각성의 본질 / 목차 및 서문

The Heart of Awareness

각성의 본질

- a translation of The Ashtavakra Gita

아시타바크라 기타

by Thomas Byrom

토마스 바이롬

평역 : 푸른글

4343. 7. 16

Ashtavakra was a sage in ancient India. Ashtavakra, also spelt as Ashtaavakra in Sanskrit:अष्‍टवक्र means "eight bends". Ashta means eight. Vakra means bend or deformity.

‘아시타바크라’ 는 고대 인도의 성인으로‘8군데나 불구인 자’ 라는 뜻이다.

We are embarking on a rare journey. Man has many scriptures, but none comparable to the Gita of Ashtavakra. Before it the Vedas pale, the Upanishads speak with a weak voice. Even the Bhagavad Gita does not have the majesty found in the Ashtavakra Samhita - it is simply unparalleled. - Osho

우리들은 희귀한 여행에 배를 띄우려 하고 있다. 인류에게는 수많은 성스러운 경전들이 있지만, 이 아시타 바크라에 비할 수 있는 것은 아무 것도 없다. 이 앞에서는 '베다' 도 색이 바래고, '우파니샤드' 는 그저 힘없는 속삭임에 불과하다. 심지어 '바가바드기타' 에도 이 아시타 바크라 기타에서 발견되는 장엄함은 없다.이것은그냥비할 데가 없다고만 말할 수 있을 뿐이다. - 오쇼

Table of contents

목차

Introduction

머릿말

1. The Self

진아

2. Awareness

각성

3. Wisdom

지혜

4. The True Seeker

진정한 구도자

5. Dissolving

풀기

6. Knowledge

지식

7. The Boundless Ocean

가없는 바다

8. The Mind

마음

9. Dispassion

침착

10. Desire

욕망

11. Stillness

고요

12. Fulfillment

성취

13. Happiness

행복

14. The Fool

바보 짓

15. The Clear Space of Awareness

투명한 각성의 공간

16. Forget Everything

모든 것을 잊음

17. Beyond All

모든 것을 넘어

18. The Master

스승

19. My Own Splendor

나 자신의 광휘

20. I Am Shiva

나는 신이다

Translator's Introduction:

번역자의 소개글

The Mystery of Awareness

각성의 불가사의

I remember the moment clearly.

나는 그 순간을 또렷이 기억하고 있다.

I had escaped from my sisters, over the rocks and around the point. I was barely seven. Above me, a rough escarpment of boulders singing in the midday heat, at my feet a rock pool of perfect, inviolable stillness, and beyond, the blue vastness of the South Pacific.

암벽을 넘고 튀어나온 곳을 돌아, 내 누이들을 피해 도망쳤을 때 내 나이는 겨우 7살이었다. 내 위로는 한낮의 열기 속에서 노래하는 거친 바위들로 된 급경사면이 펼쳐져있었고, 내 발치에는 완벽한 돌 웅덩이가, 침범할 수 없는 고요함으로, 그리고 그 너머에는 남태평양의 푸른 광대함이 펼쳐져 있었다.

There was no other living creature. I was by myself, barefooted, between the cliff and the ocean.

거기에는 살아있는 생물이라고는 전혀 없었다. 나는 맨발인 채로 절벽과 대양 사이에 혼자였다.

As I squatted there, watching the reflection of the wind in the unrippled pool, hearing its exhilaration high above me in the bright emptiness of the sky, I became aware for the first time of awareness itself.

나는 거기에 쪼그리고 앉아 있다가, 잔물결하는 하나 없는 웅덩이에 바람이 부딪히는 것을 바라보고, 내 위로 아득히 펼쳐진 밝은 하늘의 텅 빔 속 들뜸을 듣다가, 처음으로 각성 그 자체에 대해 알아차렸다.

I had no name for it, but I could almost feel it, as if it had substance, like the water in the rock pool, or breath, like the shouting wind.

나는 그것에 그 어떤 이름도 붙일 수가 없었지만, 바위 웅덩이 속의 물이나 숨결처럼, 윙윙거리는 바람처럼, 마치 그것이 실체를 가진 듯, 나는 그것을 거의 느낄 수가 있었다.

I saw that I was entirely by myself in a boundless ocean of awareness.

