A Buddhist Interpretation Of Rimbaud
As far as I know, no Rimbaud scholar has ever drawn any comparisons between Rimbaud and a Buddhist. However, as I've been studying Buddhism a number of striking similarities have come to mind. Like the Buddha, Rimbaud sought to make himself a seer. The Buddha succeeded where Rimbaud failed. Rimbaud sought to make himself a seer through a long, prodigious and rational disordering of all the senses. Zen Buddhists employ a similar method through the use of koans to challenge the validity of one's perception of reality and to encourage a different kind of thought, crazy wisdom. Rimbaud said love must be reinvented. Buddhists have reinvented love as loving-kindness and compassion. Rimbaud sought to cultivate his soul. Buddhists actually do this. It is their practice.
Rimbaud wanted the poet to become the supreme Savant, "For he arrives at the unknown! Since he has cultivated his soul - richer to begin with than any other! He arrives at the unknown: and even if, half crazed, in the end, he loses the understanding of his visions, he has seen them! Let him be destroyed in his leap by those unnamable, unutterable and innumerable things: there will come other horrible workers: they will begin at the horizons where he has succumbed." This passage from one of his lettres du voyant sounds suspiciously like a description of Enlightenment which is not always thought to be attainable in one's own lifetime but which may be achieved in a future life. In Buddhism, visions are described as one of the deeper states of meditation called Jhana, "Sometimes whole scenes can appear clearly in the mind. There might be landscapes, buildings and people. They may appear familiar or strange. Such complex nimitta are merely a reflection of an over-complicated mind." Nimitta refers to the beautiful “lights” that appear in the mind. Rimbaud's Illuminations are just such a series of visions.
Rimbaud claimed, "I came to find my mind's disorder sacred".
Buddhists also consider the mind to be sacred. In fact, they consider training the mind to be the key to the sacred. Rimbaud's "A Season In Hell" also provides many tantalizing hints of Enlightenment or the search for Enlightenment, "Perhaps he has some secrets for changing life? No, I would say to myself he is only looking for them." The Buddha actually did find the secret for changing life and that was his goal, to end suffering completely in this life. Even Rimbaud's poem "A Drunken Boat" hints at something seen that others have not seen, "And sometimes I have seen what men have thought they saw!"
A random selection of Rimbaud's writing can also be read as showing knowledge of Enlightenment;
From A Season In Hell pg 75.
But I see that my spirit is asleep.
Buddhists seek to awaken the spirit, i.e. achieve a heightened state of consciousness that will reveal reality as it really is.
If it were always wide awake from that moment on we should soon reach the truth that may even now surround us with her weeping angels!
To be always wide awake would be to abide in a state of pure consciousness which allows you to perceive the truth of the reality which surrounds you even now. Weeping angels is a reference to the emotional state which Enlightenment produces, compassion.
If it had been awake till this very instant, that would mean I had not yielded to my deleterious instincts in an immemorial age!
If the spirit had always been wide awake up till this moment it would mean I had not accumulated bad karma in my many lifetimes.
If it had always been wide awake, I should be under full sail on the high sea of wisdom.
If my spirit had always been in a state of pure consciousness I should be Enlightened, a sage.
It is this moment of awakening that has given me the vision of purity!
An instant of Enlightenment has shown me the Pure Land.
From Letter To George Izambard May 13, 1871.
It is wrong to say: I think. One should say: I am thought.
A Buddhist would say it is wrong perception to say that you think. Rather you are what you think. You confuse your conscious thought with your Self and therefore say there is a self thinking when actually your thoughts create the sense of an I, a Self.
I is some one else.
The true self is someone other than the conscious self.
From A Season In Hell pg 63.
It is recovered!
What? Eternity.
It is the sea
Mixed with the sun.
The ultimate reality is eternal, beyond time, and a sense of this can be recovered by perceiving dualities like the sea and the sun becoming one in a state of consciousness that knows no such dualities.
Of human suffrage,
Of common aspirings,
You free yourself then!
You fly according to...
Enlightenment frees one from suffering and desire and the soul feels free of the worldly and can fly in spirit.
Although Buddhism was unknown in France and Africa at the time, Rimbaud seems to have eerily intuited the goal or ideal if not the right path and right means. Rimbaud was a spiritual seeker. Unfortunately he abandoned poetry and his quest and endured endless suffering in Africa. Buddhists might consider his case an object lesson because his suffering in Africa was legendary and the aim of Buddhism is to end suffering.
posted by Robert Robbins @ 8:08 PM
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