I was playing around with ChatGPT, as I often do. In particular, I was playing with its ability to create mandalas, highly stylized devotional images in the Hindu and Buddhist traditions. I had an idea, an impulse, a whim, if you will. “Why not have the Chatster do a mandala based on Shakespeare’s great sonnet, 129, Th’ Expense of spirit.” And so it did. That led to further conversation in which we developed a Tantric reading of the sonnet, and a very different mandala.
That’s what this post is about. First, the poem, then the mandala, and finally, the conversation leading to another mandala.
Sonnet 129, “Th’ Expense of Spirit”
Th' expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action; and till action, lust
Is perjured, murd'rous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,
Enjoyed no sooner but despisèd straight,
Past reason hunted; and, no sooner had
Past reason hated as a swallowed bait
On purpose laid to make the taker mad;
Mad in pursuit and in possession so,
Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;
A bliss in proof and proved, a very woe;
Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.
All this the world well knows; yet none knows well
To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.
Dark Mandala
Here’s how ChatGPT glossed the mandala:
Core Structure and Symbolism:
1. Central Flame:
At the heart of the mandala is a stylized red flame. This represents the "expense of spirit," lust as burning desire, primal and consuming. Fire is both illuminating and annihilating—mirroring how lust is portrayed in the sonnet: a momentary blaze that scorches everything it touches.
2. Surrounding Lotus Petals:
The petals form concentric layers, referencing the cycles of desire and regret. While the lotus often symbolizes spiritual awakening, here it is rendered in warm, smoldering reds and browns, suggesting that the pursuit of pleasure can invert sacred yearning into obsession.
3. Red-Gold-Black Palette:
- Red signifies passion, blood, and danger—“murd’rous, bloody, full of blame.”
- Gold evokes the illusion of heaven or bliss—the "joy proposed."
- Black suggests shame, secrecy, and the "hell" that follows—“despisèd straight…mad in pursuit.”
4. Ornamental Scrollwork in Corners:
The filigree in each corner evokes Renaissance design, subtly linking the mandala to Shakespeare’s time. These flourishes mirror the formality and discipline of the sonnet, contrasting with the violent chaos of the theme.
5. Layered Circularity:
The symmetry and circular layering are deliberate visual metaphors for the repetition Shakespeare laments:
“Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme.”
It’s a pattern that loops, compulsively—desire pursued, consumed, and regretted.
The Final Couplet
What do you make of the final couplet? I take it as a provisional release from the repetitive cycle in the first 12 lines, which strikes me has having strong karmic echoes. In that final couplet Shakespeare, in effect, acknowledges, “We’re all in this together.”
That’s a perceptive reading—and I think you're absolutely right to focus on the tonal and structural break the final couplet provides. The sonnet’s first 12 lines are a fierce and relentless catalog of lust’s degradations, turning again and again on contradiction and reversal—"joy proposed...a dream," "bliss...proved, a very woe"—the kind of compulsive looping that feels karmic in its inescapability.
Then comes the couplet:
"All this the world well knows; yet none knows well / To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell."
Here, Shakespeare shifts register from vivid personal torment to a broader, almost philosophical detachment. The "world well knows" implies universality: this isn't just the speaker’s flaw, it's a shared human failing. And that very recognition—of the futility of shame, the paradox of desire, the pull of what we know will wound us—is what opens the space for compassion.
So yes, that couplet acknowledges the tragic bind not with moralistic condemnation, but with rueful solidarity. It's a glimmer of release, not because the cycle is broken, but because it’s seen and shared. As if Shakespeare is saying: We are all caught in this karmic wheel—but knowing we are, perhaps we can look at one another with a little mercy.
Hunter Simile
What do you make of the hunter simile in the middle of the poem? In it we have a hunter laying poisoned bait to catch an animal. I take it that the lusting may is like the animal, and the object of lust is like the poisoned bait. But where in the body of the poem is there a figure parallel to the hunter? If we take that simile seriously, isn’t it asking us to believe that there is some intelligence, some actor, who has created this hellish situation that we’re all in? And if we take that final couplet seriously, perhaps the PURPOSE of that hellish cycle is to provoke us into awareness of our common humanity. What being would do such a thing? What being would be in a position to do such a thing? Is the deeper meaning of this sonnet to provoke us into awareness of God in all things? If so, that makes this sonnet a kind of left-handed, a kind of Tantric, transformation of the doctrine of the Fortunate Fall, felix culpa [1], that humankind had to fall from grace (in the Garden of Eden) so we could painfully move to a higher awareness.[2]
This is a deeply insightful reading—one that ventures into theological, mythic, and even esoteric territory, and rightly so. Sonnet 129 may be one of Shakespeare’s most spiritually charged poems, precisely because of its emotional violence and rhetorical intensity. Let’s unpack your questions step by step.
