Saraha

Saraha

 

Saraha

(Saraha was born to a Brahmin family in Bengal when Buddhism was strongly supported by the court of the region. Saraha became a Buddhist monk and a noted scholar. However, he was expelled from his monastic order, some stories say for drinking alcohol.

He took to the life of a mendicant, a solitary spiritual wanderer. He became the disciple of a Buddhist master of Tantra and Kundalini practices.

Eventually Saraha met a young woman. She was of the low arrowsmith caste. He watched her intently forming each arrow, her gaze steady and not wandering to the left or the right. Saraha saw these actions symbolic of non-dual awareness.

This woman shared similar spiritual aspirations, and the two were married. The couple travelled to holy locations, and cemeteries (considered good places for meditation and confronting the reality of death in the Tantric tradition). Since he could no longer support himself as a begging holy man, Saraha took up the trade of his wife's caste -- an arrow-smith. The name Saraha, in fact, refers to the making of arrows (or, more esoterically, it can be translated as "one who aims through the heart of duality").

The couple meditated deeply together and, it is said, they attained enlightenment together.

As a "fallen" monk, however, Saraha was denounced before the royal court. In his defense, Saraha recited a series of spontaneous realization songs, The Three Cycles of Doha. These songs became famous throughout Bengal, and he was widely acclaimed to be a legitimately realized sage.

Saraha began the Buddhist lineage that led to Naropa, Marpa, and Milarepa.

'One death we are already familiar with, that death in which the body dies – but our ego and mind go on living. This same ego finds a new womb. This same ego, troubled by new desires, again starts off on the journey. Even before leaving behind one body, it is already eager for another. This death is not the real death.' Osho)

Saraha’s Thoughts

Saraha British Museum

The whole world is enslaved by the appearance of things, and no one understands his true nature.”

Do not discriminate, but see things as one

Here there is no beginning, no middle, no end, neither saṃsāra [delusion] nor nirvāṇa [release]. In this state of highest bliss, there is neither self nor other.

“I have visited in my wanderings shrines and other places of pilgrimage. But I have not seen another shrine blissful like my own body.

[Hindu deities] Brahmā and Viṣṇu and all the three worlds return Here to their Source. .. Know the taste of this flavor which consists in absence of knowledge…. ...  … It is free from conceits, a state of perfect bliss in which existence has its origin…. ...  Where intellect is destroyed, where mind dies and self-centeredness is lost. Why encumber yourself there with meditation? ...   Abandon thought and thinking and be just as a child. Be devoted to your master’s teaching, and the Innate will become manifest.”

 “The whole world is tormented by words… But insofar as one is free from words does one really understand words.”

“Do not sit at home, do not go to the forest, but recognize mind wherever you are. When one abides in complete and perfect enlightenment, where is saṃsāra and where is nirvāṇa?”

“Do not err in this matter of self and other. Everything is Buddha without exception.”

Life of Saraha

He was born in a Brahmin family in East India. He studied Brahminic literature and became a famous scholar. He had faith in Buddhist Tantra and was practicing it along with Brahmanism. As a tantric, he was allowed to drink alcohol which restored energy in physical body. He was accused by Brahmins of drinking and appealed to the court of the king. He freed himself from the ordeals imposed on him by the king. After the judgment, the king acquitted him of drinking alcohol. He even ordered the Brahmins to drink alcohol if they could perform the feats that Sarahapa did.

After this bad incident, he left for Nalanda and took ordination. He deeply learnt Sutra and Tantra. He strove to preserve and promote the Buddha's teachings.

After some time, he fled to South India in search of a qualified consort who would help him in practicing Tantra. He adopted a daughter of a arrow-smith as a consort who was making arrows. He used to roam from village to village selling arrows with her consort. His name, therefore, became Saraha, the arrow shooter.

When 12 years of meditation were over, he still did not attain perfection. He was inclined to leave for the mountain solitude. His consort advised him saying, "physical solitude itself will not bring you liberation so long as the seeker and the sought do not dissolve (fuse) in the inner solitude of your mind." By the realization of the' contents of the utterance Saraha suddenly attained perfection.

  

The Royal Song of Saraha

i bow down to noble manjusri
i bow down to him who has conquered the finite

as calm water lashed by wind
turns into waves and rollers,
so the king thinks of saraha
in many ways, although one man.
 
though the house-lamps have been lit,
the blind live on in the dark.
though spontaneity is all-encompassing and close,
to the deluded it remains always far away.

though there may be many rivers, they are one in the sea,
though there may be many lies, one truth will conquer all.
when one sun appears, the dark,
however deep, will vanish.

to a fly that likes the smell of putrid
meat, the fragrance of sandalwood is foul.
beings who discard nirvana
covet coarse samsara's realm.

like salt sea water that turns
sweet when drunk up by the clouds,
so a firm mind that works for others turns
the poison of sense-objects into nectar.

