Professor Swaminathan

[Guest guest]

Dear friends,

 

This interesting posting has just appeared on David Godman's Blog. It may

interest many on this site too. Love, Alan

 

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

K. S. Swaminathan

K. S. Swaminathan (1896-1994) is well known to most devotees of Bhagavan through

his writings and translations. He wrote a ‘life and teachings’ book on

Bhagavan for a publishing department of the Indian government; he translated

Guru Vachaka Kovai and parts of Sri Ramana Sannidhi Murai into English; many of

the translations of Bhagavan’s writings that appear in Collected Works are

his; and he was, for several years, the chief editor of The Mountain Path.

 

A few months ago his daughter, Mahalakshmi Suryanandan, found some of his old

articles and writings and decided to publish them in a small book. Entitled K.

S. Remembered, it was released a few weeks ago. It contains several interesting

articles on Bhagavan and his teachings that have only previously appeared in

obscure journals decades ago. The first extracts in this post are taken from the

following two articles:

 

(a) ‘Sri Ramana Maharshi (a short biography and his teachings)’, published

in the December 1958 issue of The March of India, a monthly magazine brought out

by the Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting,

Government of India.

 

(b) ‘Sri Ramana’, published in Swarajya. No other information is given.

 

In the early 1980s I used to go to Prof. Swaminathan’s house in Chennai and

read out articles that had been submitted to The Mountain Path. Having recently

had cataract operations, he had been banned from reading for a while. While I

was reading the submissions, he would periodically interrupt to correct the

grammatical errors of the contributors. As a former professor of English who

believed in upholding the virtues of correct English, he felt obliged to

intervene at least once in every paragraph. Since a few grammatical errors seem

to have crept into this new anthology, I have spared him a few posthumous

blushes by taking the liberty of correcting them. I have also interspersed, in

italics, a few supplementary comments and explanations of my own.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Was Sri Ramana a teacher? He delivered no sermon. He composed no treatise. Only

some of his talks – his answers to questions – have been recorded and

published. He also wrote a few poems (in Tamil, Telugu and Sanskrit) and did

some translations (into Tamil, Telugu, Sanskrit and Malayalam). He taught not in

words, but by being what he was. Prince and peasant, women, children and animals

were drawn to him, and he treated them all with the loving kindness of a

sensitive mother. J. C. Moloney, I.C.S., tells us how on one occasion his own

dogs ran away from him and preferred to stay with the sage. Monkeys, cows and

dogs, even squirrels and peacocks, moved on the friendliest terms with him.

 

[J. C. Moloney wrote: ‘After visiting the sage on the hill, when I reached my

camp, one of my dogs was missing. In the evening the holy man arrived, leading

the truant on a string. The sage said, “He came back to me and I should have

liked to keep him. But why should I steal him from you?â€â€™ Face to Face with

Sri Ramana Maharshi, p. 120.

 

I can’t remember where I first came across this story, but I do recollect that

Mr Moloney, a British Deputy Collector, was walking his dogs on the hill,

unaware of who Bhagavan was. His dogs found the pool by the Skandashram spring

and jumped into it to cool off. When Bhagavan emerged to see what was going on,

Mr Moloney expected a lecture from the ‘holy man’ since his dog had

contaminated his water source.

 

Instead, Bhagavan said, ‘Don’t worry about it. The stream will clean the

water in about five minutes. Dogs need to cool down in this weather. It is too

hot for dogs up here in summer, so I sent the ashram dogs away until it cools

down.’

 

Mr Moloney went back to his camp, but on the way there one of his dogs escaped

and returned to the cool of the pool at Skandashram As recorded in the quote

above, Bhagavan put a lead on it and personally returned it that evening.]

 

He infected people with the joy of friendship and the love of freedom. He spread

happiness as the sun spreads light.

 

What he did was to embody once again the eternal Indian idea of moksha,

liberation. This freedom, the noblest fruit of life, can come only from jnana,

knowledge, not from work or striving. These can only help purify the mind and

prepare it for jnana. The jnani or seer is freed from the tyranny of the

egotistic self and is conscious of the unity of All. By his mere being, he

serves the world. What effect he produces, what influence he exerts, is not the

result of effort put forth or will-power exercised by him; it is spontaneous.

