Gesang ist Dasein

Gesang, wie du ihn lehrst, ist nicht Begehr,
nicht Werbung um ein endlich noch Erreichtes;
Gesang ist Dasein. Für den Gott ein Leichtes.
Wann aber sind Wir?

Song, as you teach it, is not desire, not
a wooing of something that's finally attained;
song is existence. Easy for the god. But
when do we exist?

(Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus 1.3.5-8, trans. David Young)

Rilke's consideration of Dasein ("existence") here is, implicitly, almost Heideggerean: I say "almost," because even though the two are roughly contemporary--Rilke was much older and aesthetically speaking from a different time, one from which, ironically, emerged one of Heidegger's poetic heroes, Georg Trakl--the two men had very little awareness of each other. That Rilke parses Dasein, just like Heidegger, as da and sein (common enough in German as the word is obviously a combination of "there" and "being") is revealed in the following line where he asks wann aber sind Wir? ("but when are we?") The verb sein ("to be") is separated out from "there," rendering it placeless and emphasizing that fact. Readers of Heidegger are certainly aware that being for him is not merely a locative matter (being some-where) but a historical (being some-when) and poetic (being some-how) matter as well. The Dasein that Rilke defines matter-of-factly as song (Gesang), a thing of ease for the god, is, in our case as human beings, somehow lacking. Deepak Chopra, metaphysician to the stars, is fond of formulating being as independent of history, action, even psychology, with gnomic statements like "I am a human being, not a human doing, nor a human thinking." I'm certain that someone like Rilke or Heidegger (meaning me) would find this naïve and philosophically backwards. Thus the great, and continuing, lack of fundamental communication between the East and West, whatever they are.

What Rilke implies here is that such an abstraction of being as song is easy enough for the divine, as it has very little, if any, attachment to physical (and historical) reality. But for humanity what does this reality mean? The early Buddhists theorized Nirvana, the state of great awakening or enlightenment, as an escape from the cycle of reincarnation that ultimately dooms us all to suffering. For them, breaking the cycle of reincarnation is synonymous with understanding the true nature of being, is synonymous with independent being. Independent being can only be attained when one eradicates the will and desire, as will and desire are symptomatic of attachment to the world. This line of thought seems somewhat in tandem with what Rilke says, but his own answer to the question of reality is a bit more perplexing.

In Wahreit singen, ist ein andrer Hauch.
Ein Hauch um nichts. Ein Wehn im Gott. Ein Wind.

In truth singing, is an other Breath.
A breath for nothing. A ripple in God. A Wind.

(ll. 13-14, trans. yours truly)

Man may seek after the divine, but, in the end, the divine is very little, if anything at all.