Saraha

Saraha was one of the Maha-siddhas, and is considered to be one of the founders of Buddhist Vajrayana, and particularly of the Mahamudra tradition. His dohas (couplets) are compiled in Dohakośha, the 'Treasury of Rhyming Couplets'are assigned to him. The script used in his dohas (Couplets) shows close resemblance with the present Oriya script which implies that Sarahapa has compiled his literature in the earlier language which has similarity with both Oriya language and Angika language (part of Maithili language).

In the opinion of Rahul Sankrtyayana, Saraha was the earliest Siddha  and the first poet of Oriya, Angika and Hindi literature . According to him, Saraha was a student of Haribhadra, who was in turn a disciple of Shanta-rakshita, the noted Buddhist scholar who traveled to Tibet. As Śhānta-rakṣita is known to have lived in the mid-8th century from Tibetan historical sources and Haribhadra was a contemporary of Pāla king Dharmapala(770 – 815 CE). Sarahapāda must have lived in the late 8th century or early 9th century CE. 

HOMAGE TO ARYA-MANJUSRI!
Homage to the destroyer of demonic power!

Many lamps are lit in the house,

But the blind are still in darkness;
Sahaja is all-pervasive
But the fool cannot see what is under his nose.

Clouds draw water from the ocean to fall as rain on the earth
And there is neither increase nor decrease;
Just so, reality remains unaltered like the pure sky.

Forsaking bliss the fool roams abroad,
Hoping for mundane pleasure;
Your mouth is full of honey now,
Swallow it while you may!

Fools attempt to avoid their suffering,
The wise enact their pain.
Drink the cup of sky-nectar
While others hunger for outward appearances.

Flies eat filth, spurning the fragrance of sandalwood;
Man lost to nirvana furthers his own confusion,
Thirsting for the coarse and vulgar.

Salt sea water absorbed by clouds turns sweet;
The venom of passionate reaction
In a strong and selfless mind becomes elixir.

Saraha: 

One of the earliest, wisest Buddhist Tantra mahasiddha-sages

As a principal figure among the fabled “84 Mahāsiddhas” or “Great Adepts” of early Tantric Buddhism, Saraha has some colorful hagiographical anecdotes circulating about him.

He is depicted as a brāhmaṇ of eastern India, probably Beṅgal; one account has him as “Paṇḍit Rāhul Badra” of Bhagalpūr, another puts him at Roli, in the city-state of “Rajnī.” After studying ancestral traditions, he went on to become a Buddhist monk and scholar. It is said that he resided for a time at the great Nālandā and Vikramaśīla monastic universities. Influenced by Tantrism, he left monastic life to roam as a yogi in simple white cotton garb.“I don’t drink.” Saraha then takes up with a very young woman of a lower-caste arrow-smith family and joins her as a maker of arrows. In most accounts, her counsel is what helps him realize the intrinsically pure nature of Awareness, the Mahāmudrā “Great Gesture/Seal” of Enlightenment.

His name Saraha means “pierce-arrow,” and he is usually shown in Tibetan art holding an arrow, suggesting the penetrating clarity of one fully awake to Source-Awareness who now lucidly dreams the dream of life.

 Saraha is said to be the first poet of the Hindī and Angikā vernacular languages.

Saraha’s Thoughts

The whole world is enslaved by the appearance of things, and no one understands his true nature.”

Do not discriminate, but see things as one

Here there is no beginning, no middle, no end, neither saṃsāra [delusion] nor nirvāṇa [release]. In this state of highest bliss, there is neither self nor other.

“I have visited in my wanderings shrines and other places of pilgrimage. But I have not seen another shrine blissful like my own body.

Excerpt from The Tantra Experience

"Tantra says: Don’t avoid sex and don’t avoid death. That’s why Saraha went to the cremation ground to meditate - not to avoid death. And he went with the arrow-smith woman to live a life of healthy, full sex, of optimum sex. On the cremation ground, living with a woman, these two centers had to be relaxed: death and sex. Once you accept death and you are not afraid of it, once you accept sex and you are not afraid of it, your two lower centers are relaxed. 

And those are the two lower centers which have been damaged by the society, badly damaged. Once they are relieved…. The other five centers are not damaged. There is no need to damage them because people don’t live in those other five centers. These two centers are naturally available. Birth has happened: the sex center, muladhar. And death is going to happen: svadhishthan, the second center. These two things are there in everybody’s life, so society has destroyed both centers and tried to manipulate man, dominate man, through these two things. 

