A Digest of Paramacharya's Discourses on Soundaryalahari (DPDS - 04)

[Guest guest]

Namaste.

Recall: About the organization of the ‘Digest’: THE ENTIRE

EXPOSITION IS BY THE PARAMACHARYA. SO THE FIRST PERSON PRONOUN,

WHEREVER IT OCCURS, IS HIS. The ‘I’ of advaita-vedanta is always

within quotes. ALL THE THOUGHTS AND OPINIONS EXPRESSED ARE

THOSE OF THE PARAMACHARYA, EXCEPT WHEN ACKNOWLEDGED OTHERWISE.

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’.

V. Krishnamurthy

-------------------------------

A Digest of Paramacharya’s Discourses on Soundaryalahari - 4

 

(The Paramacharya continues to speak the words, as if, of the

Goddess):

“Thus I am the One who gives this new Bhakti in the state of

jnAna. And I will be the One who will give you that jnAna to

you, my devotee, when the time is ripe. Don’t you worry. You

have come to Me as your Mother. I will take care of you. The

bondage in which I threw you shall be removed from you by

Myself. You need not have to keep on crying for ‘Release’. Once

you know I am the only One there is, hold on to that

steadfastly; there is no question of ‘Release’ thereafter.

‘Release’ from what?

“Let jnAnis think that they will get the Ultimate Peace only

when the duality-awareness goes away from them and let them go

their own way of Enquiry of the Self. When you feel you don’t

have the interest or the stamina to go that way, don’t feel bad

or incomplete. Come through the path of Love. See the

multiplicities. But instead of seeing them as different and

separate, try not to forget that the basis of all of them is the

single Me. Love Me from your heart and view everything through

Love. Encompass everything in Love. I shall raise you to the

Ultimate Enlightenment by My Love and Grace”.

Thus arises the godly experience that is blessed by the Mother

Goddess. By Mother Goddess I also mean the Lord-God, the

paramAtmA, and also the individual favourite deity of each of

us. It is the same supreme Power that engulfs you into the

mAyA, that graces you as saguNa-brahman and also takes you to

that blissful state of jnAna.

 

Finally let me also say this. By the very fact that the jnAni

writes a book on jnAna, it must follow that he should also write

on Bhakti. For, writing a book means communicating with others.

So that means he has accepted the presence of a world of duality

in which he has to communicate and educate. The jnAni as he is,

must have already ‘descended’ to this world of duality and

decided to raise the commonfolk to his level. He who knows that

the source of all this duality is that Infinite Compassionate

God–principle, would ipso facto have no compunctions for making

a hymn of praise for that Ultimate in Its saguNa form. And he

also knows that it is that very same Power that prods him on to

make this hymn. So where is the contradiction here?

 

But if you contend that he is writing jnAna works for the

benefit of the world – ‘loka-sangrahArtham’ without any

‘kartRtva-buddhi’ -- the awareness of doership – then with the

same non-awareness of doership he can write both jnAna works and

bhakti works. What and where is the difference? The

World-welfare (loka-kalyANam) is the purpose. It is the Lord who

is effecting the welfare through the hands and mouths of these

chosen jnAnis. And the most efficient way for the jnAni, the

Lord knows, to reach the masses, is to propagate hymns of

praise of the divine, pilgrimage to holy centers, installation

of mystic yantras, and all the way down to ritual worship.

 

 

There are three superlative hymns of praise on Mother Goddess

in the form of Lalita. Chronologically they are: ‘AryA-dvishati’

(also called ‘lalitA-stava-ratnam’) a 200-sloka piece by Sage

Durvasa; ‘Soundarya-lahari’ which is actually made up of two

parts – ‘Ananda-lahari’ , a 41-sloka piece brought from Kailas

by Adi Sankara and ‘Soundarya-lahari’ the 59-sloka piece

composed by Adi Sankara himself, the two pieces together going

by the popular name of Soundarya lahari by Adi Sankara; and

‘Panca-shati’ (a 500-sloka piece) by the poet Muka.

 

Durvasa’s Arya-dvishati gives us a spiritual experience of the

presence of the Almighty-Goddess in the very words of

AryA-dvishati. In this he describes the complicated structure of

the Sri-chakra . The Goddess’s Grace descends on those who read

and recite such hymns of praise composed by great devotees who

have already merited the descent of Her Grace on them. Durvasa,

Adi Sankara and Muka are three such. Such Grace exhibits itself

first in the eloquence of these hymns. And the result is, the

devotee who revels in the recitation and repetition of these

hymns, himself gets that eloquence and flow of language and of

speech.

 

The Goddess gave such an eloquence to Muka. ‘MUka’ means

‘dumb’. We do not know what name he had before. But from the

moment he composed the five hundred slokas in Her praise, we

have known him as the poet MUka !. Both the AryA-dvishati and

the MUka-pancashati bring to our vision the majestic splendour

of the form of Mother Goddess like an expert painter’s masterly

painting. The third one, the Soundarya-lahari is the crowning

glory of all three and of all hymns of praise of the Mother

Supreme.

(To be continued).

---------------------------

PraNAms to all advaitins and Devotees of Mother Goddess.

profvk

 

 

 

 

 

 

=====

Prof. V. Krishnamurthy

My website on Science and Spirituality is http://www.geocities.com/profvk/

You can access my book on Gems from the Ocean of Hindu Thought Vision and

Practice, and my father R. Visvanatha Sastri's manuscripts from the site.