For who hath grieved when soft arms shut him safe,
And all life melted to a happy sigh,
And all the world was given in one warm kiss?
So sang they with soft float of beckoning hands,
Eyes lighted with love-flames, alluring smiles;
In wanton v.l. dainty dance their supple sides and limbs
Revealing and concealing like burst buds
Which tell their colour, but hide yet their hearts.
Never so matchless grace delighted eye
As troop by troop these midnight-dancers swept
Nearer the Tree, each daintier than the last,
Murmuring, “O great Siddārtha! I am thine,
Taste of my mouth and see if youth is sweet.”
Also, when nothing moved our Master’s mind,
Lo! Kama waved his magic bow, and lo!
The band of dancers opened, and a shape,
Fairest and stateliest of the throng, came forth
Wearing the guise of sweet Yasōdhara.
Tender the passion of those dark eyes seemed
Brimming with tears; yearning those outspread arms
Opened towards him; musical that moan
Wherewith the beauteous shadow named his name,
Sighing, “My Prince! I die for lack of thee
What heaven hast thou found like that we knew
By bright Rohini A river near to Kapilavatthu, the Bodhisatta’s home town in the Pleasure house,
Where all these weary years I weep for thee?
Return, Siddārtha! ah! return. But touch
My lips again, but let me to thy breast
Once, and these fruitless dreams will end! Ah, look!
Am I not she thou lovedst?” But Buddh said,
“For that sweet sake of her thou playest thus,
Fair and false Shadow! is thy playing vain;
I curse thee not who wear’st a form so dear,
Yet as thou art, so are all earthly shows.
Melt to thy void again!” Thereat, a cry
Thrilled through the grove, and all that comely rout defeated troops
Faded with flickering wafts of flame, and trail
Of vaporous robes.
Next, under darkening skies
And noise of rising storm, came fiercer Sins,
The rearmost of the Ten; Patigha—Hate—
With serpents coiled about her waist, which suck
Poisonous milk from both her hanging dugs, breasts
And with her curses mix their angry hiss.
Little wrought she upon that Holy One
Who with his calm eyes dumbed her bitter lips
And made her black snakes writhe to hide their fangs.
Then followed Ruparaga Skt, Pāḷi: rūparāga, passion for form—Lust of days—
That sensual Sin which out of greed for life
Forgets to live; and next him Lust of Fame,
Nobler Aruparaga, Skt, Pāḷi: arūparāga, passion for the formless. Arnold evidently didn't properly understand these terms she whose spell
Beguiles the wise, mother of daring deeds,
Battles and toils. And haughty Mano This is quoted incorrectly by Arnold, mano = mind; māna = pride, conceit came,
The Fiend of Pride; and smooth Self-Righteousness,
Uddhachcha; Pāḷi: uddhacca (Skt: auddhatya), restlessness, excitement and—with many a hideous band
Of vile and formless things, which crept and flapped
Toad-like and bat-like—Ignorance, the Dam Mother
Of Fear and Wrong, Avidya, Pāḷi: Avijjā hideous hag,
Whose footsteps left the midnight darker, while
The rooted mountains shook, the wild winds howled,
The broken clouds shed from their caverns streams
Of levin-lighted rain; Rain light by lightning, archaic stars shot from heaven,
The solid earth shuddered as if one laid
Flame to her gaping wounds; the torn black air
Was full of whistling wings, of screams and yells,
Of evil faces peering, of vast fronts Demeanour or bearing
Terrible and majestic, Lords of Hell
Who from a thousand Limbos Intermediate states led their troops,
To tempt the Master.
