Bodhisattvacharyavatara: Chapter VII, Joyous Effort – verse 8; reflectionary

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arm in arm, requires chewing

Bodhisattvacharyavatara by Acharya Śāntideva

Chapter VII– verse 8

Transglomeration: “B-but, this hasn’t been done … this is only just started … this is only half-finished; and death … all of a sudden at my door; n-ngha, this is it, I’m finished!”

~~~ “BCA” ~~~

V. 7 death will pounce suddenly …
↑ Stitch ↓
V. 8 … right in the middle of my trying to do all the things of my life – never at the right time

Summary: embroiled in too much doing (just the ordinary doing of life), too many projects, plans and desires, death will suddenly happen; complete despair, only then, at the point of dying, will we realise the value of the PHR; too late

Reflection: the exclamation ‘alas, I am lost/undone!’ has, buried within it, that all those projects mentioned in the first part of the verse were not just a list of any old jobs on a list on the side in my kitchen, these were projects with which I was building my world and building my place within it, as I have been doing all of my volitional life, the things through which I defined myself, the things I wanted to see established in the world to make sense of it all; this is why I am lost, not because I didn’t get to tick them off, but because I never got the chance to yet further prove what I think I am, I am undone … literally; and this whole verse is a gaggling-stammer-filled expostulation: arrival of death (tadaa!) “ngaah! b-but, haven’t f-finished-started-hlf-dn, wait, needto, `portant, I…”; also, a nice twistofthedagger in the verse: the first part panicking about all the things not done (not put together/compounded/conditioned) and the end realising that “I” … (to whatever extent I had hubris-dly manufactured both it and my world) am un-done, unravelled

Determination: quick, before it’s too late, get going

Bodhisattvacharyavatara: Chapter VII, Joyous Effort – verse 7; reflectionary

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arm in arm, requires chewing

Bodhisattvacharyavatara by Acharya Śāntideva

Chapter VII– verse 7

Transglomeration: There is time before death will have gathered all its conditions and suddenly arrive for me; it will be too late to do anything then, like giving up my lack of effort.   Between now and then I should be gathering my own stores (of merit and wisdom).

~~~ “BCA” ~~~

V. 6 while death watches me, has my whole life covered …
↑ Stitch ↓
V. 7 … and will pounce suddenly, too late to practise then, do it now!

Reflection: we need to act (virtuously – accumulating wisdom and virtue)

(Realisation:) now, while we have the chance/time (Holmes, ‘right now get rid of time-wasting’), not when death is actually happening (Wallace, ‘with its implements prepared’ – presumably the reference to ‘gathering provisions/necessities’ refers to things such as illness, injury, aging); one will naturally abandon one’s laziness when death is leaning over you, but by then it is too late; as Batchelor brings out, this verse is in reply to the prevaricating of the lazy mind that has been forced to accept that death is inevitable but that it’ll do something about it (making use of the PHR) later; the Wallaces’ translations of Sanskrit and Tibetan shows that the emphasis on gathering virtue now rather than wait for deathbed-regret, is a Tibetan addition/emphasis (… although I’m not sure that closer reading of either the Sanskrit or Tibetan maintains this distinction incontrovertibly …)

Parallel/Echo: death gathering the conditions for our death // we should be gathering the accumulations of merit and wisdom the while

Verse: the whole verse seems to have the flavour of ‘if you wait … then it will be too late’, but I am not skilled-enough at reading the Sanskrit to see if that is how it is really meant; the Tibetan seems to leave out death’s ‘preparations’ emphasising, rather, it’s sudden arrival

Bodhisattvacharyavatara: Chapter VII, Joyous Effort – verse 6; reflectionary & verses 3-6 embroidery

