Advaita from scratch - Kanchi Mahaswamigal's Discourses - 12

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Kanchi

Mahaswamigal's Discourses on Advaitam

 

KMDA –

12

(For KMDA – 11, see #44325)

(For the first post in this series see #43779)

 

Tamil

original of this portion is missing in the online version. In the printed book,

4th reprint, this is pp.561-565

 

Note: In these discourses, `the Acharya'

refers to Adi Shankaracharya. The speaker is the Kanchi Mahaswamigal.

 

Svadharma even at the cost of one's

life

 

Even

if one dies in doing one's svadharma,

it is good. For, death is only for the

body. The life-principle within the body keeps entering new and newer bodies

until it exhausts its balance of karma.

Does that mean there is no end to this torture of samsAra? In a sense,

yes. But there is what is called

fulfillment. That is absent in samsAra; always there is a discontent.

The fulfillment is its being stationed in its true eternal state. To make it

reach that true state one has to begin by discharging the obligatory duties in

this worldly life. That which reduces the balance of the karma-baggage after death is this svadharma-anushhTAnam

(Discharge of one's own dharmic responsibilities). Therefore, in the death in action of svadharma-anushhTAnam,

though the body dies, the life-principle goes towards its fulfillment. That is why the Gita says (III – 35) `svadharme

nidhanam shreyas', that is, even if one dies in doing one's svadharma,

it is good.

 

Direct benefit for the good of the

world

 

Any

JIva, for the matter of that, cannot

but be doing something even for a moment. That is why they have prescribed a

number of obligations under the name of `svadharma'

so that one can be led to the state of Actionlessness. When the JIva is involved in this kind of

desireless action, there is no benefit for the mind that gives individuality to

the JIva. The very meaning of

`desireless action' is this. To desire

is man's first job, most important job. All his actions are to fulfill his

desires. Therefore when he does something desirelessly, mind does not have any

use out of it. Then you may ask: what is the use of doing any action without

any use for it? The SShAstras may

have prescribed action-duties for him in order to control his desiring mind,

but is it fair to decree that there shall be no use or benefit from those

actions? The ShAstras have taken care of that.

 

First

there is the hidden benefit for the individual, namely, it takes him to that

supreme state of actionlessness, even though he may not derive any benefit

directly from his present action. But that does not mean he has been left to

discharge duties for which there is no direct benefit for anybody. There is an

indirect benefit of `purification of mind'

of the individual who discharges his duties, but leaving it there

without there being any direct benefit for any one seems to be unfair! So they

have decreed that there is also a direct benefit, though the beneficiary may

not be the individual performing the duties.

Because, making him a direct beneficiary is only likely to tempt him to

desire that benefit by hook or crook. Therefore, the ShAstras have planned for the whole society to be the direct

beneficiary. In other words, by his discharge of his svadharma, the beneficiary is the broader world. This is the inner

objective of all ShAstraic

injunctions.

 

Let

me illustrate by an example. Here is one who has all the affluence of the

material world. He has to do physical exercise for his own good health. There

are two ways of doing this. One is for him to do exercises for their own sake,

perhaps in a gym. Another way is involvement in some work which gives enough

exercise for the entire body – like gardening, for example. And even the

gardening work he can have it done in two ways.

He can go to a distant forest, where he can engage himself in cutting,

digging, watering and all the other physical work associated with gardening.

This may give him the benefit of physical exercise but there may not accrue any

benefit either for him or for the society. On the other hand, he may engage

himself in raising a fruit orchard for which he may himself do all the physical

work involved or use his money to get part of the work done. This orchard may benefit his neighbourhood

society. He may not need the fruits or any money raised

out of it. For his physical exercise

which is what his health needs, he may work in the orchard, the benefits of

which may accrue to the rest of the world.

This is certainly far better than his doing exercises in a gym or in a

distant forest shrubbery. In other words, he doesn't need the fruits but he

needs the exercises. So he performs the

exercises through the orchard which gives fruits for the rest of the world!

 

In the same manner for those who want to reach the

God Supreme by erasing all their karmas,

the ShAstra karmas are not by themselves useful to them, because the fruits of

those karmas are not needed by them.

However, in order to get the spiritual maturity which will help them to reach

the God Supreme they have to keep their mind under control and not allow it to

dissipate in all directions. For this they have to involve themselves, at least

in the early stages, in some work or other. But if these actions are

desire-prompted then undesirable fruits accrue. So they need to do something

which is not desire-prompted and in which they have no personal benefit. At the

same time it cannot be a wasteful action, like, in the analogy of the rich

man's gardening, the work in the forest shrubbery. That would be totally

foolish. Just as the rich man in the analogy did need to do exercises, but did

not need to work for an orchard, so also the JIva has to do karma only

for the purification of the mind, but at the same time does not need to reap

the fruits of those actions. Again just as the rich man did work in the orchard

which provided him the needed exercises and at the same time benefited the rest

of the world so also the JIva does karma for its own mind-purification but

the same karma is also a do-gooder

for the rest of the society. It is for

this grand design that the ShAstras

have prescribed specific actions of svadharma

for each individual.

 

And, mark it! There are always millions of

individuals who look for the goodies of the world, the fruits of the orchard of

the rich man in the analogy. In God's play of the world this is ever the

ongoing scene!

 

(To be continued in KMDA 13)

 

PraNAms to all advaitins.

PraNAms to the Mahaswamigal.

profvk