Since my brother and I both decided some years ago to train as teachers of the FM Alexander Technique, our mother also decided to look into Alexander work and found she liked it a lot. Thanks to regular lessons with a local teacher in Birmigham, she learned to sit and move in ways that caused her to suffer less with back pain. One of the best pieces of advice I have ever heard, applicable equally to Alexander work and Zen practice, I heard from this teacher in Birmingham, via my mother -- a good example of what goes around comes around. The advice was this: "Decide not to decide."
The context was that my mother was worrying about some big decision -- whether or not to move house or some such -- and anxiety about making the right decision was evidently hampering the process of "coming to quiet," which is integral to good Alexander work.
"Decide not to decide."
It really is good advice. When you have got some big decision to make, let go of the desire to arrive at a decision, and the whole body-mind instantly calms down.
"Decide not to decide."
It resonates with Yakusan's famous description of what he was thinking, quoted by Dogen as an instruction for sitting-dhyāna.
"Think the state of not thinking."
"Think into the zone of not thinking."
"Decide not to decide."
On further investigation, however, what one generally finds is that the decision to let go of the desire to arrive at a decision was not deep enough, was not real enough.
It's like the idea of just letting go of thoughts, just letting thoughts pass, like clouds wandering by.
Every half-arsed dabbler in meditation knows that puny principle. But the Buddha's truth of cessation requires more of us than that.
On further investigation, even after I have seen the wisdom of "deciding not to decide," thoughts relating to the outcome I am supposed to have stopped worrying about, continue to arise one after the other.
Recognizing this, what is necessary is to say "NO" and really mean "NO" to the desire to arrive at a decision. In other words, as usual, it is necessary really to say "NO" to the idea of gaining an end -- the end in this instance being "the right decision."
This business of not just letting go of, but really giving up, a desire to gain an end, is at the centre of the Buddha's 3rd noble truth. FM Alexander, borrowing a word from the then nascent discipline of neuro-physiology, called it "inhibition."
The inhibition, it has been observed, over and over again, always needs to be further back than one supposed.
When something goes wrong, FM Alexander said, it is always down to a failure of inhibition.
Too bloody true. Quad Erat Demonstrandum.
Even if, as a result of calm consideration, you have let go of desires,/ You must, as if shining light into darkness, abolish them by means of their opposite. //15.4//
What lies behind them sleeps on, like a fire covered with ashes;/ You are to extinguish it, my friend, by the means of mental development, as if using water to put out a fire. //15.6//
For from that source they re-emerge, like shoots from a seed. / In its absence they would be no more -- like shoots in the absence of a seed. //15.6//
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Snakes & Ladders
You know the feeling: a sense that things are going well, a sense of going in the right direction, when one false move . . . . and it is back to square one -- at which place the best thing one can possibly hope to find is the bottom rung of a ladder.
That is what happened to Nanda in Canto 12 when, for the first time, he found real confidence in the Buddha's teaching. He really believed in better. He found confidence in a better way than the ascetic end-gaining of the Brahmanical tradition and a better way than the Buddhist end-gaining of the Buddhist striver. Back in Cantos 4 and 5 what Nanda evinced was never real confidence in the Buddha's teaching, but only the sort of unexamined reverence that one sees on the adoring faces of superstitious Tibetans when the poor old Dalai Lama is in their presence. That kind of unexamined religious reverence, as I see it, is not any kind of ladder: it is a snake.
In a game of snakes and ladders, going up or going down is purely a matter of luck, not of judgement. But in the reality of snakes and ladders, intuition and awareness come into it, for better or for worse.
Alexander work, as I see it, is very much a ladder, beginning, like the Buddha's teaching, with inhibition of end-gaining. Working with developmental movements towards better integration of vestibular reflexes is so primitive it might be compared to preparation for stepping onto the first rung of a ladder, getting a better footing on the ground before even thinking of climbing up. And in listening work, the metaphor of a ladder has been used explicitly, by Alfred Tomatis no less, who referred to the Biblical example of Jacob's Ladder.
The voices I like to hear, talking of ladders, and snakes, are independent voices. Theravada Buddhism is not for me, but Ānandajoti Bhikkhu is not your average Theravada Bhikkhu. He is a genuine indie. Again, certain aspects of Tibetan Buddhism I am deeply skeptical about, not least the readiness to accept the Buddha's teaching around samsāra as if it were a literal affirmation of the ancient Hindu conception of rebirth. But the Tibetan monk Matthieu Ricard (M) is evidently another Indie and I recommend to anybody the record of the dialogue between him and his father Jean-Francois Revel (JF) published in English as "The Monk and the Philosopher."
Here is an excerpt:
J.F. -- (discussing the war in Bosnia) A total and bloody anarchy supervened, with Croats killing Muslims, Muslims killing Croats, and Serbs killing everyone. For several years no one managed to get the different factions to stick to any peace agreement at all. What we were witnessing, in fact, was the self-destruction of all the communities involved.
M. -- In place of an analysis of the political and geographical causes, I find it more useful to put it in terms of the mental processes that lead to such an eruption of hatred.
J.F: -- Absolutely. What I'm also trying to say is that the political and geographical causes don't explain anything. If that's what it had all been about, a rational solution could have been found.
M. -- All the causes of war in the world, whether territorial claims, the sharing of irrigation water, or whatever else it might be, come down to a feeling of oneself being wronged, which then gives rise to hostility. That's a negative thought, a divergence from the natural state, and is therefore a source of suffering. The obvious conclusion is that before such thoughts completely invade and take over the mind, we need to gain some mastery over them. A fire is easiest to put out at the very moment the first flames appear, not once the whole forest is ablaze. It's all too easy to get a very long way from the basic goodness within us.
J.F. -- But how do you explain the fact that we stray away from it so much more often than staying faithful to it?
M. -- When you're following a mountain path, it doesn't take much to put a foot wrong and tumble down the slope. The fundamental goal of a spiritual discipline is to maintain perfect watchfulness all the time. Attention and awareness are basic qualities that the spiritual life helps to develop.
J.F -- Yes. But if to eradicate evil from the world we have to wait for six thousand million individuals to reach that spiritual path, it could be a long wait!
M. -- As an oriental proverb says, "With patience, the orchard becomes jam." That it might take a long time doesn't alter the fact that there's no other solution. Even if violence doesn't stop arising overall, the only way to remedy it is the transformation of individuals.
Amen.
Monday, February 6, 2012
Mindfulness (4): Nothing to Be Proud of
When I first started Alexander work in earnest, as a student-teacher of the FM Alexander Technique, from 1995 onwards, one of the things that struck me was that there was this virtuous circle of stopping and awareness, that had been waiting all the time to be discovered.
"Stopping," in Alexander terms means, in other words "inhibition," i.e. stopping those "wrong inner patterns" which constitute "the doing that has to be stopped."
For 13 years I had been striving hard to keep my spine straight vertically in Zazen, but when, under the hands of skilled Alexander teachers, I started to stop indulging in the resulting gross pattern of misuse, it was as if I had opened a floodgate of awareness. And the more awareness there was, the more I saw there was to stop, to inhibit, to see as a fault and say No to.
