ari-bhuuteShv a-nityeShu
satataM duHkha-hetuShu
kaam'-aadiShu jagat saktaM
na vetti sukham avyayam
- - = = - = - -
- - = = - - - -
= = - - - - - =
- = - - - = - -
12.24
Upon transient whims which are akin to enemies,
Being eternally the causes of suffering,
Upon whims like love, the world fixates.
It does not know
the happiness that is immune to change.
COMMENT
This verse is an encouragement to believe in, and thence to pursue, the kind of happiness that is always there, as opposed to the temporary ups that are invariably followed by downs.
The four elements of the four pada ('steps' or 'feet') of this verse, as I read it, are (1) the changeable, (2) the eternal, (3) the fixed, and (4) that which is neither fixed nor subject to change.
The verse seems to ask me to ask myself:
(1) What is transient?
(2) What is eternal?
(3) How, why, and upon what does the world fixate?
(4) Do I myself know, or at least believe in the existence of, this happiness of which the Buddha speaks, which is imperishable, or immune to change?
Here for what it is worth is my attempt to answer those questions:
(1) Things that we tend to presume to be permanent, like concrete floors, or mountains, or the strong chemistry between two human beings who fall in love, on further investigation turn out not to be permanent after all, but to be transient. Everything which has energy turns out to be transient, because sooner or later the energy dissipates. Thus, marine fossils defy our presumptions by turning up on top of the highest mountains, and the majority of marriages defy the sincerest of vows that "till death do us part," by ending up in divorce.
(2) If permanence is to be sought anywhere, it might be sought in certain laws of the universe, chief among which might be impermanence itself, a.k.a. "the 2nd law of thermodynamics." Another law that might be eternally valid, the 2nd line suggests, is the noble truth of the origin of suffering.
(3) "You all fix!" said FM Alexander to his student-teachers, and "Fixing is our greatest evil." Why is it that we cling irrationally to things from which we derive a false sense of security? It might have something to do with faulty sensory appreciation, and it might equally have something to do with the infantile panic/grasp reflex. Again, faulty sensory appreciation and the panic reflex might, in many cases, have a lot to do with each other.
(4) FM Alexander said to his niece Marjory Barlow, "You know, dear, I am always happy." And Marjory said how she treasured those words. So I quizzed on her on them: What did FM mean? From his biography FM clearly had plenty of troubles to contend with, not least the libel case that he decided to contest in his old age. So what did he mean by saying "I am always happy"? Marjory's answer was given not only in words. When I think back to how Marjory answered my question, and try to put Marjory's answer into a word or two of my own choosing, Marjory's answer was to point me back in the direction of learning the backward step.
I am impelled to keep writing about the backward step, like a person with failing memory writing out a list, because my mind is so fickle that I wake up every morning more or less lost, full of surface doubts and regrets, seemingly having forgotten everything. Then I get up and sit and remember and want to write it down and publish it for posterity (as if the blogosphere were eternal): The backward step. The backward step. The backward step.
Do I believe in the sukham avayayam, imperishable happiness, of the fourth line? Yes, I do. Do I know it? I don't know if I know it or not. I know that I don't understand it. Though I dare to judge that it must be profoundly related with acceptance of the 2nd law of thermodynamics, and with learning of the backward step of turning light and shining, I do not understand what it is. I do not understand imperishable happiness any more than a miner understands the sub-atomic particles that constitute gold. I only know that happiness for me, these days, lies in endeavouring to answer Ashvaghosha's call through the centuries to dig deeper for it.
What's Nirvana?
I don't know.
A loser losing
His will to flow?
Submariners say
When hurricanes blow
That it gets stiller
The deeper you go.
EH Johnston:
The world clings to love and the rest, which are perpetual causes of suffering, transitory, and in reality its enemies, and it does not know the pleasure which does not pass away.
Linda Covill:
The world fastens on lust and other desires, which are inimical to us, transitory, and an ongoing cause of suffering. It does not know imperishable bliss.
VOCABULARY:
ari: not liberal , envious , hostile ; an enemy
bhuuteShv = locative, plural of bhuuta: (ifc.) being or being like anything , consisting of
anityeShu = locative, plural of anitya: impermanent, transient
satatam: constantly , always , ever
duHkha: suffering
hetuShu = locative plural of hetu: cause
kaama: wish, desire; pleasure, enjoyment; love, especially sexual love or sensuality
aadiShu = locative, plural of aadi: beginning with, et cetera
jagat (nominal, singular): people, mankind; the world
saktam (accusative): clinging or adhering to , sticking in (loc); committed to; fixed or intent upon, addicted or devoted to (loc)
na: not
vetti = 3rd person singular of vid: to know
sukham (accusative): happiness, ease
avyayam (accusative): not liable to change , imperishable , undecaying
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Monday, June 15, 2009
SAUNDARANANDA 12.23: Illusory & Delusory Happiness
duHkhaM na syaat sukhaM me syaad
iti prayatate janaH
atyanta-duHkh'-oparamaM
sukhaM tac ca na budhyate
= = = = - = = =
- = - - - = - =
= = - = = - - =
= = = - - = - =
12.23
'I would not suffer; I would be happy:'
People labour under this illusion;
And respite from incessant suffering
They sense not as such, but as happiness.
COMMENT:
This verse, as I read it, addresses firstly illusory thoughts about, and secondly delusory feelings about, happiness.
What happiness is I do not understand. Illusions and delusions, on the other hand, I do know a bit about.
“If only ....., I would be happy.” Fill in your own missing words. In the last fifty years I have filled in plenty of mine.
But what actually happens when those kind of wishes are fulfilled? What happens when we finally get to embrace the celestial nymph of our dreams, or when we pass the test and get our own wheels, or when we finally get to go home, or when we finally get to the end of some energy-sapping job?
For a starker example, what happens when an irresponsible layabout suddenly wins the lottery? The greed and other faults that made the irresponsible layabout an irresponsible layabout will continue to make him an irresponsible layabout even after he has won the lottery. Fundamentally, the fulfilment of his wish to hit the jackpot will not change anything for the better.
For hard labourer or layabout, as long as the faults that cause suffering are constantly generating noise in the system, any thought of real, lasting happiness is but an illusion.
And yet in the world of ordinary people, among labourers and layabouts, one does see sporadic outbreaks of apparent happiness, from the satisfaction of a job well done to the air-punching elation of a number that came up. How can we account for this?
When a faulty person feels happy, it is not that the faults have been eradicated, even for a moment: it is just that the underlying noise arising from faults has been temporarily drowned out. We see this happening under the influence of drink or drugs, for example. Subjectively the drunk feels like a million dollars and feels confident in his driving ability, but the feeling is unreliable: objectively the drunk looks in bad shape and is a menace on the roads.
The way that FM Alexander saw it was that if a person’s manner of using himself is bad, he might feel happy, due to “faulty sensory appreciation“ or “debauched kinesthesia,” but the feeling is unreliable.
Because my kinesthesia is still, more than 30 years after first stepping into a dojo and bowing, more or less debauched, whatever I do is liable to produce harmful side effects, i.e. suffering. If I just sit with the body, that is just doing, and it is liable to produce suffering. Because just sitting with the body is doing, we oppose it by the mental work (sometimes called ‘mindfulness’) of not reacting to that stimulus but rather allowing a response to this stimulus. And as a result of both those kinds of effort, sitting with the body and sitting with the mind, sitting can be the dropping off of body and mind. This is not only my experience and not only Alexander’s wisdom: it is the wisdom which Buddha/Ashvaghosha are expressing here. It is the wisdom expressed in the previous verse by the word nivRtti, non-doing.
Each of us brings to the reading of this ancient Sanskrit text our own illusory thoughts and delusory feelings, and yet we somehow know, in spite of ourselves, that the text itself is gold of a very pure form. It is a purity of gold that may not have seen the light of day for many hundreds of years. That may be why Linda Covill, with her keen eye and ear for the appropriate metaphor, wrote of her happiness that this text is being given “a thorough airing.”
EH Johnston:
Men labour that they may avoid suffering and feel pleasure, and they do not understand that that pleasure of theirs is but surcease from excessive suffering.
Linda Covill:
People are stimulated to effortful activity by the thought that there might be no suffering and that they could be happy, unaware that their happiness is just the absence of major suffering.
