Friday, August 14, 2009

SAUNDARANANDA 13.39: Ignoble Unconsciousness

teShaaM hi satataM loke
viShayaan abhikaaNkShataam
saMvin n' aaiv' aasti kaarpaNyaac
chunaam aashaavataam iva

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

13.39
For in the constant hankering of those senses

After objects in the world,

There occurs out of the ignobleness
no more consciousness

Than there is in the hoping of hounds.


COMMENT:
In this verse, as I read it, dogs are not creatures of greed or voracious appetite; they are creatures of instinctive, unconscious reaction. And the sensual hankering that the Buddha is negating is not simply gross sensuality: what the Buddha is negating, as I hear him, is end-gaining in general, i.e., the desire to feel right in the gaining of any end. For the senses are not only the vehicles of sensual greed and sensual gratification; they are the only channel through which ordinary unconscious people go about trying to gain their ends in the world -- including ends like correct posture in Zazen, and putting the world to rights, and deciding what to believe in.

It will be seen how all-essential it is that the human sensorium should function as a reliable register in order to minimize the effect of sensory illusion in the forming and assessing of the validity of the beliefs upon which our judgement of reality depends. The nature of this functioning determines the nature of this registration, and this in turn determines the nature of the experience upon which belief is based, and is, therefore, the forerunner of all we finally accept in arriving at our judgement in the matter of reality. If the Leaders in the religious life of the past and the Prophets had given due recognition to this in assessing the nature and value of the experiences upon which they believed religious and other beliefs should be based, their followers would not have been so frequently led into error by mistaking illusion for reality. Instead, they might have been led to unknown experiences far beyond the present limit of human
conception of experience, as they passed from the instinctive to the conscious in changing and improving the use and functioning of the human self.

-- FM Alexander (from the preface to 1955 edition of Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual).

From the instinctive to the conscious: that is also what this verse is about. So the Buddha, as I hear him, is not primarily interested in this verse in negating sensual pleasure, as if it were an original sin; he is primarily interested in growth of consciousness.

My understanding is like this mainly because my late teacher Marjory Barlow also was primarily interested in growth of consciousness. Without Marjory's teaching, I would never have been able to understand this verse like this and to translate it -- for better or for worse -- like this.

Marjory said that she had been bullied when she was young. Having been bullied she saw to it that she inhibited any such tendency in herself. That was one shining example to me of how an individual can pass from the instinctive to the conscious.

My intention as a translator of the likes of Dogen and Ashvaghosha is basically to be as literal as possible. What I often noticed doing the Shobogenzo translation was that when I had deviated from a literal translation, it was because I hadn't grasped the true meaning of Master Dogen's original words. Only when the penny eventually dropped, was I then able to make a literal translation.

I think EHJ got into a bit of a mess translating this verse, and deviated from a literal translation, because he couldn't understand that the verse has to do with growth of consciousness. It is a pity that during the 1920s when he was doing his translating he didn't get the train down from Oxford to London and go and have some lessons with FM Alexander in what FM called Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual. Then I think he might have understood what the Buddha is saying in this verse.

Being a slave to the senses, the Buddha is saying here, is ignoble. Not originally sinful, but ignoble -- base, of a lower order. Being a slave to sensuality is lower down the food chain than, for example, playing cricket or learning how to swim without stress, and much lower down the food chain than doing Alexander work with a teacher who understands why FM called it "the most mental thing there is."

Not only this verse but the present series of verses, as I read it, relates to what FM Alexander called "passing from the instinctive/subconscious to the conscious plane of control." FM often referred to human beings who were still firmly stuck on the bottom rungs on the subconscious plane as "Lowly evolved swine."

I have never had a pig as a pet, but having grown up with a much-loved dog I am aware that a dog is capable of hope or expectation. That was evident from my dog's excited reaction to the stimulus of the word "walkies," or the sight of a bone. But that kind of hoping is an instinctive reaction. As the Dog Whisperer Cesar Milan points out, dogs react; they don't think. Thinking is the job of the human dog owner. The ability to think is of a higher order, related with what the Buddha calls shreya, a higher good, and with what FM Alexander called "Man's Supreme Inheritance."

My elder son, barring unforeseen mishap, will have a place confirmed next week to study Chemistry at Imperial College London. This morning after sitting at dawn, as I walked down the path where I have been planting lavender, I had a strong wish that my son and other young people like him might not only be excellent scientists but might also learn to live their lives consciously -- more consciously, at least, than I and my generation have done.

To quote FM once more, using the quotation that used to appear on the front of my Middle Way Re-education Centre web-page: "It is owing to this habit of rushing from one extreme to another -- a habit which, as I have pointed out, seems to go hand in hand with subconscious guidance and direction -- to this tendency, that is, to take the narrow and treacherous sidetracks instead of the great, broad, midway path, that our plan of civilization has proved a comparative failure."

An unconscious person tends to react to the wrongness he meets in the world by reacting unconsciously, on the basis of feeling -- with "petulance" as an old friend of mine recently put it.

Whereas a more conscious person tends to respond consciously, on the basis of reason. And therein lies the struggle, starting afresh from here.

EH Johnston:
For like hungry dogs in their greed they can never have enough and strain after their objects in the world.

Linda Covill:
For there is no fulfillment for those who constantly hanker for sensory experience in the world, like dogs in their hunger, voracious for more.


VOCABULARY:
teShaam (genitive plural): of those [senses]; for those [people]
hi: for; indeed, surely
satatam: ind. constantly , always , ever
loke = locative of loka: the world, the human world, ordinary life , worldly affairs

viShayaan (accusative, plural): objects of the senses
abhikaaNkShataam = genitive, plural of present participle of abhikaaNkSh: to long for, desire; strive

saMvit = nom. sg. of saMvid: f. consciousness ; perception , feeling , sense ; a mutual understanding , agreement ; satisfying (= toShaNa: n. the act of satisfying or appeasing)
na: not
eva: (emphatic)
asti = 3rd pers. pl. of as: to be, exist, happen, occur
kaarpaNyaat = ablative of kaarpaNya: n. (from kRrpaNa) poverty , pitiful circumstance, poorness of spirit , weakness, parsimony , niggardliness; compassion, pity;
kRpaNa: pitiable, miserable, wretched; low, vile

shunaam = genitive, plural of shunii: m. a dog, hound
aashaa: f. wish , desire , hope , expectation
aashaavataam = genitive, plural of aashaavat: mfn. hoping , having hope , trusting
iva: like

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