This virtuous circle of stopping and becoming aware has not necessarily got anything to do with Buddhism, any more than, say, the 2nd law of thermodynamics, or in short impermanence, has got anything to do with Buddhism.
But in the Saundarananda of Aśvaghoṣa, as I read it, the Buddha points Nanda in the direction of discovering this virtuous circle for himself, just as the Buddha and Ānanda join forces to make Nanda acutely aware of the truth of impermanence.
There was something arrogant about Zazen as I practised it while I was in Japan, and there is something inevitably humbling about getting inside the virtuous circle of stopping and becoming aware. It is humbling to become aware of what is doing wrong, and frequently humbling -- sometimes humiliating -- to be confronted with the difficulty of stopping it. Such difficulty has caused meeker and more virtuous individuals than me to say, "I wish I had never even bloody heard of FM Alexander!"
Even though, in ancient Pali suttas, the Buddha discusses cultivating or developing mindfulness, truly, mindfulness or awareness is not something that the practitioner generates. It is rather there already, as if waiting for us to stop doing the wrong thing, so that it can assert itself.
Thus, as described at the beginning of Canto 15 and the beginning of Canto 17, when a practitioner stops pulling himself down (or in other words allows the whole body to tend straight upwards), he or she is naturally attended by mindfulness.
Again, as described in Nanda's progress through the four dhyānas in Canto 17, Nanda in the first instance, sitting in solitude, has distanced himself from end-gaining desires and tainted things, and thus he feels joy. But in this joy, he sees a fault, which is the presence of disturbing ideas and thoughts, and so he stops those interferences and finds an even deeper joy. But in this joy also, he sees a fault, and so he stops indulging in joy, whereby he experiences a supreme state of ease. But even enjoyment of this ease involves a subtle form of interference, which Nanda sees as a fault. Stopping this interference, he becomes fully aware, fully mindful.
This, however, was by no means the end of Nanda's journey. Before the Buddha could affirm him as truly having realized the worthy state of an arhat, it still remained for Nanda to cut the upper fetters.
"Stopping," in Alexander terms means, in other words "inhibition," i.e. stopping those "wrong inner patterns" which constitute "the doing that has to be stopped."
For 13 years I had been striving hard to keep my spine straight vertically in Zazen, but when, under the hands of skilled Alexander teachers, I started to stop indulging in the resulting gross pattern of misuse, it was as if I had opened a floodgate of awareness. And the more awareness there was, the more I saw there was to stop, to inhibit, to see as a fault and say No to.
This virtuous circle of stopping and becoming aware has not necessarily got anything to do with Buddhism, any more than, say, the 2nd law of thermodynamics, or in short impermanence, has got anything to do with Buddhism.
But in the Saundarananda of Aśvaghoṣa, as I read it, the Buddha points Nanda in the direction of discovering this virtuous circle for himself, just as the Buddha and Ānanda join forces to make Nanda acutely aware of the truth of impermanence.
There was something arrogant about Zazen as I practised it while I was in Japan, and there is something inevitably humbling about getting inside the virtuous circle of stopping and becoming aware. It is humbling to become aware of what is doing wrong, and frequently humbling -- sometimes humiliating -- to be confronted with the difficulty of stopping it. Such difficulty has caused meeker and more virtuous individuals than me to say, "I wish I had never even bloody heard of FM Alexander!"
Even though, in ancient Pali suttas, the Buddha discusses cultivating or developing mindfulness, truly, mindfulness or awareness is not something that the practitioner generates. It is rather there already, as if waiting for us to stop doing the wrong thing, so that it can assert itself.
Thus, as described at the beginning of Canto 15 and the beginning of Canto 17, when a practitioner stops pulling himself down (or in other words allows the whole body to tend straight upwards), he or she is naturally attended by mindfulness.
Again, as described in Nanda's progress through the four dhyānas in Canto 17, Nanda in the first instance, sitting in solitude, has distanced himself from end-gaining desires and tainted things, and thus he feels joy. But in this joy, he sees a fault, which is the presence of disturbing ideas and thoughts, and so he stops those interferences and finds an even deeper joy. But in this joy also, he sees a fault, and so he stops indulging in joy, whereby he experiences a supreme state of ease. But even enjoyment of this ease involves a subtle form of interference, which Nanda sees as a fault. Stopping this interference, he becomes fully aware, fully mindful.
This, however, was by no means the end of Nanda's journey. Before the Buddha could affirm him as truly having realized the worthy state of an arhat, it still remained for Nanda to cut the upper fetters.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Mindfulness (3): Developing Awareness
The problem of awareness, or lack of awareness, as I see it, is not primarily a psychological problem but is primarily a developmental problem.
So when the Buddha exhorts Nanda to rid the mind of polluting influences bhāvanayā (see 15.5 and 16.5), the meaning of bhāvanayā might be "by means of development" and at the same time "by developmental means."
For the last 40 years all my efforts in the direction of developing awareness have been hampered by, and at the same time motivated by gradually developing awareness of, a very imperfectly integrated Moro reflex (baby panic reflex).
One person who really understands what I am on about, from the inside, is my brother Ian, who shares my genetic inheritance and earns a crust as an Alexander Technique teacher working with nervous and phobic swimmers in the water.
If some desirous idea, a fever of the mind,
Should venture to offend you,
Entertain no scent of it but shake it off
As if pollen had landed on your robe.//15.3//
Even if, through insight,
You have dropped off desires,
You must, as if lighting up darkness,
Abolish them by means of their opposite.//15.4//
What lies behind them sleeps on,
Like a fire covered with ashes;
You are to extinguish it, my friend, by developmental means
As if using water to put out a fire.//15.5//
Thus, by methodically taking possession of the mind,
Getting rid of something and gathering something together,/
The practitioner makes the four dhyānas his own,
And duly acquires the five powers of knowing: //16.1//
The principal transcendent power, taking many forms;
Then being awake to what others are thinking;/
And remembering past lives from long ago;
And divine lucidity of ear; and of eye. //16.2//
From then on, through investigation of what is,
He applies his mind to eradicating the polluting influences,/
For on this basis he fully understands suffering and the rest,
The four true standpoints: //16.3//
This is suffering, which is constant and akin to trouble;
This is the cause of suffering, akin to starting it;/
This is cessation of suffering, akin to walking away.
And this, akin to a refuge, is a peaceable path. //16.4//
Understanding these noble truths, by a process of reasoning
While getting to know the four as one,/
He prevails over all the influences, by developmental means,
And, on finding peace, is no longer subject to becoming.//16.5//
For by failing to wake up and come round
To this four, whose substance is what is,/
Humankind goes from existence to existence without finding peace,
Hoisted in the swing of saṁsāra.//16.6//
So when the Buddha exhorts Nanda to rid the mind of polluting influences bhāvanayā (see 15.5 and 16.5), the meaning of bhāvanayā might be "by means of development" and at the same time "by developmental means."
