⏑−⏑−¦−⏑⏑¦−⏑−⏑−¦¦⏑−⏑−¦−⏑⏑¦−⏑−⏑− Vaṁśastha
tad-evam-apy-eva
ravir-mahīṁ pated-api sthiratvaṁ himavān giris-tyajet |
⏑−⏑−¦−⏑⏑¦−⏑−⏑−¦¦⏑−⏑−¦−⏑⏑¦−⏑−⏑−
adṣṭa-tattvo
viṣayonmukhendriyaḥ
śrayeya na tv-eva ghān pthag-janaḥ || 9.78
9.78
That being so, even the
sun may fall to the earth,
Even a Himālayan
mountain may relinquish its firmness,
But never would I, not
having realized the truth,
my senses oriented
expectantly towards objects,
Go back home as a
common man.
COMMENT:
In the 1st
pāda of today's verse, tad-evam, “That being so” refers back to yesterdays' verse, in which the bodhisattva clarified that, in his estimation, a breaker of a vow of
practice was not worth his or her salt.
At the end of BC Canto
5, the bodhisattva roared a lion's roar, whose verbal content was
“Until I have seen the far shore of birth and death, I shall never
again enter the city named after Kapila.” (BC5.84)
Today's verse, then, is
another one to be added to the list compiled yesterday, of verses in
which the bodhisattva expresses his iron resolve not to break this
vow.
At the same time, the
bodhisattva's use of the phrase pṛthag-janaḥ
invites us to be clear in what sense the bodhisattva does not wish to
be ordinary, and in what sense he does so wish.
EBC
translated pṛthag-janaḥ as “as a man of the world,” EHJ as “a
worldly man,” and PO as “like a common man.”
The corresponding
phrase that Dogen favours in Shobogenzo is 凡夫
(Jap: BONBU), a common man, a common bloke. But since pṛthak
originally means “separate” or “set apart,” a more literal
rendering of pṛthag-jana into
Chinese characters is 異生,
lit. “a different being,” i.e. a being who is different from an
enlightened being.
The literal meaning of pṛthag-jana, then, as the
bodhisattva is using the term, seems to be a man who is ordinary or
common in the sense of being the sort of mediocre bloke from whom an
enlightened being is set apart.
The
danger of translating pṛthag-jana as “common man” or – more
dangerously still – “ordinary person,” is that such
translations easily convey a whiff of social snobbery, as also does
the word ārya to describe those uncommon truths which are noble, or āryan.
Today's
verse, then, can be read as providing in passing a definition of what
a pṛthag-jana, or “common man,” is in the understanding of
bodhisattvas. A common man is what we do not wish to be, not out of
any sense of social snobbery, but because of our wish not to be
enslaved by senses which are oriented expectantly towards
objects.
At the same time, in
the same spirit as the bodhisattva when he said “know the state of
a true person to be freedom from faults” (prahīṇa-doṣa-tvam-avehi
cāptatām; BC9.76) a Zen master in ancient
China famously said:
the ordinary mind is the truth itself
or
the normal mind is the truth itself
平常心是道
(Jap: HEIJO-SHIN ko[re] DO).
The irony here, then,
is that the bodhisattva is seeking the nobility which sets a person
apart from the common man, but this nobility, being freedom from
faults, is nothing but a state of utter normality, or ordinariness.
And the faults in
question, the bodhisattva has evidently understood even before he has
fully realized the truth, are the faults that stem from thirsting. It
is end-gaining – to borrow a couple of phrases of FM Alexander – that brings
into play faulty sensory appreciation.
As long as I am
retaining any trace of an idea of gaining an end, the senses with
which evolution has equipped me, centred around the vestibular sense,
strain to get busy.
That being so, even the
idea of becoming normal is liable to be pernicious, especially for a
person whose sensory appreciation is more-than-usually distorted by
vestibular faults.
If not by pursuing
normality as an idea (i.e. as an end to be gained), then, how is a faulty bodhisattva to go
about becoming truly ordinary? Ironically, the message of
Saundara-nanda seems to be, by making into his own possession those
four truths that the Buddha called noble.
