In Defence of Saundarya Lahari..... RELATIONSHIP to Advaita Vedanta?

[Guest guest]

Beloved ADvaitins,

 

I came across this informative site while surfing on the net while

watching and listening to Mre.Teresa Heinz Kerry's speech( wife of

the presedential candidate JOHN KERRY) at the democratic

convention.

 

Mrs. Kerry made a valuable point...

 

'My right to speak my mind, to have a voice, to be what some have

called 'opinionated', is a right I deeply and profoundly cherish,'

she said. 'My only hope is that, one day soon, women - who have all

earned the right to their opinions - instead of being labelled

opinionated, will be called smart or well-informed, just as men are.'

 

well, dear advaitins! I hope my head will not fall off like Gargi's

for speaking up in this forum of wise and learned men!!! Smiles!! a!

 

For whatever it is worth, it is my pleasure to share with you all ,

Why Nataraja Guru, a disciple of Narayana guru , thinks that the

Saundarya Lahari is such a wonderful text !

 

The author asks a series of questions and answers them one by one ...

 

PLEASE READ ON....

 

1. How could Sankara, who is known to be an Advaita

 

philosopher, be credited with the authorship of this text

 

which is evidently of the form belonging to the context

 

of Tantra Shastra?

 

 

 

Sankara's great commentaries are primarily metalinguistic

 

while this work is protolinguistic. Tantra is only a structural,

 

protolinguistic, non-verbal approach to Indian spirituality at

 

its best, when taken as a whole. We have to think of Mantra,

 

Yantra and Tantra at once as presupposing one another, if we are

 

to enter into a sympathetic and intuitive understanding of the

 

dynamism that Tantra essentially represents. This dynamism is

 

none other than mutual participation of the two other aspects

 

which go with it, which are Yantra on the one side and Mantra on

 

the other. Thus, Tantra is the "know-how" or savoir - faire by

 

which Yantra and Mantra could interact mutually and produce what

 

we call the fully real experience of unitive understanding, by

 

a double correction. Yantra is associated with a wheel or

 

machine, while Mantra evidently stands for uttered syllables or

 

sounds. Each Mantra involves a Devata, which term has to be

 

distinguished from just a Deva.

 

 

All the devas of the Hindu pantheon can be given their correct

 

positions as monomarks in the context of the Yantra, which is

 

essentially a geometrical figure called Sri Chakra. Letters of

 

the Sanskrit alphabet could be used in the place of monomarks to

 

indicate structural aspects of the Absolute within the context of

 

erotic mysticism, where beauty is the most prominent prevailing

 

value.

 

In the erotic context of Tantra there are four functional

 

monomarks commonly used which are: the goad and noose,

 

referring to the spatial dynamism applicable to an elephant,

 

together with the sugarcane bow and five flower-tipped arrows

 

which indicate the limits of the horizontal world of erotic

 

pleasure or enjoyment. Many of the Tantra texts quoted or

 

alluded to in the writings of Sir John Woodroffe make use of

 

these monomarks and protolinguistic devices profusely, and to

 

such a point of intricacy that the modern reader could easily get

 

lost in their ramifications and its further complicated

 

implications. For a clear statement we have to go to the

 

Mahanirvana Tantra, which perhaps owes its inspiration to

 

Buddhistic as well as proto-Aryan Tantric sources. One sees very

 

clearly from this particular Tantra how the colour of the dark

 

monsoon cloud which hangs over the whole west coast of India,

 

from Ujjain to Kanyakumari, has a place within the context of

 

Tantrism. Moreover, the best palm-leaf manuscripts preserved to

 

this day, bearing on Tantra, are found in the collections of some

 

Maharajas of this area. There is also a temple situated on the

 

West Coast, half way between Gujarat and the Cape, which could be

 

considered as the most ancient of the epicentres from which

 

this kind of influence could be imagined to have spread far and

 

wide, through the Mahayana Buddhism of Central and North India,

 

reaching Tibet and finally nourishing the roots of the Sakti cult

 

of present-day Bengal.

 

 

 

Tantra is a discipline which combines the secrets of Yoga

 

side by side with other esoteric teachings, the greater part of

 

which is a contribution by the lower strata of society, to whom

 

the five Tattvas proper to its practice - Matsya (fish), Mamsa

 

(meat), Madya (liquor), Maithuna (copulation) and Mudra

 

(gesture)- are to be considered both natural and normal. When

 

this lower form of Tantra was subjected to revaluation and

 

restatement in the light of Veda and Vedanta, it gave rise to

 

further subdivisions and graded stratifications, such as the

 

Purva Kaula, Uttara Kaula, Samayin and fully Vedantic versions of

 

Tantrism.

 

 

Thus Tantra is a complex growth in the spiritual soil of India.

 

 

 

Sankara, as a great dialectical revaluator of the Hindu

 

spirituality of his time, could easily be imagined to have

 

attempted a final revaluation of the same body of spiritual

 

wisdom which he proposed to clothe in a special kind of non-

 

verbose language. As a result, there were two texts from his

 

pen, the twin complementary works named Saundarya Lahari and

 

Sivananda Lahari, respectively. The former presupposes a negative

 

ascending dialectical perspective, while the latter presupposes

 

the same Absolute Value when viewed from a more positive position

 

in terms of a descending dialectic. The final content of both

 

remains the same, although the starting postulates might seem

 

diametrically opposed to each other.