For the last 40 years all my efforts in the direction of developing awareness have been hampered by, and at the same time motivated by gradually developing awareness of, a very imperfectly integrated Moro reflex (baby panic reflex).
One person who really understands what I am on about, from the inside, is my brother Ian, who shares my genetic inheritance and earns a crust as an Alexander Technique teacher working with nervous and phobic swimmers in the water.
If some desirous idea, a fever of the mind,
Should venture to offend you,
Entertain no scent of it but shake it off
As if pollen had landed on your robe.//15.3//
Even if, through insight,
You have dropped off desires,
You must, as if lighting up darkness,
Abolish them by means of their opposite.//15.4//
What lies behind them sleeps on,
Like a fire covered with ashes;
You are to extinguish it, my friend, by developmental means
As if using water to put out a fire.//15.5//
Thus, by methodically taking possession of the mind,
Getting rid of something and gathering something together,/
The practitioner makes the four dhyānas his own,
And duly acquires the five powers of knowing: //16.1//
The principal transcendent power, taking many forms;
Then being awake to what others are thinking;/
And remembering past lives from long ago;
And divine lucidity of ear; and of eye. //16.2//
From then on, through investigation of what is,
He applies his mind to eradicating the polluting influences,/
For on this basis he fully understands suffering and the rest,
The four true standpoints: //16.3//
This is suffering, which is constant and akin to trouble;
This is the cause of suffering, akin to starting it;/
This is cessation of suffering, akin to walking away.
And this, akin to a refuge, is a peaceable path. //16.4//
Understanding these noble truths, by a process of reasoning
While getting to know the four as one,/
He prevails over all the influences, by developmental means,
And, on finding peace, is no longer subject to becoming.//16.5//
For by failing to wake up and come round
To this four, whose substance is what is,/
Humankind goes from existence to existence without finding peace,
Hoisted in the swing of saṁsāra.//16.6//
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Mindfulness/Awareness (2) : Textual Evidence
The word smṛti appears in Saundara-nanda in the following verses or series of verses -- the most notable series being the Buddha's description of mindful everyday action in canto 14, and Aśvaghoṣa's description of Nanda's experience of four stages of sitting-meditation in canto 17.
Hitherto I have usually translated smṛti as "mindfulness," except in 9.33 where old-age is described as a robber of smṛti ("memory"), and in the description of sitting-meditation in which smṛti-mat seems to express the presence of "full awareness."
In the following verses smṛti has been translated in every case as mindfulness, highlighted in bold.
9.33
Robber of mindfulness; destroyer of looks;
Ender of pleasure; seizer of speech, hearing and sight;
Birthplace of fatigue; slayer of strength and manly vigour:
For those with a body, there is no enemy to rival aging.
13.30
On this basis, standing grounded in mindfulness,
The naturally impetuous senses
From the objects of those senses
You should hold back.
13.35-37
For smeared with the poison of ideas,
Are those arrows, produced from five senses,
Whose tails are anxiety, whose tips are thrills,
And whose range is the vast emptiness of objects.
They strike human fawns in the heart
Fired off by Desire, the hunter;
Unless they are warded away,
Men wounded by them duly fall.
Standing firm in the arena of restraint,
And bearing the bow of resolve,
The mighty man, as they rain down, must fend them away,
Wearing the armour of mindfulness.
14.1
And so using the floodgate of mindfulness
To close a dam on the power of the senses,
Be aware, in eating food, of the measure
That conduces to meditation and to health.
14.35-45
And so upon acts like sitting, moving, standing,
Looking, speaking and so on --
Being fully aware of every action --
You should bring mindfulness to bear.
When a man is like a gatekeeper at his gate,
His mindfulness directed,
The faults do not venture to attack him,
Any more than enemies do a guarded city.
No affliction arises in him
For whom mindfulness pervades the body --
Guarding the mind in all situations,
As a nurse protects a child.
But he is a target for the faults
Who lacks the armour of mindfulness:
As for enemies is he who stands in battle
With no suit of armour.
Know to be vulnerable that mind
Which mindfulness does not guard --
Like a blind man without a guide
Groping after objects.
When men attach to meaningless aims
And turn away from their proper aims,
Failing to shudder at the danger,
Loss of mindfulness is the cause.
When, each standing on its own patch,
The virtues which begin with integrity are engaged,
Then as a herdsman follows his scattered cows,
Mindfulness follows after those virtues.
The deathless nectar is lost to him
Whose mindfulness dissipates;
The nectar exists in the hands of him
Whose mindfulness pervades his body.
Where is the noble principle of him
To whom mindfulness is alien?
And for whom no noble principle exists,
To him a true path has been lost.
He who has lost the right track
Has lost the deathless step.
Having lost that nectar of deathlessness,
He is not exempt from suffering.
Therefore walking like this: "Walking, I am";
And standing like this: "Standing, I am" --
Upon moments such as these
You should bring mindfulness to bear.
15.1-15.2
"In whatever solitary place you are,
Crossing the legs in the supreme manner,
Aligning the body,
And thus being attended by mindfulness
that is directed...
... towards the tip of the nose
or towards the forehead,
Or right in between the eyebrows,
You may make the inconstant mind
Wholly engaged with the fundamental.
15.64
So for the giving up,
In short, of all these ideas,
Mindfulness of inward and outward breathing, my friend,
You should make into your own possession.
16.33
True mindfulness, properly harnessed
So as to bring one close to the truths; and true balance:
These two, pertaining to practice,
Are for mastery, based on tranquillity, of the mind.
17.3-17.4
Having washed his feet in that water,
He then, by a clean, auspicious, and splendid tree-root,
Girded on the intention to come undone,
And sat with legs fully crossed.
By first directing the whole body up,
And thus keeping mindfulness turned towards the body,
And thus integrating in his person all the senses,
There he threw himself all-out into practice.
17.23-17.25
As a bow of true knowledge, clad in the armour of mindfulness,
Standing up in a chariot of pure practice of integrity,
While his enemies, the afflictions, stood up in the battlefield of the mind,
He took his stance for victory, ready to engage them in battle.
Then, unsheathing a sword that the limbs of awakening had honed,
Standing in the supreme chariot of true motivation,
With an army containing the elephants of the branches of the path,
He gradually penetrated the ranks of the afflictions.
With arrows made from the presence of mindfulness,
Instantly he shot those enemies whose substance is upside-down-ness:
He split apart four enemies, four causes of suffering,
With four arrows, each having its own range.
17.50 - 17.55
And so experiencing the ease enjoyed by the noble ones, from non-attachment to joy,
Knowing it totally, with his body,
He remained indifferent, fully mindful,
And, having realised the third stage of meditation, steady.
Since the ease here is beyond any ease,
And there is no progression of ease beyond it,
Therefore, as a knower of higher and lower,
he realised it as a condition of resplendent wholeness
Which he deemed superlative -- in a friendly way.
Then, even in that stage of meditation, he found a fault:
He saw it as better to be quiet, not excited,
Whereas his mind was fluctuating tirelessly
Because of ease circulating.
