Sensuality, Intimacy and Training

In Sanskrit literature the Chakraváka bird, the ruddy shelldrakehttp://orientalbirdimages.org/search.php?action=searchresult&Bird_ID=159, a species of waterbird signifies conjugal love. Here in the West, Swans would have the same symbolism. Swans on the River Main this morning

I have just started reading a book entitled: Handsome Nanda (Saundaranandakavya)http://www.claysanskritlibrary.org/Handsome-Nanda-v-43.html written by Ashvaghosha http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asvaghosa. Nanda is blessed with youth, money, being attractive and a voluptuous wife and is able to satisfy all of his sexual and emotional needs. He also has the Buddha as an older brother. The Buddha forces him to confront his enslavement to sensuality and physical intimacy. It is a story that I can understand very much and something that I deal with in my life everyday. How do I find the healthy Middle Path?



The long poem is split up into 18 cantos and I have read through the first six and have some things to share. I really liked this line from the 3 Canto which is "A Description of the Realized One":

"For just as the risen sun dispels darkness, so Gáutama with his sun-like appearance dispelled the dark ignorance of sensual people who followed a number of different paths." 3.16

In the 4th canto, the Buddha arrives at Nanda's house, but he and his wife are so enthralled in what they are doing and cause the servants to be busied with the preparation of everything needed for their pleasures that they do not even know the Buddha is there:

"While Nanda was thus enjoying himself in his palace, which was like a celestial palace, the Tathágata, the realized one, entered his home for his alms, since was the time for his alms-round. Looking downwardsand without asking for anything, he stood hin his brolther's house as he would in the house of any other person. But he went away without obtaining any alms because of the household's preoccupation." 4.24-26

How often am I so concerned with my own "pleasures" that I forget to turn towards the Eternal that is there and offering Itself?

Nanda is totally upset when he finds out that his older brother was there and then decides to hurry and find him. His wife does not want to let him go, being so attached to him:

"So she let him go from her arms which were scented with sandal from her breast, but she did not let him go in her mind." 4.37

How often do we think that we have let go and we haven't?

And then at the very end of the canto, you can feel the confusion within Nanda...I know the same confusion!:

"Kept back by his passion for love, and drawn forward by his attachment to dharma, he proceeded with difficulty, being turned about like a boat going upstream on a river."

In the 5th canto, the Buddha ordains Nanda and interestingly enough it is a bit against his will, but his older brother knows this is the only way to give him the medicine he needs.

"The greatly compassionate one saw his distress in an instant and pitied him. He laid his hand with its wheelmarked palm on Nanda's head and said:

'Dear friend, Death is present in every situation and strikes in many ways. Before that dread time arrives, make sure your mind is composed. Hold back your restless mind from the sense-pleasures common to all, which dreamlike and insubstantial. For sensual pleasures are no more satisfying for people than oblations are for a wind-blown fire.'" 5.22-23

It's not so much that these things are "bad", it is just are holding on to them that makes them consume us rather than seeking the Unborn, Undying. Stated again in another way:

"I see no feature of pleasure which would not change into something else and so bring sorrow. Therefore under no circumstances should you tolerate attachment, unless the grief at its passing is bearable." 5.44

The 5th canto ends movingly and beautifully and I wish I could read Sanskrt better, but the English translation is also good:

"And later, wearing a faded garment of ochre tree-bark and depressed as a newly-captured elephant, Nanda resembled the full moon moving into the dark half of the month, at the end of night,daubed with the light of the early morning sun." 5.53

The 6th canto, "The Wife's Lament" is very moving as we see how her "attached" thoughts roam about fearing that he has another woman or that he has stopped loving her since he did not return like he said. This is another side of sensuality and intimacy---jealousy and anger. But that's enough for today!