Digest of Paramacharya's Discourses on Soundaryalahari(DPDS-17)

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Namaste

Recall that the entire contents of the Digest are from the

Paramacharya’s ideas and words, except for my English rendering.

Wherever he uses specific English words himself, I have drawn

the attention of the reader to that fact. FOR NEW READERS of

this series, it may be worthwhile to go back to the

Introduction about the objective of this Digest and the Note on

the Organization (both at advaitin Message No.18425;

message no.5273; advaita-L message No.14046; Sadhana_shakti

message no.334).

V. Krishnamurthy

 

A Digest of Paramacharya’s Discourses on Soundaryalahari - 17

(Digest of pp.802 - 820 of Deivathin Kural Vol.6, 4th imprn)

 

I was saying: It is Shiva Himslf who gets reflected in the

mirror of mAyA and becomes ambaal. If you ask the advaitin,

“What is this mAyA”, he will reply: ‘It is not possible to say

what it is. You know it is called mAyA, magical ! So it will not

allow us to understand it’. The ShAkta school will say: ‘Even

mAyA is only a part of ambaal.’. I already told you that mAyA

occurs only at the stage where Shivam becomes the jIva,

according to ShAktam. That the jIva does not know that it is

itself Shivam, is mAyA. It is the work of mAyAShakti that makes

it incomprehensible for jIva to know the Permanent Eternal One

and mistake the ephemeral things as permanently existing.

 

It is at this point that the object and its reflected image

analogy leads to the positive and negative. What we said earlier

pertained to electricity. But now we shall take the

positive-negative phenomenon of photography. In the positive,

light is light and dark is dark. In the negative on the other

hand, light is dark and dark is light. That is the Ignorance

which shows what exists as not existing and non-existence as

existence. This is the handiwork of mAyA ! We are all submerged

in this mAyA and since ambaal is responsible for this, we call

Her, mAyA.

 

But to top it all, we should not forget that, the very ambaal

who does all this play of mAyA, is Herself the Most

Compassionate One, and those of us who can surrender to Her as

the Only Refuge, will be graced by Her and made to cross the

mAyA-curtain !

 

Now we can make the meaning of the first sloka more

meaningful.The very fact that the Acharya says that it was

ambaal who activated the first movement in Shivam gives a clear

hint to us, that the reverse movement of the universe going back

to that immutable Shivam has again to be triggered only by Her

Grace.

 

All the movements which resulted in the jIvas and the universe

coming up are together called (cosmic) evolution. This is not

Darwin’s evolution. In his case it is something where lower

level beings transform in due time to higher levels. In Vedanta,

the brahman at the apex expands into the universe and living

beings. This outward expansion of subtle principles into gross

matter is called evolution. The principles are taken to be 36 by

some and 24 by some. Having become the jIvas, our goal should

now be to go back to the source. That going back is moksha.

 

All the things in the expanded mode have to get back into the

internal mode and merge in brahman. That is ascent (ArohaNam).

The descent of jIvas and the universe from brahman is

avarohaNam. The terms ‘expansion’ and ‘merging’ seem to be

better. Expansion of brahman is Evolution and the merging into

brahman is ‘Involution’. All of us have evolved from brahman;

not by ourselves but by the Will and Action of ambaal. We cannot

involve into brahman except by Her Will and Grace. Even though,

in her cosmic Play, She seems to have given us a role for

ourselves, we can never complete the ‘Involution’ without Her

Grace. The electrical switch makes the fan rotate. Only the same

switch can stop it from rotating. Thus the same Cause which made

us evolve has to work again to make us involute into brahman.

So we have to pray to Her. This is where bhakti, jnAna and yoga

come in.

 

What is incomprehensibly divine would be made comprehensible by

the divine itself if we cultivate intense love for that divine.

This intense love is bhakti. If we have that, the divinity then

would descend to make itself comprehensible to us. It is this

bhakti-rasa coupled with the poetic rasa that our Acharya gives

us in the form of Soundaryalahari.

 

So with all this introduction based on Sloka 1, we may now go

forward. Sloka 2 elaborates the words

‘hari-hara-virincAdhibhir-api ArAdhyAM’ (you who are worshipped

even by Vishnu, Siva and BrahmA and others) of Sloka 1. Here it

says that only by Her Grace these three great divinities

discharge their functions of Creation, Sustenance and

Dissolution. And this they do just by the power of the dust of

the holy feet of the Mother Goddess! This praise of the divine

dust is carried over into Sloka 3 also. It (the divine dust) is

the ‘rising sun for the darkness of the Ignorant, the

flower-bunch giving out the honey of wisdom for the Dull-witted,

and the wish-fulfilling godly gem for the Poor’.

 

Sloka 4 continues to dwell on the glory of the Divine Feet but

does it very subtly.

 

tvad-anyaH pANibhyAM abhaya-varado daivata-gaNaH

tvam-ekA naivAsi prakaTita-varAbhIty-abhinayA /

bhayAt trAtuM dAtuM phalam-api ca vAnchhA-samadhikaM

sharaNye lokAnAM tava hi sharaNAveva nipuNau // 4 //

 

daivata-gaNaH: The multitude of gods

tvad-anyaH : other than You

abhaya-varado: grant abhaya (=fearlessness) and boons

pANibhyAM: by the hands

tvam-ekA asi: You are the only one

na-eva: not at all

prakaTita-vara-abhIti-abhinayA: exhibiting – boon (giver) –

fearlessness (giver) – by your ‘mudras’.

sharaNye: Oh Refuge

lokAnAM : for all the worlds

hi: indeed

tava: Your

charaNau-eva: feet alone

nipuNau: (are) expertly efficient

trAtuM : to protect

bhayAt : from fear

dAtuM api ca: and also to give

phalam: the fruit, the result

vAnchhA-samadhikaM: more than what one wishes.

 

(As in sloka 1, to get the total meaning, please read the

English portions above in the order in which they are presented

above. The Paramacharya does the same thing, but presents it in

the order in which it will make sense in the Tamil language. He

usually does not give the total meaning, initially, in one go.

We shall follow the same arrangement in the succeeding slokas

also. VK)

(To be continued)

PraNAms to alladvaitins and Devotees of Mother Goddess.

profvk

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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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.