karmaNo hi yathaa-dRShtaat
kaaya-vaak-prabhavaad api
aajiivaH pRthag ev' okto
duH-shodhatvaad ayaM mayaa
= - = - - = - =
= - = - - = - -
= = = - - = = =
= = = = - = - =
13.17
So separately from overt action
And from the origin of use of body and voice,
I have spoken of making a living
Because it is so hard to make a pure one --
COMMENT:
If I have understood the first two lines correctly, I have understood them on the basis of Dogen's teaching that there is sitting with mind, as opposed to sitting with body; and sitting with body, as opposed to sitting with mind.
To sit with the body is to attend to overt action, i.e, action as seen from the outside. Japanese and French Zazen practitioners tend to be strong in that direction, maybe reflecting the highly developed aesthetic sensibilities of their culture, cuisine, et cetera. Rule no. 1, they seem to understand, is that one has to look the part. I heard of a French Zen practitioner who tried to stretch his ears with weights, so that he might have long ears like the Buddha. How French can you get?
To sit with the mind, as opposed to sitting with the body, is to attend to stopping those wrong inner patterns from which misuse of body and voice originates. This latter approach relates to what FM Alexander called "thinking in activity," and to what followers of the Buddha in places like Thailand and Tibet call "mindfulness" or "training the mind." This seems to me to be no easy thing in itself, but quite apart from this difficulty the Buddha has been speaking of something which he himself (mayaa: "by me") now calls difficult: the cleansing or purification of one's livelihood.
The gold standard for purity might be the filthy rags that beggars of old would pick up, sort out, wash, dye and wear as a kashaya.
Purity as the Buddha uses the word, if I hear him correctly, means not being tainted. The non-taintedness of filthy rags, as I see it, has to do with the separateness between, on the one hand, the end-gaining of the world, and on the other hand, the attention followers of the Buddha are required to pay to a process. In the world of end-gaining, rags chewed by rats or soiled by shit or menstruation have no value. They are like CO2 emissions, something polluted and polluting -- unavoidable side-effects of the gaining of valuable ends -- something to be discarded. But beggars who followed the Buddha saw value in these waste products that had zero or negative value in the world, seeing them not as impure but as the most pure kind of cloth for making a robe.
If that is the sense in which the Buddha uses the term duH-shodhatva, "difficulty of cleansing," what does it mean for us to purify our means of making a living?
For a start, to sit as the dropping off of body and mind might be a condition of cleanness, i.e., of untainted simplicity, clarity, and indifference. I think that in the time of Ashvaghosha this practice and this understanding, in mutual accord with each other, were still flowing like a torrent in India. Nowadays river-beds everywhere are hardly overflowing, and anybody who really wants water had better be prepared to dig deep for it -- starting afresh from here.
EH Johnston:
For this livelihood is explained by Me separately from the physical actions, namely those of body and voice, because it is so difficult to purify.
Linda Covill:
Because of the difficulty of keeping it clean, I have explained making a living separately from actions as they are seen in body and speech.
VOCABULARY:
karmaNaH = ablative, singular of karmaN: act , action , performance , business ; work, labour, activity ; product , result , effect ; former act as leading to inevitable results , fate (as the certain consequence of acts in a previous life)
hi: for
yathaa: as, in accordance with
dRShtaat = ablative of dRShta: seen
kaaya: body
vaak = in compounds fo vaac: speech , voice , talk
prabhavaad = ablative of prabhava: m. production , source , origin , cause of existence ; birthplace (often ifc. springing or rising or derived from , belonging to)
api: also
aajiivaH (nom. m.): livelihood
pRthak: widely apart , separately
eva: (emphatic)
ukta: uttered, said, spoken
duH: (prefix indicating difficulty)
shodha: purification, cleansing ; correction, setting right
- tva: (abstract noun suffix)
duH-shodhatvaad (ablative): from the difficulty of cleansing
ayam (nom. m.): this
mayaa (instrumental): by me
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