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arm in arm, requres chewing

Bodhisattvacharyavatara by Acharya Śāntideva

Chapter VII– verse 6

Transglomeration: And the lord of death has already caught sight of you and closed off all possible exit.   How can you continue taking pleasure eating and copulating, and how can you, contented, turn round and go back to sleep?

~~~ “BCA” ~~~

V. 5 evidence of death all around, but I sit chewing the cud
↑ Stitch ↓
V. 6 while death watches me, has my whole life covered

Reflection: immanence of death – how enjoy worldly pleasures (simile: being ‘eyeballed’ (Berzin) by the Lord of Death); if death were actually standing by me, watching everything I do, waiting for his chance, I would not able to find anywhere or place to get away from his sight, how could I enjoy a piece of cake, watching a film, sleeping; death exposes the lie of the kleśas that there is pleasure or constancy to be gained in this life: they lead only to birth, and then death

Reflection: this is meant to be shocking (shocking to what?), shocking to my own complacency, shocking to me thinking it’s probably alright, I can just feel good about this, I can just eat that, I can take some time out for the other … recent dreams about school – still! – about not quite being in control, bridge through my waking to thoughts of incredulity that they didn’t listen to me, didn’t take what I had to give seriously, spills through into my waking life where I am easily barbed by a change of plan (‘I thought I knew what I was doing’), where I am easily emptied of self-confidence because, far less than not seeing an immediate effect (just about tolerable if I keep my eye raised to the horizon), the slightest questioning or lack of expected response throws me into deep and angry self-doubt, that I haven’t gotten anywhere, that what I thought was the way is just another instance of me … not quite being in control of this class, and the biggest embarrassment of all is my own, for myself, ‘I thought I had it’ before I really did; death will prod me out of wallowing in this (because there definitely is no gain from wallowing around prolonging the feeling that I don’t know anything, that I can’t do anything, that I can’t have an effect etc.), and later in the chapter will be the development of a self-confidence (in the Vow I have taken) to actually do something about it (rather than think I might have the answer already)

Reflection: when playing with my cat, dangling something for her to ambush, at some point she’ll crouchlow, I’ll slow the dangling to a slight drag along the floor, she’ll have already tested the environs for open doors, under tables, chairs, beside cupboards during the preliminary playing, her eyes quickly double-check them from her central position, she has anticipated everything, she could make whichever move from where she is jusslikethat, belly on the ground, she can’t be seen but her eyes are now completely fixed, chin on the ground, ears back, she lets the quarry do a few moves without any reaction at all, she can take her time, she knows the outcome; death knows my outcome, fixes me with his piggy little eyes, watches me scrape myself into ever-receding corners until there is nowhere left that I might hope to escape from this nagging ennui anymore, but I can’t see him, he’s crouched low where I least expected he’d be, he’s so where I least expected him to be that I’d put off thinking he was anywhere around anyway … except for this faint haunting, this beguiling echo when I thought I was most out in the open; but it’s me he’s fixed on, it really is me; there’s nothing I can do about it, the least I can do is drop this infantile hubris that Mark Redford has got this and damned-well grow up and face it in the time I have left

Embroidery [3-6]: saṃsāra is a way of being which runs contrary to how things exist; it runs contrary because it is a way of being which is predicated on there being a ‘self’ ready-made with some reflex notion of a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; this pre-predicated reflex thrives the better the less it is analysed but the more it is fed; the perpetuation of this way of being comes about through habit, through being used to operating like this, through exercising that right before all else; there is no better way to exercise this right than through laziness: the laziness of not questioning the basis of this self and the laziness of indulging in the feeding of this self in the many ways it requires; [3] when there is no dis-satisfaction with saṃsāra – a wilful ignorance wherein the self, and the life that the self leads, is not questioned, but just indulged, even consumed – then the attachment and the hate run riot holding high a triumphant banner of self-justification … the be-coming of the self is reinforced with every breath it takes, so much so that perpetuates its own momentum, all one has to do is sit back, and the momentum does the rest leading you deeper and deeper (lower and lower) into this predicated existence; it thrives on laziness once it really gets going; verses 4-6 start to give the lie to this laziness, this satisfaction of being, by introducing the immediate and shocking flaw in this way of being, [4] which is death: as soon as a ‘self’ is propounded it is born, as soon as a ‘self’ is born it immediately embroils death (as soon as there is the crescendo of a ‘1’ then there is the immediate context of the ‘0’ from which it extrapolated); the stronger the ‘self’ the harder the death, the longer the ‘self’ perpetuates despite death, the more it has to inevitably lose; any being despite its own context is an extrapolation which has lost its own bearing, it is a needless being, it is a pointless being, it is a selfish being; as soon as it, the ‘self’, ‘be’s despite its own whole and complete existence, it instigates for itself a whole universe of ‘not-me’ with which it struggles with its weapons, the kleśas of attachment and hatred and so many others … death is the redress of this obscene and embarrassing tantrum of being; [5] but do we listen to it, do we heck: we see it as the spoiler of our fun and we pretend it doesn’t happen the better to chew our own cud, we are that self-propounded and self-perpetuated that we cannot stop; so verse [6] wracks up the reality, labours it, beats us over the head with it, ‘look, here it is’ – slap! – ‘it’s been eyeing you since your latest birth – all 60 of them, Mark, all 60 trillion of them, Mark’s mind – all the time with a beady eye; and there you are eating jam on toast again thinking “I’m safe now, it won’t happen now”’; the first step out of laziness is facing death

Determination: the first step out of the laziness of a needlessly extrapolated and indulgent life is to face death

Bodhisattvacharyavatara: Chapter VII, Joyous Effort – verse 5; reflectionary

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arm in arm, requres chewing

Bodhisattvacharyavatara by Acharya Śāntideva

Chapter VII– verse 5

Transglomeration: And do I still not see all these ones about, my mothers, felled and finished with, one by one, without let?   And all the while I am one who allows himself a complacent slumber like the buffalo unperturbed before the butcher!

