Very soon, parts of the world will witness an almost total solar eclipse, a phenomenon so powerful, it entrances even the most consummate astronomers already familiar with spectacular celestial events. The untimely nightfall that occurs must have frightened our ancestors into imagining the permanent extinction of the sun, the end of the world, human life dissolving into the void. Indeed, the word eclipse, from the Greek, means abandonment, failure, cessation, omission. The ancients associated these unusual dramatic occurrences with catastrophe, plague, famine, apocalypse, the death of a monarch and even created a specific demon – Rauh or Rahu – responsible as he endeavoured wickedly (and unsuccessfully) to swallow the sun.
Even though an eclipse may be one of the most mysterious and sublime sights a human can behold, it is still very strange even today with our intellectual clarity around what’s actually happening. Knowledge can be at odds with experience – perhaps that’s one of the questions yoga and meditation poses. Do we practise according to tradition (established knowledge) or according to our individual perceptions and feelings? Is personal experience tantamount? What is the role of the literal, the imaginary, the tangible, the blissful, the visible, the palpable?
Tenkei, a 17C Zen Master, apparently said, ‘See with your eyes, smell with your nose, taste with your tongue…nothing in the universe is hidden. What else would you have me say?’*
Please research Annie Dillard, Maria Mitchell and Virginia Woolf for descriptions of solar eclipses.
* Thanks to Edward Brown for this quote.