ciram unmaarga-vihRto
lolair indriya-vaajibhiH
avatiirNo 'si panthaanaM
diShTyaa dRShTy" aa-vimuuDhayaa
12.20
Long carried off course
By the restless horses of the senses,
You have now set foot on a path,
With clarity of vision, happily, that will not dim.
COMMENT:
In this verse, as I read it, the reactive stallions and errant mares of the senses, which pull us from one side to the other, are contrasted with the kind of detached, reasoned insight that is constant and irremovable, because it is cut off from the flux of sensory experience.
The late Marjory Barlow, niece of FM Alexander, memorably impressed on me that the four verbal directions "(1) to let the neck be free, (2) to let the head go forward and up, (3) to let the back lengthen and widen, (4) sending the knees forwards and away," are constant. They express the direction of muscular release, all of the time, whatever activity one is engaged in, while breathing out and equally while breathing in.
This means that, however faulty is the functioning of one's vestibular system on a particular day, however hopeless is one's own sense of direction, one thing remains the same. Just as I did yesterday, I wish today (1) to let the neck be free, (2) to let the head go forward and up, (3) to let the back lengthen and widen, while (4) sending the knees forwards and away. Even if I don't get what I wish for, even if the result is different, the central direction of the wish is always the same: it is the direction of growth. The four directions that Marjory taught in lesson one, and that I also teach in lesson one, are the same four directions that I return to after 15 years in the Alexander work, and they are the same four directions that Marjory returned to after 70 years in the Alexander work. The directions do not change because, the human condition being as it is, the causes of the noise that the directions are designed to prevent do not change. The human faults of the time of the seven ancient buddhas are the human faults of the Buddha’s time are the human faults of Ashvaghosha’s time are the human faults of Dogen’s time are the human faults of Alexander’s time are the human faults of our time.
So the directions are always the same; they do not change in any circumstance. After Marjory had impressed this point upon me, I remember feeling very happy. I left Marjory's teaching room with a spring in my step. It was not the spring one gets from a temporary sensory buzz, thanks to an Alexander teacher's magic hands. It was the kind of spring one gets on understanding something that one is never going to forget. It was indeed the gaining of a kind of foothold in this struggle towards... what? I do not know. In this struggle not to stop growing.
Nanda, in the same way, has seen something not only through his visual sense but with his mind’s eye. Optimism leads to disenchantment, just as surely as 2 + 2 = 4. The bliss of union with a celestial nymph always proves to be impermanent, just as surely as 2 + 2 = 4. The rules of the game of love never change. Again, falling in love turns the ordinary human world into an earthly paradise, but there is something unsatisfactory about paradise, even before it turns into its opposite, with the white of shock, denial, despair, and then the red of anger and the rest. The cycle of samsara is impermanence itself. There is no permanence to be found in it -- except that impermanence itself is a law, like the 2nd law of thermodynamics, or like 2 + 2 = 4, in which there is constancy. A person can always rely on that. And once a person has seen that clearly, no amount of confused input from a faulty visual system can dim that clarity of seeing.
To sit in the full lotus posture with head shaved and body wrapped in a robe is also a matter of 2 + 2 = 4, although there are many who do not like to think so. My teacher, Gudo Nishijima, was a teacher who, very unusually for a Japanese man of his generation, had highly developed powers of independent reasoning. But when I drew his attention to the wrongness of forcibly pulling in the chin in order to straighten the neck bones, he seemed to have too much invested emotionally in teaching the wrong thing that he could not recognize his mistake -- at least not in public. In Confucianist-influenced Japan it is rather scandalous to highlight the mistake of one’s benevolent teacher. But 2 + 2 = 4 in Japan just as 2 + 2 = 4 in England. If apologists for Japanese culture would have it any other way, they can stuff their cultural arguments up their jumper. What is supreme in the Buddha’s teaching is not anybody’s culture. What is supreme in the Buddha’s teaching is the truth of truly sitting upright.
