⏑−⏑−¦−⏑⏑¦−⏑−⏑−¦¦⏑−⏑−¦−⏑⏑¦−⏑−⏑− Vaṁśastha
yadā
bahir-gacchati pārthivātmaje-tadābhavad-dvāram-apāvtaṁ
svayam |
⏑−⏑−¦−⏑⏑¦−⏑−⏑−¦¦⏑−⏑−¦−⏑⏑¦−⏑−⏑−
tamaś-ca
naiśaṁ raviṇeva pāṭitaṁ tato 'pi daivo vidhir-eṣa
ghyatām || 8.46
8.46
The
moment that the prince moved outwards
The
way out spontaneously became open
And
the darkness of night was broken as if by the sun –
Hence,
again, let this be grasped as action in the presence of the gods.
COMMENT:
Sometimes
I get on my own nerves, constantly repeating the formula ostensibly
today's verse means that but as I read it it means this; so the three
professors translated it like that, but I translate it like this.
Making
such comments every day makes me sound and feel wiser than I am. This
morning I woke up early and got up early with a bit of a headache. As
I sat in the darkness before dawn, I didn't feel so wise, and I
didn't feel that the gods were with me. If sitting in full lotus is
always the king of samādhis, and samādhi is a state like the sea,
then this morning the sea, at least on the surface, seemed cold and
grey.
But
having made a cup of strong tea and dragged myself upstairs to this
office, and re-directed my attention to today's verse, I find myself wanting to translate the word bahir in the 1st pāda as “outwards,” in such a way as to emphasize the sense of
movement in the right direction.
Then
I can't help but ask myself how the three professors understood it.
EBC: “when the prince went out”; EHJ: “when the king's son went
forth”; PO: “as the king's son departed.”
So ostensibly it means when the prince went out/forth. But the real
meaning of gacchati bahir, as I read it, is not so much “going
out” as “moving to go outwards.”
What's
the difference? It has to do with the principle that I cannot do the
right thing directly, because the right thing does itself. But it is
possible to learn how to get oneself going in the right direction.
Thus
Marjory Barlow never intimated for a moment that I might be right.
She always emphasized the opposite – that there was no future in
being right, but everything to be gained by being happy to be wrong.
But what she did sometimes say by way of encouragement at the end of
a lesson, as I was leaving her in peace, was “You are going well.”
“You
are going well” meant, in other words, “You are wrong as hell,
but, thanks to my uncle's work, just now you are going in the right
direction.”
Marjory's
uncle, for anybody who is reading this blog for the first time, was
FM Alexander, founder of the technique which bears his name, who
famously said: “There is no such thing as a right position, but
there is such a thing as a right direction.”
And
“a right direction,” in the 1st pāda of today's
verse, as I read it, is expressed as bahir, outwards.
In
the 2nd
pāda, ostensibly, the phrase abhavad-dvāram-apāvṛtaṁ svayam is
describing the kind of miracle that nobody has ever yet witnessed –
an event like a gate opening itself in defiance of the 2nd
law of thermodynamics. But below the surface the intention might be
to describe the kind of everyday miracle which is described by the
2nd
law of thermodynamics – an event like muscles giving up undue
tension as body and mind spontaneously drop off.
Ostensibly, then,
abhavad-dvāram-apāvṛtaṁ svayam means “the gate opened by
itself” – hence: “the gate was
thrown open of its own accord” (EBC);
“The gate was thrown
open of itself” (EHJ); or “the gate opened on its own”
(PO).
More literally, however,
abhavad-dvāram-apāvṛtaṁ svayam means “the entrance / exit
spontaneously became open.” Dvāram (singular) is more exactly
understood not as one gate but as an entrance / exit, i.e. as a means
of passage, with two gates or two doors. The reason I say this is
that in BC5.70 two gates or two doors (kapāṭe, dual) are described
as being spontaneously opened (vivṛte svayam):
As the women, abandoning all shame and submission, relaxed in front of me; / And as the doors opened, spontaneously (vivṛte ca yathā svayaṁ kapāṭe), it is doubtless time to depart, in pursuit of wellness.”//BC5.70/
This
distinction, between two doors and one way out, is worth making
because, understood as “a way out,” dvāram can be taken as an
expression of sitting-meditation itself, akin to Dogen's 出身活路 (SHUSSHIN NO KATSURO), lit. “vigorous road of getting the body
out." This is precisely the allusion that
Aśvaghoṣa himself already made in BC5.66:
When he had seen this deficiency in the other, the desire sprang up in him to escape in the night; / Whereupon, under the influence of gods, who were steeped in this mind, the entrance of the palace was found to be wide open. [Or the way to freedom from existence was seen to be wide open.] (bhavana-dvāram-apāvṛtaṁ babhūva) //BC5.66//
In the 3rd
pāda, as I read it, the darkness of night is a metaphor for the
darkness of ignorance – not only the kind of darkness that I sat
in this morning before dawn, but also the kind of darkest ignorance I sat in for
12 of the 13 years I spent in Japan, thinking and feeling that the
way to be upright was to pull my chin in so as to keep the neck bones
straight vertically.