In excitement there is interference,
And where there is interference there is suffering,
Which is why, insofar as ease is excitatory,
Devotees who are desirous of quiet give up that ease.
Then, having already transcended ease and suffering,
And emotional reactivity,
He realised the lucidity in which there is indifference and full mindfulness:
Thus, beyond suffering and ease, is the fourth stage of meditation.
Since in this there is neither ease nor suffering,
And the act of knowing abides here, being its own object,
Therefore utter lucidity through indifference and mindfulness
Is specified in the protocol for the fourth stage of meditation.
=========================================================================================
Here is the same series of verses with smṛti translated in every case as "awareness." It would be interesting to know which word, if either, people find more helpful.
9.33
Robber of awareness; destroyer of looks;
Ender of pleasure; seizer of speech, hearing and sight;
Birthplace of fatigue; slayer of strength and manly vigour:
For those with a body, there is no enemy to rival aging.
13.30
On this basis, standing grounded in awareness,
The naturally impetuous senses
From the objects of those senses
You should hold back.
13.35-37
For smeared with the poison of ideas,
Are those arrows, produced from five senses,
Whose tails are anxiety, whose tips are thrills,
And whose range is the vast emptiness of objects.
They strike human fawns in the heart
Fired off by Desire, the hunter;
Unless they are warded away,
Men wounded by them duly fall.
Standing firm in the arena of restraint,
And bearing the bow of resolve,
The mighty man, as they rain down, must fend them away,
Wearing the armour of awareness.
14.1
And so using the floodgate of awareness
To close a dam on the power of the senses,
Be aware, in eating food, of the measure
That conduces to meditation and to health.
14.35-45
And so upon acts like sitting, moving, standing,
Looking, speaking and so on --
Being fully conscious of every action --
You should bring awareness to bear.
When a man is like a gatekeeper at his gate,
His awareness directed,
The faults do not venture to attack him,
Any more than enemies do a guarded city.
No affliction arises in him
For whom awareness pervades the body --
Guarding the mind in all situations,
As a nurse protects a child.
But he is a target for the faults
Who lacks the armour of awareness:
As for enemies is he who stands in battle
With no suit of armour.
Know to be vulnerable that mind
Which awareness does not guard --
Like a blind man without a guide
Groping after objects.
When men attach to meaningless aims
And turn away from their proper aims,
Failing to shudder at the danger,
Lack of awareness is the cause.
When, each standing on its own patch,
The virtues which begin with integrity are engaged,
Then as a herdsman follows his scattered cows,
Awareness follows after those virtues.
The deathless nectar is lost to him
Whose awareness dissipates;
The nectar exists in the hands of him
Whose awareness pervades his body.
Where is the noble principle of him
To whom awareness is alien?
And for whom no noble principle exists,
To him a true path has been lost.
He who has lost the right track
Has lost the deathless step.
Having lost that nectar of deathlessness,
He is not exempt from suffering.
Therefore walking like this: "Walking, I am";
And standing like this: "Standing, I am" --
Upon moments such as these
You should bring awareness to bear.
15.1-15.2
"In whatever solitary place you are,
Crossing the legs in the supreme manner,
Aligning the body,
And thus being attended by awareness
that is directed...
... towards the tip of the nose
or towards the forehead,
Or right in between the eyebrows,
You may make the inconstant mind
Wholly engaged with the fundamental.
15.64
So for the giving up,
In short, of all these ideas,
Awareness of inward and outward breathing, my friend,
You should make into your own possession.
16.33
True awareness, properly harnessed
So as to bring one close to the truths; and true balance:
These two, pertaining to practice,
Are for mastery, based on tranquillity, of the mind.
17.3-17.4
Having washed his feet in that water,
He then, by a clean, auspicious, and splendid tree-root,
Girded on the intention to come undone,
And sat with legs fully crossed.
By first directing the whole body up,
And thus keeping awareness turned towards the body,
And thus integrating in his person all the senses,
There he threw himself all-out into practice.
17.23-17.25
As a bow of true knowledge, clad in the armour of awareness,
Standing up in a chariot of pure practice of integrity,
While his enemies, the afflictions, stood up in the battlefield of the mind,
He took his stance for victory, ready to engage them in battle.
Then, unsheathing a sword that the limbs of awakening had honed,
Standing in the supreme chariot of true motivation,
With an army containing the elephants of the branches of the path,
He gradually penetrated the ranks of the afflictions.
With arrows made from the presence of awareness,
Instantly he shot those enemies whose substance is upside-down-ness:
He split apart four enemies, four causes of suffering,
With four arrows, each having its own range.
17.50 - 17.55
And so experiencing the ease enjoyed by the noble ones, from non-attachment to joy,
Knowing it totally, with his body,
He remained indifferent, fully aware,
And, having realised the third stage of meditation, steady.
Since the ease here is beyond any ease,
And there is no progression of ease beyond it,
Therefore, as a knower of higher and lower,
he realised it as a condition of resplendent wholeness
Which he deemed superlative -- in a friendly way.
Then, even in that stage of meditation, he found a fault:
He saw it as better to be quiet, not excited,
Whereas his mind was fluctuating tirelessly
Because of ease circulating.
In excitement there is interference,
And where there is interference there is suffering,
Which is why, insofar as ease is excitatory,
Devotees who are desirous of quiet give up that ease.
Then, having already transcended ease and suffering,
And emotional reactivity,
He realised the lucidity in which there is indifference and full awareness:
Thus, beyond suffering and ease, is the fourth stage of meditation.
Since in this there is neither ease nor suffering,
And the act of knowing abides here, being its own object,
Therefore utter lucidity through indifference and awareness
Is specified in the protocol for the fourth stage of meditation.
Hitherto I have usually translated smṛti as "mindfulness," except in 9.33 where old-age is described as a robber of smṛti ("memory"), and in the description of sitting-meditation in which smṛti-mat seems to express the presence of "full awareness."
In the following verses smṛti has been translated in every case as mindfulness, highlighted in bold.
9.33
Robber of mindfulness; destroyer of looks;
Ender of pleasure; seizer of speech, hearing and sight;
Birthplace of fatigue; slayer of strength and manly vigour:
For those with a body, there is no enemy to rival aging.
13.30
On this basis, standing grounded in mindfulness,
The naturally impetuous senses
From the objects of those senses
You should hold back.
13.35-37
For smeared with the poison of ideas,
Are those arrows, produced from five senses,
Whose tails are anxiety, whose tips are thrills,
And whose range is the vast emptiness of objects.
They strike human fawns in the heart
Fired off by Desire, the hunter;
Unless they are warded away,
Men wounded by them duly fall.
Standing firm in the arena of restraint,
And bearing the bow of resolve,
The mighty man, as they rain down, must fend them away,
Wearing the armour of mindfulness.
14.1
And so using the floodgate of mindfulness
To close a dam on the power of the senses,
Be aware, in eating food, of the measure
That conduces to meditation and to health.
14.35-45
And so upon acts like sitting, moving, standing,
Looking, speaking and so on --
Being fully aware of every action --
You should bring mindfulness to bear.