한없는 각성의 대양 속에서 나는 전적으로 나 혼자임을 보았다.

In the same instant I understood that awareness is the single mystery of life, that it enfolds all other mysteries, even the secret of the separate self.

동시에 나는, 모든 다른 신비를 감싸고, 심지어는 따로 분리된 자아의 비밀까지도 감싸는, 각성만이 단 하나뿐인 삶의 신비임을 이해했다.

From that moment I was indelibly astonished, and I knew that all my life I would be pinching myself and asking, What is awareness? Nothing else would ever command my attention so completely. How could it? For nothing else mattered next to the constant pressure, the single compulsion of this mystery.

나는 깜짝 놀랐고, 잊을 수 없는 그 순간 이후로 나는 생애 내내 “무엇이 깨달음인가?”하는 질문으로 내 자신에 대해 꼬집고 캐묻게 되리라는 것을 알았다. 그 이후로는 한번도 그토록 완전하게 내 관심을 장악하는 것은 없었다. 그것이 가능했냐고? 물론이다. 왜냐하면 단 하나인 이 신비의 압박 외에 다른 것은 전혀 문제가 되지 않았기 때문이다.

A quarter of a century went by, and one day my teacher placed in my hands a copy of Mukerjee's edition of the Ashtavakra Gita. I had by then, in the ordinary course of my seeking, read a great deal of scripture, enough to know the truth of Ashtavakra's admonition, halfway through his own Song:

그 일이 있은 후 25년이 지난 어느 날, 나의 지도교수는 내 손에 무케르지 편집본 아시타바크라 기타 한 권을 쥐어주었다. 그때까지 통상적인 탐구 과정을 밟고 있던 나는, 수많은 경전을 뒤적거리다가, 책 중간부분에 나오는 다음과 같은 그의 노래를 읽고난 후에야, 아시타바크라 기타가 충고하는 진리에 대해 충분히 알게 되었다.

My child, you can talk about holy books all you like. But until you forget everything, you will never find yourself.

사랑하는 아들아, 너는 네가 좋아하는 모든 성스러운 경전들에 대해 이야기할 수는 있을 것이다. 하지만 네가 모든 것을 놓아버리기 전에는 너는 결코 자기 자신을 발견하지는 못할 것이다.

Understanding the vanity of scripture, I hardly expected Ashtavakra to solve in a single epiphany the mystery of awareness.

경전의 무의미함을 이해한 나는, 각성의 불가사의를 비이원론 안에서 풀기 위하여 아시타바크라에 전적으로 매달렸다.

And yet, as I read his spare and simple verses, I felt that here at last were words which in some measure consumed my astonishment. They spoke so directly, and so modestly. They seemed so austere, and yet so generous. I found myself once more a child of seven, tipped between the sea and the sky, but hearing now in the wind's exuberance a clearer music, touching the heart of the mystery.

그리고 아직도 나는 여전히 그가 쓴 시의 여백과 소박한 구절들을 읽으면, 그 속에 내 마음에 사무치게 맺힌 경이로운 소절들이 있음을 느낀다. 그의 말은 아주 직설적이면서도 아주 겸손하다. 그리고 아주 소박해 보이면서도 넉넉하다. (아시타바크라를 읽으면) 나는 다시 한번 바다와 하늘 사이에 놓여있던 7살 그때로 돌아간 내 자신을 발견한다. 하지만 지금은 바람의 의기양양함 속에서 신비의 가슴을 만지는 음악을 더 선명하게 듣는다.

What is the rising or the vanishing of thought? What is the visible world, or the invisible? What is the little soul, or God Himself?

생각의 출현 또는 소멸이란 무엇인가? 보이는 세상 또는 보이지 않는 세상이란 무엇인가? 작은 영혼 또는 창조주 그 자신이란 무엇인가?

Awareness. Pure awareness. The clear space, the sky, the heart of awareness.

나아가 각성. 순수한 각성은 무엇이며 투명한 공간, 하늘, 각성의 본질이란 무엇인가?