The truth of sitting upright is a matter of 2 + 2 = 4, and a matter of much more than 2 + 2 = 4. It is a matter of not being able to do an undoing. It is a matter of up being up, not being down. However faulty my vestibular system may be on a particular day... and yesterday was a particularly bad day as my sleep (along with the sleep of my disgruntled French neighbours) was cut short by the howling through the night of my neighbour’s dog, whose keen sense of smell seems to have picked up, during our recent daily walks, the scent of a bitch on heat... however faulty my sense of up and down may be on a particular day, up is not down. Even if, with my “debauched kinesthesia” as FM put it, what I sense as up is actually down, the truth remains that up is not down. Up is always up. Up, happily, is always up.
EH Johnston:
What good fortune it is that you who have been carried away for so long down the wrong road by the restless horses of the senses have now entered the true path with unconfused gaze.
Linda Covill:
For a long time the frenzied horses of the senses have carried you the wrong way. How wonderful that with clear vision you have alighted on the right path!
VOCABULARY:
ciram: for a long time
unmaarga: taking a wrong way , going wrong or astray
vi-√hR: to carry away, remove
vihRtaH (nominative, singular): one who is carried away
lolaiH = instrumental, plural of lola: moving hither and thither , shaking , rolling , tossing , dangling , swinging , agitated , unsteady , restless
indriya: senses
vaajibhiH = instrumental, plural of vaajin: swift , spirited , impetuous , heroic , warlike RV. &c &c (with ratha m. a war-chariot); m. the steed of a war-chariot; m. a horse , stallion
avatiirNaH = nominative, singular of avatiirNa: mfn. alighted , descended
asi: you are
√panth: to go, move
panthaanam = accusative of panthan: path (??)
diShTyaa (instrumental of diShTi, good fortune): ‘by good fortune,’ used to express strong pleasure
dRShTyaa = instrumental of drShti: f. seeing , viewing , beholding (also with the mental eye) ; sight , the faculty of seeing ; the mind's eye , wisdom , intelligence
a: not
vimuuDhayaa = instrumental of vimUDhaa: (f) perplexed; foolish, stupid
Showing posts with label verbal directions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label verbal directions. Show all posts
Friday, June 12, 2009
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
SAUNDARANANDA 12.18: Ultimate Good Is Not Groped by Feeling
tatas tasy' aashayaM jNaatvaa
vipakShaan' indriyaaNi ca
shreyash c' aiv' aamukhii-bhuutaM
nijagaada TathaagataH
12.18
Then, knowing where he was coming from,
And that, though his senses were set against it,
Ultimate good was now emerging,
The realised one spoke:
COMMENT:
Apologies in advance that this comment will be too long, but the above verse counter-poses two elements about which much more could be written: indriyaaNi, the senses; and shreyas, Ultimate Good.
In seeking to understand this opposition, I am prejudiced by 27 years as a student and translator of Zen Master Dogen, by 15 years in Alexander work, and by 10 years in the work of primitive reflex inhibition, but from where I sit Ultimate Good can never be groped by the senses of balance, touch, hearing or sight.
In the autumn of 1984, with a head full of missionary zeal and with a hold-all full of copies of my teacher's book To Meet the Real Dragon, I set off from Tokyo to San Francisco. Staying there at the San Francisco Zen Centre I was struck during a one-day sitting retreat by the easy uprightness of a Danish practitioner. When I complimented him on his form in sitting, he simply said, "Ah, it is because I am a student of the Alexander Technique." It was another ten years before I got round to looking into the Alexander Technique myself. Shortly after that I ended up in Aylesbury at the training school run by late Ray Evans, who used to describe Alexander work as "vestibular re-education" and who emphasized the fundamental importance, in working towards understanding of the human condition, of primitive reflexes.
Following Ray's lead, after graduating from Ray's training school run, I trained at INPP (Institute of Neuro-Physiological Psychology), Chester under Peter Blythe and his wife Sally Goddard, in the diagnosis and remediation of aberrant primitive reflexes. A baby is born with very many of such primitive reflexes, the orderly emergence and inhibition of which helps the baby to survive and to develop. But in the course of my work over the past ten years, encouraged on since Ray's death by Ray's assistant Ron Colyer, guided by the ultra-practical Alexander teachers Marjory Barlow and Nelly Ben-Or, and motivated by my own wish for clarity and simplicity in working with the reflexes, my interest became more and more concentrated on just four vestibular reflexes. I see these reflexes as primary, and I see a direct correspondence between Alexander's four primary directions and these four reflexes.
