⏑−⏑−¦−⏑⏑¦−⏑−−¦¦⏑−⏑−¦−⏑⏑¦−⏑−− Upajāti
(Mālā)
an-ātmavanto
hdi yair-vidaṣṭā vināśam-archanti na yānti śarma |
−−⏑−¦−⏑⏑¦−⏑−−¦¦−−⏑−¦−⏑⏑¦−⏑−−
kruddhogra-sarpa-pratimeṣu
teṣu kāmeṣu kasyātmavato ratiḥ syāt || 11.24
11.24
People not possessed of
themselves, being bitten in the heart by them,
Veer in the direction
of utter loss and do not arrive at security.
Desires are like fierce
angry snakes.
Who in possession of
himself would delight in those desires?
COMMENT:
Once again the
ostensible gist is to condemn desires, but the hidden meaning has to
do with self-possession.
But what exactly is that hidden meaning? And
how many layers of it might there be?
The main clue in
today's verse is in the repetition of ātmavat in the 1st
and 4th pāda, firstly with an ostensibly negative connotation and then with an
ostensibly positive connotation.
The superficial sense,
as in BC11.21 and other previous verses, is that desires are a great
terror of the world, something for everybody to be afraid of, causing
people who succumb to them to arrive at an evil end.
But when we examine exactly the reasoning contained in the bodhisattva's words, what he is saying is not
that.
In today's verse, first of
all, the bodhisattva is precisely not saying that desires are
something for everybody to be afraid of. He is saying that desires
are dangerous to people who are not in possession of themselves. To
people who are in possession of themselves, the implication might be,
desires are not necessarily dangerous – in the same way that people
who know snakes well (herpetologists, zoo keepers, snake charmers and so on) are not liable to be bitten even by hooded cobras, rattlesnakes,
bushmasters, and black mambas.
Second of all, vināśam
archanti, “they veer towards utter loss” (like
dur-gatim-abhyupaiti, “he passes in the direction of difficulty”
in BC11.21) need not be understood as expressing arrival at a final
destination. "Veering towards utter loss" might rather be understood as describing a developmental process – a developmental process in which the idea
of arrival at a place of security (aka “fixing”) is truly death
and destruction.
Read in that light,
vināśam archanti, “they veer towards utter loss,” might
describe the directed action of bodhisattvas on their way to dropping
off body and mind.
So when we read today's
verse like this, when it asks the question, "Who would delight in those desires?", the answer to this question might be, for
example: a non-buddha, an icchantika, one who does whatever he likes,
a loser of the sort described in Shobogenzo chap. 28:
Zen Master Koboku tells the assembly: "Once we know of the matter of the buddha-ancestors going on up, then we can talk. Tell me, Zen do-gooders, just what is this matter of a buddha-ancestor going on up? There is, born to a human family, a child deficient in the six sense organs and imperfect in the seven kinds of consciousness. He does whatever he likes, and is without a seed of the buddha-nature. Meeting with buddha, he kills buddha. Meeting with ancestors, he kills ancestors. Heaven cannot accept him, and even Hell has no gate that would take him in. Do you lot know this person or not?"
He pauses a good while and says: "You are facing one who is not quick at anticipating others' wishes, who sleeps a lot and talks a lot in his sleep."
The
main reason these comments tend to be unduly long is that there is so
much more buried in them than initially meets the eye. That is the
objective reason, or my excuse.
On
the subjective side, one of the reasons these comments tend to be
unduly long is that I write them on the day before publishing each
post, and then wake up realizing that my comment has totally failed to do the verse justice.
When I went to bed last night, the opening sentence of this comment read:
Once again the ostensible gist is to condemn desires, but the hidden agenda is to cause us to aspire to be in possession of ourselves.
Fortunately something caused me to realize in my sleep that a lot more is buried in today's verse than that.
This morning I didn't wake up feeling like a bloke in
possession of himself, or even feeling like a bloke who aspires to be
in possession of himself. On the contrary, I woke up as I often wake
up, feeling like a bloke who, in his ignorance, when tempted by
various kinds of desires, has allowed himself too many times to be
deeply bitten.
Feeling like this when I woke up, feeling bad, I nevertheless seemed to have been thinking developmentally in my sleep. I woke up thinking about the dictionary's two definitions
of śarman, viz. 1. shelter, safety, security; and 2. joy, happiness.
FM
Alexander was thinking developmentally when he famously asserted:
“There is no such thing as a right position, but there is such a
thing as a right direction.”