Sometimes as regular
readers will know, I ask myself stupid questions (like the one
underlined above) and then shortly afterwards, having sat for a while
and slept for a while, I wake up with stupid answers, which I can't
resist unloading onto this blog. So it was just now.
The answer that
presented to the question I had asked myself was simply the one word samādhi, lit. “putting (ādhi)
together (sam-).”
Samādhi as means, and
samādhi as end.
Samādhi as means
because samyak-samādhi, straight samādhi, is the eighth element in
the eightfold path which constitutes the fourth of the Buddha's four noble truths.
Samādhi as end
because just sitting in full lotus, as that practice and
experience has been transmitted through the ages, is the ultimate
end, the highest and most transcendent matter, the one great purpose,
the King of Samādhis.
Going further, I wonder
whether it was the desire to express oneness of samādhi as means and samādhi
as end that led Nāgārjuna to the enigmatic compound
pratītya-samutpāda. This pratītya-samutpāda, in Nāgārjuna's book, is
the very transcendent thing that the Buddha, the fully awakened one,
taught.
Sam-ut-pāda,
“Springing Up (ut-pad) Together (sam-),” can be taken as an
expression of samādhi as the end itself. This end in my
book is inevitably a function of sitting in lotus; equally it is a function of the integrative working of the
vestibular system, as is indicated by the Up (ut-) and by the Together
(sam-) of Springing Up Together.
And
I suppose, because samādhi is not only the end but also the means,
Nāgārjuna used as the first element in the compound a word which
also suggests samādhi as a means of going (√i)
towards (prati) the
end.
This,
though it is early days, is how I am inclined right now to understand
Nāgārjuna's famous phrase pratītya-samutpāda – which, according
to Nāgārjuna, is the very transcendent thing that the fully
awakened Buddha taught.
samutpāda:
Springing Up Together
pratītya
(= abs. prati-√i):
going / having gone (itya) in a direction (prati).
The
samādhi which is a Springing Up Together (samutpāda),
whose
means is the samādhi which is a going in a direction (pratītya).
- to be continued...
VOCABULARY
tad:
ind. that, therefore, thus
evam:
ind. thus
api:
even
eva
(emphatic)
raviḥ
(nom. sg.): m. the sun
mahīm
(acc. sg.): f. 'the great world' the earth
patet
= 3rd pers. sg. optative pat: to fall
api:
even
sthiratvam
(acc. sg.): n. firmness
himavān
(nom. sg.): m. a snowy mountain ; the himālaya
giriḥ
(nom. sg.): m. a mountain
tyajet
= 3rd pers. sg. optative tyaj: to leave ; to give up ,
surrender , resign , part from , renounce
adṛṣṭa-tattvaḥ
(nom. sg. m.): not having seen/realized the truth
viṣayonmukhendriyaḥ
(nom. sg. m.): with senses beholden to their object
viṣaya:
m. object, object of the senses
unmukha:
mfn. raising the face , looking up or at ; waiting for , expecting
indriya:
n. sense
śrayeya
= 1st pers. sg. optative śri: to go to , approach ,
resort or have recourse to (for help or refuge) , tend towards (acc.)
; to go into, enter
na:
not
tu:
but
eva
(emphatic)
gṛhān
(acc. pl.): m. (m. sg. and pl. , in later language m. pl. and n. sg.)
a house , habitation , home ; m. pl. a house as containing several
rooms
pṛthag-janaḥ
(nom. sg.): m. a man of lower caste or character or profession ; an
ordinary professing Buddhist ; a fool, blockhead, a villain ; pl.
common people , the multitude (also sg.)
pṛthak:
ind. ( √ pṛth or prath + añc) widely apart , separately ,
differently , singly , severally , one by one
pṛ́thak-pinda:
m. a distant kinsman who offers the śrāddha oblation (» piṇḍa)
by himself and not together with the other relations
pṛthag-gaṇa:
m. a separate company or class
日月墜於地 須彌雪山轉
我身終不易 退入於非處
我身終不易 退入於非處
No comments:
Post a Comment