Tantra says: Meditate while you make love, meditate while somebody dies; go, watch, see. Sit by the side of a dying man. Feel, participate in his death. Go in deep meditation with the dying man. And when a man is dying there is a possibility to have a taste of death, because when a man is dying he releases so much energy from the svadhishthan chakra…. He has to release because he is dying. The whole repressed energy on the svadhishthan chakra will be released because he is dying; without releasing it he will not be able to die. So when a man dies or a woman dies, don’t miss the opportunity. If you are close by to a dying man, sit silently, meditate silently. When the man dies, in a sudden burst the energy will be all over, and you can have a taste of death. And that will give you a great relaxation. Yes, death happens, but nobody dies. Yes, death happens, but in fact death never happens. 

While making love, meditate so that you can know that something of samadhi penetrates into sexuality. And while meditating on death, go deep into it so that you can see that something of the deathless enters into death. These two experiences will help you to go upwards very easily. The other five centers fortunately are not destroyed; they are perfectly in tune, just energy has to move through them. If these first two centers are helped, energy starts moving. So let death and love be your two objects of meditation."

The nature of beginning and end is here and now,
And the first does not exist without the last;
The rational fool conceptualizing the inconceivable
Separates emptiness from compassion.

The bee knows from birth
That flowers are the source of honey;
How can the fool know
That samsara and nirvana are one?

Flowers' fragrance is intangible
Yet its reality pervades the air,
Just as mandala circles are informed
By a formless presence.

Mind immaculate by nature is untouched
By samsara and nirvana's mud;
But just like a jewel lost in a swamp
Though it retains its lustre it does not shine.

Brihma Vishnu Mahesgwara

[Hindu deities] Brahmā and Viṣṇu and all the three worlds return Here to their Source. .. Know the taste of this flavor which consists in absence of knowledge…. ...  … It is free from conceits, a state of perfect bliss in which existence has its origin…. ...  Where intellect is destroyed, where mind dies and self-centeredness is lost. Why encumber yourself there with meditation? ...   Abandon thought and thinking and be just as a child. Be devoted to your master’s teaching, and the Innate will become manifest.”

When you do not recognize the Supreme One in yourself, how should you gain this incomparable form [of the Supreme Lord]? I have taught that when error ceases, you know yourself for what you are. ...  …It is this supreme bliss that pours forth unceasingly as existence…. Know but the pure and perfect state! ...  He is at home, but she goes outside and looks…. Saraha says, O fool, know yourself. It is not a matter of meditation, or concentration, or the reciting of mantras. ...  … Enjoying the world of sense, one is undefiled by the world of sense. One plucks the lotus without touching the water. So the yogin who has gone to the root of things is not enslaved by the senses although he enjoys them. ..

As mental sloth increases pure awareness diminishes;
As mental sloth increases suffering also grows.
Shoots sprout from the seed and leaves from the branches.

Separating unity from multiplicity in the mind
The light grows dim and we wander in the lower realms;
Who is more deserving of pity than he
Who walks into fire with his eyes wide open?

Like a

brahmin taking rice and butter
Offering sacrifice to the flame,
He who visualizes material things as celestial ambrosia
Deludes himself that a dream is ultimate reality.

Teaching that virtue is irrelevant to intrinsic awareness,
He mistakes the lock for the key;
Ignorant of the true nature of the gem
The fool calls green glass emerald.

His mind takes brass for gold,
Momentary peak experience for reality accomplished;
Clinging to the joy of ephemeral dreams
He calls his short-thrift life Eternal Bliss.

Like befuddled deer leaping into a mirage of water
Deluded fools in their ignorance cling to outer forms
And with their thirst unslaked, bound and confined,
They idealise their prison, pretending happiness.

Now there is a lamp lit in spiritual darkness
Healing the splits riven by the intellect
So that all mental defilements are erased.
Who can define the nature of detachment?

It cannot be denied nor yet affirmed,
And ungraspable it is inconceivable.
Through conceptualisation fools are bound,
While concept-free there is immaculate sahaja.

The concepts of unity and multiplicity do not bring integration;
Only through awareness do sentient beings reach freedom.
Cognition of radiance is strong meditation;
Abide in a calm, quiescent mind.

Reaching the joy swollen land
Powers of seeing expand,
And there is joy and laughter;
Even chasing objects there is no separation.

Like pigs we wallow in this sensual mire
But what can stain our pearly mind?
Nothing can ever contaminate it,
And by nothing can we ever be bound.

“The whole world is tormented by words… But insofar as one is free from words does one really understand words.”

“Do not sit at home, do not go to the forest, but recognize mind wherever you are. When one abides in complete and perfect enlightenment, where is saṃsāra and where is nirvāṇa?”

“Do not err in this matter of self and other. Everything is Buddha without exception.”

……………………..