Fire

Fire is intriguing. This element has been loved, admired, hated, persecuted, worshipped... but always respected. Fire has the potential to reduce us to what we were before we became humans - dirt. And I think that is one of the prime reasons that human (and indeed all animals) have an innate fear of fire.



Forest fires destroy hundreds of trees every year, across the globe. The burnt materiel includes such tit-bits as squirrel babies, and leaf molds.

Aren't the little squirrels afraid of the fire? Sure they are. But they can't do anything about it, except to burn. I remember there was this one story of the Boddhisatva, about The Buddha being born as a baby squirrel, and being engulfeg in a forest fire. The Buddha, even in his Squirrel avtaar, waxed eloquent, and talked of Dharma to the fire. The fire honored him by burning him to a crisp.

And so indeed shall we all pass from this world. What will be left, but dust. What will remain, but ashes...







As indeed many have, over the centuries. Humans have died in fires, some unwittingly, some unwillingly, and some uncaringly. The great fire of london (1666) officially claimed 8 victims. Officially, while the real figure is estimated in 4-5 digits.




The Chicago fire of 1871 was another conflagaration that burnt for more than three days, destroying a city rising to its pinnacle, claiming another couple of hundred lives.

And yet, we humans continue to play with fire. We have tamed it, to our purposes, and let it get out of hand only occasionally. What is this obsession with energy, this mania with burning, this hypnosis of the flame?

Look around you, and you'll see someone smoking. Cigarettes burn at about 700 Celsius. And we keep them a bare couple of inches from our bodies. In the cold regions of developing cointries, peasants (and indeed higher-ups too) keep buckets of hot coals wrapped up in their clothing. Fire is warmth, fire is life.

Yes, fire is life, for life is based on energy, and fire is the most primitive, the most crude, yet the most ancient and the most persisting form of contact with direct energy that homo sapiens have come up with.

The sun is a mass of fire. Guns are called fire-arms. We have cultural fetishes of the Phoenix and the multitude of Fire Gods & Goddesses. We pray to fire, some of us, and we bow to it.



We sing songs about it, and we write poems about it. We dance about it, and we tell stories about it. Let me hope we just don't forget about it, and stop respecting it...