 

Books such as the Upanishads, the Gita, the Yoga Vasishta, Vivekachudamani, and

Jivanmukti-viveka describe in a hundred ways the ‘one liberated in life’. He

lives in the world but is not changed by it. Like a burnt rope, which is all

ashes, his action does not bind. He has nothing to attain, nothing to give up.

Seeing him, hearing about him, and thinking about him, all beings are delighted.

Him the world fears not; and he is afraid of nothing.

 

[Duncan] Greenlees writes: ‘I have taken all the descriptions of the

jivanmukta I could find in any scripture – Hindu, Buddhist Confucian,

Christian, Muslim, Jain, etc. I have watched Bhagavan under all kinds of

circumstances and checked up what I have seen with those descriptions. He alone

of all the men I have seen seems to dwell always in sahaja samadhi…

 

In insisting on right meditation leading to right action and right living, and

in maintaining strict silence on irrelevant speculative issues, the sage

resembled the Buddha. His main metaphysical position was that of Sri Sankara. D.

S. Sarma (in his Hindu Standpoint) says that ‘historically, there has been no

such emphasis on jnana since Sankara …Against the vast main current of bhakti

flowing freely through eleven centuries stands the silent naked figure of Sri

Ramana Maharshi like a rock.'

 

Savants and scholars such as Kavyakantha Ganapati Sastri and Swami

Siddheswarananda, who know the tree and search eagerly for the good fruit among

the thick foliage of Indian humanity, are satisfied, but not surprised, when

they find it. But it is otherwise with untrained observers – such as Somerset

Maugham – who come suddenly upon this unusual phenomenon and are struck by its

strange goodness. Their testimony too has high value, as their experience was no

less authentic because it was unexpected and inexplicable. But the two classes

are never far apart. In the calm of the ashram the conservative Hindu Sastri, at

home among the backward castes, and the unresting, up-to-the-minute American

journalist felt at peace with themselves, and with each other. Neither judged

the other. Followers of many religions and many schools of thought came to see

the Maharshi and went back strengthened in spirit and more than ever loyal to

their own gurus. Not even the

do-nothing sadhu and the earnest satyagrahi quarreled there…

 

It was no accident that Paul Brunton was sent to the seer by the orthodox

Jagadguru Sri Sankaracharya of Kanchipuram. A front-rank Congress leader, who

later became Chief Minister of Madras, would, every time he went to jail, seek

Bhagavan’s blessings, and could secure them only on an assurance of

Gandhiji’s prior approval. Rajendra Prasad (now India’s President) was

advised by Gandhi to spend a week in the ashram to gain peace of mind and took

from there the message that shanti [peace] and shakti [power] were the inward

and outward aspects of the one force of love.

 

There have been many fruits, big and ripe, on the Indian tree. Sri Ramana’s

naturalness and truth-to-form only proves that he belongs to the tree and has

grown on it. Dr C. G. Jung says: ‘Sri Ramana is a true son of the Indian

earth. In India he is the whitest spot in a white space…. Sri Ramakrishna and

Sri Ramana not only remind us of the thousands-of-years-old spiritual culture of

India, they also directly embody it.’

 

[The quotation that Prof. Swaminthan is using here is taken from a poor-quality,

abridged translation of a Jung piece that has been recycled many times in

articles on Bhagavan. The original essay appeared as an introduction to a German

book on Bhagavan that had been edited and translated by Heinrich Zimmer.

Professor Zimmer had privately taken Jung to task for coming to South India in

1938 and not taking the time to meet Bhagavan. When Jung agreed to write the

introduction to Zimmer’s book, he addressed the criticisms in the following

way:

 

The carrier of mythological and philosophical wisdom in India has been since

time immemorial the ‘holy man’ – a western title which does not quite

render the essence and outward appearance of the parallel figure in the East.

This figure is the embodiment of the spiritual India, and we meet him again and

again in the literature. No wonder, then, that Zimmer was passionately

interested in the latest and best incarnation of this type in the phenomenal

personage of Shri Ramana. He saw in this yogi the true avatar of the figure of

the rishi, seer and philosopher, which strides, as legendary as it is

historical, down the centuries and the ages.

