Vivekachudamani - Post 18

 Verse 12  

 

सम्यग्विचारतः सिद्धा रज्जुतत्त्वावधारणा ।
भ्रान्तोदितमहासर्पभयदुःखविनाशिनी ॥ १२ ॥

 

samyagvicārataḥ siddhā rajjutattvāvadhāraṇā |
bhrāntoditamahāsarpabhayaduḥkhavināśinī || 12 ||

 

(The fear and sorrow created by the delusory serpent on the rope can be ended only after fully ascertaining the truth of the rope which is available for recognition only through steady and balanced thinking) 

 

रजजसु पवय दार् means a clear knowledge of rope; rajju means rope; it is the satvam; sarvam means the substratum of the false snake; 

 

Suppose if one says it may be rope and somebody asks go and touch it; he will say: why to take risk. Similarly if we say the world is Brahman; it is one thing. If we say the world may be Brahman; that is not enough.

 

And how did the snake come into existence? Not that there was a mother snake; and it gave birth to smaller snakes; it is not like that; this snake how did come; purely because of rope-ignorance. 

Therefore he says Bhrantodita. Bhranthihi means the error; erroneous perception; uditha means born. So therefore the clear knowledge of rope is the destroyer of the fear born out of the snake which is born out of an erroneous perception. In short, knowledge alone will destroy this particular fear.

 

It is never possible that one who has seen the rope as a rope will ever have the fear and sorrow of a snakebite. But in the gathering darkness of dusk, a traveller mistakes an innocent rope to be a snake. The serpent delusion is created in the mind of the traveller because of his ignorance of the rope-reality. 

 

Having thus been bitten by a delusory serpent, the individual, so long as he is under the delusion, suffers the agony of a snakebite and, if left alone, will exhibit symptoms of blood poisoning too, but the traveller is advised to make an enquiry into his delusion. 

 

In vedanta, this example is often quoted to make the student understand how the names and forms created through the ignorance of Reality can end with the rediscovery of the Truth underlying them. 

 

However great a devotee he may be; you might have the mantropadesah, but when rajju sarpa comes, what you need is to intelligently bring the torch and see it properly. The torch is called the sastra pramaṇam. 

 

Take the sastra pramaṇam torch. Knowledge is attained through only proper enquiry. Proper enquiry means what, with sastra torchlight; that is why "proper" is put. So then alone this knowledge will come and the knowledge alone will destroy the bhayaṁ.

 

Similarly if the samsara bhayam should go; atma jnanam should come; and if atma jnanam should come, vichara is a must.

 

Till the time we keep thinking about snake, how much ever we may try to negate the existence of snake, the fear will never go. Only upon discovering the existence of rope, the delusion of snake will go.

 

Similarly, Sankara says, as long as you think that Brahman may be the reality, you won’t be able to experience Brahman. Only when you are convinced through the stage of mananam that “Only Brahman exists”, then, in nidhidhyasanam, there is hope for you to experience Brahman as pure awareness / consciousness.

 

 

Love.

Vivekachudamani - Post 17

 Verse 11  

 

चित्तस्य शुद्धये कर्म न तु वस्तूपलब्धये ।
वस्तुसिद्धिर्विचारेण न किंचित्कर्मकोटिभिः ॥ ११ ॥

 

cittasya śuddhaye karma na tu vastūpalabdhaye |
vastusiddhirvicāreṇa na kiṃcitkarmakoṭibhiḥ || 11 ||

 

(Selfless work and charitable acts help to purify the mind, but they do not, by themselves, contribute to the perception of Reality. The discovery of the Reality is brought about only by discriminative analysis and never by any number of actions.)

 

An often quoted analogy by the author - In our school times, we loved our school, we loved our seating, our class mates who uses to sit along with us in a row. But can we, after growing up and getting married, still go and sit on the same seat in that same row in the same class room saying that we love that seat, that class and we won’t leave that?

Another example.

