Sankara Jayanthi by Sri Swami Chidananda

[Guest guest]

Greetings Advaitins:

 

This week is celebrated by all Vedantic Instution in honor of Adi Sankara as

"Sanakra Jayanthi." Incidently Ramanjua Jayanthi also falls in the same week.

Chinmaya Mission Celebrates Swami Chinmayananda's Jayanthi also in this week.

This article by Swami Chidnanda describes the importance of Sankara Jayanthi and

it can motivate and cultivate a desire to seek the Truth. A second article from

the Hindu on the services rendered by Ramanuja will follow this article.

 

Have a great week of the Jayanthi of Sages and Saints who dedicated their life

to promote Vedanta,

 

regards,

 

Ram Chandran

 

Sankara Jayanthi by Sri Swami Chidananda

 

This week we will observe the jayanti (birthday) of Adi-Sankaracharya, one of

the greatest of Self-realised souls and philosophers this world of ours has

produced. Leaving home, in a spirit of renunciation and aspiration to realise

the Reality, at the tender age of eight years, he completed an unbelievable

mission in the span of just a few years, passing away in his 32nd year. During

that period he did what is known, as digvijaya (conquest of the quarters),

carrying the banner of Advaita Vedanta, the supreme philosophy of absolute

monism , into the four, corners of India and overcoming all lesser schools of

philosophy through his convincing, irrefutable arguments. His incredible work

remains dynamically living, active and ever progressive even to this day, more

than 1200 years after he propounded his doctrine.

 

The quintessence of Advaita Vedanta is to affirm the truth and reality of your

essential, eternal, divine identity and to resolutely reject the error of

thinking of yourself as a finite human creature having a name and form,

beginning and end, and subject to changes such as birth, death, old age,

disease, decay, pain, sorrow, suffering, etc. Resolutely rejecting this error

and simultaneously affirming your eternal, unchangeable divine identity is the

centre of Advalta Vedanta sadhana (practice). They call it affirming and

rejecting, pushtikarana and nirakarana-neti, neti.

 

Sankara's most popular work, Vivekachudamani, is a call to discrimination

between the Self and the non-Self-atma-anatma viveka. Atman is sat (existence

absolute). Anatman is appearance only, temporary in time, limited in space,

perishable; it is kshara purusha (perishable being). Atman is akshara purusha

(imperishable being)-ajo nityah sasvato'yam purano na hanyate hanyamane sarire

(Unborn, eternal, changeless and ancient, the Self is not killed when the body

is killed). Thus the Vivekachudamani is a discourse, a treatise and a sadhana on

discrimination between the Self and the non-Self.

 

And a second work of his, Atma Bodha, is a light upon what the Self is. As you

discriminate between the Self and the non-Self, you get a good knowledge of

what the non-Self is, so you can reject it; you will not be deluded by it. You

can free yourself from the veil of delusion by knowing the nature of anatman.

And then, to be rooted in the Reality, to be fixed in it firmly, to be able to

think, reflect and meditate upon it and to awaken the correct awareness within

your consciousness, a thorough study of what the Self is of great importance and

value. To that end, Atma Bodha can be the way that God can gradually answer

your prayer, "tamasoma jyotir gamaya" and "dhiyo yo nah prachodayat" ("From

darkness lead me unto light" and "May He illumine our intellects").

 

To avoid that which is wrong, we have to get a knowledge of what wrong is; and

to pursue and practice that which is right, we have the need to have a

knowledge and a grasp of what right is of what Reality and Truth is. Thus both

the negative and positive aspects of Vedantic admonition are of equal importance

in making the mind aware of its error and to make the intellect grasp the

truth. When Brahman is the reality to be attained, why unnecessarily know about

the world, prapancha, samsara? The answer is that because you want to free

yourself from the delusion of the world, you must know the tricks of this

deluding appearance. Indeed, you must know everything about it, because it comes

in numerous subtle ways. We think the world is outside us, but, by and large,

the world or prapancha or samsara is within us. We have to understand that.

What is it within us that makes us regard prapancha to be real and makes us move

towards it, get attached to it, get bound by it? What is it within us? That has

to be rooted out, eradicated first. Thus the study of avidya or maya within is

the key to freeing ourselves from delusion and rising from darkness to light.

Gurudev again and again reiterated: "Thou art immortal Soul. Thou art not this

body nor this mind. They are upadhis, limiting adjuncts temporarily added on to

you. They are there as part of your lesser personality, your earth

consciousness, but you are also there far beyond them, transcending them, a

divine personality, a suprahuman spiritual reality, untouched by time and

space, not bothered by pain, sorrow and suffering."

 

This, then, is to be heard, reflected upon and meditated upon. May you direct

all your attention to the practice of this truth which shall make you free. For

it is this truth that arouses in us our kinship with the eternal, universal

Reality, paramatman. May the grace of the Lord grant you success in this sadhana

of being what you really are and of resisting the pull of the lower mind to

make you imagine that you are something other than this Reality. Constantly you

have to reject the, attempts of the mind and its age-old, inveterate tendencies

to keep itself tied down to a lower level of ignorance and mistaken identity.

It should be given no quarter.

 

By the strength of your will-power, your positive, awakened consciousness and

your resolute and determined sankalpa (thought) to attain realisation in this

very body, you must keep this process up. You must shine with an effulgent inner

awareness of your own essential, immortal and imperishable divine identity.

Your interior should be a mass of effulgence, of jnana prakasa. There should be

a state of jnana bodha within, a state of wakefulness within-no slumber. For

this you must pray, and for this you must practice.

 

May this week be permeated by the spirit of Jagat Guru (world teacher) Adi

Sankaracharya, the Advaita Acharya, and may it have the effect of successfully

lifting up your consciousness from the present, ordinary, humdrum human level

of earth consciousness into a lofty, sublime higher spiritual level of a divine

spiritual consciousness!

 

Source: http://www.sivanandadlshq.org/religions/sankarajay.htm

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