On Feminine Beauty: Eros and Perception: Part IV: Marc Gafni
Installation four in a series of blogs:
Clearly at this stage in his life the sexual was for the Master, like for the Buddha, Jesus and virtually all the saints at some point in their path, a trap to be avoided at all costs. The good news is that this is not the end of the story.
Many years later, after the master has deepened greatly in his service, he taught a very different teaching about the relation to the sexual. He tells over the wisdom text about the story of Akiva, the same master of love who we met in the last chapter, the master who witnessed the destruction of the Temple.
Akiva was at the time a well-known teacher who often represented his community to the Roman powers. One of the Roman leaders, Turnus Rufus, returns home one day, greatly distressed. “I just debated Akiva,” he tells his wife, “and as usual he made a fool of me.”
“Let me deal with him my dear,” coolly replies his wife. So Mrs. Turnus Rufus — one of the ravishing beauties of the time — invites Akiva for a meeting.
She alone is present. The candles burn seductively low; the incense are of the most intoxicating and arousing kind. The finest wine to drug the senses is served. Servant with strong supple and barely covered bodies lead Akiva to the inner chambers. Awaiting his is the wife of Turnus Rufus; some said the most beautiful woman in the Empire. She is dressed in the yet revealing yet elegant of clothing with a body more sexually alluring than one could even imagine. All of this is implies in the terse accounting of the story in the ancient Talmud. Akiva sees her; he cries, he spits and then and he laughs with joy.
In explaining Akiva’s luaghter the Maggid writes, “In beholding her great beauty, Akiva saw how this beauty was but a reflection of the greater beauty of the Shehina — the feminine divine.”
Now if we read carefully we realize that the feminine divine to which Akiva refers is not just Venus or Aphrodite sitting in Olympus nor is it merely the platonic “form” of beauty. Rather, Akiva by seeing her sexual beauty is moved to a deeper kind of perception. He sees the Shehina in her: her infinite specialness as a human being created in the image of God. He sees her body in all of its immense beauty and then he looks in her eyes and there he sees — Shehina. He saw not merely the dust that she was composed of and the dust to which she will return, but rather the divine which she was suffused of and the divine to which she will return. The master Akiva has done a 180 degree turn.
In the first story seeing the pleasure sexual seeing was a trap to be avoided at all costs. In the second story sexual seeing is a door of perception, which when cleansed, opens us up to the infinite perception of love. In a conscious world, sexual gazing models and leads to a deeper lovers perception. Love is the perception of the Shehina in other. Akiva laugh with joy and pleasure because he sees the inner gorgeousness of Turnus Rufus’s wife. He sees the Shehina in her. Akiva as we will see later is one of the primary masters of Hebrew Tantra. He is able — employing Cherubic tantric practice — to transpose sexual looking into spiritual looking. One leads to the other. They are as 19th century mystical master Nachum of Chernobyl reminds “on the same continuum”.
marc gafni
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