SAUNDARANANDA 12.18: Ultimate Good Is Not Groped by Feeling

tatas tasy' aashayaM jNaatvaa
vipakShaan' indriyaaNi ca
shreyash c' aiv' aamukhii-bhuutaM
nijagaada TathaagataH

12.18
Then, knowing where he was coming from,

And that, though his senses were set against it,

Ultimate good was now emerging,

The realised one spoke:

COMMENT:
Apologies in advance that this comment will be too long, but the above verse counter-poses two elements about which much more could be written: indriyaaNi, the senses; and shreyas, Ultimate Good.

In seeking to understand this opposition, I am prejudiced by 27 years as a student and translator of Zen Master Dogen, by 15 years in Alexander work, and by 10 years in the work of primitive reflex inhibition, but from where I sit Ultimate Good can never be groped by the senses of balance, touch, hearing or sight.

In the autumn of 1984, with a head full of missionary zeal and with a hold-all full of copies of my teacher's book To Meet the Real Dragon, I set off from Tokyo to San Francisco. Staying there at the San Francisco Zen Centre I was struck during a one-day sitting retreat by the easy uprightness of a Danish practitioner. When I complimented him on his form in sitting, he simply said, "Ah, it is because I am a student of the Alexander Technique." It was another ten years before I got round to looking into the Alexander Technique myself. Shortly after that I ended up in Aylesbury at the training school run by late Ray Evans, who used to describe Alexander work as "vestibular re-education" and who emphasized the fundamental importance, in working towards understanding of the human condition, of primitive reflexes.

Following Ray's lead, after graduating from Ray's training school run, I trained at INPP (Institute of Neuro-Physiological Psychology), Chester under Peter Blythe and his wife Sally Goddard, in the diagnosis and remediation of aberrant primitive reflexes. A baby is born with very many of such primitive reflexes, the orderly emergence and inhibition of which helps the baby to survive and to develop. But in the course of my work over the past ten years, encouraged on since Ray's death by Ray's assistant Ron Colyer, guided by the ultra-practical Alexander teachers Marjory Barlow and Nelly Ben-Or, and motivated by my own wish for clarity and simplicity in working with the reflexes, my interest became more and more concentrated on just four vestibular reflexes. I see these reflexes as primary, and I see a direct correspondence between Alexander's four primary directions and these four reflexes.

So I think that Ultimate Good might be to sit shaven-headed in lotus while the body, wrapped in a Buddha-robe, liberates itself from disharmony between those four reflexes.

That might mean, in Master Dogen's words, to sit with the body, to sit with the mind, and to sit as body and mind dropping off.

Again, that might mean to sit in lotus allowing (1) the neck to be free, to allow (2) the head to go forward and up, to allow (3) the back to lengthen and widen, while allowing (4) the arms and legs to release out of the back.

Ultimate Good, then, from what I have experienced of what I believe it to be, is not something out there that comes into the range of our senses, whereupon we pursue it. It may rather be something that spontaneously emerges from within during those rare moments when we are able to get out of the way and allow it. FM Alexander put it more succinctly: "The right thing does itself."

Ultimate good does itself.
Our job is to allow it.

Then what does it mean to allow? I do not know. It does not mean to think about, to discuss endlessly, to intellectualise. But neither does it mean blindly to do, to pull the chin in, to push the knees down, to hyper-extend the back, and all that other nonsense which is pure doing based on feeling. To allow does not mean to feel. To feel, to rely on the senses, is to limit oneself to sitting with the body.

In general it is the job of the senses to feel something, as opposed to feeling nothing. In swaying left and right as Master Dogen instructs in his rules for sitting, for example, one has a fairly reliable sense that three or four inches left or right of the midline is to the left or to the right -- the vestibular system, with input from tactile senses (and visual senses too if the eyes are open), senses the imbalance. Such an imbalance, after all, might be dangerous in circumstances like walking a tightrope or riding a bike. To approach the midline, however, is to enter an area of uncertainty. The vestibular system seems better adapted to sensing something (an imbalance) as opposed to sensing nothing (the absence of imbalance).

This being so, insofar as Ultimate Good is a bit of nothing, a bit of freedom from the faults that cause suffering, a bit of absence of noise, and in the end a bit of body and mind dropping off, a bit of the right thing being allowed to do itself, then it may be not only Nanda's whose senses were set against it: it may be that everybody's senses are set against it.

