58 § Traversing the Waters

ANANDA COOMARASWAMY has shown that in Buddhism as in Brahmanism, the 'Pilgrim's Way', represented as a voyage, can be related in three different ways to the symbolic river of life and death. The journey can be accomplished either by going upstream towards the source of the waters, or by crossing over the waters to the other shore, or by going downstream towards the sea.^[1] As he quite rightly remarked, this use of different symbolisms, which are contrary only in appearance and really have the same spiritual significance, agrees with the very nature of metaphysics which is never systematic while being always perfectly coherent. Thus it is only necessary to make sure of the precise sense in which the symbol of the river, with its source, its banks, and its mouth, is to be understood in each case.

The first case, that of going upstream, is perhaps the most remarkable in certain respects; for the river must then be conceived as identical with the World Axis. This is the 'celestial river', which descends towards the earth and which, in the Hindu tradition, is designated by such names as _Ganga_ and _Saraswati_, which are strictly names of certain aspects of the _Shakti_. In the Hebrew Kabbala this 'river of life' finds its correspondence in the 'channels' of the Sephirothic tree by which the influences of the 'world above'

are transmitted to the 'world below', and which are also directly related to the Shekinah which is a near equivalent of the Shakti; and there are also the waters which 'flow upwards', which is an expression of the return towards the celestial source, represented in this case not by the re-ascent of the current, but by the reversal of direction of the current itself. In any case, there is clearly a 'reversal' which, as Coomaraswamy remarks, was represented in the Vedic rites by the reversal of the sacrificial post, this post being yet another image of the World Axis; and we see immediately thereby that all this is closely linked to the symbolism of the 'inverted tree' of which we have already spoken.

It could be noted also that there is here both a resemblance and a difference with regard to the symbolism of the four rivers of the terrestrial Paradise. These flow horizontally on the surface of the earth and not vertically in the axial direction; but their source is at the foot of the Tree of Life which is itself the World Axis, and which is also the Sephirothic tree of the Kabbala. It can be said, therefore, that the celestial influences, descending by the Tree of Life and thus arriving at the centre of the terrestrial world, then spread out in this world along the four rivers; or else, replacing the Tree of Life with the 'celestial river', we can say that upon reaching the earth, the river is divided and flows forth according to the directions of space. In these conditions, the upstream movement can be considered as being achieved in two phases: the first, on the horizontal plane, leads to the centre of the world; the second, starting from this centre, is accomplished vertically along the axis, and it is with this in mind that the first phase is performed. Let us add that these two successive phases, from the initiatic point of view, have their correspondence in the respective domains of the Lesser Mysteries and the Greater Mysteries.

The second of these symbolisms, that of the crossing from one bank to the other, is doubtless more common and more generally known. The 'crossing of the bridge' (which also may be the crossing of a ford) is found in nearly all traditions and more particularly in certain initiatic rituals as well. The crossing may likewise be made on a raft or in a boat, which then is linked with the very widespread symbolism of navigation.^[2] The river that must be crossed is more specifically the 'river of death'; the shore which is left behind is the world subject to change, that is, the domain of manifested existence (most often considered in its human and corporeal state in particular, as it is from this state that we must actually set forth), and the 'other shore' is Nirvana, the state of the being which is definitively set free from death.^[3]