SAUNDARANANDA 12.43: Towards Circumvention of the Senses

yaavat tattvam na bhavati hi dRShTaM shrutaM vaa
taavac chraddhaa na bhavati bala-sthaa sthiraa vaa
dRShTe tattve niyama-paribhuut'-endriyasya
shraddaa-vRkSho bhavati sa-phalash c'aashrayash ca

= = = = - - - - - = = - = =
= = = = - - - - - = = - = =
= = = = - - - - - = = - = =
= = = = - - - - - = = - = -

saundaranande mahaa-kaavye pratyavamarsho naama dvaadashaH sarghaH

= - - = = - = = = = - - = = = = = - = = =

12.43
For so long as the real truth is not seen or heard,

Confidence does not become strong or firm;

But when, through restraint,
the power of the senses is circumvented
and the real truth is realised,

The tree of confidence bears fruit and weight.


The 12th Canto of the epic poem Handsome Nanda, titled
'Gaining Hold.'


COMMENT:
What is the real truth?

My view of the real truth is not the real truth.

I came to England at the end of 1994 with the strong intention of getting to the bottom of the discoveries of FM Alexander, because initial experience of Alexander lessons in Tokyo awakened a shoot of confidence in me with regard to the real truth of Alexander work. Alexander work is a means of circumventing the senses and allowing the right to do itself, via inhibition of the wrong. In this work, I am confident, there is real truth.

I used to believe that my sitting practice was practically bursting with real truth. But Alexander work falsified my former belief. Alexander work showed me that there was not so much real truth in my sitting practice as I had believed there was. To put it another way, my sitting practice was much fuller of faults than I realised. Those faults, I have come to realise, are profoundly related with four vestibular reflexes which have to do with (1) fear, (2) balance, (3) side-to-side coordination (see above photo), and (4) top-to-bottom coordination. Because I was practising these faults unconsciously, my sitting practice was much fuller of faults than I realised.

To put it simply, in 7 words:

What I felt was up was down.

Or to put it in 13 words:

What I felt to be true uprightness
Turned out to be just uptightness.

Any confidence I have now to mine for Ashvaghosha's gold has grown from the clear realisation, which Alexander work practically forced upon me, of the distinction that exists between the fool's gold of uptightness and the true gold of uprightness. Alexander work gave me a shoot of confidence in the existence of true gold.

Before Alexander work, I sincerely believed in the truth of Master Dogen's teaching, but it was only belief, not confidence. I loved then as I have continued to love, Master Dogen's teaching of learning the backward step, so that body and mind drop off, and the original face appears. I appreciated the beauty of Master Dogen's words and sensed the truth in them, but I had not understood the meaning of those words as well as I believed I had.

To see and hear the real truth might be to really experience body and mind dropping off and one's original face emerging; in other words, to experience the right thing doing itself. But to express a view on it which one sincerely believes to be true, is not it.

There is, however, a criterion other than verbal expression by which to judge whether or not a person has seen and heard the real truth. That criterion, the Buddha tells us now, is confidence. Real experience of the real truth causes a person's confidence in the real truth to grow strong and firm, like a healthy sapling that grows over 10, 20, 30, 50 or 70 years into a great tree.

A protege of FM Alexander named Patrick Macdonald who was notorious for his wry sense of humour apparently used to say that the first 10 years were the worst. But as he got older he started saying that the first 20 years were the worst. Then he started saying that the first 40 years were the worst, and so on. Once in his old age Patrick Macdonald asked my teacher how long she had been teaching, and she told him: 35 years. "Oh, really?" Macdonald inquired, "Is that all?" I think he was making the same point that the Buddha is making with the metaphor of the tree: real confidence does not grow strong or firm in one or two summers.

Patrick Macdonald, they say, placed a great deal of emphasis on the importance of taking a pupil UP. But he famously remarked that for the first 30 years he himself was taking everybody down. He understood that despite his wish to leave his wrists totally open so that he might take his pupil up, some recalcitrant downward, depressive, or controlling tendency had remained in him which was not willing to partake in that wish.

To practice the real truth, it seems to me, is to say no to reliance on all such wayward depressing tendencies. Those tendencies have both intellectual and sensory roots.

Nanda had reached the point at the beginning of this Canto when he was able to retreat from his former thirst for heaven, which was sustained by a wrong intellectual conception about the satisfaction to be found among celestial nymphs. He had reached the point of giving up an idea that was putting him wrong.

Here at the end of the Canto, the challenge that still faces Nanda is to circumvent those senses of his which, Ashvaghosha tells us in 12.18, are still set against ultimate good. This circumvention is the subject of Canto 13.

In discussing the senses, sometimes Ashvaghosha cites the five senses of sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch, which he calls in 13.56 a-kushala-karaaNaam ariiNaaM, "evil-causing enemies." But often in records of the Buddha's teaching, for example in the Heart Sutra, six senses are enumerated. This caused me often to wonder, when I was in Japan, how to understand and how to translate the sixth sense, called in Sanskrit manendriya. Those questions were answered, to my satisfaction at least, when I got into Alexander work and started hearing about proprioception, and what Alexander called "debauched kinaesthesia."

On its own man means to perceive, know, understand, or comprehend, so manendriya suggests the compound sense of proprioception, central to which is the vestibular sense. It was my Alexander head of training, Ray Evans, who when I met him in 1995 first alerted me to the primary importance, at the centre of all the senses, of the vestibular sense. The vestibular system, calibrated by the semi-circular canals of the inner ear, is central to our sense of the body as a structure in or out of balance, as the body remains still, or moves through space, as it floats weightlessly in water, or as the body stands on the earth, bearing weight.