When a man is like a gatekeeper at his gate,
His mindfulness directed,
The faults do not venture to attack him,
Any more than enemies do a guarded city.
No affliction arises in him
For whom mindfulness pervades the body --
Guarding the mind in all situations,
As a nurse protects a child.
But he is a target for the faults
Who lacks the armour of mindfulness:
As for enemies is he who stands in battle
With no suit of armour.
Know to be vulnerable that mind
Which mindfulness does not guard --
Like a blind man without a guide
Groping after objects.
When men attach to meaningless aims
And turn away from their proper aims,
Failing to shudder at the danger,
Loss of mindfulness is the cause.
When, each standing on its own patch,
The virtues which begin with integrity are engaged,
Then as a herdsman follows his scattered cows,
Mindfulness follows after those virtues.
The deathless nectar is lost to him
Whose mindfulness dissipates;
The nectar exists in the hands of him
Whose mindfulness pervades his body.
Where is the noble principle of him
To whom mindfulness is alien?
And for whom no noble principle exists,
To him a true path has been lost.
He who has lost the right track
Has lost the deathless step.
Having lost that nectar of deathlessness,
He is not exempt from suffering.
Therefore walking like this: "Walking, I am";
And standing like this: "Standing, I am" --
Upon moments such as these
You should bring mindfulness to bear.
15.1-15.2
"In whatever solitary place you are,
Crossing the legs in the supreme manner,
Aligning the body,
And thus being attended by mindfulness
that is directed...
... towards the tip of the nose
or towards the forehead,
Or right in between the eyebrows,
You may make the inconstant mind
Wholly engaged with the fundamental.
15.64
So for the giving up,
In short, of all these ideas,
Mindfulness of inward and outward breathing, my friend,
You should make into your own possession.
16.33
True mindfulness, properly harnessed
So as to bring one close to the truths; and true balance:
These two, pertaining to practice,
Are for mastery, based on tranquillity, of the mind.
17.3-17.4
Having washed his feet in that water,
He then, by a clean, auspicious, and splendid tree-root,
Girded on the intention to come undone,
And sat with legs fully crossed.
By first directing the whole body up,
And thus keeping mindfulness turned towards the body,
And thus integrating in his person all the senses,
There he threw himself all-out into practice.
17.23-17.25
As a bow of true knowledge, clad in the armour of mindfulness,
Standing up in a chariot of pure practice of integrity,
While his enemies, the afflictions, stood up in the battlefield of the mind,
He took his stance for victory, ready to engage them in battle.
Then, unsheathing a sword that the limbs of awakening had honed,
Standing in the supreme chariot of true motivation,
With an army containing the elephants of the branches of the path,
He gradually penetrated the ranks of the afflictions.
With arrows made from the presence of mindfulness,
Instantly he shot those enemies whose substance is upside-down-ness:
He split apart four enemies, four causes of suffering,
With four arrows, each having its own range.
17.50 - 17.55
And so experiencing the ease enjoyed by the noble ones, from non-attachment to joy,
Knowing it totally, with his body,
He remained indifferent, fully mindful,
And, having realised the third stage of meditation, steady.
Since the ease here is beyond any ease,
And there is no progression of ease beyond it,
Therefore, as a knower of higher and lower,
he realised it as a condition of resplendent wholeness
Which he deemed superlative -- in a friendly way.
Then, even in that stage of meditation, he found a fault:
He saw it as better to be quiet, not excited,
Whereas his mind was fluctuating tirelessly
Because of ease circulating.
In excitement there is interference,
And where there is interference there is suffering,
Which is why, insofar as ease is excitatory,
Devotees who are desirous of quiet give up that ease.
Then, having already transcended ease and suffering,
And emotional reactivity,
He realised the lucidity in which there is indifference and full mindfulness:
Thus, beyond suffering and ease, is the fourth stage of meditation.
Since in this there is neither ease nor suffering,
And the act of knowing abides here, being its own object,
Therefore utter lucidity through indifference and mindfulness
Is specified in the protocol for the fourth stage of meditation.
=========================================================================================
Here is the same series of verses with smṛti translated in every case as "awareness." It would be interesting to know which word, if either, people find more helpful.
9.33
Robber of awareness; destroyer of looks;
Ender of pleasure; seizer of speech, hearing and sight;
Birthplace of fatigue; slayer of strength and manly vigour:
For those with a body, there is no enemy to rival aging.
13.30
On this basis, standing grounded in awareness,
The naturally impetuous senses
From the objects of those senses
You should hold back.
13.35-37
For smeared with the poison of ideas,
Are those arrows, produced from five senses,
Whose tails are anxiety, whose tips are thrills,
And whose range is the vast emptiness of objects.
They strike human fawns in the heart
Fired off by Desire, the hunter;
Unless they are warded away,
Men wounded by them duly fall.
Standing firm in the arena of restraint,
And bearing the bow of resolve,
The mighty man, as they rain down, must fend them away,
Wearing the armour of awareness.
14.1
And so using the floodgate of awareness
To close a dam on the power of the senses,
Be aware, in eating food, of the measure
That conduces to meditation and to health.
14.35-45
And so upon acts like sitting, moving, standing,
Looking, speaking and so on --
Being fully conscious of every action --
You should bring awareness to bear.
When a man is like a gatekeeper at his gate,
His awareness directed,
The faults do not venture to attack him,
Any more than enemies do a guarded city.
No affliction arises in him
For whom awareness pervades the body --
Guarding the mind in all situations,
As a nurse protects a child.
But he is a target for the faults
Who lacks the armour of awareness:
As for enemies is he who stands in battle
With no suit of armour.
Know to be vulnerable that mind
Which awareness does not guard --
Like a blind man without a guide
Groping after objects.
When men attach to meaningless aims
And turn away from their proper aims,
Failing to shudder at the danger,
Lack of awareness is the cause.
When, each standing on its own patch,
The virtues which begin with integrity are engaged,
Then as a herdsman follows his scattered cows,
Awareness follows after those virtues.
The deathless nectar is lost to him
Whose awareness dissipates;
The nectar exists in the hands of him
Whose awareness pervades his body.
Where is the noble principle of him
To whom awareness is alien?
And for whom no noble principle exists,
To him a true path has been lost.
He who has lost the right track
Has lost the deathless step.
Having lost that nectar of deathlessness,
He is not exempt from suffering.
Therefore walking like this: "Walking, I am";
And standing like this: "Standing, I am" --
Upon moments such as these
You should bring awareness to bear.
15.1-15.2
"In whatever solitary place you are,
Crossing the legs in the supreme manner,
Aligning the body,
And thus being attended by awareness
that is directed...
... towards the tip of the nose
or towards the forehead,
Or right in between the eyebrows,
You may make the inconstant mind
Wholly engaged with the fundamental.
15.64
So for the giving up,
In short, of all these ideas,
Awareness of inward and outward breathing, my friend,
You should make into your own possession.
16.33
True awareness, properly harnessed
So as to bring one close to the truths; and true balance:
These two, pertaining to practice,
Are for mastery, based on tranquillity, of the mind.
