Bodily delight is a sensory experience,
not any different from
pure looking or the pure feeling with ,
which a beautiful fruit fills the tongue;
it is a
great, an infinite learning that is given to us,
a knowledge of the world, the fullness
and
the splendor of all knowledge.
And it is not our acceptance of it that is bad;
what is
bad is that most people misuse this learning
and squander it and apply it
as a stimulant on the tired places of their lives
and as a distraction rather than as a way of
gathering
themselves for their highest moments.
People have even made eating into something else:
necessity on the one hand, excess on the other;
have muddied the clarity of this need,
and
all the deep, simple needs in which life renews itself
have become just as muddy.
But the
individual can make them clear for himself
and live them clearly
(not the individual who
is dependent, but the solitary man).
He can remember that all beauty in animals and plants
is a silent, enduring form of love and yearning,
and he can see the animal, as he sees
plants,
patiently and willingly uniting and multiplying and growing,
not out of physical
pleasure, not out of physical pain,
but bowing to necessities that are greater than
pleasure and pain,
and more powerful than will and withstanding.
If only human beings
could more humbly receive
this mystery which the world is filled with,
even in its
smallest Things, could bear it, endure it,
more solemnly, feel how terribly heavy it is,
instead of taking it lightly.
If only they could be more reverent to ward
their own
fruitfulness, which is essentially one,
whether it is manifested as mental or physical;
for mental creation too arises from the physical,
is of one nature with it and only like a
softer,
more enraptured and more eternal repetition of bodily delight.
"The thought
of being a creator, of engendering, of shaping"
is nothing without
its continuous
great confirmation and embodiment in the world,
nothing without
the thousand-fold assent
from Things and animals
- and our enjoyment of it is so indescribably
beautiful and rich
only because it is full of
inherited memories of the engendering and birthing of millions.
In one creative thought a thousand forgotten nights of love
come to life again and fill it
with majesty and exaltation.
(C) 1903, Rainer Maria Rilke
