SAUNDARANANDA 16.91: Sharadvati-putra to Gavam-pati

shaaradvatii-putra-subaahu-cundaaH
kondeya-kaapya-bhRgu-kuNThadhaanaaH
sa-shaivalau revata-kauShThilau ca
maudgalya-gotrash ca GavaaMpatish ca

16.91
The son of Sharadvati, Subahu, Chunda,

Kondeya, Kapya, Bhrigu, Kuntha-dhana,

Plus Shaivala, Revata and Kaushthila,

And he of the Maudgalya clan and Gavam-pati --

COMMENT:
These twelve individuals are the 51st through 62nd of the 62 names on the list, including him of the Maudgalya clan, i.e., Maudgalyayana, another of the ten major disciples.

In seeking to clarify what the Buddha & Ashvaghosha might be saying on the subject of true individuality, I have quoted words that seemed relevant from FM Alexander, Master Dogen, Marjory Barlow, Elisabether Walker, and Kodo Sawaki. Finally, I will say something from my own experience.

Belief in the value of individual freedom was very much in the air during my upbringing. My father's uncle, Eugene Cross, was a close friend of Nye Bevan and a leading light in his own right in the early trade union movement in the South Wales valleys. Sir Eugene Cross was sometimes known in later life as "Mr Ebbw Vale." My father who was generally known in Ebbw Vale as Eugene Cross's nephew, could not wait to escape to the relative anonymity of the big city, Birmingham -- a city which, as a Welshman, he has remained in but never of. My mother, as the only child of a single mother, was brought up in poverty in the house of her grandmother, a worker in a Lancashire cotton mill. My mother's mother was a very hard worker, and my mother herself worked her way to and through a grammar-school education. At family gatherings my maternal grandmother was fond of the toast: "Here's to us. Who's like us? Bloody few!" My paternal grandfather, a steelworker, always encouraged me in the direction of rugged individuality -- "You've got to be tough, see?" He encouraged me to avoid the company of girls in favour of manly pursuits like rugby and boxing. I remember him taking me to the training camp of local boxing hero Howard Winston, his epitome of individual toughness...

All that was part of the background of me setting off by myself in 1982 to seek a way in Japan, where I lived for the next 13 years. There were many things about living in Japan that I liked -- for one thing, the anonymity of living as a foreigner in Tokyo was like living as a Welshman in Birmingham, only moreso.

Still, I did suffer a strong culture shock. My values might have been more Christian than I realised, and I was very sensitive to, and shocked by, a certain totalitarian tendency in Japanese society. This tendency went with the paying of lip-service to universal values, like democracy, and a profound sense of us and them. I rarely encountered overt malevolent racism, but the air was constantly suffused with something more insidious: We (ware-ware) are like this; they, intellectual foreigners with brains that work like computers, are like that. We Japanese (ware-ware Nihonjin) are practical, unlike those intellectual white people. True Buddhism resides with us, the true Buddhists, not with those non-Buddhists who disagree with our view.

In 1987 I read "The Informed Heart" by Bruno Bettleheim, in which he gave an account of his time interned in a Nazi concentration camp, and railed against totalitarianism. One chapter I remember was titled "Men Are Not Ants." The book resonated deeply with me.

A couple of years later I read "The Enigma of Japanese Power" by Karel van Wolferen, a brilliant expose of how Japanese society worked that helped me to understand more clearly the tendency within Japanese society that disturbed me. Even though I hated that tendency, I had somehow become susceptible to it -- just like the Jewish capos that Bruno Bettelheim described becoming integral to the working of the concentration-camp system. I was somehow being pulled into a spider's web of Japanese habit, based around such heavily emotion-laden notions as giri, sense of obligation, and ninjo, human feeling. These restrictive notions are very Japanese, and to struggle against them also is quintissentially Japanese -- as the director of every Tora-san film and yakuza movie is well aware. That is why I use the analogy of a spider's web; because to struggle to get out of it is just to be caught more deeply in it.