So I think that Ultimate Good might be to sit shaven-headed in lotus while the body, wrapped in a Buddha-robe, liberates itself from disharmony between those four reflexes.
That might mean, in Master Dogen's words, to sit with the body, to sit with the mind, and to sit as body and mind dropping off.
Again, that might mean to sit in lotus allowing (1) the neck to be free, to allow (2) the head to go forward and up, to allow (3) the back to lengthen and widen, while allowing (4) the arms and legs to release out of the back.
Ultimate Good, then, from what I have experienced of what I believe it to be, is not something out there that comes into the range of our senses, whereupon we pursue it. It may rather be something that spontaneously emerges from within during those rare moments when we are able to get out of the way and allow it. FM Alexander put it more succinctly: "The right thing does itself."
Ultimate good does itself.
Our job is to allow it.
Then what does it mean to allow? I do not know. It does not mean to think about, to discuss endlessly, to intellectualise. But neither does it mean blindly to do, to pull the chin in, to push the knees down, to hyper-extend the back, and all that other nonsense which is pure doing based on feeling. To allow does not mean to feel. To feel, to rely on the senses, is to limit oneself to sitting with the body.
In general it is the job of the senses to feel something, as opposed to feeling nothing. In swaying left and right as Master Dogen instructs in his rules for sitting, for example, one has a fairly reliable sense that three or four inches left or right of the midline is to the left or to the right -- the vestibular system, with input from tactile senses (and visual senses too if the eyes are open), senses the imbalance. Such an imbalance, after all, might be dangerous in circumstances like walking a tightrope or riding a bike. To approach the midline, however, is to enter an area of uncertainty. The vestibular system seems better adapted to sensing something (an imbalance) as opposed to sensing nothing (the absence of imbalance).
This being so, insofar as Ultimate Good is a bit of nothing, a bit of freedom from the faults that cause suffering, a bit of absence of noise, and in the end a bit of body and mind dropping off, a bit of the right thing being allowed to do itself, then it may be not only Nanda's whose senses were set against it: it may be that everybody's senses are set against it.
Now the Knower of Ultimate Good, the Best of Listeners, is about to speak. That the Buddha was the best of listeners was not only a matter of his auditory sense: his listening was also a matter of what he intended to hear and, most importantly, what he was able to filter out. The Buddha's listening was a matter of how the whole of his ear processed sound. The whole of the ear means everything involved in inner and outer listening, right down to the auditory and vestibular nucleii in the brainstem, and on into the bones, and on into the internal organs through the circuitous route of the wandering vagabond which is the vagus nerve. When Buddha sits in what Paul Madaule calls a good listening posture, it may be that the whole body-mind is an ear -- an ear whose listening is body and mind dropping off.
Whatever understanding I have gleaned about what FM Alexander called "faulty sensory appreciation," and the need to transcend it, I have gleaned from the standpoint of a person with a listening problem struggling to get round that problem. I myself am terribly bothered by noise. Two or three years ago, as I sat here by the stream, trying not to listen to engine noise, and being mindful of the mirror principle, I seriously asked myself what the problem was. The conclusion I came to was that the external noise that bothers me so much is a mirror for internal noise which I tend unconsciously to suppress, as it arises from my faulty vestibular system. I think that conclusion was true, and the conclusion is supported by everything Ashvaghosha records about the primary importance of eradicating the faults.
A couple of years ago a so-called Zen Master, a professed Dharma-brother of mine in the lineage of Zen Master Dogen, despite never actually having met me, recommended that, as a pre-condition for joining an organisation to which he belongs, I should undergo a course of psychological treatment. Aside from the personal affront, the shocking thing about this was the lack of insight it revealed into the teaching of Dogen, Ashvaghosha, and all the other ancestors. What Dogen and Ashvaghosha are telling us is that the faults which are the cause of suffering are primarily rooted, not in psychology, but in neuro-physiology.