EH Johnston:
For so long as the real path is not seen or heard, so long faith does not become strong or firm, but when a man by restraining his senses with self-control sees the real truth, the tree of his faith bears fruit and becomes the vehicle (of further advance).'

Linda Covill:
As long as reality is not seen or heard, faith is not firm or strongly fixed. But when a man's senses are governed by the rules of restraint and he sees reality, then the tree of faith is fruitful and supportive.

End of Canto 12: Comprehension.


VOCABULARY:

yaavat (correlative of taavat): insofar as
tattvam (accusative): what is, reality ; n. true or real state , truth , reality ; (in phil.) a true principle
na: not
bhavati: is, becomes
hi: for
dRShTa: seen, looked at
shruta: mfn. heard , listened to , heard about or of , taught , orally transmitted or communicated from age to age
vaa: or

taavat (correlative of yaavat): so
shraddhaa: confidence, trust, belief,
na: not
bhavati: is, becomes
bala-stha: mfn. " being in strength or power " , strong , powerful , vigorous
sthira: mfn. firm , hard , solid , compact , strong ; fixed , immovable , motionless , still , calm ; firm , not wavering or tottering , steady
vaa: or

dRShTe = locative of dRShTa: seen
tattve = locative of tattva: what is, reality
niyama: restraining, checking, holding back, preventing, controlling
paribhuuta: overpowered, conquered, slighted, disregarded, despised
indriyasya = genitive of indriya: sense, power of the senses

shraddhaa: confidence, trust, belief,
vRkShaH = nominative of vRkSha: tree
bhavati: is, becomes
sa-phalaH (nominative): fruitful, bearing fruit
ca: and
aashrayaH (nominative): something on which to rely, depend, or rest upon
ca: and

SAUNDARANANDA 16.61: Again, What Not to Do

vyaapaada-doSheNa manasy udiirNe
na sevitavyaM tv a-shubhaM nimittam
dvesh'-aatmakasya hy a-shubhaa vadhaaya
pitt-aatmanas tiikShNa iv' opacaaraH

16.61
When a mind is wound up, however,
with the fault of ill-will,

A disagreeable stimulus is not to be dwelt upon;

For unpleasantness is destructive to a hating type,

As acid treatment is to a bilious type.

COMMENT:
Can a deeply-rooted tendency like hatred that obscures a human being's true nature be given up?

The likes of professional therapists and counsellors, along with religious believers, are prone to answer, optimistically, on the basis of some theory or other: yes. Optimistically thinking, the answer is always: yes.

Pessimistically thinking, however, the answer, based on actual experience of failed personal endeavour, or based on objective consideration of the slaughter bench of human history, tends to be: no.

In the thinking of Buddha/Ashvaghosha, evidently, the first thing, in any event, is NOT TO DO anything to make the problem worse.

So the first practical step, as the bulldog locks onto his intended target and his hate-ometer begins to rise from 0 towards 10, is not to try to bring out his inherent Buddha-nature (at least not yet), but the more modest one of distracting the blighter's attention before his eyes turn red and he charges in for the kill.

Similarly, when I recognize that my mind has been dwelling on some unpleasantness, just at that moment of cognition the option exists of not dwelling on the disagreeable stimulus -- providing that I am able, like a good human pack leader to give a swift correction to the inner bulldog. This is not easy, but neither is it impossible. And every day provides ample opportunities to hit the target.

In his original instructions for sitting, Zen Master Dogen wrote that when a thought arises in the mind, just wake up. And in the waking up to it, it vanishes.

There is no grounds there for that fool's gold which is optimism. Rather, one senses in the background, as with Ashvaghosha's writings, the presence of true gold.

EH Johnston:
But when the mind is agitated by the vice of malevolence, do not choose the subject of meditation known as 'impure'; for that meditation tends to the destruction of the man whose nature is full of hate, just as pungent treatment does for the man of bilious temperament.

Linda Covill:
When the mind is agitated by the fault of malice, the impurity meditation should not be undertaken, for the impurity meditation destroys a hate-filled man, like treatment with acids in the case of a patient with a bile condition.

VOCABULARY:
vyaapaada: evil intent or design , malice
doSheNa = instrumental of doSha: fault
manasi = locative of manas: mind
udiirNe = locative of udiirNa: issued out , excited , increased , elevated

na: not
sevitavyam (nom. sg. n. from gerundive of sev): to be dwelt on, resorted to, cultivated , practised , used
tu: but
a-shubham (nom. sg. n.): not beautiful or agreeable , disagreeable; impure
nimittam (nom. sg.): n. cause, stimulus, antidote

dvesh'-aatmakasya (genitive): to a hating type
dvesha: hatred , dislike , repugnance
hi: for
ashubhaa (nom. sg.): f. non-beauty
a: (negative prefix)
shubhaa: f. light , lustre , splendour , beauty
vadhaaya = dative of vadha: the act of striking or killing , slaughter , murder , death , destruction

pitt-aatmanaH (gen. sg. m): to a bilious type
pitta: bile , the bilious humour (one of the three humours [cf. kapha and vaayu] or that secreted between the stomach and bowels and flowing through the liver and permeating spleen , heart , eyes , and skin ; its chief quality is heat)
aatman: the individual soul , self , abstract individual ; essence , nature , character , peculiarity ; the person
tiikShNaH (nom. sg. m.): sharp , hot , pungent , fiery , acid
iva: like
upacaaraH (nom. sg.): m. treatment