SAUNDARANANDA 12.15: In Praise of Giving Up

yadi praapya divaM yatnaan
niyamena damena ca
a-vitRptaaH patanty ante
svargaaya tyaagine namaH

12.15
If, after struggling to get to heaven,

Through self-restriction and self-restraint,

Men fall at last, unsatisfied,

Then homage to the heaven-bound
who give up on the way.

COMMENT:
At the centre of the teaching of FM Alexander, as FM’s niece Marjory Barlow communicated it to me, is the practice of giving up. Alexander work is a kind of exact, in-depth, scientific study of giving up, and the only laboratory you need to practice this science is yourself.

The first thing to give up is the idea of being right, because the idea of being right is the first thing that puts a person wrong.

This recognition is also implicit in Zen Master Dogen’s rules of sitting-dhyana, where he says: ZEN-AKU OMWAZU, ZE-HI O KANSURU KOTO NAKARE, “Don’t think good, bad; Don’t care right, wrong.”

The difficult thing is to completely give up the idea of being right, without giving up the effort to keep going in the right direction.

In order to go in the right direction, paradoxically, step one is to give up any idea of rightness as a destination.

A further step, another difficulty to be met, is to completely give up the idea of doing something -- a bow, for example -- in order to find the freedom in which actually to do, or not to do, a bow.

In the fourth line of this verse, as I read it, Nanda is paying homage to nobody if not FM Alexander. FM’s secret, as Marjory taught it to me, not as a theory but as a principle subject to exact verification in practice, is to give up an idea without giving up one’s direction.

Losers have stopped trying,
Winners never quit.
FM taught the two in one,
In true pursuit of It.

The Alexander teachers I have met who seem to have really deep understanding of and devotion to Alexander’s teaching, all without exception have reverence also, to the extent that they know it, for the Buddha’s teaching. Buddhist teachers I have met who do not revere Alexander’s teaching, are as they are, as I see it, because they have never seen the true essence of the Buddha’s teaching, even in a dream. The true essence of the Buddha’s teaching and the true essence of Alexander’s teaching is the same true essence. It has to do primarily with stopping wrong doing, and that stopping begins with giving up an idea. How can preachers of Buddhism, realism and the like understand this point, even in a dream?

If this comment confirms me as a non-Buddhist, so be it. I do not give a damn about true Buddhism. Ashvaghosha’s gold has got nothing to do with true Buddhism. Ashvaghosha’s gold is the truth.

EH Johnston:
If, after obtaining heaven through toil, abstinence and self-restraint, men fall again at the end with desires unappeased, what is the use of so fleeting a Paradise?

Linda Covill:
If men must eventually fall unfulfilled from a heaven so effortfully obtained through observance of the rules and through training, then homage to the man relinquishing heaven!

VOCABULARY:
yadi: if, when
praapya = absolultive of pra-√aap: to attain to ; reach , arrive at , meet with , find ; obtain
divam (accusative): heaven
yatnaat = ablative of yatna: effort , exertion , energy , zeal , trouble , pains

niyamena = instrumental of niyama: m. restraining , checking , holding back , preventing , controlling
damena = instrumental of dama: m. self-command , self-restraint , self-control
ca: and

avitRptaaH = nominative, plural of avitRpta: unsatisfied
patanti = 3rd person plural of pat: to fall down or off , alight , descend
ante (locative of anta): in the end, at last

svargaaya (dative of svarga): for heaven, [being bound] for heaven,
NB. The Clay Sanskrit Library version has svargasya (genitive of svarga)
tyaagine = locative of tyaagin: one who has given up
namas: n. bow , obeisance , reverential salutation , adoration