Does anybody out there understand what I am banging on about -- what I have been banging on so clumsily through all these hundreds of blog posts? Does anybody understand why this verse has stimulated such a long comment from me? What this verse is saying is that what is opposing the emergence in Nanda of Ultimate Good is, primarily, his senses. Senses means balance, touch, hearing, vision, taste and smell, but most of all it means balance, because the vestibular system is the integrator of all sensory input.
When people with superficial understanding of the human condition look at behaviour that they don't understand, they attribute the behaviour they don't understand to psychological causes. But if people's primary problem were psychological, then what would be the point of crossing the legs and endeavouring to direct oneself upward?
No, what leads me astray, primarily, is my faulty vestibular system. It has led me so far astray in my life I would like to crawl back into the womb and start all over again. Fortunately, to sit all wrapped up in the lotus posture with rain pattering down on the roof and a cow mooing intermittently in the distance, is not a bad substitute.
I am a congenitally bad listener, the worst of listeners. Being the worst of listeners, I have sought out and am seeking to clarify the teaching of the Best of Listeners.
Now the Best of Listeners is about to open his mouth and speak. Will he voice a sound? Or will sound voice itself?
EH Johnston:
Then the Tathagata, knowing his disposition and that, while his senses were still contrary, the highest good was now within his range, spoke thus:--
Linda Covill:
The realized one understood his disposition, and that though his senses were still opposed to it, Excellence was now within his sight, and he spoke:
VOCABULARY:
tataH: then
tasya (genitive): of him
aashayam (accusative): m. resting-place , bed ; seat , place ; an asylum , abode or retreat ; a receptacle ; any recipient ; thought , meaning , intention ; disposition of mind , mode of thinking
jNaatvaa = absolutive of jNaa: to know
vipakShaaNi = accusative plural of vipakSha: m. " being on a different side " , an opponent , adversary , enemy (mfn. " counteracting ")
indriyaaNi = accusative plural of indriya: n. bodily power , power of the senses
ca: and
shreyas: n. the better state , the better fortune or condition; m. good (as opp. to " evil ") , welfare , bliss , fortune , happiness ; m. the bliss of final emancipation
ca: and
eva: (emphatic) now
aamukha: commencement
aamukhii-bhuu: to become visible
bhuuta: being, become
nijagaada = perfect of ni-√gad: to recite , proclaim , announce , declare , tell , speak
tathaagataH (nominative singular): the Thus-Come, the realised one
vipakShaan' indriyaaNi ca
shreyash c' aiv' aamukhii-bhuutaM
nijagaada TathaagataH
12.18
Then, knowing where he was coming from,
And that, though his senses were set against it,
Ultimate good was now emerging,
The realised one spoke:
COMMENT:
Apologies in advance that this comment will be too long, but the above verse counter-poses two elements about which much more could be written: indriyaaNi, the senses; and shreyas, Ultimate Good.
In seeking to understand this opposition, I am prejudiced by 27 years as a student and translator of Zen Master Dogen, by 15 years in Alexander work, and by 10 years in the work of primitive reflex inhibition, but from where I sit Ultimate Good can never be groped by the senses of balance, touch, hearing or sight.
In the autumn of 1984, with a head full of missionary zeal and with a hold-all full of copies of my teacher's book To Meet the Real Dragon, I set off from Tokyo to San Francisco. Staying there at the San Francisco Zen Centre I was struck during a one-day sitting retreat by the easy uprightness of a Danish practitioner. When I complimented him on his form in sitting, he simply said, "Ah, it is because I am a student of the Alexander Technique." It was another ten years before I got round to looking into the Alexander Technique myself. Shortly after that I ended up in Aylesbury at the training school run by late Ray Evans, who used to describe Alexander work as "vestibular re-education" and who emphasized the fundamental importance, in working towards understanding of the human condition, of primitive reflexes.