 

Perhaps I should have visited Shri Ramana. Yet I fear that if I journeyed to

India a second time to make up for my omission, it would fare with me just the

same. I simply could not, despite the uniqueness of the occasion, bring myself

to visit this undoubtedly distinguished man personally. For the fact is, I doubt

his uniqueness; he is of a type which always was and will be. Therefore it was

not necessary to seek him out. I saw him all over India, in the pictures of

Ramakrishna, in Ramakrishna’s disciples, in Buddhist monks, in innumerable

other figures of the daily Indian scene, and the words of his wisdom are the

sous-entendu [concealed implication] of India’s spiritual life. Shri Ramana

is, in a sense, a hominum homo, a true ‘son of man’ of the Indian earth. He

is ‘genuine’, and on top of that he is a ‘phenomenon’ which, seen

through European eyes, has claims to uniqueness. But in India he is merely the

whitest spot on a white surface

(whose whiteness is mentioned only because there are so many surfaces that are

just as black). Altogether, one sees so much in India that in the end one only

wishes one could see less. The enormous variety of countries and human beings

creates a longing for complete simplicity. This simplicity is there too; it

pervades the spiritual life of India like a pleasant fragrance or a melody. It

is everywhere the same; never monotonous, unendingly varied. To get to know it,

it is sufficient to read an Upanishad or any discourse of the Buddha. What is

heard there is heard everywhere; it speaks out of a million eyes, it expresses

itself in countless gestures, and there is no village or country road where that

broad-branched tree cannot be found in whose shade the ego struggles for its own

abolition, drowning the world of multiplicity in the All and All-Oneness of

Universal Being. This note rang so insistently in my ears that soon I was no

longer able to shake off

its spell. I was then absolutely certain that no one could ever get beyond

this, least of all the Indian holy man himself, and should Shri Ramana say

anything that did not chime in with this melody, or claim to know anything that

transcended it, his illumination would assuredly be false. The holy man is right

when he intones India’s ancient chants, but wrong when he chants any other

tune. The effortless drone of argumentation, so suited to the heat of Southern

India, made me refrain, without regret, from a visit to Tiruvannamalai.

These paragraphs, translated here fully and properly by R. F. C. Hull, appear in

‘The Holy Men of India’, a chapter in Jung’s Psychology and Religion: West

and East. This book now appears as volume eleven of Jung’s ‘Collected

Works’. If anyone is interested, the whole essay on Bhagavan can be found

online at:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/17676488/CGjung-Psychology-and-Religion-West-and-East-\

Collected-Works-Volume-11. The inaccurate version of this essay that has been

widely distributed indicates that Jung felt that Bhagavan was a unique and

exalted being, but it should be clear from this extract that his appreciation

was far more nuanced and qualified. However, this did not prevent Jung from,

later in the same essay, paying tribute to Bhagavan’s teachings in the

following words:

 

Shri Ramana’s thoughts are beautiful to read. What we find here is purest

India, the breath of eternity, scorning and scorned by the world. It is the song

of the ages, resounding like the shrilling of crickets on a summer’s night,

from a million beings. The melody is built up on the one great theme, which,

veiling its monotony under a thousand colourful reflections, tirelessly and

everlastingly rejuvenates itself in the Indian spirit, whose youngest

incarnation is Shri Ramana himself.

Prof. Swaminathan continues:]

 

The Hindu view is that the state of freedom is natural; Tamil uses the same word

(veedu) for home, heaven and freedom. The free man is happy here and now. The

saint is normal; it is he who provides the norm for the rest of us.. We love him

because he is the outward image of our inmost Self; he prefigures the

evolutionary possibilities of the race. He is already what all men will become

one day. If the Maharshi’s personal attendants included harijans and his

followers included foreigners, if in his ashram a shrine was raised to a woman

and a widow, it was all accepted as ‘natural’. The distinctions between

pariah and pandit, dog and man, vanished in his presence…

 

Apart from his spoken, acted and written teachings, the simple human

friendliness of Bhagavan showed the utter soulabhya, the easy accessibility, of

the ultimate Truth when it graciously chooses to embody itself in human form..