17.3-17.4
Having washed his feet in that water,
He then, by a clean, auspicious, and splendid tree-root,
Girded on the intention to come undone,
And sat with legs fully crossed.
By first directing the whole body up,
And thus keeping awareness turned towards the body,
And thus integrating in his person all the senses,
There he threw himself all-out into practice.
17.23-17.25
As a bow of true knowledge, clad in the armour of awareness,
Standing up in a chariot of pure practice of integrity,
While his enemies, the afflictions, stood up in the battlefield of the mind,
He took his stance for victory, ready to engage them in battle.
Then, unsheathing a sword that the limbs of awakening had honed,
Standing in the supreme chariot of true motivation,
With an army containing the elephants of the branches of the path,
He gradually penetrated the ranks of the afflictions.
With arrows made from the presence of awareness,
Instantly he shot those enemies whose substance is upside-down-ness:
He split apart four enemies, four causes of suffering,
With four arrows, each having its own range.
17.50 - 17.55
And so experiencing the ease enjoyed by the noble ones, from non-attachment to joy,
Knowing it totally, with his body,
He remained indifferent, fully aware,
And, having realised the third stage of meditation, steady.
Since the ease here is beyond any ease,
And there is no progression of ease beyond it,
Therefore, as a knower of higher and lower,
he realised it as a condition of resplendent wholeness
Which he deemed superlative -- in a friendly way.
Then, even in that stage of meditation, he found a fault:
He saw it as better to be quiet, not excited,
Whereas his mind was fluctuating tirelessly
Because of ease circulating.
In excitement there is interference,
And where there is interference there is suffering,
Which is why, insofar as ease is excitatory,
Devotees who are desirous of quiet give up that ease.
Then, having already transcended ease and suffering,
And emotional reactivity,
He realised the lucidity in which there is indifference and full awareness:
Thus, beyond suffering and ease, is the fourth stage of meditation.
Since in this there is neither ease nor suffering,
And the act of knowing abides here, being its own object,
Therefore utter lucidity through indifference and awareness
Is specified in the protocol for the fourth stage of meditation.
Sunday, January 15, 2012
What Is Mindfulness? (1)
I don't know what mindfulness is.
The Sanskrit word that is generally translated (including by me) as "mindfulness" or "awareness" is smṛti.
Smṛti is from the root smṛ, which the dictionary gives as:
to remember , recollect , bear in mind , call to mind , think of , be mindful of.
When Chinese translators looked for a Chinese character to represent that word, they opted for 念 (NEN), whose two component radicals, appropriately enough, are 今, now, and 心 heart/mind.
In the original version of his rules of sitting-zen for everybody, Dogen writes of true mindfulness being distinct and clear.
"True mindfulness" is 正念 (SHO-NEN):
If ever anybody asked Gudo Nishijima what 正念 (SHO-NEN) actually meant, you wouldn't catch him saying "I don't know." What he would say, one hundred times out of a hundred, whenever he had the chance, was that 正念 (SHO-NEN) is the consciousness we have when the autonomic nervous system is in a state of balance.
I do not buy that attempt to reduce mindfulness to the physiology which may underpin it. Saying that mindfulness is the consciousness we have when the autonomic nervous system is in a state of balance is like saying mindfulness is the consciousness we have when our diet is healthy. The truth as the Buddha expresses it is not like that. The Buddha tells Nanda that a balanced diet conduces to mindful practice, not that diet itself is the means whereby mindfulness is cultivated. In much the same way, as I see it, balance of the autonomic nervous system is a condition that conduces to mindful practice, but what is required is practical understanding of the means whereby mindfulness can be cultivated, and a theory about the autonomic nervous system, in my book, does not cut the mustard.
Aśvaghoṣa in Saundara-nanda does not try to tell us what mindfulness is. But he gives us clues as to where mindfulness fits in the natural order of things. I shall consider these clues in more detail in a subsequent post, particularly in light of the description of Nanda's progress in Canto 17, where mindfulness features before, during, and after Nanda's practice of sitting-dhyāna.
Suffice to say, for a start, that in the same way that Dogen first discusses the practice of sitting upright and naturally becoming one piece, and then praises the virtue of true mindfulness, Aśvaghoṣa at the beginning of Canto 15 and then again at the beginning of Canto 17 seems to describe ṛjuṁ, lit. “tending in a straight direction," as a primary or prior cause, which is duly followed by smṛtiṁ, “mindfulness":
"In whatever solitary place you are,
Crossing the legs in the supreme manner,/
Aligning the body,
(ṛjuṃ kāyaṃ samādhāya)
And thus being attended by mindfulness
that is directed...//15.1//
... towards the tip of the nose
or towards the forehead,
Or right in between the eyebrows,/
You may make the inconstant mind
Wholly engaged with the fundamental."//15.2//
Having washed his feet in that water,
He then, by a clean, auspicious, and splendid tree-root, /
Girded on the intention to come undone,
And sat with legs fully crossed.//17.3//
By first directing the whole body up,
(ṛjuṃ samagraṃ praṇidhāya kāyaṃ)
And thus keeping mindfulness turned towards the body, /
And thus integrating in his person all the senses,
There he threw himself all-out into practice. //17.4//
Again, though Aśvaghoṣa in Saundara-nanda does not tell us what mindfulness is, he does tell us what it is like, and his favourite metaphor is smṛti-varma, "the armour of mindfulness," which appears three times, in 13.37, 14.38, and 17.23.
I started to write this post last night, before being overcome by the desire to watch Match of the Day. After watching the football, I sat for 15 minutes or so in a place where I could see the moon. Then when I sat this morning I looked up to see two sparrows in the branches of a tree in the front garden. So it occured to me to write that true mindfulness being distinct and clear might be a golden half-moon in black night sky, or might be a bird on a branch in a blue winter morning. But aren't these just the thoughts of somebody who is deluding himself that he knows what mindfulness is?
It may be that the mindfulness which thinks about itself is not true mindfulness. It might rather be that when mindfulness is thinking about itself, there is a great big gap in the armour of mindfulness, leaving a practitioner open to all kinds of attacks from manifold faults.
The latter understanding, I think, is more in line with the Buddha's teaching of mindfulness as Aśvaghoṣa presents it to us in Saundara-nanda -- the great thing to aspire to being not so much brilliant poetry and philosophy as a simple life of freedom from faults.
In the next post, I will try to let Aśvaghoṣa speak for himself, by quoting all the verses in Saundara-nanda in which smṛti is mentioned.
The Sanskrit word that is generally translated (including by me) as "mindfulness" or "awareness" is smṛti.
Smṛti is from the root smṛ, which the dictionary gives as:
to remember , recollect , bear in mind , call to mind , think of , be mindful of.
When Chinese translators looked for a Chinese character to represent that word, they opted for 念 (NEN), whose two component radicals, appropriately enough, are 今, now, and 心 heart/mind.
In the original version of his rules of sitting-zen for everybody, Dogen writes of true mindfulness being distinct and clear.