 

 

 

Beauty, especially when it is colourful and full of

 

significant lights and lines, lends itself to be considered the

 

most tangible content of the otherwise empty or merely

 

mathematical notion called "the Absolute." Truth and value thus

 

are made to fulfil the same function: to give full tangible

 

content to the Absolute. In short, metalinguistically stated

 

Advaita coincides here with what is protolinguistically

 

understood.

 

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2. Why should he have written these verses after his great

 

commentaries, which are by themselves sufficiently

 

monumental for supporting his fame as a Vedantic

 

philosopher?

 

 

As Sankara himself states in Verse 59 of the

 

Vivekacudamani, verbosity is a bane which could even cause

 

mental derangement.

 

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3. If Sankara gave primacy to wisdom, as is well known, how is

 

it that he seems to have come down to the vulgar or popular

 

level of a worshipper of the beauty of a goddess?

 

 

 

The simple answer is that no visible goddess is directly envisaged

 

in any of the verses in the series here.

 

Certain picturesque situations are, of course, presented

 

here and there in such a way that when the numerator and the

 

denominator aspects of the same are cancelled out we are left

 

with an overwhelming sense of sheer absolute Beauty,

 

independently of any anthropomorphically conceived goddess. The

 

first and the last verses of the series, when read together,

 

absolve Sankara completely of any possible charge of being a

 

theist, deist or even a ritualist in the ordinary religious sense.

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4. The Sri Chakra, which figures in the text very prominently,

 

seems to be the hallmark by which Tantra texts are

 

recognisable. What has this geometrical design to do with

 

Advaita Vedanta, which believes in the purest form of reason

 

only?

 

 

 

The Sri Chakra is a structurally conceived linguistic

 

device. Just as a graph can verify an algebraic formula, there

 

is no contradiction between the Advaita as Sankara has stated

 

metalinguistically in his Bhasyas (commentaries) and that

 

which the same Advaita represents in the form of a schema here.

 

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5. What is the place of eroticism in the context of the

 

austere Sannyasa (renunciation) which Sankara stood for so

 

uncompromisingly?

 

 

 

The proper theme of all poetry or even art could be said to

 

be love. No lover, no art. One cannot think of beauty without

 

the form of woman coming into it. Thus the relevancy of erotic

 

mysticism stands self-explained. The best proof in this matter is

 

the high place that Kalidasa's poetry occupies to the present

 

day.

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6. Was Sankara interested in Yoga Sastra (the science of yoga)

 

also?

 

 

 

7. If not, why does he take the trouble of describing the

 

various details of Cakras (synergic centres) as seen in the

 

verses of this text?

 

 

 

Yoga properly pertains to a dualistic school called

 

Samkhya. When revised in the light of Advaita Vedanta, the

 

abstractions and generalisations of the various stable

 

syndromes and synergisms proper to the dynamism of Yoga discipline

 

refuse to resemble other texts on Yoga such as Kheranda Samhita,

 

Hathayoga Pradipika or even the Astanga Yoga of Pantanjali.

 

Thus it is that Sankara's treatment of Yoga seems different from other

 

Yoga disciplines. He merely restates it in a more respectable

 

form acceptable to an Advaita Vedantin. The Vyasa Bhasya and

 

Bhoja Thika applied to Patanjali Yoga, are supposed to effect the

 

same corrections and revaluations. Careful scrutiny of the Sakta

 

Upanisads and the Yoga Upanisads will clarify any further doubt

 

that might linger in the minds of keen and critical students

 

in respect of the purport of these verses.

 

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8. If non-duality is the teaching of Sankara, how is it that

 

he postulates Siva and Sakti as two distinct factors,

 

principles or entities?

 

 

 

In the Samkhya philosophy there are the concepts of Prakrti

 

and Purusa, the former being not imbued with intelligence, while

 

the latter is the fully intelligent principle. Thus we find a

 

heterogeneity between the two categories, which it is the purpose

 

of the revised epistemology and methodology of Advaita to abolish

 

effectively. Siva and Sakti, as meant to be united in the

 

present work, are to be understood as belonging together to the

 

same neutral epistemological grade of the non-dual Absolute.

 

They must lose their distinctness and, when generalised and

 

abstracted to the culminating point, they could be treated as two

 

perimeters or parameters to be cancelled out by their mutual

 

intersection or participation. One has a vertical reference and

 

the other a horizontal reference, while both exist at the core of

 

the Absolute. When abstraction and generalisation are thus

 

pushed together to their utmost limit, the paradox is transcended

 

or dissolved into the unity of one and the same Absolute Value

 

which is here referred to as Beauty or Bliss. Thus, duality,

 

accepted only for methodological purposes, is to be abolished at

 

each step by unitive understanding.

 

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PlEASE VISIT

 

http://www.advaitavedanta.de/contents_slvariants.htm - 67k - Cached -

 

 

Salutations to the GODDESS!!!