A child is told by his parents to revise his arithmetic tables  everyday. The obedient child soon gets into the habit of starting his day with a reading of the tables. But if the child continues his habit as a dull and unintelligent routine even in his postgraduate classes, it is but natural for his professor to laugh at his stupidity.

 

A sage writes,

 

“In the halls of Vedanta, the seeker is laughed at because of the time-worn techniques of self-development to which he has become habituated, but that does not mean that  Sankara or the Vedantins are against them. 

 

The paths of karma, bhakti and so on, have certainly a place in the scheme of self-development and they are unavoidable in hauling up a man through the various stages of self-development to the pinnacle of perfection. 

 

Here Sankara points out that karma when undertaken with a pure nishkama bhava purifies the inner instruments of feeling and understanding. The word 'shuddhi' used in connection with the mind is to be understood as a greater degree of integration. The purer mind has a greater capacity to concentrate.”

 

Three things constitute dharma; one is rituals or religious exercises; like puja, japa etc. that is one part of dharma; all religious exercises whether it is temple visit, puja, pilgrimage japa, etc. all of them will come under rituals or religious exercises.

 

Second part of dharma is values. There are many people who give importance to religious exercises but they never give importance to their character, the quality or morality. And therefore morality or value is the second part of dharma.

 

And third part of dharma is attitude; the way we look at the creation; the way we look at ourselves and the way we look at the people around. First learn to respect yourself.  A Bhakta is great not because of anything; because Lord is inside him. 

 

Thus religious exercises, values and attitude. This is called karma here. Chittasya Shuddaye karma; Karma is equal to dharma.

 

When an action is undertaken with a motive, the individual must necessarily be shattered and fatigued under its persecution. On the other hand, when an act of charity or kindness is done in a spirit of dedication  and love, with no ulterior motive, the mind cosily settles down and  peace that rises within the sadhaka increases automatically and  his personality becomes more and more integrated. 

 

Selfless actions do not help a seeker directly in his flights of self-discovery. But they certainly have a place in one's sadhana in as much as they prepare the individual to transcend the ego and give him the wings for the last flight to the beyond. 

 

Sankara is uncompromisingly severe when he declares in his irrevocable statements that the Self is neither produced nor knowledge created as a result of finite actions, however noble, divine and great they may be.

 

How about someone who is unable to take up the path of vichara? He would like to do more of puja; Can he cry in front of the Lord as a replacement of vichara? 

 

Sankara says Na kinchit karma kotibhihi; one can do crores of yajnas; crores of yagas; crores of pujas; intense bhajans; one  may do all these things; cry in front of the Lord; crying would not replace enquiry; but crying in front of the Lord would not go waste; the Lord will make him fit for enquiry make you love enquiry. 

 

Such a bhakthi will gradually change and one will begin to like enquiry and Lord would change the mind; change the attitude. 

 

A bhakta may not know when he has moved / evolved to the path of discrimination. In His Love for God, when the urge within him is on fire to merge with the lord instead of crying out for the lord, in that quest for merger with lord, the path of Jnana/discrimination has started.

Karmaṇa siddhihi, vicharane jnana. This is sara of this sloka. Religion gives purity; philosophy gives knowledge. Veda purva is purity; veda anta is knowledge. 

 

 

Love.

Vivekachudamani - Post 16

 Verse 10 

 

संन्यस्य सर्वकर्माणि भवबन्धविमुक्तये ।
यत्यतां पण्डितैर्धीरैरात्माभ्यास उपस्थितैः ॥ १0 ॥

 

saṃnyasya sarvakarmāṇi bhavabandhavimuktaye |
yatyatāṃ paṇḍitairdhīrairātmābhyāsa upasthitaiḥ || 10 ||

 

(May the wise and learned man give up all actions which are motivated by desires and start the practice of rediscovering the Self and thereby attain freedom from the bondage of birth and death.) 

 

A sage says,

 

“Here is a piece of advice given to a man who has all the necessary theoretical knowledge of the science of self- perfection. He is told to renounce all activities motivated by self-aggrandizing hopes or disintegrating desires. 

