The Siren Song

Series: The Summer of the Ocean

The Siren Song

After ten years of war, Ulysses can finally return home. Troy has fallen, and it is time for him to reunite with his wife, Penelope.

However, his return is an odyssey fraught with obstacles. Yet he only has to cross one sea and circumnavigate the Hellenic peninsula. It was not exactly a risk-free cruise, because at that time, traveling was much, much more dangerous than it is today. But for the famous hero renowned throughout the Greek world for his cunning intelligence, nothing would frighten him excessively.

His journey lasts twenty years and takes him across the entire Mediterranean. Of the twelve ships that departed from Troy, he arrives alone in Ithaca on a makeshift raft. His adventures have been sung countless times to this day. One in particular catches my attention: the story of the Sirens.

According to Homer, they are dangerous spirits, large birds with women’s heads and sharp claws and teeth that feast on human flesh. They have one specific feature: their song bewitches sailors and attracts them.

 “But in Dzogchen, it is different. To rewrite history, we would see our cunning Greek hero come and go freely on his ship with a smile on his lips while the sirens would be heard screaming their lungs out more and more.” 

This episode is found in Canto XII of the Odyssey, which recounts the end of the valiant Greek’s journey – although he obviously doesn’t know this. When he and his crew return to the island of the sorceress Circe, after a trip to the land of the dead, she warns them about the sirens they will encounter next and offers them a way to protect themselves..

However, the ingenious Ulysses wants to hear their song without risking death. When their ship arrives in the vicinity of southern Sardinia, where these creatures lives, he asked his men to tie him to the mast and forbids them to release him, no matter what he asks them. They plugged their own ears with wax.

I have always wondered what would have happened to Ulysses if he had untied himself.

I cannot help but draw a parallel with Dzogchen and Buddhism. If there is one danger lurking on this path that we try as best we can to follow, it is the sirens of gain and loss, pleasure and pain, fame and shame, praise and blame. These eight realities whisper magnificent promises to satisfy our desires, to flee our fears, or to dress up the feeling of emptiness.

Who has never been tempted to gamble at the casino once more? To make one more video on Instagram or YouTube to get more reactions? Who never feels undervalued or underemployed? Who has never sought recognition from important people? Who has never used its status to grant oneself a privilege, such as getting a front row seat? Swelled with pride by putting someone down?

In Buddhism, these eight reactions cause us to deviate from the narrow path of acting for the common good. They nurture our primary emotions, preventing us from seeing them clearly and freeing ourselves from their grip. They are the song that makes us fall into the claws of cyclic wandering. This is why we must have Ulysses’s wisdom to resist them.

But in Dzogchen, it is different. To rewrite history, we would see our cunning Greek hero come and go freely on his ship with a smile on his lips while the sirens would be heard screaming their lungs out more and more. Fully enjoying the melodious sound of their voices without succumbing to their charm, he would only be clearer at the Base, freer in his actions.

For in the Great Perfection, even these eight worldly concerns (gain and loss, pleasure and pain, fame and shame, praise and blame) are the ornament of primordial nature, the illusory song of universal compassion. It is not about resisting them: simply letting them be as they are, without excessive fascination or unwelcome rejection. 

Easy to say. More difficult to do for most of us, because this already requires good familiarity with the nature of primordial evidence (rigpa), this primordial aspect of our mind which, at the beginning of training in natural liberation (the main path of Dzogchen), will recognize directly its movements as the natural expression and transitory play of its own Base.

Therefore, we must first take the path of gradual Dzogchen. Mindfulness and vigilance are the ropes and mast that prevent us from falling into the trap of taking these eight tendencies as real in themselves. Mindfullness of danger when we feel the desire to please rising, vigilance not to succumb to its calls and act accordingly.

There is no fall, no failure in “missing” and letting oneself be carried away. It is normal and we continue training tirelessly, again and again, until the entire vision becomes primordial evidence.

Whether we are on a beach, in the mountains, or at home, the song of the sirens never ceases – for its real nature is universal compassion. Remaining lucid and clear while sunbathing on the deck of a boat tied to a mast, there is nothing else to do. The odyssey will take as long as it takes: because besides the ship, we must consider the winds. But rest be assured that, just as Ulysses finally saw his beautiful Ithaca again, we too will surely rediscover our own nature.