VOCABULARY:
duHkham (accusative): suffering, hardship
na syaat (optative): there might not be
sukham (accusative): happiness, ease
me = genitive of aham: of me, for me
syaat (optative): there might be
iti: thus
prayatate = 3rd person singular of pra-√yat: strive, endeavour
janaH (nominative): person, people
atyanta: mfn. beyond the proper end or limit ; excessive , very great , very strong ; endless , unbroken , perpetual
duHkha: suffering
uparamam (accusative): m. cessation , stopping , expiration ; leaving off , desisting , giving up
sukham (accusative): happiness, ease
tat: that
ca: and
na: not
budhyate = 3rd person singular of budh: to wake , wake up , be awake ; perceive, realise
iti prayatate janaH
atyanta-duHkh'-oparamaM
sukhaM tac ca na budhyate
= = = = - = = =
- = - - - = - =
= = - = = - - =
= = = - - = - =
12.23
'I would not suffer; I would be happy:'
People labour under this illusion;
And respite from incessant suffering
They sense not as such, but as happiness.
COMMENT:
This verse, as I read it, addresses firstly illusory thoughts about, and secondly delusory feelings about, happiness.
What happiness is I do not understand. Illusions and delusions, on the other hand, I do know a bit about.
“If only ....., I would be happy.” Fill in your own missing words. In the last fifty years I have filled in plenty of mine.
But what actually happens when those kind of wishes are fulfilled? What happens when we finally get to embrace the celestial nymph of our dreams, or when we pass the test and get our own wheels, or when we finally get to go home, or when we finally get to the end of some energy-sapping job?
For a starker example, what happens when an irresponsible layabout suddenly wins the lottery? The greed and other faults that made the irresponsible layabout an irresponsible layabout will continue to make him an irresponsible layabout even after he has won the lottery. Fundamentally, the fulfilment of his wish to hit the jackpot will not change anything for the better.
For hard labourer or layabout, as long as the faults that cause suffering are constantly generating noise in the system, any thought of real, lasting happiness is but an illusion.
And yet in the world of ordinary people, among labourers and layabouts, one does see sporadic outbreaks of apparent happiness, from the satisfaction of a job well done to the air-punching elation of a number that came up. How can we account for this?
When a faulty person feels happy, it is not that the faults have been eradicated, even for a moment: it is just that the underlying noise arising from faults has been temporarily drowned out. We see this happening under the influence of drink or drugs, for example. Subjectively the drunk feels like a million dollars and feels confident in his driving ability, but the feeling is unreliable: objectively the drunk looks in bad shape and is a menace on the roads.
The way that FM Alexander saw it was that if a person’s manner of using himself is bad, he might feel happy, due to “faulty sensory appreciation“ or “debauched kinesthesia,” but the feeling is unreliable.
Because my kinesthesia is still, more than 30 years after first stepping into a dojo and bowing, more or less debauched, whatever I do is liable to produce harmful side effects, i.e. suffering. If I just sit with the body, that is just doing, and it is liable to produce suffering. Because just sitting with the body is doing, we oppose it by the mental work (sometimes called ‘mindfulness’) of not reacting to that stimulus but rather allowing a response to this stimulus. And as a result of both those kinds of effort, sitting with the body and sitting with the mind, sitting can be the dropping off of body and mind. This is not only my experience and not only Alexander’s wisdom: it is the wisdom which Buddha/Ashvaghosha are expressing here. It is the wisdom expressed in the previous verse by the word nivRtti, non-doing.
Each of us brings to the reading of this ancient Sanskrit text our own illusory thoughts and delusory feelings, and yet we somehow know, in spite of ourselves, that the text itself is gold of a very pure form. It is a purity of gold that may not have seen the light of day for many hundreds of years. That may be why Linda Covill, with her keen eye and ear for the appropriate metaphor, wrote of her happiness that this text is being given “a thorough airing.”
EH Johnston:
Men labour that they may avoid suffering and feel pleasure, and they do not understand that that pleasure of theirs is but surcease from excessive suffering.
Linda Covill:
People are stimulated to effortful activity by the thought that there might be no suffering and that they could be happy, unaware that their happiness is just the absence of major suffering.
VOCABULARY:
duHkham (accusative): suffering, hardship
na syaat (optative): there might not be
sukham (accusative): happiness, ease
me = genitive of aham: of me, for me
syaat (optative): there might be
iti: thus
prayatate = 3rd person singular of pra-√yat: strive, endeavour
janaH (nominative): person, people
atyanta: mfn. beyond the proper end or limit ; excessive , very great , very strong ; endless , unbroken , perpetual
duHkha: suffering
uparamam (accusative): m. cessation , stopping , expiration ; leaving off , desisting , giving up
sukham (accusative): happiness, ease
tat: that
ca: and
na: not
budhyate = 3rd person singular of budh: to wake , wake up , be awake ; perceive, realise
Sunday, June 14, 2009
SAUNDARANANDA 12.22: Rarity of Non-doing
loke 'sminn aalay'-aaraame
nivRttau dur-labhaa ratiH
vyathante hy a-punar-bhaavaat
prapaataad iva baalishaaH
12.22
In this world which likes what is close to home,
A fondness for non-doing is rare;
For men shrink from the end of becoming
Like the puerile from the edge of a cliff.
COMMENT:
Non-doing involves going against the habit of a lifetime, which we find uncomfortable, and it is a journey into the unknown, which we find fearful.
How rare is a fondness for non-doing? Maybe rarer than we realise.
Alexander work is supposed to be all about non-doing, but when one looks deeply into it, a lot of what passes for non-doing, both within and without the self, is actually a subtle form of doing.
Marjory Barlow said that the wrong inner patterns are the doing that has to be stopped. I think those ‘wrong inner patterns’ generally have to do with noise emanating from aberrant survival reflexes. If that noise had a voice, it might say: “What’s in it for me?”
Similarly, to work in service of the Buddha is to give up one’s own agenda, but again when one looks deeply into it, a lot of what passes for obedient service of the Buddha, both within and without the self, is actually more or less subtle pursuit of a personal agenda. A noisy trace too often remains of “What’s in it for me?”
I could easily criticize others at this point, following the mirror principle, but the only noise I have any hope of preventing is the noise in my own system. That, after all, is what I am here on my own in France for. To get to the end of becoming in myself.
When Zinadine Zidane dropped the nut on his opponent’s chest in a World Cup Final, I wrote in a blog post at the time that I saw great beauty in Zidane’s act. Zidane’s action, as I saw it, was tempered by compassion: if it had been an untrammelled act of brutal malevolence, Zidane would have gone for his opponent’s nose, or throat, or testicles. What I saw in Zidane’s action was a kind of total negation of “what is in it for me?” It was not the kind of puerile petulance to be seen among the pampered premiership prima donnas of today. In Zidane’s spontaneous release of energy there was a kind of full stop, a decisive expression of the end of becoming.
The phrase a-punar-bhaava, as I read it, is by no means lending any support to the dubious ancient idea of karma and rebirth, which has nothing to with true scientific pursuit, not being subject to empirical verification, but everything to do with maintaining a political status quo. The only end of becoming that I know is a moment of leaving it all on the pitch, or in the dojo, or in the garden, or on the round cushion. I think of Stuart Pearce, former left-back for England, going in for a tackle, with a certain manly commitment, without any trace of boyish shrinking back from the edge.
To have done my best to translate one verse per day, and to have spoken my mind on it without fear or favour, might be a kind of end of becoming. If I die tomorrow, so be it. I refuse to be in a hurry about this translation, or to worry about heaven or hell. If, aided by the wonderful natural energy of this place where I am, I could manage some time today to allow just one moment of true non-doing, that would be great.
Listening
From in the womb
The end of becoming
Is a stream flowing
And a bird singing
All out
EH Johnston:
In this world, which rejoices in attachment, it is hard to find delight in the cessation of active being ; for fools shrink back from release from rebirth as from a precipice.
Linda Covill:
In this world with its liking for the household life, it is hard to take pleasure in abstention from activity; for fools shrink from the prospect of the end of rebirth as from the edge of a cliff.
VOCABULARY:
loke = locative of loka: world
asmin = locative of ayam: this
aalaya (from aa-li): a house , dwelling
aa -li: to come close to ; to settle down upon ; a receptacle, asylum
aaraame = locative of aarama: m. delight , pleasure ; place of pleasure , a garden , grove
nivRttau = locative of nivRtti: abstention; ceasing from worldly acts , inactivity , rest , repose; antonym of pra-vRtti, end-gaining
dur-labhaa: difficult to be found, rare
ratiH (nominative): f. rest , repose ; pleasure , enjoyment , delight in , fondness for (loc.)
vyathante = 3rd person plural of vyath: to tremble , waver , go astray
hi: for
a-punar-bhaavaat (ablative): not again becoming
prapaataad = ablative of prapaata: a steep rock , cliff , precipice
iva: like, as if
baalishaaH = nominative, plural of baalisha: mf(A)n. young , childish , puerile , ignorant , simple , foolish; m. a fool , simpleton , blockhead
nivRttau dur-labhaa ratiH
vyathante hy a-punar-bhaavaat
prapaataad iva baalishaaH
12.22
In this world which likes what is close to home,
A fondness for non-doing is rare;
For men shrink from the end of becoming
Like the puerile from the edge of a cliff.