~~~ “BCA” ~~~

V. 4 cornered prey, trapped in birth after birth
↑ Stitch ↓
V. 5 evidence of death all around, but I sit chewing the cud

Glimpse: living (life) in ignorance of death (simile: the buffalo asleep with the butcher – Sharma, ‘…and the butcher’s sword breathing over its neck, one goes on chewing the cud of illusory joys…’); everyone else is dying

Reflection: making the implication of verse 4 even more explicit, there’s nothing clever going on here, no subtlety of argument: death is immanent, it’s there, it’s right behind you!   It really is!   Verses 4-6 are driving the point home, verse 4 a hook – makes us look completely the other way; verse 5 a body punch, right in the ribs, makes us look stupid, wo wind; verse 6 the downing KO, this is what happens when you live stupidly; and what is ‘stupid’: in verse 5 it is the wilful ignorance we exercise, the ostrich-reaction to what is the single most definite thing in life – death; and this is beyond the ‘o, people die’ realisation, the flippant ‘no one can live forever and can I have that last piece of pizza’, and neither is it the perverse reaction to death that makes a ghoulish fetish and fashion out of it, this should be the realisation that should bite, sink its teeth in and draw blood – the fact that we are still sitting around, chewing the cud, means that that realisation has not bitten; `makes us look really stupid

Determination: if I am really serious about making anything out of my life anything more meaningful than swallowed cud, there needs to be an edge that pricks me out of complacency; now!