The 4th pāda
is ostensibly Chandaka's renewed plea to Yaśodharā to believe that
the gods ate his homework. Hence, for example, EHJ: “this therefore
too must be understood to have been of divine ordering.” But in the
original Sanskrit the past tense is not specified, and in translation
I have gone out of my way to avoid the past tense, so that we can
also read the 4th pāda, below the surface, as an
exhortation to grasp, here and now, what action really is, on a good
day, in the zone, abiding on what FM Alexander called “the plane of
constructive conscious control,” when the gods seem to be on our
side.
That action makes us
balanced was absolutely the central teaching of my Zen teacher Gudo
Nishijima, and the teaching is demonstrably true. You don't have to
be a Buddhist to affirm this truth. In Gudo's book, to affirm this
truth was to be a follower of the Buddha, whatever you called
yourself. My teacher knew full well what today's verse is all
about, at least in principle.
Thus Gudo taught us,
his students, action makes us balanced. The moment we go into action,
we are already in balance, like somebody getting going on a bicycle.
Against this kind of background, I find episodes of the Dog Whisperer on youtube to be
compelling viewing. Cesar Millan says that he trains people and
rehabilitates dogs. In rehabilitating dogs Cesar applies the
universal principle that action makes us balanced. What it means in
practice is, if you want your dog to be balanced, take it for a walk.
But here is the thing.
Even people who have watched episodes of the Dog Whisperer and read
Cesar's books, so that they know very well the truth that the way to
make a dog balanced is to take it for a walk, don't actually know how
to take a dog for a walk. For a start they need to be taught, in
Cesar's words, “to master the walk.”
A parallel can be drawn
between these dog owners in training and we Zen practitioners who are
totally committed to Dogen's teachings, now that we have read it
translated into English, and yet who in our everyday life repeatedly
find the way out closed and ourselves surrounded in the
all-encompassing darkness of ignorance.
The reason I came back
to England at the end of 1994 with a view to training as a teacher of
the FM Alexander Technique was that I knew damn well that under Gudo
I was like a dog whose owner had never understood how to walk a dog – much
less establish a balanced pack.
Gudo's genius was in
the area of clarity of intellectual thinking. In the practical area,
and particularly in the matter of how to sit well, he was literally worse than
useless.
I sense that Cesar
Millan might have had a field day with my teacher: “You might be a
Zen master, but you don't know how to walk a dog.”
Would my teacher mind
me describing him like this? He once warned me not to spit upwards.
But, unless I am deluding myself, I don't feel like I am spitting
upwards. I feel more like I am endeavouring (1) to tell the truth;
(2) to see and to paint all things as part of one big picture; and
(3) to clarify in Aśvaghoṣa's writing the very truth that my teacher endeavored to
clarify in Dogen's writing. The truth in question, again, is that action
makes us balanced, and it is the gist of today's verse as I read it.
VOCABULARY
yadā
(correlative of tadā in b or tataḥ in d): when , at what time ,
whenever (generally followed by the correlatives tadā , tataḥ)
yataḥ
[EHJ] (correlative of tataḥ in d): ind. from which or what ,
whence , whereof , wherefrom ; wherefore , for which reason ; since
bahiḥ:
ind. out , forth , outwards , outside (a house , village , city ,
kingdom &c ) with √ gam , or yā , to go out
gacchati
= loc. sg. m. pres. part. gam: to go , move , go away , set out ,
come
pārthivātmajaḥ
(nom. sg. m.): the prince
pārthivātmaje
[EHJ] (loc. sg. m.): the prince ; the self-begotten of a lord of the
earth
pārthiva:
mfn. earthen , earthy , earthly , being in or relating to or coming
from the earth , terrestrial ; fit for kings or princes , royal ,
princely ; m. an inhabitant of the earth ; m. a lord of the earth ,
king , prince , warrior ; m. an earthen vessel
ātmaja:
m. born from or begotten by one's self " , a son
tadā:
ind. at that time , then , in that case
abhavat
= 3rd pers. sg. imperf. bhū: to be, become
dvāram
(nom. sg.): n. door , gate , passage , entrance ; a way , means ,
medium
apāvtam
(nom. sg. n.): mfn. open , laid open ; unrestrained , self willed
svayam:
ind. self , one's self (applicable to all persons e.g. myself ,
thyself , himself &c ) , of or by one's self spontaneously ,
voluntarily , of one's own accord
tamaḥ
(nom. sg.): n. darkness , gloom ; mental darkness , ignorance ,
illusion , error
ca:
and
naiśam
(nom. sg. n.): relating to night , happening at night , nightly ,
nocturnal ; walking or studying at night
raviṇā
(inst. sg.): m. the sun or sun-god
iva:
like, as if
pāṭitam
(nom. sg. n.): mfn. split , torn , broken , divided
paṭ:
to split , open , burst asunder ; causative: to split , burst
(trans.) , cleave , tear , pierce , break , pluck out , remove
tataḥ:
ind. from that, hence, consequently
api:
also
daivaḥ
(nom. sg. m.): mfn. belonging to or coming from the gods , divine ,
celestial ; depending on fate , fatal
vidhih
(nom. sg.): m. a rule , formula , injunction , ordinance , statute ,
precept , law , direction ; method , manner or way of acting , mode
of life , conduct , behaviour ; any act or action , performance ,
accomplishment , contrivance , work , business
eṣa
(nom. sg. m.): this, this here
gṛhyatām
= 3rd pers. sg. passive imperative grah: to grasp
城門自然開 虚空自然明
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