Mike Cross: Aśvaghoṣa's Gold

Buddhacarita - 201
jaigīṣavyo ’tha janako vṛddhaś caiva parāśaraḥ /
imaṁ panthānam āsādya muktā hy anye ca mokṣiṇaḥ // 12.67 //
For Jaigīṣavya, ‘Son of Ambition,’ and Janaka, ‘The Begetter’, as well as Vṛddha Parāśara, ‘The
Old Crusher,’ / By realizing this path in their sitting, 625 were liberated – as were other
liberation-seekers, being different. 626 “ //12.67//
iti tasya sa tad-vākyaṁ gṛhītvā tu vicārya ca /
pūrva-hetu-bala-prāptaḥ pratyuttaram uvāca ha // 12.68 //
But [the bodhisattva], having taken in these words of the other, and reflected on them this way
and that, / Being possessed of the power of previous causes, spoke up in reply: //12.68//
śrutaṁ jñānam idaṁ sūkṣmaṁ parataḥ parataḥ śivam /
kṣetra-jñasyāparityāgād avaimy etad anaiṣṭhikam // 12.69 //
“I have listened to this wisdom of yours, which grows more subtle stage by stage, and more
wholesome, / But insofar as the Knower of the Field is not abandoned, I see this wisdom as short
of the ultimate. //12.69//
vikāra-prakṛtibhyo hi kṣetra-jñaṁ muktam apy aham /
manye prasava-dharmāṇaṁ bīja-dharmāṇam eva ca // 12.70 //
For, I consider ‘the Knower of the Field,’ even when freed from ‘the Transformed and the
Primary,’ / To be engendering in nature and to be, in its very nature, a seed. //12.70//
viśuddho yady api hy ātmā nirmukta iti kalpyate /
bhūyaḥ pratyaya-sad-bhāvād amuktaḥ sa bhaviṣyati // 12.71 //
For even if the pure self 627 – ‘the soul’ – is declared to have been released, / Once again, as long
as the grounds exist, it will become not released. //12.71//
ṛtu-bhūmy-ambu-virahād yathā bījaṁ na rohati /
rohati pratyayais tais tais tadvat so ’pi mato mama // 12.72 //
Just as, in the absence of season, soil and water, a seed does not grow, / But does rise up when
those various causal grounds are present, so also, as I see it, does [‘the soul.’] 628 //12.72//
625
Meanings of ā-√sad include 1. to meet with, reach, realize; and 2. to sit, sit near.
626
As in so many previous instances, anye (others) in its hidden meaning suggests real individuals, who do
not conform to easy assumptions or idealistic expectations.
627
By viśuddhaḥ... ātmā, the pure self, the bodhisattva indicates that he has in view not the self we refer to
in everyday speech but the self as philosophical or religious abstraction, the soul.
628
Ostensibly the bodhisattva thus recognizes the existence of a soul. But in the real meaning, what he
recognizes is the arising in people's deluded minds of a concept.