aNNA svAmiyin amuda mozhival - 3. BhagavAn's "Blemishes".

[Guest guest]

aNNA svAmiyin amuda mozhigal - 3. BhagavAn's "Blemishes".

 

Kalyani Krishnamachari had presented the first two write-ups in this series.

I am continuing with this third one. We may both be writing under this

topic in the future.

 

This topic deals with SrI PBA's plea to all people to desist from talking

ill of others. We may recall that this is where we left off in the first

write-up, where he had made a plea that innuendos about others can cost the

subject enormously while gaining nothing to the person who indulges in them.

He points out that if we delve deep into our own self-consciousness, none of

us is absolute perfection with no blemishes, nor is there any one who is

absolutely full of blemishes. So he suggests that we should learn to look

at the good in others and respect them for it, and ignore the deficiencies

in them. When we love someone dearly, this is what we do all the time in

real life. This love should extend to one and all.

 

SrI PBA's thoughts above were evoked in the context of a pASuram of

nammAzhvAr in tiruvAi mozhi -

 

kaDiyan koDiyan neDiya mAl ulagam koNDa

aDiyan aRivaru mEno mAyattan Agilum

koDiya en ne~njam avan enRE kiDakkum ellE!

tuDi koL idai maDat tOzhI! annai en Seyyume? (5-3-5)

 

Here, AzhvAr is pointing out that all the negatives that can be talked about

Him will not deter him from being interested in Him and nothing else. In

truth, the fact that these 'negatives' are associated with Him already make

them meritorious qualities in his mind. The 'negatives' that are referred

to in this pASuram are -

 

BhagavAn is kaDiyan - He is a greedy person or lubdhan who hides Himself

from those who seek Him, but if He wants and likes someone then He

avariciously clings to them.

 

koDiyan - krUran or harsh. No matter how much we suffer and long for Him,

He does not care and gets away from us mercilessly.

 

neDiya mAl - atyanta dushprApan - One who becomes endlessly beyond our

reach whenever He feels like it.

 

ulagam koNDa aDiyan - One who 'cheated' mahAbali cakravarti by asking for

three feet of land and then usurping the whole of everything that mahAbali

had, and leaving nothing behind for the giver; He is the 'looter' who showed

His small feet and then just increased their size when the time came to

measure the three feet.

 

aRivaru mEni mAyattan - One who has a tirumEni that is beyond comprehension

of our intellect which He assumes by His own free will, and makes us lost in

His tirumEni's beauty resulting in our not knowing Its true nature.

 

SrI uttamUr vIrarAghavAcArya svAmi in his vyAkhyAnam gives a beautiful

analysis of how His 'bad' qualities are exactly the reason why nammAzhvAr

falls in love all the more with BhagavAn. The AzhvAr asks - So what? Is it

wrong that He was greedy (kaDiyan) to the point that He enslaved me and then

refused to let me belong to anyone else? If this is a bad quality in Him,

then I love Him all the more for it. Granted that He put on a show and took

away everything from mahAbali by 'trickery', but in return He gave Him His

darSanam and ultimately moksham. If this is a fault in Him, then I will

praise this 'bad' attribute forever with no problem. It is true that He is

inaccessible to those who do not trust in Him, but it is also true that for

a SAraNAgatan He is full of Mercy with no reason to justify His dayA. If

there are other bad qualities in Him that people want to tell me about, I

would love to know about them, and I know that these are all His great

qualities just because they are His qualities.

 

Thus, AzhvAr's life, thought, mind, word and deed are involved in Him

independent of His guNa-s, to the point that it may appear that his mind is

falling prey to the nirguNa-brahman of the mAya-vAdi-s. Quite the

opposite. AzhvAr's thoughts are that the saguNa-brahman's attributes are all

good by definition, and there is no issue of accepting or rejecting Him

based on an analysis of His guNa-s, but on the contrary, "en ne~njam avan

enRe kiDakkum". The truth is that all His guNa-s are for the good of us,

and every guNa or act of His is purely for the benefit of His creation viz.

us. I am reminded of the repeated reference to this concept in dayA

Satakam, which we had reviewed as part of SrI veDanta deSika stotra-s.

 

Coming back to the lesson we need to learn from the above anubhavam of

nammAzhvAr, we should all learn to see the good in others, and not pay

attention to the 'faults' as we see them. Even though the nature of humans

is to hide their own faults and exaggerate the good in themselves, instead

we should look inside our own conscience and realize and rectify our faults,

while seeing the good in others and respect them for it. In fact, in many

cases, if people talk negatively about someone, it is because that person is

great in some way to start with, and is worthy of attention. SrI PBA points

out that no one goes and throws stones at a tree that is bereft of any

fruit, but only on a tree that has something to give. In this context, SrI

PBA gives the quote from rAmAnuja nURRantAdi - pazhikkil pugazh - in the

fifth pASUram, where tiruvarangattamunAr says that he will take it as a

praise if anyone criticizes or adversely comments on his work on SrI

rAmAnuja, because this itself means that the work is worthy of their

attention.

 

-To be continued.

 

-dAsan kr*shNamAcAryan