NYAAYENA YUKTAA SMIRTIH: REMEMBERING, THE PROPER WAY

For one obtains fire by rubbing the wood,
and one finds water by digging the earth;
There is nothing that is impossible
for the man who is persistent;
Everything can be accomplished,
when it is done the proper way.

Buddha-carita 13.60, trans. Patrick Olivelle

The final line in Sanskrit is:
NYAAYENA YUKTAM CA KRTAM CA SARVAM.

In this passage, Patrick Olivelle has translated NYAAYENA YUKTAM as "when it is done the proper way."

NYAAYENA YUKTAM corresponds to the phrase discussed in the previous post, NYAAYENA YUKTAA, where it was used in relation to mindfulness or remembering.

So NYAAYENA YUKTAA... SMIRTIH might be translated "remembering practised the proper way."

What Ashvaghosha seems to be saying in the above passage is that everything is possible for the persistent man, as long as what he does is yoked to a method, as long as his effort is systematic, as long as his energy is directed in accordance with a conscious means-whereby principle -- and not scattered here and there by end-gaining in an unconscious, willy-nilly fashion.

(Why do I have a nagging sense that with the words "end-gaining in an unconscious, willy-nilly fashion," I have just exactly described my own blogging efforts over the past few years, charging here and there like a locomotive off the rails? Or like a blind donkey seeking a lost carrot.... yes, I am afraid it is the latter metaphor that hits the target with tragic accuracy.)

A further clue in Saundarananda to the meaning of NYAAYA is that Ashvaghosha seems to use the word as synonymous with UPAAYA, which definitely means "method" or "means-whereby" -- as in the title of the 2nd chapter of the Lotus Sutra.

"... for even diligence is destructive if it is accompanied by the wrong method [AN-UPAAYA]" In this way, the Sugata spoke to him concerning right method [NYAAYAM] and the retreat from the wrong method [A-NYAAYA].

Saundarananda 16.70, trans. Linda Covill

The Clay Sanskrit Library translations of Ashvaghosha provide a tremendous resource. Using them as a starting point, I now firmly intend to clarify for myself, by studying for myself Ashvaghosha's words in their original Sanskrit, what Ashvaghosha was really driving at.

Little by little I aim to continue progressing like this, in small degrees, from greater to lesser misunderstanding of Ashvaghosha's words, as if removing grosser then finer impurities from gold.

By manifesting myself groping in the dark like this, as a novice of Sanskrit, I am probably making even more of a fool of myself than I have already done to date. But as Ashvaghosha concluded, "serviceable gold necessarily comes from ore-born dust."

So, in the Ashvaghosha / SAS spirit of Who Dares Wins, I will try again:

Out and out remembering -- yoked, for the purpose of getting at the truth, to the means-whereby principle -- along with out and out stillness: this pair constitutes the two precepts on [body-mind] integration, whose purpose is mastery, seated in peace, of the practice of thinking.

Saundarananda 16.33

YOGA-VIDHYAU: THE TWO PRECEPTS ON BODY-MIND INTEGRATION

Out and out remembering, driven by the intention of getting at the truth, along with out and out stillness -- this pair constitutes the two precepts on [body-mind] integration, for the purpose of mastering, while seated in peace, the practice of thinking.

Saundarananda 16.33

Linda Covill's translation of the same sentence is:

Right mindfulness, conjoined to the plan for the discovery of the truth, and right concentration -- these two occur in the ordinance on yogic practice, and are a basis for peace in order that one's thoughts may be circumscribed.

As already mentioned, I like very much Linda Covill's style as a writer and translator of Ashvaghosha's words. And anybody can see from the dictionary definitions below that LC's translation is literal enough. Still I have dared to have a go myself at this important passage from the section on the fourth noble truth. I hope my translation conveys something of the sense of urgency that Ashvaghosaha's words convey to me. As old-age and/or death rapidly approach, and notion after notion that we held to be true turns out to have been false, while the world continues to burn, as it has always burned... in this situation we need a definite plan, like a plan of military action, so that, binding on the armour of mindfulness, we may defeat those foe-like faults that have so far been defeating us. No! more than anybody else's plan, we need to find within ourselves the courage and strength of purpose that lead to the kind of thinking by which faults are eliminated. That is the kind of thinking that FM Alexander discovered -- inhibitory thinking, thinking that inhibits the reptilian faults, thinking that will not take 'no' for an answer.