So when I returned to England and began Alexander teacher-training in 1995, I got a second culture shock that was in some ways even harder to deal with, because I was older and more set in my ways, than the first culture shock of going to live in Japan. It was as if 13 years on what Dogen called SHUSSHIN NO KATSURO "the vigorous path of getting the body free," had left me totally tangled up in a web of attachment to views that were not my own, and to stiffening reactions that masked my own original features.

I think it was some time during my 3rd year of Alexander teacher training when I began to realise that there was no "Alexander teacher" mould that I had to try to force myself into. It was OK to be me. In fact, not only was it OK to be me: it was absolutely necessary to be me if I was going to be any use to anybody else in the Alexander work. It was truly essential to the work that I learn to inhibit my tendency to stiffen up in politeness and deference when my Alexander head of training, Ray Evans, approached. And I had to get used to calling the head of training not Evans Sensei or Evans Roshi but just the name that his parents had given him: Ray.

What is true in Alexander work is equally true, as far as I see it, in sitting practice as was practised by the Buddha and his followers. People who make a big thing of sewing a robe immaculately and wearing it on top of a black Japanese uniform, while trying to force themselves into what looks from the outside like a buddha's posture, are missing the point. There are people who have never even been to Japan and yet they do this kind of thing, wishing to imitate the formalistic, conformist behaviour of group-minded Japanese.

But this list of 62 names, as I read it, includes the Buddha's affirmation, again, of pursuit of freedom on an individual basis.

EH Johnston:
Sharadvatiputra, Subahu, Cunda, Kondeya, Kapya, Bhrigu, Kunthadhana, Saivala, Revata and Kaushthila, and Maudgalyayana and Gavam-pati :

Linda Covill:
the son of Sharadvati, Subahu, Chunda, Kondeya, Kapya, Bhrigu, Kuntha-dhana, Shaivala, Revata and Kaushthila, and Maudgalyayana and Gavam-pati --

VOCABULARY
putra: son
sa (prefix expressing conjunction or possession): along with, plus
ca: and
gotra: cow-shed , hurdle ; " family enclosed by the hurdle " , family , race , lineage , kin ; the family name

SAUNDARANANDA 16.90: From Kapphina to Purna Shonaparanta

sa-kapphinaH kaashyapa auruvilvo
mahaa-mahaakaashyapa-tiShya-nandaaH
puurNash ca puurNash ca sa puurNakash ca
shonaaparaantash ca sa puurNa eva

16.90
Kapphina, Kashyapa of Uruvilva,

The great Maha-kashyapa, Tishya, Nanda,

Purna and Purna as well as Purnaka

And Purna Shonaparanta,

COMMENT:
These nine individuals are the 42nd through 50th names on the list, including the one of the three Purnas listed here who appears, along with Maha-kasyapa, in the list of the ten major disciples of the Buddha.

Maha-kasyapa means Big Kasyapa, or Kasyapa the Great, so mahaa-mahaa-kaashyapa means the great Kasyapa the Great.

This designation, including the extra great, reflects the fact that in the lineage of ancestors linking the Buddha with Ashvaghosha as number 12, linking the Buddha with Bodhidharma as number 28, and linking the Buddha with Dogen as number 51, Maha-kasyapa is, in each of these lineages, ancestor number one.

With the 28th ancestor in India, Bodhidharma, the lineage passed from India to China; and the Japanese monk Dogen, having visited China and experienced what seemed to him to be the lifeblood of Bodhidharma, recorded his confidence as follows in Shobogenzo chapter 72, The Samadhi that is King of Samadhis:

The founding ancestor, the Venerable Bodhidharma, after arriving from the west, went to the Shaolin temple on the Shaoshi peak of Mount Song and, facing the wall in the dhyana of lotus-sitting, passed nine years. From that time through to the present, China has bulged with brains and eyes. The lifeblood of the founding ancestor is nothing but full lotus sitting. Before the founding ancestor came from the west, living beings in eastern lands had never known full lotus sitting. Since the founding ancestor came from the west they have known it. So, through one life and ten thousand lives, from bottom to top and top to bottom, not leaving the forest, day and night, just to practise lotus sitting and be otherwise jobless -- this is the samadhi that is king of samadhis.