Ashtavakra's words begin after almost everything else has been said. They barely touch the page. They are often on the point of vanishing. They are the first melting of the snow, high in the mountains, a clear stream flowing over smooth and shining pebbles. Theirs is the radiance of the winter sky above Trishul, Kailash, Annapurna. My satguru, Neem Karoli Baba, called the Ashtavakra Gita 'the purest of scriptures'. All its beauty is in the transparency, its enraptured and flawless purity.

아시타바크라의 말은 다른 모든 것들이 거의 말해진 후부터 시작된다. 그 말은 간신히 페이지를 건드린다. 그의 말은 대개가 사라짐의 요점에 대한 것이다. 그의 말은 높은 산에서 녹은 첫눈이며, 매끈하고 빛나는 자갈들 위로 흐르는 맑은 시냇물이다. 그것들은 트리슐, 카일라시, 안나푸르나 산 위로 펼쳐진 겨울 하늘의 빛이다.

나의 스승이신 '님 까롤리 바바'께서는 아시타바크라 기타를 ‘가장 순수한 성스러운 경전’이라 부르셨다. 이 경전의 아름다움은 모두 투명함과 그것의 황홀하고 흠 없는 순수성에 있다.

It is written as a dialogue between King Janaka, the father of Sita, and his guru, Ashtavakra. But this is just a literary device, unsupported by any internal drama, and I have done away with it in my version. The Gita has only one voice, Ashtavakra's, a voice of singular compassion and uncompromised clarity.

이 경전은 자나카 왕과 라마(Rama)왕의 아내인 시타(Ramayana) 그리고 그의 스승(guru) 아시타바크라 사이에 나눈 대화의 형식으로 적혀져 있다. 하지만 이것은 그 어떤 내적인 드라마도 뒷받침되지 않는 단지 문학적 장치에 지나지 않을 뿐이다. 그래서 나는 과감하게 내 번역본에서는 그것들을 빼어버리기로 했다. 기타에는 오직 아시타바크라 한 사람의 목소리밖에 없다. 그 목소리는 독특한 연민의 소리이며 타협하지 않는 명료성의 소리이다.

He is not concerned to argue. This is not speculative philosophy. It is a kind of knowledge. Ashtavakra speaks as a man who has already found his way and now wishes to share it. His song is a direct and practical transcript of experience, a radical account of ineffable truths.

그는 논쟁에는 관심이 없다. 이것은 추측에서 나온 철학이 아니다. 이것은 일종의 지혜다. 아시타바크라는 이미 그의 길을 찾은 한 사람의 인간으로서 말한다. 그리고 이제 그는 그것을 나누기를 원한다. 그의 노래는 직설적이고 사실에 근거한 경험의 구술이며 형언할 수 없는 진리들에 대한 철저한 기록이다.

He speaks, moreover, in a language that is for all its modesty physical and direct. He is not abstract, though some translations, laboring to render his special terms faithfully, make him sound difficult, even abstruse.

그는 추상적이지 않다. 비록 어떤 번역에서는, 그의 특별한 용어를 너무 충실하게 표현하려고 너무 애쓰다보니 그의 말이 어렵게 들릴지 모르지만 그의 말은 심지어 심원한 것을 표현할 때에도 추상적이지 않다.

On the contrary, Ashtavakra is very simple.

그와는 정반대로, 아시타바크라는 아주 단순하다.

We are all one Self. The Self is pure awareness. This Self, this flawless awareness is God. There is only God.

Everything else is an illusion: the little self, the world, the universe. All these things arise with the thought 'I', that is, with the idea of separate identity. The little 'I' invents the material world, which in our ignorance we strive hard to sustain. Forgetting our original oneness, bound tightly in our imaginary separateness, we spend our lives mastered by a specious sense of purpose and value. Endlessly constrained by our habit of individuation, the creature of preference and desire, we continually set one thing against another, until the mischief and misery of choice consume us.

But our true nature is pure and choiceless awareness. We are already and always fulfilled.

It is easy, says Ashtavakra. You are the clear space of awareness (cidakasa), pure and still, in whom there is no birth, no striving, no 'I'.

Then how do we recover our original awareness? How do we dispel the illusion of separation?

Some commentators suppose that Ashtavakra is really not concerned to answer these questions. For them, this Gita is a transcendent confession too pure to be useful. Others see it as earnestly didactic, a manual of conduct. Both are right. Ashtavakra is indeed wild, playful, utterly absorbed in the Self. Since words are of the mind, which arises only to obscure awareness, words are indeed folly. And who would teach folly?