Following Ray's lead, after graduating from Ray's training school run, I trained at INPP (Institute of Neuro-Physiological Psychology), Chester under Peter Blythe and his wife Sally Goddard, in the diagnosis and remediation of aberrant primitive reflexes. A baby is born with very many of such primitive reflexes, the orderly emergence and inhibition of which helps the baby to survive and to develop. But in the course of my work over the past ten years, encouraged on since Ray's death by Ray's assistant Ron Colyer, guided by the ultra-practical Alexander teachers Marjory Barlow and Nelly Ben-Or, and motivated by my own wish for clarity and simplicity in working with the reflexes, my interest became more and more concentrated on just four vestibular reflexes. I see these reflexes as primary, and I see a direct correspondence between Alexander's four primary directions and these four reflexes.
So I think that Ultimate Good might be to sit shaven-headed in lotus while the body, wrapped in a Buddha-robe, liberates itself from disharmony between those four reflexes.
That might mean, in Master Dogen's words, to sit with the body, to sit with the mind, and to sit as body and mind dropping off.
Again, that might mean to sit in lotus allowing (1) the neck to be free, to allow (2) the head to go forward and up, to allow (3) the back to lengthen and widen, while allowing (4) the arms and legs to release out of the back.
Ultimate Good, then, from what I have experienced of what I believe it to be, is not something out there that comes into the range of our senses, whereupon we pursue it. It may rather be something that spontaneously emerges from within during those rare moments when we are able to get out of the way and allow it. FM Alexander put it more succinctly: "The right thing does itself."
Ultimate good does itself.
Our job is to allow it.
Then what does it mean to allow? I do not know. It does not mean to think about, to discuss endlessly, to intellectualise. But neither does it mean blindly to do, to pull the chin in, to push the knees down, to hyper-extend the back, and all that other nonsense which is pure doing based on feeling. To allow does not mean to feel. To feel, to rely on the senses, is to limit oneself to sitting with the body.
In general it is the job of the senses to feel something, as opposed to feeling nothing. In swaying left and right as Master Dogen instructs in his rules for sitting, for example, one has a fairly reliable sense that three or four inches left or right of the midline is to the left or to the right -- the vestibular system, with input from tactile senses (and visual senses too if the eyes are open), senses the imbalance. Such an imbalance, after all, might be dangerous in circumstances like walking a tightrope or riding a bike. To approach the midline, however, is to enter an area of uncertainty. The vestibular system seems better adapted to sensing something (an imbalance) as opposed to sensing nothing (the absence of imbalance).
This being so, insofar as Ultimate Good is a bit of nothing, a bit of freedom from the faults that cause suffering, a bit of absence of noise, and in the end a bit of body and mind dropping off, a bit of the right thing being allowed to do itself, then it may be not only Nanda's whose senses were set against it: it may be that everybody's senses are set against it.
Now the Knower of Ultimate Good, the Best of Listeners, is about to speak. That the Buddha was the best of listeners was not only a matter of his auditory sense: his listening was also a matter of what he intended to hear and, most importantly, what he was able to filter out. The Buddha's listening was a matter of how the whole of his ear processed sound. The whole of the ear means everything involved in inner and outer listening, right down to the auditory and vestibular nucleii in the brainstem, and on into the bones, and on into the internal organs through the circuitous route of the wandering vagabond which is the vagus nerve. When Buddha sits in what Paul Madaule calls a good listening posture, it may be that the whole body-mind is an ear -- an ear whose listening is body and mind dropping off.
Whatever understanding I have gleaned about what FM Alexander called "faulty sensory appreciation," and the need to transcend it, I have gleaned from the standpoint of a person with a listening problem struggling to get round that problem. I myself am terribly bothered by noise. Two or three years ago, as I sat here by the stream, trying not to listen to engine noise, and being mindful of the mirror principle, I seriously asked myself what the problem was. The conclusion I came to was that the external noise that bothers me so much is a mirror for internal noise which I tend unconsciously to suppress, as it arises from my faulty vestibular system. I think that conclusion was true, and the conclusion is supported by everything Ashvaghosha records about the primary importance of eradicating the faults.