Over many generations in Japan, between Dogen's death in 1253 and the end of the 19th century, certain aspects of the teaching were retained in Japan but in certain respects the teaching degenerated. Many people, me included, revere Kodo Sawaki as having been instrumental in reviving the lifeblood itself. For several years I believed that my teacher, Gudo Nishijima, had been a disciple of Kodo Sawaki. This turned out to have been a misunderstanding on my part. My teacher deeply revered Kodo Sawaki, and attended the talks and sitting retreats of Kodo Sawaki, but Kodo Sawaki did not accept him formally as a student. That must have been a difficult stimulus to deal with.

On the one hand, something very unsatisfactory and too complicated, all tied up with personality traits and culture-centric habits, has adulterated Bodhidharma's lifeblood, and I am part of that mess.

On the other hand, I have a cassette recording of a talk by Kodo Sawaki on the final chapter of Shobogenzo, The Eightfold Awakening of a Great Human Being, in which, in a voice of 80-odd years that is vibrant with life, Kodo cuts through all complications:

"Hito to hikaku shinakute mo, ore wa ore da. Jibun ga tsukai furushita kotoba de aru ga, jibun ga jibun o jibun de jibun suru koto de aru. Sore wa doo suru koto yatte, ashi kunde suwatte oitara ii. Jibun ga jibun o jibun de jibun shi te suwatte oitara ii."

"Without comparing myself with other people, I am who I am. I have said it so often the phrase is worn out, but it is me by myself realising myself for my own sake. In other words, just cross the legs and sit. By yourself realize yourself for yourself by sitting as yourself."


EH Johnston:
Kapphina, Kasyapa of Uruvilva, Mahamahakasyapa the Great, Tisya, Nanda, Purna, Purna, Purnaka and Purna Sonaparanta,

Linda Covill:
Kapphina, Kashyapa of Uruvilva, Maha-kashyapa the Great, Tishya, Nanda, the two Purnas as well as Purnaka and Purna Shonaparanta,

SAUNDARANANDA 16.89: Kshema to Meghika

kShem"-aajito nandaka-nanda-maataav
upaali-vaagisha-yasho-yashodaaH
mahaahvayo valkali-raaShTrapaalau
sudarshana-svaagata-meghikaash ca

16.89
Kshema, Ajita, the mothers of Nandaka and Nanda,

Upali, Vagisha, Yashas, Yashoda,

Mahahvaya, Valkalin, Rashtra-pala,

Sudarshana, Svagata and Meghika,

COMMENT:
These 14 individuals are the 28th through 41st names on the list of 60-odd true individuals who made into their own possession those four noble truths that begin with suffering.

Better known names on this list include Ajita and Upali, one of the ten major disciples of the Buddha.

Apropos the present themes of true individuality and unshakeable confidence, here are two quotes about teaching the FM Alexander Technique, taken from Forward and Away, the recently published memoirs of Alexander teacher Elisabeth Walker.

First a piece of advice to Alexander teachers:
"Collect the truth into yourselves. Don't try and be like anyone else, or like F.M. Be yourself as a teacher."

Second an affirmation of true life after death, which has got nothing at all to do with optimism. It is a wonderful and exceptionally strong life-affirming last word from a 93-year old widow who early in life suffered the devastating loss of her first child, due to a tonsillectomy that went wrong:
"Teaching has been a most extraordinarily rewarding experience. Communication by touch is probably the most basic form of communication. And what is one communicating? The answer very simply is 'life.' This sounds a rather grand claim, but every teacher will bear me out. The pupil becomes 'alive' no matter whether he is stuck in a state of collapse or stuck in a condition of over-tension. But whether the pupil is aware of this greater aliveness or not, the teacher is, and this is what is most rewarding. Because one knows with absolute certainty that what one is communicating is good."

