DEIVATHIN KURAL #184 (Vol #4) Dated 30 Apr 2011

DEIVATHIN KURAL #184 (Vol #4) Dated 30 Apr 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 1,029 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)
227. Some Examples are Good Enough. If you take a single individual, the requirement is that, from being a flower to a ripened fruit that is sweet, you have to progress gradually step by step. If you take the society as a whole, only one in a million become fully matured like that. But, we do not have to feel bad about it. If you look at the society like a tree, think of how many leaves are likely to be in a tree. Every season think of how many thousands of leaves and flowers fall off. Compare with the number of flowers falling off, the number that turn in to small of the fruit are only a small percentage. Many of the small of the fruits (known as ‘pinju’ in Tamil) also fall off. Then, a further smaller percentage only continues to hang on to the tree till they attain full growth and ripening. Even amongst them, many are subjected to various obstacles in their growth like the vagaries of the weather, onslaught by insects, being tasted by birds or monkeys and so on! That is how it is in nature.
228. Amongst human beings also many vanish from the scene like a leaf or flower is blown away as dry and brittle pieces of wood. Like the fruits from a tree, amongst a million, only one raises above the pulls of the senses. Rest of the people get stuck in Kaama, Krodha et al! When a whole milky ocean was churned and we got a small quantity of the Nectar of perennial life. Like that one in a million is still a good batting average for the creation of such individuals of sterling character like a Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi or Rama Krishna Parmahamsa. To churn the Bhava Saagara and take out a little bit of the high value butter; God is visualised by our AachaaryaaL as the tool ‘Maththu’, when he says, “bhava jhaladi mathana mandara”. The poison also comes out of the same source, but be patient that in the end there will be Amirtam for sure. So, take heart that we are not to lose hope and become despondent!
229. Slowly and gradually everyone has a right to grow and improve. All that we have to do is to ensure that the Maththu does not slip off the rope that is turning it this way and that. Which is that rope? That rope is nothing else but, Bhakti that is Devotion! In ‘Sivananda Lahari’ our Aachaaryaal tells Siva, “drudam bhaktya bandva”, to mean, ‘Oh God! Please tie up this mind of mine that is as fickle as a monkey, with a strong rope of devotion’. If our grip of devotion is strong, He will churn the Samsaara Saagara and enable us to get across as well as obtain the Nectar of eternal Moktcha!
230. ‘Punarapi jananm punarapi maraNam, punarapi janani jatare sayanam’, the repeated cycle of birth and death is the Samsaara. When there is no death, there is no birth also. That is Moksham, happiness without any repeated going and coming. To get the Amirtam by churning the ocean of existence means that you realise your oneness with everything. That is getting the ‘Param’ here in ‘Iham’. By the path of Gnaana you cross the ocean of life by dispassion and totally giving up of all attachments. By the path of devotion here and now we partake of God’s eternity. Thus the Shatpadi Slokam starts in crossing of the ocean of life and ends in attaining to eternity without giving up or discarding anything, in the largesse of universal expansiveness.
231. The Essence of the Shatpadi Sloka – Removal of Life’s Sorrows. In the first sloka we start with praying to God to take us across the ocean of life saying, “taaraya samsaara saagarata:”. In the next we prostrate to the lotus like feet of God which is capable of mitigating all the sorrows and fears of life, when he says, “bhava bhaya khedachchide vande”. In the third sloka, there is no direct reference to the Samsaara, though there is an indirect reference to the ‘Samsaara Saagara’ in which the transactional relationship between the Paramaatma and Jeevaatma is similar to the ‘wave belonging to the ocean while being the same as the ocean without any separate identity of its own!’ The word ‘Saagaram’ in the first sloka and the word ‘Jhaladi’ in the sixth; both mean the ocean. Thus though we are separate, we need not be afraid of submerging in the ocean of life as we are part and parcel of the ocean itself. As the wave merges in the ocean, we have to merge in the Paramaatma. It is this idea that we have to constantly and continuously bring to our minds to overcome the fear of life!
