E. C. Dimock, Jr., on Vaishnava poetry:
Vaishnava (Bengali) poetry originated in the Vaishnava bhakti sects of the 16th and 17th centuries. For the most part they are love poems, of the love between the god Krishna and Radha,49 most beautiful of the gopis, sung in kirtan (“praise”) gatherings with drum and cymbals. But some are hymns to Chaitanya, a 15th-century Bengali Vaishnava saint considered to be an incarnation of Krishna. Krishna has many aspects, but for the Vaishnavas, “Krishna was the lover and beloved, whose foremost characteristic is the giving and receiving ofjoy, who is approachable only by bhakti, by devotion and selfless dedication.”
The sardaya, “the man of sensibility,” who is aware of certain associations in Bengali, can appreciate in Vaishnava lyrics their interplay of the erotic and the mystical. The mood of the poems is called madhurya-bhava, a mood of identification in which poet or reader enters into the love-longing of Radha or another of the gopis. One of the formalities is the bhanito, or signature line, usually at the end of the poem, in which the poet identifies himself by name.
Here are some examples I like from the In Praise of Krishna anthology. The translations are by Professor Dimock in collaboration with the poet Denise Levertov.50
I would set fire to my house
for him. I would bear
The scorn of the world.
He thinks his sorrow is joy
When I weep, he weeps.
When the sound of your flute reaches my ears
it compels me to leave my home, my friends,
it draws me into the dark towards you.
I no longer count the pain of coming here
Says Govinda-dasa (Bhanita)
His life cuts into my life
as the stain of the moon’s rabbit
engraves the moon.
Others have many loves, I have
Only you, dearer to me than life.
You are the kohl on my eyes, the ornaments
on my body,
you, dark moon.
As wing to bird,
water to fish,
life to the living—
so you tome.
But tell me
Madhava, beloved,
who are you?
Who are you really?
Vidyapati says, they are one another.
Cruel Kama pierces me with his arrows;
the lightning flashes, the peacocks dance,
frogs and waterbirds, drunk with delight,
call incessantly-and my heart is heavy.
Darkness on earth,
the sky intermittently lit with a sullen glare…
Vidyapati says,
How will you pass this night without your lord?
Sankaracharya on brahman, the real samadhi, etc. (from The Crest-Jewel of Discrimination);
“The knowledge that we are Brahman is like a fire which altogether consumes the thick forest of ignorance. When a man has realized his oneness with Brahman, how can he harbor any seed of death and rebirth?…
“Thus the wise man discriminates between the real and the unreal. His unsealed vision perceives the Real. He knows his own Atman to be pure indivisible consciousness. He is set free from ignorance, misery and the power of distraction. He enters directly into peace….
“Those who echo borrowed teachings are not free from the world. But those who have attained samadhi by emerging the external universe, the sense-organs, the mind and the ego in the pure consciousness of the Atman—they alone are free from the world, with its bonds and snares….
“If a man loves Brahman with an exclusive and steadfast devotion, he becomes Brahman. By thinking of nothing but the wasp, the cockroach is changed into a wasp.”
(Sankaracharya, pp. 105–8)
November 6, 1968. Second audience with the Dalai Lama
We drove up earlier, at 8:30, a bright, clear morning. More people and more trucks on the road: army trucks roaring around the corners, ambling buffaloes, students on their way to school, and the Jubilee Bus Company’s silver dragons. At the entry to the Dalai Lama’s residence there were pilgrims, maybe sadhakas, with marigolds on their hats or in their hair.
Most of the audience was taken up with a discussion of epistemology, then of samadhi. In other words, “the mind.” A lot of it, at first, was rather scholastic, starting with sunyata and the empirical existence of things known—the practical empirical existence of things grounded in sunyata—enhanced rather than lessened in a way. I tried to bring in something about sila, freedom, grace, gift, but Tenzin Geshe had some difficulty translating what I meant. Then we discussed various theories of knowledge, Tibetan and Western-Thomist. There is a controversy among Tibetans as to whether in order to know something one must know the word for it as well [as] apprehend the concept.
We got back to the question of meditation and samadhi. I said it was important for monks in the world to be living examples of the freedom and transformation of consciousness which meditation can give. The Dalai Lama then talked about samadhi in the sense of controlled concentration.
He demonstrated the sitting position for meditation which he said was essential. In the Tibetan meditation posture the right hand (discipline) is above the left (wisdom). In Zen it is the other way round. Then we got on to “concentrating on the mind.” Other objects of concentration may be an object, an image, a name. But how does one concentrate on the mind itself? There is division: the I who concentrates…the mind as object of concentration…observing the concentration…all three one mind. He was very existential, I think, about the mind as “what is concentrated on.”
