DEIVATHIN KURAL #145 (Vol #4) Dated 11 Feb 2011

DEIVATHIN KURAL #145 (Vol #4) Dated 11 Feb 2011

(These e-mails are translations of talks given by Periyaval of Kanchi Kamakoti Peetam, over a period of some 60 years while he was the pontiff in the earlier part of the last century. These have been published by Vanadi Padippagam, Chennai, in seven volumes of a thousand pages each as Deivathin Kural. Today we are proceeding from the last para on page number 806 of Vol 4 of the Tamil original. The readers may note that herein 'man/he' includes 'woman/she' too mostly. These e-mails are all available at http://Advaitham.blogspot.com updated constantly)
404. There have been some greats of Adwaitam who despite loving that principled stand of philosophy did not contribute to the idea of Adwaita Moksham. They used to say that the real Moksham is for the Jeevaatma to become one with the Paramaatma as per the Adwaita Siddhantam. But they used to say that they do not wish to have that wherein they would not be pining with the Love of God! Amongst the Saivites in Thiruvaroor, there were a set of people known as ‘Thirukkoottathaar’ who were of the firm conviction, “that the very purpose of existence is to ‘eternally continue to love to love Siva’, short of that, Heaven can go to Hell!” About them Sekkizhar says in Periya PuraNam, “koodum anbinil kumbidale anri veedum vendaa viRalin viLanginaar”. It means that those devotees of Siva thought that, “to be with Siva devoted to Him in Kailasam is by far preferable to Adwaita Moksham”!
405. From the first two lines of this song another interesting information is gathered. Though they are saying that they do not care for Adwaita Moksham, they were looking at the whole world with this sense of oneness of Adwaita ‘samarasa bhava’. Other than Jeeva – Brhma oneness, they were hard core Adwaitins! For them a piece of mud and gold was one and the same! “Odum ponnum okkave nokkuvar”. They were unaware of good and bad. They were looking at growth and deterioration in the same perspective, “kedum aakkamum ketta thiruvinaar”. For them everything was equal and so they were always without a care!
406. For the Taste of Dwaitam, Pain and Sorrow are Unavoidable. All said and done, is there eternal peace and bliss in the Vaikundam and Kailasam of the Dwitins? No! Even Mahalakshmi, Garudaazhvaar, Aadi Sesha, Narada and Siva’s consort Parvathi; have all been subjected to endless problems of anger, sorrow, competition and difficulties, some time or the other, as seen in the PuraNas. Even Bhagawan Himself has suffered times of tribulation on many occasions in extreme situations. Krishna’s most beloved Radha has had to suffer from the pangs of separation often.
407. If there are two things, you just cannot help undergoing this cycle of happiness and sorrow repeatedly. Without the pairs of opposites duality will be a drab experience. If everything is all the time happy and pleasant, there will be boredom. Even a story will not be interesting without twist and turns of ups and downs with problems to be solved. If there is a hero and heroine, there has to be a villain. At the time of some important celebrations there has to be an obstacle from the most unexpected quarters. The planned coronation has to be stopped, the heroine has to be insulted and ridiculed, someone has to take a vow of revenge and then there has to be a fight or fisticuff, leading to a war before solutions are found. That is how the life goes on in this world of duality resulting in multiplicity!
406. Since in Dwaitam, happiness is experienced only in relation to something else, it can never be permanent and not become satiating. So, necessarily the happiness in Dwaitam has to be continual with gaps, rather than continuous. When something is lost and regained, only then, the experience of happiness will increase. So even people who are the dearest and very close to God also have to undergo the experience of the effect of the pairs of the opposites. That is inevitable taste of Dwaitam. Night – day, Iceland – Sahara, tiger – deer, birth – death, good – bad, happiness – sadness and sweet pudding with some savouries in between and so on; have to be there. Depending on one’s own accumulation of Karma effects, the duration between good and bad experiences will have to vary. The eternal experience of bliss is only possible when we drop the separateness of our identity and know our true reality of oneness with the Aatma. That is what we Adwaitins say!
407. There are such staunch principled stand points of view such as the Kashmiri Saivam, which talks of completely being absorbed in the highest meditation; Instead of going to some world called Vaikundam or Kailasam and live there with God in the form of VishNu or Siva. Even in them, instead of merging completely losing one’s individual identity of being a separate entity, there is only dhyaana, laya and absorption. At any time that laya can be missed and the whole jing-bang can and do start all over again! Yes, here there is no Siva with form, but it is formless Siva, agreed! Still, like a thread that has been combined with another by spinning and twisting, can be separated by twisting it in the opposite direction, here too separation is inevitable. So even the bliss of dhyaana is not permanent, only Adwaitam is eternal bliss!
