A Digest of Paramacharya's Discourses on Saundaryalahari

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Namaste:

This introduction to A Digest of Paramacharya's Discourses on

Saundaryalahari was written and posted by Professor V. Krishnamurthy

on advaitin. The wisdom in the words of Paramacharya

is so beautiful, unpretentious, and inspiring that I requested

permission from Sri Krishnamurthy to forward this to this group.

While there is an ongoing discourse on Paramacharya on the advaitin

group, it is much more extensive than I could post here. Other than

the learned explanations of Sri Krishnamurthy, I will limit what I

post to the actual words, as translated, of the sage known lovingly

as Paramacharya. I have added the images to the text.

Paramacharya, in 'Deivathin Kural' -

meaning, 'The Voice of God'

"Sri Chandrasekharendra Saraswati Swamigal (1894 -1994), also called

the Paramacharya, was the sage of Kanchi in Tamilnadu, India, who was

so simple, humble, profound, enlightened, compassionate, scholarly and

full of Grace that he naturally and effortlessly touched the hearts of

men and women, prince and pauper, around the world. Ascending to the

Headship of the Kanchi Kamakoti Mutt at the age of thirteen as the

68th pontiff in the line of succession from Adi Sankara, he

ministered to the needs of the afflicted and the distressed and

spread the message of compassion and of a return to the most

treasured ancient values. After a mission like this full of action

for almost half a century which included a 30-year walking pilgrimage

of the entire subcontinent of India, he laid down his headship and

devoted his time, for the next forty years, to severe penance for

universal welfare. Not one of those thousands who had his darshan

every day missed to feel the soul-stirring presence of the Living God

"in their veins." Professor V. Krishnamurthy

Excerpts from Professor V. Krishnamurthy-ji’s NOTE ON THE OBJECTIVE OF

HIS DIGEST: .... the purpose of this digest is TO BRING THE ADVAITA

PART TO THE FOCUS AND ACQUAINT OURSELVES WITH THE PARAMACHARYA'S

VIEWS, WONDERFUL ELABORATIONS AND COMMENTS ON THE SUBJECT. ...

Note that the original extends to 754 pages (pp.577 to 1331 of the

sixth volume). The attempt shall be made, therefore, to be as brief

as possible. But, wherever it is found that the Paramacharya's

already lucidly forceful and simple explanations cannot be 'digested

through a further precise or summary', one will have to resort to

almost a close (or free !) translation of his words as reported by

Ra. Ganapathi.

And also note that, (1) I, as the digest writer, cannot be expected

to dwell on those portions of the discourses that are not reasonably

clear to me, and (2) it may be easy to pull out just a sentence here

or there from what I write and see wrong or absurd meanings in it .

If this happens let us remember to go back to the Paramacharya

himself and try to understand his explanations in entirety... .

With these preliminary words let me start on this venture, which is

actually a swAdhyAya-yajna, that is, a yajna of study. May the

Paramacharya himself as well as my own Guru and father, (late) Sri R.

Visvanatha Sastri, guide me in this endeavour and see that I don't

misrepresent either the Paramacharya or the Soundaryalahari!

ON THE ORGANIZATION OF THE 'DIGEST:

The entire exposition is by the Paramacharya. So the first advaita-vedanta is always within quotes.

Additional explanations given by Ra. Ganapathi are so acknowledged.

Parenthetical remarks by him, like 'with a smile', 'after a small

pause' etc. that all refer to the speaker, the Paramacharya, are

repeated, if at all, as they are in the original, within parentheses.

My own remarks, if any, shall be properly demarcated. And note that

the Paramacharya most often refers to Adi Sankaracharya as 'Our

Acharya'. By Professor V. Krishnamurthy

ADI SHANKARA

PARAMACHARYA

A DIGEST OF PARAMACHARYA'S DISCOURSES ON SAUNDARYALAHARI - 1"How could

Adi Sankara, who preached the jnAna mArga, have promoted this work

(Soundaryalahari) of bhakti? It cannot be his," say some who profess

'Philosophy'. But our Acharya was not a professor who isolated

philosophy as a separate discipline. Having written very profoundly

on advaita and its deepest implications in his several Bhashyas and

the other works of his, he promoted the spiritual pursuit of the

common man by writing and talking about the need to follow one's

swadharma by Karma and Bhakti. His intent was to raise the common man

from his own level. For this purpose he went from one pilgrim centre

to another all his life and composed hymns after hymns and also

established yantras in temples.

The philosophers argue: JnAni says everything is One. But Bhakti can

happen only when there is the duality of the devotee and the deity.

Therefore, they say, the jnAni can never be a bhakta. These

philosophers cannot themselves claim to have the Enlightenment of

advaita ! But there have been those who could have so claimed, like

the sage Suka, Madhusudana Saraswati or Sadasiva-brahmam. If we

carefully study their lives we will know that they were devotees of

God in the fullest sense of the word and have themselves written

works of Bhakti.

