[Below is a draft of an Introduction I have been asked to write for the Saundarananda translation. I intend to start work soon on the translation of Buddhacarita.]
Aśvaghoṣa
wrote two mahā-kāvya,
or
epic
poems. The poem whose translation follows is the
Saundarananda-mahā-kāvya,
An
Epic
Story of Nanda, the Beautiful. The other, better known work is
Buddhacarita-mahā-kāvya,
An
Epic Story of the Buddha's Life.
The
Buddhacarita
was translated into Chinese (as also into Tibetan), and is highly
revered in Japan. The story of the Buddha's enlightenment as it is
commonly told by good Zen teachers in Japan – who emphasize how the
Buddha gave up ascetic grasping for an imagined truth and
consequently realised the unfathomable enlightenment of just sitting
-- is drawn from the Chinese translation of the Buddhacarita.
But
Aśvaghoṣa is revered in Japan as much more than a biographer of
the Buddha. In a line of fifty-one Zen patriarchs – of whom
Mahākāśyapa was the first in India, of whom Bodhidharma was the
first in China, and of whom Dogen was the first in Japan –
Aśvaghoṣa is number twelve.
Hence,
in the fifteenth chapter of Master Dogen's Shobogenzo, titled
仏祖
BUSSO,
“the Buddha-Ancestors,” Dogen records that the Great
Master Śākyamuni Buddha transmitted his Dharma to the Great Master
Mahākāśyapa (1), who transmitted it to the Great Master Ānanda
(2), who transmitted it to the Great Master Śāṇavāsa (3), who
transmitted it to the Great Master Upagupta (4), who transmitted it
to the Great Master Dhītika (5), who transmitted it to the Great
Master Micchaka (6), who transmitted it to the Great Master Vasumitra
(7), who transmitted it to the Great Master Buddhanandhi (8), who
transmitted it to the Great Master Baddhamitra (9), who transmitted
it to the Great Master Pārśva (10), who transmitted it to the Great
Master Puṇyayaśas (11), who transmitted it to the Great Master
Aśvaghoṣa (12).
In
the Japanese Zen tradition, therefore, Aśvaghoṣa's writing could
hardly be more important: it is revered as the first written record
of the Buddha's teaching that we have authored by a Zen patriarch
writing under his own name.
The
fifty-first Zen patriarch, Zen Master Dogen, born in Japan in the
year 1200 CE, though a native speaker of Japanese, was precocious in
his ability to read and understand Chinese poetry. Even before he
left Japan for China as a young man he was thoroughly versed in
Chinese Buddhist texts, especially the Chinese translation of the
Lotus Sutra. On his return to Japan, Dogen set about distilling, in
his native Japanese language, what he had understood in China of the
Buddha's teaching. The 95 chapters of Master Dogen's Japanese
Shobogenzo, therefore, can be read as a distillation of teaching that
had percolated into a vast body of Chinese Buddhist literature.
In
a similar way, Aśvaghoṣa's Sanskrit epic poetry can be read as a
distillation of the vast body of the Buddha's teaching that had been
preserved prior to Aśvaghoṣa's time through memorization and
recitation of the Pāḷi Suttas.
It
is easy to make the mistake of assuming that this distillation might
be concentrated in the second half of the Saundarananda,
in which the Buddha lays before Nanda a blueprint for liberation.
Some commentators who have made this mistake have argued that the
earlier cantos are more concerned with poetry while the later cantos
are more concerned with doctrine. These are the same commentators who
have discussed whether Aśvaghoṣa was primarily a poet or a monk.
From
the standpoint of Dogen's teaching, Aśvaghoṣa was primarily
neither a poet or a monk; as indicated above, Aśvaghoṣa was
Dogen's Zen ancestor. As such, his primary task was neither literary
nor religious: his primary task was just to sit. Knowing this, though
evidently not well enough, and fearing that I might not live long
enough to get through all eighteen cantos of the Saundarananda,
I began by translating the part of Canto 17 that relates directly to
sitting-meditation, and left till later the cantos which seemed less
relevant to sitting, like the tirade against women in Canto 8. In
retrospect, I see that this approach was mistaken. The truth may be
that devotees of Zen sitting practice who wish to hear Aśvaghoṣa's
message should read the earlier chapters if anything more attentively
than the later ones. Why? Because what Aśvaghoṣa clarifies for us
above all in the Saundarananda
is how NOT to sit.