The original Sanskrit is:
NYAAYENA SATYAABIGAMAAYA YUKTAA
SAMYAK SMRTIH SAMYAG ATHO SAMAADHIH --
IDAM DVAYAM YOGA-VIDHAU PRAVRTTAM,
SHAMAASHRAYAM CITTA PARIGRAHAAYA.


NYAAYA [Monier-Williams pp. 528] plan, design; leading thought, principle, system, method, doctrine.
NYAAYENA [instrumental case] by the leading thought
SATYA the truth
ABIGAMA [MW61] approaching, visiting
ABIGAMAAYA [dative case: indicating purpose] for the purpose of approaching, for the discovery of, with the intention of getting at
YUKTAA yoked to, yoked with
NYAAYENA ... YUKTAA literally means, I think, "by the leading thought [remembering] is yoked..." So the image that is conjured is not the all-too-easily evoked remembrance of the war veteran or the pining lover; it is closer to the effort that I make to remember when I have forgotten what I went upstairs for. If we call it "mindfulness," then it is mindfulness whose energy is harnessed to a strongly directed driving force, like a cart harnessed to a horse. And this horse is pulling in one direction, towards liberation, which is synonymous in Ashvoghosha's eyes with elimination of faults.


SAMYAK out & out, straight, true
SMRTI remembrance, reminiscence, thinking of or upon, calling to mind, memory
ATHO [connecting particle] next, then, along with
SAMAADHIH samadhi, stillness
For SAMAADHI, Monier-Williams [MW1159] gives: putting together; bringing into harmony, agreement; fixing the mind on.
For Master Dogen, however, the king of samadhis is the act, with right foot on left thigh and left foot on right thigh, of sitting still (but without fixing anything on anything).



IDAM [nominative, singular of AYAM] this
DVAYAM couple, pair
YOGA [MW856] the act of yoking, joining, harnessing; junction, union, combination
VIDHI [MW968] a rule, formula, injunction, ordnance, statute, precept
VIDHAU [nominative, dual of VIDHI] two precepts
PRAVRRTAM [MW693] resulted, arisen, produced, happened, occurred


SHAMA tranquility, peace
AASHRAYAM [MW158] that to which anything is annexed or with which anything is closely connected or on which anything depends or rests [or sits]
CITTA thinking, thoughts, mind
PARIGRAHA [MW593] to take hold of on both sides, embrace, surround, enfold, envelop; to fence round, to occupy on both sides; to seize, clutch, grasp, catch; to take or carry along with one; to take possession of, master, overpower; to take, adopt, conform to, follow
PARIGRAHAAYA [dative case, denoting purpose, of PARIGRAHA]
for the purpose of practising

I have suggested already at the end of this post that to me the purpose denoted is not so much the quashing of thoughts as the practice of inhibitory thinking of the kind that Ashvaghosha proceeds to describe -- thinking in a friendly manner towards oneself as an antidote to ill-will, contemplating the impurity of the body as an antidote to passion, et cetera.


The three characters below, taken from the Fukan-zazengi scroll thought to be written in Master Dogen's own hand, may be understood as expressing the original meaning of the word YOGA. The first character, JO, means become or realize. The second two characters, IPPEN, mean one piece. JO-IPPEN means becoming one piece, or realizing/rememembering that one is already, has already been from the beginning, one piece.

MAITRII -- FRIENDLINESS, GOODWILL

"But when the fault of ill-will is disturbing one's thinking, then [thinking] should be practised by supplying oneself with goodwill."

Saundarananda 16.62

This translation is a kind of groping in the dark. Please don't quote me.

