidden sustaining vital force upon which depends the recovery of the sick
, So Telesphoros (or any other archetypal ’divine healer’ ) does not cure us miraculously, but alerts us to the hidden sustaining vital force within us which will make its whole or bring us to fulfillment. This vital force is our life-blood, our faith, our creative energy, our desire for truth and fulfillment When we are in contact with it, we feel healthy, happy, and vital.
For me Telesphoros ’works’ just as archetypal Buddha and Bodhisattva figures ’work’. Just as Shakyamuni, Vajrasattva, and Padmasambhava uplift and inspire me, so too Telesphoros awakens me, gives me a taste of freedom, encourages my highest aspirations. Telesphoros is a figure from the Western cultural tradition who has made a dramatic appearance in my imagination and affected me deeply. My experience convinces me that if, as Sangharakshita suggests in his essay Buddhism and William Blake, Buddhism will not really spread in the West until it speaks the language of Western culture
it is important to allow Western archetypes into our minds and hearts, and into our practice, without being afraid that they are ‘non-Buddhist’.
Bodhivajra lives In Norwich, where he teaches piano and jazz improvisation courses, as well as spending as much time as possible writing music.
Reprinted from Golden Drum 33.