COMMENT:
Non-doing involves going against the habit of a lifetime, which we find uncomfortable, and it is a journey into the unknown, which we find fearful.
How rare is a fondness for non-doing? Maybe rarer than we realise.
Alexander work is supposed to be all about non-doing, but when one looks deeply into it, a lot of what passes for non-doing, both within and without the self, is actually a subtle form of doing.
Marjory Barlow said that the wrong inner patterns are the doing that has to be stopped. I think those ‘wrong inner patterns’ generally have to do with noise emanating from aberrant survival reflexes. If that noise had a voice, it might say: “What’s in it for me?”
Similarly, to work in service of the Buddha is to give up one’s own agenda, but again when one looks deeply into it, a lot of what passes for obedient service of the Buddha, both within and without the self, is actually more or less subtle pursuit of a personal agenda. A noisy trace too often remains of “What’s in it for me?”
I could easily criticize others at this point, following the mirror principle, but the only noise I have any hope of preventing is the noise in my own system. That, after all, is what I am here on my own in France for. To get to the end of becoming in myself.
When Zinadine Zidane dropped the nut on his opponent’s chest in a World Cup Final, I wrote in a blog post at the time that I saw great beauty in Zidane’s act. Zidane’s action, as I saw it, was tempered by compassion: if it had been an untrammelled act of brutal malevolence, Zidane would have gone for his opponent’s nose, or throat, or testicles. What I saw in Zidane’s action was a kind of total negation of “what is in it for me?” It was not the kind of puerile petulance to be seen among the pampered premiership prima donnas of today. In Zidane’s spontaneous release of energy there was a kind of full stop, a decisive expression of the end of becoming.
The phrase a-punar-bhaava, as I read it, is by no means lending any support to the dubious ancient idea of karma and rebirth, which has nothing to with true scientific pursuit, not being subject to empirical verification, but everything to do with maintaining a political status quo. The only end of becoming that I know is a moment of leaving it all on the pitch, or in the dojo, or in the garden, or on the round cushion. I think of Stuart Pearce, former left-back for England, going in for a tackle, with a certain manly commitment, without any trace of boyish shrinking back from the edge.
To have done my best to translate one verse per day, and to have spoken my mind on it without fear or favour, might be a kind of end of becoming. If I die tomorrow, so be it. I refuse to be in a hurry about this translation, or to worry about heaven or hell. If, aided by the wonderful natural energy of this place where I am, I could manage some time today to allow just one moment of true non-doing, that would be great.
Listening
From in the womb
The end of becoming
Is a stream flowing
And a bird singing
All out
EH Johnston:
In this world, which rejoices in attachment, it is hard to find delight in the cessation of active being ; for fools shrink back from release from rebirth as from a precipice.
Linda Covill:
In this world with its liking for the household life, it is hard to take pleasure in abstention from activity; for fools shrink from the prospect of the end of rebirth as from the edge of a cliff.
VOCABULARY:
loke = locative of loka: world
asmin = locative of ayam: this
aalaya (from aa-li): a house , dwelling
aa -li: to come close to ; to settle down upon ; a receptacle, asylum
aaraame = locative of aarama: m. delight , pleasure ; place of pleasure , a garden , grove
nivRttau = locative of nivRtti: abstention; ceasing from worldly acts , inactivity , rest , repose; antonym of pra-vRtti, end-gaining
dur-labhaa: difficult to be found, rare
ratiH (nominative): f. rest , repose ; pleasure , enjoyment , delight in , fondness for (loc.)
vyathante = 3rd person plural of vyath: to tremble , waver , go astray
hi: for
a-punar-bhaavaat (ablative): not again becoming
prapaataad = ablative of prapaata: a steep rock , cliff , precipice
iva: like, as if
baalishaaH = nominative, plural of baalisha: mf(A)n. young , childish , puerile , ignorant , simple , foolish; m. a fool , simpleton , blockhead
Saturday, June 13, 2009
SAUNDARANANDA 12.21: Anxiously Desiring Detachment
adya te sa-phalaM janma
laabho 'dya su-mahaaMs tava
yasya kaama-rasa-jNasya
naiShkramyaay' otsukaM manaH
12.21
Today your birth bears fruit;
Your gain today is great;
For though you know the taste of love,
Your mind is yearning for indifference.
COMMENT:
Quite unlike the dog which is right now pining and whimpering and straining at the leash to which he is tied in my neighbour’s front garden, in blind reaction to the scent of love he has sensed in the morning air through his moist nostrils, a human being can be inspired to aspire to the state of zero. Guided by a skilful trainer, service dogs, guard dogs, sniffer dogs and the like can achieve remarkable things, but their training is always driven by instinct, especially the instinctive desire to please their pack leader. Again, balanced though dogs tend to be, that balance is not a function of intelligence. After a while next door’s dog, as he did yesterday, will stretch out in the sun and fall asleep. Dogs, more quickly than humans tend to do, quickly and naturally return to balance. Dogs, however, do not consciously aspire to balance; they do not consciously aspire to that freedom of the neck which is not caring. The story of Handsome Nanda, in contrast, is the story of a human being who is consciously inspired by the Buddha to aspire toward the state of zero. And in telling Nanda’s story, Ashvaghosha’s conscious intention is to inspire us consciously to aspire in the same direction.
This all sounds very reasonable and conscious. At least it made sense to me as I thought it out. So I thought of translating the last line “Your mind aspires towards detachment.” Then a nagging doubt arose and I went back to the dictionary, which seems to confirm that the word utsuka, in the fourth line, includes a greater sense of negative emotion than does the word “aspire.” Utsuka carries a connotation of restlessness, disquiet, anxiety, unease. These words certainly describe the kind of vibes that my neighbour’s dog is emanating right now, really, unconsciously, instinctively; maybe they also describe Nanda’s state as he stands trembling before the Buddha, with tearful eyes and lowered head. So the use of the word utsuka in the fourth line requires us to dig deeper.
How come the Buddha is praising Nanda for being in an anxiously desirous state?
The anxiety associated with attachment to the gaining of an end is prone to be regarded as a bad thing. Isn’t that why as a translator I am liable to be drawn unconsciously, notwithstanding the dictionary definition, to a translation such as 'aspire toward,' that does not carry the negative connotation? A teaching that contradicts this unconscious tendency (which might be regarded as a variety of naive optimism) was expressed to me by a woman who had unshakeable confidence in the conscious means-whereby principle she taught. That teaching was: “Being wrong is the best friend you have got in this work.”
From the little experience I myself have got of teaching the means-whereby principle, it is true: a pupil who is openly and anxiously desirous of gaining some end is a pupil who is likely to be very receptive to being taught a reliable means-whereby for consciously gaining that end. Aqua-phobic swimmers who wish to lose their fear of the water might be a case in point.
Whether or not a dog has the Buddha-nature, I do not know, but not for the first time in my life a dog, which is always primarily interested in energy, has pointed me in the direction of what the Buddha’s teaching is fundamentally all about.
That the mind, whether of dogs or humans, strains painfully and energetically towards the end it desires, is neither good nor bad: it is just how the mind really is. Optimistically thinking, aspiring towards our natural state of balance ought not to be such a struggle. But in reality the journey Nanda is making is a struggle, always, for everybody.
In this verse, seeing that the goal Nanda’s human mind was straining for was not the positivity of love but rather the zero of indifference, the Buddha saw that as very good. And from here onwards, the Buddha proceeds to spell out for Nanda the means-whereby he may consciously gain that end which is indifference, detachment, the state of zero -- which is, in other words, to sit immovably in lotus with a truly free neck.
My mind thinks,
Quite unlike a dog’s.
But the mind of that whimpering dog,
Is just like mine, which strains.
EH Johnston:
To-day your present existence has become fruitful, to-day your profit is extreme, since, though you know the taste of love, your mind yearns for renunciation.
