Countless strange places exist in the world, but one of the strangest is unique in its very name: the end of unbornness – Ajanta.
I first came across Ajanta as a child. Leafing through a photo album of the Far East, I found a picture of a mural. Where it was from – how could I ever have remembered that? But the majestic face of Buddha, the infinitely elegant gesture, the living colours, the lotus flower in the hand, and the hand, yes, the hand – not only its graceful gesture but the incredibly fine chiselling of the fingers – burned into my memory for ever.
Decades passed, and other sights, scents and sounds of the Far East swept over me, but in the very depths of my consciousness the imprint of that picture lived on. It surfaced again with incredible force when, on a close friend's hand – astonishing! – I discovered the same fine chiselling as on the thousand-year-old mural. A chance repetition, perhaps, a strange play of genetics? Or had nature, the greatest artist, repeated its brushstrokes – this time modelling a body? Or perhaps a hint of a meeting a thousand years before? Was that why the picture came into my hands, and why, out of a million pictures, it stayed alive in my consciousness, so that if one day I met the owner of the hand in life, I would recognise him? Today in the western half of the world, long ago in the eastern half – yet had we walked the path of eternity together? It is said that the signs must be heeded…
Then I opened the books again, and the picture greeted me like an old acquaintance. The unconscious attraction had now become a conscious familiarity: Padmapani, the famous Buddha figure from Ajanta holding a lotus flower in his hand… and with compelling certainty I recognised that the thousand-year-old motif and the present-day, flesh-and-blood reality of my friend were one and the same. The thought ripened in me that one day I must visit Ajanta – or return? Who knows?
This was no pressing urge, no compulsion to set off at once, but a deep-rooted conviction. Then, decades later, the time came. India, the wonder-paradise whose inexplicable magnetism disarms and draws in even those who resist it, this time invited me to Ajanta.
Bruised from the ride, we clamber out of the car, and our guide, with a confident, all-knowing smile, points to a track that vanishes into the untouched forest: That way, always straight ahead! Slowly the trees thin out, and we come out onto a bare plateau. We have only to bend down, and a whole array of crystals and coloured stones greets us. It is as if our path had been strewn with jewels. A princely welcome, or rather a diversion? If you stop for the precious pebbles, you will miss the real treasures… At the edge of the rocky rise an unexpected sight awaits us: below us, a wild and romantic horseshoe-shaped gorge. On the left the crystal-clear little river, the waters of the Waghora, comes rushing down in a series of cascades. Opposite rises an almost vertical cliff, nearly a hundred metres high, and the garland of cave-shrines hollowed into the rock face is strung on the thread of the walkway that runs before them, like a five-hundred-metre mala of dark jewels about the neck of the gorge.
Slowly we set off down to the floor of the gorge, to cross the little bridge there and at last walk the path of the monasteries. From the depths the caves cannot be seen, but yielding to an ever more urgent pull, we climb up the other bank.
There we stand on the walkway that runs past the row of cave-monasteries. Dare I say it – here again? As I stand there, all my technical gear is stripped from me. One step, and in place of the worldly clothes now falling away comes a pilgrim's robe. One more step, and the outer world I knew ceases to be, and barefoot now I step closer to the entrance of the first cave shrine. And there inside – the eye slowly grows used to the dark – at the far end of the hall, on the mural, Buddha meditates enigmatically. In the gloom he can scarcely be made out, and yet, there is Padmapani. And though I cannot see his hand, his beautifully chiselled fingers, I know that every line is in its place. It is there on the thousand-year-old mural, and it is there in the bodily reality of my friend's hand as well. Deep within, I know it is not the dark that keeps me from seeing. There is a veil over my eyes. ‘Art is a veil rather than a mirror’ – said Nietzsche, but he is wrong. This art is at once veil and mirror, at once the illusion of reality and the enchantment of beauty.
Ananda, Buddha's beloved disciple, spoke thus to the Master:
– One half of the holy life is friendship with beauty, companionship with beauty and fellowship with beauty!
– Not so, Ananda, not so! – said the Master. – This is not merely one half of the holy life, but the whole of it! (Samyutta Nikaya V.2.)
Beauty is a spiritual quality, and a cruel person cannot even be beautiful. Beauty is the symbol of things divine, and the sanctified life is nothing other than companionship with beauty.