It was a very lively conversation and I think we all enjoyed it. He certainly seemed to. I like the solidity of the Dalai Lama’s ideas. He is a very consecutive thinker and moves from step to step. His ideas of the interior life are built on very solid foundations and on a real awareness of practical problems. He insists on detachment, on an “unworldly life,” yet sees it as away to complete understanding of, and participation in, the problems of life and the world. But renunciation and detachment must come first. Evidently he misses the full monastic life and wishes he had more time to meditate and study himself. At the end he invited us back again Friday to talk about Western monasticism. “And meanwhile think more about the mind,” he said as we left him.
T. R. V. Murti on Tantra:
“Tantra is the unique combination of mantra, ritual, worship and yoga on an absolutistic basis. It is both philosophy and religion, and aims at the transmutation of human personality, by Tantric practices suited to the spiritual temperament and needs of the individual, into the absolute——It is sunyata that provided the metaphysical basis for the rise ofTantra. With its phenomenalising aspect, karuna (corresponding to the Hindu concept of sat), the formless absolute (sunya) manifests itself as the concrete world. But the forms neither exhaust nor do they bring down the absolute. It is through these forms again that man ascends and finds his consummation with the universal principle.”
Murti, p. 109)
With a clear and sensible exposition like the above I am left musing on St. Irenaeus, St. Gregory of Nyssa, the catechesis of St. Cyril of Jerusalem, early Christian liturgy, baptism, and Eucharist as initiation into the Pascha Christi [the Passover of Christ]. And, of course, the influence of the mystery religions is important here.
For Marco Pallis, the Buddha icon “touching the earth” means Buddha’s reply to Mara,51 who disputes his right to the “throne” of enlightenment. Sitting on the earth under the bodhi tree, Mara asserts that the earth is “his,” as does Satan in the temptation of Christ. Buddha “touched the Earth, mother of all creatures, calling on her to witness that the throne was his by right and the Earth testified that this was so.”
Imagine [the Buddha seated on] a lotus on the water—“existence with its teeming possibilities.” (Cf. the baptism of Christ in the liturgy of January 13.) Buddha overcomes samsara,” not by mere denial but by showing forth its true nature.” The Buddha’s right hand points downw
ard to touch the earth; the other hand supports a begging bowl—symbolizing acceptance of the gift—grace. Pallis says, “In the two gestures displayed by the Buddha-image the whole programme of man’s spiritual exigencies is summed up.” An active attitude toward the world and a. passive attitude toward heaven. The ignorant man does the opposite: he passively accepts the world and resists grace, gift, and heaven.52
Marco Pallis on grace in Buddhism:
“The word ‘grace’ corresponds to a whole dimension of spiritual experience; it is unthinkable that this should be absent from one of the great religions of the world.
“The function of grace…to condition man’s homecoming to the center itself…which provides the incentive to start on the Way and the energy to face and overcome its many and various obstacles. Likewise grace is the welcoming hand into the center when man finds himself at long last on the brink of the great divide where all familiar human landmarks have disappeared.”
(Pallis, p. 5)
Murti on Madhyamika:
Madhyamika does not oppose one thesis with another. It seeks the flaw both in thesis and in antithesis. It investigates the beginningless illusion that holds “views” to be true in so far as they appeal to us and when they appeal to us we argue that they are not “views” but absolute truth. All views are rejected for this reason. “The Madhyamika dialectic, unlike the Hegelian, is purely analytic in character. Criticism is Sunyata—the utter negation of thought as revelatory of the real.”
“The death of thought is the birth of Prajna, knowledge devoid of distinction,” i.e., intuition of the unconditioned. Absolute reality is not set over against empirical reality. The empirical, liberated from conventional thought forms, is identical with the absolute. “Transcendent to thought, the absolute is thoroughly immanent in experience.” This is Madhyamika.
Madhyamika is critical of thought, open to experience. It accepts the phenomenalization of the absolute and knows this as twofold.
1) Avidya: through ignorance and defilements.
2) Prajna: “the free conscious assumption of phenomenal forms activated by prajna and karuna.”
“The former is the unconscious activity of the ignorant, and the latter is that of the Enlightened Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.”
Hence, not escape from the world into idealism, but the transformation of consciousness by a detached and compassionate acceptance of the empirical world in its interrelatedness. To be part of this interrelatedness.
(Murti, pp. 140–43)
After reading Murti on Madhyamika, a reflection on the unconscious content and inner contradiction of my own drama. There I was riding through Lower Dharamsala, up the mountain, through McLeod Ganj, in the Dalai Lama’s jeep, wearing a snow-white Cistercian robe and black scapular. Smiles of all the Tibetans recognizing the jeep. Namaste gestures (palms raised together before the nose), stares of Indians. Am I part of it? Trying to fit into an interrelation, but on my own terms? Trying to find a dogmatic solution to this contradiction? Learning to accept the contradiction? One must, provisionally at least, experience all roles as slightly strange, ridiculous, contrived. Wearing my monastic habit because Marco Pallis strongly urged me to—and it is right, I guess, thoroughly expected. Yet recognizing that it is at odds with my own policy of not appearing as a monk, a priest, a cleric, in “the world.” The role of “tourist” is less offensive. However, I have the feeling that everybody here knows all about everything and that as an “American lama” I am a joyful and acceptable portent to all the Tibetans. Smiles everywhere. Every Tibetan lights up, even when I am in no jeep, no habit, and only in corduroy pants and turtleneck jersey.