As
I gradually began to see this point, as a result of reading the
Saundarananda
as
a whole, I realized that Aśvaghoṣa's primary emphasis on the
negative tallies with
personal experience, insofar as I do not know how to sit any better
than I did thirty years ago; but I have garnered some clues along the
way – with help, I would like to add, from FM Alexander – about
how NOT to sit.
Saundarananda-mahā-kāvya
means, on the face of it, “The Epic Poem 'Handsome Nanda.'” It
is a poem, on the face of it, that celebrates the heroic doings of
the Buddha's half-brother Nanda who was called 'Handsome Nanda'
because he was so strikingly good-looking. But more than that, the
Saundarananda
is an ode to the beauty of non-doing; it is a story of rediscovering
what was beautiful in us before we started striving after anything –
hence “An Epic Story of Nanda, the Beautiful.”
Nanda,
which means Joy, is everyman. The Saundarananda
is the story of how the beauty that is joyfully inherent in every man
and every woman may be realized by every man and every woman, through
gradual elimination of those befouling faults – greed, anger,
delusion, and the rest – which we trigger into action by thirsting
after objects.
You
are beautiful.
(No matter what they say.) The message is not difficult to
understand. The difficulty is in the realization. The difficulty is
in crossing for oneself the fathomless sea of faults which the Buddha
crossed.
You
are beautiful.
The fathomless sea of faults which is so hard to cross, you can
cross.
But
not by thirsting. Not by thirsting for any object, even if the
valuable object for which you thirst is a spiritual one, like the far
shore of enlightenment.
The beautiful practice
of Buddha is to accept the golden treasure of oneself and to use it
well. This is a very different thing from practising the ugly
asceticism of self-denial.
In highlighting this
difference, however, Aśvaghoṣa is invariably circumspect: he
relies on irony and eschews anything that might constitute a direct
affront to his Sanskrit-loving audience, whose values were most
likely rooted in the ascetic traditions of Brahmanism. This, again,
is why the earlier cantos require such attentive reading, so as not
to miss Aśvaghoṣa's irony.
An
Idealized Picture of Kapilavastu (Cantos 1-3)
The
first three cantos of the Saundarananda
set
the scene, portraying in glowing terms the city of Kapilavastu (Canto
One), the King of Kapilavastu (Canto Two), and the King's son Gautama
who came back to Kapilavastu as the One Thus Come, the Realised One,
the Tathāgata (Canto Three).
In
Canto One Aśvaghoṣa seems on the surface to portray the
Brahmanical religious ideal of ascetic practice as a noble pursuit,
but if one reads the chapter carefully, keeping one's ears open for
Aśvaghoṣa's irreligious use of irony, then Canto One takes on the
opposite meaning. Canto Two is mainly devoted to singing the praises
of Gautama's father, the King. Among the virtues emphasized are lack
of conceit and reverence for dharma. Since the dharma in question is
a non-Buddhist dharma, Aśvaghoṣa in this canto seems to be saying
something about the universality of the principle of reaping what is
sown. The message might be that one doesn't have to be a Buddhist to
be, as the Buddha's royal father is glowingly portrayed to be, a very
good person, blessed by cause and effect with two good sons –
namely, Gautama and Nanda. Canto Three is a condensed account of the
Buddha's path to enlightenment and his subsequent edification of
Kapilavastu, whose citizens under the Buddha's benevolent influence
enjoy a golden age.
Nanda
& Sundarī: Two Real Individuals (Cantos 4 – 7)
If
the first three cantos are thus idealized visions of the history and
reality of Kapilavastu around the time of the Buddha, the next four
cantos can be read, on the contrary, as a description of the
concrete, discrete non-ideal side of reality.
There
is nothing abstract about the descriptions in Canto Four of how
handsome Nanda and his beautiful wife Sundarī cavort with each other
in their palace penthouse. In the drama of this canto the Buddha
makes a brief appearance as a character without a speaking part:
while upstairs Nanda and Sundarī are making passionate love,
downstairs the Buddha on his alms round stands in silence.
In
Canto Five, in which Nanda is caused reluctantly to go forth into the
wandering life, the Buddha again appears as a man of action before
words: when Nanda invites him to eat the midday meal at his house,
the Buddha silently declines with a gesture. Again, as a tactic to
prevent Nanda from going home, the Buddha silently entrusts his bowl
to Nanda. When the Buddha eventually does speak, his first words are
to remind Nanda that death is an ever-present danger and to advocate
the pursuit of peace.