Bodhisattvacharyavatara: Chapter VII, Joyous Effort – verse 4; reflectionary

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arm in arm, requres chewing

Bodhisattvacharyavatara by Acharya Śāntideva

Chapter VII– verse 4

Transglomeration: Baited then caught in the traps of the hunters, the kleśas, these disruptive emotions; here I am, snared and trapped in birth after birth, endlessly becoming.   And still do I not see that I am lying here in the open jaws of the lord of death?

~~~ “BCA” ~~~

V. 3 languishing in rebirth and becoming through inertia, sleep and learnt-dependence
↑ Stitch ↓
V. 4 like cornered prey, trapped in birth after birth

Simile: kleśas (trappers, hunters), those minds that consent to a sense of a self, distinct from other >>> birth (trap/net and being trapped), the exercise of those kleśas in the building up and identifying that sense of self as a person, self-identity >>> death (mouth of the trapper, death; once trapped, death is inevitable), that once exposed and out on a limb as a self, the downfall of the self is inevitable; kleśas > birth > death happens inexorably

Reflection: there is such a mass out there, in here, of constantly connecting, branching, tiding, consuming, conflicting, incompatible, over-laying, undermining, influencing, exploiting, accruing causes and conditions, like an overwhelming mass of muscle with ever-renewing fibres of connective tissue pulling in all directions, like a self-propelling idea with ever-firing synapses in all directions; and I need to haemorrhage from it all so that I am not consumed by it (but how do I adhere in the first place, and at all – because I seek to define myself in and amidst this amorphous mass of cause and conditioning; if I need to haemorrhage from it I need to dismantle this very needy self that came into existence when I was born and fears that it will go out of existence when it dies (as all cause and conditioning inevitably does) before it was able to prove itself); but I do not need to ignore it for concern of all others caught in the same unnecessary drag and whirl, I do not just inure myself from the mire (even if I do have to lose that self to inure it) and think the job is done; look at all my brothers and sisters bumping into their own walls, I’ve got a job, here, to do

Reflection: … in the human realm, certainly, there is a proliferation, a saturation even, of cause and conditionality within which we exercise our lifetimes and even, to some extent, which we understand: we build our civilisations and technology and science upon it, we personally define our ‘selves’ according to how we navigate through cause and conditionality; but our understanding is, necessarily, only human, it is only a political or social or institutional or technological or economic understanding of how the mass (the chaos) of cause and conditioning can be made to work to a specific goal: from the time the ape triumphantly picked up the bone to the graceful according waltz of the spaceship rendezvous we have channelled cause and conditionality to make the various froth of civilisations through which we live, and this channelling has been achieved by selectivity, by de-finition, by dividing and exclusivising, by hierarchizing … by the exercising of will on cause and conditionality to hone an outcome; we, as humans, have the ability – and have exercised it – to play cause and conditionality, to make certain things happen despite the amorphous mass of cause and condition that is all about – but we are also trapped and caught in those very same outcomes that we ourselves channelled, we are stuck being one side or the other (king or peasant, rich or poor, have or have not) of whichever dichotomy we are proximate to because we are defined by it, and we are such a clever species that we can be proximate to many more than one dichotomy; because the channelling serves a self, the manipulation of cause and conditionality narrows the plethora of possible outcomes to serve a particular need of a self, and because there are all these other ‘selves’ about, the prevailing ‘channel’ becomes the one through which the majority of others can define themselves compromised, whether willingly or coerced; it is the exercise of will over cause and conditionality which defines the human experience; (those practised in the exercise of magic practise the same exertion of will over cause and conditionality which bypasses established political, economic routes of cause and conditionality through tapping into more subtle fibres and synapses of cause and conditionality – but it is nevertheless the exercise of will over (caused and conditioned) existence); OK, so the ethical question arises: is this exercise of will to serve the needs of the selfs (i.e. ‘I’ and, by mutual distinction, ‘other’), good, or not … depends on the extent to which the channelling of causes and conditions is for the sake of a self over and against other selves (on either a macro or micro level) (i.e. selfish, not good), or whether it is for the sake of others over and against oneself (i.e. better, but unsustainable), or whether it is exercised with no sense of self (one’s own or others’) at all (good, as in, wise; wise, as in, plays within cause and conditionality without self-reference, which can only be fully appreciated when cause and conditionality are realised to be empty of any self at all in order to be causal and conditional … emptiness); so, as with chapter 6 which largely played out the exercise of other-concern in the cause and conditional context of difficulty and frustration, chapter 7 likewise exercises will/effort in the cause and conditional context of inertia and self-defeat; but, again as already noted, there is a ‘wise accommodating with’ in the exercise of patience, there is a ‘wise making so’ with effort – the dynamics are contrasting although the wisdom is the same

Reflection: this is very redolent of the suffering of conditioned aggregates – that having the body and receptors of a human being, I am inexorably to experience the fulfilments and frustrations of a human life according to both the constructive and destructive tendencies I packed with me when I came.   The fact that I just don’t feel right today is a peculiarly human condition which might even drag me back for a whole day or week; it is a feeling and drag that could not even remotely occur to my cat who is made up of an altogether different physiology and psychology and sense of self – she has the aggregates of a cat, she suffers from a desperation around feeding that I, a rationalising human, need not suffer from; how these kleśas perceive and develop within me and my cat are wholly dependent on the psycho-physical aggregates which we respectively spent many lifetimes accumulating before; and here we both are, wandering about our lives and bumping into our respective walls, both of us also wilfully (well, actually, that’s only for me, as I have the human mind-aggregate) oblivious to the fact that it will all just end some time, the body/mind aggregates will fail and we shall die

Determination: I need to sharpen up my act, I need to sharpen up the realisation of what is going on here, I need to do more than simply run around after the next feed, however I might cleverly conceive of it being a human being; (‘… and may it increase infinitely’).

Bodhisattvacharyavatara: Chapter VII, Joyous Effort – verse 3; reflectionary

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Bodhisattvacharyavatara by Acharya Śāntideva

Chapter VII– verse 3

Transglomeration: Lounging about in bittersweet pleasure, abandoning myself to daydream and sleep rendering me inured to the sufferings inherent to the rounds of becoming in life, engenders laziness to grow within me, complete and thorough.

