The original story as follows was written by the founder-acarya of The International Society For Khrishna Conscousness (ISKCON), His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Praphupada. Those purists among you will find the link to the original Liquid Beauty, actually a retelling by a devotee of the Hindu Vaishnaiva sect.
I prefer to tell my own version of it, so here goes:
Once upon a time, a beautiful woman who happenned to be very devout found herself the object of unwanted attention. From the time she was a young girl, she had multiple proposals of marriage, and had since lost track of the times she had been pursued. Their faces all blended into one giant lustful leer that made it impossible to distinquish one from the other.
As impossible as it was to believe save to those who knew her well, she was at the age of twenty five still a virgin. She was determined to keep her virginity until she found a man suitable for marriage. This was not out of some religous compunction so much as it was just from a sense of self-esteem. Still, as time went on she found herself becomming more and more spiritual. It became a great comfort to her.
One night, as she went about her evening meditations, she felt the power ofthe goddess enveloping her, and she could almost hear her speak out to her, "you will be betrayed by the one man outside your family you trust above all others".
Immediately she thought of Greg, her workmate and a close friend who had been a great help to her both on and off the job, in various ways. Actually, she didn't believe this sudden feeling, but she couldn't shake it, and had trouble sleeping that night.
About a week later, she noticed that Greg seemed to have changed. He became much more attentive, and was suddenly around her all the time at work, and soon started calling three or four times a day. She knew then her feelings were right, and so she put in her two weeks notice, and after a very uncomfortable two weeks left her job. She had years earlier inherited a great amount of money, and so had no need of work as a means of supporting herself. Still, she was distressed as this job had been a chosen path to a career she had longed dreamed of. But it had to be done, she realized.
Still, she was resentful. Why should she have to quit her job on account of a man who turned out to be like all others after all? Yet, he had previously been such a good friend. What had happenned to him? She looked at herself in the mirror, and realized that her beauty was to her a curse. Why couldn't she have just been beautiful? Did she have to be ravishingly so? And was she really all that beautiful? She couldn't see it herself.
As these thoughts tormented her, Greg called, and begged her to see him. He declared his love for her and pleaded, his voice sounding as though he were near to tears. In fact, he seemed to have been crying. Reluctantly, she agreed to see him.
When he arrived at her doorstep, he repeated his declarations of love, and asked for her hand in marriage. She asked him why her, whereupon he responded that his previous engagement had been broken off, and he came to realize then that it was her he loved the whole time. And then he spilled it.
"You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen in my life, more beautiful than even any model or actress I have ever seen, by far."
Like a flash, it occurred to her what to do, and what to say.
"I'll tell you what", she said. "Give me one month to think about it, and I'll let you know. In the meantime, don't come around me, don't call me, don't get anywhere near me. One month. Do you think you are strong enough to handle that? Because if you are not, you certainly ain't the man I'm looking for."
Reluctantly, Greg agreed with this demand, and went on his way. Starting the next day, Darla purchased a months supply of laxatives and other purgatives, and all but stopped eating. In addition, she acquired a series of large pots. She would need at least four of them.
She lived over the course of the next month on nothing but bread and water and a little fruit here and there, but as little as possible. Nor did she use any kind of vitamin or mineral supplement to make up the loss of all the essential nutrients. She quickly became severely ill, and weak. Within two weeks time, she was throwing up what little she did eat. It seemed as though her body was beginning to turn on itself and consume itself, which in addition to the bread and water she quickly passed.
In addition, she caught a cold, and her nose was constantly running.
All of this she kept. He excrement, her urine, her vomit, and her mucous, each one in a sperate jar until, once they were all filled, she found another one in which she mixed all the bodily substances together.
Finally, a month passed, and Greg did not waste a second as he arrived at her door. He knocked impatiently, and when Darla opened the door, he obviously did not recognize the pathetic wretch of a creature that stood before him. She had wasted away to all but skin and bones, her cheekbones were hollow and her eyes were sunk in way back in the sockets. She had sores that seemed to be running with pus on her face, and her once beautiful complexion was ashen, a sickly mixture of white and grey. She was wrinkled and baggy and dry from dehydration. The light clothes that she wore seemed almost to weigh her down, as they now revealed a skeletal frame upon which the skin clung tenuously.
She was a living horror, a veritable manifestation of walking death. Yet, Greg seemed not to notice. In his eagerness, he had only one thought on his mind.
