SAUNDARANANDA 15.30: Relative Worries

vRddhy-a-vRddhyor atha bhavec
cintaa jNaati-janaM prati
svabhaavo jiiva-lokasya
pariikSyas tan-nivRttaye

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15.30
Should there be anxious thoughts, then,

About whether or not your family is prospering,

Investigate the nature of the world of the living

In order to put a stop to those thoughts.

COMMENT:
In verse 17.12 Ashvaghosha writes of the practitioner's "desire for release/liberation" (vimokSha-kaama). So although desire (kaama), when it is tied up with an end-gaining idea, tops the list of those gross afflictions which are to be driven out like gross impurities from gold, it is not desire itself that the Buddha is asking us to see as the problem. What turns the biological fact of desire into something akin to poison is an end-gaining idea. This recognition, I think, is the key to understanding every verse in the present Canto. Our essential task, as we sit on a round cushion, engaging with the fundamental, is to get free of an idea.

With this verse, then, the Buddha sets his sights on the ideas we tend to have around family.


EH Johnston:
If your thoughts should turn to the prosperity and adversity of your kinsfolk, you should investigate the nature of the world of the living in order to stop such thoughts.

Linda Covill:
Now you might feel worried about whether your family is flourishing or not. You should put a stop to this by examining the true nature of the world of humankind.

VOCABULARY:
vRddhi: f. growth , increase , augmentation , rise , advancement , extension , welfare , prosperity , success , fortune , happiness
a: (negative prefix) not
vRddhyor = gen./loc. dual vRddhi
atha: now, then etc.
bhavet = 3rd pers. sg. optative bhuu: there might be

cintaaH (nom. pl.): f. thought , care , anxiety , anxious thought about (gen. loc.)
jNaati: m. " intimately acquainted " , a near relation , kinsman
janam (acc. sg.): m. person, people
prati: ind. towards

svabhaavaH (nom. sg.): m. native place ; own condition or state of being , natural state or constitution , innate or inherent disposition , nature , impulse , spontaneity
jiiva-lokasya = gen. sg jiiva-loka: m. the world of living beings (opposed to that of the deceased) , living beings , mankind

pariikShyaH = nom. sg. gerundive pariikSh: to look round , inspect carefully , try , examine , find out , observe , perceive
tan: it, that
nivRttaye = dative nivRtti: (from ni-√vRt, to turn back , stop) ; f. returning , return ; ceasing , cessation , disappearance ; leaving off , abstaining or desisting from