This
life of mine is going to end in death. That is for damn sure. And I
don't believe in reincarnation, at least not any kind of
reincarnation that violates the principle of psychophysical unity. So
if there is any drop of the nectar of immortality in my hands,
anything truly worth getting out of bed for, anything in prospect
bearing even a faint resemblance to the happy ending of a fairy
story, it might be totally contained in Alexander's credo that
there is such a thing as a right direction.
Assuming
then that Aśvaghoṣa no less than Alexander was one who thought
developmentally, I woke up thinking that the true essence of the 2nd pāda
might be like this:
There is no such
thing as arriving at śarma, but there might be śarman in veering in
the direction of utter loss.
There is no such
thing as arriving at security, but there might be happiness
in veering in the direction of utter loss.
When I went to bed last night, the opening sentence of this comment had read:
Once again the ostensible gist is to condemn desires, but the hidden agenda is to cause us to aspire to be in possession of ourselves.
But what, in any case, does
it mean “to aspire to be in possession of ourselves”?
Was
Aśvaghoṣa encouraging us to try to become buddha?
If he was so
encouraging us, I think it was in the spirit of an elephant hunter preparing a great big elephant trap (into which this fat elephant
promptly walked).
Was Aśvaghoṣa really
encouraging us not to aspire to something but, on the contrary, to veer in the direction of losing everything?
Maybe, below the
surface, that is exactly what he was always encouraging, not only in today's verse but throughout his writing.
Thus, when Aśvaghoṣa
describes the awakened Nanda truly having found himself, the
description is conspicuously in the negative:
arhattvam-āsādya sa
sat-kriyārho nirutsuko niṣpraṇayo nirāśaḥ /
Having attained to the
seat of arhathood, he was worthy of being served.
Without ambition,
without partiality, without expectation;
vibhīr-viśug-vītamado
virāgaḥ sa eva dhṛtyānya ivābabhāse //SN17.61
Without fear, without
sorrow, without pride, without passion;
while being nothing but
himself, he seemed in his constancy to be different.
The final thought
stimulated in me by today's verse, when I finally dragged my
miserable self out of bed and sat, was the question of who Aśvaghoṣa
was writing all this for anyway?
Was Aśvaghoṣa writing for
great arhats who, being already in full possession of themselves,
could smugly recognize in his poetry the working of a
like awakened mind?
Or was he writing for
the likes of me and you, the not-yet-self-possessed and the
non-self-possessed?
Seeing the target
audience to be the latter, more than anything else, is the fuel that
gets me – veering ineptly in the direction of utter loss – up and
out of bed.
VOCABULARY
an-ātmavantaḥ
(nom. pl. m.): those not in possession of themselves ; those who are
not self-possessed ; the non-self possessed
hṛdi
(loc. sg.): n. heart
yaiḥ
(inst. pl. m.): by those [desire]
vidaṣṭāḥ
(nom. pl. m.): mfn. bitten
vināśam
(acc. sg.): m. utter loss , annihilation , perdition , destruction ,
decay , death , removal
archanti
= 3rd pers. pl. ṛ: to go towards , meet with , fall upon
or into , reach , obtain
na:
not
yānti
= 3rd pers. pl. yā: to go to ; to go towards or against ,
go or come to , enter , approach , arrive at , reach
śarma
(acc. sg.): n. shelter , protection , refuge , safety ; Joy , bliss
, comfort , delight , happiness
kruddhogra-sarpa-pratimeṣu
(loc. pl. m.): like angry fierce snakes
kruddha:
mfn. irritated , provoked , angry with; fierce , cruel
ugra:
mfn. powerful , violent , mighty , impetuous , strong , huge ,
formidable , terrible ; cruel , fierce , ferocious , savage
sarpa:
mfn. creeping ; m. a snake , serpent , serpent-demon
pratimā:
ifc. like , similar , resembling , equal to
teṣu
(loc. pl. m.): those
kāmeṣu
(loc. pl.): m. pleasures, desires
kasya
(gen. sg.): who?
ātmavataḥ
(gen. sg. m.): being self-possessed
ratiḥ
(nom. sg.): f. pleasure , enjoyment , delight in , fondness
syāt
= 3rd pers. sg. optative as: to be
愚癡卑賤人 慳貪毒燒心
終身長受苦 未曾得安樂
貪恚如蛇毒 智者何由近
終身長受苦 未曾得安樂
貪恚如蛇毒 智者何由近
No comments:
Post a Comment