⏑⏑−⏑⏑¦−⏑−⏑−−¦¦⏑⏑−−⏑⏑¦−⏑−⏑−− Aupacchandasaka
nava-puṣkara-garbha-komalābhyāṁ
tapanīyojjvala-saṁgatāṅgadābhyām |
⏑⏑−⏑⏑¦−⏑−⏑−−¦¦⏑⏑−−⏑⏑¦−⏑−⏑−−
svapiti
sma tathāparā
bhujābhyāṁ parirabhya priyavan-mdaṅgam-eva || 5.50
5.50
With her
two arms
as soft as the sepals of young lotuses,
as soft as the sepals of young lotuses,
With her
two arms
whose blazing golden bands had merged together,
whose blazing golden bands had merged together,
Slept an
individual who thus was different,
Embracing,
as if it were a beloved friend,
nothing
more or less than a drum.
COMMENT:
The sepals of young
lotuses should be as soft as portrayed in this image gleaned from the
internet, which is to say as soft
as an Alexander teacher's wrists, which is to say as soft as the arms
of a sitting buddha.
Soft arms are conduits
of golden energy. But here comes the tricky part: the intention to be
a conduit for golden energy is liable to block the flow of energy as
surely as if a door had been bolted with an iron bar.
On the face of
it, today's verse does not have much to do with non-doing as
practised in the FM Alexander Technique, nor much to do with
sitting-zen. Nevertheless – whether like a heroic miner emerging
from a deep pit bearing golden nuggets, or whether like a pathetic gullible Christian who contrives to see the face of Jesus in his cheese on
toast – I have thus read today's verse as intimately related with two of my
favourite things.
And why stop there? Can
today's verse also be read as representing the Buddha's dialectic
philosophy of the middle way?
On the face of it,
again, not easily.
But if one accepts that
a gilded lute and a bamboo flute symbolize, as I have insinuated,
something religious and something irreligious, then today's verse
ought to speak of synthesis, or uniting of spirit and matter in
action. This, I venture to submit, might be one of the things that is
hinted at by the coming together of left and right arms, and what is represented
by the drum.
If I quote
from my comment of 2nd March:
In Gudo's version of dialectic Buddhism, Hegelian dialectic idealism constituted a thesis, to which Marxist dialectic materialism constituted the anti-thesis, and Gudo's “philosophy of action” constituted a new synthesis. In Gudo's synthesis, subject and object are joined in the reality of the action, that real action being totally separated from thinking, which is not real.
During the same decade of the 1980s, it turns out, George Soros was working out his own new synthesis, centred on the concept of reflexivity. In the epilogue to his The Alchemy of Finance (first published 1987), Soros writes:
Hegel propounded a dialectic of ideas; Marx turned the idea on its head and espoused dialectic materialism; now there is a new dialectic that connects the participants' thinking with the events in which they participate – that is, it operates between ideas and material conditions. If Hegel's concept was the thesis and Marxism the antithesis, reflexivity is the synthesis.
The woman in today's
verse is described in the 3rd pāda as tathāparā (=
tathā + aparā), translated by EBC and PO as “another”; and by
EHJ as “Similarly, a third [was sleeping]....” EBC and PO
evidently regarded tathā as inconsequential and ignored it. EHJ
translated tathā as “similarly,” suggesting that the woman in
today's verse was similar to the women in the two previous verses
insofar as she was sleeping.
The merit of taking
tathā to mean “similarly” or “in the same vein” is that this
would allow an attention-arousing juxtaposition of the sameness in
tathā and the difference in aparā; hence, for example, “An
individual who – in the same vein – was different.” The
juxtaposition of same and different would thus encourage us to
consider in what way these three individual women described so far
are the same and in what way they are different.
This line of inquiry
might lead to the conclusion that the three women are all the same in
being different – different in the sense of each being individuals
in their own right; or in other words, being real, being different
from a generic concept.
The way I have ended up
reading tathāparā, however, is to take tathā (“thus”) as
referring to this third woman's use of her two arms, in such a way
that the arms are soft, and in such a way that the left and right
arms cross the mid-line and form a circuit that allows energy to flow
left to right and right to left. In this way, the woman in today's
verse, or the metaphorical monk she represents, is different (aparā
/ apara) from, or is a cut above, religious and irreligious people
who do not sit like this.
Sitting like this means
sitting with soft arms, sitting such that golden energy flows,
sitting such that left and right sides are integrated, and sitting as
an individual.
In conclusion, then, I
think embracing mṛdaṅgam-eva as if it were a beloved friend
suggests embracing in this manner the action of just sitting. I take
the mṛdaṅgam (drum) as a symbol of beating of the drum, i.e.
action itself – like the 打 TA
(lit. “to strike”), in 祗管打坐
SHIKAN-TAZA (“just sitting”). And I take the emphatic eva
as corresponding to the 祗管
SHIKAN (“just”) of 祗管打坐
SHIKAN-TAZA (“just sitting”).
For this reason, having
slept on it, and upon further reflection, I saw that I had to
translate eva as “nothing more or less than” – because, in the
end, that is what golden sitting (kāñcanam-āsanam) means, and that
is what the Buddha's lifeblood might be: nothing less than sitting.
And nothing more.
VOCABULARY
nava-puṣkara-garbha-komalābhyām
(inst. dual m.): tender as the hearts of new lotuses
nava:
mfn. new, young
puṣkara:
n. a blue lotus-flower , a lotus
garbha:
m. the womb ; the inside , middle , interior of anything , calyx (as
of a lotus)
komala:
mfn. soft, tender , bland , sweet , pleasing , charming , agreeable ;
n. water, silk
tapanīyojjvala-saṁgatāṅgadābhyām
(inst. dual m.): their blazing golden armlets having come together
tapanīya:
'to be heated'; n. gold purified with fire
ujjvala:
mfn. blazing up , luminous , splendid , light
saṁgata:
mfn. come together , joined, united ; fitted together
aṅga-da:
n. a bracelet worn on the upper arm.
aṅga:
n. a limb of the body; member ; the body
da:
mfn. giving , granting , offering , effecting , producing
svapiti
= 3rd pers. sg. svap: to sleep
sma:
(joined with a pres. tense or pres. participle to give them a past
sense)
tathā:
ind. in that manner , so , thus ; so also , in like manner
aparā
(nom. sg. f.): mfn. other, another ; different
bhujābhyām
(inst. dual): m. the arm
parirabhya
= pari- √ rabh: to embrace , clasp
√ rabh:
to take hold of , grasp , clasp , embrace ; to desire vehemently ; to
act rashly
priyavan
(acc. sg. n.): mfn. 1. possessing friends; 2. like a friend / lover
priya:
m. a friend; a lover , husband
-vat:
1. possessive affix
-vat:
2 an affix added to words to imply likeness or resemblance , and
generally translatable by “as” or “like"
mṛdaṅgam
(acc. sg.): m. (prob. fr. mṛdam + ga , " going about while
being beaten ") a kind of drum , tabour
eva:
in its most frequent use of strengthening the idea expressed by any
word , eva must be variously rendered by such adverbs as) just ,
exactly , very , same , only , even , alone , merely , immediately on
, still , already , &c
纓絡如曳鎖
衣裳絞縛身
抱琴而偃地 猶若受苦人
抱琴而偃地 猶若受苦人
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