Rupa and svarupa - appearance and reality

[Guest guest]

The current discussion of real and unreal has set me thinking of the

distinction between 'rupa' and 'svarupa'. The result is a piece of

verse that I am appending below. This is of course a delicate

question, which is all too liable to descend into mind-boggling

conundrums. Sorry if I've fallen prey to that.

 

Ananda

 

 

Rupa and svarupa

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

 

Whatever may appear perceived

through sense and mind is just a 'form'.

It's nothing but a seeming shape

produced by sight or sound or smell

or taste or touch or by some thought

or feeling in the course of time.

 

As time proceeds, in world or mind,

such seeming shapes become transformed,

by changing ways of seeing and

observing and describing things

from various different points of view.

 

Whatever gets perceived through sense,

or is conceived or felt through mind,

it's thereby shown externally,

through some external instrument

that makes an outside show of it,

to something other than itself.

 

That 'something other' stands elsewhere,

out in a world of space and time,

where standpoints change and thus produce

the changes of external show.

 

But what is it that's truly known

through intervening instruments

of sense and mind which show all these

apparent forms of seeming things

that are observed from the outside?

 

To know what truly is perceived,

the forms produced by sense and mind

must be interpreted to find

what is observed just as it is,

in its own self, just as it stands

there in its own reality.

 

Where that reality is found,

no doubtfully known instrument

of sense or mind can interfere

between what knows and what is known.

 

The knower there must stand at one

with the reality that's known.

What is there known is only self,

just in its own identity,

unchanged by any outside show

that's seen by looking from elsewhere.

 

That self is known, just as it is,

through inner sight: reflecting back,

beneath all show of sense and mind,

to knowing as identity

of that which rightly knows with the

reality that's truly known.

 

That is not 'rupa', not a form

that mind and sense have seen transformed

from any outside point of view.

 

Instead, it is 'svarupa': just

that inmost form which is what's found

by penetrating outward forms

to stand at one with what is known,

just as it is within itself.

 

There, every last remaining trace

of transformation is dissolved

in truth beyond all compromise

with ignorance and falsity.

[Guest guest]

--- Ananda Wood <awood wrote:

...........

...........

>

> There, every last remaining trace

> of transformation is dissolved

> in truth beyond all compromise

> with ignorance and falsity.

>

>

Beautiful Anandaji. Reading that was refressing indeed in the

dissolution in the truth, divine. God Bless You.

 

Hari OM!

Sadananda

 

 

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What you have is destiny and what you do with what you have is self-effort.

Future destiny is post destiny modified by your present action. You are not only

the prisoner of your past but master of your future. - Swami Chinmayananda