I’ve begun reading Anthony Esolen’s translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy and would like share my thoughts as I go by posting them here at the Mani Pearl. Those who come here as faithful Buddhists might find the subject difficult to get into, but I am myself always intensely curious about the ways of religious thought and language. I have a syncretic streak that desires always to find the shared principles found in various places and which abhors what splits asunder different points of view. Which is not say I make a habit of ignoring differences, or of pretending that vastly different religious and philosophical traditions can be merged in some literal fashion. Rather, I tend to see the sincerely religious practicianers and philosophers of the world as fellows to myself, who are treading a similar path, with similar goals in mind. There is a way the mind and the heart is driven when it is true, and so we see very similar conclusions and epiphanies in one place and another. I proceed with the belief that all religion and philosophy of the human spirit has a shared goal of uplifting human civilization and maintaining what is wise and what is right.

At any rate, the first part of the Divine Comedy is Inferno, Dante’s journey through Hell with Virgil as his initial guide on the long trek to Heaven (Paradiso). For those who are unfamiliar with the text, it is an epic poem. Dante narrates a journey by himself though the Christian cosmos beyond this world: Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. I have not read much background commentary from the Western tradition on Dante’s deeper motives for writing the text, but I see a couple themes already. First, Dante was disgusted with the behavior and leadership of his contemporaries. He uses his journey through Hell and Purgatory to name names and pass tongue-in-cheek judgement on them. He uses the journey through Heaven to name the true saints and philosophers and they in turn denounce the corruption of various Church and secular institutions. No one was safe from Dante’s criticism, not popes nor nobles nor monastic orders. The second theme is (I think) a concrete metaphor for a spiritual journey he had taken after his first love, Beatrice, had died an untimely death. He was grief stricken and took time to recover from it. I myself had gone through a very similar experience when I was a teenager and can very easily sympathize and understand. It can be very much like beginning in Hell and dragging yourself up through Purgatory and finally to the peace of Heaven. It is no surprise to me, then, that Beatrice appears in Paradiso as Dante’s Angelic guide through the Heavens. It is the point at which he finds peace with her passing and paradoxically is reunited with her again (through the story). Perhaps I am reading this into the verse more than Dante actually intended, but it seems to me a real part of the story.

Of course, to return to the Buddhist perspective of reading the text, I must say that to a traditional Buddhist, it is not so foreign a territory as one might imagine. Buddhism has its own roughly equivalent cosmology — Naraka (Hell), the World (Purgatory), and the various Deva and Brahma-lokas (Heavens). Buddhism differs from Christianity in a profound way in that Buddhists believe living beings can and do indeed traverse the path through Hell, Earth, and the Heavens. Nor do they believe there is any substantive spiritual separation between humans and other living beings. And Buddhists made the mystic leap beyond (away from?) eternal union in Heaven with a Creator. Buddhist cosmology does not assert eternal spirits or eternal destinies as the Christians do, and so the spiritual journey becomes literally possible in Buddhist cosmology. In fact, the journey is central, not the destiny.

Whereas, in the Divine Comedy, Dante is playing with theology, pretending to be reporting a supernatural adventure, seeing what no one sees and then reports after death (aside from the occasional intervention by Angelic muses, perhaps). He uses the stage of the afterlife to interweave his understanding of the first principles of existence (the wisdom, morality, and faith that spring from God) with his commentary on how few of his contemporaries in his experience succeeded in living as “good Christians” (to steal a phrase from Luther). But there certainly is a sense of a spiritual journey to the story, that goes beyond the literal scenery he passes through. Indeed, he cheats his way into Hell and leaves it to rise higher (something otherwise impossible in Christian theology). It is in many ways a Catholic Christian rendition of Homer’s Odyssey.

So, the theory and function of Buddhist and Christian cosmologies differ somewhat, but the structures of the two are parallel. The nature of the Divine Comedy, as a journey through the deepest evil to the highest good, actually resonates with my Buddhist education, as it signifies the transformation of the spirit from a defiled state to a pure one through the journey. On this score, the Divine Comedy is closer to Buddhism that Christianity, but it is small point. Dante was not attempting to write theology, he was simply bending the rules so that his character would have access to and describe all three realms of the afterlife.

Thus far, I am enjoying the Divine Comedy. It is multi-layered: an adventure full of scathing rebukes and deserved laurels for his contemporaries and luminaries, masterful poetry, and underneath it all: Dante’s own spiritual journey. It should be interesting to write a layman’s commentary as I read this text: To my knowledge, it has not yet been critically appraised by a Buddhist reader.