"Where's Darla?", he asked expectantly, barely able to hide his hopeful yet wary desires.
"I am Darla", she said incredulously. It was an effort to her by now to even be able to speak, to say nothing of standing long enough to answer the door. Greg took a good long look at the woman who now seemed to be on the verge of collapse, if not on death's door. Yet, as horrible as it seemed, he could soon tell that this was indeed Darla.
"What happenned to you?", he demanded in shocked amazement.
"I wanted you to see me for what I really am", she explained. "Then, I want you to see what it is you have fallen in love with. I want you to see my beauty. I still have it, though not on me right now. Come with me."
"Darla, what the hell are you talking about", he demanded. But he followed along behind her, until she made her way to the utility room, upon which he noticed for the first time the stench that seemed to permate the house. She stood now in front of a series of large jars without lids.
"There is my beauty", she explained, "distilled down to it's essence."
He looked into the jars filled with the vile collection of excrement, urine, mucous,vomit, and the one that was a mixture of all these substances, and began gagging. He looked. His expression of horrified revulsion spoke volumes.
"So do you still want to marry me?", she asked.
"No, not any more", he confessed. "You've made your point. I have been a real idiot."
"What do you mean?", Darla asked. "Do you mean that you understand now that beauty is only skin deep, and that it is all in the eye of the beholder, that it is all an illussion based on gross material lust?"
"No", he replied. "I mean because I see now that you are one crazy bitch."
18 comments:
The story is similar to an old Zen or Taoist parable. You really had me going up until the punch line!
The Tao of Masonry
Thanks for posting this! He's right too- there are variations on this story in many different religions. I recently found a sufi variation.
You're welcome, Rufus, and thanks for reminding me of it. I guess there are more versions than I thought. I guess mine can be considered a westernized secular humanist approach with a wiccan/pagan element.
And thank you also, Tom, both for your comments and for linking me on your blog. I've been meaning to return the favor and will add you to my blogroll in a day or two.
hahaaaa thank you, I needed that tonight!
Glad I could bring you a little joy, Meowkatt, sounds like you had a stressful Sunday.
Danielle: Thanks, and yes, she is very beautiful isn't she? I started to use the picture that went with the story on the link I provided, but after running across that picture, I had to use it. No true connection to the story, actually, other than she is an Indian woman and the story was originally a Vedic parable. But if I hadn't been writing that story and happened across it, I thik I might have written something just as an excuse to use it.
I've been popping in to read this often enough, so I figured it was time to link to it - if only because it made it easier for me than drill down through my bazillion bookmarks ;-)
Seriously, you're doing a nice job here!
There are a lot of parables that overlap in cultures. Vedic, Taoist, Zen are all cousins anyway, so it's not surprising. Good modern twist on the ending, though. I'm going to email this link to a few "New Age-y" friends.
The Tao of Masonry
Thanks a lot Tom. I used to update once a week and put on ten or more, sometimes more than twenty posts in one or two days. But I quickly ascertained that a good lot of them were seldom if ever being read, so I went down to one or two posts a day, or three or four every two or three days. A good many of them are longer posts, but at least they are being read now.
In this case, I thought it would be cool to add a modern twist. Greg stayed the hedonist to the bitter end, the spiritual lesson totally lost on him, though Darla did at least accomplish her main objective. Real life is actually very much like that. If you expect acolades and applause for spiritual endeavors, you'd better expect an equal amount of ridicule and derision. And, when you stop to think about it, it would be nutty, to say the least, to go to such an extent.
I know what you mean about the bookmarks too. No sooner do I clear them out it seems I end up with 200 or more in no time.
That's a good point too. When you are really infatuated with someone, you do tend to have an overly romanticized view of the person. That's actually understandable, though, because your instincts are all geared toward consummation of the relationship. Reality doesn't begin to set in until afterwards. That's when you eventually start to think oh what the hell have I done? In some cases, walking in on the person in the middle of taking a good, health shit might be just what the doctor ordered to help you put things in a more realistic perspective, like well this ain't exactly a god/goddess sitting in here stinking up the bathroom.
Your post is serendipitous... certainly for the friend to whom I’m about to forward it. He’s in his late 20s, as is his girlfriend. We were just discussing her ‘overly romanticized view’ of relationships and marriage. At the risk of stereotyping, she is a devout Catholic, with a very traditional orientation to marriage and family (for starters, no living together and no sex before marriage). She wants a guarantee of sorts that the relationship will never change, will never grow stale, and the like. The man she marries will be her first, only and everlasting prince charming.