Still, what is not in doubt is that Ashvaghosha is advocating, as an antidote to the fault of malice or ill-will (VYAAPAADA), the introduction of its opposite, which is goodwill (MAITRII).

MAITRII is conventionally translated, rather wetly to my ears, as "loving-kindness." Hence Linda Covill's translation of the above sentence is:

But when the mind is disturbed by the fault of malice, the loving-kindness meditation should be practised with reference to one's own position.

My understanding of Sanskrit grammar is not yet adequate to understand exactly in my own mind, or to explain for others, how each word of Ashvaghosha's relates to the others in this sentence, but I am able to look up each word in the dictionary, thus:

VYAAPAADA malice, ill-will, evil intent
DOSHA fault, defect, taint
KSHUBHITE (case?) shaken, agitated
TU but
CITTE (locative case of CITTA?) thinking, mind
SEVYAA practised [I am not sure about the grammar - can anybody help?]
SVA-PAKSHA one's own wing/side/half/place; oneself
UPANAYENA (instrumental case of UPANA) by supplying, by introducing
MAITRII goodwill, friendship

With each passing day I am more determined that I will learn Sanskrit properly (though my facility for picking up languages is not what it once was), and I will clarify for self and others what Ashvaghosha really meant. And this time I will do it independently, with the intention of serving nobody other than Ashvaghosha himself and whoever reads my stuff. Insofar as I am able to direct my energy simply towards this service of one who is truly worthy of being served, the Great Arhat Ashvaghosha, I think that I might be able to turn over a new leaf. I might manage to supply even myself with a bit of goodwill. I might feel that this field of misfortunes which is my body, insofar as it might become a kind of wheelbarrow for transporting the serviceable gold of Ashvaghosa, might be worth redeeming.

In so redeeming myself, however, I do not think that I will need to bother resorting to a meditational technique of loving kindness. I think Ashavghosha's message is not about a technique of meditation, but is, more directly and simply, about learning how to think.

I think that what Ashvaghosha is saying is along the lines of what FM Alexander used to say, as quoted to me by his niece Marjory Barlow, that "This work is an exercise in finding out what thinking is." And "In this work being wrong is the best friend you have got."

From this bias, I suspect that Ashvaghosha is saying that what is to be practised, by supplying oneself with friendship, is thinking itself, by which faults are eliminated and peace ultimately won.

Or this interpretation could be a prejudice which the process of approaching a direct and literal translation of Ashvaghosha's words will require me to drop off.

Translation as I enjoy doing it is like this. It is rather like Alexander work under a good teacher -- repeatedly finding that you were wrong; repeatedly finding that what you thought might be it, was in fact not it.

Translation as I enjoy doing it is like this -- a work in progress.

INTRODUCING MY FRIEND MARA

Vowing to win release,
The great seer, born in a line of royal seers,
Sat there, and the world rejoiced.
Shaking with fright, however, was the enemy of true dharma -- Mara.


Comment:
The opening verse of the 13th canto, "Victory over Mara," of Buddha-carita is translated by Patrick Olivelle like this:

When that great seer, who was born in a line
of royal seers, sat down there with the pledge
to win release, the world rejoiced, and yet
Mara, foe of true Dharma, shook with fright.

I don't see anything to criticize in Patrick Olivelle's translation.
But when I examine the original four-line verse, through (I cannot deny it) the eyes of my teacher Gudo:

the first line is about the Buddha's mind;
the second line expresses objectively, in terms of his royal ancestry, who the Buddha was;
the third line centres on the actions of sitting and rejoicing; and
the fourth line describes, with poetic license, the real effect on the evil one -- poor old Mara.

THE UNHEROIC FAULT OF FIXING

All that I know, really and truly, is this: fixing the head down on the front of the spine by pulling in the chin, as I was taught to do it, for the purpose of stopping thought, is never part of the solution to the problem of suffering. It is part of the problem.