A couple of years ago a so-called Zen Master, a professed Dharma-brother of mine in the lineage of Zen Master Dogen, despite never actually having met me, recommended that, as a pre-condition for joining an organisation to which he belongs, I should undergo a course of psychological treatment. Aside from the personal affront, the shocking thing about this was the lack of insight it revealed into the teaching of Dogen, Ashvaghosha, and all the other ancestors. What Dogen and Ashvaghosha are telling us is that the faults which are the cause of suffering are primarily rooted, not in psychology, but in neuro-physiology.
Does anybody out there understand what I am banging on about -- what I have been banging on so clumsily through all these hundreds of blog posts? Does anybody understand why this verse has stimulated such a long comment from me? What this verse is saying is that what is opposing the emergence in Nanda of Ultimate Good is, primarily, his senses. Senses means balance, touch, hearing, vision, taste and smell, but most of all it means balance, because the vestibular system is the integrator of all sensory input.
When people with superficial understanding of the human condition look at behaviour that they don't understand, they attribute the behaviour they don't understand to psychological causes. But if people's primary problem were psychological, then what would be the point of crossing the legs and endeavouring to direct oneself upward?
No, what leads me astray, primarily, is my faulty vestibular system. It has led me so far astray in my life I would like to crawl back into the womb and start all over again. Fortunately, to sit all wrapped up in the lotus posture with rain pattering down on the roof and a cow mooing intermittently in the distance, is not a bad substitute.
I am a congenitally bad listener, the worst of listeners. Being the worst of listeners, I have sought out and am seeking to clarify the teaching of the Best of Listeners.
Now the Best of Listeners is about to open his mouth and speak. Will he voice a sound? Or will sound voice itself?
EH Johnston:
Then the Tathagata, knowing his disposition and that, while his senses were still contrary, the highest good was now within his range, spoke thus:--
Linda Covill:
The realized one understood his disposition, and that though his senses were still opposed to it, Excellence was now within his sight, and he spoke:
VOCABULARY:
tataH: then
tasya (genitive): of him
aashayam (accusative): m. resting-place , bed ; seat , place ; an asylum , abode or retreat ; a receptacle ; any recipient ; thought , meaning , intention ; disposition of mind , mode of thinking
jNaatvaa = absolutive of jNaa: to know
vipakShaaNi = accusative plural of vipakSha: m. " being on a different side " , an opponent , adversary , enemy (mfn. " counteracting ")
indriyaaNi = accusative plural of indriya: n. bodily power , power of the senses
ca: and
shreyas: n. the better state , the better fortune or condition; m. good (as opp. to " evil ") , welfare , bliss , fortune , happiness ; m. the bliss of final emancipation
ca: and
eva: (emphatic) now
aamukha: commencement
aamukhii-bhuu: to become visible
bhuuta: being, become
nijagaada = perfect of ni-√gad: to recite , proclaim , announce , declare , tell , speak
tathaagataH (nominative singular): the Thus-Come, the realised one
Thursday, March 5, 2009
SAUNDARANANDA 16.21: Afflictions Develop Personality, Life by Life
krodha-praharSh'aadibhir aashrayaaNaam
utpadyate c'eha yathaa visheShah
tath" aiva janmasv api n'aika-ruupo
nirvartate klesha-kRto visheShaH
16.21
Just as the anger, lust, and so on
of sufferers of those afflictions
Give rise in the present to a personality trait,
So too in new lives, in various manifestations,
Does the affliction-created trait develop:
COMMENT:
Ain't it funny how your new life didn't change things?
You're still suffering from the same old affliction you used to have.
It somehow doesn't scan as well as the old Eagles lyric, but I think it makes Ashvaghosha's point here.
As a translation of klesha, I like "affliction" because it means both SUFFERING itself and also a delusory tendency that CAUSES SUFFERING.
To be grumpy, to return to that example, is not only to suffer from grumpiness (suffering itself) but also to see the world as if through grumpiness-tainted spectacles (a cause of suffering to self and others).
And here again, a bit of knowledge about early vestibular reflexes may help to deepen our understanding of how afflictions afflict us.
If the Moro, or infantile panic/grasp reflex, fails to be INHIBITED during the initial window of inhibition lasting till around 6 months after birth, the reflex will tend to remain stuck in the system of the child and adult as a big obstacle to enlightened behaviour.
