−−⏑−¦−⏑⏑¦−⏑−−¦¦−−⏑−¦−⏑⏑¦−⏑−− Upajāti
(Bālā)
ke-cij-jala-klinna-jaṭā-kalāpā
dviḥ pāvakaṁ juhvati mantra-pūrvam |
−−⏑−¦−⏑⏑¦−⏑−−¦¦⏑−⏑−¦−⏑⏑¦−⏑−−
mīnaiḥ
samaṁ ke-cid-apo vigāhya vasanti kūrmollikhitaiḥ
śarīraiḥ || 7.17
7.17
Some, their matted
locks having been wetted in water,
Twice
pour butter into the fire, with mantras.
or
Twice
make offerings of three, with mantras.
or
Twice
a day, with mantras, honour a person who has been purified.
Some,
like fishes, go deep into the water
And
there they abide,
their
bodies being scratched by turtles
or
their
bodies scratching the surface of the tortoise.
COMMENT:
Today's verse is the
fourth in a series of five verses in this monologue. The previous
three verses ostensibly relate to what and how ascetics eat and
drink. The first verse of the five (BC7.14) is introductory and the
fifth verse (BC7.18) is conclusory. We might expect today's verse, as
the fourth verse in this series, to be the most enigmatic verse, or
the most difficult one to get to the bottom of – and I think it is.
First of all, is
today's verse, like the three verses preceding it, related to food
and drink?
It could be insofar as
(a) pāvakaṁ
juhvati in the 2nd
pāda means “they poured butter
into the fire” and (b) apah in the 3rd
pāda means water.
Rather than being consumed, however, this butter is sacrificed, and
this water is plunged into. So something does not quite fit. The
reader's brain – at least the brain of this reader – is denied
the satisfaction of a last piece of a jigsaw fitting neatly into
place.
In
translating and commenting on the three previous verses, I was able
to make a case – convincing at least myself – for an ostensible
ascetic reading on the surface and a hidden reading available to
those who are prepared to dig for it, or to go on the necessary
journey, via descending steps. But the hidden meaning of today's verse,
as I read it, is not so accessible.
The
first half of the verse, i.e. the first yugapāda, is the more problematic, as the reference to
dreadlocks seems to exclude anybody other than ascetic peacocks. Any
hope of a hidden reading would centre on the multiple meanings of
pāvakaṁ juhvati.
Since
pāvaka (fire) can mean the number three (there being three kinds of
fire), and √hu can mean to make an offering not only of butter but
of any kind, could dviḥ pāvakaṁ juhvati suggest doing two sets
of three prostrations – for example, before having one's head
shaved for the first time?
Again,
since pāvaka (fire) can mean a person who has been purified (as if
by fire), and dviḥ can mean not only “twice” but “twice a
day,” could dviḥ pāvakaṁ juhvati mean “they honour a human
being who has been purified [= buddha] twice a day [at least]”?
So, at a stretch, could the suggestion be that we who once had long
hair which would drip with water (when we swam or when we washed it),
now, having shaved our heads, honour the Buddha by our practice of sitting-meditation on a daily
basis first thing every morning and last thing at night?
It
is possible, but my guess is that Aśvaghoṣa did not wish to give
us the satisfaction of cracking the first yugapāda with an attempt
like this – a putative “right answer” of the kind provided by
crossword puzzles, but not, sadly, by life.
I
found myself thinking when I woke up this morning that I could have intervened to
save our dog even after triggering her initial injury. The problem
only became serious after I went to France in the middle of July,
and my wife, being so emotionally attached to her dog, struggled to
cope. If I had come back from France, I could have taken the dog to
see the local osteopath who is my friend. He would have been a lot
more help than the useless vets my wife visited. Again, I could have
explored the homeopathic route with my friend who is a homeopath.
Could have, would have, should have.... As if, all along, there was a
right answer, but I in my stupidity and ignorance failed to work it
out in time.
In truth, I tell myself, there never was a right answer that I could have worked out...
Or was there?
Dogen writes in
Shobogenzo – I think he is quoting Nāgārjuna – that in
principle a lay practitioner can attain the truth that the Buddha
realized, but in practice it is extremely difficult. If we attend to
our family life, our practice suffers; and if we focus on our
practice, our family life suffers. In this situation it boils down to
a question of selection.
Those words a
question of selection have a lot of barnacles attached to them
in the murky depths of my unconscious mind. They were the words Gudo
Nishijima used to describe a predicament I was in exactly 30 years
ago, in the late summer and autumn of 1983. My end-gaining mind
latched onto those words all too eagerly.... If it is a question of
selection, OK, that is easy then. Of course, in view of My Great
Mission in life, I will chose the Way to Enlightenment.
