Gilgamesh by Stephen Mitchell Read Free Book Online Page B

that someday awaits him, collapses, and he is plunged into a desperate questioning. His story has a happier ending than Gilgamesh’s: after six years of futile austerities, he sits down under the Bodhi tree, determined not to move until either death or understanding comes, and at dawn, when the morning star appears, suddenly he wakes up from the dream of suffering. “When you see the unborn, uncreated, unconditioned,” he later said, “you are liberated from everything born, created, and conditioned.”
    Gilgamesh too asks an all-consuming question about life and death. But his question is not driven by a deep need for understand-ing; it is driven by fear. (Rilke called
Gilgamesh
“the epic of the fear of death.”) Fear is the reverse side of the cool warrior ethos, in whichthe consciousness of mortality motivates the hero to establish his fame.
“Our
days are few in number,” Gilgamesh had said, imperturbably. “Why be afraid then, / since sooner or later death must come?” Why indeed? Except that terror comes unbidden, on the way to monsters or in the presence of overwhelming loss. Love has changed everything; it has made Gilgamesh absolutely vulnerable. His earlier consciousness of mortality turns out to be a pale, abstract thing in comparison with the anguish he feels as he roams though the wilderness.
    â€œMust I die too? Must I be as lifeless as Enkidu? How can I bear this sorrow that gnaws at my belly, this fear of death that restlessly drives me onward? If only I could find the one man whom the gods made immortal, I would ask him how to overcome death.”
    In his previous, heroic mode, Gilgamesh thought he knew that only the gods live forever. Now, terrified, he is no longer certain. His first question—“Must I die too?”—is not rhetorical; he really doesn’t know the answer anymore. It is the question of a child at the threshold of adult awareness, who for the first time is faced with the concept of dying. Every child, to
become
an adult, must realize that the answer to that question is yes. (Once he has passed through the gate of “I will die,” he can later, if his questioning goes deep enough, pass through the gate of “I was never born.”)

    Gilgamesh wants to find the one exception to the rule of mortality, his ancestor Utnapishtim, who was granted eternal life and dwells somewhere at the eastern edge of the world. The fact that there has been one exception to the rule of mortality means that there may be a second exception. This hope postpones Gilgamesh’s necessary acceptance until a time when he is more ready for it, less raw with grief. Like a thousand later heroes in folktales and Zen stories, he sets out in search of a teacher who can give him wisdom. In this he is bound to be disappointed. Wisdom isn’t an object; it can’t be grasped by words, nor can it be passed on. But until Gilgamesh completes his quest, he won’t be able to realize the futility of it. “This thing we tell of can never be found by seeking,” said the Sufi master Abu Yazid al-Bistami, “yet only seekers find it.”
    The first arrival we hear about is at the Twin Peaks, two high mountains overlooking the tunnel into which the sun sets for its nightly underground journey and out of which it rises in the morning. Two terrifying monsters called “scorpion people” guard the eastern end of this tunnel, just as Humbaba guarded the Cedar Forest.
    After Gilgamesh recovers from his dread and approaches them (he is no longer in a monster-slaying frame of mind), the creatures turn out to be quite courteous and tell him that the road to Utnapishtim lies through the tunnel. The scorpion man, at his wife’s compassionate urging, allows Gilgamesh to enter the tunnel, warning him that if he fails to get to the western end before the sun enters, he will be burned to a crisp. For twelve hours, nonstop, Gilgamesh runs through