The Poison Arrow

The Poison Arrow
by Grisha Krivchenia

For Piano, Violin, and Violoncello, Advanced, 34 Pages

The title of The Poison Arrow refers to one of the Buddha's sermons. A young man comes to Siddhatta Gotama with a barrage of ontological questions: how long has the universe been in existence, who created it, etc. Gotama replies with an analogy:

It's just as if a man were wounded with an arrow thickly smeared with poison. His friends & companions, kinsmen & relatives would provide him with a surgeon, and the man would say, 'I won't have this arrow removed until I know whether the man who wounded me was a noble warrior, a priest, a merchant, or a worker.' He would say, 'I won't have this arrow removed until I know the given name & clan name of the man who wounded me.'

[...]

The man would die and those things would still remain unknown to him.*
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In the Buddha's teaching, speculative philosophies are not important; what matters is figuring out how to overcome suffering in everyday life. We will all die without answering the mysteries of physics and metaphysics. So the appropriate thing to do is to focus significant attention on living a better life here and now.
The first movement of The Poison Arrow depicts suffering, and a frantic, often fruitless, attempt to find a way out. The second movement is a depiction of life without suffering, completely placid and free.