Ashtavakra would. His is an eminently compassionate and practical madness. Even while cutting the ground from under our feet, he shows us at every turn what to do. With a crazy solicitude, he tells us how to end our Self-estrangement.

Be happy. Love yourself. Don't judge others. Forgive. Always be simple. Don't make distinctions. Give up the habit of choice. Let the mind dissolve. Give up preferring and desiring. Desire only your own awareness. Give up identifying with the body and the senses. Give up your attachment to meditation and service. Give up your attachment to detachment.

Give up giving up! Reject nothing, accept nothing. Be still. But above all, be happy. In the end, you will find yourself just by knowing how things are.

It would be perverse and humorless to suppose that just because Ashtavakra, with his irreducible nondualism, considers meditation merely a distracting habit, he means us to abandon our practice. Of course, from the perspective of unconditional freedom, where nothing makes any difference, meditation seems a comically self-important waste of time. But Ashtavakra makes it plain.

The moment a fool gives up his spiritual practices, he falls prey to fancies and desires.

God help the seeker who presumes that since he is already and always fulfilled, he can give up trying.

It is all a matter of knowing. We are all indeed already perfect, but until we know it, we had better deal with our ignorance, and that can't be done just by listening to words. It requires sadhana, trying, doing what we do not wish to do. It means long, hard self-effacing work.

The heart of Ashtavakra's advice is not to give up our practice, but to abandon our strenuous indolence.

Striving is the root of sorrow, he says. But who understands this?

Look at the master, he says. Who is lazier? He has trouble even blinking! He certainly does not run around puffing himself up looking for God or liberation, busily making excuses for not finding himself.

Dealing with our ignorance also means, for almost all of us, finding someone like Ashtavakra to help us. We cannot easily break the spell ourselves. Here again, Ashtavakra is very practical. At least half of the book describes the nature of the master, the man who has found his way.

It is an austere and enchanting portrait. The master is a child, a fool, a man asleep, a leaf tumbling in the wind. Inside, he is utterly free. He does exactly as he pleases. Rules mean nothing to him. He doesn't care who makes fun of him, because he is always playing and having a wonderful time. He lives as if he had no body. He seems to walk on air. He is unsmudged, like the clear sky or the smooth and shining surface of a vast lake.

Because we are subject to the dualities which he has transcended, we glimpse his nature only through paradox. He sees but he sees nothing. He sees what cannot be seen. He knows but he knows nothing. He sleeps soundly without sleeping. He dreams without dreaming. He is busy, but he does nothing. He is not alive, nor is he dead.

His secret, and the ultimate paradox, is that he stands on his own. He is completely by himself (svasthya). Only by an absolute indepence (svatantrya) has he discovered his absolute oneness with all things.

Who was this Ashtavakra, this uncompromising poet and saint?

Since Ashtavakra's whole point is that individual identity is an illusion, it is perfect irony that the only certain thing we can say about him is that he was not Ashtavakra. He was an anonymous master who adopted Ashtavakra's character as he found it represented in a number of tales in classical Indian literature, and used it as a suitably faceless mask through which to deliver his gospel of self-effacement.

The best known tale, in the Mahabharata, explains how he got his name, which means 'eight twists'. When still in his mother's womb, Ashtavakra overheard his father Kahoda reciting the Vedas. Though still an unborn he already knew the scriptures, and hearing his father's mistakes, he called out to correct him. Kahoda was insulted and cursed him, and in due course he was born with deformed limbs.

Some years later, at the court of Janaka, Kahoda engaged in a debate with the great scholar Bandin, son of King Varuna. He was defeated, and Bandin had him drowned.

When Ashtavakra was twelve he discovered what had happened. He went at once to Janaka's court where he beat Bandin in a debate. Bandin then explained that his father had not been drowned, but had been banished to the bottom of the sea to serve King Varuna. He released Kahoda, who wished at once to lift the curse from his son. He told Ashtavakra to bathe in the river Samanga. When he came out of the water, his body was straight.