Even in our own times Ramakrishna Paramahamsa has been a great devotee

of Mother Goddess and Ramana Maharishi has done works of devotion on

God Arunachalesvara. Again, on the other side, great devotees like

Manikka-vasagar, Nammazhvar, Arunagiri-nathar, Tayumanavar, etc. have

themselves been convinced advaitins, and this is reflected in

innumerable flashes in their compositions.

If a jnAni should not do a Bhakti composition, then I would say that

he should not also do a work of jnAna. Why am I saying this? Let us

go back to the definition of a jnAni. ' The world is all mAyA; the

thinking of people as if they were separate separate jIvAtmAs is

nothing but Ignorance' - with such a conviction through personal

experience, they have thrown away that Ignorance as well as its basic

locus, the mind, and they live in the non-dualistic state of ' 'I' am

everything' - such should be the status of the jnAni; shouldn't it be

so?

Such a person preaching, or writing a book, even if it be about the

subject of jnAna - is it not a contradiction? Unless such a person

thinks there is a world outside of him and there are jIvAtmAs

outside, how can he think of 'teaching'? Teaching whom? And when we

look at it this way, all those great teachers of jnAna should really

not be jnAnis ! What power will there be for such a teaching about

jnAna from teachers who are not jnAnis themselves?

A DIGEST OF PARAMACHARYA'S DISCOURSES ON SAUNDARYALAHARI - 2

On the other hand what do we observe in our experience? Whether it is

the teaching about jnAna in the Gita, or the Viveka Chudamani of our

Acharya, or the Avadhuta Gita of Sri Dattatreya or the teaching in

the Yoga-vASiShTa, or a song of Tayumanavar - even when we just read

these we feel we are being taken beyondthe curtain created by mAyA to

some distant peaceful state of Calm. Just by reading, in one's

spiritually ripe stage, such teachings, there have been people who

have renounced the world and reached the state of Bliss-in-one-Self

!

If these teachings had not been written from that spiritual apex of

Experiential Excellence, how could such things have ever happened?

Therefore, however much by your intellectual logic, you argue whether

a jnAni can get bhakti, how the jnAni can do any preaching and so such

possibilities cannot exist and so on, these are certainly happening,

by the Will of the Lord which is beyond the Possible and the

Impossible. It is only the Play of the Lord that the jnAni, who is

non-dualistic internally, appears to do things in the dualistic

world. His mind may have vanished, mAyA might have been transcended

by him; but that does not mean that the outsideworld of jIvAtmAs has

disintegrated. What do we gather from this?

There is a Super-Mind which does all this and in some mysterious way

is compering and directing the entire universe. And it also means

that it is the same Supra-Mind that is making the minds of men

revolve in the illusion of mAyA. It is that Power which is known in

advaita scriptures as saguNa-brahman or Isvara. In the scriptures

devoted to shakti or Shiva , whenever they call the Actionless

nirguNa-brahman as 'Shivam' they call this saguNa-brahman as

'shakti', 'parA-shakti' or 'ambAL'. Just as that nirguNa-brahman

exhibits itself and acts as the saguNa-brahman, so also, it must be

presumed, that the enlightened jnAni also does his external actions

and that again, is the work of the saguNa-brahman!

What is the path of jnAna? It is the effort through self-enquiry and

meditation for the eradication of the mind and vanquishing of mAyA.

But the other path is to dedicate oneself and all one's thoughts and

actions to that very parA-shakti (who produced this mAyA on us) with

an attitude of devotion. It is like giving the house-key to the thief

himself ! However much the parA-shakti may play with you and toss you

and your mind hither and thither, Her infinite compassion cannot be

negated. Only when we separate and rejoin, we realise the value of

that union. To pray to Her for that reunion and for Her to get us

back to Her in answer to our prayers - this is the great Leela of

Duality wherein She exhibits Her Infinite Compassion !

So when one prays with Bhakti for such release She releases Him by

giving Him that Wisdom of Enlightenment. It is wrong to think that

the goal of Bhakti lies in the dualistic attitude of being separate

from God. It is by this wrong assumption that people ask the

question: How can a jnAni exhibit Bhakti? In the very path of Bhakti

wherein it appears there is an embedded duality, the same Bhakti

would lead the practitioner to the stage where he will ask: Oh God !

May I be one with You ! This is the subtle point which the

questioning people miss.

When that stage comes to the devotee, the very parA-shakti known as

kArya-brahman or saguNa-brahman will bless him with that jnAna that

takes him to the non-dual kAraNa-brahman or nirguNa-brahman. Not

everybody can practise the path of jnAna that brings the realisation

of the mahA-vAkyas by sravaNa (hearing), manana(thinking and

recalling) and nididhyAsana (contemplating). Only when the mind

vanishes one can realise the Self as the Absolute brahman. If that is

so, the real question is: How to kill the truant mind, which refuses

to be subdued, much less vanquished ? The very effort of vanquishing

the mind has to be done by the mind only. How can it kill itself ?

