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strī-saṁsargaṁ
vināśāntaṁ pāṇḍur-jñātvāpi kauravaḥ |
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mādrī-rūpa-guṇākṣiptaḥ
siṣeve kāma-jaṁ sukham || 4.79
4.79
'The
Pale' Pāṇḍu, a king in the Kuru line,
Knew
that intercourse with his wife would end in death
And
yet, bowled over by Mādrī's beautiful attributes,
He
indulged in pleasure born of desire.
COMMENT:
Nanda's rendering in
Saundara-nanda Canto 7 of the story of how Pāṇḍu finally failed
to resist the charms of his wife Mādrī, is as follows:
And Pāṇḍu 'The Pale One' having been cursed by Passion to die on coupling with a woman, / Went nonetheless with Mādrī: he heeded not the death that would result from the great seer's curse, when he tasted what he was forbidden to taste. // SN7.45 //
The background to the story involves
the beautiful and manipulative Kālī/Satyavatī mentioned in BC4.76.
After her brief encounter with 'The Crusher'
Parāśara had left her pregnant with her first son Vyāsa, she went
back to helping her father work as a ferryman across the Yamunā
river, where one day she attracted the eye of Śāntanu, king of the Kurus.
She became Śāntanu's queen and bore him two sons. When the older of
these sons died, the younger one, named Vicitra-vīrya, took the
throne,with Kālī pulling the strings as the power
behind the throne. Vicitra-vīrya married two princesses –
Ambālikā and her older sister Ambikā – but before he managed to
get either princess pregnant, Vicitra-vīrya also died. Kālī then persuaded
Vyāsa, her son by Parāśara, to see if he could provide a successor
to the Kuru throne.
While Vyāsa was
endeavoring to impregnate the older queen, Ambikā, according to this version of the story recorded in Wikipedia, she noticed his dark
appearance [which presumably he had inherited from his mother – Kālī means black] and closed her eyes. Vyāsa declared to Kālī
that due to such cruelty towards him, Ambikā's son would be born
blind. Kālī
considered that such an heir would be an unworthy king, and so she
asked Vyāsa also to father a child by her younger daughter-in-law, Ambālikā.
During this liaison, this version of the story goes, Ambālikā
fell pale due to Vyāsa's grim appearance. Vyāsa then predicted to
his mother that Ambālikā's baby would be born
pale. Vyāsa's prediction came true, and so the baby was named Pāṇḍu,
'Pale.'
When in due course he
became the Kuru king, Pāṇḍu married the princess Mādrī along
with another princess named Kuntī. While out hunting in the woods
Pāṇḍu accidentally shot the sage Kindama while the latter had
taken the form of a deer and was mating with a doe. The wounded sage
Kindama placed a curse on Pāṇḍu to the effect that he would die
if he ever again had sex. Pāṇḍu then remorsefully renounced his
kingdom and lived with his wives as a celibate ascetic. After fifteen
years of ascetic celibacy, however, when his second wife Kuntī was
away, Pāṇḍu was irresistibly drawn to his first wife Mādrī,
and so fulfilled the sage's curse and died.
What has any of this
got anything to do with what we are primarily interested in?
When we ask that
question, the wording of the 4th pāda might be worthy of further
consideration. On the surface siṣeve kāma-jaṁ sukham means “he
yielded to the pleasures of love” (EBC), or “he gave himself up
to the pleasures of love” (EHJ), or “he gave in to the pleasure
of sex” (PO).
Kāma, from the root
√kam (to wish, desire), originally means wish, desire, longing. But kāma is also used to refer in particular to love, especially sexual
love or sensuality – as in the Kāma-sūtra, the famous treatise on
sexual love attributed to Vātsyāyana.
In the Buddha's
teaching of small desire quoted yesterday alpecchu = alpa (small) + icchu (wishing,
desiring), from the root √iṣ (to endeavour to obtain, seek; to
desire, wish; to intend).
So as words √kam and
√iṣ are different. One might say that √kam suggests a more
physical kind of desire, whereas √iṣ suggests something more
mental, like wishing.
But from the standpoint
of the reality which is utterly indifferent to words, how many kinds
of desire are there?
Does the desire (√kam)
to have sex arise from an energy which is fundamentally different
from the energy that fuels the wish (√iṣ) to work on a
Sanskrit-English translation of an ancient text? Is it possible to
desire (√kam) too strongly to get on with translation work – so
strongly that I become irritated or angered by anything that might
get in the way? And is it possible to wish (√iṣ) to have sex, but
not so greedily that it can't wait until tomorrow, or next week, or
next month?