Thus
exhorted by the Buddha to go forth, Nanda consents; but then he
changes his mind and announces that he won't go forth after all. This
causes the Buddha to speak to Nanda more sternly, telling him to
abandon the net of delusions he calls “my love.” And so the
depressed Nanda finally has his head shaved by Ānanda. As
his hair is being banished, Nanda's tearful downcast face resembles a
rain-sodden lotus in a pond with the top of its stalk sagging down.
Cantos
Six and Seven can be read as individual case-studies in grief – studies
in the psychology of grief and also in the detailed physiology of
grief, including vivid depiction of facial pallor or redness,
arhythmic breathing, changes in postural tone, involuntary movements
of arms and hands, and so on.
In
Canto Six Sundarī takes centre stage, surrounded by her women, one
among whom, senior in years, and good with words, holds Sundarī from
behind in a firm embrace, wipes her tears away, and tells Sundarī in
so many words to pull herself together. This direct approach,
however, does not pass the pragmatic test of truth: it doesn't work.
Sundarī only begins to come back to herself when another woman tells
her, more intimately, what she wishes to hear: that Nanda will soon
disrobe and return to her side. Here is a case, then, when denial of
reality proves to be a truer course, in practice, than accurately
foretelling the future.
In
Canto Seven Nanda exhibits the kind of negative thinking against which
the Buddha will later caution him. In so thinking, Nanda repeatedly
refers to examples in ancient myths of Brahmanical heroes whose
ascetic pursuit of religious ideals was scuppered by desire for
women. Some commentators have suggested that through such references
to Brahmanical tradition, Aśvaghoṣa sought to present the Buddha's
teaching as the culmination of Brahmanism. Such a view arises from
failing to catch Aśvaghoṣa's irony. The real point to take from
Canto Seven is that when Nanda keeps harking back pessimistically to the
examples of failed ascetics, he is demonstrating to us how NOT to
think. This demonstration continues through the next four cantos.
How
Not to Think, Continued: The Misogynist Striver (Cantos 8 - 9)
Canto
Eight marks the appearance of an eloquent Buddhist striver who, while
ostensibly acting for Nanda's benefit, actually continues in the same
vein of demonstrating how NOT to think. Like the eloquent woman who
took firm hold of Sundarī and encouraged her to get a grip, this
Buddhist striver tries ineffectually, going for the direct approach,
to straighten Nanda out. Though the striver has a good way with
words, neither he nor Nanda can see the flaw in his argument which
puts the blame for men's suffering on the women who are the objects
of men's desire.
The
way to enjoy this Canto, then, is with a sense of the ironic humour
which is at play. The same applies to Canto Nine, in which the striver,
who evidently has a high opinion of his own insight, takes Nanda to
task for being vain and conceited.
How
Not to Think, Continued: Nanda Is Inspired to Practice Asceticism
(Cantos 10 – 11)
Canto
Ten, titled “A Vision of Heaven,” gives us the clearest insight of
any canto into the working of the mind of Aśvaghoṣa himself. Being
pure fantasy, it provides a blank canvas on which Aśvaghoṣa can
allow himself to paint, which he does in vivid colours, like
beryl-blue and blazing red and untarnished gold.
In
the vision of heaven that is presented, vivid individual things have
philosophical meaning, if one looks for it. Why, for example, are
particular trees and particular birds described as different from
other trees and birds? And why are blue lotuses described as blue,
red lotuses as red, and gold lotuses as gold?
More
pertinently to the narrative of Nanda's redemption, in this canto
Nanda spies the one-eyed she monkey, and sets eyes on the unspeakably
gorgeous celestial nymphs, the apsarases.
In the beauty stakes, Nanda has to admit, the gap between the nymphs
and poor old Sundarī is greater than the gap between Sundarī and
the monkey.
“Practice
asceticism,” the Buddha tells Nanda – taking a long view which
ultimately proves to be correct, but not in the way that Nanda
imagines – “and you and the nymphs will be one.”
Thus
is Nanda caused really to know, with his whole body-mind, what it
means to thirst for an illusory object. And thus, at the beginning of
Canto Eleven, as a result of his ascetic self-restraint in pursuit of the
celestial nymphs, formerly handsome Nanda is described as having
become extremely ugly.
