⏑−⏑−¦−⏑⏑¦−⏑−−¦¦⏑−⏑−¦−⏑⏑¦−⏑−− Upajāti
(Mālā)
yataḥ
śarīraṁ manaso vaśena
pravartate vāpi
nivartate vā |
−−⏑−¦−⏑⏑¦−⏑−−¦¦−−⏑−¦−⏑⏑¦−⏑−−
yukto
damaś-cetasa eva tasmāc-cittād-te kāṣṭha-samaṁ śarīram
|| 7.27
7.27
Since
the body, by the mind's command,
Either
carries on or stops its doing,
Therefore
what is appropriate is taming of the mind.
Without
the thinking mind, the body is like a wooden log.
COMMENT:
Experts
in the workings of the human mind include great writers, like William
Shakespeare, and great psychologists, like Sigmund Freud.
Experts
in the workings of the human body include great physiologists like
Charles Sherrington.
But
to know the Buddha's teaching, in my book, is to know sitting, from
the inside of it.
To know sitting means
to know not only the ease in sitting referred to yesterday in the
famous Zen phrase 安樂法門
(ANRAKU [no] HOMON), the Dharma-gate of ease/happiness, but
to know also the difficulty of sitting; it means to know good
sitting, to know bad sitting, and to know sitting beyond good and
bad. It means to know sitting with the body, to know sitting with the
mind, and to know sitting as dropping off body and mind.
Read in this light,
today's verse might be an expression of that naïve idealism on the
prince's part in which mind and body are seen as originally separate
from each other; or it might be a precursor to that practical
teaching of the enlightened Buddha which recognized the role that
the thinking mind has to play in allowing the right thing to
do itself. I think Aśvaghoṣa exactly intended today's verse to be both.
This morning while I
was sitting I remembered something that, during a lesson
with Marjory Barlow, made me laugh at the time, and made me smile inwardly to
remember it. In a previous lesson Marjory had emphasized the
importance of humility on the teacher's part in giving an Alexander
lesson. I had related what I thought Marjory had said to my brother,
in Chinese whispers style, and he had related it to one of his
Alexander teachers, who was nearly as experienced as Marjory was. This veteran teacher had replied that for her it was not so much
about humility as it was all about confidence. So the new Chinese
whisper was duly relayed back from my brother to me and from
big-mouthed me to Marjory herself. Marjory who was working with me on
the table at the time paused for a good while. What kind of
clarification might follow, I wondered to myself, expectantly.
“Oh well,” Marjory said finally, “I know what I mean!”
This, in retrospect,
was one of Marjory's all-time best clarifications – in the same
spirit as what I referred to yesterday about happiness spreading out
in waves, a la Ricky Nelson.
I have described on
this blog many times, in such a way that I am afraid that few
readers, or none, has truly been able to understand what I have been
going on about, that in his eagerness to negate naïve idealism, my
Zen teacher Gudo Nishijima threw the baby out with the bathwater when
it came to being prepared to recognize any role for the thinking mind
in sitting-zen. For Gudo, Dogen's “sitting with the mind” meant
sitting in a somewhat imbalanced condition, with the sympathetic
nervous system in the ascendancy.
And so now here I am
writing again about my teacher's big mistake. And every time I write about it I do so
with less and less of an expectation that anybody out there will really understand
what I am writing about, and more and more of a sense, a la Ricky Nelson and a
la Marjory Barlow, that it is all right now, as long as I know what I
mean!
FM Alexander described
his work as the most mental thing there is, because Alexander work is
all about the conscious sending of mental messages to muscles either
to get on and do something (“direction), or to stop doing
(“inhibition”).
In that sense, the
thoughts around mind and body of FM Alexander and the thoughts around
mind and body expressed by the Buddha-to-be in today's verse would
seem to have a lot in common with each other, but not so much in common
with the Buddha's teaching as I have just discussed it, in which he primary thing is neither mind nor body, but the act of sitting.
And yet, the first
paragraph of Alexander's third book, The Use of the Self, contains
the following admission.
I must admit that when I began my investigation, I, in common with most people, conceived of 'body' and 'mind' as separate parts of the same organism, and consequently believed that human ills, difficulties, and shortcomings could be classified as either 'mental' or 'physical' and dealt with on specifically 'mental' or specifically 'physical' lines. My practical experiences, however, led me to abandon this point of view and readers of my books will be aware that the technique described in them is based on the opposite conception, namely, that it is impossible to separate 'mental' and 'physical' processes in any form of human activity.