Linda Covill:
Today your birth bears fruit, today you profit greatly, in that your mind longs for withdrawal though you know the taste of passion
VOCABULARY:
adya: today
te (genitive): of you
sa-phalam (accusative): together with fruits , having or bearing fruit
janma = nominative singular of janman: birth
laabhaH = nominative singular of laabha: obtaining , getting , attaining , acquisition , gain , profit
adya: today
su-mahaan: great (in space , time , quantity or degree)
tava (genitive): of you
yasya (genitive of yat): of whom
kaama: love, sensual pleasure, longing
rasa: taste
jNasya = genitive of jNa: knowing
naiShkramyaaya = dative of naiShkramya: n. indifference (esp. to worldly pleasures) , resignation
utsuka: uneasy, anxious ; anxiously desirous, zealously active , striving for any object ; eager for, fond of, attached to ; sorrowing for
manaH: nominative/accusative of manas: mind
laabho 'dya su-mahaaMs tava
yasya kaama-rasa-jNasya
naiShkramyaay' otsukaM manaH
12.21
Today your birth bears fruit;
Your gain today is great;
For though you know the taste of love,
Your mind is yearning for indifference.
COMMENT:
Quite unlike the dog which is right now pining and whimpering and straining at the leash to which he is tied in my neighbour’s front garden, in blind reaction to the scent of love he has sensed in the morning air through his moist nostrils, a human being can be inspired to aspire to the state of zero. Guided by a skilful trainer, service dogs, guard dogs, sniffer dogs and the like can achieve remarkable things, but their training is always driven by instinct, especially the instinctive desire to please their pack leader. Again, balanced though dogs tend to be, that balance is not a function of intelligence. After a while next door’s dog, as he did yesterday, will stretch out in the sun and fall asleep. Dogs, more quickly than humans tend to do, quickly and naturally return to balance. Dogs, however, do not consciously aspire to balance; they do not consciously aspire to that freedom of the neck which is not caring. The story of Handsome Nanda, in contrast, is the story of a human being who is consciously inspired by the Buddha to aspire toward the state of zero. And in telling Nanda’s story, Ashvaghosha’s conscious intention is to inspire us consciously to aspire in the same direction.
This all sounds very reasonable and conscious. At least it made sense to me as I thought it out. So I thought of translating the last line “Your mind aspires towards detachment.” Then a nagging doubt arose and I went back to the dictionary, which seems to confirm that the word utsuka, in the fourth line, includes a greater sense of negative emotion than does the word “aspire.” Utsuka carries a connotation of restlessness, disquiet, anxiety, unease. These words certainly describe the kind of vibes that my neighbour’s dog is emanating right now, really, unconsciously, instinctively; maybe they also describe Nanda’s state as he stands trembling before the Buddha, with tearful eyes and lowered head. So the use of the word utsuka in the fourth line requires us to dig deeper.
How come the Buddha is praising Nanda for being in an anxiously desirous state?
The anxiety associated with attachment to the gaining of an end is prone to be regarded as a bad thing. Isn’t that why as a translator I am liable to be drawn unconsciously, notwithstanding the dictionary definition, to a translation such as 'aspire toward,' that does not carry the negative connotation? A teaching that contradicts this unconscious tendency (which might be regarded as a variety of naive optimism) was expressed to me by a woman who had unshakeable confidence in the conscious means-whereby principle she taught. That teaching was: “Being wrong is the best friend you have got in this work.”
From the little experience I myself have got of teaching the means-whereby principle, it is true: a pupil who is openly and anxiously desirous of gaining some end is a pupil who is likely to be very receptive to being taught a reliable means-whereby for consciously gaining that end. Aqua-phobic swimmers who wish to lose their fear of the water might be a case in point.
Whether or not a dog has the Buddha-nature, I do not know, but not for the first time in my life a dog, which is always primarily interested in energy, has pointed me in the direction of what the Buddha’s teaching is fundamentally all about.
That the mind, whether of dogs or humans, strains painfully and energetically towards the end it desires, is neither good nor bad: it is just how the mind really is. Optimistically thinking, aspiring towards our natural state of balance ought not to be such a struggle. But in reality the journey Nanda is making is a struggle, always, for everybody.
In this verse, seeing that the goal Nanda’s human mind was straining for was not the positivity of love but rather the zero of indifference, the Buddha saw that as very good. And from here onwards, the Buddha proceeds to spell out for Nanda the means-whereby he may consciously gain that end which is indifference, detachment, the state of zero -- which is, in other words, to sit immovably in lotus with a truly free neck.
My mind thinks,
Quite unlike a dog’s.
But the mind of that whimpering dog,
Is just like mine, which strains.
EH Johnston:
To-day your present existence has become fruitful, to-day your profit is extreme, since, though you know the taste of love, your mind yearns for renunciation.
Linda Covill:
Today your birth bears fruit, today you profit greatly, in that your mind longs for withdrawal though you know the taste of passion
VOCABULARY:
adya: today
te (genitive): of you
sa-phalam (accusative): together with fruits , having or bearing fruit
janma = nominative singular of janman: birth
laabhaH = nominative singular of laabha: obtaining , getting , attaining , acquisition , gain , profit
adya: today
su-mahaan: great (in space , time , quantity or degree)
tava (genitive): of you
yasya (genitive of yat): of whom
kaama: love, sensual pleasure, longing
rasa: taste
jNasya = genitive of jNa: knowing
naiShkramyaaya = dative of naiShkramya: n. indifference (esp. to worldly pleasures) , resignation
utsuka: uneasy, anxious ; anxiously desirous, zealously active , striving for any object ; eager for, fond of, attached to ; sorrowing for
manaH: nominative/accusative of manas: mind
Friday, June 12, 2009
SAUNDARANANDA 12.20: Vision that Can’t Be Clouded by Faulty Sensory Input
ciram unmaarga-vihRto
lolair indriya-vaajibhiH
avatiirNo 'si panthaanaM
diShTyaa dRShTy" aa-vimuuDhayaa
12.20
Long carried off course
By the restless horses of the senses,
You have now set foot on a path,
With clarity of vision, happily, that will not dim.
COMMENT:
In this verse, as I read it, the reactive stallions and errant mares of the senses, which pull us from one side to the other, are contrasted with the kind of detached, reasoned insight that is constant and irremovable, because it is cut off from the flux of sensory experience.
The late Marjory Barlow, niece of FM Alexander, memorably impressed on me that the four verbal directions "(1) to let the neck be free, (2) to let the head go forward and up, (3) to let the back lengthen and widen, (4) sending the knees forwards and away," are constant. They express the direction of muscular release, all of the time, whatever activity one is engaged in, while breathing out and equally while breathing in.
This means that, however faulty is the functioning of one's vestibular system on a particular day, however hopeless is one's own sense of direction, one thing remains the same. Just as I did yesterday, I wish today (1) to let the neck be free, (2) to let the head go forward and up, (3) to let the back lengthen and widen, while (4) sending the knees forwards and away. Even if I don't get what I wish for, even if the result is different, the central direction of the wish is always the same: it is the direction of growth. The four directions that Marjory taught in lesson one, and that I also teach in lesson one, are the same four directions that I return to after 15 years in the Alexander work, and they are the same four directions that Marjory returned to after 70 years in the Alexander work. The directions do not change because, the human condition being as it is, the causes of the noise that the directions are designed to prevent do not change. The human faults of the time of the seven ancient buddhas are the human faults of the Buddha’s time are the human faults of Ashvaghosha’s time are the human faults of Dogen’s time are the human faults of Alexander’s time are the human faults of our time.
So the directions are always the same; they do not change in any circumstance. After Marjory had impressed this point upon me, I remember feeling very happy. I left Marjory's teaching room with a spring in my step. It was not the spring one gets from a temporary sensory buzz, thanks to an Alexander teacher's magic hands. It was the kind of spring one gets on understanding something that one is never going to forget. It was indeed the gaining of a kind of foothold in this struggle towards... what? I do not know. In this struggle not to stop growing.
Nanda, in the same way, has seen something not only through his visual sense but with his mind’s eye. Optimism leads to disenchantment, just as surely as 2 + 2 = 4. The bliss of union with a celestial nymph always proves to be impermanent, just as surely as 2 + 2 = 4. The rules of the game of love never change. Again, falling in love turns the ordinary human world into an earthly paradise, but there is something unsatisfactory about paradise, even before it turns into its opposite, with the white of shock, denial, despair, and then the red of anger and the rest. The cycle of samsara is impermanence itself. There is no permanence to be found in it -- except that impermanence itself is a law, like the 2nd law of thermodynamics, or like 2 + 2 = 4, in which there is constancy. A person can always rely on that. And once a person has seen that clearly, no amount of confused input from a faulty visual system can dim that clarity of seeing.
