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mahatyā
tṣṇayā duḥkhair-garbheṇāsmi
yayā dhtaḥ |
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tasyā
niṣphala-yatnāyāḥ
kvāhaṁ mātuḥ kva sā mama || 6.45
6.45
With a
great desire, and attendant sufferings,
She
bore me in her womb:
When
her effort's fruit is naught,
Where
will I be, for my mother? Where she, for me?
COMMENT:
Extra
motivation to find hidden meaning is provided in today's verse by the
difficulty in understanding the ostensible gist of the verse, and
especially of the 3rd pāda.
She, my mother, by whom I was borne
in the womb with great thirst and pains, — where am I now with
regard to her, all her efforts fruitless, and
where is she with regard to me? (EBC)
My mother bore me in her womb with
pains and great longing. Her efforts have been fruitless.
What am I to her now or she to me? (EHJ)
She bore me in her womb with great
yearning and pain; Yet her efforts are vain:
What am I to my mother? What is she to me? (PO)
The three professors thus each took the
3rd pāda, whose elements are genitive, as a straight
description of the vain or fruitless efforts of the genitive mātuḥ
(mother) in the 4th pāda.
But those translations do not seem to
me to make any sense, even at the ostensible level. Why would the
prince say that his mother's efforts to date had been fruitless?
After all, the prince had got as far as he had got, had he not? –
he had awakened the will to the truth and arrived where he wanted to
be in the forest.
In my book, even at the ostensible
level the 3rd pāda is better read as the genitive absolute, or something akin to the genitive absolute, so that the
prince, following on from the discussion of death in yesterday's verse, is ostensibly saying
“When her effort has ceased to bear fruit (i.e. when I am or we are
dead), what use will I be to my mother, and she to me?”
So much for the surface meaning. What
lies today below the surface?
The first thing to note might be the
antagonistic interplay between mumukṣayā (retaining the desire to
be free) in yesterday's verse and mahatyā tṛṣṇayā
(with a great thirst/desire) in the 1st pāda of today's verse.
If yesterday's thesis
is the need for a practitioner to keep nurturing the flame of his
desire for liberation, today's antithesis is the noble truth that
great desire is invariably attended by sufferings – even if the
desire in question is something so natural and noble as a woman's
longing or yearning to have a baby. The unspoken synthesis might be
the teaching that to have small desire (Skt: alpecchu) is already to
have nirvāṇa.
But the main key that unlocks the
hidden meaning of today's verse might be in the 3rd pāda in the niṣ-
of niṣphala. The niṣ- of niṣphala, I venture to submit, is the
nair- of nair-guṇyam. Just as the hidden meaning of nair-guṇyam
is “having the virtue of being without,” the hidden meaning of
niṣ-phala is “the fruit which is to be without” or “the
effect which is emptiness.” Tasya niṣphala-yatnāyāḥ,
then, might literally mean (if we take the phrase as genitive
absolute) “while her effort is being directed towards the fruit
which is emptiness....”
The
prince's question, in that case, might be about the practical
consequences (whether the agent of realization is understood to be the mother or her son, or both) of an individual's realization of emptiness. The practical consquences of realizing emptiness.... Hmmm. Food for thought.
Any
way up, as evidence in support of the above reading of
the hidden meaning of niṣ-phala, I would like to refer to SN Canto
17 in which Aśvaghoṣa describes Nanda successively attaining four
fruits of dharma, viz:
- he
attained the first fruit of dharma
(dharmasya
pūrvāṃ phala-bhūmim-āpa; SN17.27)
- he
obtained the second fruit in the noble dharma
(prāpa
dvitīyaṃ phalam-ārya-dharme; SN17.37)
- So
that he attained, because of practice, the fruit of not returning,
and stood as if at the gateway to the citadel of nirvāṇa
(yogād-anāgāmi-phalaṃ
prapadya dvārīva nirvāṇa-purasya tasthau ; SN17.41)
The fourth of these four fruits is the
worthy state of the arhat, known in Chinese and Japanese as 四果
(Jap: SHIKA), “the fourth fruit” or “the fourth
effect.”
And the fourth effect as Aśvaghoṣa
describes it is very much a matter of nir- and niṣ- and vi- and
vita-, all of which prefixes mean “being without":-
Having attained to the seat of arhathood, he was worthy of being served. Without ambition (nir-utsuko), without partiality (niṣ-praṇayo), without expectation (nir-āśaḥ); / Without fear (vi-bhīr), without sorrow (vi-śug), without pride (vīta-mado), and without the red taint of passion (vi-rāgaḥ); while being nothing but himself, he seemed in his constancy to be different. // SN17.61 //
arhattvam-āsādya sa sat-kriyārho
nirutsuko niṣpraṇayo nirāśaḥ /
vibhīr-viśug-vītamado virāgaḥ sa
eva dhṛtyānya ivābabhāse // 17.61 //
Speaking of being without, eight or
nine years ago while practising alone by the forest in France as I am
doing now, I came up, on the basis of sitting-dhyāna, with the
following attempt to express in my own words that empty fruit (niṣ-phalam) which is
endowed with the virtue of being without (nair-guṇyam).
Without fear or greed,
From dawn until dusk,
Sits Buddha's mind-seed,
Untainted by husk.
Since then events seem to have
conspired to test how real or constant the realization was that I was
presuming to express then. For example, when the current financial crisis first hit
the news in 2007, how amenable were my fear reflexes to being
excited? Again, when in response to the financial crisis I turned to
gold, and the strategy proved successful, how capable was my fear of
turning into greed?
The answer to those question might be:
1. Very amenable, and 2. Very capable.
Small desire is not no desire, but
neither is it greed.
The Buddha's ultimate teaching, the
teaching of small desire, is too simple for words. A child of three
could understand it, and yet...
VOCABULARY
mahatyā (inst. sg. f.): mfn. great
mahatyā (inst. sg. f.): mfn. great
tṛṣṇayā
(inst. sg.): f. thirst ; desire , avidity (chiefly ifc.)
duḥkhaiḥ
(inst. pl.): n. pain, sorrow, suffering
garbheṇa
(inst. sg.): m. the womb
asmi =
1st pers. sg. as: to be
yayā
(inst. sg. f.): by whom
dhṛtaḥ
(nom. sg. m.): mfn. held, borne, maintained
tasyāḥ
(gen. sg. f.): her
niṣphala-yatnāyāḥ
(gen. sg. f.): efforts being fruitless ; effort bearing the fruit of
nothingness
niṣphala:
bearing no fruit , fruitless , barren , resultless , successless ,
useless , vain
yatna:
m. (also pl.) effort , exertion , energy , zeal , trouble , pains ,
care
kva:
ind. where? (with √bhū , √as) how is it with? what has become
of? i.e. it is done with ; or kva alone may have the same meaning
(e. g. kva sukham , where is happiness? i.e. there is no such thing
as happiness ; kva - kva or kutra-kva (implying excessive
incongruity) where is this? where is that? how distant is this from
that? how little does this agree with that?
aham
(nom. sg. m.): I
mātuḥ
(gen. sg. f.): of mother
kva:
ind. where?
sā
(nom. sg. f.): she
mama
(gen. sg.): of me
慈母懷妊我 深愛常抱苦
生已即命終 竟不蒙子養
存亡各異路 今爲何處求
慈母懷妊我 深愛常抱苦
生已即命終 竟不蒙子養
存亡各異路 今爲何處求
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