~~~ “BCA” ~~~

V. 2ii – obstacles of the four lazinesses
↑ Stitch ↓
V. 3 which spring from languishing in rebirth and becoming through inertia, sleep and learnt-dependence

Wording: ālasya – lethargy, indolence, inactivity; caused by:

1. (Berzin, ‘relishing’) a taste for worldly, ephemeral joys
2. excessive craving for sleep/torpor (Berzin, ‘as a haven’)
3. absence of disillusion with, insensible to, apathy towards, unconcerned with saṃsāra (Sharma, we remain in saṃsāra ‘like worms wriggling in a dirty drain’); (Matics, ‘an eagerness to be protected’); (Crosby & Skilton, ‘the longing to lean on others’); is this what Chögyam Trungpa called ‘nostalgia’ for saṃsāra?;

Personal Reflection:

1. attachment to the good quote, the skyline scene, eating, (the need for recognition?), what things looked like at the moment of the inspiration;
2. sleeping, anyway, but also the going-into-neutral zone of my life when it all becomes a little too overwhelming (or even when it isn’t overwhelming, but I don’t know what to do with the question of existence), wanting to zone-out into a film or television or music or comics, wanting to be able to hit the right perspective which will carry me through a situation in idle;
3. thinking ‘it’ll be alright’ or ‘it doesn’t matter’ when giving in to self-indulgence;

Reflection: so this is exploring the lack of a mind of renunciation from saṃsāra, but also situating it within the Vow that a Bodhisattva has taken to liberate all beings from all suffering … and here I am, Hawaiian shirt, sunglasses and flip-flops thinking ‘sometime I oughta do something about all this’

Determination: to engage myself in mindful activity and engagement, like keeping my abdomen through all movements

Bodhisattvacharyavatara: Chapter VII, Joyous Effort – verse 2ii; reflectionary

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Bodhisattvacharyavatara by Acharya Śāntideva

Chapter VII– verse 2ii

Transglomeration: What is understood to frustrate effort?   The laziness of indolence, the laziness of being attached to unwholesome, un-virtuous habits and experience, and the laziness of allowing ourselves a lack of resolve and urgency leading us like sheep to the laziness of lacking confidence and low self-esteem.

~~~ “BCA” ~~~

V. 2i vīrya – riding the understanding of karma to build benefit
↑ Stitch ↓
V. 2ii – despite the four lazinesses

Wordings:

• lethargy, sloth, laziness, indolence, languidness, lack of élan, faintness
• attachment to, weakness for, clinging to (bad actions)
• despondency, disinclination, discouragement, despair, apathy, lack of resolve
• result: self-reproach, low self-esteem, self-contempt, self-deprecation

Recognition: 1. ‘… can’t be bothered’, 2. ‘just a minute, I’ll just finish …’, 3. ‘can’t get no satisfaction’, 4. ‘it’s just not me’; like a recalcitrant school-child being unrelentingly urged by the class teacher through the stages of a self-fulfilling prophecy which holds many of us back; the reticence that keeps us on the swimming pool edge for ages and ages; the unwillingness to embrace the whole of life in case we get it wrong; the feeling the fear and building our whole identity around the not-trying (the lack of self-compassion that lets ourselves fail at first); the depression of saṃsāra

Reflection: can’t be sure if there are three (Tibetan) or four (Sanskrit) lazinesses; if there are three then the Tibetan has rolled the third (discouragement) and fourth (self-contempt) into one or the latter three (from the Sanskrit listing) are understood as iterations of laziness overall

Reflection: verse 2 is just business: a definition and a preliminary breakdown of what frustrates it; the rest of the chapter is the explanation of its resolve

Bodhisattvacharyavatara: Chapter VII, Joyous Effort – verse 2i; reflectionary

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Bodhisattvacharyavatara by Acharya Śāntideva

Chapter VI– verse 2i

Transglomeration: What is effort, vigour, endeavour?   It is taking delight in what is virtuous, it is putting energy to what is beneficial.