EH Johnston:
Ksema, Ajita, the mothers of Nandaka and Nanda, Upali, Vagisa, Yasas and Yasoda, Mahahvaya, Valkalin and Rastrapala, Sudarsana, Svagata and Meghika,

Linda Covill:
Kshema, Ajita, the mothers of Nandaka and Nanda, Upali, Vagisha, Yashas and Yashoda, Mahahvaya, Valkalin and Rashtra-pala, Sudarshana, Svagata and Meghika,

SAUNDARANANDA 16.88: Bhaddali to Kotikarna

bhaddali-bhadraayaNa-sarpadaasa
subhuuti-godatta-sujaata-vatsaaH
saMgraamajid bhadrajid ashvajic ca
shroNash ca shoNash ca sa-koTikarNaH

16.88
Bhaddali, Bhadrayana, Sarpa-dasa,

Subhuti, Go-datta, Sujata, Vatsa,

Sangramajit, Bhadrajit, and Ashvajit,

Shrona and Shona Kotikarna,

COMMENT:
These twelve are the 16th to the 27th names in the list, including Subhuti, one of the ten major disciples.

A search in the Buddhist Dictionary of Pali Proper Names yields the following entry on Bhaddali:

When the Buddha, at Jetavana, laid down the rule that monks should eat one meal a day and that in the morning, Bhaddáli protested and refused to keep this rule because he said that, in so eating, he would be a prey to scruples and misgivings. For three months he avoided the Buddha, until, just before the Buddha was starting on a journey, Bhaddáli, acting on the advice of his fellow monks, confessed his fault to the Buddha and begged for forgiveness (M.i.437ff). The Buddha praised this action and preached to him the Bhaddáli Sutta (q.v.).

There is also an entry for Godatta.

This verse is simply a list of twelve autonomous individuals linked by the four noble truths that each had made his own, not primarily through philosophical understanding or group activity, but through finding for himself what the Buddha had found for himself: the truth of sitting in solitude without fixing or slumping, enuncumbered by greed, ill-will, ignorance or any lesser fault.

EH Johnston:
Bhaddali, Bhadrayana, Sarpadasa, Subhuti, Godatta, Sujata, Vatsa, Samgramajit, Bhadrajit, and Asvajit, Srona, Sona Kotikarna,

Linda Covill:
Bhaddali, Bhadrayana, Sarpa-dasa, Subhuti, Go-datta, Sujata, Vatsa, Sangramajit, Bhadrajit, and Ashvajit, Shrona, Shona Kotikarna,

SAUNDARANANDA 16.87: Kaundinya to Pilinda-vatsa

kaunNDinya-nanda-kRmil-aaniruddhaas
tiShy-opasenau vimalo 'tha raadhaH
vaaShp-ottarau dhautaki-moharaajau
kaatyaayana-dravya-pilindavatsaaH


16.87
Kaundinya, Nanda, Krimila, Aniruddha,

Tishya, Upasena, Vimala and Radha,

Vashpa, Uttara, Dhautaki, Moha-raja,

Katyayana, Dravya, Pilinda-vatsa


COMMENT:
Here are the first fifteen names in a list of sixty-two individuals, including both men and women, beginning with Kaundinya -- he of the Kaundina clan mentioned in verse 3.13.

What is the significance of these individual names being listed one by one?

Following on from the preceding verses, I think the Buddha is saying to Nanda: Don't take my word for it. Make the noble truths your own. Cut a path for yourself, as did Kaundinya, Nanda, Krimila, Aniruddha, Tishya, Upasena, Vimala and Radha, Vashpa, Uttara, Dhautaki, Moha-raja, Katyayana, Dravya, and Pilinda-vatsa.

The Nanda in this list is not the hero of Saundarananda to whom the Buddha is speaking but another Nanda, who was (according to the Japanese-English Buddhist Dictionary) a cowherd before becoming a disciple of the Buddha.