I think that when the
2nd law of thermodynamics demands that energy dissipates,
unless prevented from doing so by activation energy barriers, the 2nd
law is not the slightest bit interested in the distinctions the
dictionary might draw between desire and wishing. The human urge to
go in any direction, whether that urge is a small desire, or a strong
wish, or a strong desire, or a moderate wish, is dependent on what
chemists call “activation energy barriers.” Activation energy
barriers are what prevents everything just flowing down the drain.
Activation energy barriers make life possible, make organic growth
possible, make photo-synthesis possible, make sex possible, make
sitting possible, make human desire possible, and make possible conscious direction of that desire.
That being so, between
the sheets there can be realization of happiness as the fulfillment
of romantic wishing. And on a round black cushion there can be
indulgence in pleasure that is born of a physical desire to be alone
by the forest.
The irony in Udāyin's
words in today's verse, then, might be that the words he uses to
describe Pāṇḍu's indulgence in the pleasure of sex also fit
perfectly well as a description of what the Buddha indulged in under
the bodhi-tree – that happiness/ease/pleasure which is born of
desire (kāma-jaṁ sukham).
Why did the ultimate
teaching of the Buddha, on the night before he died, begin with the
words alpecchu “small desire”? Simply because the Buddha knew
that ultimate happiness is born of desire.
The
Buddha never said that ultimate happiness is born of no desire. The
Buddha said that ultimate happiness is born of small desire.
In conclusion, then, I
venture to submit that the happiness of just sitting, though it must
inevitably end in death, is in every instance kāma-jaṁ sukham,
“happiness born of desire.”
Was
Aśvaghoṣa himself aware of both the meanings discussed above of siṣeve
kāma-jaṁ sukham? I would bet my bottom dollar he was.
VOCABULARY
strī-saṁsargam (acc.
sg. m.): intercourse with a woman/his wife
strī: f. a woman ,
female , wife
saṁsarga: m. mixture
or union together , commixture , blending , conjunction , connection
, contact , association , society , sexual union , intercourse with
vināśāntam (acc. sg.
m.): mfn. ending in death
vināśa: m. utter loss
, annihilation , perdition , destruction , decay , death , removal
anta: m. end
pāṇḍuḥ (nom.
sg.): m. 'the Pale,' N. of a son of vyāsa by the wife of
vicitra-vīrya and brother of dhṛta-rāṣṭra and vidura (he was
father of the five pāṇḍavas)
jñātvā = abs. jñā:
to know (acc.)
api: even, though
kauravaḥ (nom. sg.
m.): mfn. relating or belonging to the kurus
kuru: m. pl. N. of a
people of India and of their country; N. of the ancestor of the kurus
(son of saṁvaraṇa and tapatī , daughter of the sun ; kuru is the
ancestor of both pāṇḍu and dhṛta-rāṣṭra , though the
patronymic derived from his name is usually applied only to the sons
of the latter , the sons and descendants of the former being called
pāṇḍavas)
mādrī-rūpa-guṇākṣiptaḥ
(nom. sg. m.): transported by Mādrī's beautiful attributes
mādrī: f. "
princess of the Madras " , N. of the second wife of pāṇḍu
and mother of the twins nakula and sahadeva (who were really the sons
of the aśvins)
rūpa: n. any outward
appearance or phenomenon or colour (often pl.) , form , shape ,
figure; handsome form, beauty
guṇa: m. a quality ,
peculiarity , attribute or property; good quality , virtue , merit ,
excellence
ākṣipta: mfn. cast ,
thrown down; thrown on the beach (by the sea) ; caught , seized ,
overcome (as the mind , citta , cetas or -hridaya) by beauty ,
curiosity , &c , charmed , transported
siṣeve = 3rd
pers. sg. perf. sev: to remain or stay at , live in , frequent ,
haunt , inhabit , resort to (acc.) ; to enjoy sexually , have sexual
intercourse with (acc.) ; to devote or apply one's self to ,
cultivate , study , practise , use , employ , perform , do
kāma-jam (acc. sg.
n.): mfn. produced or caused by passion or desire , arising from lust
sukham (acc. sg.): n.
ease , comfort , pleasure , happiness
[No
corresponding Chinese]
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