With this kind of expectation, even the most glorious of unions is in for trouble. He’s a great guy, but knows he cannot promise this kind of perpetual bliss, as the proverbial shit happens from time to time.
But she wants said promise.
Your friends fiancee' sounds very immature for a woman in her late twenties. It's one thing to insist on celibacey before marriage, you can make a case for that. But for somebody of that age to insist that everything just remain so so from now on tells me that this woman is a fruitcake, and your friend had better end it before he gets in way too deep. Tell him to count his blessings that she doesn't want sex before marriage. If he got her pregnant he would be tied to her from then on to at least an extent. This is not good.
I used to update once a week and put on ten or more, sometimes more than twenty posts in one or two days.
My problem is that I've got way too much stuff in my head. I could write more, but I have this damned day job thing that I'm supposed to do ;-)
I find that it takes me about 2-1/2 - 3 hours to type it out, edit for 'speeling' and grammar, and then tweak it some more. I figure if I can do this onece or twice a week, it won't stress me out.
The Tao of Masonry
I feel your pain. Blogging takes a lot of time away from other projects I should be working on, on the other hand I guess I'll get to them when they or I am ready.
Wow that was one story I hadn't come across.. really nice (funny) version though :)
When I saw Aishwarya Rai's pic (from the movie Devdas) I thought you were writing a review of devdas or of rai :P
Wow! You know who she is? No, I had no idea who she was, I just ran across her picture on a search for one I thought might fit in with the story, and she stood out among the crowd. What a beautiful woman, I thought. Now that you have clued me in as to her identity I'll look around for some more info on her when I get time. She now has in me her latest American fan/stalker. Thanks, Sou.
hahaa.. ur welcome. yeah i 'know' her :) she's a biiig star in the Indian movie industry.
you know.. i had been thinking for some days now that i should blog obscure stories from indian mythology and this post has just inspired me some more. Now i just have to see if the inspiration outlasts my lazyness :p
I looked her up on Wikkipedia yesterday. I find it commendable that she refuses to discuss her personal life. Most stars here are spoiled, go out of their way for publicity, then bitch and moan when those evil papparazzi won't leave them alone.
On a related note, what is the Indian fascination with musicals all about? Going by what I read, it seems the only chance an Indian film has of doing any good is if the main characters suddenly break out into a song and dance routine every thirty minutes or so. Or is that an exaggerated view?
Good idea about the Indian myths. I pretty much dissected the myth of Ganesh a while back, don't know if you saw it. It would probably be pretty offsensive to some devotees of the god. I love to put things under a microscope, maybe too much.
LOL "Indian fascination with muscials" ..
dunno.. I guess our movies are a natural progression of our plays where you'd always have a song to descibe the city or a dream .. you know..
Quite a few movies now are doing away with the songs but most of them still have it. I guess it's an integral part of Indian movies now.. wonder if it'll ever change. (oh also it rakes in moolah.. another reason why nobody's in a hurry to do away with the songs)
chk out my latest post.. me thinks you'll find it quite interesting.
I read it, interesting. You should be cautious, however, a lot of modern interpretations, and interpretors, like to play fast and loose with comparisons between the ancient texts and their suppossed modern day meanings. I remember reading something along these lines that was ascribed to Khrisha flying some kind of spacecraft which used mercury as a fuel.
In another instance, it was said that Vrindivana was always lit up with the light of the either the suns, moon, or "lightning", which some people interpreted to mean some form of electricity like we have today.
It's easy to jump to those conclusions. Personally I don't buy it, but to each his/her own. Kind of like this thing in the Bible where Ezekiel is suppossed to have been taken up into heaven in a "fiery chariot" described as being made of "wheels within wheels". A lot of people like to ninterpret that as a reference to "flying suacers", or UFO's, and thus there was the implication of an intergalactic race and of interplanetary travel that was applied to God, angels, etc.
First you have to be willing to believe that stuff really happenned, and I just don't believe that kind of thing literally happenned. There was a point to the sotries, they had great symbolic meaning, and the original writers had a fertile imagination which was probably grounded to a great extent in obserations of natural phenomena, like lightning, for example.
On a more positive note, that kind of natural observation and inquisitiveness, and imagination, was the same thing that in modern times lead to the exact kind of scientific and techological advances we take for granted today.
So to that extent there may be a relationship, and probably is, but not to that extent, in my opinion.
Post a Comment