Kaundinya, Aniruddha, and Katyayana are conventionally included in a list of ten great disciples.

Of the fifteeen individuals listed in this verse, then, history regarded three as particularly eminent. The Buddha did not nominate any of these fifteen as his successor, his Number One, and twelve of the fifteeen didn't even make it into the Top Ten.

Still, the Buddha cited these individuals as examples in encouraging his younger half-brother Nanda to be a true man of action, one in whose sitting a certain unshakability is expressed.

A deep sense in sitting of not being susceptible to being shaken by anything, is what I most treasure. I don't always have it, but those moments when I do have it, helped along by quiet circumstances and Mother Nature, I would not swap for anything. And without having experienced those moments, I certainly wouldn't dare to try to clarify Ashvaghosha's words like this.

To quote again from the passage I quoted yesterday in which Marjory Barlow described her uncle FM Alexander:

I'm not trying to make him out to be a Saint, because he was like all of us, but there was a certain integrity (and that is the exact word) and he was absolutely true to what he had discovered. Nothing could shake him on that. He knew. That was F.M.

What did FM know, with such unshakeable confidence? What unshakeable confidence is the Buddha exhorting Nanda to discover for himself? I think the essence of what the Buddha discovered for himself, and what FM discovered for himself, was that if a person is truly able just to sit, not doing the wrong thing, then the right thing has a strong tendency to do itself. This, I submit, is not "Alexander theory" any more than it is "true Buddhism." It is a discovery of a noble truth that is available for every individual to make for himself or for herself, in his or her own way.

Marjory Barlow records as follows how her uncle encouraged her to find her own truth, just as the Buddha encouraged Nanda more than 2,400 years before:

He used to say, "You've got to find your own way. Nobody can help you. You've got to find your own truth and follow it."

One of the most shaking things he ever said to me, early on, and which I've never forgotten, was, "You know there's nothing that you believe that is your own. There's nothing that you think that is your own. Everything you say and do is because of other people, the way you've been brought up. What you've got to do," he said, "is find out what is really yours in the way of what you think and what you believe."

What a task. I had no clue how to set about it, as I was very young of course, but I've never forgotten that. He was so inspiring, he really was. And he was wonderful to me because he never refused to answer my very immature questions. He knew I was so passionate to find out and we used to talk shop all the time when I was with him. But he would never tell me what to do. If I asked him his advice about something, that was different, but he would never say you shouldn't do this or that. Never. Because he really believed in the individual. He knew it was the only hope for real change -- the individual person.


EH Johnston:
Kaundinya, Nanda, Krimila and Aniruddha, Tisya and Upasena, Vimala and Radha, Vaspa, Uttara, Dhautaki and Moharaja, Katyayana, Dravya and Pilindavatsa

Linda Covill:
Kaundinya, Nanda, Krimila and Aniruddha, Tishya and Upasena, Vimala and Radha, Vashpa, Uttara, Dhautaki and Moha-raja, Katyayana, Dravya and Pilinda-vatsa

SAUNDARANANDA 16.69: Constructive Prescription for the Individual

yathaa bhiShak pitta-kaph'aanilaanaaM
ya eva kopaM samupaiti doShaH
shamaaya tasy' aiva vidhiM vidhatte
vyadhatta doSheShu tath" aiva buddha

16.69
Just as a physician,
for a disorder of bile, phlegm, or wind,

-- For whatever disorder of the humours
has manifested the symptoms of disease --

Prescribes a course of treatment
to cure that very disorder,

So did the Buddha prescribe for the faults:

COMMENT:

“I drive a gold Rolls-Royce, ‘cuz it’s good for my voice,” sang Marc Bolan circa 1970. I like that lyric. Everybody should do WHATEVER it is that causes his or her original features to appear.

