meditation 109

In one's consciousness,

liberation and bondage

are merely reflections —

like the reflections of the sun in water.

These words —

(liberation and bondage) —

are there to terrify

the ignorant.

I am really neither

bound

nor free.

*

Note:

Whereas Lakshmanjoo and Hughes as well as Lakshmanjoo and Muju correlate the 109th dhāraṇā with verse 135 of the scripture, Singh correlates it with verse 134.

Swamiji and Panditji's original reads as follows:

Liberation and bondage are merely reflections in one's consciousness, like the reflection of sun in water. These words (liberation and bondage) are there to terrify the ignorant. I am really neither bound nor free.

In The Manual of Self-Liberation, Swamiji emphasizes that the reflections of the sun here are like those reflected variously in multiple pools or streams of still or moving waters.

Singh's notes on the verse are clarifying.

I find it interesting that the preeminent Song dynasty Neo-Cunfucian, Chu Hsi (Zhu Xi; 1130–1200), employed a similar simile to somewhat similarly illustrate a somewhat similar point: Ultimately, for the Metaphysical person, the Supreme Ultimate, though found in all things, is not cut up into pieces. Rather, it is like the one moon's reflection in ten thousand streams. Whereas for the Non-Metaphysical person, it is not.

(Leibniz knew his Chu Hsi, and his system reflects Chu's—as well as those of some Buddhisms: a case of Silk Road contagion?)

In this verse, the scripture veers into the use of apophatic rhetoric (i.e., I am neither bound nor free) to seem more relevant to the collapse of conventional logic and semantics that takes place when these two structures of mentation are confronted with the impossibility of saying the unsayable.

Swami Lakshmanjoo classifies this way as Shakta-upaya, or the method of Energy.

*

An aside:

Laura Makabresku's photographic image was inspired by the Hans Christian Andersen tale The Wild Swans (De vilde svaner).

The story tells of a golden-tressed maiden whose brothers had been transformed into swans.

She set forth to rescue them.

One morning . . .

when she awoke, the sun was high in the heavens; yet she could not see it, for the lofty trees spread their branches thickly over her head; but like a golden mist, here and there, its beams were glancing through the leaves.

There was a sweet fragrance from the fresh green verdure, and the birds almost perched upon her shoulders. She heard water rippling from a number of springs, all flowing into a lake with golden sands.

Bushes grew thickly round the lake, and at one spot a deer had made an opening, through which Eliza went down to the water.

The lake was so clear that, had not the wind rustled the branches of the trees and the bushes, so that they moved, they would have appeared as if painted in the depths of the lake; for every leaf was reflected in the water, whether it stood in the shade or the sunshine. . . .