DEIVATHIN KURAL # 1 (of Vol 3) Dated 08 Oct 2008

DEIVATHIN KURAL # 1 (of Vol 3) Dated 08 Oct 2008

(These e-mails are translations of talks given by Periyavaal of Kanchi Kamakoti peetam, over a period of some sixty years while he was the pontiff in the earlier part of last century. These have been published in Tamil by Vanadi Padippagam, Chennai, in seven volumes of a thousand pages each, as Deivathin Kural. To day we are proceeding from page number 1, of Vol 3, of the Tamil original. )
(Note:- All these Deivathin Kural e-mails are available in ‘http://advaitham.blogspot.com’, which is being updated every time this e-mail is sent. )
Pillaiyar Suzhi
1. Whatever is written in Tamil (and most of the Indian Languages too), is started with a squiggle of a ‘round and a flat horizontal line’, known as Pillaiyar Suzhi. Pillaiyar literally is a respectful way of referring to a son, like a few decades back, the eldest son of the family used to be referred as, ‘Prince of Wales’! This was the effect of English education in India. It is a Hindu custom to start any writing with Pillaiyar Suzhi, whether it is a post card or grocery list, or the preamble of a literary work! The idea is to think of God before launching oneself on any endevours. Especially if you want to complete the job without any hindrance or obstacle, you think of Ganapati or Ganesha, who is known as Pillaiyar in Tamil! He is known as Vigneswara and Vinayaka too. So, Pillaiyar Suzhi is the written proof in black and white that we have correctly abided with the protocol of starting with the invocation of Ganesha!
2. Whatever we are going to do or write subsequently, so that it may not go in to vicious cycle, we start it with the Pillaiyar Suzhi. There are those who start with a ‘Ohm’ / ‘Aum’. But, that is also Pillaiyar Suzhi in another form symbolic of the Pranava Onkara! Since after all, the real ‘Swaroopa’ of Pillaiyar is also Pranava and vice-versa!
3. Suzhi is a curve; called ‘vakram’. Pillaiyar’s trunk’s front end is curved. So one of His names is ‘Vakra Thunda’. (The trunk of the elephant in Sanskrit ‘thunda’ is pronounced with a light touch between, ‘tunda and thunda’. So, it has been typed here with a smaller ‘h’.) The half circle or curve if completed will become a full circle. The world, of the Earth, planets, stars and all the galaxies are all of the oval circular form of the ‘egg’ known as ‘andam’. If the micro egg form is andam, the macro is ‘Brhmaandam’! This complete cipher is also zero and it is surprising that, in Mathematics too, zero or cipher is indicative of ‘nothingness’ on the one hand as well as, the Universe which contains everything!
4. I am thrilled to note that this zero, which is nothingness and totality, is also representative of ‘Poornatvam’(completeness) and ‘Parabrhmam’, that is another name for God the Universal Ultimate! So, the Suzhi is symbolically indicating ‘Parama Atma’ principle. When somebody comes back having failed in the task, he will be twisting and turning as though he will go under the earth, given a chance! We are likely to say, “What happened I say? Is it a suzhi?”
5. The Pillaiyar is holding the Modakam in his hands, and that modakam contains sweet ‘poornam’. ‘Poornam’ here again means completeness, as well as, a sweet filling inside the modakam, made of jaggery and fine grinded coconut. Invoking that Pillaiyar, we are writing the Suzhi which will turn all half done works in to completed whole!
6. The Pillaiyar Suzhi, which starts with a twist, ends in a straight line. As He is ‘poornam and nothingness’, He is also the ‘curve (vakram) and straight line (aarjavam)’. That is the meaning. The opposite of the curve is the straight line. Completeness is the opposite of nothingness, vacuum or zero. God is a combination of all opposites that we can think of and what we cannot even imagine or comprehend. This ‘aarjavam’ is known as ‘nermai’ in Tamil and ‘straight forwardness’ in English. ‘Guna and guna heenam’ that is, characteristics and absence of it, are all of the same Para Brhmam!