~~~ “BCA” ~~~

V. 1 without the wind of vīrya, nothing happens
↑ Stitch ↓
V. 2i vīrya – riding the understanding of karma to build benefit

Text-stitch: when in verse 1 it refers to there being no merit without effort, in verse 2i it makes the link in defining effort as delight in doing good, virtue, wholesomeness etc; merit can seem a bit boy-scouty, but working delightedly in benefit for self and others sounds … square-jawed heroic

Etymology: descriptors of effort: wholesome, enthusiastic, zestful, proper, delighting, joyful, endeavouring, courageous, vigorous, striving

Reflection: enthusiasm, excitement for goodness; not having done something good (‘what a good boy, Mark’), but delight in (the rightness) of so-doing; I do it because it is good, I am happy to do it because it is good; as with patience, it is not just the absence of laziness but the positive enthusiasm for virtue

Reflection: as Patrul Rinpoche points out, vīrya is a virtue of the mind which informs all other virtues (cf. of body and speech, vīrya is the cause of virtuous acts and word, acts and speech are not virtuous in themselves); this is a re-enforcement of the points made at the beginning of chapter 5 (all the Perfections are trainings of the mind), but it is a welcome reminder here: virtue is not defined by what you say or do, it is all about the mind first; because the practise of the Perfections is stepped (or, better, telescoped) then it should come as no surprise that virtue is first-of-all in the mind and that the engagement of the practice of vīrya begins once we have laid down clinging to good-acts or good-speech as an outer, quantifiable, objective form

Bodhisattvacharyavatara: Chapter VII, Joyous Effort – verse 1; reflectionary

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Bodhisattvacharyavatara by Acharya Śāntideva