"True mindfulness" is 正念 (SHO-NEN):
If ever anybody asked Gudo Nishijima what 正念 (SHO-NEN) actually meant, you wouldn't catch him saying "I don't know." What he would say, one hundred times out of a hundred, whenever he had the chance, was that 正念 (SHO-NEN) is the consciousness we have when the autonomic nervous system is in a state of balance.
I do not buy that attempt to reduce mindfulness to the physiology which may underpin it. Saying that mindfulness is the consciousness we have when the autonomic nervous system is in a state of balance is like saying mindfulness is the consciousness we have when our diet is healthy. The truth as the Buddha expresses it is not like that. The Buddha tells Nanda that a balanced diet conduces to mindful practice, not that diet itself is the means whereby mindfulness is cultivated. In much the same way, as I see it, balance of the autonomic nervous system is a condition that conduces to mindful practice, but what is required is practical understanding of the means whereby mindfulness can be cultivated, and a theory about the autonomic nervous system, in my book, does not cut the mustard.
Aśvaghoṣa in Saundara-nanda does not try to tell us what mindfulness is. But he gives us clues as to where mindfulness fits in the natural order of things. I shall consider these clues in more detail in a subsequent post, particularly in light of the description of Nanda's progress in Canto 17, where mindfulness features before, during, and after Nanda's practice of sitting-dhyāna.
Suffice to say, for a start, that in the same way that Dogen first discusses the practice of sitting upright and naturally becoming one piece, and then praises the virtue of true mindfulness, Aśvaghoṣa at the beginning of Canto 15 and then again at the beginning of Canto 17 seems to describe ṛjuṁ, lit. “tending in a straight direction," as a primary or prior cause, which is duly followed by smṛtiṁ, “mindfulness":
"In whatever solitary place you are,
Crossing the legs in the supreme manner,/
Aligning the body,
(ṛjuṃ kāyaṃ samādhāya)
And thus being attended by mindfulness
that is directed...//15.1//
... towards the tip of the nose
or towards the forehead,
Or right in between the eyebrows,/
You may make the inconstant mind
Wholly engaged with the fundamental."//15.2//
Having washed his feet in that water,
He then, by a clean, auspicious, and splendid tree-root, /
Girded on the intention to come undone,
And sat with legs fully crossed.//17.3//
By first directing the whole body up,
(ṛjuṃ samagraṃ praṇidhāya kāyaṃ)
And thus keeping mindfulness turned towards the body, /
And thus integrating in his person all the senses,
There he threw himself all-out into practice. //17.4//
Again, though Aśvaghoṣa in Saundara-nanda does not tell us what mindfulness is, he does tell us what it is like, and his favourite metaphor is smṛti-varma, "the armour of mindfulness," which appears three times, in 13.37, 14.38, and 17.23.
I started to write this post last night, before being overcome by the desire to watch Match of the Day. After watching the football, I sat for 15 minutes or so in a place where I could see the moon. Then when I sat this morning I looked up to see two sparrows in the branches of a tree in the front garden. So it occured to me to write that true mindfulness being distinct and clear might be a golden half-moon in black night sky, or might be a bird on a branch in a blue winter morning. But aren't these just the thoughts of somebody who is deluding himself that he knows what mindfulness is?
It may be that the mindfulness which thinks about itself is not true mindfulness. It might rather be that when mindfulness is thinking about itself, there is a great big gap in the armour of mindfulness, leaving a practitioner open to all kinds of attacks from manifold faults.
The latter understanding, I think, is more in line with the Buddha's teaching of mindfulness as Aśvaghoṣa presents it to us in Saundara-nanda -- the great thing to aspire to being not so much brilliant poetry and philosophy as a simple life of freedom from faults.
In the next post, I will try to let Aśvaghoṣa speak for himself, by quoting all the verses in Saundara-nanda in which smṛti is mentioned.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
A Seed of Integration?
I write this at 4.15 in the morning, having woken up before 3.00 with a very itchy ear and a bad taste in my mouth. I had a partial metal crown but on a back tooth on Tuesday and I seem to be reacting to it badly, unless I am imagining something. Yesterday (Thursday) I phoned the dentist to inquire where the crown had been made (thinking it might have been made on the cheap in some dodgy Chinese laboratory). The dentist invited me to come and see him at his surgery, so there I duly cycled. He confirmed that, yes, the crown had been made in China, but the laboratory was accredited, and dentistry in the UK is very tightly regulated. The dentist assured me that any symptoms I was experiencing were psycho-somatic. In the course of our discussion, I inquired if there might be any mercury (amalgam) in the crown, and he assured me that no, amalgam was not used in crowns, and that anyway many scientific studies had looked into it and the evidence was incontrovertible that amalgam is safe to use in dental fillings. I left the consultation unconvinced, and naturally enough, the dentist seemed offended that I seemed to think he might have done some harm by giving me a poisonous crown.
So as I sat just now, mindful of Dogen's words that the secret of sitting-dhyāna is JI-JO-IPPEN, "naturally/spontaneously to become one piece," and mindful also of how the presence of this metal crown a few inches from my brainstem makes my health and integrity dependent on the honesty and integrity of some person running a dental laboratory somewhere in China, I am more than usually aware of the fact that more than ever before human beings really are in the same big boat, so that we will all sink or we will float.
Who the hell I am, what role there is for me to play in preventing the ship sinking, I do not know. As I cycled back from the dentist, I reflected on the series of famous experiments in which Matthieu Ricard showed himself to be such an extraordinarily excellent person. In one of these experiments a grouchy professor was supposed to antagonize MR in a philosophical discussion, but found it impossible, as MR's metta-soaked brain continued to pump out gamma waves in massive profusion. MR, doubtless, would have handled the consultation with his dentist more skillfully than I had done. Before that, indeed, MR might have had the wisdom not to agree to having a metal crown put in, especially one made in China. An enlightened person might have had the wisdom to leave alone a tooth that was only a bit broken, and not bother going to the dentist at all.
As I cycled back from the dentist, pondering that my life has possibly been shortened by having some alloy of mercury, lead and god knows what else implanted into my head, I felt a surge of desire to do something useful with whatever is left of it.
The business of not really knowing what the Buddha is on about when Aśvaghoṣa quotes him talking about using different nimitta, apparently in the context of extinguishing the faults that start with thirsting by means of the water of bhāvanā, has sharpened my sense of being far behind a monk like Mathieu Ricard, trained in the Tibetan tradition and evidently highly skilled in the use of specific antidotes to specific faults, e.g. compassion as an antidote to hatred, as described in Saundara-nanda.
In one of the experiments Mathieu Ricard was subjected to, he astonished Prof. Paul Ekman by not showing even a slight facial flicker when subjected to a stimulus that triggered a startle response in everybody else that had ever done the experiment. MR rather demonstrated what FM Alexander called "constructive conscious control," and "inhibition of unduly excited fear reflexes and emotions." This is the kind of thing I aspire to. But in so aspiring, I reflected yesterday, as I cycled back from the dentist, I am like one of the guys in wheelchairs that take part in the London marathon, whereas MR is akin to one of the so-called "elite" athletes.