But Buddh heeded not,
Sitting serene, with perfect virtue walled
As is a stronghold by its gates and ramps;
Also the Sacred Tree—the Bodhi-tree—
Amid that tumult stirred not, but each leaf
Glistened as still as when on moonlit eves
No zephyr A mild gentle wind or breeze, poetic spills the gathering v.l. glittering gems Drops, poetic of dew;
For all this clamour raged outside the shade
Spread by those cloistered stems:
In the third watch,—
The earth being still, the hellish legions fled,
A soft air breathing from the sinking moon—
Our Lord attained Sammā-sambuddh, Skt, Pāḷi: Sammāsambuddha, the word is used incorrectly here; he means to say he attained Sambodhi, perfect Awakening, and became a Sammāsambuddha, one who is perfectly Awake he saw
By light which shines beyond our mortal ken,
The line of all his lives in all the worlds;
Far back, and farther back, and farthest yet,
Five hundred lives and fifty. This is the number of stories there are in the Pāḷi Jātaka collection, but in the Pāḷi discourses (e.g. MN 36), it is said that the Buddha remembered aeons of lives, together with their details Even as one
At rest upon a mountain-summit, marks
His path wind up by precipice and crag,
Past thick-set woods shrunk to a patch; through bogs
Glittering false-green; down hollows where he toiled
Breathless; on dizzy ridges where his feet
Had well nigh slipped; beyond the sunny lawns,
The cataract Waterfall and the cavern and the pool,
Backward to those dim flats wherefrom he sprang
To reach the blue; thus Buddha did behold
Life’s upward steps long-linked, from levels low
Where breath is base, to higher slopes and higher
Whereon the ten great Virtues Skt: Pāramitā (Pāḷi: Pāramī), perfections: giving, virtue, reununciation, wisdom, energy, patience, truth, resolution, friendliness, equanimity wait to lead
The climber skyward. Also, Buddha saw
How new life reaps what the old life did sow;
How where its march breaks off its march begins;
Holding the gain and answering for the loss;
And how in each life good begets more good,
Evil fresh evil; Death but casting up
Debit or credit, whereupon th’ account
In merits or demerits stamps itself
By sure arithmic Arithmetic, archaic—where no little drops—
Certain and just, on some new-springing life
Wherein are packed and scored past thoughts and deeds,
Strivings and triumphs, memories and marks
Of lives foregone:
And in the middle watch
Our Lord attained Abhidjna Pāḷi: abhiññā, deep knowledge—insight vast
Ranging beyond this sphere to spheres unnamed,
System on system, countless worlds and suns
Moving in splendid measures, band by band
Linked in division, one yet separate,
The silver islands of a sapphire sea
Shoreless, unfathomed, undiminished, stirred
With waves which roll in restless tides of change.
He saw those Lords of Light who hold their worlds
By bonds invisible, how they themselves
Circle obedient round mightier orbs Celestial bodies, poetic
Which serve profounder splendours, star to star
Flashing the ceaseless radiance of life
From centres ever shifting unto cirques Cirles, rings, poetic
Knowing no uttermost. These he beheld
With unsealed vision, and of all those worlds,
Cycle on epicycle, all their tale
Of Kalpas, Mahakalpas Aeons and great aeons—terms of time
Which no man grasps, yea, though he knew to count
The drops in Gunga The river Ganges from her springs to the sea,
Measureless unto speech—whereby these wax
And wane; whereby each of this heavenly host
Fulfils its shining life, and darkling growing dark dies.
Sakwal by Sakwal, Pāḷi: Cakkavāla, a world-system, or universe depths and heights he passed
Transported through the blue infinitudes,
Marking—behind all modes, above all spheres,
Beyond the burning impulse of each orb Celestial bodies, poetic—
That fixed decree at silent works which wills
Evolve the dark to light, the dead to life,
To fulness void, to form the yet unformed,
Good unto better, better unto best,
By worldless edict; having none to bid,
None to forbid; for this is past all gods,
Immutable, unspeakable, supreme;
A Power which builds, unbuilds and builds again,
Ruling all things accordant to in accordance with the rule
Of virtue, which is beauty, truth, and use. custom, tradition
So that all things do well which serve the Power,
And ill which hinder; nay, the worm does well
Obedient to its kind; the hawk does well
Which carries bleeding quarries to its young;
The dewdrop and the star shine sisterly,
Globing Lit: (both) becoming spherical; it means that the nature of both a dewdrop and a star is the same in the way of shape together in the common work;
And man who lives to die, dies to live well
So if he guide his ways by blamelessness
And earnest will to hinder not but help
All things both great and small which suffer life.
These did our Lord see in the middle watch.