I have a friend who is a homeopath and who tends to observe the individual peculiarities of others in an interested but non-judgemental way, through the eyes of a homeopath. People who are familiar with the principles of homeopathy will know what I mean. If you are a drill-and-fill dentist who believes in amalgam fillings for all, then you will wonder what the hell I am talking about.

When FM Alexander was searching for a title for his second book, he came up with: Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual. Somebody complained that it was a bit of a mouthful, and so how about dropping the last three words? “Oh no!” FM protested, “Don’t you see? That is the most important part!”

This and the previous verse are not in the form of a quotation of the Buddha’s instruction. These two verses are Ashvaghosha himself speaking.

In this verse Ashvaghosha seems to me to drive home the point made in the 3rd and 4th line of the previous verse, that the Buddha knew Nanda, as an individual person, inside and out. The Buddha knew Nanda’s peculiarities and his personal history, and the Buddha instructed Nanda on that individual basis.

The thrust of Ashvaghosha’s message, it seems to me, is totally antithetical to what Master Kodo Sawaki called gurupo boke, “group delusion.”

Master Kodo, by all accounts, was himself a very unique individual. The fact that I know, not only on the basis of the Sanskrit dictionary but also with my skin, flesh, bones and marrow, that nimitta does not mean either “subject of meditation” or “meditational technique,” is mainly thanks to Master Kodo -- a man who was truly not interested in meditation and who, I think, was never afraid to be seen by Buddhist scholars, Buddhist monks and Buddhist students as a non-Buddhist. When he felt like a swim, into his swimming costume the old man changed and into the sea he went -- and I have seen the photo to prove it. If driving a gold Rolls-Royce had been good for his voice, I have a feeling Master Kodo might have driven one.

Master Kodo was a truly remarkable individual, and all the more so considering that he was born into Japanese society -- that most conformist of all societies. In a previous post, I expressed criticism of Master Kodo, because I think a lot of bad, doing habits (viz. pulling in the chin to stretch the back of the neck) are traceable back to his wrong instructions. I don’t retract those criticisms. But at the same time, I think Master Kodo was a true individual.

In this verse, “disorder of the humours” and “faults” are the same word: dosha. The faults referred to in the 4th line seem to refer back to the lust, ill-will and delusion that the Buddha has just discussed -- i.e. the three gross faults -- and at the same time to refer forward to the subtler patterns of negative mental chatter that the Buddha is about to discuss.

EH Johnston:
As the physician prescribes the treatment for the cure of disease according to which one of the three humours it is that has become deranged, so the Buddha prescribed the treatment for the faults :-

Linda Covill:
Just as a doctor prescribes a treatment to alleviate whichever among the humors of bile, phlegm, and wind has become irritated, so too has the Buddha prescribed concerning the faults.

VOCABULARY:
yathaa: just as
bhiShak = nom. sg. bhiShaj: m. a healer, physician
pitta: bile, the bilious humour
kapha: phlegm
aanilaanaam = genitive, plural of anila: wind as one of the humors or rasas of the body; rheumatism , paralysis , or any affection referred to disorder of the wind

yah (nominative, singular): [that] which
eva: (emphatic)
kopam (acc. sg.): m. morbid irritation or disorder of the humors of the body
samupaiti = 3rd person singular, sam-upa- √i: to approach, go to (acc.); to occur , happen , appear
doShaH = nominative, singular doSha: m. fault , vice , deficiency , want , inconvenience ; alteration , affection , morbid element , disease (esp. of the 3 humours of the body, applied also to the humours themselves)

shamaaya (dative of shama): for the appeasing, curing
tasya (genitive of sa): of it, of that [disorder]
eva: (emphatic) the same, that very
vidhim = accusative of vidhi: any prescribed act, instruction, formula, method, course
vidhatte = from vidh (weak form of √vyadh): to rule, prescribe

vyadhatta: prescribed
doSheShu = locative, plural of doSha: fault, imbalance, disorder
tath"aiva: so too
buddha (voc. sg. m.): O Buddha! O Awakened One!