Fixing, as FM Alexander said, is our worst evil. I think fixing is the fault at the centre of all faults, as the Moro reflex is at the centre of the whole tangle of vestibular problems. Fixing is right at the center of the tangled skein of faults that, as Ashvaghosha described, sets dukha in motion.

If I sometimes seem strident it is because I know the above, I have had it clearly demonstrated to me, whereas if any of the so-called Soto Zen masters of the present know it, I do not see the evidence of them knowing it. I see the evidence of them not knowing it, and yet teaching others. They put on a show as if they might be sitting in the enlightened glow of ancestors like Ashvaghosa and Dogen, while actually they are manifesting the gross stupidity and delusion of the bad teachers of recent times who taught them, throwing away mindfulness, unconsciously to pull in their chin. Kodo Sawaki, Shunryu Suzuki, Taisen Deshimaru... I don't care how great and famous the Roshi was; if he advocated pulling in the chin, then the "right posture" that he thought of as enlightenment was actually the very essence of subjective delusion. And Gudo Nishijima, my own teacher, has continued to be a prime example of this stupidity, this arrogant madness. Now, in his old age, he thinks he has got enlightenment at last. But I know for sure that he is not enlightened. He is just a stubborn old man who did not like, when I confronted him with the reality, to look in fact at the reality he preached in theory. He opted for denial. He preferred to listen to people who curried favour with him, wanting to get his Dharma so that they could believe themselves to be -- even announce themselves ridiculously on their web-pages to be -- a certified Zen Roshi. Gudo in recent years has taken to calling those who revere him "Venerable." That became his criterion -- whether a person reveres him or not. What a joke. What a tragedy.

Gudo is like one of those old dentists who, having made a career of putting mercury into people's mouths, would rather die in ignorance than admit that amalgam fillings can have a very toxic effect on some, if not all, people.

Even though I know, I have been taught, I have been shown, by Alexander teachers, that fixing is never part of the solution but is invariably part of the problem, I continue to do it, because I forget, I fail to remember, what I have already been shown.

Therefore....

As this breath passes in,
I try to remember not to interfere.
As this breath passes out,
I try to remember not to interfere.
What was it, not to interfere?
It is difficult to remember.
But one thing I know:
It was not that.

Finally there is nothing to do but express gratitude to the stupid bad teachers of recent times like Kodo and Gudo. They did their best, in a degenerate age, to go back to the source. Binding on the armour of mindfulness, let us try to follow their example of heroic endeavour -- while striving to be freer of foe-like faults like fixing, than they have been. For, as Ashvaghosa said:

Even a hero is not considered heroic if he is struck down by the foe-like faults.

Saurandananda 18.28, trans. Linda Covill

SAMYAK SMRTI -- OUT & OUT REMEMBRANCE

The characters in the photo, from the edition of Fukan-zazengi written in Master Dogen's own hand read SHO-NEN, representing the Sanskrit SAMYAK SMRTI, which is conventionally translated into English as "right mindfulness."

What is SMRTI?

Setting aside the secondary issue of what English word to use as a translation of SMRTI, and going back to the source, what did Ashvaghosha really mean by SMRTI?

We see from Saundarananda that Ashvaghosha emphasized very much the vital importance of SMRTI, as a safeguard against faults. Faults can be understood as manifestations of a lack of integrity and self-restraint -- Ashvaghosa cites hypocrisy along with passion, malice, delusion and the rest. So what did he mean by SMRTI? How does it work?

The origin in Sanskrit of the word SMRTI is the verb whose root is SMR, to remember. SMARATI means "he remembers."

On November 11th, I was watching on TV the faces of people involved in remembrance day services, especially the faces of very old people who really were remembering. Clearly, there is a part of the brain that is particularly deeply implicated in the act of remembering, and these old people were allowing that part of the brain to function unimpeded.

Sitting outside in the sun just now, listening to low-flying aircraft buzzing overhead, like missiles straight from Mara, it occurred to me that SMRTI must have to do with using those parts of the brain that are particularly implicated in memory, in order to suppress, or inhibit, the "reptilian faults" (DOSHA-VYALAN) arising from within the deepest and oldest parts of the brain.