There is another story about him in the Vishnu Purana. As Ashtavakra was performing penances under water, celestial nymphs gathered and sang for him. He was so delighted, he gave them a boon: they would all marry Krishna. But when he came out of the water, the nymphs saw his deformities and made fun of him. Ashtavakra added a curse to the boon: after their marriage they would all fall into the hands of robbers. And so it happened. They all married Krishna, but after his death, despite the efforts of Arjuna, they were all carried off by robbers.

The moral of both stories is, of course, that even the ugliest form is filled with God's radiance. The body is nothing, the Self is everything. There may be, as well, some notion of the sacrificial value of deformity, of the kind we find in Saint Augustine when he remarks of the breaking of Christ's body on the cross 'his deformity forms you.'

So the Ashtavakra Gita was written by an unknown master who took his inspiration from the contest between Ashtavakra and Bandin, which Ashtavakra wins by demonstrating the absolute oneness of God (brahmadavaitam).

Though he casts his verses as a debate, there is, as I have said, no real dialogue. Only one voice is heard, speaking through the assumed character and with the borrowed yet potent authority and special facelessness of Ashtavakra. And it is entirely appropriate that the real master of the Gita remain forever unknown since, as he has Ashtavakra say of himself, for what he has become there is no name.

We not only know next to nothing about him, we cannot even be sure when he lived. Sanskrit was so static, especially after Panini's account of it became prescriptive, a little before Christ, that its literature is hard to date on linguistic evidence alone. Since we have only the slimmest literary, historical, or philosophical evidence besides, it is very hard to date the Ashtavakra Gita with any accuracy.

Indian editors usually argue, with some sentimentality, that it was written in the same age as or just before the Bhagavad Gita, which they date to the fifth of fourth century B.C.E., but they generally agree that the Ashtavakra Gita comes a good deal later still. Without rehearsing the arguments, we may safely guess that it was written either in the eighth century by a follower of Shankara, or in the fourteenth century during a resurgence of Shankara's teaching. As a distillation of monastic Vedanta, it certainly has all the marks of Shankara's purification of ancient Shaivism.

인도 편집자들은 약간의 감상벽으로 인해 흔히 논쟁하는데, 그것은 그 글이 기원전 4세기 중반에 쓰여진 것으로 추정되는, 바가바드기타와 동시대에 쓰여진 글인지 그 전에 쓰여진 글인가 하는 것이다. 하지만 그들도 대체적으로 아시타바크라 기타가 훨씬 뒤에 출현한 것에는 동의하고 있다. 선입견 없이 논의한다면, 우리는 아시타바크라 기타가 아마도 8세기 경 상카라[주:인도 베단타 학파의 철학자]의 추종자에 의해 쓰여졌거나 혹은 14세기 상카라 철학의 부흥기에 쓰여졌다고 무방하게 추정할 수 있을 것이다. 그리고 베단타 수도원의 정수(精髓)로서 고대 시바신 숭배의 상카라적 정화의 모든 흔적들임이 분명하다.

Ashtavakra ends his Gita with a litany of self-dismissive questions, all of them utterly rhetorical.

아시타바크라는 경멸적인 자아[ego]에 대해 질문하는 일련의 설명으로 그의 설법[Gita]을 끝낸다.

What is good or evil? Life or death? Freedom or bondage? Illusion or the world? Creation or dissolution? The Self or the not-Self?

무엇이 선이고 무엇이 악인가? 무엇이 삶이고 무엇이 죽음인가? 무엇이 해탈이고 무엇이 속박인가? 무엇이 환상이고 무엇이 세상인가? 무엇이 창조이고 무엇이 소멸인가? 무엇이 진정한 자아이고 무엇이 진정한 자아가 아닌가?

The Sanskrit literally asks 'where?' rather than 'what?'

산스크리트어에서는 문자 그대로 ‘무엇?’ 보다는 ‘어디'라고 묻는다.

Where is the little soul, or God Himself?

작은 영혼 혹은 창조주 자신이 어디에 존재하는가?

Within the ever-fulfilled and ubiquitous Self there is no place for these or any distinctions.

영원토록 다 이루어져있고 어디에나 있는 진정한 나[眞我] 속에는 그런 것들이나 그 어떤 차별을 위한 자리도 없다.