Finally,
having been encouraged by the Buddha to go to the outer limit of
ascetic thirsting for an object, Nanda is then able to begin his
journey back home, not to the Sundarī who once represented for him
the female embodiment of beauty, but rather back home to the beauty
of being himself. In making this about turn, Nanda is aided first by
Ānanda's teaching of impermanence, and then by his own sense of
shame, i.e. by his consciousness of having gone wrong, of having been
led astray by the wrong kind of thinking.
The
Buddha Preaches the Buddha-Dharma (Cantos 12 – 16)
Cantos
Twelve through Sixteen take the form of a long monologue by the Buddha,
interspersed with a few verses of Aśvaghoṣa's commentary. The key
words in Canto Twelve are śraddhā
(belief, confidence) and śreyas
(better, a better way, a higher good): the Buddha praises Nanda for
believing in better, for exhibiting confidence in a better way – a
way that is better, for example, than hedonistic enjoyment of
sensuality, and better than ascetic thirsting after objects.
A
better way than thirsting after objects out there, the Buddha
teaches Nanda, is elimination of the faults in here. To that end, the
practice that the Buddha keeps coming back to, in Canto 13,
Conquering the Senses through Integrity, in Canto 14, Stepping into
Action, and in Canto 15, Abandoning Ideas, is smṛti
(mindfulness, awareness, vigilance).
The
importance of Canto 16, Exposition of the Noble Truths, can be gauged
by its length: at 98 verses it is by far the longest of the
Saundarananda's
eighteen cantos. The Buddha's great monologue finishes, at the end of
Canto 16, with him singing the praises of vīrya,
directed energy. In the final analysis, evidently, understanding the
teaching intellectually is never enough. In order to eliminate those
faults which the Buddha compares to impurities in gold, it is
necessary for each person to mobilize his or her own energy, like a
diligent dirt-washer sifting for gold-dust or like a skilled
goldsmith working at a furnace.
Nanda
Makes the Teaching His Own (Canto 17)
Canto
17, therefore, is Aśvaghoṣa's account of how Nanda goes to the
forest by himself and mobilizes his own energy in pursuit of
liberation. Sitting upright with his legs crossed in the traditional
manner, Nanda finds the body to be full of suffering, impermanent,
and devoid of self, and thus he causes the tree of afflictions to
shake. Then he gradually penetrates the ranks of the afflictions,
cuts the three lower fetters, and obtains stream-entry, the first
fruit of dharma. By reducing to a minimum love and hate, the fourth
and fifth of the five lower fetters, he obtains the second fruit of
dharma, And by going entirely beyond love and hate, he obtains the
third of the four fruits of dharma. At this point in Nanda's progress
Aśvaghoṣa describes how Nanda passes through four stages of
sitting-meditation (dhyānas),
by seeing faults at subtler and subtler levels and abandoning those
faults. Even at the level of the fourth dhyāna,
however – advanced Zen meditators take note – it still remains
for Nanda to cut the five upper fetters, including spiritual ambition
and conceit. This he duly does: like a lamp going out when all its
oil is spent, Nanda comes to the utmost quiet, attaining the fourth
and ultimate fruit of dharma, the worthy state of the arhat.
Affirmation
(Canto 18)
In
Canto 18 Nanda approaches the Buddha, expressing his realisation as
“being present in the world without being of the world,” and
prostrates himself on the ground with his whole body. Booming at
Nanda like a thundercloud, the Buddha addresses him as “Conqueror
of yourself” and asks him to stand up. “What a wonderful sight
you are for me to behold!” the Buddha tells Nanda, “For even an
unlovely sort is a sight to behold when he is well-adorned with his
own best features. But a man who is full of the befouling faults,
strikingly beautiful man though he may be, is truly ugly.” “How
could I possibly repay you?” Nanda asks. “Among beings who are
wandering in the night, their minds shrouded in darkness,” the
Buddha replies, “let the lamp of this transmission be carried.”
In
the final verse of the Saundarananda Aśvaghoṣa tells the
reader that he has crafted a kāvya poem only as a pretext.
What is paramount for him is not poetry but liberation, next to which
elegant Sanskrit is so much dust. But out of the dust, with
well-directed effort, Aśvaghoṣa encourages the reader, gold will
emerge.