A drum in the village, with an erratic beat; and before, shrill, enthusiastic brass getting nowhere. Cries of children nearer the house. Light of setting sun on the brown mountainside. A long, quiet meditation.
Sankaracharya on the atman, brahman, and maya (The Crest-Jewel of Discrimination):
“Hold fast to the truth that you are the Atman. Give up identifying yourself with the ego, or any of the coverings. Remain completely indifferent to them, as though they were broken jars of clay….
“This entire universe of which we speak and think is nothing but Brahman. Brahman dwells beyond the range of Maya. There is nothing else. Are jars, pots and vessels distinct from the clay of which they are made? Man drinks the wine of Maya, becomes deluded and begins to see things as separate from each other, so that he talks of ‘you’ and ‘I.’”
(Sankaracharya, pp. 112–14)
November 7, 1968
The contemplative life must provide an area, a space of liberty, of silence, in which possibilities are allowed to surface and new choices—beyond routine choice—become manifest. It should create a new experience of time, not as stopgap, stillness, but as “temps vierge”53—not a blank to be filled or an untouched space to be conquered and violated, but a space which can enjoy its own potentialities and hopes—and its own presence to itself. One’s own time. But not dominated by one’s own ego and its demands. Hence open to others—compassionate time, rooted in the sense of common illusion and in criticism of it.
Marcuse has shown how mass culture tends to be anticulture—to stifle creative work by the sheer volume of what is “produced,” or reproduced. In which case, poetry, for example, must start with an awareness of its contradiction and use it—as antipoetry—which freely draws on the material of superabundant nonsense at its disposal. One no longer has to parody, it is enough to quote—and feed back quotations into the mass consumption of pseudoculture.
The static created by the feedback of arguments or of cultural declarations—or of “art” into their own system—is enough to show the inner contradictions of the system. So Madhyamika shows the opponent the absurdity of his position “on principles and arguments accepted by him.” However, when his supposed values are returned to him in irony, as static, he will not accept the implications. That is his problem.
Madhyamika does not propound “another truth.” It is content to reduce “the opponent’s position to absurdity on principles and consequences which the opponent himself would accept.” If he does not in fact accept them in this form the logic of his position demands their acceptance. But then, argument is at an end. The purpose of Madhyamika is not to convince, but to explode the argument itself. Is this sadism? No, it is compassion! It exorcises the devil of dogmatism.
(Murti, pp. 145–46)
Quoting from the Kasyapaparivarta, Murti points out that “Sunyata is the antidote for all dogmatic views, but him I call the incurable who takes sunyata itself as a theory.”
(Murti, p. 164)
I asked Sonam Kazi about Marxism and monasticism, in view of my Bangkok talk. He said that as long as one is not attached to wealth and power, Communism can do him no harm. Sonam Kazi has often been the official interpreter in important meetings for the Dalai Lama, for instance at a dinner with Nehru and Chou En-lai. He probably knows as much as anyone person about the whole Tibetan question, and he is by no means a reactionary about it. He has a definitely broad view, realizes to what extent the Tibetan landlords and abbots were wrong or shortsighted, and discounts stories about the Chinese poisoning lamas at banquets and so on. He was in Tibet in 1957 and spoke to various abbots of the big monasteries, asking what they expected to do. They had no idea, although the Chinese Communists were by that time right on their doorstep. The monasteries were too big and too rich. And too many monks who did not belong there were intent on holding onto their property until it was taken from them by force. The 13th Dalai Lama had foreseen this many years before and warned them, but his warning was not understood.
I had a fine visit with Chobgye Thicchen Rinpoche, a lama, mystic, and poet of the Sakyapa school, one of the best so far. Sonam says Chobgye Thicchen is very advanced in Tantrism and a great mystic. He even knows how to impart the technique of severing one’s soul from the body. He taught this to another lama who was later captured by Communists. The lama, when he was being led of
f to prison camp, simply severed soul from body—pfft!—and that was the end of it. Liberation!
We talked first about samadhi, beginning with concentration on an object, then going beyond that to meditation without object and without concept. I asked a lot of questions about bodhicitta, Maitreya54 and karuna. Bodhicitta, Thicchen said, is the most fundamental of these three concepts, which all center on love and compassion. He spoke of three kinds of bodhicitta: (I) “kingly”—in which one seeks spiritual power to save oneself and then save others; (2) “that of boannan”-in which one ferries oneself together with others to salvation; (3) “that of shepherd”—in which one goes behind all the others and enters salvation last—and this is the most perfect.
Chobgye Thicchen quoted something from the founder of the Sakyapa school that went more or less like this:
If you are attached to worldly things, you are not a religious man.
The Other Side of the Mountain Page 31