To sit in the full lotus posture with head shaved and body wrapped in a robe is also a matter of 2 + 2 = 4, although there are many who do not like to think so. My teacher, Gudo Nishijima, was a teacher who, very unusually for a Japanese man of his generation, had highly developed powers of independent reasoning. But when I drew his attention to the wrongness of forcibly pulling in the chin in order to straighten the neck bones, he seemed to have too much invested emotionally in teaching the wrong thing that he could not recognize his mistake -- at least not in public. In Confucianist-influenced Japan it is rather scandalous to highlight the mistake of one’s benevolent teacher. But 2 + 2 = 4 in Japan just as 2 + 2 = 4 in England. If apologists for Japanese culture would have it any other way, they can stuff their cultural arguments up their jumper. What is supreme in the Buddha’s teaching is not anybody’s culture. What is supreme in the Buddha’s teaching is the truth of truly sitting upright.
The truth of sitting upright is a matter of 2 + 2 = 4, and a matter of much more than 2 + 2 = 4. It is a matter of not being able to do an undoing. It is a matter of up being up, not being down. However faulty my vestibular system may be on a particular day... and yesterday was a particularly bad day as my sleep (along with the sleep of my disgruntled French neighbours) was cut short by the howling through the night of my neighbour’s dog, whose keen sense of smell seems to have picked up, during our recent daily walks, the scent of a bitch on heat... however faulty my sense of up and down may be on a particular day, up is not down. Even if, with my “debauched kinesthesia” as FM put it, what I sense as up is actually down, the truth remains that up is not down. Up is always up. Up, happily, is always up.
EH Johnston:
What good fortune it is that you who have been carried away for so long down the wrong road by the restless horses of the senses have now entered the true path with unconfused gaze.
Linda Covill:
For a long time the frenzied horses of the senses have carried you the wrong way. How wonderful that with clear vision you have alighted on the right path!
VOCABULARY:
ciram: for a long time
unmaarga: taking a wrong way , going wrong or astray
vi-√hR: to carry away, remove
vihRtaH (nominative, singular): one who is carried away
lolaiH = instrumental, plural of lola: moving hither and thither , shaking , rolling , tossing , dangling , swinging , agitated , unsteady , restless
indriya: senses
vaajibhiH = instrumental, plural of vaajin: swift , spirited , impetuous , heroic , warlike RV. &c &c (with ratha m. a war-chariot); m. the steed of a war-chariot; m. a horse , stallion
avatiirNaH = nominative, singular of avatiirNa: mfn. alighted , descended
asi: you are
√panth: to go, move
panthaanam = accusative of panthan: path (??)
diShTyaa (instrumental of diShTi, good fortune): ‘by good fortune,’ used to express strong pleasure
dRShTyaa = instrumental of drShti: f. seeing , viewing , beholding (also with the mental eye) ; sight , the faculty of seeing ; the mind's eye , wisdom , intelligence
a: not
vimuuDhayaa = instrumental of vimUDhaa: (f) perplexed; foolish, stupid
lolair indriya-vaajibhiH
avatiirNo 'si panthaanaM
diShTyaa dRShTy" aa-vimuuDhayaa
12.20
Long carried off course
By the restless horses of the senses,
You have now set foot on a path,
With clarity of vision, happily, that will not dim.
COMMENT:
In this verse, as I read it, the reactive stallions and errant mares of the senses, which pull us from one side to the other, are contrasted with the kind of detached, reasoned insight that is constant and irremovable, because it is cut off from the flux of sensory experience.
The late Marjory Barlow, niece of FM Alexander, memorably impressed on me that the four verbal directions "(1) to let the neck be free, (2) to let the head go forward and up, (3) to let the back lengthen and widen, (4) sending the knees forwards and away," are constant. They express the direction of muscular release, all of the time, whatever activity one is engaged in, while breathing out and equally while breathing in.
This means that, however faulty is the functioning of one's vestibular system on a particular day, however hopeless is one's own sense of direction, one thing remains the same. Just as I did yesterday, I wish today (1) to let the neck be free, (2) to let the head go forward and up, (3) to let the back lengthen and widen, while (4) sending the knees forwards and away. Even if I don't get what I wish for, even if the result is different, the central direction of the wish is always the same: it is the direction of growth. The four directions that Marjory taught in lesson one, and that I also teach in lesson one, are the same four directions that I return to after 15 years in the Alexander work, and they are the same four directions that Marjory returned to after 70 years in the Alexander work. The directions do not change because, the human condition being as it is, the causes of the noise that the directions are designed to prevent do not change. The human faults of the time of the seven ancient buddhas are the human faults of the Buddha’s time are the human faults of Ashvaghosha’s time are the human faults of Dogen’s time are the human faults of Alexander’s time are the human faults of our time.
So the directions are always the same; they do not change in any circumstance. After Marjory had impressed this point upon me, I remember feeling very happy. I left Marjory's teaching room with a spring in my step. It was not the spring one gets from a temporary sensory buzz, thanks to an Alexander teacher's magic hands. It was the kind of spring one gets on understanding something that one is never going to forget. It was indeed the gaining of a kind of foothold in this struggle towards... what? I do not know. In this struggle not to stop growing.
Nanda, in the same way, has seen something not only through his visual sense but with his mind’s eye. Optimism leads to disenchantment, just as surely as 2 + 2 = 4. The bliss of union with a celestial nymph always proves to be impermanent, just as surely as 2 + 2 = 4. The rules of the game of love never change. Again, falling in love turns the ordinary human world into an earthly paradise, but there is something unsatisfactory about paradise, even before it turns into its opposite, with the white of shock, denial, despair, and then the red of anger and the rest. The cycle of samsara is impermanence itself. There is no permanence to be found in it -- except that impermanence itself is a law, like the 2nd law of thermodynamics, or like 2 + 2 = 4, in which there is constancy. A person can always rely on that. And once a person has seen that clearly, no amount of confused input from a faulty visual system can dim that clarity of seeing.
To sit in the full lotus posture with head shaved and body wrapped in a robe is also a matter of 2 + 2 = 4, although there are many who do not like to think so. My teacher, Gudo Nishijima, was a teacher who, very unusually for a Japanese man of his generation, had highly developed powers of independent reasoning. But when I drew his attention to the wrongness of forcibly pulling in the chin in order to straighten the neck bones, he seemed to have too much invested emotionally in teaching the wrong thing that he could not recognize his mistake -- at least not in public. In Confucianist-influenced Japan it is rather scandalous to highlight the mistake of one’s benevolent teacher. But 2 + 2 = 4 in Japan just as 2 + 2 = 4 in England. If apologists for Japanese culture would have it any other way, they can stuff their cultural arguments up their jumper. What is supreme in the Buddha’s teaching is not anybody’s culture. What is supreme in the Buddha’s teaching is the truth of truly sitting upright.
The truth of sitting upright is a matter of 2 + 2 = 4, and a matter of much more than 2 + 2 = 4. It is a matter of not being able to do an undoing. It is a matter of up being up, not being down. However faulty my vestibular system may be on a particular day... and yesterday was a particularly bad day as my sleep (along with the sleep of my disgruntled French neighbours) was cut short by the howling through the night of my neighbour’s dog, whose keen sense of smell seems to have picked up, during our recent daily walks, the scent of a bitch on heat... however faulty my sense of up and down may be on a particular day, up is not down. Even if, with my “debauched kinesthesia” as FM put it, what I sense as up is actually down, the truth remains that up is not down. Up is always up. Up, happily, is always up.
EH Johnston:
What good fortune it is that you who have been carried away for so long down the wrong road by the restless horses of the senses have now entered the true path with unconfused gaze.
Linda Covill:
For a long time the frenzied horses of the senses have carried you the wrong way. How wonderful that with clear vision you have alighted on the right path!
VOCABULARY:
ciram: for a long time
unmaarga: taking a wrong way , going wrong or astray
vi-√hR: to carry away, remove
vihRtaH (nominative, singular): one who is carried away
lolaiH = instrumental, plural of lola: moving hither and thither , shaking , rolling , tossing , dangling , swinging , agitated , unsteady , restless
indriya: senses
vaajibhiH = instrumental, plural of vaajin: swift , spirited , impetuous , heroic , warlike RV. &c &c (with ratha m. a war-chariot); m. the steed of a war-chariot; m. a horse , stallion
avatiirNaH = nominative, singular of avatiirNa: mfn. alighted , descended
asi: you are
√panth: to go, move
panthaanam = accusative of panthan: path (??)
diShTyaa (instrumental of diShTi, good fortune): ‘by good fortune,’ used to express strong pleasure
dRShTyaa = instrumental of drShti: f. seeing , viewing , beholding (also with the mental eye) ; sight , the faculty of seeing ; the mind's eye , wisdom , intelligence
a: not
vimuuDhayaa = instrumental of vimUDhaa: (f) perplexed; foolish, stupid
Thursday, June 11, 2009
SAUNDARANANDA 12.19: A Foothold On the Way to Spontaneity
aho pratyavamarsho 'yaM
shreyasas te purojavaH
araNyaaM mathyamaanaayaam
agner dhuuma iva' otthitaH
12.19
"Aha! This gaining of a foothold
Is the harbinger of a higher good in you,
As, when a firestick is rubbed,
Rising smoke is the harbinger of fire.