Thinking somewhat positively, I may never be a champion in the field of demonstrating what "constructive conscious control" is, but out of the failure which my life has been so far, I may at least have gleaned some insight into what disables, or shackles, a non-elite athlete, in the marathon whose finishing line is full realization of the buddha-nature. I am thinking primarily here of faults in the vestibular system, centred on an immature Moro reflex. Those of us who have grown up with such faults -- and we may be in the majority -- may forever in this life be up against it.
With this in mind, it occured to me as I cycled back yesterday, that I might at some point post on the internet my voluminous record of years of questions and answers with Gudo Nishijima, in case somebody could find my record useful -- as well, inevitably, as ridiculous. As ridiculous as a guy in a wheelchair dreaming of becoming a champion elite athlete.
So it seems that I did a lot of reflecting in a few hundred yards yesterday. And further to that, as I sat earlier on (it is now 5.05), I reflected that Aśvaghoṣa's writing is truly seminal. For practitioners like me whose starting point was Dogen's teaching, Aśvaghoṣa is a founding Zen patriarch. The same goes for any practitioner in China who reveres Bodhidharma; that is to say, any Chinese dental laboratory entrepreneur who reveres Bodhidharma as a grandfather also has to recognise Aśvaghoṣa as a great grandfather. Again, if any extraordinarily excellent Tibetan monk wishes to highlight the simplistic ignorance of his faulty Zen brother who knows nothing about the Buddha's teaching of using specific antidotes to specific faults, Aśvaghoṣa's writing provides a basis for so doing. And finally, it did not escape my notice that when a few months ago I googled "Aśvaghoṣa, Buddhacarita," I arrived at the website of a certain Ānandajoti Bhikkhu, a monk in the Theravada tradition who described himself to me as a fellow fan of Aśvaghoṣa.
At Ānandajoti's behest I have been dutifully preparing a transcription of the text of Saundara-nanda, painstakingly noting the variants, of which there are more than a hundred in most chapters. At time of writing, I am half-way through Canto 16, so should be finished noting the variants by next week. Then I intend to have several runs through the text and translation.
If Aśvaghoṣa's writing truly is as seminal as it seems to me to be, then planting this seed skillfully might be the most useful thing I could possibly do, notwithstanding my own multifarious faults.
Trying to be skillful, of course, is the very end-gaining that triggers a faulty individual's multifarious faults. So saying, at 5.26, I shall go back to bed.
So as I sat just now, mindful of Dogen's words that the secret of sitting-dhyāna is JI-JO-IPPEN, "naturally/spontaneously to become one piece," and mindful also of how the presence of this metal crown a few inches from my brainstem makes my health and integrity dependent on the honesty and integrity of some person running a dental laboratory somewhere in China, I am more than usually aware of the fact that more than ever before human beings really are in the same big boat, so that we will all sink or we will float.
Who the hell I am, what role there is for me to play in preventing the ship sinking, I do not know. As I cycled back from the dentist, I reflected on the series of famous experiments in which Matthieu Ricard showed himself to be such an extraordinarily excellent person. In one of these experiments a grouchy professor was supposed to antagonize MR in a philosophical discussion, but found it impossible, as MR's metta-soaked brain continued to pump out gamma waves in massive profusion. MR, doubtless, would have handled the consultation with his dentist more skillfully than I had done. Before that, indeed, MR might have had the wisdom not to agree to having a metal crown put in, especially one made in China. An enlightened person might have had the wisdom to leave alone a tooth that was only a bit broken, and not bother going to the dentist at all.
As I cycled back from the dentist, pondering that my life has possibly been shortened by having some alloy of mercury, lead and god knows what else implanted into my head, I felt a surge of desire to do something useful with whatever is left of it.
The business of not really knowing what the Buddha is on about when Aśvaghoṣa quotes him talking about using different nimitta, apparently in the context of extinguishing the faults that start with thirsting by means of the water of bhāvanā, has sharpened my sense of being far behind a monk like Mathieu Ricard, trained in the Tibetan tradition and evidently highly skilled in the use of specific antidotes to specific faults, e.g. compassion as an antidote to hatred, as described in Saundara-nanda.
In one of the experiments Mathieu Ricard was subjected to, he astonished Prof. Paul Ekman by not showing even a slight facial flicker when subjected to a stimulus that triggered a startle response in everybody else that had ever done the experiment. MR rather demonstrated what FM Alexander called "constructive conscious control," and "inhibition of unduly excited fear reflexes and emotions." This is the kind of thing I aspire to. But in so aspiring, I reflected yesterday, as I cycled back from the dentist, I am like one of the guys in wheelchairs that take part in the London marathon, whereas MR is akin to one of the so-called "elite" athletes.
Thinking somewhat positively, I may never be a champion in the field of demonstrating what "constructive conscious control" is, but out of the failure which my life has been so far, I may at least have gleaned some insight into what disables, or shackles, a non-elite athlete, in the marathon whose finishing line is full realization of the buddha-nature. I am thinking primarily here of faults in the vestibular system, centred on an immature Moro reflex. Those of us who have grown up with such faults -- and we may be in the majority -- may forever in this life be up against it.
With this in mind, it occured to me as I cycled back yesterday, that I might at some point post on the internet my voluminous record of years of questions and answers with Gudo Nishijima, in case somebody could find my record useful -- as well, inevitably, as ridiculous. As ridiculous as a guy in a wheelchair dreaming of becoming a champion elite athlete.
So it seems that I did a lot of reflecting in a few hundred yards yesterday. And further to that, as I sat earlier on (it is now 5.05), I reflected that Aśvaghoṣa's writing is truly seminal. For practitioners like me whose starting point was Dogen's teaching, Aśvaghoṣa is a founding Zen patriarch. The same goes for any practitioner in China who reveres Bodhidharma; that is to say, any Chinese dental laboratory entrepreneur who reveres Bodhidharma as a grandfather also has to recognise Aśvaghoṣa as a great grandfather. Again, if any extraordinarily excellent Tibetan monk wishes to highlight the simplistic ignorance of his faulty Zen brother who knows nothing about the Buddha's teaching of using specific antidotes to specific faults, Aśvaghoṣa's writing provides a basis for so doing. And finally, it did not escape my notice that when a few months ago I googled "Aśvaghoṣa, Buddhacarita," I arrived at the website of a certain Ānandajoti Bhikkhu, a monk in the Theravada tradition who described himself to me as a fellow fan of Aśvaghoṣa.
At Ānandajoti's behest I have been dutifully preparing a transcription of the text of Saundara-nanda, painstakingly noting the variants, of which there are more than a hundred in most chapters. At time of writing, I am half-way through Canto 16, so should be finished noting the variants by next week. Then I intend to have several runs through the text and translation.
If Aśvaghoṣa's writing truly is as seminal as it seems to me to be, then planting this seed skillfully might be the most useful thing I could possibly do, notwithstanding my own multifarious faults.
Trying to be skillful, of course, is the very end-gaining that triggers a faulty individual's multifarious faults. So saying, at 5.26, I shall go back to bed.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)