Absolute devotion and surrender to the divine enables soul freedom.  (Sutra ii, 45).

The sonnet by Stéphane Mallarmé confronts us with a swan trapped in a freezing pond, perhaps having migrated too late, or caught by an early winter storm.  The problem of separation, of who sees with what is seen, resonates with me in personal life and civic experience.  I must pass over the former in silence.  With regard to civic life, left to my own resources I am as helpless as the swan.

Will the virginal, strong and beautiful today
Tear for us with a drunken flap of his wing
This hard forgotten lake which the transparent glacier
Of flights unknown haunts under the frost!

A swan of former times remembers that it is he
Magnificent but who without hope gives himself up
For not having sung of the region where he should have been
When the boredom of sterile winter was resplendent.

All his neck will shake off this white death-agony
Inflicted by space on the bird which denies space
But not the horror of the earth where his wings are caught.

Phantom whom his pure brilliance assigns to this place,
He becomes immobile in the cold dream of scorn
Which the Swan puts on his useless exile.

(translation by Wallace Fowlie, Mallarme, 1953)
(LS translation)

Le vierge, le vivace et le bel aujourd’hui
Va-t-il nous déchirer avec un coup d’aile ivre
Ce lac dur oublié que hante sous le givre
Le transparent glacier des vols qui n’ont pas fui !

Un cygne d’autrefois se souvient que c’est lui
Magnifique mais qui sans espoir se délivre
Pour n’avoir pas chanté la région où vivre
Quand du stérile hiver a resplendi l’ennui.

Tout son col secouera cette blanche agonie
Par l’espace infligée à l’oiseau qui le nie,
Mais non l’horreur du sol où le plumage est pris.

Fantôme qu’à ce lieu son pur éclat assigne,
Il s’immobilise au songe froid de mépris
Que vêt parmi l’exil inutile le Cygne.

(Plusieurs Sonnets, 1885, published in La Revue Independante)

I see the uprooted who surround us, just as Stéphane, standing at the edge of the pond, must have seen a swan he could not rescue.  And I see myself as one of their number.  But I am also fortunate, as one who can take refuge in the Dharma and who sees practice without condition as a miracle of personal liberation.

Jennie Lee, in True Yoga, writes:

“Devotion (Iswara Prahidhana) is the key, according to this sutra, to unlocking the greatest levels of love within us.  By surrendering the identification with our small self in complete devotion to our highest Self, we find ultimate happiness.  Our hearts are transformed when the mind and the ego step out of the way and when we offer up self-consciousness and personal agenda in service to the Divine.  When we attune to the energy of love and walk through the world seeing everything and everyone as part of the One, we experience unparalleled levels of well-being and joy.  The trio of Tapas (right action), Swadhaya (reflection on Self), and Iswara Pranidhana (wholehearted devotion) form the transformation combination of yoga in action called kriya yoga.”*

I take refuge in the dharma and pray for the courage to pursue right action, understand who I am, and surrender to the sanctity of all that exists. I surrender to love.

 

*True Yoga by Jennie Lee.  Llewellen Publications, 2016, ISBN 978-07387-4685-8.
From Chapter 10, “Devotion (Iswara Pranidhana): Surrendering to Love.”