Longing for Darkness: Tara and the Black Madonna

An separate important offset of the journey which is expressed in both arrests is the union of opposites. The occidental way of seeing and persuasion is gener solelyy based on a duality in which opposites are in betrothal with one another. In these two books, however, we find these opposites being brought unitedly. In Galland, for example, we find a woman from the West, from a Christian back understanding, attempt to understand the Eastern way:

In Tibetan Buddhism, the typic union of male and female deities is completely bound up with the highest ghostlike experience of enlightenment. This is not the world of God the give or even God the Mother. This is the world of ecstatic union, of engender and mother, male and female, the Great Bliss. . . . I was on unknown ground (Galland 102-103).

Although Pirsig preindications his journey continuously with meditations on Western philosophers, the midriff of his book is the concept of Quality, which turns out to be a good mystical and Eastern-oriented phenomenon. Pirsig sees philosophy not as a wilful act of the consciousness alone, but a more instinctive event which flows from the unconscious: : "He knew he had reached some frame of culmination of thought he had been unconsciously striving for everywhere a long period of time" (Pirsig 215).

Again and once again in both books we find references to the creative nature of the spiritual journey, the importa

nce of spontaneity and freedom. For example, Pirsig looks at the instructions which comes with a machine and describe the way to put it together:

Pirsig, Robert M. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. New York: Bantam, 1985.

This is darkness to the thinking mind, to the ego that grasps and holds that there is such a thing as "mine.' This goes beyond thinking mind, beyond the world of appearances, into the vast claim experience of being. This is not ordinary reality. This is the black of starless midnight, imminence, that comes beforehand the pre-dawn of enlightenment. . . . (Galland 342).

These . . . instructions begin and end exclusively with the machine. But the kind- kindlinged of approach I'm thinking about doesn't cut it off so narrowly.

What's really angering about instructions of this sort is that they imply there's scarcely one way to put this [machine] together---their way. And that presumption wipes out all the creativity. Actually, there are hundreds of ways to put the [machine] together. . . . [Sticking to the instructions,] you lose feeling for the work. . . . And it's very unlikely that they've told you the best way (Pirsig 147).

For example, Galland captures this natural character reference of the spiritual journey and of enlightenment in the final lines of her book:

There are, however, more similarities than differences between the two books. At the heart of the spiritual journey for both authors are the little things in life which give delight and wonder, rather than the explosive snatch of sudden and complete illumination which many believe to mark the enlightenment experience. To both authors, the small, everyday connections with life and nature and other human beings are the real moments of enlightenment which are for sale at any moment of the night or day.

I am perplexed by the tiny flickers of light exit off. . . . After a moment I realize that these are the glimmer of birds' wings as they flit from chaparral to bush
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