Sankara Jayanthi - Adi Shankaracharya's Birthday-24th Apr 04

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Sankara Jayanthi - Birthday of Swamy Adi Shankaracharya - 24th April 2004

 

Adi Shankaracharya was one of the greatest of Self-realised souls and philosophers this world of ours has produced. Leaving home, in a spirit of renunciation and aspiration to realise the Reality, at the tender age of eight years, he completed an unbelievable mission in the span of just a few years, passing away in his 32nd year.He was responsible for the Bhakthi movement in India.

 

He did all his pilgrimages by walk in the thick forests and spread the Bhakthi movement all over India. In Kanchipuram to Kasi and Sringeri in Karnataka,etc.

 

During that period he did what is known, as digvijaya (conquest of the quarters), carrying the banner of Advaita Vedanta, the supreme philosophy of absolute monism , into the four, corners of India and overcoming all lesser schools of philosophy through his convincing, irrefutable arguments. His incredible work remains dynamically living, active and ever progressive even to this day, more than 1200 years after he propounded his doctrine.

 

The quintessence of Advaita Vedanta is to affirm the truth and reality of your essential, eternal, divine identity and to resolutely reject the error of thinking of yourself as a finite human creature having a name and form, beginning and end, and subject to changes such as birth, death, old age, disease, decay, pain, sorrow, suffering, etc. Resolutely rejecting this error and simultaneously affirming your eternal, unchangeable divine identity is the centre of Advalta Vedanta sadhana (practice). They call it affirming and rejecting, pushtikarana and nirakarana-neti, neti. *********************************One day, when he was in Benares, he was returning from the river through a narrow lane, and a person who was considered to be an untouchable was coming opposite to him. Sankara asked him to move away and keep at a distance so that he, a Brahmin, could move on unpolluted.

Then that untouchable asked Sankara, "Are you asking the body to keep at a distance? If that is so, one body, which is Jada or inert, is asking another inert body and it has no authority to do so.

 

If you are asking the soul to keep away at a distance, the soul that is in me is the same as the soul or Atma that is in you. Therefore, the same Atma cannot ask itself to move away from itself and be aloof." Then Sankara thought, "This so-called untouchable is one who knows what is real Atma and what is real Anatma, what is Kshetra and what is Kshetrajna and I must respect him."

 

So saying, he prostrated before the 'untouchable'.

The untouchable was none other than Lord Viswanatha Himself. He then appeared in His true form to Sankara. Let one be a Brahmin or belong to any caste, if he knows well the Advaita Thatwa, then he has true spiritual enlightenment.

 

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Let us also remember his great love for his mother. He knew that if he did not please his mother, he would not be successful in his Sadhana. So, even though he desired to take Sanyasa, he was not prepared to take it without the prior permission of his mother. Because he was the only son, the mother also was not willing to permit him to take Sanyasa. The Sanyasa taken by Sankara is not like the monkshood of today.

 

By merely wearing a saffron-coloured robe, devotion and detachment do not descend on a person. You know the crocodile incident and how Sankara got his mother's permission for taking Sanyasa.

 

After Sankara came to the shore of the river, he told his mother, "Mother, it is not a real crocodile that caught me in the waters, but it is the crocodile of Samsara or family that caught me." Sankara used his skill and his intelligence but never did he do a thing without the permission of his parents.

 

We do various actions now and then, but they are not sometimes appropriate to the time and situation. When the iron is red hot, if you beat it with a hammer, you can mould it as you want and it will yield to you. But when it becomes black and also cold even though a very strong man comes and beats it, it will not yield. Thus, our actions should be appropriate to the time and situation and always be for the right purpose and in the right direction.

 

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Sankara's most popular work, Vivekachudamani, is a call to discrimination between the Self and the non-Self-atma-anatma viveka. Atman is sat (existence absolute). Anatman is appearance only, temporary in time, limited in space, perishable; it is kshara purusha (perishable being). Atman is akshara purusha (imperishable being)-ajo nityah sasvato'yam purano na hanyate hanyamane sarire (Unborn, eternal, changeless and ancient, the Self is not killed when the body is killed).

 

Thus the Vivekachudamani is a discourse, a treatise and a sadhana on discrimination between the Self and the non-Self.

And a second work of his, Atma Bodha, is a light upon what the Self is. As you discriminate between the Self and the non-Self, you get a good knowledge of what the non-Self is, so you can reject it; you will not be deluded by it. You can free yourself from the veil of delusion by knowing the nature of anatman.

 

And then, to be rooted in the Reality, to be fixed in it firmly, to be able to think, reflect and meditate upon it and to awaken the correct awareness within your consciousness, a thorough study of what the Self is of great importance and value. To that end, Atma Bodha can be the way that God can gradually answer your prayer, "tamasoma jyotir gamaya" and "dhiyo yo nah prachodayat" ("From darkness lead me unto light" and "May He illumine our intellects").

 

To avoid that which is wrong, we have to get a knowledge of what wrong is; and to pursue and practice that which is right, we have the need to have a knowledge and a grasp of what right is of what Reality and Truth is. Thus both the negative and positive aspects of Vedantic admonition are of equal importance in making the mind aware of its error and to make the intellect grasp the truth.

 

When Brahman is the reality to be attained, why unnecessarily know about the world, prapancha, samsara? The answer is that because you want to free yourself from the delusion of the world, you must know the tricks of this deluding appearance. Indeed, you must know everything about it, because it comes in numerous subtle ways.

 

We think the world is outside us, but, by and large, the world or prapancha or samsara is within us. We have to understand that. What is it within us that makes us regard prapancha to be real and makes us move towards it, get attached to it, get bound by it? What is it within us? That has to be rooted out, eradicated first. Thus the study of avidya or maya within is the key to freeing ourselves from delusion and rising from darkness to light.

 

Shankaracharya reinterated again and again: "Thou art immortal Soul. Thou art not this body nor this mind. They are upadhis, limiting adjuncts temporarily added on to you. They are there as part of your lesser personality, your earth consciousness, but you are also there far beyond them, transcending them, a divine personality, a suprahuman spiritual reality, untouched by time and space, not bothered by pain, sorrow and suffering."

 

This, then, is to be heard, reflected upon and meditated upon. May you direct all your attention to the practice of this truth which shall make you free. For it is this truth that arouses in us our kinship with the eternal, universal Reality, paramatman. May the grace of the Lord grant you success in this sadhana of being what you really are and of resisting the pull of the lower mind to make you imagine that you are something other than this Reality.

 

Constantly you have to reject the, attempts of the mind and its age-old, inveterate tendencies to keep itself tied down to a lower level of ignorance and mistaken identity. It should be given no quarter. By the strength of your will-power, your positive, awakened consciousness and your resolute and determined sankalpa (thought) to attain realisation in this very body, you must keep this process up.

 

You must shine with an effulgent inner awareness of your own essential, immortal and imperishable divine identity. Your interior should be a mass of effulgence, of jnana prakasa. There should be a state of jnana bodha within, a state of wakefulness within-no slumber. For this you must pray, and for this you must practice.

 

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Jagam Nee, Agam Nee Paripoorani Nee-..

Adi shankaracharya sings on Goddess Ambal in his movie picturisation of Adi Shankaracharya

 

Adi Shankaracharya Jayanthi - 24th April 04

 

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