The affliction of an immature Moro reflex directly brings suffering itself, in the form of irrational fear, anger, over-excitement and hypersensitivity. But more than that, because of its wide-ranging effects on the functioning of the ears, eyes, vestibular/proprioceptive and other senses, an immature Moro reflex plays a big role in what FM Alexander called "faulty sensory appreciation." Faulty sensory appreciation is the antithesis of lucidity; it is akin to seeing the world through coloured and distorted lenses, and is thus the indirect cause of suffering.
FM Alexander was way ahead of his time in understanding the importance of the afflictions he termed "unduly excited fear reflexes and emotions" and "faulty sensory appreciation." Not only did he see the problem clearly, he also devised a MEANS-WHEREBY the misuse of the self associated with an immature Moro reflex might be inhibited, and the faulty sensory appreciation associated with it might be by-passed. Thus Alexander's MEANS-WHEREBY involved, as also the realisation of the four dhyaana as described by Ashvaghosha involved, at least in the early stages of their application, reliance on reason.
Specifically, Alexander taught verbal directions which point precisely away from the stiffening of the neck, holding of the head, narrowing and arching of the back, and holding in of the limbs, which characterizes the Moro pattern. Those verbal directions go something like this:
"I wish to let my neck be free,
To let the head go forward and up,
To let the back lengthen and widen,
Sending the legs and the arms out of the back...."
VOCABULARY:
krodha: anger
praharSha: erection (or greater erection) of the male organ; erection of the hair, extreme joy , thrill of delight , rapture
aadibhiH = instrumental [indicating agent of passive construction], plural of aadi: beginning with, and so on
aashrayaaNaam = genitive, plural of aashraya: that to which anything is annexed or with which anything is closely connected or on which anything depends or rests ; a recipient , the person or thing in which any quality or article is inherent or retained or received
utpadyate = 3rd person singular passive utpad: to arise , rise , originate , be born or produced ; to come forth , become visible , appear ; to be ready ; to take place , begin ; to produce , beget , generate ; to cause , effect ; to cause to issue or come forth , bring forward
ca: and; (sometimes emphatic = eva) , even , indeed , certainly , just
iha: in this place , here ; to this place ; in this world; now
yathaa: (correlative of tathaa in the following sentence) just as
visheShah = nominative singular of visheSha: distinction , difference between ; characteristic difference, peculiar mark, special property, speciality, peculiarity ; a kind , species , individual
tathaa: similarly, in the same manner
eva: just so
janmasu = locative plural of janman: birth, production; origin; existence , life
api: and , also , moreover , besides
n'aika: not one, many, various
ruupaH = nominative, singular of ruupa: form, shape, figure
nirvartate = 3rd person singluar of nir- √ vRt: to cause to roll out or cast (as dice); to take place , happen ; to come forth , originate , develop , become; to be accomplished or effected or finished, come off ;
klesha: pain , affliction , distress , pain from disease , anguish; (the Buddhists reckon ten , viz. three of the body [murder , theft , adultery] , four of speech [lying , slander , abuse , unprofitable conversation] , three of the mind [covetousness , malice , scepticism])
kRtaH: done, made, created
visheShaH (see above): peculiarity, personality trait
EH Johnston:
And as the special character of the bodily constitution in this existence is brought about by anger, joy, etc., similarly a special character, effected by the vices, is developed in various forms in their (new) births also.
Linda Covill:
Just as the distinctive character of embodied individuals arises because of their anger, joy and so on, so does their distinctive defilement-created character develop in various formats in future births too.
utpadyate c'eha yathaa visheShah
tath" aiva janmasv api n'aika-ruupo
nirvartate klesha-kRto visheShaH
16.21
Just as the anger, lust, and so on
of sufferers of those afflictions
Give rise in the present to a personality trait,
So too in new lives, in various manifestations,
Does the affliction-created trait develop:
COMMENT:
Ain't it funny how your new life didn't change things?
You're still suffering from the same old affliction you used to have.
It somehow doesn't scan as well as the old Eagles lyric, but I think it makes Ashvaghosha's point here.