On
a Saturday afternoon when I lived in Tokyo, from 1982 onwards, there would be Zazen, followed by an English
lecture on Shobogenzo, followed by Zazen again, followed by a
Japanese lecture. On the particular afternoon in question in September 1983 – I
remember it was in Mita, not in the usual venue of Hongo-sanchome –
I had alluded to my romantic predicament in a question after the English lecture and
Gudo had deemed that it was a question of selection. In the
following Zazen period, straightening my spine and pulling in my chin
like my life depended on it, I zealously reflected on the question of
selection and in my excited state wherein my pelvis and my head were
hopelessly out of true alignment with each other, I latched heatedly
onto the wrong conclusion. Straight after that Zazen period, and before
starting his Japanese lecture, Gudo came up to me and said something
to the effect of “At the same time, there is no need to deny
calling your girlriend up on the telephone.” (These were the days, mind you, when a
three-minute phonecall from Japan to England would cost me a day's
English-teaching wages.) Evidently Gudo had reflected on his
question of selection while sitting – which tended, ironically,
to be much better aligned than the sitting of those students who
followed his instructions most literally – and realized that a more
moderate approach in the middle way might be appropriate. But I had
made up my mind already, feeling my own sitting to be quite balanced,
thank you very much. So I replied to Gudo something along the lines
of “It is OK. The problem does not affect my balance so much.”
Never was a feeling more unreliable. And never was a falser word
spoken.
So
it is not that there are no answers, and not that there is no question
of selection. In the writings of Aśvaghoṣa there are verses as I
hope to have demonstrated over the years, that can be cracked. And
according to the Zen patriarchs, sometimes it does boil down to a
question of selection.
At
the same time, to decide too quickly that it all boils down to a
question of selection – as I decided at the age of 23 that my
predicament boiled down to a question of selection, before I
had searched thorougly enough for a middle way – is a mistake.
Sometimes it is a question of selection; and sometimes it
isn't. In principle it is not necessarily so, as Nāgārjuna indicates. But in practice sometimes it is, as Nāgārjuna also suggests.
So is it a question of selection? Or is it not a question of selection?
Yes and No.
This
being so, it may be that Aśvaghoṣa deliberately wrote – like a
novelist writing a novel with an uncertain ending – some verses
that cannot be cracked. One such memorable example comes towards the
end of SN Canto 17:
Thus he overcame three surges, three sharks, three swells, the unity of water, five currents, two shores, / And two crocodiles: in his eight-piece raft, he crossed the flood of suffering which is so hard to cross. // 17.60 //
Read in this light, the
words mantra-pūrvam
(with mantras) in the 2nd
pāda take on real meaning. A
mantra, from the root √man,
to think, originally means “an instrument of thought.” This in
itself is ironic, since a mantra, as generally understood, has come
to mean a mystical sound or word that is repeated thoughtlessly as a
means of transcending thought. But if a mantra means an instrument of
thought, then the verse I referred to yesterday recited in praise of
the kaṣāya is a mantra, since it reminds us in what direction to
keep pointing our thoughts....
広度諸衆生
KO-DO-SHO-SHUJO
widely crossing over
all living beings.
My tentative conclusion
about the first yugapāda, then, it is that it might be a device by
which Aśvaghoṣa is encouraging us to think in an open-ended or open-minded manner. The first yugapāda might itself be a kind of
mantra, an instrument of thought.
I think the second
yugapāda, in contrast, is in fact a kind of riddle that can be
cracked – but only by people who are accustomed to work in which
the surface of the egg, or the surface of the tortoise, is scratched
with the whole body abiding in stillness.
Ostensibly the man born
again is describing some weird brand of asceticism which involves the
ascetic practitioners' bodies being “scratched by tortoises”
(EBC) or “scored by turtles” (EHJ/PO). But
I am sure that, below the surface, vasanti
kūrmollikhitaiḥ śarīraiḥ is a description of people sitting in
a meditation hall – abiding there, with bodies that are scratching
the surface of the tortoise.
In
conclusion, then, today's verse can be read as I have translated it
above, as replete with many possible meanings, none of which should
be selected as “the right answer.” Indeed, to allow one's brain
to fix upon a “right answer” might be the very thing Aśvaghoṣa
wishes the reader to avoid.
Conversely,
today's verse can be read as I have translated it below, the first
yugapāda describing nothing but the behaviour of dreadlocked
ascetics, which never even scratches the surface of the tortoise; and
the second yugapāda describing the behaviour of shaven-headed Zen
practitioners whose sitting-meditation does indeed scratch the
surface of the tortoise.
7.17
Some, their matted
coils of hair dripping with water,
Twice
pour butter into the fire, with mantras.
Some,
like fishes, go deep into the water
And
there they abide,
their
bodies scratching the surface of the tortoise.”
Read
like this, today's verse seems to affirm the truth of it being, in
the end, a question of selection. The way of asceticism? Or the Buddha's way of sitting-meditation? Pay your money and make your choice. Piss or get off the pot.
But
there again, today's
verse can be read like this:
7.17
Some, their matted locks having been wetted in water,
Twice
pour butter into the fire, with mantras.
or
Twice
make offerings of three, with mantras.
or
Twice
a day, with mantras, honour a person who has been purified.
