Buddhist Romanticism

vapor and, trembling with sweet fear, he sinks into the dark, alluring
heart of nature, consumes his poor personality in the crashing waves
of lust, and nothing remains but a focus of infinite procreative force, a
yawning vortex in an immense ocean? What is the flame that is
manifested everywhere? A fervent embrace, whose sweet fruits fall
like sensuous dew. Water, first-born child of airy fusions, cannot
deny its voluptuous origin and reveals itself an element of love, and
of its mixture with divine omnipotence on earth. Not without truth
have ancient sages sought the origin of things in water, and indeed,
they spoke of a water more exalted than sea and well water. A water
in which only primal fluidity is manifested, as it is manifested in
liquid metal; therefore should men revere it always as divine. How
few up to now have immersed themselves in the mysteries of fluidity,
and there are some in whose drunken soul this surmise of the highest
enjoyment and the highest life has never wakened. In thirst this
world soul is revealed, this immense longing for liquefaction.” 9
The fact that the Romantics did not pursue the experience of Oneness in
any systematic or rigorous way helps to explain three features of their
religious thought.
One, they could not teach religion as a skill. For them, Oneness was a
communion between inside and outside forces. Thus, the outside
contribution was just as crucial as the inside one. Ultimately, the outside
contribution was the more important of the two, for—as these writers
recognized—there were some moments when they tried to experience
Oneness but could not, but other moments when Oneness was forced on
them without their having prepared for it. This is why their religion, even
though it accommodated a wide variety of concepts of the divine,
nevertheless held that the existence of a single divine force at the heart of
the universe is a necessary principle of religious life. There could be no
religious experience, in their eyes, without it. Thus their definitions of
religion centered on the word, “relationship”: In their eyes, a felt
relationship between the individual and a divine principle was needed to
make religion possible.
Two, because symphilosophy taught them that ideas did not have to
come to specific conclusions, they allowed themselves to be satisfied with a
religious goal that never reached a conclusive attainment. Religion, like an
on-going discussion, was to be pursued as an on-going process with no
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