408. The Action of Cleansing. That is to say that, at the ideal pinnacle of existence, after all ‘to – do’ responsibilities have been done and the mind has been cleansed of its dirt and cob-webs and attained to ‘aikaagrata’ that is, oneness of focus; then and only then the eternal bliss of Adwaita Anubhava can be experienced. Till then all the efforts have to be ‘dwaita saadhana’, keeping the Adwaita Idea as a continuous thread in the back-ground. The cleansing of the mind happens when we do our allotted duties as detailed in the Vedas on the daily and periodical basis, praying to God to wipe off the whole series of blemishes starting from desire, anger and so on. We have to pray and melt. There is no meaning in poodle faking as though we are totally unattached, claiming ourselves to be like the water on the lotus leaf. It is just mind blowing to think of how we have been adding and accumulating our load of demerits for generations of existence, getting annoyed at the drop of a hat being seized with fear, insult and greed! How many small and big desires pull us in how many directions? Let us just have no doubt that we have to work hard in cleansing our minds, if we have to deserve the Gnaana of the reality of our being the Aatma!
409. Philology: Jeevaatma & Paramaatma, there too! There is a ‘seppu sombu’. Sombu is a derivation from Sembu. Seppu means copper. So also sombu means copper. In Tamil language, between this ‘..mbu..’ and ‘..ppu..’ there is a general rule of grammer. The root word will end in ‘..mbu..’ and the derived will end in ‘..ppu..’. The mother word ends in ‘mbu’ and the offspring will end in ‘ppu’. ‘Irumbu’ is the word for iron in Tamil. The Railway line will be called ‘Iruppu paadai’. ‘Varambu’ is the word for the limit or border. For a specific field while marking the borders we will call it ‘varappu’. The sugar cane is known as, ‘Karumbu’. The crushed sugar juice is ‘Karuppanjaaru’ and solid pieces of jaggery are ‘’Karuppatti’. To turn is ‘thirumbudal’, while the road turning is known as ‘thiruppu munai’. From the verb and adverb ending in ‘mbu’ the pronoun will end in ‘ppu’. In both the cases the meaning is the same. General word ends in ‘mbu’ and the specific ends in ‘ppu’. We have seen both these being added to words to mean the same thing. In Sanskrit also water is known by ‘ambu’ and ‘appu’. Let us come back to Seppu and Sombu, both meaning something made of the metal copper.
410. In earlier times they used to make small household items in copper for the children to play with as toys. Small utensils, plates, spoon etc. They were known as ‘seppu paatram’. Though there were many utensils of copper, the children’s play things got the generic name of ‘seppu’ which over time became ‘soppu’ as a word for toys and dolls! The big pot like utensil made of copper came to be called the ‘sombu’. The child plays with ‘soppu’ and what the mother uses is ‘sombu’. That is also made of copper only. From the principle of Aatma, we have now come to Philology. We can console ourselves that in understanding the meanings of the words, we are going in to ‘pada + artam = padaartam’ which is ‘word + meaning = material’ and there by trying to reach the very root of existence! We can assume that ‘mbu’ is like the Paramaatma and ‘ppu’ is like the Jeevaatma and go ahead with the discussion.
411. Like Cleaning and Polishing the Utensil. We were talking about the stage when the use of language, speech and mind are all redundant! There is a Upanishadic sentence, which goes something like, ‘from where the speech and mind do not return’! I brought in the ‘seppu sombu’ matter to make the point clearer. Let us say a pot made of copper was lying in the earth uncared, for a long time. Inside all that is the copper Sombu. But it is of no use till it is cleaned by rubbing mud, tamarind water and copra coir. After much cleaning and rubbing, the metal shines. We have not made it. We have not cleaned it either. We just removed the coating of dirt that had accumulated on its surface over the years. That is all.
412. Like this copper utensil is our Aatma. It has been covered by all the dirt and muck that we cannot recognise it as our own inner being. Though Aatma remains as it is, it is beyond recognition because by thoughts of our minds, actions by our bodies and words that we utter, we have raised an impenetrable screen between us and our own reality. In such a state, even if we are told that inside is the Aatma, we can know it only after cleansing the covering. To offset the dirt that we have accumulated by mind, speech and body; we have to do counter actions by the same mind, body and speech!
(To be continued.)
Sambhomahadeva.