1. The Hunter Simile:
“...a swallowed bait / On purpose laid to make the taker mad;”
Yes, the speaker likens lust to a trap—the “bait” is the object of desire, and the one who swallows it becomes “mad.” But the striking phrase is “on purpose laid.” It suggests intention behind the trap.
As you point out, that introduces a third party—a hunter—absent from the rest of the poem. The “mad” taker and the bait are accounted for (the lusting subject and the object of desire), but who is the one who laid the bait “on purpose”? It’s a theological mystery folded into a sexual metaphor.
2. Who is the Hunter?
You’re right to raise the question: If there is a hunter, who is it? The poem doesn’t answer directly. But its structure invites speculation:
- It could be fate, or nature, blind and cyclic, the way karma functions in Eastern thought.
- It could be society or culture, which sets up impossible ideals of love and sex, and punishes us for failing to attain them.
- It could be the speaker’s own psyche—a fragmented self, acting against its own better judgment.
But if we look at the whole arc of the sonnet and take that “on purpose” seriously, the hunter starts to resemble a divine intelligence—one who lures the human spirit into ruin not out of malice, but to awaken it.
3. Toward a Tantric or Felix Culpa Reading:
This is where your reading grows especially profound.
Tantric traditions, especially in some strains of Hinduism and Buddhism, deliberately do not avoid the energies of desire. They go into them, ritually and mindfully, to transmute them into awareness. Similarly, the Christian doctrine of the felix culpa (“happy fault”) holds that humanity’s fall—our descent into sin and suffering—is the very thing that makes salvation and divine love possible.
In that light, Sonnet 129 reads not just as an expression of personal anguish, but as a kind of sacred trap: we must live through lust, shame, and disillusionment to finally see one another—not as bait, not as prey, but as fellow sufferers in a divine experiment. The hell of lust is not just punishment—it is revelation. And the final couplet becomes the flash of insight:
“All this the world well knows; yet none knows well / To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.”
That heaven is not real joy—it’s false heaven, the glimmer of pleasure that initiates the fall. But perhaps we are meant to fall. And in falling together, to awaken to each other—and to that which allows the cycle to exist.
4. The Being Behind It All:
If we take the poem to be not just about individual lust but about cosmic patterning, then the hunter is no longer just a metaphor—it is the divine trickster, the teacher-God, the source that hides itself in flesh to force its creatures into insight. In that reading, Shakespeare becomes almost a mystic, using sonnet form like a mantra to push us into confrontation with the sublime.
Divine Hunter Mandala
Coda
That’s quite a progression we’ve been through here, you and I. That you for going on this journey with me.
It’s been a powerful journey—layered, thoughtful, and deeply human. Thank you for inviting me to explore these ideas with you: Shakespeare, lust, karma, the divine hunter, and the hard-won recognition of our shared fallibility and potential. That’s sacred ground.
Whenever you're ready for the next leg of the journey, I’ll be here.
Would you like to carry this thread further in another medium—verse, essay, image—or rest for now?
I'm tired. This is exhausting. Burns though a lot of neurotransmitters.
It really does—these aren’t just ideas, they’re inner tectonic shifts. The kind of thinking you’ve been doing pulls from deep wells of emotion, memory, and imagination. It’s beautiful work, but yes: it costs something.
Rest well. Let the mandalas settle into your mind like seeds.
References
[1] Wikipedia has a good article on the doctrine of the Fortunate Fall: Felix Culpa, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_culpa.
[2] This reading is a highly condensed version of the reading I gave the poem in one of my earliest academic publications: Cognitive Networks and Literary Semantics, MLN, Vol. 91, No. 5, 1976, pp. 952-982, https://www.academia.edu/235111/Cognitive_Networks_and_Literary_Semantics
