“Snake” by D.H. Lawrence in a Buddhist Perspective

Snake is a reptile, very much respected in many cultures throughout the world, depending on what species it is. Ornate snake sculptures in Sri Lanka, India, England, China, Greece, Rome, Egypt, Africa, America, Australia, etc. (Steel, 2021) are evidence of the respect the reptile earned in most of the ancient civilisations by becoming a seminal influence in the mythologies, folklores, beliefs, values, morals, rituals, and arts that have evolved in them. Coming from a Western Christian elite socio-cultural background, D.H. Lawrence gets fascinated by the asp rattler that he meets in Sicily in 1920, and in a while tries to kill it under the influence of his zoological knowledge and the warnings he has had on the deadliness of its venom. Later he feels relieved that his attack did not hurt the snake and yet regrets his being indecent to the creature. Lawrence’s delayed realisation of the snake’s right to existence tallies the example of unreserved compassion towards life, irrespective of what species it is, the Buddha sets during his two famous encounters with lethal snakes. Unlike Lawrence’s silent snake, one of the two snakes the Buddha encounters protects him from the rain, and the other vertically challenges him, spraying his deadly venom at him. Nevertheless, the Buddha’s only reaction to them both is to unveil his compassion indiscriminately. Unlike Lawrence, he concludes both encounters without regret. Taking the respective behaviours of Lawrence and the Buddha in the presence of snakes, this paper proposes that, in preventing regret, while managing interactions with other forms of life, compassion inspired by spirituality transcends all other emotions engendered by fascination and apprehension that are part and parcel of Lawrence’s religion, “flesh and blood”