FM Alexander called this kind of inhibitory activity "thinking" -- by which he most certainly did not mean intellectual thinking.

My Sanskrit is not yet good enough to make the argument convincingly, but I suspect that Ashvaghosha also used the word "thinking" (CITTA) to express this kind of inhibitory activity.

In Saundarananda 16.33, Linda Covill translates Ashvaghosha as follows:

Right mindfulness conjoined to the plan for the discovery of the truth, and right concentration -- these two occur in the ordinance on yogic practice, and are a basis for peace in order that one's thoughts may be circumscribed.

The final words of this sentence in Sanskrit are CITTA PARIGRHAAYA.

CITTA is here translated by Linda Covill as "thoughts," but the Monier-Williams Sanskrit dictionary defines CITTA as "attending, observing; thinking, reflecting.... etc."

PARIGRAHAAYA is here translated by Linda Covill as "in order that... may be circumscribed." -AAYA represents the dative case, denoting purpose or result ("in order that"). Monier-Williams defines PARIGRAH as "to take hold of on both sides, embrace, surround, enfold, envelop; to fence round, to occupy on both sides; to seize, clutch, grasp, catch; to take or carry along with one; to take possession of, master."

So maybe a case can be made that CITTA PARIGRHAAYA expresses not so much the circumscribing, or fencing around, of thoughts but rather the mastery of thinking.

SERVICEABLE GOLD

This is a review I wrote, for the Amazon website of Ashvaghosha's Saundarananda (Handsome Nanda), translated by Linda Covill and published by Clay Sanskrit Library.

For anybody who would like to know the original teaching of the Buddha's four noble truths, as it was preserved through twelve generations in India, here it is, straight from the horse's mouth, in Sanskrit and in English.

The teaching of the four truths first appears, in a nutshell, in the third of this book's eighteen cantos:

"This is suffering, this is the network of causes producing it, this is its pacification, this is the means." [3.10]

How great it is for the reader to be enabled not just to take the translator's word for it, but to check for himself with the Sanskrit on the facing page, and thereby know that the original words with which Ashvaghosha expressed the second noble truth were SAMUDAYA-LATA PRAVARTIKA. The dictionary tells us that SAMUDAYA means "combination" or "aggregate," that LATA originally means "creeper," and that PRAVARTIKA means "setting in motion" or "producing."

Aha! So the Master seems to be describing that which sets suffering in motion as a network of faults, a tangled skein, a many-tentacled monster of misuse.

Seeking to extricate Nanda from this tangled skein, the Buddha acts craftily: first he lures his younger brother away physically from the comforts of home, and then, to help release Nanda's mind from the continuing pull of his wife's sensual charms, the Buddha conjures up a bevy of truly heart-stopping heavenly stunners, in comparison with whom Mrs Nanda suddenly seems less sexually appealing than a one-eyed monkey!

The story of Handsome Nanda's path to liberation progresses through cantos dwelling on the joy he finds in faith (SHRADDHA), and the merit he acquires by binding on the armour of mindfulness (SMRTI). The primacy of integrity / self-restraint (SHILA) is emphasized, as is the need for heroic endeavor (VIRYA) in the fight against the foe-like faults. Then, in the final three cantos, we are given a detailed exposition of the four noble truths themselves, together with an account of Nanda's ultimate success in penetrating them.

Along the way, Ashvaghosha, who holds liberation to be paramount, is relentless and remorseless in tearing apart any fanciful notion that may present an obstacle to the reader's own progress along the path towards liberation. These efforts to rid us of sentimental conceptions and thoughtless assumptions about our own health and immortality are particularly concentrated in Canto 15, titled Abandoning Notions. Thus, "In this world, by nature separate, nobody is truly dear to anybody... Nowhere is happiness found... Where this body goes, it is followed by sorrow... Expectations of well-being or continuing life do not occur to a truly seeing man as he drags around his body, that field of misfortunes."