There is no place even for spiritual enquiry. Who is the seeker? Ashtavakra asks. What has he found? What is seeking and the end of seeking? These final questions dissolve even the voice which asks them. Who is the disciple, and who the master? With this last gesture of self-erasure, the nameless master is finally free to declare his real identity, which he shares unconditionally with all beings.

심지어 그것이 영적인 질문이라 할지라도 거기엔 자리할 곳이 없다. ‘누가 찾는 자인가?’ 하고 아시타바크라는 묻는다. 그리고 ‘무엇을 그가 깨닫는단 말인가?’ ‘구도란 무엇이며 구도의 끝은 무엇인가?’ 이어서 묻는다. 이러한 최종적인 질문들은 거기에 대해 묻는 질문마저 녹여버린다. ‘누가 스승이고 누가 제자란 말인가?’ 자기 자신이 지워져버린 이 마지막 몸짓과 함께, 이름이 사라진 스승은 마침내 자유롭게, 그가 모든 존재들과 더불어 무조건으로 나눌, 그의 진정한 정체[本來面目]를 분명하게 선포한다.

For I have no bounds.

나에게서는 그 어떤 한계도 없네.

I am Shiva.

나는 창조와 파괴의 신이네.

Nothing arises in me,

In whom nothing is single,

Nothing is double.

내 안의 그 자리에서는

아무 일도 일어나지 않았네.

거기에는

아무 것도 홀로 존재하지도 않고,

쌍으로도 존재하지 않네.

Nothing is,

Nothing is not.

존재도 없고,

비존재도 없네.

What more is there to say?

거기에무슨 말을 더하리?

Some years ago, when we first settled in our ashram in Florida, we used to go out riding in the very early morning. My teacher always insisted that we take with us a much-thumbed, broken-backed but well-loved copy of the Ashtavakra Gita. We would saddle our horses before dawn and ride out along the banks of the Sebastian River. I remember the frost glazing the water, the ghostly breath of the horses, and on the western horizon the thin crescent of a Shiva moon. Once, looking back when the horses shied, I saw a panther standing in our tracks, silent and unafraid, smelling our voices.

몇 년 전, 우리가 플로리다에 있는 우리의 아쉬람[寺院]에 처음 정착했을 때, 우리는 이른 아침마다 말을 타고 산책을 나가곤 했다. 나의 스승은 그때마다 아주 손때가 많이 묻고 뒷 표지가 떨어져나갔지만 아주 사랑받았던 아시타바크라 기타 복사본을 우리가 산책 나갈 때 함께 가져가야 한다고 고집했다. 우리는 동이트기 전에 말에 안장을 얹어서 말을 타고는 세바스찬 강변의 둑을 따라 산책하곤 했다. 나는 그때의 수면 위 살얼음과 환청 같던 말들의 숨소리 그리고 시바 신의 달인 서쪽 지평선의 가는 초승달을 아직도 기억한다. 그리고 한번은 말들이 겁을 먹어 돌아보았다가, 나는 한 동료가 우리가 지나온 길에 서서, 우리의 목소리를 들이마시며, 두려움 없이 침묵을 지키고 서있는 것을 보았다.

Just before the sun came up we would dismount and, gathering frosted palm fans and handfuls of oak duff, make a fire. And as the sun rose above the bright water we read aloud from the Gita.

해가 막 떠오르기 직전이면 우리는 말에서 내려, 서리 내린 야자나무 잎과 한 줌의 참나무 쭉정이를 모아 불을 피우곤 했다. 그리고 해가 눈부신 수면 위로 떠오르면 우리는 힘차게 소리 내어 아시타바크라 기타를 읽었다.

It is easy.

그것은 쉽네.

God made all things.

There is only God.

하나님께서 모든 것을 만드셨고

오직 하나님만이 존재하시네.

When you know this

Desire melts away.

그대 이것을 알면

욕망은 녹아 사라지리.

Clinging to nothing,

You become still. . . .

아무 것에도 집착하지 않으면

그대 고요하리.

Thomas Byrom

토마스 바이롬

Kashi Foundation

카시 재단

July 1989

1989년 7월

영어원문출처

http://bhagavan-ramana.org/ashtavakragita2.html

http://itisnotreal.com/gpage1.html