Zen Master Rilke: We Are the Bees of the Invisible. Poet’s dialogues with Gautama Buddha

• The Invisible

Only through ignorance and delusion do men indulge in the dream that their souls are separate and self-existent entities.

    – Gautama Buddha

First of all, in attempting to answer the eternal question of the primary basis of human existence in his Elegies, Rilke introduces a very important and difficult to understand category into his philosophical vocabulary – the Invisible (́Unsichtbareś). This word will certainly mislead the reader who is not familiar with the texts of the Letters and the Elegies. Indeed, at first glance, based only on the meaning of the word itself, it may seem that it denotes only a relative, limited category, referring to something otherworldly, non-existent, which can be contrasted with something visible, existing. In other words, the Invisible belongs to the world of opposites known as Samsara*. However, as we shall see from the text of the Letter, the author of the Elegies endowed the Invisible with much more meaning, going beyond the usual notions of life and death, of the earthly and the hereafter. According to Rilke, the Invisible is ́a vast unitý, ́a true lifé, a supreme existence that encompasses ́this world and the otheŕ. The Invisible is absolutely real. Naturally, the Invisible is also present in the Sonnets. The poet even invented a special word for this category – ́Doppelbereich́ (́double realḿ, ́both this light and the otheŕ).

Rilke and Bodhisatta Vajrapani

At this point the reader is bound to ask, ́Is it possible to find something like the Invisible in the Buddhist lexicon?́ Of course it is, given the powerful conceptual apparatus developed in the Buddhist tradition. Without pretending to make a definitive choice, we can assume that Rilke’s Invisible, his ́Doppelbereich́, is nothing less than the abode of eternal and unchanging… Truth. And that by gathering ́the honey of the visible in the beehive of the Invisiblé, the Rilkean man penetrates the abode of Truth and becomes Truth himself.

To illustrate how close the views of the author of the Elegies on the Invisible are to Buddha’s Teaching on Truth, we can quote Rilke’s words that not only man but also the earth has no other destiny than to become invisible:

́The earth has no other way out but to become

invisiblé.

Isn’t this also what Gautama preached when he claimed,

́Truth is the accomplishment and goal of all existencé?

• Man Who Participates in the Invisible

…there is no being that cannot be transformed into a vessel of Truth.