Is this all too pessimistic for one who has taken the Mahayana vow of a bodhisattva? I think not. Ashvaghosha has gone far, far beyond the optimism and pessimism of philosophers of the large and small vehicles. Ashvaghosha is just telling us, as the Buddha taught it, the bitter truth.

The bitter pill is sweetened with many evocative, memorable, sometimes surprising, and sometimes humorous images:


"A glance at Sundari, her waist compact between her swelling breasts and thighs like a golden fissure in a mountain, could no more satisfy Nanda than drinking water with one hand. Reverence for the Buddha drew him on, love for his wife drew him back again. He hesitated, neither going or staying, like a king-goose pushing forward against the waves." [4.40]

"Even yogic practice can lead to failure, not success, if practiced at the wrong time or in the wrong way. A man milking a cow at the wrong time, when her calf is not yet born, will get no milk; and even at the right time, he would get no milk if, in ignorance, he were to milk her by the horn." [16.50]

"Just as a man weary of excessive love-making will, for example, go for a brisk walk, so should the wise man proceed in relation to the faults." [16.80]

As her introduction demonstrates, as also do the above excerpts, Linda Covill herself has got a very nice way with words, and she translates very unobtrusively, in a way that never draws attention to herself as a translator. I like her approach very much. She uses one or two terms that strike this reader as dubious, or at least that offend his prejudices: "meditational technique," which seems to be a translation of NIMITTAM, is the prime example. Relying on conventional terms like "the four foundations of mindfulness," may be regarded as a fudge, or a virtue, depending on one's point of view. It may be a bit of both, on the one hand reflecting the difficulty of coming up with a new, more literal and yet still meaningful translation of SMRTY-UPASTHANA, and on the other hand reflecting the same modesty of approach by which Linda Covill generally stays out of the way and allows Ashvaghosha's brilliance to shine through.

Oft-recurring metaphors are part of that brilliance. They speak to the reader's soul more deeply than any amount of dry philosophy possibly could.

The fathomless sea of hypocrisy, greed, malice and other faults (DOSHA) is introduced as such in the third canto:

"The seer had passed over the fathomless sea of faults -- which is watered by conditioned existence, which has anxious thoughts for fish, and which is disturbed by waves of anger, desire and fear -- and he carried the world across too." [3.10]

Thereafter the faults, are variously portrayed as snakes (DOSHA-VYALAN is intriguingly translated as "reptilian faults" [14.30], causing this reader to come back to the question of how deeply rooted the nexus of faults might be in brain physiology and body chemistry); as symptoms of a disease to be cured; as enemies to be defeated in battle; and as impurities to be removed from gold.

Appropriately indeed does Ashvaghosha finish his epic poem with the words UPAKARAM CAMIKARAM, "serviceable gold":

"Seeing that the world generally holds the pleasure of sensory experience uppermost and is resistant to liberation, I, holding liberation to be paramount, have described the truth in the guise of poetry. Knowing this, that part which relates to peace should be carefully extracted from it, not the entertaining part; serviceable gold necessarily comes from ore-born dust."

Since obtaining a few weeks ago this handily pocket-sized volume, together with its companion volume in the Clay Sanskrit Library "The Life of the Buddha," this reviewer seems constantly to have been carrying around one book or the other. Both books are hard to put down. This one has the added virtue of being from a Sanskrit text which is complete. The words of the noble Ashvaghosha are conspicuously clear and unambiguous, his whole poem has a coherence to it, and he speaks to the English speaker very really -- as if there were no cultural filter. Certainly, there is no Chinese Confucian influence here, and nothing Japanese either.

A friend and fellow Ashvaghosha fan commented on this book, "To my eyes it's not shrouded in mysticism; it seems to go straight to the heart." I agree. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Reading it makes the reader want to start afresh and dig deeper, so that, notwithstanding this fathomless tangle of faults and fanciful notions that causes suffering, the Buddha's teaching might be caused to yield up, again, its true gold.