Bhagavan was not merely a yogi or a teacher or a saint: he was a seer, a being

comprehending and transcending all these lower categories, and he succeeded in

being a friend of everyone – sinner or saint, prince or peasant, old or young,

learned or ignorant, man or woman, cow, dog, monkey or peacock. Hundreds of

quite ordinary human visitors to the ashram were treated like intimate friends

by Maharshi, who took a most sympathetic interest in all their personal affairs:

the train they came on, the food they ate, the marriages and deaths, the

appointments and promotions that occurred in their families. No one felt that he

was unimportant or unwanted. Women and harijans were no less welcome than

learned brahmins to this charmed

circle. To all he taught humility without humiliating any, as he taught

self-surrender without loss of freedom.

 

If the good teacher is a friend who joins you where you are and leads you up

from that point to the mountain top of truth, then Maharshi is the greatest

teacher the world has seen because he refused to stretch us on a Procrustean bed

of creed or conduct. He did not merely concede as a matter of formal politeness,

but convinced every one of his devotees and disciples that there are as many

distinct ways of reaching the goal as there are unique human individuals. His

more than mother-like tenderness made no harsh choice between one friend and

another among the thousands of his friends; and his steady, calm and unfailing

cheerfulness and rock-like certainty sprang from his conviction that the

world-process must end in the final release of all beings.

 

Bhagavan has said:

 

When the ego rises, the mind is separated from its source, the Self, and is

restless, like a stone thrown up in the air, or like the waters of a river..

When the stone or the river reaches its place of origin, the ground or the

ocean, it comes to rest. So too the mind comes to rest and is happy when it

returns to and rests in its source. As the stone and the river are sure to

return to their starting place, so too the mind will inevitably – at some time

– return to its source. Thus, all shall reach the goal. Happiness is your

nature. It is not wrong to desire it. What is wrong is seeking it outside when

it is inside.

 

[Prof. Swaminathan has not attributed this quote, but it seems to be a

paraphrase of and commentary on Arunachala Ashtakam, verse eight. This is Prof.

Swaminathan’s own translation of the verse, taken from his Five Hymns to

Arunachala and Other Poems of Sri Ramana Maharshi:

 

The raindrops showered down by the clouds, risen from the sea, cannot rest until

they reach, despite all hindrance, once again their ocean home. The embodied

soul from You [Arunachala] proceeding may through various ways self-chosen

wander aimless for a while but cannot rest till it joins You, the source. A bird

may hover here and there and cannot in mid-heaven stay. It must come back the

way it came to find at last on earth alone its resting place. Even so, the soul

must turn to You, O Aruna Hill, and merge again in You alone, Ocean of Bliss.

Prof. Swaminathan met Mahatma Gandhi in 1915, twenty-five years before he

encountered Bhagavan. He was a lifelong Gandhian who, starting in 1960, spent

more than a quarter of a century editing the more-than-ninety volumes that

comprise Gandhi’s Collected Works. His allegiance to both Gandhi and Bhagavan

compelled him to ponder the apparently competing claims of pro-active service to

the nation and inner contemplation. He saw no conflict in Bhagavan’s own life,

as the following two paragraphs (taken from the two articles that are the source

of the earlier passages) demonstrate:]

 

Ramana Maharshi] chose to dwell like a tame bird in the cage of the ashram’s

regulations. Not only did he sit in the centre of a great household; he read

letters and newspapers; he corrected proofs and did a hundred odd jobs with

scrupulous care. He stressed by precept as well as by example the primacy of

dharma, right action. Many devotees who wished to escape from the duties of

their station in life he ‘ordered back to their posts’.

 

To a question on the relation of karma yoga and karma sannyasa, he gave an

answer in the manner of a Zen Master. Without uttering a word, he walked up the

hill, cut off two sticks from a tree and fashioned them into walking sticks. One

he gave to the questioner and the other to a passerby. Then he said, ‘The

making of the walking sticks is karma yoga; the gift of them is sannyasa’.

 

[in his attempts to synthesise the ideas of Gandhi with the advaitic teachings

of Bhagavan, Prof. Swaminathan often framed the discussion around the

purusharthas, the traditional four goals or aims of human life for Hindus.