Chapter VII– verse 1

Transglomeration: Then, having established patience, engage joyful effort in your practice; because working toward Awakening only comes about when grounded in engaged effort.   As there is no possibility of movement without the agency of wind, there is no generating merit without effort.

~~~ “BCA” ~~~

Metaphor: as there can be no movement without wind, there can be no development without vīrya; this abides by the analysis that everything happens only under causes and conditions (flavour from the previous chapter), but particularly re-establishes it here in relation to inner, spiritual happening; ‘wind’ is a specific example, here, of there needing to be an agent to make movement happen, and it is presented as a simile in the translations, but I wonder if it is to be understood much wider than ‘a puff of wind’ blowing some dried-up ‘leaf’ – nothing moves by itself, it needs to be moved by something other than it, anything which, itself, is moving and which was set in motion by something else, by something else, by something else etc; back to the verse, this is flagging that you can’t just ‘quiet’ yourself through spiritual development, you need to actually drive it too

Embroidery: this flags a gear-change in the practice of the Perfections: the first three Perfections are stopping miserliness, carelessness and anger respectively, effort is the start of making realisations happen; you can’t just give or discipline or calm your way to Enlightenment, you actually have to cultivate the realisations, you actually have to do the Work (as Gurdjieff (and others) worded it); there is not just purification, there is also accumulation; and, again, the Perfections are accumulative steps in development, they are not stand alone qualities, and so effort will incorporate whatever relinquishment you have achieved in giving, whatever discipline you have cultivated in your behaviour, whatever reserve you dwell in in your interactions, and it will project through your development of concentration into the realisations of relative and ultimate Bodhichitta

Translations: Matics emphasises the complementary translation of ‘vīrya’ as ‘heroic’ (Padmakara, ‘courageous’) rather than simply ‘effort’, emphasising also the need to ‘stand firm’; the next Perfection; you can’t just stop yourself from committing bad stuff, you need also to develop good stuff too; there needs to be a movement beyond one’s limited self, beyond one’s self-limits, despite oneself, otherwise there is no movement – one is stuck; this involves a bit of gritted teeth, but, as is to be seen (verse 2aa), it needs to be ‘joyous’ rather than just (‘self-defining-and-focussed’) effort

Reflection: the Perfections are causal stages so, to the extent that one has developed patience (of not reacting to conditions based on what one wants/doesn’t want and having bathed in the contemplation of the pervasiveness of cause and conditionality and also having developed compassionate sympathy with others caught in that same cause and conditionality), then one has the reserve to be able to focus one’s efforts more directly, more purposefully, according to the needs of the situation and the needs of others without all of one’s ‘me, me, me’ getting in the way; and because ‘me, me, me’ doesn’t get in the way so much, messing things up and making everything all gloopy and magnetised about itself, then there is the space to act more cleanly and effectively as a result

Resolve: I need to get shifting, I can’t just sit around having nice thoughts and being inspired by other peoples’ words and practices

Bodhisattvacharyavatara: Chapter VI, Patience – verses 128-132; reflectionary

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Bodhisattvacharyavatara by Acharya Śāntideva

Chapter VI– verses 128-132

Transglomeration: [128] For example, acting completely alone, a king’s officer could intimidate and persecute a whole crowd of people, but those in the crowd who are clear-headed would not react even if they had the opportunity.   [129] This is because they know that the officer does not act alone but with the power of the king.   Likewise, I should not make light of or react to even the slightest of these beings who do me even the slightest wrong … [130] for they are backed by the power of both the guardians of hell and the Compassionate Ones.   So I should respect and please each of these beings as I would the officer of that fiery king.   [131] Moreover, what could even such an enraged king unleash upon me comparable to the tortures and agonies of hell which would certainly become my experience from causing the sorrow of beings?   [132] And what possible reward could a gratified king bestow comparable to the realisation of Buddhahood which would certainly be achieved if I was instrumental in bringing benefit and happiness to beings?

~~~ “BCA” ~~~

V. 127 serving beings serves Buddhas, serves my own ends, ending suffering = my Vow & practice
↑ Stitch ↓
V. 128-132 benefitting beings using the analogy of a king’s steward

Reflection: [128] it is best not to retaliate against bullies in power [129] because they have the might of that power protecting them; the full force – the punchline – of these two verses does not come until verse 130; these verses establish clearly (i.e. spells it out over two verses) that you don’t mess with other beings who are well-protected (in this case under the protection of a king: now, the ‘might is right’ is not so openly practised as to provide a useful example; now it is the fear of law (maybe…), social approbation (maybe…), but I can’t think of an example of an ‘untouchable’ outside of the social dynamics of gangsterism … maybe the equivalent is politicians, now, but their conduct has become the policy of repression, and their ‘protection’ is that ‘them’s makes the rules’, the Law), even though they might be one against a whole crowd, a whole populace, of people, because the punishment/retribution/comeback for messing with them would be definite and probably enhanced far beyond what you did; it is the definiteness and the extent of the comeback which would hold you back, and this is the point to be clearly established here using a worldly/political/military illustration, so you just wouldn’t do it, if you’re at all wise; even though the ‘steward’ might be just one against thousands, even though the crowd would be able to tear him limb from limb and eat his liver, even though he might personally be completely uncharismatic or stupid or impetuous in his actions, as long as he bears the king’s insignia, he is untouchable; it’s not saying it is right, it is merely establishing a clear illustration of how you ‘don’t mess’ with some people even if you have the perfect opportunity when you meet this person alone in a dark alley (in a neighbourhood from which the whole local population has been inexplicably moved out for … reasons, so there are no witnesses), and you happen to have a whole workshop of freshly-sharpened disembowelling knives and machetes with you and a spare machine-gun in your back pocket, ‘just in case’, still, this person is protected, don’t mess …); the point is some people are untouchable because someone else has their backs, they are protected by someone else – this is the only point being established in these two verses

