Nammalvar

[Guest guest]

This is in response to Ms.Devika's request....

 

 

The pAsuram:

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yAvaiyum yavarum thAnAy avaravar samayam thORum*

thOyvilan pulan ain^dhukkum solappadAn uNarvin mUrththy*

Avi sEr uyirin uLLAl AdhumOr paRRilAdha*

bhAvanai adhanaik kUdil avanaiyum koodalAmE.

 

A literary translation of the verse will run as follows:

 

Becoming everything and everybody Himself,

He is not confined to any religion of any one.

Not to be accounted for in terms of the five senses,

He is the Deity of the Consciousness.

If ever one can achieve a state of mind

Like unto the soul in the body,

Remaining detached from the deeds thereof,

One can attain Him too.

 

The explanation :

 

Becoming everything and everybody :

 

This line explains the indwelling nature of God. He is Himself the sentient

and nonsentient beings. There is another verse of Nammalvar beginning "ivan

avan uvan evan, ival aval uval eval....." wherein Nammalvar has expressed

the idea of sentient beings in all aspects of human actions including

inaction as being manifest forms of the God. Namadevar also has celebrated

the indwelling nature of God in a song of his. "I brought a pot of water to

bathe you but found 42 million beings in it. You were in each one of them.

With which water am I to bathe you? I brought a garland of flowers to bestow

on you. You have already smelt the flowers as a bee. Which flower am I then

to decorate you with? I boiled milk, churned and took the butter for you.

You have already tasted the milk as a calf. Which butter am I to offer to

you? Vittala, You are here and there and everywhere!"

The indwelling nature of God is repeatedly celebrated in Vaishnavite

literature in general and Nammalvar is no exception. The tamil word iRaivan

in fact means iRainji niRpavan - the Indwelling. Christians also have the

concept of discovery of God in the world of nature. Hopkins would say, "The

world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will shine forth like shining

from shook foil."

 

He is not confined to any religion of any one:

 

One of the major businesses of any religion is to account for the aspects of the

Divine. Every religion has its own way of accounting for the presence of God in

its own way. Whatever is said in any religion to account for his presence, God

remains the Transcendent Reality, dwelling beyond all such.

 

Thus in the very first line of the verse Nammalvar has explained the basic

dualistic aspect of God as such. He is at one and the same time, the Immanent

Reality and the Transcendent Reality.

 

Not to be accounted for in terms of the five senses,

He is the Deity of the Consciousness:

 

If God is the Immanent Reality, is he to be realised by sensory perceptions?

Nammalvar's answer is that God is to be realised in terms of sensory perceptions

but then He who is thus realised only is not God. God is the Presiding Deity of

the Consciousness. That is to say an inner awakening to the true relationship

between the embodied self and the Transcendent Reality is Divine Revelation. Let

us put it this way. The Manifest Forms of God and the Presiding Deities of God

in temples are special forms of Divine Manifestations which can be realised in

terms sensory. But the ultimate seeker of God always finds Him in his own

consciousness. It is the realisation of the Transcendent as Immanent that

Nammalvar seems to underscore in this statement.

 

If ever one can achieve a state of mind

Like unto the soul in the body,

Remaining detached from the deeds thereof,

One can attain Him too:

 

The question of Mathurakavi to Nammalvar before he came out with his divine

outpourings was "When the small is born in the dead, where will it remain

experiencing what?" Nammalvar's answer had been, "It will remain there in it

until it has spent the cumulative effects of the previous births." So the

process of living consists of not one living this life but eking out the effects

of both the good and bad of the previous births. This attitude enables one to

live this life in detachment. The detachment consists of a certain attitude.

Whatever I do is not what I want to do or have to do but is preordained to be

such so that the accumulated effect of the deeds of the past shall be spent.

The other side of the coin is that we account for our deeds in terms of our

desires, our goals, our ambitions and thus we appreciate or blame ourselves for

whatever has happened to us in this embodied self. The right way of living this

life is to cultivate a certain attitude towards what we do in this life.

One has to keep doing something in this life insofar as the body and soul remain

together for the term of life being inevitable, the attitude towards such deeds

be such that the deeds are to be witnessed and not participated in by the soul.

This essential duality between what the embodied self does and the same that the

soul witnesses with detachment is the burden of the last lines of the verse.

Once this attitude is cultivated, what the Gita celebrates as nishkamya karma is

performed. It is this state of mind that is called the bhavanai here.

 

Thus the ultimate message of the verse is that a certain state of mind is to be

achieved wherein one can consciosuly maintain the duality between what is done

and what is witnessed. They remain the same to the less-religiously-oriented

insofar as they do not realise the essential duality between the physical and

the spiritual wedded together in the way of living in this embodied life.

 

Ramani

 

 

 

 

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