Theos-Talk Archives (December 2006 Message tt00879)

Friends, 
 
If  Christmas’ season and the end of a 12 months’s cycle celebrate the yearly rebirth of Sun’s life, and if it  also marks the periodical renewal of buddhic or universal love in human soul —   then William Shakespeare,  one of the last great  thinkers to use Theater as a means to express Wisdom,  has indeed something to tell us about that.      
 
In “ “Merchant of Venice”,  Shakespeare — or perhaps Francis Bacon using his name —  makes this portrait of  the central Meeeting Point between Justice and Compassion: 
 
“The quality of mercy is not strain’d,
It droppeth  as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath : it is  twice bless’d ; 
It blesses him that gives and him that takes :
’Tis mightiest in the mightiest ; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown ;  
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, 
The attribute of  awe and majesty, 
Wherein doth sit  the dread and fear of kings ;   
But mercy is above this sceptred sway ; 
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings, 
It is an attribute to God himself,
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore (...),
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,  
That in the course of justice none of us 
Should see salvation : we do pray for mercy, 
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render 
The deeds of mercy.” (1) 
 
Mercy, or unconditional compassion for all beings, is “mightiest in the mightiest”.  That means you must have real inner power in order to have mercy and be efficient in that.  Otherwise, “being merciful” might get to be but a false excuse to be weak, or even timid, perhaps to be merely attached to personal comfort and  routine.  
 
A precocious and karmically groundless show of mercy can easily work  as an invitation to further abuse of  that which deserves respect: Truth, or Equilibrium.   
 
So there is a painful Probation to occur before Acceptance. Speaking in terms of  the three gunas, there is some Rajas to take place before Satwa is obtained ; and Nature does not often leaps forward.  It is Justice at the lower and objective  levels of reality that will prepare a real and effective exercise of mercy and compassion at the higher planes.  Yet balance and justice must be found within oneself first,  and only then expressed into the outer world ;  it cannot  not work  the other way around. 
 
Best regards,    Carlos. 
 
NOTE: 
 
(1) “Merchant of Venice”,  Act IV, Scene I.   See “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare”, edited by W.J. Craig, Magpie Books,  1992, London, 1142 pp., p. 211.


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