It is dark, but in the starlight we dimly see steps. Reaching these, we hear music. Somewhere in the night, behind the walls, the union of Shiva with Parvathi is being celebrated. The drums beat, the conch shrieks, the horn pierces the night. As if by some sure knowledge, André Malraux leads us through a small door to the parvis of the temple. A tree covers the music, the tower seems insubstantial in the silence, men pray somewhere, chanting hymns as if they spoke intimately. Night seems the only sound. Now Brahmins come out of the night with coconut, burning camphor, and garlands. The little lantern reappears. The arcane men offer the distinguished pilgrim an eternity of happiness. Alone in the night one recovers the happiness of Kailas. Shivoham, Shivoham, I am Siva, I am Shiva . . .

Man is by nature good. Coming out of his home he meets with old age, death, sickness, misery. He also sees the fullness of peace upon the face of the anchorite. He knows that he should go where there is no returning. To live is pain. To die is to be born again. All that is tangible decomposes. The body is made of eighteen aggregates. The mind is but a shaft from the unknown. With a lotus in our hands, we are all Bodhisattvas watching the river that runs through the gorge. Compassion makes the world as twilight makes the day. Let the sun rise beyond those hills, or set; death is only life’s shadow. One dies in life; one does not die out of life. So like the Buddha one must stretch oneself and disappear. In this way one never dies.

If Ellora is medieval, Ajanta is renaissance. Here man flowers. True, he is sorrowful of sorrow. Life is but a cycle of becoming. That is why one should hold these flowers in the hand and look at the swans on the wall, composing the life of the Buddha with so many splendours that one can live because one is dead to this life. Maya, the mother of Buddha, twists her body in pain of birth with such human cosmicity that the trees burst into flower about her.

See these princesses beside the Bodhisattva, their breasts rounded by love, their limbs of cooing sensuality, their tiaras of confirmed femininity. Man leaves these behind because he looks at the world of twilight, which is not really of this world. There is no world. The Void is. Only the Void is.

The eagles were happy to eat all that André Malraux gave them. They flew up to the trees to eat, letting the bones fall into the clear river below.

Elephanta