saa jighaaMsus tamo haardaM
yaa samprati vijRmbhate
tamo naishaM prabhaa saurii
vinigiirN" eva meruNaa
= - = = - = = =
= = - - - = - =
- = = = - = = =
- - = = - = - =
12.29
Seeking to dispell darkness of the heart
It now blossoms forth
Like the light of the sun
dispelling the darkness of the night
When poured forth by mount Meru.
COMMENT:
In this verse, light and darkness may be understood as symbolizing consciousness and unconsciousness.
What is light? Nobody knows. Not even Einstein knew. But light is not dark. That much we know.
What is consciousness? Consciousness is not unconscious reaction. That much, with the help of Marjory Barlow in particular, I figured out for myself.
I don't believe in Buddhism. I believe in the truth of the Buddha's teaching, which each of us has to work out for himself or herself, by working on the self.
Aged 8-9, while attending Ms. Higgin's class at Chilcote Primary School, I gained an overblown confidence in my ability to solve problems, and to some extent this confidence has stayed with me all my life. As a teenager, however, I came up against a problem that I couldn't figure out, which was chronic blushing, wherein fear of the reaction would set off the reaction. The mere thought of a girl sitting next to me on the bus would make me go hot and red, and sweat, and go redder and hotter, and sweat more, until eventually by the time I got off the bus I would have the sense of being reduced to a deathly cold and pale dribble of sweat. A struggle was going on within my system between two opposing fear responses: the red of the panic reflex vs the white of fear paralysis.
For the past 35 years, this is a problem I have been working on, and I am still working on it -- how not to be a slave to this kind of unconscious emotional reaction, rooted in undue excitement of fear reflexes.
My initial lines of enquiry were physical. Doing things with the body, like weight training and rugby, and then karate, and eventually doing Zazen, clearly seemed to help, up to a point.
For the past 15 years, I have been gradually waking up to the other side, through Alexander work -- "the most mental thing there is."
I still don't consider that I have got close to solving the problem, but maybe like Nanda at this point in his story, my trials and tribulations to this point have caused me to gain a hold on the problem.
The essence of the problem is how to be more conscious, and less at the mercy of emotional reactions rooted in fear.
So to return to the verse in question, I think that tamo haaRdaM, the darkness of Nanda's heart means unconsciousness rooted in his fear paralysis response -- this response having been described, as I read it, in verse 12.8.
Growth of consciousness is stimulated, I think, insofar as I understand the process at all, by inhibiting unconscious reactions which are rooted in such fear paralysis, or rooted in the Moro reflex which is the antagonist of fear paralysis, or rooted in an unresolved struggle between those two opposing fear responses.
When exactly does "inhibiting unconscious reactions" mean? It means myriad different things in myriad situations, but it always means:
Not that.
EH Johnston:
It strives now to destroy the darkness of your heart, as the light of the sun, when poured forth by mount Meru, diffuses itself to dispel the darkness of night.
Linda Covill:
Now it spreads out, seeking to dispell the darkness that is your emotionality, just as the sunny radiance put forth by Mount Meru seeks to disperse noctural darkness.
VOCABULARY:
saa: (f.) it (buddhi)
jighaaMsu: desirous of destroying or ruining
tamaH = accusative of tamas: darkness
haardaM = accusative of haard (fr. and = hRd): the heart, as seat of emotion
yaa: (f) which
samprati: now
vijRmbhate = 3rd person singular of vi-√jRmbh: to open the mouth , yawn , gape ; to open (intr.) , expand , become expanded or developed or exhibited , spread out , blossom ; to extend , become erect (said of the membrum virile) ; to arise , appear , awake
tamaH (accusative): darkness
naisham = accusative of naisha: relating to night , happening at night , nightly , nocturnal
prabhaa: light
saurii: f. the wife of the sun
vi-: prefix, sometimes giving a meaning opposite to the idea contained in the simple root (e.g. √ krI , " to buy " ; vi- √krI , " to sell ")
nigiirNa: swallowed , devoured ; left out , not expressed
vinigiirNaa: spewed out, poured forth
iva: like
meruNaa = instrumental of meru: N. of a fabulous mountain
8 comments:
Mike,
Thank your for your response to my previous comment. I know there are so selections on your website, but do you ever plan to produce a comprehensive arrangement of these passages with your commentary. I often can't read the blog everyday but I think it would be wonderful to have a book or ebook with verse and commentary in chronological sequence. Is this too unrealistic of a fantasy?
Thanks,
Raymond
Thank you, Raymond. Your question brings back an answer that I dreamed in response to your last comment, which was along the lines of: in order to make progress, sometimes one has to completely give up the idea of getting anywhere. Sometimes it is the desire to sleep, for example, that prevents us getting to sleep, but when we completely give up hope of getting to sleep, we fall into a deep and happy sleep. So, for the time being, I am enjoying this as a one-verse-per-day work in progress. That being ambitious is a cause of unhappiness, whereas not being ambitious is the cause of real happiness, is the original teaching picked up by Dogen at the end of his life, that inspired me to search upstream and then start this work in the first place -- SHOYOKU |CHISOKU, "to want little and be content." But thanks for the vote of confidence.
I'm with Raymond on this one. Once you wrap this endeavor up put it in order and send it to a publisher. Might not make anything, but who cares. The effort has already been made. All that energy should go somewhere. Isn’t that the second law or something?
Jordan,
Thanks for the solidarity!
Mike,
I respect your approach to this endeavor very much. I have often found that as soon as I have set up a goal the whole thing becomes a future-driven burden. Perhaps it would be more skillful to say, if, at the end of the natural course of this project, with no claim to actually expect, hope for, or foresee, that time, the opportunity presents itself to collect these posts, I would be one reader - tentatively....
Have a good evening!
Raymond
Thanks as always for your encouragement, Jordan, but I fancy myself as a miner rather than a jeweller, a potato-farmer rather than a shopkeeper --one who is happier with a spade in hand than he would be standing behind a till.
In terms of the 2nd law, I see my main job as having been where possible to break down activation energy barriers -- what Ashvaghosha called twirling the firestick -- rather than passing on the torch. The difficulty with fire, in any case, is getting it. Once got it tends to spread by itself like anything. So I think this work I am doing every day is primary, not secondary, and I am very happy to be doing it as such.
If there comes a day when this work could be published as a book and you would like to publish it, be my guest -- as long as you are not in charge of checking spelling. But I think that day is too far away to bother thinking about yet, as evidenced by the lack of certainty surrounding 12.26.
As I write this, to a friend in the home of the brave and land of the free, I am looking out on a forest in the beautiful countryside of France, and while eating a breakfast of coffee and pancakes I will shortly be listening to my beloved Radio 4 from the British Broadcasting Corporation. Through the day I will be sitting outside listening to the stream flowing by and the singing of birds, working in the garden, and thinking out the translation of the next verse. There being nobody around to harmonize with, at some point in the day, when I feel like it, I will have a nap. Maybe two naps. Why not? I am pretty much just where I wish to be, and in no hurry to be anywhere else.
All the best,
Mike
One white digger
No pretence
Contented figure
In his trench
Thanks Raymond. We are singing from the same hymn sheet.
Mike
nir-gīrṇ: mfn. ( √ gṝ) vomited forth
saurī (nom. sg. f.): relating or belonging to the sun
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