DakshiNa-mUrti ashTakam Verse 3

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Verse No.3

 

yasyaiva sphuraNam sadAtmakam-asat-kalpArthakaM bhAsate

sAkshAt-tat-tvam-asIti veda-vacasA yo bodhayaty-ASritAn /

yas-sAkshAtkaraNat bhavenna punarAvRttir-bhavAmbhonidhau

tasmai SrI-guru-mUrtaye nama idaM SrI-dakshiNA-mUrtaye //

 

Translation:

 

To Him whose luminosity of Absolute Truth alone, shines forth in the

false world of appearance, to Him who instructs those who resort to Him

through the vedic text 'That Thou Art', to Him by realising whom there will

be no further return to the cycle of transmigration, to Him of the form of

the Guru, (who is attained by kinesis ), the blessed dakshinA-mUrti, is

this prostration.

 

Commentary:

 

The phenomenal appearance of the universe is actually the shining of brahman

and not its own shine. The 'reality' of the universe is actually the

reality of the substratum that is brahman. When the movie appears on the

screen, what is real is the screen, not the movie; because the screen is the

only thing that is present before, during and after. That Thou Art is the

famous Grand Pronouncement (mahA-vAkya) found in the Chandogya-Upanishad of

the Sama Veda, meted out by AruNi to Svetaketu. It is repeated nine times to

him and explained nine times. It is not supposed to be a casual statement.

It is the summum bonum of all Upanishadic teaching. It says: That brahman

which is the common Reality behind everything in the cosmos is the same as

the essential Divinity, namely the Atman or the Self, within you. This

latter is the innermost core of our selves and so seems to have an

individuality of its own. In saying that it is the same as the unqualified

brahman in the infinite cosmos, we seem to be identifying two things, one

that is unlimited and unconditioned and one that is possibly limited and

conditioned. Whenever someone says, for instance, that the person (call him

B) whom you are meeting just now is the same as the one whom you saw (call

him A) twenty years ago at such a such a place, what is actually meant is

not the identity of the dresses of the two personalities of A and B, nor of

the features (those of B may be totally different from those of A), but of

the essential person behind the names. So whenever such an identity is

talked about we have to throw away certain aspects which are clearly

distinctive in both and cling on to only those essentials without which they

are not what they are. B and A may be engaged in distinct professions, B

and A may be having different names, B and A may be having different

attitudes towards you or towards a certain issue, B and A may be posing as

different persons, by, say, showing off different passports, -- but still

they are the same, is what is being asserted. So when brahman and the

individual Self are being identified in this statement, we have to see what

commonality or essentialness there is in them that is being identified.

brahman is the cause of this universe. But this is a predication of brahman

and is extraneous to the identity that we are talking about. We want the

essentiality, the svarUpa-lakshaNa of both. (For two types of lakshaNas go

to The absolute As It Is). The capability of creation is only a

taTastha-lakshaNa of brahman, that is, it is a definition which is only

indicative, and does not distinguish it from everything else. The Self

of Man appears to be limited by an individuality which keeps it under the

spell of Ignorance; this is extraneous to the essentiality of the Self. So

what we are identifying is brahman, minus its feature of being the Cause of

this Universeand the Self minus its limitations of Ignorance-cum-Delusion

which individualises it. That these two are the same, is, in essence, the

content of the statement: tat tvam asi. The Cosmic mAyA is what makes

brahman the cause of the universe. The individual avidyA (=Ignorance) is

what makes the Self circumscribed and delimited. So the mahA-vAkya says

brahman minus its mAyA and the Self minus its avidyA are identical.

 

This statement 'That thou Art' is not just a flattery of the individual

Self; because the subject of discussion is vedanta where sentiment is not

the issue. It is not just a comparison between two entities; there is no

necessity to compare. It actually says they are identical. There is no

status of cause and effect here; the tvam, that is the individual self, is

not the effect of Isvara as the pot is that of the potter. There is no

question of attribute and subject here; because, on the one hand, if ISvara

is the subject which is attributed by the jIva-guNa then it should be mortal

and on the other hand, if jIva is the subject with ISvara-guNa then it

should be immortal. Nor is the statement just one of worship or prayer.

 

Commentary and translation by Prof V Krishnamurthy

The website is at:

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Rhodes/2952/gohitvip/63.html