But when the fourth watch came In the Pāḷi sources the night (any night) is divided into three watches (yāma) only. In the 1st watch the Buddha attained pubbenivāsañāṇa, knowledge of past lives; in the 2nd dibbacakkhu, the divine eye, which gives vision of the arising and passing away of beings according to past actions and their results (kammavipāka); in the 3rd he gained āsavakkhayañāṇa, knowledge of the destruction of the pollutants, which is equivalent to the last one here the secret came
Of Sorrow, which with evil mars the law,
As damp and dross hold back the goldsmith’s fire.
Then was the Dukha-Satya Pāḷi: Dukkhasacca, Sanskrit: Duḥkhasatya, the Truth of Suffering or the unsatisfactory nature of existence opened him
First of the “Noble Truths”; how Sorrow is
Shadow to life, moving where life doth move;
Not to be laid aside until one lays
Living aside, with all its changing states,
Birth, growth, decay, love, hatred, pleasure, pain,
Being and doing. How that none strips off
These sad delights and pleasant griefs who lacks
Knowledge to know them snares; but he who knows
Avidya—Delusion—sets those snares,
Loves life no longer but ensures escape. What follows is part of the conditional origination (paṭiccasamuppāda) formula
The eyes of such a one are wide, he sees
Delusion breeds Sankhāra, Volitions, not necessarily perverse as here, but including good intentions Tendency
Perverse; Tendency Energy—Vidnnān Pāḷi: Viññāṇa, consciousness
Whereby comes Nāmarūpa, Name and form, or mind and body local Form
And Name and Bodiment, = Embodiment bringing the man
With senses naked to the sensible,
A helpless mirror of all shows which pass
Across his heart; and so Vedanā grows—
‘Sense-life’—false in gladness, v.l. false in its gladness; which is one syllable too long fell fallen, depressed in sadness,
But sad or glad, the Mother of Desire,
Trishna, Pāḷi: taṇhā, craving that thirst which makes the living drink
Deeper and deeper of the false salt waves
Whereon they float pleasures, ambitions, wealth,
Praise, fame, or domination, conquest, love;
Rich meats foods, archaic and robes, and fair abodes, and pride
Of ancient lines, and lust of days, and strife
To live, and sins that flow from strife, some sweet,
Some bitter. Thus Life’s thirst quenches itself
With draughts which double thirst, but who is wise
Tears from his soul this Trishna, feeds his sense
No longer on false shows, files disciplines, archaic his firm mind
To seek not, strive not, wrong not; bearing meek
All ills which flow from foregone wrongfulness,
And so constraining passions that they die
Famished; till all the sum of ended life—
The Karma Pāḷi: Kamma—all that total of a soul
Which is the things it did, the thoughts it had,
The ‘Self’ it wove—with woof of viewless time,
Crossed on the warp invisible of acts—
The outcome of him on the Universe,
Grows pure and sinless; either never more
Needing to find a body and a place,
Or so informing what fresh frame it takes
In new existence that the new toils prove
Lighter and lighter not to be at all,
Thus “finishing the Path;” free from Earth’s cheats
Released from all the skandhas aggregates (of mind and body) of the flesh; This line is missing in some editions
Broken from ties—from Upādānas attachment, grasping—saved
From whirling on the wheel; aroused and sane
As is a man wakened from hateful dreams.
Until—greater than Kings, than Gods more glad!—
The aching craze to live ends, and life glides—
Lifeless—to nameless quiet, nameless joy,
Blessed Nirvāna sinless, stirless rest—
That change which never changes!
Lo! the Dawn
Sprang with Buddh’s victory! lo! in the East
Flamed the first fires of beauteous day, poured forth
Through fleeting folds of Night’s black drapery.
High in the widening blue the herald-star Venus
Faded to paler silver as there shot
Brighter and brightest bars of rosy gleam
Across the grey. v.l. Brighter and brighter bars of rosy gleam Across the sky Far off the shadowy hills
Saw the great Sun, before the world was 'ware, = aware
And donned their crowns of crimson; flower by flower
Felt the warm breath of Morn and 'gan = began unfold
Their tender lids. Over the spangled glittering grass
Swept the swift footsteps of the lovely Light,
Turning the tears of Night to joyous gems,
Decking the earth with radiance, broidering embroidering
The sinking storm-clouds with a golden fringe,
Gilding the feathers of the palms, which waved
Glad salutation; darting beams of gold
Into the glades; touching with magic wand
The stream to rippled ruby; in the brake overgrown fields
Finding the mild eyes of the antelopes
And saying “It is day!” in nestled sleep
Touching the small heads under many a wing
And whispering, “Children, praise the light of day!”