COMMENT:
The spontaneous exclamation expressed in Sanskrit as aho we might render into English as Ah! or Oh! or Aha! It is a sound that doesn't mean anything. At the same time, it means a lot.
The pratyavamarsha of the first line I have translated as "gaining of a foothold." I understand it to mean Nanda's gaining of a foothold in his struggle to consciously direct his own energy, autonomously, instead of allowing energy to leak out here and there as happens when we are a slave to emotional reaction. This gaining of a foothold, equally, might be called an insight or a true conception: as described in 12.8, 12.14, and 12.16, Nanda has become acutely aware of, and shocked by the changeability of, the cycle of unconscious reaction.
The pratyavamarsha of the first line of this verse is also the chapter title. EH Johnston notes:
It is hard to determine the exact meaning of pratyavamarsha as it does not apparently occur in any other Buddhist work, Sanskrit or Pali... The original meaning of mRsh with pratyava seems to be 'lay hold of,' which suggests that it means the first step in the path of enlightenment, consisting of laying hold of the Law by faith in the Buddha.
The dictionary gives primacy to the mental aspect of pratyavamarsha, i.e., making contact mentally, forming a mental conception. But the more concrete original meaning that Johnston indicates also appeals. If we go with the more concrete meaning, that the kind of hold intended might be a foothold fits with the title of chapter 14 aadi-prasthaanaH, which carries a connotation of walking; e.g., "The First Steps" or "Initial Marching Out," and with the meta-metaphor of truth of a path, the fourth noble truth.
There is evidence to support both "gaining a foothold" and "touching mentally" in the next verse, where the Buddha tells Nanda he has set foot on a true path, with the kind of insight that does not become confused.
For the moment, as a title of this chapter, I am leaning towards "Gaining a Foothold," because this wording suggests in particular Nanda's readiness to stand on his own two feet. Whereas Nanda has hitherto shown a dependent attitude, from here he is deemed ready to assume responsibility for working on himself -- like a patient who has become well enough to take care of himself without medical supervision, or like a child ready to ride a bicycle without the stabilizing hand of a parent.
In the metaphor of the firestick, it is not that fire is created by twirling the firestick. The 2nd law of thermodynamics describes the tendency that wood always has to combust spontaneously, unless prevented from doing so by activation energy barriers. What the twirling of the firestick does is break down the activation energy barriers so that combustion can begin, whereupon combustion will tend to continue as a spontaneous process.
This, as I see it, is why twirling of the firestick to start a fire is such an excellent and recurrent metaphor. The point is that we have to persist with consciously directed effort, in order to initiate a spontaneous process of energy flow. That is the central irony of sitting practice: the need to make a great and sustained conscious effort in order to initiate a process that we wish in the end simply to allow, as a spontaneous flow of energy.
Sitting with the body is the breaking down of mental barriers, and sitting with the mind is the breaking down physical barriers. As physical and mental activation energy barriers are thus broken down, sitting tends to assert itself, so that body and mind spontaneously drop away and our original features emerge.
I am afraid this attempt to express spontaneity, by the worst of listeners, is too long-winded and convoluted. The Best of Listeners put it much better in a word:
aho!
EH Johnston:
' Ah! This discernment arises as the harbinger of the highest good for you, as the smoke, rising when the stick is rubbed, is the harbinger of the fire.
Linda Covill:
"Oh! This comprehension is the precursor of Excellence arising in you, just as when a firestick is rotated, smoke arises as a precursor of fire.
VOCABULARY:
aho: Ah! (expressing praise)
mRsh: to touch, stroke, handle ; to touch mentally, consider, reflect, deliberate
pratyava-mRsh: to touch; to reflect, to meditate
pratyava-marshaH (nominative, singular): inner contemplation, profound meditation; counter conclusion ; recollection ; consciousness
ayam: this
shreyasaH = genitive of shreyas: most excellent, the best ; the better state ; good (as opposed to evil)
te (genitive): of you, belonging to you, inherent in you
purojavaH (nominative, singular): m. one who goes before
araNyaam = locative of araNi: f. firestick
mathya: to be rubbed out of, to be extracted from
mathyamaana (present participle): being extracted by rubbing
agneH = ablative/genitive of agni: fire
dhuuma: smoke
iva: like
utthita: risen or rising
shreyasas te purojavaH
araNyaaM mathyamaanaayaam
agner dhuuma iva' otthitaH
12.19
"Aha! This gaining of a foothold
Is the harbinger of a higher good in you,
As, when a firestick is rubbed,
Rising smoke is the harbinger of fire.
COMMENT:
The spontaneous exclamation expressed in Sanskrit as aho we might render into English as Ah! or Oh! or Aha! It is a sound that doesn't mean anything. At the same time, it means a lot.
The pratyavamarsha of the first line I have translated as "gaining of a foothold." I understand it to mean Nanda's gaining of a foothold in his struggle to consciously direct his own energy, autonomously, instead of allowing energy to leak out here and there as happens when we are a slave to emotional reaction. This gaining of a foothold, equally, might be called an insight or a true conception: as described in 12.8, 12.14, and 12.16, Nanda has become acutely aware of, and shocked by the changeability of, the cycle of unconscious reaction.
The pratyavamarsha of the first line of this verse is also the chapter title. EH Johnston notes:
It is hard to determine the exact meaning of pratyavamarsha as it does not apparently occur in any other Buddhist work, Sanskrit or Pali... The original meaning of mRsh with pratyava seems to be 'lay hold of,' which suggests that it means the first step in the path of enlightenment, consisting of laying hold of the Law by faith in the Buddha.
The dictionary gives primacy to the mental aspect of pratyavamarsha, i.e., making contact mentally, forming a mental conception. But the more concrete original meaning that Johnston indicates also appeals. If we go with the more concrete meaning, that the kind of hold intended might be a foothold fits with the title of chapter 14 aadi-prasthaanaH, which carries a connotation of walking; e.g., "The First Steps" or "Initial Marching Out," and with the meta-metaphor of truth of a path, the fourth noble truth.
There is evidence to support both "gaining a foothold" and "touching mentally" in the next verse, where the Buddha tells Nanda he has set foot on a true path, with the kind of insight that does not become confused.
For the moment, as a title of this chapter, I am leaning towards "Gaining a Foothold," because this wording suggests in particular Nanda's readiness to stand on his own two feet. Whereas Nanda has hitherto shown a dependent attitude, from here he is deemed ready to assume responsibility for working on himself -- like a patient who has become well enough to take care of himself without medical supervision, or like a child ready to ride a bicycle without the stabilizing hand of a parent.
In the metaphor of the firestick, it is not that fire is created by twirling the firestick. The 2nd law of thermodynamics describes the tendency that wood always has to combust spontaneously, unless prevented from doing so by activation energy barriers. What the twirling of the firestick does is break down the activation energy barriers so that combustion can begin, whereupon combustion will tend to continue as a spontaneous process.
This, as I see it, is why twirling of the firestick to start a fire is such an excellent and recurrent metaphor. The point is that we have to persist with consciously directed effort, in order to initiate a spontaneous process of energy flow. That is the central irony of sitting practice: the need to make a great and sustained conscious effort in order to initiate a process that we wish in the end simply to allow, as a spontaneous flow of energy.
Sitting with the body is the breaking down of mental barriers, and sitting with the mind is the breaking down physical barriers. As physical and mental activation energy barriers are thus broken down, sitting tends to assert itself, so that body and mind spontaneously drop away and our original features emerge.
I am afraid this attempt to express spontaneity, by the worst of listeners, is too long-winded and convoluted. The Best of Listeners put it much better in a word:
aho!
EH Johnston:
' Ah! This discernment arises as the harbinger of the highest good for you, as the smoke, rising when the stick is rubbed, is the harbinger of the fire.
Linda Covill:
"Oh! This comprehension is the precursor of Excellence arising in you, just as when a firestick is rotated, smoke arises as a precursor of fire.