7. Ohm is also Aum. This combined form of ‘a + u + m’ is ‘aum’. The first letter is ‘a’ creation; Brhma. The second letter ‘u’ is sustenance and governing; Vishnu. The third letter ‘m’ is destruction / samharam / assimulation; Siva. (May be that is the reason that on gobbling up and assimulating some eats, we say ‘mmm’!) This ‘aum’ change places and becomes ‘uma’. These three forms of Brhma, Vishnu, Maheswara are known as ‘Trimurthy’, who have all evolved from the one Parasakti only. But this ‘Aum’ is not called ‘Devi Pranavam’. ‘Uma’ is the Devi Pranavam! In Aum, ‘a’ as the creative ‘srushti beejam’ is the first akshara, while in the Devi Pranavam, ‘u’ as the ‘paripalana beejam’ is the first. Because Ambal Uma is the loving Mother form, who with kindness and compassion takes intimate care of the children, this ‘Uma’ is itself the Devi Pranavam!
8. The heart like central ‘u’ in ‘aum’, is in the primary first place in the lovingly compassionate Devi Pranavam ‘uma‘. Pranava Swaroopa Pillaiyar, on the other hand, is the lone u’kara less the ‘a and m’! This tells us that He is not only ‘like mother like son’, but a couple of steps further higher. How? At least She still is keeping the ‘m and a’ after the protective ‘u’. He has dropped all those other works or responsibilities or interests. Simply he has kept for Himself the only job of protecting and blessing His devotees.
9. In the Pranavam, ‘u’ is the Vishnu roopam or form. As ‘Vishnu roopini’, as the sister of Narayana, as ‘padmanaabha sahodari’, as ‘Vishnu maya vilasini’, she is named Narayani. Everybody for all types of work, chant a sloka at the start for Pillaiyar, which also commences with the words, “suklaam baradaram vishnum…”, where the word ‘vishnum’ means omnipresent. So this ‘u’ relates the son of ‘Siva-Sakti’ with Vishnu and thereby brings equality and complimentality between Saivam and Vaishnavam!
10. There is much inner symbolic and allegorical meaning in the Suzhi. Whatever rotates, it has to have an axis as the basis around which the rotation can happen. That axis has to be a straight line. Vishnu holds His pointing finger straight around which the Chakrayudham rotates spraying sparks all around, as shown in the statues or drawings. This is the light effect. Then there is the rotating drum around a stick held in the hand making a ’rat-a-tat-tat’ noice, as you move your hand in a circle. This is the sound effect. Similarly, the whole lot of galaxies are going around an axis and so does the milky way itself! So if all the planets, stars, pulsars and quasars and what not, are going round and round, there has to be a powerful straight line, though not visible to our eyes, cameras and telescopes of whatever sophistication, around which all this rotation can take place! We draw the Pillaiyar Suzhi as a symbolic representation of the, “rotating universe (the Suzhi) and the axial (straight line of) power”!
11. Some where I have read or heard that, energy is created in the form of ‘Pillaiyar Suzhi’ only. Water falls on a series of moveable surfaces, which causes the axle holding the surfaces to rotate. Converting gravitational energy into kinetic. This movement of the axle in a circle, when done inside the flux of a series of magnets, causes it to generate electricity, a straight line! That electricity is again in three phases, in waves and or particles, is further going into subtler aspects! In the Pillaiyar Suzhi, the curve or ‘kombu’ is the rotation; ‘nerkodu’ or straight line is the emergence of electricity / sakti. These two can be thought of as Siva-Sakti Swaroopa of Naada-Bindu. That will be further going into subtler aspects!
12. The circle which comes back to where it started from, can be taken as indicative of the one Brhmam. Having come half way around the circle, the Pillaiyar Suzhi becomes a straight line. This can be taken to mean that, having indicated the Brhmam, it is indicative of the emergence of the creation. ‘The Brhmam or Creator is complete or poornam and so is the created world’, says the Shanti mantra in the Upanishad. So this Pillaiyar Suzhi brings to the mind the Creator, by the half circle and the Creation by the straight line. Having said so, it also reminds us that the creation is from the creator.
13. I talked about ‘kombu and kodu’ for the ‘half circle and straight line’. Interestingly, both these two words have gone to mean Pillaiyar’s two tusks! About that in the next e-mail! (To be continued.)
Sambhomahadeva.