As a translation of klesha, I like "affliction" because it means both SUFFERING itself and also a delusory tendency that CAUSES SUFFERING.
To be grumpy, to return to that example, is not only to suffer from grumpiness (suffering itself) but also to see the world as if through grumpiness-tainted spectacles (a cause of suffering to self and others).
And here again, a bit of knowledge about early vestibular reflexes may help to deepen our understanding of how afflictions afflict us.
If the Moro, or infantile panic/grasp reflex, fails to be INHIBITED during the initial window of inhibition lasting till around 6 months after birth, the reflex will tend to remain stuck in the system of the child and adult as a big obstacle to enlightened behaviour.
The affliction of an immature Moro reflex directly brings suffering itself, in the form of irrational fear, anger, over-excitement and hypersensitivity. But more than that, because of its wide-ranging effects on the functioning of the ears, eyes, vestibular/proprioceptive and other senses, an immature Moro reflex plays a big role in what FM Alexander called "faulty sensory appreciation." Faulty sensory appreciation is the antithesis of lucidity; it is akin to seeing the world through coloured and distorted lenses, and is thus the indirect cause of suffering.
FM Alexander was way ahead of his time in understanding the importance of the afflictions he termed "unduly excited fear reflexes and emotions" and "faulty sensory appreciation." Not only did he see the problem clearly, he also devised a MEANS-WHEREBY the misuse of the self associated with an immature Moro reflex might be inhibited, and the faulty sensory appreciation associated with it might be by-passed. Thus Alexander's MEANS-WHEREBY involved, as also the realisation of the four dhyaana as described by Ashvaghosha involved, at least in the early stages of their application, reliance on reason.
Specifically, Alexander taught verbal directions which point precisely away from the stiffening of the neck, holding of the head, narrowing and arching of the back, and holding in of the limbs, which characterizes the Moro pattern. Those verbal directions go something like this:
"I wish to let my neck be free,
To let the head go forward and up,
To let the back lengthen and widen,
Sending the legs and the arms out of the back...."
VOCABULARY:
krodha: anger
praharSha: erection (or greater erection) of the male organ; erection of the hair, extreme joy , thrill of delight , rapture
aadibhiH = instrumental [indicating agent of passive construction], plural of aadi: beginning with, and so on
aashrayaaNaam = genitive, plural of aashraya: that to which anything is annexed or with which anything is closely connected or on which anything depends or rests ; a recipient , the person or thing in which any quality or article is inherent or retained or received
utpadyate = 3rd person singular passive utpad: to arise , rise , originate , be born or produced ; to come forth , become visible , appear ; to be ready ; to take place , begin ; to produce , beget , generate ; to cause , effect ; to cause to issue or come forth , bring forward
ca: and; (sometimes emphatic = eva) , even , indeed , certainly , just
iha: in this place , here ; to this place ; in this world; now
yathaa: (correlative of tathaa in the following sentence) just as
visheShah = nominative singular of visheSha: distinction , difference between ; characteristic difference, peculiar mark, special property, speciality, peculiarity ; a kind , species , individual
tathaa: similarly, in the same manner
eva: just so
janmasu = locative plural of janman: birth, production; origin; existence , life
api: and , also , moreover , besides
n'aika: not one, many, various
ruupaH = nominative, singular of ruupa: form, shape, figure
nirvartate = 3rd person singluar of nir- √ vRt: to cause to roll out or cast (as dice); to take place , happen ; to come forth , originate , develop , become; to be accomplished or effected or finished, come off ;
klesha: pain , affliction , distress , pain from disease , anguish; (the Buddhists reckon ten , viz. three of the body [murder , theft , adultery] , four of speech [lying , slander , abuse , unprofitable conversation] , three of the mind [covetousness , malice , scepticism])
kRtaH: done, made, created
visheShaH (see above): peculiarity, personality trait
EH Johnston:
And as the special character of the bodily constitution in this existence is brought about by anger, joy, etc., similarly a special character, effected by the vices, is developed in various forms in their (new) births also.
Linda Covill:
Just as the distinctive character of embodied individuals arises because of their anger, joy and so on, so does their distinctive defilement-created character develop in various formats in future births too.
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