VOCABULARY:
aho: Ah! (expressing praise)
mRsh: to touch, stroke, handle ; to touch mentally, consider, reflect, deliberate
pratyava-mRsh: to touch; to reflect, to meditate
pratyava-marshaH (nominative, singular): inner contemplation, profound meditation; counter conclusion ; recollection ; consciousness
ayam: this
shreyasaH = genitive of shreyas: most excellent, the best ; the better state ; good (as opposed to evil)
te (genitive): of you, belonging to you, inherent in you
purojavaH (nominative, singular): m. one who goes before
araNyaam = locative of araNi: f. firestick
mathya: to be rubbed out of, to be extracted from
mathyamaana (present participle): being extracted by rubbing
agneH = ablative/genitive of agni: fire
dhuuma: smoke
iva: like
utthita: risen or rising
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
SAUNDARANANDA 12.18: Ultimate Good Is Not Groped by Feeling
tatas tasy' aashayaM jNaatvaa
vipakShaan' indriyaaNi ca
shreyash c' aiv' aamukhii-bhuutaM
nijagaada TathaagataH
12.18
Then, knowing where he was coming from,
And that, though his senses were set against it,
Ultimate good was now emerging,
The realised one spoke:
COMMENT:
Apologies in advance that this comment will be too long, but the above verse counter-poses two elements about which much more could be written: indriyaaNi, the senses; and shreyas, Ultimate Good.
In seeking to understand this opposition, I am prejudiced by 27 years as a student and translator of Zen Master Dogen, by 15 years in Alexander work, and by 10 years in the work of primitive reflex inhibition, but from where I sit Ultimate Good can never be groped by the senses of balance, touch, hearing or sight.
In the autumn of 1984, with a head full of missionary zeal and with a hold-all full of copies of my teacher's book To Meet the Real Dragon, I set off from Tokyo to San Francisco. Staying there at the San Francisco Zen Centre I was struck during a one-day sitting retreat by the easy uprightness of a Danish practitioner. When I complimented him on his form in sitting, he simply said, "Ah, it is because I am a student of the Alexander Technique." It was another ten years before I got round to looking into the Alexander Technique myself. Shortly after that I ended up in Aylesbury at the training school run by late Ray Evans, who used to describe Alexander work as "vestibular re-education" and who emphasized the fundamental importance, in working towards understanding of the human condition, of primitive reflexes.
Following Ray's lead, after graduating from Ray's training school run, I trained at INPP (Institute of Neuro-Physiological Psychology), Chester under Peter Blythe and his wife Sally Goddard, in the diagnosis and remediation of aberrant primitive reflexes. A baby is born with very many of such primitive reflexes, the orderly emergence and inhibition of which helps the baby to survive and to develop. But in the course of my work over the past ten years, encouraged on since Ray's death by Ray's assistant Ron Colyer, guided by the ultra-practical Alexander teachers Marjory Barlow and Nelly Ben-Or, and motivated by my own wish for clarity and simplicity in working with the reflexes, my interest became more and more concentrated on just four vestibular reflexes. I see these reflexes as primary, and I see a direct correspondence between Alexander's four primary directions and these four reflexes.
So I think that Ultimate Good might be to sit shaven-headed in lotus while the body, wrapped in a Buddha-robe, liberates itself from disharmony between those four reflexes.
That might mean, in Master Dogen's words, to sit with the body, to sit with the mind, and to sit as body and mind dropping off.
Again, that might mean to sit in lotus allowing (1) the neck to be free, to allow (2) the head to go forward and up, to allow (3) the back to lengthen and widen, while allowing (4) the arms and legs to release out of the back.
Ultimate Good, then, from what I have experienced of what I believe it to be, is not something out there that comes into the range of our senses, whereupon we pursue it. It may rather be something that spontaneously emerges from within during those rare moments when we are able to get out of the way and allow it. FM Alexander put it more succinctly: "The right thing does itself."
Ultimate good does itself.
Our job is to allow it.
Then what does it mean to allow? I do not know. It does not mean to think about, to discuss endlessly, to intellectualise. But neither does it mean blindly to do, to pull the chin in, to push the knees down, to hyper-extend the back, and all that other nonsense which is pure doing based on feeling. To allow does not mean to feel. To feel, to rely on the senses, is to limit oneself to sitting with the body.
In general it is the job of the senses to feel something, as opposed to feeling nothing. In swaying left and right as Master Dogen instructs in his rules for sitting, for example, one has a fairly reliable sense that three or four inches left or right of the midline is to the left or to the right -- the vestibular system, with input from tactile senses (and visual senses too if the eyes are open), senses the imbalance. Such an imbalance, after all, might be dangerous in circumstances like walking a tightrope or riding a bike. To approach the midline, however, is to enter an area of uncertainty. The vestibular system seems better adapted to sensing something (an imbalance) as opposed to sensing nothing (the absence of imbalance).
This being so, insofar as Ultimate Good is a bit of nothing, a bit of freedom from the faults that cause suffering, a bit of absence of noise, and in the end a bit of body and mind dropping off, a bit of the right thing being allowed to do itself, then it may be not only Nanda's whose senses were set against it: it may be that everybody's senses are set against it.
Now the Knower of Ultimate Good, the Best of Listeners, is about to speak. That the Buddha was the best of listeners was not only a matter of his auditory sense: his listening was also a matter of what he intended to hear and, most importantly, what he was able to filter out. The Buddha's listening was a matter of how the whole of his ear processed sound. The whole of the ear means everything involved in inner and outer listening, right down to the auditory and vestibular nucleii in the brainstem, and on into the bones, and on into the internal organs through the circuitous route of the wandering vagabond which is the vagus nerve. When Buddha sits in what Paul Madaule calls a good listening posture, it may be that the whole body-mind is an ear -- an ear whose listening is body and mind dropping off.
Whatever understanding I have gleaned about what FM Alexander called "faulty sensory appreciation," and the need to transcend it, I have gleaned from the standpoint of a person with a listening problem struggling to get round that problem. I myself am terribly bothered by noise. Two or three years ago, as I sat here by the stream, trying not to listen to engine noise, and being mindful of the mirror principle, I seriously asked myself what the problem was. The conclusion I came to was that the external noise that bothers me so much is a mirror for internal noise which I tend unconsciously to suppress, as it arises from my faulty vestibular system. I think that conclusion was true, and the conclusion is supported by everything Ashvaghosha records about the primary importance of eradicating the faults.
A couple of years ago a so-called Zen Master, a professed Dharma-brother of mine in the lineage of Zen Master Dogen, despite never actually having met me, recommended that, as a pre-condition for joining an organisation to which he belongs, I should undergo a course of psychological treatment. Aside from the personal affront, the shocking thing about this was the lack of insight it revealed into the teaching of Dogen, Ashvaghosha, and all the other ancestors. What Dogen and Ashvaghosha are telling us is that the faults which are the cause of suffering are primarily rooted, not in psychology, but in neuro-physiology.
Does anybody out there understand what I am banging on about -- what I have been banging on so clumsily through all these hundreds of blog posts? Does anybody understand why this verse has stimulated such a long comment from me? What this verse is saying is that what is opposing the emergence in Nanda of Ultimate Good is, primarily, his senses. Senses means balance, touch, hearing, vision, taste and smell, but most of all it means balance, because the vestibular system is the integrator of all sensory input.
When people with superficial understanding of the human condition look at behaviour that they don't understand, they attribute the behaviour they don't understand to psychological causes. But if people's primary problem were psychological, then what would be the point of crossing the legs and endeavouring to direct oneself upward?
No, what leads me astray, primarily, is my faulty vestibular system. It has led me so far astray in my life I would like to crawl back into the womb and start all over again. Fortunately, to sit all wrapped up in the lotus posture with rain pattering down on the roof and a cow mooing intermittently in the distance, is not a bad substitute.
I am a congenitally bad listener, the worst of listeners. Being the worst of listeners, I have sought out and am seeking to clarify the teaching of the Best of Listeners.
Now the Best of Listeners is about to open his mouth and speak. Will he voice a sound? Or will sound voice itself?
EH Johnston:
Then the Tathagata, knowing his disposition and that, while his senses were still contrary, the highest good was now within his range, spoke thus:--
Linda Covill:
The realized one understood his disposition, and that though his senses were still opposed to it, Excellence was now within his sight, and he spoke:
VOCABULARY:
tataH: then
tasya (genitive): of him
aashayam (accusative): m. resting-place , bed ; seat , place ; an asylum , abode or retreat ; a receptacle ; any recipient ; thought , meaning , intention ; disposition of mind , mode of thinking
jNaatvaa = absolutive of jNaa: to know
vipakShaaNi = accusative plural of vipakSha: m. " being on a different side " , an opponent , adversary , enemy (mfn. " counteracting ")
indriyaaNi = accusative plural of indriya: n. bodily power , power of the senses
ca: and
shreyas: n. the better state , the better fortune or condition; m. good (as opp. to " evil ") , welfare , bliss , fortune , happiness ; m. the bliss of final emancipation
ca: and
eva: (emphatic) now
aamukha: commencement
aamukhii-bhuu: to become visible
bhuuta: being, become
nijagaada = perfect of ni-√gad: to recite , proclaim , announce , declare , tell , speak
tathaagataH (nominative singular): the Thus-Come, the realised one
vipakShaan' indriyaaNi ca
shreyash c' aiv' aamukhii-bhuutaM
nijagaada TathaagataH
12.18
Then, knowing where he was coming from,
And that, though his senses were set against it,
Ultimate good was now emerging,
The realised one spoke:
COMMENT:
Apologies in advance that this comment will be too long, but the above verse counter-poses two elements about which much more could be written: indriyaaNi, the senses; and shreyas, Ultimate Good.
