Song of Freedom, Sutta Nipala Uraga, The Serpent

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The verses of this ancient book are a challenging call to us to leave behind

the narrow confines of our imprisoned existence with its ever-growing walls of

accumulated habits of life and thought. They beckon us to free ourselves from

the enslavement to our passions and to our thousand little whims and wishes.

 

Once we have settled down in our habitual ways of living and thinking, we feel

less and less inclined to give them up for the sake of risky ventures into a

freedom of life and thought full of dangers and uncertainties.

 

True freedom places on us the uncomfortable burden of ever-fresh responsible

decisions, which have to be guided by mindfulness, wisdom and human sympathy.

 

-- a monk gives up the here and the beyond, just as a serpent sheds its

worn-out skin.

 

The shedding of the serpent's old skin is done in four ways:

(1) in following the law of its own species,

(2) through disgust,

(3) with the help of a support, and

(4) with effort.

 

The "law of his own species" is virtue.

Standing firm in his own law of virtue, and seeing the misery involved, he

becomes disgusted with the "old worn-out skin" of the "here and the beyond,"

comprising

 

Thus he becomes disgusted and, seeking the support of a noble friend, (a wise

teacher and meditation master),

 

Daily practice of alienation from what has been understood to be actually alien

will wear thin the bondage to "self" and the world, loosen more and more

clinging's tight grip, until, like the serpent's worn-out skin, it falls away

almost effortlessly.

 

By such an act of "shedding the old skin," no "violence against nature" is

done; it is a lawful process of growing, of outgrowing that which is no longer

an object of attachment

 

-- this hollow concept of an imaginary self which had hidden for so long the

true nature of body and mind. Mind-and-body are now seen as they truly are. Now

one no longer misconceives them for what they are not and no longer expects of

them what they cannot give: lasting happiness.

 

How big a burden of anxiety, fear, frustration and insatiate craving will have

been discarded! How light and free the heart can become if one sheds attachment

to what is not one's own! What actually has to be shed is this attachment

rooted in the ego-illusion.

 

Yet it is to that hardest task that the Master summons us: "Give up what is not

yours! And what is not yours? The body is not yours: give it up! Giving it up

will be for your weal and happiness. Feelings, perceptions, volitions and

consciousness are not yours: give them up! "

contemplation can be helpful:

 

1. We look at our skin encasing the body: it is now firm and taut, healthily

alive, our warm blood pulsating beneath it. Imagine it now lying before you,

empty and limp, like a snake's discarded slough.

 

2. Just as the serpent does not hesitate to fulfill the biological "law of its

kind" in shedding its old skin, so right renunciation will not waver or shrink

from those acts of giving up which right understanding of reality demands.

 

3.-- the disgust felt towards residual attachments and defilements will give to

the disciple an additional urgency in his struggle for final liberation.

 

4. --effort = spiritual practice

 

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/bps/wheels/wheel241.html

 

~variations on surrender, love Karta~