Enkidu, the Child of Silence, is a character from the Epic of Gilgamesh. He was fashioned by the gods to be a foil to King Gilgamesh who was upsetting the population with his unmatched vigor and propensity to fight every man -and be free with every man’s wife!. Enkidu was not originally a human. He lived with the wild beasts in a state of innocence and nature. But he was tempted to embrace the human world, eventually becoming a friend to Gilgamesh. This in time, lead to Enkidu’s death. It’s one of the most poignant moments (I think) in ancient literature. This following is a piece I wrote imagining an alternative situation. Enkidu never leaves the state of innocence in the wilderness. He is never corrupted by the human world. And yet, he still must die and pass into the great transformation that is characteristic of all reality. I imagine him meeting death with an epiphany of the great wisdom, reality-mind personified as Mahaprajnaparamita, the Mother.
‘Enkidu ran with the deer of the woods. Long and blissful years he spent as a friend to forest life, companion of the beasts, a child to the Moon.
But the years drew swiftly past. Enkidu found he could no longer keep pace with the deer or the fox. His mind grew weary and his eyes grew dim.
His apportioned long life was not shared by his animal friends. Tired he was of many days mourning those who had passed before him. Though they rose up together with him in happy dawns, shared adventures in the noon times, they faded unto the dusk, leaving him alone. And so, he wept. Time passed and even his long life neared it's allotted end. The Moon saw him in greying sadness, the Sun in quiet aching.
Then one evening, a strange wind blew through the boughs, whispering in the leafy glades, finding Enkidu at rest. Above the twilight shadows, the early stars sparked. A voice came to him on that breeze, and it seemed to him a voice of someone loved, but long forgotten. His old eyes became damp with tears. The voice spoke –
“O, my child, come away with me now!
Silent, have I watched your brief joys
and long hours of sorrow.
All is fulfilled, and nothing ever forgotten.
Know me, for I am thy Mother, and I come to take you home”
Then Enkidu felt at last his deepest spirit rising as sleep overtook his old limbs. The sky seemed to shimmer with twinkling gems of divine colour, and the woods rang with the sound of crystal bells. On miraculous wings, his spirit took flight into the bosom of the night, and passed again into his Mother’s embrace, back into the eternal return’
Poignant indeed. I’ve read the Epic of Gilgamesh, and I think the way you gave voice to Enkidu’s passing, is the most spiritual of all. The character of Enkidu always struck me as being the ‘give it all but get nothing in return’.