In seeking to understand this opposition, I am prejudiced by 27 years as a student and translator of Zen Master Dogen, by 15 years in Alexander work, and by 10 years in the work of primitive reflex inhibition, but from where I sit Ultimate Good can never be groped by the senses of balance, touch, hearing or sight.
In the autumn of 1984, with a head full of missionary zeal and with a hold-all full of copies of my teacher's book To Meet the Real Dragon, I set off from Tokyo to San Francisco. Staying there at the San Francisco Zen Centre I was struck during a one-day sitting retreat by the easy uprightness of a Danish practitioner. When I complimented him on his form in sitting, he simply said, "Ah, it is because I am a student of the Alexander Technique." It was another ten years before I got round to looking into the Alexander Technique myself. Shortly after that I ended up in Aylesbury at the training school run by late Ray Evans, who used to describe Alexander work as "vestibular re-education" and who emphasized the fundamental importance, in working towards understanding of the human condition, of primitive reflexes.
Following Ray's lead, after graduating from Ray's training school run, I trained at INPP (Institute of Neuro-Physiological Psychology), Chester under Peter Blythe and his wife Sally Goddard, in the diagnosis and remediation of aberrant primitive reflexes. A baby is born with very many of such primitive reflexes, the orderly emergence and inhibition of which helps the baby to survive and to develop. But in the course of my work over the past ten years, encouraged on since Ray's death by Ray's assistant Ron Colyer, guided by the ultra-practical Alexander teachers Marjory Barlow and Nelly Ben-Or, and motivated by my own wish for clarity and simplicity in working with the reflexes, my interest became more and more concentrated on just four vestibular reflexes. I see these reflexes as primary, and I see a direct correspondence between Alexander's four primary directions and these four reflexes.
So I think that Ultimate Good might be to sit shaven-headed in lotus while the body, wrapped in a Buddha-robe, liberates itself from disharmony between those four reflexes.
That might mean, in Master Dogen's words, to sit with the body, to sit with the mind, and to sit as body and mind dropping off.
Again, that might mean to sit in lotus allowing (1) the neck to be free, to allow (2) the head to go forward and up, to allow (3) the back to lengthen and widen, while allowing (4) the arms and legs to release out of the back.
Ultimate Good, then, from what I have experienced of what I believe it to be, is not something out there that comes into the range of our senses, whereupon we pursue it. It may rather be something that spontaneously emerges from within during those rare moments when we are able to get out of the way and allow it. FM Alexander put it more succinctly: "The right thing does itself."
Ultimate good does itself.
Our job is to allow it.
Then what does it mean to allow? I do not know. It does not mean to think about, to discuss endlessly, to intellectualise. But neither does it mean blindly to do, to pull the chin in, to push the knees down, to hyper-extend the back, and all that other nonsense which is pure doing based on feeling. To allow does not mean to feel. To feel, to rely on the senses, is to limit oneself to sitting with the body.
In general it is the job of the senses to feel something, as opposed to feeling nothing. In swaying left and right as Master Dogen instructs in his rules for sitting, for example, one has a fairly reliable sense that three or four inches left or right of the midline is to the left or to the right -- the vestibular system, with input from tactile senses (and visual senses too if the eyes are open), senses the imbalance. Such an imbalance, after all, might be dangerous in circumstances like walking a tightrope or riding a bike. To approach the midline, however, is to enter an area of uncertainty. The vestibular system seems better adapted to sensing something (an imbalance) as opposed to sensing nothing (the absence of imbalance).
This being so, insofar as Ultimate Good is a bit of nothing, a bit of freedom from the faults that cause suffering, a bit of absence of noise, and in the end a bit of body and mind dropping off, a bit of the right thing being allowed to do itself, then it may be not only Nanda's whose senses were set against it: it may be that everybody's senses are set against it.
Now the Knower of Ultimate Good, the Best of Listeners, is about to speak. That the Buddha was the best of listeners was not only a matter of his auditory sense: his listening was also a matter of what he intended to hear and, most importantly, what he was able to filter out. The Buddha's listening was a matter of how the whole of his ear processed sound. The whole of the ear means everything involved in inner and outer listening, right down to the auditory and vestibular nucleii in the brainstem, and on into the bones, and on into the internal organs through the circuitous route of the wandering vagabond which is the vagus nerve. When Buddha sits in what Paul Madaule calls a good listening posture, it may be that the whole body-mind is an ear -- an ear whose listening is body and mind dropping off.
Whatever understanding I have gleaned about what FM Alexander called "faulty sensory appreciation," and the need to transcend it, I have gleaned from the standpoint of a person with a listening problem struggling to get round that problem. I myself am terribly bothered by noise. Two or three years ago, as I sat here by the stream, trying not to listen to engine noise, and being mindful of the mirror principle, I seriously asked myself what the problem was. The conclusion I came to was that the external noise that bothers me so much is a mirror for internal noise which I tend unconsciously to suppress, as it arises from my faulty vestibular system. I think that conclusion was true, and the conclusion is supported by everything Ashvaghosha records about the primary importance of eradicating the faults.
A couple of years ago a so-called Zen Master, a professed Dharma-brother of mine in the lineage of Zen Master Dogen, despite never actually having met me, recommended that, as a pre-condition for joining an organisation to which he belongs, I should undergo a course of psychological treatment. Aside from the personal affront, the shocking thing about this was the lack of insight it revealed into the teaching of Dogen, Ashvaghosha, and all the other ancestors. What Dogen and Ashvaghosha are telling us is that the faults which are the cause of suffering are primarily rooted, not in psychology, but in neuro-physiology.
Does anybody out there understand what I am banging on about -- what I have been banging on so clumsily through all these hundreds of blog posts? Does anybody understand why this verse has stimulated such a long comment from me? What this verse is saying is that what is opposing the emergence in Nanda of Ultimate Good is, primarily, his senses. Senses means balance, touch, hearing, vision, taste and smell, but most of all it means balance, because the vestibular system is the integrator of all sensory input.
When people with superficial understanding of the human condition look at behaviour that they don't understand, they attribute the behaviour they don't understand to psychological causes. But if people's primary problem were psychological, then what would be the point of crossing the legs and endeavouring to direct oneself upward?
No, what leads me astray, primarily, is my faulty vestibular system. It has led me so far astray in my life I would like to crawl back into the womb and start all over again. Fortunately, to sit all wrapped up in the lotus posture with rain pattering down on the roof and a cow mooing intermittently in the distance, is not a bad substitute.
I am a congenitally bad listener, the worst of listeners. Being the worst of listeners, I have sought out and am seeking to clarify the teaching of the Best of Listeners.
Now the Best of Listeners is about to open his mouth and speak. Will he voice a sound? Or will sound voice itself?
EH Johnston:
Then the Tathagata, knowing his disposition and that, while his senses were still contrary, the highest good was now within his range, spoke thus:--
Linda Covill:
The realized one understood his disposition, and that though his senses were still opposed to it, Excellence was now within his sight, and he spoke:
VOCABULARY:
tataH: then
tasya (genitive): of him
aashayam (accusative): m. resting-place , bed ; seat , place ; an asylum , abode or retreat ; a receptacle ; any recipient ; thought , meaning , intention ; disposition of mind , mode of thinking
jNaatvaa = absolutive of jNaa: to know
vipakShaaNi = accusative plural of vipakSha: m. " being on a different side " , an opponent , adversary , enemy (mfn. " counteracting ")
indriyaaNi = accusative plural of indriya: n. bodily power , power of the senses
ca: and
shreyas: n. the better state , the better fortune or condition; m. good (as opp. to " evil ") , welfare , bliss , fortune , happiness ; m. the bliss of final emancipation
ca: and
eva: (emphatic) now
aamukha: commencement
aamukhii-bhuu: to become visible
bhuuta: being, become
nijagaada = perfect of ni-√gad: to recite , proclaim , announce , declare , tell , speak
tathaagataH (nominative singular): the Thus-Come, the realised one
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