Whereat there piped anthems of all the birds,
The koil’s Hindi: koel, the Indian cuckoo fluted song, the bulbul’s hymn,
The “morning, morning” of the painted thrush,
The twitter of the sun-birds starting forth
To find the honey ere the bees be out,
The grey crow’s caw, the parrot’s scream, the strokes
Of the green hammersmith, the myna’s chirp,
The never-finished love-talk of the doves:
Yea! and so holy was the influence
Of that high Dawn which came with victory
That, far and near, in homes of men there spread
An unknown peace. The slayer hid his knife;
The robber laid his plunder back; the shroff money-lender, archaic
Counted full tale of coins; all evil hearts
Grew gentle, kind hearts gentler, as the balm
Of that divinest Daybreak lightened Earth.
Kings at fierce war called truce; the sick men leaped
Laughing from beds of pain; the dying smiled
As though they knew that happy Morn was sprung
From fountains farther than the utmost East;
And o'er the heart of sad Yasōdhara,
Sitting forlorn at Prince Siddārtha’s bed
Came sudden bliss, as if love should not fail
Nor such vast sorrow miss to end in joy.
So glad the World was—though it wist knew not why—
That over desolate waste went swooning songs
Of mirth, the voice of bodiless Prets and Bhuts Pāḷi: Peta, Bhūta, the Departed Ones, and Ghostly Beings
Foreseeing Buddh; and Devas Lit.: bright-ones, gods in the air
Cried, “It is finished, finished!” and the priests
Stood with the wondering people in the streets
Watching those golden splendours flood the sky,
And saying “There hath happed happened some mighty thing.”
Also in Ran Forest and Jungle grew that day
Friendship amongst the creatures; spotted deer
Browsed fearless where the tigress fed her cubs,
And cheetahs lapped the pool beside the bucks; deer
Under the eagle’s rock the brown hares scoured
While his fierce beak but preened cleaned. v.l. presented; which is two syllables too long an idle wing:
The snake sunned all his jewels in the beam
With deadly fangs in sheath; the shrike a bird of prey let pass
The nestling-finch; the emerald halcyons Evidently a type of bird, but I cannot identify it further
Sate dreaming while the fishes played beneath,
Nor hawked the merops, bee-eaters though the butterflies—
Crimson and blue and amber—flitted thick
Around his perch; the Spirit of our Lord
Lay potent upon man and bird and beast,
Even while he mused under that Bodhi-tree,
Glorified with the Conquest gained for all,
And lightened by a Light greater than Day’s.
Then he arose—radiant, rejoicing, strong—
Beneath the Tree, and lifting high his voice
Spake this, in hearing of all Windows and Worlds:—
Anékajátisangsārang
Sandháwissang anibhisang
Gahakárakangawesanto
Dukkhájátipunappunang.
Gahakarakadithsi;
Punagehang nakāhasi;
Sabhátephásukhábhaggá,
Gahaktangawisang khitang;
Wisangháragatang chittang;
Tanhánangkhayamajhagá. Dhammapada 153-154. in standard transliteration: anekajātisaṁsāraṁ sandhāvissaṁ anibbisaṁ,
gahakārakaṁ gavesanto: dukkhā jāti punappunaṁ.
gahakāraka diṭṭhosi! puna gehaṁ na kāhasi:
sabbā te phāsukā bhaggā, gahakūṭaṁ visaṅkhitaṁ,
visaṅkhāragataṁ cittaṁ, taṇhānaṁ khayam-ajjhagā
Many a house of life
Hath held me—seeking ever him who wrought
These prisons of the senses, sorrow-fraught;
Sore was my ceaseless v.l. cheerless strife!
But now,
Thou builder of this tabernacle—thou!
I know thee! Never shalt thou build again
These walls of pain,
Nor raise the roof-tree of deceits, nor lay
Fresh rafters on the clay;
Broken thy house is, and the ridge-pole split!
Delusion fashioned it!
Safe pass i thence—deliverance to obtain.