Some,
like fishes, go deep into the water
And
there they abide,
their
bodies scratching the surface of the tortoise.
Read
like this, the impenetrability of first yugapāda creates a certain tension which the cracked riddle of the second yugapāda resolves – like delusion being followed by
enlightenment.
Isn't
this how we would like our life of Zen practice to be? Bitter effort
followed in due course by sweet reward.
In SN Canto 16, the
Buddha, in exhorting Nanda to manifest heroic endeavour, seems to
suggest to Nanda that this is how it is:
Just as a fruit may have flesh that is bitter to the taste and yet is sweet when eaten ripe, / So heroic effort, through the struggle it involves, is bitter and yet, in accomplishment of the aim, its mature fruit is sweet. // SN16.93 //
In principle, Nāgārjuna
seems to suggest, this is how it is and how it can be, even for a lay
practitioner. Even for a lay practitioner, it is possible in
principle. But especially for a lay practitioner, neither the Buddha
nor any Zen Patriarch ever said it was easy in practice.
In principle it is possible even for a lay practitioner to enjoy the sweetness of the mature fruit of enlightenment, or so they say. But in practice it is not easy even to scratch the surface of the tortoise – that much is for damn sure.
VOCABULARY
ke-cid
(nom. pl. m.): some
jala-klinna-jaṭā-kalāpāḥ
(nom. pl. m.): their matted coils of hair dripping with water
jala:
n. water
klinna:
mfn. moistened , wet ; running (as an eye) ; rotted , putrefied
jaṭā-kalāpa:
m. a knot of braided hair
jaṭā:
f. the hair twisted together (as worn by ascetics , by śiva , and
persons in mourning)
kalā:
f. a small part of anything , any single part or portion of a whole ,
esp. a sixteenth part
kalāpa:
m. (fr. √āp, to get) " that which holds single parts together
" , a bundle , band ; a peacock's tail ; an ornament in general
; a zone , a string of bells (worn by women round the waist) ; the
rope round an elephant's neck ; totality , whole body or collection
of a number of separate things
dvis:
ind. twice ; twice a day
pāvakam
(acc. sg.): m. fire or the god of fire ; m. name of the number 3
(like all words for " fire " , because fire is of three
kinds » agni); m. a kind of ṛṣi , a saint , a person purified by
religious abstraction or one who purified from sin
agni:
m. fire , sacrificial fire (of three kinds , gārhapatya , āhavanīya
, and dakṣiṇa)
gārhapatya:
m. the householder's fire (received from his father and transmitted
to his descendants , one of the three sacred fires , being that from
which sacrificial fires are lighted
āhavanīya:
m. consecrated fire taken from the householder's perpetual fire and
prepared for receiving oblations
dakṣiṇāgni:
m. the southern fire of the altar
juhvati
= 3rd pers. pl. hu: to sacrifice (esp. pour butter into
the fire) , offer or present an oblation (acc. or gen.) to (dat.) or
in (loc.) , sacrifice to , worship or honour (acc.) with (instr.) ;
to sprinkle on; to eat
mantra-pūrvam:
ind. with mantras
mantra:
m. " instrument of thought " , speech , sacred text or
speech , a prayer or song of praise ; a Vedic hymn or sacrificial
formula ; a sacred formula ; a mystical verse or magical formula
(sometimes personified) , incantation , charm , spell
pūrvam:
ifc. in the sense of " with " e.g. prīti-pūrvam , with
love ; mati-pūrvam with intention , intentionally
mīnaiḥ
(inst. pl.): m. a fish
samam:
ind. ind. in like manner , alike , equally , similarly; mfn. same ,
equal , similar , like , equivalent , like to or identical or
homogeneous with (instr.
ke-cid
(nom. pl. m.): some
apaḥ
(acc. sg.): n. water
vigāhya
= abs. vi- √ gāh: , to plunge or dive into , bathe in , enter ,
penetrate , pervade ; to be engrossed by or intent upon , ponder ;
to reach, obtain
vasanti
= 3rd pers. pl. vas: to dwell, live ; to remain , abide
with or in (with loc. of pers. ; loc. or acc. of place ); to remain
or keep on or continue in any condition (with a pp. , e.g. with
channa , " to continue to be covered)
kūrmollikhitaiḥ
(inst. pl. n.): being scratched by tortoises / scratching a tortoise
kūrma:
m. a tortoise , turtle ; the earth considered as a tortoise swimming
on the waters
ullikhita:
mfn. slit , torn ; scratched , polished , &c ; painted, Bcar.
ul-
√ likh: to make a slit or incision or line , tear , mark by
scratching ; to scratch , scrape , cut , make lines upon ; to make
a scratch or incision , cut into ; to chip , chisel ; to delineate ,
shape , make visible or clear ; to polish , grind away by polishing
śarīraiḥ
(inst. pl.): n. body
或常水沐頭 或復奉事火
水居習魚仙
水居習魚仙
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