REFLECTIONS ON KING SOLOMON AND THE BUDDHA Chapt 23.

Reflections On King Solomon And The Buddha - Section 2

Chapter 23 - Personal Engagement and Authority

by Ira Rosenberg

The mythology surrounding Solomon depicts him as both a lover and wise man, as a king and a magician, as a founder of alchemy, as a conjurer of devils, as a sinner and repentant. But whatever he acquired, he acquired on his own. He did not have a guru. Mysterious wise men did not reveal secrets to him. God may have granted him an "understanding heart" but it was Solomon who devised his understandings from close observation and long experience. The sense we get from the writings is that Solomon's wisdom and powers were personally cultivated, acquired individually, gleaned from life directly, experientially, learned anew. And so it must be for us too if we want to live authentically.

But we must not make Solomon's mistake. As Adin Steinsaltz put it, Solomon's great error as king and man was to suppose that others could live with the unshielded intensity of insight that he did, that they could endure his existential commotion without going mad. That others would even want to cultivate it, that others would be able to live with full authenticity, was Solomon's misapprehension. But people love mystery and authority, and Solomon's expectations for spiritual renewal could never be met because "of his inability to discern the significance of the petty and the trivial." (Steinsaltz. Biblical Images. p. 159.)

Though seen through a dukkha eye, subtle powers can emerge from attention to timing based on the onceness of life, the quietness of the Watcher and the power of appropriately framed intentions. New capacities for action can develop in us. Unheralded virtues can appear. Something like the siddhis (powers) described in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali can emerge. But not every intention can be accomplished, even with impeccable timing, even by Solomon. Dukkha is always there. Whatever is built up immediately starts to fall down. Love too is built and falls apart and wisdom falls apart too.

Perhaps this is what Solomon means when he says:

And I hated all my toil that I toil under the sun, that I should leave it to the man who will be after me. And who knows whether he will be wise or foolish. And he will rue over all my toil that I have toiled and that I have gained wisdom under the sun; this too is vanity.

The Targum sees this as a reference to the generation of Reheboam and to Jeraboam who usurped the kingdom and implies that Solomon foresaw the split kingdom and the loss of sovereignty.

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Last Updated 09/19/98 (rge)