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Upajāti (Bālā)
ūror-yathaurvasya
pṛthoś-ca hastān-māndhātur-indra-pratimasya mūrdhnaḥ |
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kakṣīvataś-caiva
bhujāṁsa-deśāt-tathāvidhaṁ tasya babhūva janma || 1.10
1.10
Just
as Aurva was born from the thigh,
Pṛthu
from the hand,
Indra-equalling
Māndhātṛ from the head,
And
Kakṣīvat from the armpit:
Of
that same order was his birth.
COMMENT
As
is usually the case when Aśvaghoṣa alludes to Brahmanical legends,
on the surface he seems to affirm the
fantastic old fairy stories, or at least to tolerate them agnostically, but truly his words are intended to subvert
common-sense understanding of the old religious nonsense.
On
the surface, Aśvaghoṣa is accepting the fantasy of the old legends
and saying that the Buddha's birth, like the birth of Brahmanical
heroes, was an unnatural miracle of the sort in which religious people believe. But was it fuck an unnatural
miracle. Aśvaghoṣa is describing birth not as an unnatural
miracle but as a miracle of nature.
How could Aśvaghoṣa be saying
that the Buddha's birth was something unreal, using Brahmanical
legends as the standard? No,
his gold standard was the reality of the Buddha's birth, through the
real means of the whole of the Buddha's mother Māyā, as described in 1.9 –
by the real means of her side, her thighs, her hands, her head, and
her armpits, these elements having been sanctified, or perfected, or
made whole, by the manner of her action.
Below the surface, what Aśvaghoṣa is really doing is
describing the fact that no human birth is ever partial, just as no
human act is ever partial.
As
Sir Charles Sherrington (1857-1952,
Neurophysiologist,
Nobel Prize for Medicine 1932) wrote in praise
of FM Alexander:
"Mr.
Alexander has done a service to the subject [of the study of reflex
and voluntary movement] by insistently treating each act as involving
the whole integrated individual, the whole psychophysical man. To
take a step is an affair, not of this or that limb solely, but of the
total neuromuscular activity of the moment, not least of the head and
neck." (The
Endeavour of Jean Fernel [1946]).
The
truth might be that when a woman gives birth well, she uses her
whole self well. She uses her side well, and her thighs, and her arms
from her armpits to her fingertips, and above all she uses her head
and neck well. And this is a universal principle, equally applicable
to the imagined births of tiresome Brahmanical heroes and to the
truly miraculous births of ordinary human beings.
My
grandma used to have a stone bird-bath into which the words had been
carved “GOD IS IN THE GARDEN.” The bird-bath I believe passed to
my sister, and as far as I am concerned she can keep it. The truth is
that birds are in the garden. Trees are in the garden. Weeds are in
the garden. Life is in the garden. The real miracle which is the
birth of life is in the garden. And on a good day I am in the garden,
sitting in full lotus, letting the neck be free to let the head go
forward and up, to let the back lengthen and widen, so that the legs
are released out of the hips. On a good day I am content just to sit
in the garden allowing myself, in Dogen's words, to naturally become
all of one piece:
自
成
一片
God, originally,
does not come into it. But since translators like EH Johnston approached Aśvaghoṣa's teaching as if Aśvaghoṣa were out to propagate a religion, complete with belief in unnatural miracles, the non-issue of God needs to be addressed. Since people like my grandma needlessly let God into the garden, it might be necessary for me to kick the bugger out.
Irrational belief in
unnatural miracles informed Brahmanist thinking before the time of
the Buddha, and Aśvaghoṣa addressed these whacko beliefs in a manner suitable to his
age, in which it may have been wise to be circumspect, using irony
and indirectness to undermine Brahmanist thoughts.
Irrational
belief in God, unnatural miracles and the like still evidently
informs the thinking of many people of the present age. But things have progressed, at least in the parts of England and France
where I live, so that I am not endangering my life by asserting bluntly that
irrational belief in unnatural miracles is never the Buddha's
teaching at all, and that if you think that in a verse like today's verse
Aśvaghoṣa was demonstrating an agnostic attitude towards unnatural
miracles, then you haven't peeped Aśvaghoṣa even in a dream.
