SAUNDARANANDA 14.5: Towards Balance

yathaa bhaareNa namate
laghun" onnamate tulaa
samaa tiShThati yuktena
bhojyen' eyam tathaa tanuH

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14.5
Just as a weighing scale bends down with a heavy weight,

Bends upwards with a light one,

And stays in balance with the right one,

So does this body according to intake of food.

COMMENT:
The literal meanings of the word nam in the 1st line and its antonym unnam in the 2nd line, are to bend downwards vs to bend upwards.

Sometimes it seems to be worth sticking with the first word given in the Sanskrit-English dictionary, even if it does not sound quite right to an English ear on first listening. We would normally say that a weighing scale falls or rises, goes down or goes up. We would not normally use the word "bend" which might tend to imply structural distortion, rather than free movement, of the beam of the weighing scale.

But down, up, and balance are very loaded words for us human beings with our unreliable senses of weight, and of balance and movement within the gravitational field. So caution might be called for. The Buddha might be pointing to a fact of which we, in our ignorance, are generally unaware. We need to dig deeper.

When people who are bent downwards in a slump try to make themselves upright, what they generally do is send to their body a direction that FM Alexander called "back and down." They bend backwards into a posture that they feel is more up but which, to the enlightened eye, is another kind of down. True up is nothing postural. True up is balance.

So what relation might the Buddha have observed between food intake and postural distortion?

When a man eats a heavy meal, his parasympathetic nervous system is prone to assume the ascendancy. Conversely, as Bob Marley said it, a hungry man is an angry man: when a man's body is deprived of food, his sympathetic nervous system is liable to assume the ascendancy.

These imbalances of the autonomic nervous system each has its own characteristic posture -- the parasympathetic slump vs sympathetic hyper-extension. Whereas balance of the autonomic nervous system might be characterized by dropping off of posture.

Master Dogen exhorted us to sit with body, to sit with mind, and to sit as body and mind dropping off.

My teacher, Gudo Nishijima, taught me that sitting with the body means sitting when the parasympathetic nervous system is in the ascendancy, sitting with the mind means sitting when the sympathetic nervous system is in the ascendancy, and sitting as body and mind dropping off means sitting with the autonomic nervous system in balance.

For all my faults, my brain is pretty good at knowing when I have not yet truly solved a problem. I experience the unresolved problem as a kind of suffering -- like when you can't remember something, or can't solve a riddle. And so more than 20 years ago I knew that my teacher's interpretation didn't quite hit the target, and this continued to bother me until, with the benefit of Alexander's insights into the mind-body problem, I finally understood to my own satisfaction what Master Dogen really meant.

Master Dogen meant sit on the basis of body-feeling, wrong though it may be. And sit on the basis of that which is dialectically opposed to body-feeling, which is mind-thinking, the wish for integrity. And finally, on the basis of balance of the autonomic nervous system et cetera, let sitting do itself. "Go into movement without a care in the world," as Marjory used to say.

So Master Dogen's words are pointing in the same direction as Nanda's journey: from the lower good of sensuality, with confidence, to a higher good based in integrity, and onward and upward into freedom in action.

Regrettably, on the way to solving the koan of physical, mental and transcendent sitting, and subsequently in my efforts to let everybody know about my brilliant solution, I caused quite a lot of collateral damage. So whether, on balance, any real good will come of my efforts very much remains to be seen. The scales might tip either way -- always assuming that I was able to let go of them.

Earlier this week an Alexander pupil phoned me up just a few hours before a lesson to cancel the lesson. She affected a light and breezy tone, inquiring about my stay in France, and then casually mentioned that she wouldn't be able to make the lesson, due to some pressing engagement, so how about Thursday. I was enraged. Why? Because she totally omitted to apologize for inconvenience caused.

I sat in my shed at the bottom of the garden, reflecting on my rage. Sadly, the mirror principle never fails at all.

That afternoon I wrote a letter to somebody who I need to apologize to -- an Alexander teacher of mine to whom I had been incredibly rude, like a frightened animal (to use Jordan's excellent analogy) snapping at the one who was trying to set it free. I didn't find it an easy letter to write. Something within me doesn't like to admit that I had any responsibility for what went wrong. Something within me would rather fight to the death. "It is all part of the fixing," Marjory Barlow would say.

Yesterday I found myself in a similarly uncomfortable position of needing to apologize for hurting the feelings of a family member who shall remain nameless. I just about managed to wring the word "sorry" out of myself, like trying to get a rusty pivot to move.

If somebody used a nut and bolt to fix a weighing scale at its fulcrum, so that the beam was level, and took a photo, the scale would seem to be in balance. But it wouldn't truly be in balance. For the balance to be true balance, the fulcrum would have not to be fixed. And that is a metaphor that resonates on many levels.

EH Johnston:
As the scales fall with too heavy a weight, rise with too light a one and remain level with the proper one, so is it with the body and its nourishment.

Linda Covill:
Just as the scales go down with a heavy weight and up with a light one, but stay level with the correct weight, so does this body with its food.

VOCABULARY:
yathaa: just as
bhaareNa = inst. of bhaara: m. ( √ bhR) a burden , load , weight ; heavy work; a large quantity
namate = 3rd pers. sg. of nam: to bend or bow (either trans. or oftener intr. ) to bow to , subject or submit , one's self ; to yield or give way , keep quiet or be silent

laghunaa = inst. of laghu: light ; light in the stomach , easily digested

unnamate = 3rd pers. sg. of unnam (= ud, upwards + √nam, to bow): to bend upwards , raise one's self , rise , ascend
tulaa: f. a balance , weight

samaa: f. even , smooth , flat , plain , level ; equal ; constant ; having the right measure , regular , normal ; equally distant from extremes , ordinary , common , middling ; just , upright
tiShThati: it remains
yuktena = inst. of yukta: fit , suitable , appropriate , proper , right

bhojyena = inst. of bhojya: n. anything to be enjoyed or eaten , nourishment , food; n. the act of eating , a meal
iyam (nom. sg. f.): this
tathaa: so, likewise
tanuH (nom. sg.): f. the body , person , self