And
at the same time, as quoted in Shobogenzo, Sakyamuni
Buddha told a great gathering:
"This is why we practise full lotus sitting."
Then the Thus-Come, the World-Honored One, taught his disciples that they should, like this, sit. Among those who stray from the way some seek enlightenment by constantly remaining on tiptoes, some seek enlightenment by constantly standing up, and some seek enlightenment by constantly carrying their legs on their shoulders. Mad and stubborn mind like this is sunk in the sea of falsity, and the physical form is not quiet. Therefore the Buddha taught his disciples full lotus sitting -- sitting that rights hearts and minds. How so? Because, when we allow the body to be upright, the heart tends to mend. When the body itself rights sitting, then the heart is not faint and, with open heart and true mind, we tether our attention to what exists before us. If the mind races or becomes distracted, if the body leans or becomes agitated, [sitting] inhibits this and brings us back. When we want to experience samadhi and want to enter samadhi, and yet all kinds of thought-chasing and and all kinds of dissipation is going on, [sitting] totally puts a stop to all this. Training and learning like this, we experience and enter the samadhi that is king of samadhis.
I
have devoted nearly 20 years now to an effort to clarify for self and
others the significance of Alexander's discovery, or re-discovery, of
the secret of Zen for our time. But in recent months, and
particularly this summer while alone in France, I have felt myself
tangibly losing the will to continue any effort that is primarily directed towards others.
A
few months ago I received an email from an evidently highly
intelligent Zen academic / mathematician – not the one referred to
yesterday but another one – who expressed his desire to meet me for
some one-on-one Zen doku-san. This
Ph.D-to-be expressed his interest in what I had written about
“sitting with the mind.” He seemed to understand that by “sitting
with the mind” I meant some kind of purely mental meditation which saved one the
bother of actually placing one's sitting bones on a cushion and
crossing one's legs on the floor.
Oh well.... I know what I mean.
Sometimes, it is true, without the thinking mind the body is like a wooden log. And sometimes, it is also true, the body without any thinking mind spontaneously rises up from the earth like a geyser.
That being so "without the thinking mind the body is like a wooden log" is all too true, and all too false.
VOCABULARY
yataḥ:
ind. since
śarīram
(nom. sg.): n. the body
manasaḥ
(gen. sg.): n. the mind
vaśena
(inst. sg.): m. authority , power , control , dominion (vaśena "
by command of , by force of , on account of , by means of , according
to ")
pravartate
= 3rd pers. sg. pra- √ vṛt: , to roll or go onwards
(as a carriage) , be set in motion or going
vā:
or
api:
also
ca:
and
api:
also
nivartate
= 3rd pers. sg. ni- √ vṛt: to turn back , stop
(trans. and intrans.); to turn away , retreat , flee , escape ,
abstain or desist; to leave off, cease , end , disappear , vanish ;
to be ineffective or useless ; not to exist (yato vāco nivartante ,
for which there are no words)
vā:
or
ca:
and
yuktaḥ
(nom. sg. m.): mfn. fit , suitable , appropriate , proper , right ,
established , proved , just , due , becoming to or suitable for (gen.
loc. or comp); auspicious , favourable
damaḥ
(nom. sg.): m. self-command , self-restraint , self-control; m.
taming
cetasaḥ
(gen. sg.): n. consciousness , intelligence , thinking soul , heart ,
mind
eva:
(emphatic)
tasmāt:
ind. from that, therefore
cittāt
(abl. sg.): n. thinking , reflecting , imagining , thought; n. the
heart, mind
ṛte:
ind. under pain of , with the exclusion of , excepting , besides ,
without , unless (with abl. or acc. or a sentence beginning with
yatas)
kāṣṭha-samam
(nom. sg. n.): like a lump of wood
kāṣṭha:
n. a piece of wood or timber , stick
sama:
mfn. same , equal , similar , like , equivalent
śarīram
(nom. sg.): n. the body
身所行起滅 皆由心意力
若離心意者 此身如枯木
是故當調心 心調形自正
若離心意者 此身如枯木
是故當調心 心調形自正
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