232. As the ocean is also the wave, we are also the Paramaatma only or a wave of that ocean only! Keeping him in mind, we should rest assured that we are His! If we have such a mentality, what can this ‘Samsaara Saagara’ do to us? Maximum that can happen to us is to be absorbed by it, is it not so? OK. It is alright. So what does the third stanza do? From the point of view of Adwaitam, there is the simplicity and humility of Dwaitam. From the Dwaitam point of view, there is the gravity and seriousness of Adwaitam, that the ocean and the wave are one and the same! In the fourth stanza too there is mention of Samsaara that, ‘once we have His Darshan, how can the ephemerality of life last or continue? It has to vanish’, as he says, “na bhavathi kim bhava thiraskaara:”. In the next sloka he prays to God to ‘mitigate his fear of this worldly existence’ as he is “bhava taapa bheetoham”. In the last stanza, that is the sixth he describes God as the very power that churns the ocean of life to produce the quintessential Aatma Tattva. Thus the very purpose of the Shatpadi Stotram is removal of all the problems and obstacles of existence.
233. This slokam finishes in “paramam daram apanaya tvam may”. The word by word meaning is as follows – ‘daram’ means fear; ‘paramam daram’ means extreme fear; ‘tvam’ means You; ‘may’ means ‘for me’; ‘apanaya’ means remove! Look at what all the fears there can be. Will we be able to get through or not? Will we get Moksham or not? Fear of death. Will we be born again, if we die? Then there is the fear of Hell. Thus the ocean of life has many pronged fears, for the removal of which we have to pray to God.
234. First Verb in the End Too. He started the Shatpadi Stotram with the words, ‘avinayam apanaya’. He ends the Stotram also with the same word ‘apanaya’, when he says, ‘daram apanaya tvam may’. Thus the cycle is complete and the Stotram comes to an end. Bhagawat Gita also has the same connectivity in terms of Verb between the start and end. Starting from the 11th Sloka of the second chapter to the 66th Sloka of the 18th chapter, the 631 slokas constitute the main message of Gita. All that comes before and after those two points are like the preface and epilogue. There, in the 11th of the 2nd chapter, the words are ’asochyaan anva sochastvam’ and the 66th in the 18th chapter ends in the ‘maa sucha:’, respectively. The root word is ‘sucha’ meaning ‘feeling bad’. He starts with, “you are unnecessarily worrying about things which are unworthy of your concern” and ends with, “Do not worry”!
235. Like in Gita, in Shatpadi too, the start of the first sloka and the last of the sixth sloka make use of the word ‘apanaya’. First he says remove my lack of ‘vinaya’ and ends with the request to ‘remove my fear’. Whatever it is, removal of the negative tendencies is more important than bringing in the positive inputs. Both are beyond us anyhow. It has to be done only with God’s Grace. That is why, in the start as well as the culmination, he is insisting on removal of the negative tendencies. Please remove my haughtiness and my fear, he pleads. Fear is the exact opposite of pride! We have both. On the one hand we are afraid and that is why we act as though we could not care less, as though we are unafraid. AachaaryaaL is teaching us to pray to God, to get rid of our false pride and real fear!
236. As we have seen, ‘andaadi’ is a decorative way of forming the sequence of poems so that the last word of the previous stanza becomes the first word of the next. In addition to adding to the beauty of the poem, it enables the reader to remember the words of the poem. In this Shatpadi of only six slokas, we have seen as to how our AachaaryaaL has played with the words in many ways with rhyming of words and meanings. By making the first word of the sloka recur in the end line, he has made a special twist. Instead of just any first word – last word iteration; he has made the first verb repeat itself at the end. Verb as it is known as ‘vinai chol’ in Tamil and ‘kriya padam’ in Sanskrit, is concerned with action. In the Shatpadi, he has not only given work to God to remove pride and fear; he has meant it to be a job to be done by us too! We are to repeatedly chant the sloka till it becomes committed to memory! That is the idea I suppose!
(To be continued.)
Sambhomahadeva.