Dharma is the performance of social duties in an ethical way; artha is the

acquisition of wealth through righteous means; kama is the happiness derived

from sensual enjoyments; moksha, liberation, is the natural state of abiding as

the Self.

 

Mahalakshmi Suryanandan, Prof. Swaninathan’s daughter, mentioned in her

introduction to this new book that some of the old articles she resurrected for

this anthology were lying dog-eared and crumbling in a drawer. This struck a

chord with me since I remember finding a Swaminathan piece in a similar state of

disrepair in the early 1980s. It had been languishing in an ashram file for

years, with no author’s name on it, but when I read it and discovered it to be

an essay on dharma, artha, kama and moksha I immediately knew who the author

was. Although he didn’t, on rereading it, think it had any particular merit, I

persuaded him to let it be published in The Mountain Path.

 

Bhagavan’s position on the purusharthas was that moksha was the only real

state, and that it is realised once one abandons the other three purusharthas to

dwell in the mauna of the Self:

 

To abandon completely dharma, artha and kama is the good fortune of liberation,

the excellent state of peace. Therefore, completely give up thoughts of all

those other attainments and live a life in which you take as your sole target

mauna, the experience that arises in a mind which dwells on Sivam, the supreme

swarupa.

 

Calling even the attainments [of dharma, artha and kama], which suffer from the

defect of appearing and disappearing in an illusory way, ‘everlasting’, is a

polite attribution, a superimposition. The hard-to-attain liberation [the fourth

purushartha, moksha], whose nature is the excellent and true Atma-jnana, which

is the goal that should be attained by everyone, is alone the everlasting

attainment. (Guru Vachaka Kovai, verses 1204, 230)

I have given this long preamble on the purusharthas because this new Swaminathan

anthology contains an interesting article, entitled ‘Dharma and Moksha’,

that discusses, in an elegant way, the apparently conflicting demands of worldly

action, and duties, sadhana, and other-worldly renunciation. No publication

information is given, so I cannot say if it has ever been published before. What

follows is an abridged version of what Prof. Swaminathan originally wrote:]

 

Everyone in the world wants to be happy – at all times, in all places and

under all conditions. This quest for ananda is the universal desire and the goal

of all human endeavour. There are, however, some persons who are happy at all

times, in all places and under all conditions, and that too without any desire,

and without any effort on their part. This strange paradox about happiness –

that one who seeks it strenuously often misses it, while the one who is

indifferent to it enjoys it – is explained by our failure to distinguish

between pleasure or satisfaction on the one hand and happiness or ananda on the

other. We mistake pleasure for happiness and, pursuing it as if it were

happiness, end up in all kinds of misery.

 

In Who am I? and Talks Sri Bhagavan brings out clearly this distinction between

happiness, which is our inherent and permanent nature, and the pleasure which

we, from time to time, derive from the satisfaction of our desires, physical and

mental, healthy or unhealthy.

 

Happiness is the very nature of the Self; happiness and the Self are not

different. There is no happiness in any object of the world. We imagine through

our ignorance that we derive happiness from objects. When the mind goes out, it

experiences misery. In truth, when its desires are fulfilled, it returns to its

own place and enjoys the happiness that is the Self. Similarly, in the states of

sleep, samadhi and fainting, and when the object desired is obtained, or the

object disliked is removed, the mind becomes inward-turned and enjoys pure

Self-happiness. Thus the mind moves without rest, alternately going out of the

Self and returning to it. Under the tree the shade is pleasant; out in the open

the heat is scorching. A person who has been going about in the sun feels cool

when he reaches the shade. Someone who keeps on going from the shade to the sun

and then back to the shade is a fool.. A wise man stays permanently in the

shade. Similarly, the mind of

the one who knows the truth does not leave Brahman. The mind of the ignorant

one, on the contrary, revolves in the world, feeling miserable, and for a little

time returns to Brahman to experience happiness. In fact, what is called the

world is only thought. When the world disappears, i.e. when there is no thought,

the mind experiences happiness; and when the world appears, it goes through

misery.

 

Absolute and permanent happiness does not reside in objects but in the Atman.