Reflection: [131] (Jimmy Cagney voice): ‘… there’s protection on these beings, see; all of them, they’re very special to my dear friends; my friends, you see, they have this ‘special interest’ in all these beings: big plans, big dreams – yes, all of them (I don’t see it myself, still, that’s the way it is, I am loyal to my friends); now, we can do this the easy way – that’s how my friends would prefer it done, hell, they’d even want to include you in, the Family, sheesh – or we can spend some time (heh, quite a lotta time, actually) doing business with my boys, here (and, I’ll be totally frank with you, I’d prefer we didn’t have to use them, `always so much mess to clear up afterwards); so, come on, let’s be reasonable, here, we’re all grown-ups now, aren’t we…?’

Practice: when encountering someone who is against me, quick-as-a-flash, I imagine a hell-demon slavering behind them, newly-leering because I am about to do something which means it will be able to impale me or split me open yet one more time, and then, also quick-as-a-flash, I imagine a Compassionate Being behind them with a look of brows-raised-open-mouth shock at the harm I am about to unleash on them through my anger … that ought to calm me down

Reflection: [131] a king, an enemy with power, could deprive me of my rights, torture me, even kill me, fine, but once I’m dead he couldn’t do anything more to me – that’s the worst a sentient being could do to another; a hellish torment would not end with the exhaustion of my body, my life during that torment would not be short-lived; and this would all result from having harmed other beings in whatever way: they have the ‘protection’ of the hell-demons and the Compassionate Ones, not in the sense that they will stop the harm that we might inflict on others, but that they guarantee that there will be an outcome in terms of causal inevitability (the hell-demons will pay it back) and severity (the harm done will have hurt both the beings directly, and have frustrated the wishes of the Compassionate Ones, we don’t get away from having only hurt sentient beings, we hurt the Compassionate Ones as well – this is no small transgression); do the Compassionate Ones have wishes that we can go against and frustrate – in the sense that they are Enlightened, no, they have attained Enlightenment, but in that their only and natural function once they have achieved Enlightenment is to – by default – respond to those who, un-understandably, are not Enlightened, with compassion (they cannot not be like this, like water cannot not be wet, like water cannot not spread to the edges of that into which it is poured); if we, as deluded sentient beings are actively harming other beings, we are being more than just suffering beings needing help and direction, we are actively frustrating that very help and direction being supplied by the Compassionate Ones … have we no measure of our own blindness?

Reflection: [132] and – of course – this can be flipped (because this isn’t because it’s the ‘rules of some game’, it’s not because ‘Simon says’, it’s because this is the causal and conditioned reality devoid of the illusion of a ‘self’ of oneself or other which makes it seem like ‘all is for the taking’, ‘he who dares wins’, ‘luvvly jubbly’; when there is no self-existent anything, all that is left is the care and welfare of ‘other’ that hasn’t quite got round to realising it all yet, and what a quagmire of suffering they’re stuck in as a result): that if we pleased a ‘king’ (someone in power and influence), if we really got in there and charmed and impressed and proved indispensable to this someone of power, the best they might do would bestow some of that power, influence and maybe wealth back onto us; is that it?: power which could be undermined or equally taken away, influence that is as up to date as fashion, wealth which is only really useful when ‘liquid’ (as Gordon Gekko remarked), none of which would leave me any guarantee even into my old age, let alone my death; is that the best this king could bestow me – an unsteady burden, a shifting sand; and yet Buddhahood (no need of power or influence – no world or self to exercise over; no need of wealth and enjoyment – no need or self to indulge) could just be ours without any of the lifetime-career expended trying to position ourselves right within a loaded game in which we can never win … just by making others happy

Practice: don’t play the game, it’s always loaded; let the focus always be ‘benefit towards others’