Spring begins! (3/20) "Buddha in the Forest"

Andrew Olendzki (trans.), Katthaharaka Sutta: "The Buddha in the Forest" (SN 7.18), Access to Insight; Vishnu108 (DeviantArt); Dhr. Seven, Ananda (DB Meditation) (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

It's springtime for sitting outside in bliss.

Today (Sunday, March 20, 2022) is the first day of spring in this hemisphere. All things are new again. It is the first green, the privmavera, the original New Year's Day. It is time to sit like the Buddha, plunged in a green grove blissed out with a purified heart. It seems the full moon, the equinox, and the season should all coincide if our reckoning of the world were right.

[The Brahmin Bharadvaja said to the meditating Buddha:]

Deep in the bowels of a terror-filled forest,

Immersed in empty and desolate woods,

Without flinching at all, steadfast, compelling

You meditate, monk, in an exquisite way.

Where nothing is sung and nothing sounded,

Alone in the wilderness, a wood-dwelling sage,

This appears to me something remarkable:

You live in the woods, alone, glad-minded!

I'm guessing you long for the three highest heavens

There to befriend the Supreme Lord of the World.

Why else, sir, dwell in this desolate jungle,

Except to do penance for reaching Brahma?

[The Buddha replied:]

Every kind of delighting and longing,

So often attaching to all kinds of things,

Yearned for because of deep-rooted confusion —

All these, with their roots, have been vanquished by me.

Devoid of clinging, longing, and thirst,

Clearly all phenomena are seen.

Having gained the sublime, the highest awakening,

I* meditate, priest, in ripened seclusion.

[*NOTE: Though the Buddha says "I," he is not confused by his conventional speech, seeing the ultimate truth in all things regardless of what other may think or read into his choice of words. Ultimately, he is aware that there is no ego, that all is impersonal. But the Brahmin priest does not comprehend that at all, so to communicate, the Buddha uses the convention "I" in his utterance, as that is how it will look to the priest, that he, the Awakened One, is sitting in meditation as it seems.]