−⏑−−−¦⏑−−−¦¦−⏑−−¦⏑−⏑−
nāsmi
yātuṁ puraṁ śakto dahyamānena cetasā |
−⏑−−¦⏑−−−¦¦⏑−⏑⏑¦⏑−⏑−
tvām-araṇye
parityajya sumantra
iva rāghavam || 6.366.36
I am not able, with a mind that is
burning,
To go to the city,
Having left you behind in the woods –
As Sumantra was unable to leave behind
Raghu-descended Rāma.
COMMENT:
The old Nepalese manuscript has Sumitra
in the 4th pāda, and EBC's text retains Sumitra from his
manuscripts, with a note referencing Sumantra to Rāmāyaṇa Book
2, Canto 57. Sumitra, which means “Good Friend,” is the name of
one of the wives of Rāma's father, and she is mentioned in Rāmāyaṇa
Book 2, Canto 56. So either Aśvaghoṣa originally wrote Sumantra
and a later copyist made a copying error, confusing Sumitra and
Sumantra, or Aśvaghoṣa called Sumantra su-mitraḥ, “a good
friend.”
Either way, the 4th pāda
refers to the 57th canto in the 2nd book of
the Rāmāyaṇa, titled Sumantra's Return. As the title suggests,
the 57th canto does not in fact describe Sumantra leaving Prince
Rāma; what it does rather describe is Sumantra's emotional disquiet
on having left Rāma and on returning to Ayodhya without him.
The Rāmāyana is written in the same
32 syllable per verse (8 syllable per pāda) metre as all the verses
we have covered in BC Canto 6 to date. And the sense of the Rāmāyana
being a poem is impressively brought out by the translation that
Ralph
T. H. Griffith accomplished between 1870 and 1874. Here is Griffith's translation of the opening verses of Rāmāyaṇa 2.57, with the parts highlighted that describe Sumantra's failure to
put Rāma behind him.
King Guha's heart with sorrow sank:
He with Sumantra talked, and spent
With his deep sorrow, homeward went.
Sumantra, as the king decreed,
Yoked to the car each noble steed,
And to Ayodhyá's city sped
With his sad heart disquieted.
On lake and brook and scented grove
His glances fell, as on he drove:
City and village came in view
As o'er the road his coursers flew.
On the third day the charioteer,
When now the hour of night was near,
Came to Ayodhyá's gate, and found
The city all in sorrow drowned.
To him, in spirit quite cast down,
Forsaken seemed the silent town,
And by the rush of grief oppressed
He pondered in his mournful breast:
'Is all Ayodhyá burnt with grief,
Steed, elephant, and man, and chief?
Does her loved Ráma's exile so
Afflict her with the fires of woe?'
Thus as he mused, his steeds flew fast,
And swiftly through the gate he passed.
In the true sense, then, Sumantra was
not able to leave behind Rāma just as Chandaka now admits he is
unable to leave the prince behind, and just as in Saundarananda Nanda
was initially unable to leave Sundarī behind.
So today's verse as I read it, is
primarily a stimulus to consider what it means, at various levels, to
leave and to have left behind.
Today's verse is the last in a series
of six verses featuring four verbs meaning to forsake, to forget, to
leave, and fully to leave behind, viz:
1. vihātum, from vi- √hā –
translated as to forsake (BC6.31);
2 .vismartum, from vi- √smṛ –
translated as to forget (BC6.32);
3. tyaktum, from √tyaj – translated
as to leave / abdicate (BC6.33); to part from / forego (BC6.34) ; to
renounce / abandon (BC6.35);
4. parityajya, from pari- √tyaj –
translated as having left behind (BC6.36 ).
Is any of this at all relevant to
sitting-meditation?
Here is one way of seeing a connection:
1. vi- √hā, as well as meaning “to
leave behind” also means “to go apart from”; to separate
oneself from. The connection therefore is to the description of the
first dhyāna as “born of separation.”
2. vi- √smṛ means to forget or to
be unmindful of. The verb can therefore be read as representing the
anti-thesis, or an antidote, to the habitual tendency of meditators
to try to concentrate their minds. “Forget involvements forever,”
exhorted Dogen in the first edition of his rules of
sitting-meditation.
3. √tyaj expresses the essence of
sitting-meditation as to leave – but not like that! As such it
brings to mind what FM Alexander famously said to a pupil he was
giving a lesson to: “You are doing what you call leaving yourself
alone.” The point is that the essence is to leave, or let, or
allow, but knowing that intellectually is just as liable to be a
hindrance as a help. Hence:
4. pari- √tyaj adds to √tyaj the
prefix pari- which expresses roundness or fullness. Besides which,
whereas vihātum, vismartum, and tyaktum are infinitives, parityajya
is absolutive, and so it adds further to the sense of a completed
act, as opposed to a nice idea.
Once parityaja in the 3rd
pāda of today's verse is understood like this, the hidden meaning of
the first two pādas comes into focus. Ostensibly Chandaka is
expressing something that he personally finds difficult to do but
which he has no choice but to do -- “ It is hard for me to go to
the city with my mind burning like this, leaving you here in the
woods as Sumantra left Rāma.” But Aśvaghoṣa's real intention
might be to emphasize a universal truth of practice, which is that a
burning mind and real leaving / letting / allowing are mutually
exclusive. In other words, while my mind is burning it is utterly
impossible for me to go to or truly be in place B having already
left, or completely transcended, person A.