Now the Knower of Ultimate Good, the Best of Listeners, is about to speak. That the Buddha was the best of listeners was not only a matter of his auditory sense: his listening was also a matter of what he intended to hear and, most importantly, what he was able to filter out. The Buddha's listening was a matter of how the whole of his ear processed sound. The whole of the ear means everything involved in inner and outer listening, right down to the auditory and vestibular nucleii in the brainstem, and on into the bones, and on into the internal organs through the circuitous route of the wandering vagabond which is the vagus nerve. When Buddha sits in what Paul Madaule calls a good listening posture, it may be that the whole body-mind is an ear -- an ear whose listening is body and mind dropping off.

Whatever understanding I have gleaned about what FM Alexander called "faulty sensory appreciation," and the need to transcend it, I have gleaned from the standpoint of a person with a listening problem struggling to get round that problem. I myself am terribly bothered by noise. Two or three years ago, as I sat here by the stream, trying not to listen to engine noise, and being mindful of the mirror principle, I seriously asked myself what the problem was. The conclusion I came to was that the external noise that bothers me so much is a mirror for internal noise which I tend unconsciously to suppress, as it arises from my faulty vestibular system. I think that conclusion was true, and the conclusion is supported by everything Ashvaghosha records about the primary importance of eradicating the faults.

A couple of years ago a so-called Zen Master, a professed Dharma-brother of mine in the lineage of Zen Master Dogen, despite never actually having met me, recommended that, as a pre-condition for joining an organisation to which he belongs, I should undergo a course of psychological treatment. Aside from the personal affront, the shocking thing about this was the lack of insight it revealed into the teaching of Dogen, Ashvaghosha, and all the other ancestors. What Dogen and Ashvaghosha are telling us is that the faults which are the cause of suffering are primarily rooted, not in psychology, but in neuro-physiology.

Does anybody out there understand what I am banging on about -- what I have been banging on so clumsily through all these hundreds of blog posts? Does anybody understand why this verse has stimulated such a long comment from me? What this verse is saying is that what is opposing the emergence in Nanda of Ultimate Good is, primarily, his senses. Senses means balance, touch, hearing, vision, taste and smell, but most of all it means balance, because the vestibular system is the integrator of all sensory input.

When people with superficial understanding of the human condition look at behaviour that they don't understand, they attribute the behaviour they don't understand to psychological causes. But if people's primary problem were psychological, then what would be the point of crossing the legs and endeavouring to direct oneself upward?

No, what leads me astray, primarily, is my faulty vestibular system. It has led me so far astray in my life I would like to crawl back into the womb and start all over again. Fortunately, to sit all wrapped up in the lotus posture with rain pattering down on the roof and a cow mooing intermittently in the distance, is not a bad substitute.

I am a congenitally bad listener, the worst of listeners. Being the worst of listeners, I have sought out and am seeking to clarify the teaching of the Best of Listeners.

Now the Best of Listeners is about to open his mouth and speak. Will he voice a sound? Or will sound voice itself?

EH Johnston:
Then the Tathagata, knowing his disposition and that, while his senses were still contrary, the highest good was now within his range, spoke thus:--

Linda Covill:
The realized one understood his disposition, and that though his senses were still opposed to it, Excellence was now within his sight, and he spoke:

VOCABULARY:
tataH: then
tasya (genitive): of him
aashayam (accusative): m. resting-place , bed ; seat , place ; an asylum , abode or retreat ; a receptacle ; any recipient ; thought , meaning , intention ; disposition of mind , mode of thinking
jNaatvaa = absolutive of jNaa: to know

vipakShaaNi = accusative plural of vipakSha: m. " being on a different side " , an opponent , adversary , enemy (mfn. " counteracting ")
indriyaaNi = accusative plural of indriya: n. bodily power , power of the senses
ca: and

shreyas: n. the better state , the better fortune or condition; m. good (as opp. to " evil ") , welfare , bliss , fortune , happiness ; m. the bliss of final emancipation
ca: and
eva: (emphatic) now
aamukha: commencement
aamukhii-bhuu: to become visible
bhuuta: being, become

nijagaada = perfect of ni-√gad: to recite , proclaim , announce , declare , tell , speak
tathaagataH (nominative singular): the Thus-Come, the realised one