The palm can slap another; but it cannot slap itself. Though we are

thus brought to adilemma, there is a supreme power which has created

all these minds. So instead of self-effort to kill our minds, we

should leave it to the parA-shakti and surrender to Her. Instead of

falling at the feet of the witness for the prosecution we fall at the

feet of the prosecutor himself! Then She will help us quell the mind.

She will grace us with the necessary jnAna.

Digest of Paramacharya’s Discourses on Soundaryalahari - 3Either She

might totally eradicate your mind and give you the peaceful state of

‘I am shiva’ (shivoham) or She might tell you from within: "Look,

after all, all this is My Play. The Play appears real to you because

of mAyA. I shall totally erase that mAyA-view for you. Then you can

also be like me, with that calm non-dual bliss inside and having on

the outside a mind which is untouched by mAyA. Thereby you can also

be a witness to all this worldly Dance. You will thus see yourself in

Me and see Me in all the worldly multiplicities. In other words

instead of making the mind non-existent, your mind will then be full

of Me" And She might make you just exactly that way.

But I know your worry. You constantly worry about the impossibility of

transcending mAyA, of eradicationg this worldly vision and of

vanquishing the mind. You keep worrying to the extent of almost

weeping over it. To such a wailing seeker She replies: "Why do you

worry and weep like this? You are worrying that you cannot discard

the world from your view. But you forget that the world was not your

making. This Sun and Moon, mountains, trees, oceans, animal kingdom,

and the millions of living beings and categories – all this was not

created by you. "When that is so, you are worrying about the little

‘you’ that you are, and you forget that this little ‘you’ also was

not your creation. Instead of thinking all this is not only one but

one with Me, your mAyA-clouded view makes you think they are all

different and distinct. And even that mAyA-view that clouds you,

again was not your making!

"My dear child, you are caught up in the web of the world, a mind and

a mAya-cloud -- all this is My making. Did I not make Krishna say to

you: mama mAyA duratyayA ? (My mAyA is intranscendable). I have also

told you there that it is ‘daivI’ (made by the Power of God). If you

had made it all, then you could have overcome them. But it was all

made by Me in the fullness of Power. "You jIvas have only little

fragments of that Power. So if you cannot eradicate the world, the

mind and the mAya that I have made, you don’t have to cry over it. It

is not in your Power. It has to take place only by My Grace. Come

nearer to Me through Devotion ! I shall do the eradication in proper

doses for you. "That somebody is able to control his mind and is

able to walk on the path of jnAna – that again is My own Grace. It is

I who have granted that privilege to him. What appears as many and

different must be seen as one. To crave for that view is what

iscalled ‘advaita-vAsanA’. One gets it only by My Grace".

(Now the Paramacharya, who has been talking in the words of the Mother

Goddess, continues on his own).

There is another novelty here. Even the jnAni who has had the non-dual

Enlightenment, still enjoys the play of mAyA. He sees the different

things; but knows they are all one. Just as a spectator of a play who

is not playing any role in it, the jnAni enjoys the playful novelties

of mAyA and revels in his devotion to that parA-Sakthi who is the

author of it all. To be keeping such jnAnis in this dual-non-dual

state is also the work of Mother Goddess. Mark it. It is not that the

jnAni is showing Devotion just for the sake of others only. No, By

himself he is indeed thinking ‘What a pleasure to witness this

dualistic play of the non-dualistic One! What a multiplicity of

beauty, panoramic variety and continuity of Love !’ .

Thus revelling in that blissful vision, he continues to pour out his

own love (bhakti) to that Transcendental Power from the bottom of his

heart. This tribute to the jnAni has been given by the great Teacher

Suka himself. (Cf. Bhagavatam 1-7-10: AtmArAmAshca munayaH

nirgranthA apy-urukrame; kurvanty-ahaitukIm bhaktim itham-bhUta-guNo

hariH. – meaning, Those who revel in the Self, even though rid of all

attachments, show a causeless bhakti towards the Lord, just

naturally.) On the one hand the devotee who has yet to get the

Enlightenment enjoys the devotional state for the very reason of

getting the Enlightenment; on the other hand, the one who is already

enlightened and is a jIvan-mukta shows his bhakti for the sake of

enjoyment of that bhakti and not for any other reward or purpose.

Prof. V. Krishnamurthy's website can be found at Science and

Spirituality

http://www.geocities.com/profvk/

Advaitin List Archives available at:

http://www.eScribe.com/culture/advaitin/advaitin

OM Namah Shivaya

With Love and Gratitude,

Joyce

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