Sunday, July 12, 2009

SAUNDARANANDA 13.6: Untaintedness of the Sage

tadval loke munir jaato
lokasy' aanugrahaM caran
kRtitvaan nirmalatvaac ca
loka-dharmair na lipyate

= = = = - = = =
= = = = - = - -
- = = = - = = -
= - = = - = - =

13.6
So the sage, born in the world,

And acting for the benefit of the world,

Because of complete and stainless integrity,

Is not tainted by worldly things.


COMMENT:
Here in south-east England, men of the world like to fly light aircraft around for fun, when the weather permits. They tend to avoid built-up areas, opting to skirt around a town like Aylesbury and fly instead over the surrounding villages, where yours truly is vainly seeking peace and quiet.

The tendency of gold not to be tarnished, and the tendency of lotus leaves not to be sullied by the water of a muddy pond, are inherent in the chemistry of gold and in the biology of the lotus, and gold and lotus never go against their inherent nature.

When we observe the world of men, however, in self and in others there is often a tendency for a person to be tainted by his emotional reactions to worldly things.

To witness the birth of a healthy baby makes us wonder how nature managed to produce such flawless perfection. But as a human being grows up and makes his way in the world, the choices we make and the education we receive, seem too often to cause us to lose the quality of child mind. Some of us, sensing this loss, look for ways to let our original child mind shine through again. We take up some form of non-worldly practice of the backward step, like playing the Japanese bamboo flute, not to become anything, but for the sheer enjoyment of the beauty of the sound; or like just sitting.

Still, true learning of the backward step, at least as I struggle with it, is not such an easy matter. When what I perceive to be a worldly intrusion is buzzing overhead, my practice is tainted by an emotional reaction. This reaction has a psychological aspect but more fundamentally, as I have come to understand this reaction, it is a symptom of a lack of inhibitory circuits at a deep level of functioning of the inner ear.

Now I am discussing what I understand to be the root cause of my own tainted reactions to worldly things, but what this verse is describing is the cause of the Buddha's not being tainted by emotional reaction to worldly things.

The cause of the sage Gautama not being tainted, Ashvaghosha tells us here, by his use of the ablative case to indicate a causal relation, was the sage's kRtitva and nirmalatva. So understanding of the verse seems to me to hinge on understanding of these two words.

At time of writing, I am not sure how to understand these two words. Are they expressing a momentary state of balance in action, which allows a person to be there in a moment of listening to a new-born baby's first cry, or a moment of looking at a potato flower in bloom, or a moment of lopping off a thick branch with one well-aimed swing of a sharp axe? Or are they are expressing untaintedness as an irreversible state like a cracked mirror or a fallen leaf?

For the present, I have translated kRtitva as "perfected integrity" without knowing what "perfected integrity" really means -- which may be why the buzz of the aircraft continues to bother me.

In the process of translating Shobogenzo, I was bothered by the same sense of lack of integrity, for example in translating words like anuttara-samyak-saMbodhi whose meaning I had not experienced for myself. In that situation, I thought that I was lending the translation authenticity and integrity by deferring to a senior "co-translator" whose integrity I saw, with a certain degree of optimism, as beyond question. Gudo Nishijima claimed in his own words to be "strong to noise," and he truly was strong to noise. But him being strong to noise was of no use to me who was and is weak to noise. There is no integrity in a student who is weak to noise imitating a teacher who is strong to noise. My optimistic attempt to outsource integrity to another is one mistake I will never make again, one mirror that was well and truly cracked.


EH Johnston:
So the Sage, though born in the world and acting for its benefit, is not stained by the conditions of the world because of His purity and stainlessness.

Linda Covill:
likewise the sage is born in the world and operates as a favour to the world, but because of his perfectedness and spotlessness he is not soiled by any worldly thing.


VOCABULARY:
tadvat (correlative of yathaa): so, also, likewise
loke (locative): in the world
muniH (nominative): sage
jaataH (nominative): born

lokasya (genitive): of the world
anugraham = accusative of anugraha: m. favour , kindness , showing favour , conferring benefits , promoting or furthering a good object
caran nominative singular m. of present participle of car: to undertake , practise , do or act, effect

kRtin: mfn. one who acts , active ; expert , clever , skilful , knowing , learned
kRti: f. the act of doing , making , performing , manufacturing , composing ; action , activity ; creation , work
-tvaM: (abstract noun suffix) the state of being...
kRtitvaat = ablative of kRtitva: n. the state of one who has attained any object
nirmalatvaat = ablative of nirmalatva: n. stainlessness , cleanness , purity
ca: and

loka: world
dharmair (instrumental, plural of dharma): things, practices
na: not
lipyate: is tainted

No comments: