Part 12: The Corrida, Cont.

No one can be faulted for finding the event gory and difficult to watch. But private death is no less gory than that which is public. The leather which furnishes our shoes, wallets, handbags, gloves, sportscar upholstery and filet mignons did not grow on leather trees. Neither did it come from steers that committed suicide.

The bull who is destined for the Corrida has lived well, free in the open countryside, unmolested by humans, and to an older age than the steer. Also, a steer became a steer by virtue of castration without anesthesia; and for his entire life he was herded about like, well.. cattle... constantly driven. To make him gain weight estrogen is shot into him by injection or mixed into his food. Nobody wonders what it’s like to be a steer with a cow’s hormones. Nobody cares if the animal is frantic in his hormonal rushes, his incongruous femininity. But bulls are always bulls. They live like kings for four or five years and then, for twenty minutes, they experience combat and give their flesh to the poor. It is an honorable death and it follows an honorable life.

No.. the Corrida is not about killing or abusing animals. Probably the most significant reason for the Corrida’s mystique consists in people’s being able to witness heroism, to participate in it vicariously. In antiquity there no doubt was survival strategy inherent in the domination of the animal for killing purposes. Beef is and always was an important source of protein. Survival. We think of Aesop’s fable of the mice who decide that the best strategy for thwarting the intentions of the dangerous cat is to put a bell around it’s neck. That way they’ll be warned of its approach. Everyone will benefit. "But who will bell the cat?" one mouse asks. Who amonst mice or men has the courage to confront the danger and to neutralize it.

Perhaps, also, there was an omen attached to the contest’s outcome when it was held for religious purposes. A prediction of things to come.

If the astrologically determined omens which prefigure the Spring Ox ritual in China can augur feast or famine, so might a contest between a man and a living bull. The bull is the Moon’s representative; and the moon presides over darkness. Perhaps when the ritual was held at, say, the winter solstice, the prevalence of light’s representative over dark’s would symbolically guarantee or reinforce the expectation that the days would lengthen. The death of the one in the feathered garment or suit of lights might bode cold and gloom for ensuing days.

If the ritual was held at the vernal equinox, the prevalence of light over dark might indicate in the spilling of the beast’s blood a fecundating fertilizing element, while the goring of the matador might signify sacrificial blood, and in honor of his heroism men might mourn their own spiritual cowardice. The death of the man in the arena affects everyone. He is heroic and, not so curiously after all, so is the bull that killed him. Their names are matrimonially joined. Any Spaniard can rattle off the names of every bull that killed every great matador. Who, today, says "Manolete" without the hyphenated "Islero."

Manolete with Islero and the official published account of the fatal wound.

Ultimately, the Corrida and the Discipline of Spiritual Alchemy are about achieving harmony between Light and Dark, between Power and the Law Power obeys. They are both regimens which provide for the divine conjunction of Sun and Moon.

In Zen the contest is entirely within the individual psyche. But it is just as grueling and painful and demands just as much courage - sometimes more - than confronting a wild animal. And there’s no financial reward for succeeding! The Opus is its own incentive. (What can be more Zen that working for the sake of the work and not for any result?)

The Corrida overtly displays the blood of sacrifice. The Labial Wound. The blood that follows the nuptial deflowering. Naturally, when the event is not sacred, it is just so much commercial crap - a step below cock-fighting or professional wrestling. A travesty.

Finally, the idea of heros, spinning maidens and divine marriage emerges in an interesting Irish myth which Joseph Campbell records in his The Hero With A Thousand Faces. "In the west of Ireland they still tell the tale of the Prince of the Lonesome Isle and the Queen of Tubber Tintye. Hoping to heal the Queen of Erin, the heroic youth had undertaken to go for three bottles of the water of Tubber Tintye, the flaming fairy well. Following the advice of a supernatural aunt whom he encountered on the way, and riding a wonderful, dirty, lean little shaggy horse that she gave to him, he crossed a river of fire and escaped the touch of a grove of poison trees." The prince arrives at the castle and finds sleeping giants, monsters, and beasts of every kind in its enormous interior. He mounts a great stairway and enters a chamber in which he finds a beautiful sleeping woman. He passes through and enters eleven other chambers each containing a beautiful sleeping woman. Finally, he opens the door of the thirteenth chamber and is nearly blinded by the dazzling sight of gold; and there, on a spinning golden bed, was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, the Queen of Tubber Tintye. Spinning with the bed, near its foot, and covered with a lid of gold, was the Well of Fire whose healing waters he had come to obtain. The prince got in bed with the Lady and for six days and nights spun with her. "On the seventh morning he said, ‘It is time for me now to leave this place.’ So he came down and filled the three bottles with water from the flaming well." In the golden chamber on a golden table he found a leg of mutton and some bread. Whatever he ate was magically replaced, so nothing was changed when he prepared to leave. He remembered his manners, however, and left a note acknowledging what he had taken and expressing his gratitude for it and, of course, for the Queen’s company.

This myth, as it happens, is a woman’s myth. In her ego identity, she would be the Aunt. Her Animus figure is the prince. The regal figure encountered in hieros gamos is the Queen of Tubber Tintye. The royal dalliance, the first phase, lasts only a short time; and then other female characters "awaken" and come onstage. Obviously, this myth ends before the divine child’s conception. (Sequel? Do we see a sequel here?)

So why is a Zen master like a matador? Because he is heroic and his actions are salvific and because he has transcended Samsaric existence and entered Nirvana complete - as both man and woman. He has become the Bodhisattva, the One who is Seen from Within and he has reveled in the ecstasy of divine love. He has united all the elements in his personality, balanced and integrated them, in order to discover the great truth that he contains within himself all that he could possibly desire. Truly independent, he needs nothing or no one and has nothing left to prove. He does not fear death..

Like the matador whose concentration must be so intense that it is transcendent, in a single, brief moment of ultimate truth he calls Satori, the Zen master, too, has discovered that the rest of the world does not e11 st. He too knows love and death intimately and with resignation understands that there is not much difference between them.

Before we close with Xu Yun’s lovely commentary on the Oxherding series, I’d like to make a personal comment about the 7th picture. Two competent translators independently interpreted Xu Yun’s references to "the Bride". I have not found a single other commentary on the Oxherding pictures which so much as mentions the Bride whose existance is the quintessential reason for the pictures’ being drawn at all.

We’ve come a long way in these ruminations. I, for one, am glad that it is Zen policy to live in the moment, to cherish the journey and not just the destination. I started this commentary on the Oxherding pictures so long ago I almost forget what point I was trying to make. Ok. Let’s see... We don’t end the opus as drunks. That’s a mistake. We don’t whip the Ox. That’s really stupid. God carries us and feeds us with his body, and we don’t beat him up for it. And the Ox is not the ego. None of us has to go looking for his ego.

Practice meditation techniques: the Healing Breath, Heel breathing and the Kundalini or Microcosmic Orbit practices. Spend some time alone. Get to appreciate the difference between loneliness and solitude. Be gentle and, though it takes the courage of a matador, forgive the people who hurt you. Advanced techniques shouldn’t even be considered until you have no enemies and no complaints.

And some day, when you least expect it, you’ll get to understand Bernoulli’s quote in his Spiritual Development In Alchemy: "This liberated ‘self,’ which has lost all connections with the person or individual might well be designated as ‘God,’ as for example in Angelus Silesius: ‘Thou must be Mary and bear God from within thee.’ And the gradual attainment of this state would find its correspondence in the great work of alchemy, which culminates precisely in the creation of the philosophers’ stone."

It has been a pleasant ride on this Ox.