For Nanda person A was originally his
beautiful wife Sundarī, the fire for whom was replaced in his heart,
via some skilful means on the part of the Buddha, by a fire for
persons C, the celestial nymphs. Hence,
in Saundarananda Canto 11, with a view to quenching that fire, Ānanda
teaches Nanda:
Blazing with a fire of desire in your heart, you carry out observances with your body: / What is this devout abstinence of yours, who does not practise abstinence with his mind? // SN11.30 // Again, since in spiralling through saṁsāra you have gained celestial nymphs and left them / A hundred times over, what is this yearning of yours for those women? // 11.31 // A fire is not satisfied by dry brushwood, nor the salty ocean by water, / Nor a man of thirst by his desires. Desires, therefore, do not make for satisfaction. // 11.32 // Without satisfaction, whence peace? Without peace, whence ease? / Without ease, whence joy? Without joy, whence enjoyment? // 11.33 // Therefore if you want enjoyment, let your mind be directed within. / Tranquil and impeccable is enjoyment of the inner self and there is no enjoyment to equal it. // 11.34 // In it, you have no need of musical instruments, or women, or ornaments; / On your own, wherever you are, you can indulge in that enjoyment. // 11.35 // The mind suffers mightily as long as thirst persists. / Eradicate that thirst; for suffering co-exists with thirst, or else does not exist. // SN11.36 //
Read in
this light, in conclusion, the having left behind in today's
verse is again intimately related with turning back. Because turning back is the means to eradicate that thirst, and without eradicating that thirst, there is no having left behind.
Ostensibly
in this Canto, Chandraka is the one who turns back, leaving the
prince behind. But really Chandaka does not yet know the path as a
turning back, and so he is not able to leave the prince behind –
just as Sumantra was unable, in the true sense, to leave Rāma
behind.
I hope this makes it clear why, as a
translation of the 4th pāda of today's verse, I have
eschewed the simpler “As Sumantra left Raghu-descended Rāma”
in favour of what I think is the more accurate “As
Sumantra was unable to leave behind Raghu-descended Rāma.”
Today's verse looked quite
straightforward at first glance, apart from the need to clarify a
textual uncertainty surrounding Sumantra vs Sumitra.
Should have known better.
A final reflection on the meaning of
leaving behind stems from having heard an account on the radio of the
daughter or granddaughter of an officer in the Indian army (think
Joanna Lumley) who made a kind of pilgrimage to India to return to the Dalai
Lama some old relic her relative had stolen from Tibet, along with a photo of how the Potala palace used to be.
DL, it was reported, politely received the object, politely examined
the photo for a while, and then made a kind of sweeping gesture motioning back with his hands, as if
to say all that belonged behind him, in the past.
Again, my own teacher Gudo Nishijima,
who was as I knew him – along with many Japanese – something of
an expert in living in the present, used to speak of things of no
importance being “as important as last year's calendar.”
Speaking for myself, in contrast, I
have a terrible deluded tendency – much more persistent than Nanda's – to
hark back to my glory years, before I got sidetracked by Zen, when
all my karma was glowing, everybody loved me, and the world was my
oyster. In this I may have something in common with a certain class
of Brits in the second half of the 20th century who
mourned the loss of our glorious empire. Added to which, I have
always since childhood been a terrible loser. In preaching the true
meaning of “having left behind,” then, I, along with hypocrites
everywhere, would ask readers to do as I say, and not as I do.
VOCABULARY
na: not
na: not
asmi = 1st pers. sg. as: to
be
yātum = inf. yā: to go
puram (acc. sg.): n. the city
śaktaḥ (nom. sg. m.): mfn. able
dahyamānena = inst. sg. n. pres. part.
passive daḥ: to be burned, to burn, to be consumed by flames
cetasā (inst sg.): n. mind, heart
tvām (acc. sg.): you
araṇye (loc. sg.): n. a distant land
; a wilderness , desert , forest ; the wilds, the back of beyond,
the boondocks
parityajya = abs. pari- √ tyaj : to
leave, quit, abandon
pari-: ind. around, fully
su-mantraḥ (nom. sg.): m. 'following
good advice'; name of a minister and charioteer of daśa-ratha
mantra: m. " instrument of
thought " , speech , sacred text or speech , a prayer or song of
praise; consultation , resolution , counsel , advice , plan , design
, secret
su-mitraḥ (nom. sg.): m. 'having good
friends' ; m. a good friend ; m. name of various men ; m. name of one
of the wives of daśa-ratha (mother of lakṣmaṇa and śatru-ghna)
iva: like
rāghavam (acc. sg.): m. (fr. raghu) a
descendant of raghu patr. of aja , of daśa-ratha , and (esp.) of
rāma-candra
我心懷湯火 不堪獨還國
今於空野中 棄捐太子歸
則同須曼提 棄捨於羅摩
我心懷湯火 不堪獨還國
今於空野中 棄捐太子歸
則同須曼提 棄捨於羅摩
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