Such happiness is peace, free from pain and pleasure. In Talks it is said:

 

If a man thinks that his happiness is due to external causes and his

possessions, it is reasonable to conclude that his happiness must increase with

the increase of his possessions, and diminish in proportion to their diminution.

Therefore, if he is devoid of possessions, his happiness would be nil. What is

the real experience of man? Does it conform to this view?

 

In deep sleep the man is devoid of possessions, including his own body. Instead

of being unhappy, he is quite happy. Everyone desires to sleep soundly.. The

conclusion is that happiness is inherent in man and is not due to external

causes. One must realise one’s self in order to open the store of unalloyed

happiness.

For the sadhaka no doubt the ultimate goal is the complete extinction of the

ego, when the jiva and the world cease to be and only the brightness and bliss

of pure awareness remains. This goal, gained in a matter of a few moments by

Bhagavan, seems to most of us to be too remote and indeed inaccessible in this

our present life. We are repeatedly told and we readily believe that spiritual

progress has to be gradual and that moksha should wait until we have gone

through the other purusharthas. Self-enquiry, the direct sovereign method taught

by Bhagavan, gets continuously postponed while we are busy discovering and

painfully practising our dharma, or worse still, we allow ourselves to be lulled

into a spiritual sleep by sentimental bhakti and escape from the responsibility

of our station in life.

 

If moksha is bliss and if bliss is our real, permanent and inescapable nature,

what is its relation to dharma? Dharma is not a normative or moralistic concept;

it is well-being, health and growth, rooted in responsibility and freedom to

play with the light and warmth of awareness. The tree does not distinguish

between horizontal and vertical growth, between its loyalties to earth, water,

air and to the sun. It follows its nature and grows unawares till seed becomes

tree and matures into fruit. This also is the human destiny. We are seed sown in

the soil and, eating matter and warmth, bound to become fruit. The eater ceases

to eat and becomes food. The man of dharma ripens into the mukta. We however

separate dharma, our empirical nature as prakriti, from moksha, our

transcendental nature as Purusha. Instead of exposing ourselves to the sun

wherever we are and drinking in its light and warmth, we make elaborate plans of

travelling towards it at some future

time.

 

The traditional view of dharma as that which binds man’s social existence to a

moral order which holds, preserves and protects mankind can be illustrated by

Kausalya’s words to Rama before he left for the forest.

 

She said, ‘May that dharma which you have nourished with determination and

discipline protect you. This is the only blessing I can give.’

 

Here we have the popular idea of Rama as the fullest and clearest embodiment of

dharma, the horizontal or interpersonal dimension of human growth. The mother

rightly regards her son as a moral athlete who has, with determination and

discipline, nourished dharma, which in turn is expected to protect him as the

mother protects the child.

 

But Sri Ramana Maharshi prefers to dwell on the truer and more mature image of

Sri Rama presented in the Yoga Vasishta. He cites with approval the

preceptor’s adjuration to the pupil who, absorbed in the bliss of awareness,

is disinclined to act in the world of time and space:

 

Holding firmly at heart to the truth of your being, play like a hero your part

on the world stage, inwardly calm and detached, but assuming zeal and joy,

stirrings and aversions, initiative and effort, and performing outward actions

appropriate to your particular role in various situations.

In other words, the quest for Self-realisation, serious mumukshutva, goes hand

in hand with bold heroic action. The call to such action, addressed to Sri Rama,

is meant really for us. In outward action, or the practice of dharma, there is

no difference between the seeker and the realised person. The disinterested

action which the seeker performs deliberately as a matter of discipline, which

is for him a means of discovering his identity with fellow-beings, is for the

jnani such as Sri Rama or Janaka the spontaneous expression of such identity….

 

In recommending and indeed prescribing the quest of the Self to all thoughtful

persons in the adolescent and adult stages of life, Bhagavan makes a radical and

necessary departure from the letter of the tradition in order to restore its

spirit. In chapter three of Sri Ramana Gita the paramount task of man is

declared to be ‘the discovery of our real human nature, which is the basis of

all actions and their fruit’. This quest for our real nature, the withdrawing

of thoughts from sense objects and steady self-enquiry, is not to be postponed.

