SAUNDARANANDA 13.30: May Consciousness Emerge

tataH smRtim adhiShThaaya
capalaani sva-bhaavataH
indriyaan' indriy'-arthebhyo
nivaarayitum arhasi

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13.30
On that basis, standing grounded in awareness,

The naturally impetuous senses

From the objects of those senses

You should hold back.

DUST & FLUFF:
"On that basis" (tataH) seems to mean on the basis of a real need, and indeed of a real desire, to go in the direction of release and to work on integrity, starting afresh from here.

As a translation of smRti, as I see it, there is nothing wrong with mindfulness. But there is invariably something wrong with how people react to the word. On one side are the reactions of those who call themselves Buddhist meditators. On the other side are the reactions of those who consider themselves not to be meditators but to be iron men of Zen who just sit in the correct posture. On one side mindfulness tends to be associated with a slumped posture, tending towards fear paralysis. On the other side antagonism to mindfulness tends to be associated with rigidity of posture and view, tending towards blind panic.

If I say that one side is not it and the other side is not it either, but I of the middle way am truly mindful, that would not be it either. True mindfulness tends not to know itself.

To some extent I know when I am really down, sitting in a slumped posture, or sitting in a fixed posture. To some extent I can feel the wrong thing -- those sensory impulses, giving negative feedback, are more reliable. But the middle is a way beyond posture, a way of not knowing. And recognition of not knowing is a basis for not following instinctive sensory impulses. Since my feeling of where up lies is false, what is the point of reacting blindly to the impulse to sit up straight?

Which way is up? I only know that is not where my senses are prone to lead me: down.

On BBC Radio 4 I heard a feature about a new style of women's prison in Spain, designed to enable mothers to serve out their sentence without causing undue distress to their young children. One of the inmates reported that living in that community had helped her to learn to not always act so impulsively, but to think before she acted.

Again on Radio 4, former Australian opening batsman Matthew Hayden spoke of making an effort, ball by ball, to watch the cricket ball from the bowler's hand onto the bat.

These, I think, are real examples of mindfulness -- mindfulness in which there is no mindfulness of a virtue called mindfulness, but the beginning of thinking in activity, and heightened awareness including a round red object.

Holding back the senses, as I read this verse, does not mean becoming stilted in one's actions; and neither does it mean failing to watch the ball.

Nivaarayitum, "to hold back," is describing, as I read it, the withholding of consent to one's first unconscious reaction to a stimulus perceived through the senses; it is not describing suppression of desire. For a person who desires to take the backward step of turning his light and shining, so that body and mind spontaneously drop off and his original face emerges, it might be natural to want to hold back the senses in this way, so that a gap is created between stimulus and response. And that might be the very gap in which consciousness emerges.

Slumping and fixing are unconscious postural reactions based on faulty sensory appreciation. Human beings can become more conscious by learning to inhibit such reactions, beginning afresh in the first person singular, from here.

This is what Marjory Barlow taught me; and this is where this verse, as I read it, is leading.

EH Johnston:
Then you should hold back your senses from their objects by fixing your attention, since they are by nature restless.

Linda Covill:
Next, establishing mindfulness, hold back those naturally restless senses from sensory experience,

VOCABULARY:
tatas: from that place, thence; thereupon , then , after that ; from that , in consequence of that
smRtim (acc.): f. remembrance , reminiscence , thinking of or upon (loc. or comp.) , calling to mind
adhiShThaaya = absolutive of adhiShTaa: to stand upon , depend upon ; to superintend , govern ; to step over or across ; to overcome to ascend , mount ; to attain , arrive at

capalaani = acc. plural n. of capala: moving to and fro , shaking , trembling , unsteady , wavering; wanton , fickle , inconstant
svabhaava: own condition or state of being , natural state or constitution , innate or inherent disposition , nature , impulse , spontaneity
- taH: ablative suffix
sva-bhaavatas: from natural disposition , by nature , naturally , by one's self , spontaneously

indriyaani (acc., plural): senses
indriya-arthebhyaH = ablative, plural of indriya-artha: object of the senses
artha: aim; thing, object; object of the senses,

nivaarayitum = infinitive of ni-√vR: to hold back from (abl.) , prohibit , hinder , stop , prevent , withhold , suppress , forbid
arhasi: you should