 

This renunciation of the activities of the world is not to be over-emphasized and misunderstood, as is generally done, to mean that Vedanta is calling man to a life of eating only fruits and leaves. It is only asking us to reduce overexcitement in life and to curb the wasteful expenditure of our mental and intellectual energies born out of our unintelligent desires and lofty expectations.”

 

Sarvakarmaṇi samnyasya. After renouncing all the karmas; if the karmas are formally renounced, it is called sanyasa asrama. So literally saṁnyasya sarvakarmaṇi means caturta asram swekritya; but if a person does not take to sanyasa asrama, we can do the enquiry in Grahastha asrama also; but reducing the karmas to some extent, and developing detachment. In fact finding time is easier. But getting a withdrawn mind is more difficult. 

 

For a grahastha's attempt is more than finding time, finding a quality mind, because the mind can, when time is available, efficiently do the worrying. Therefore time is not a problem but the mind, committed mind, a withdrawn mind is difficult to attain. Therefore detachment becomes more important for a grahastha than even reducing the activity. If detachment is there, minutes available would be quality time. 

 

That good and sincere work will yield noble fruits should be a sufficient direction to guarantee us a peaceful passage for our pilgrimage here. But we  expect the impossible, a noble return from a vicious or ill-planned  action instead of the painful returns of sorrow, that will yield to us  many a terrible hour of unproductive anxiety and suicidal worry. 

 

In the Bhagwad Gita, Lord says,

 

kamyanaṁ karmanaṁ nyasam sannyasam kavayo viduh, 

sarvakarmaphalatyagaṁ prahus tyagaṁ vicaksanaḥ (18.2). 

 

Sannyasa is that kind of behaviour by which the actions that are connected with desire of some kind or the other are abandoned. A person may be said to be in a state of sannyasa the moment that actions which are motivated by desire are abandoned. 

 

That is to say, sannyasa does not mean abandonment of action as such. It means abandonment of actions which are connected with a desire of some kind. If we can think of an action without any desire attached to it, that is a different matter. It is up to us to imagine if such an action is possible at all: an action with which no desire is associated, and from which we expect nothing.

 

Here, the reference is to another kind of action. Action which is charged with a motive, any kind of motivated action, is kamya karma; and the abandoning of kamya karma, or motivated action, is sanyasa. This is the definition of sannyasa given by great ancient learned ones. 

 

We also learnt in the Manas Buddhi Chitta Ahankara blog posts that actions pushed by Ahankara or chitta are bound to add to our Karma further whereas, Actions performed purely due to the instructions received by our pure intellect do not fetch us further karmas.

 

The second part of the verses insists on a seeker who is striving to integrate himself is advised to walk  the path of intelligent living. 

 

Our aim is to clearly understand this consciousness is not part of matter; it is an independent entity which is my nature. And when I have to assimilate this, the intellect raises lot of questions and therefore to answer the question and to make the intellect clearly understand, lot of thinking is involved. Therefore Sankara  says Panditah; Panditah means a logical thinker is required.

 

Pandithyam is important; dhiratvam is important. Then what is the next? Atmabhyasa upasthithai. And one should become dedicated; committed to atma bhyasaha; Self-enquiry. Atmabhyasaḥ is another beautiful word for Self-enquiry. Here abhyasaḥ means shravaṇa manana nidhidhyaśana. Thus being committed to this one should work for mokṣa. 

 

The renunciation of false values is only a negative aspect of self-making. Man-making fulfils itself in God discovery and this spiritual art of perfection is not to be gained by a negative endeavour. Sankara specifies the positive aspect by saying, 'Let him practise the various means of self-discovery.”

 

If carefully examined, this one verse is all about  Sadhana chatushtaya.

 

The first part of the verse is giving up actions motivated by desires. This is is covered in Viveka, Vairagya and the intial part of Shad Sampat - Sama, Dama, Uparati, Titiksha

 

The second part of the verse is rediscovering the Self and thereby attain freedom from the bondage of birth and death. 

 

This is all about Shraddha, Samadana and Mumukshatva.

 

 

Love.