In chapter ten, ‘Sangha Vidya’, one’s duty to one’s circle and to

humanity is clearly defined as an organic interdependence to be promoted both by

shanti which purifies one’s own mind, and by shakti, which is required for the

progress of society. The attenuation of the ego by steady self-enquiry and the

acceptance in practice of normal and family responsibilities can alone lead to

the brotherhood and

equality, which is the supreme goal to be attained by mankind as a whole....

 

Loving the Lord God with all one’s heart and loving one’s neighbour as

oneself are not two commandments but one. We cannot effectively love and serve

our neighbour unless we have succeeded in some measure in loving the Father as

Awareness...

 

Instead of complaining against one’s real circumstances, one derives

inexhaustible strength from inner happiness (uran in Tamil) and says with

Thoreau, ‘I love my fate to the very core and rind’. One’s present life is

the fruit one has earned and must eat to the last bite.

 

As we climb the mountain path, the view widens; new responsibilities come to us

and are cheerfully undertaken. We are no more inclined to off-shoulder our

burden on others. We find fulfillment in mastering rather than evading svadharma

[one’s own duties and obligations]. Such svadharma, disinterested action

surrendered to the Lord (Upadesa Saram, verse three), purifies the mind and

points the way to moksha. Through the practice of dharma we become progressively

more eligible for the ultimate happiness of moksha…

 

In any case, at all times and places and under all conditions, dharma has to be

practised, whether as duty and discipline or as the happy and spontaneous

expression of awareness… It is only in and through dharma that the happiness

of moksha can be reached or manifested...

 

As ends and means are inseparable, so are moksha and dharma. They reinforce each

other in healthy individual and social life. They are, in fact, the empirical

and transcendental modes of our being, whose basic nature is the bliss of

awareness, stillness, shanti, broken occasionally by ripples of action,

movement, shakti. It must be remembered [though] that dharma is bound by time,

while moksha is the boundless bliss of awareness.

 

[i will make no comment on Prof. Swaminathan’s views about the relationship

between dharma and moksha. Instead, I will conclude with a series of quotations

from Bhagavan himself. These, I hope, will demonstrate that, so far as Bhagavan

was concerned, true dharma is abiding in and as the Self:

 

Since the impartite, non-dual, true jnana alone abides and shines as the refuge

for all dharma-observances, the jnani [alone] becomes the one who has observed

all the dharmas. (Guru Vachaka Kovai, verse 705. The following paragraph is

Muruganar’s explanatory note to this verse)

 

Since non-dual jnana alone shines as the refuge for all the dharmas, the jnani

who is established in that state [automatically] becomes the one who has

observed all dharmas impeccably. There is no greater dharma than getting firmly

established in the Self. All the actions of that jnani who possesses motionless

consciousness are actions of God.

 

Living as the Self is the essence of all dharmas. All other dharmas merge there.

(Padamalai, p. 134, v. 44)

 

The supreme reality exists as the undivided space of true jnana. When we become

different from it and rise as a false ‘I’ that frolics about and suffers,

this constitutes the sin of destroying that non-duality by cleaving it into two,

the ‘I’ [nan] and God [tan], thus bringing ruination upon the way of dharma.

(Guru Vachaka Kovai, verse 777)

 

The state of abiding as swarupa, which is the pure and vast true consciousness,

is an obligation that should be firmly observed by all the beings in the world.

 

Swadharma [one’s own duty] is abidance in the pure Self only. All other

[perceived] duties are worthless. (Padamalai, p. 299, vv. 13, 16)

 

By becoming the source of all desires, the ego is the doorway to the sorrow of

samsara. The extremely heroic and discriminating person first attains through

dispassion the total renunciation of desires that arise in the form of ‘I

want’. Subsequently, through the Selfward enquiry ‘Who am I?’, he

renounces that ego, leaving no trace of it, and attains the bliss of peace, free

from anxieties. This is the supreme benefit of dharma. (Guru Vachaka Kovai,

verse, 850)]

 

 

 

Posted by David Godman

Labels: artha, dharma, Jung, K. S. Swaminathan, kama, Mahalakshmi Suryanandan,

moksha, Moloney