EB
Cowell's translation of the 4th
pāda was: “thus too was his birth (miraculous).”
EH Johnston,
similarly, asserted that in this section Aśvaghoṣa was explaining
why the Buddha's birth was miraculous.
Patrick Olivelle, as a step in the right direction in his translation per se, just translated the words and said nothing about miracles one way or the other. In his Introduction, however, PO writes: "Gods are a third level of authority within the Brahmanical tradition, and at every step of Siddhartha's life gods affirm his uniqueness and facilitate his path toward Awakening. Miracles abound at his birth.... Even more significant, however, is the implicit undercurrent of the entire text that compares the Buddha to significant Brahmanical figures of the past. Thus, his extraordinary birth is compared to that of other famous kings of the past who had unusual births [1.1o]."
Anyway, I would like to go further than agnosticism and nail my colours to the mast of a-theism -- which is not to say that I subscribe to the ism of athe-ism. I am not inclined to join Richard Dawkins' club and join him on a jolly jaunt into the countryside with other atheists. But I would like as far as possible to strip away any lingering belief in God, unnatural miracles and the like, which might continue to prevent Aśvaghoṣa's true message from emerging.
America is in danger of electing a Mormon as president. Why? Because of an attitude, enshrined in the American constitution, to respect other people's belief in their God. But speaking for myself, I don't respect anybody's belief in such things as unnatural miracles. If your belief in God causes you to believe in unnatural miracles, whereby cause and effect is defied by divine intervention, then I don't respect your belief. In my book you are just a religious nutter. I wouldn't vote for you any more than if your name was Tony Blair.
VOCABULARY
ūroḥ
(abl. sg. m.): from the thigh
yathā:
ind. just as
aurvasya
(gen. sg.): m. Aurva (in later mythology he is called aurva bhārgava
as son of cyavana and grandson of bhṛgu ; he is the subject of a
legend told in MBh. i , 6802 ; there it is said that the sons of
kṛtavīrya , wishing to destroy the descendants of bhṛgu in order
to recover the wealth left them by their father , slew even the
children in the womb ; one of the women of the family of bhṛgu , in
order to preserve her embryo , secreted it in her thigh [ūru] ,
whence the child at its birth was named aurva)
pṛthoḥ
(gen. sg.): m. Pṛthu, name of a son of veṇa.
ca:
and
hastād
(abl. sg. m.): from the hand
māndhātuḥ
(gen. sg.): m. Māndhātṛ. See SN11.43: Having
attained half of Indra's throne as a veritable earth-lord of the old
school, / Māndhātṛ when his time with the gods elapsed came back
down again. // 11.43 //
indra-pratimasya
(gen. sg. m.): Indra-equalling
pratimā:
f. the part of an elephant's head between the tusks; (ifc. like ,
similar , resembling , equal to)
mūrdhnaḥ
(abl. sg. m.): from the forehead , head in general , skull
kakṣīvataḥ
(gen. sg.): m. Kakṣīvat = Kākṣīvat, name of a renowned
ascetic rṣi. See SN1.1: A
sage named Kapila Gautama, an outstanding upholder of dharma, /
Became as consumed in ascetic practice as was Kākṣīvat Gautama.
// 1.1 //
kakṣa:
m. lurking place, hiding place; mf. the armpit (as the most concealed
part of the human body)
ca:
and
eva
(emphatic)
bhujāṁsa-deśāt
(abl. sg.): from the shoulder-place; from the armpit
bhuja:
arm
aṁsa:
the shoulder , shoulder-blade ; corner of a quadrangle
deśa:
m. spot, place, part
tathā-vidham:
ind. likewise, in like manner
vidhā:
f. division , part , portion ; form, manner, kind
tasya
(gen. sg. m.): of him
babhūva
= 3rd
pers. sg. perf. bhū: to be
janma
(nom. sg.): n. birth
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