DEIVATHIN KURAL # 71 (Vol # 5) Dated 23 Oct 2011

DEIVATHIN KURAL # 71 (Vol # 5) Dated 23 Oct 2011

(These e-mails are translations of talks given by PeriyavaaL of Kanchi Kaamakoti 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 second para on page No 428 of Vol 5 of the Tamil original. The readers may note that here in 'man/he' includes 'woman/she' too mostly. These e-mails are all available at http://Advaitham.blogspot.com updated constantly)
208. Pointedly, in this Kali Yuga of total lack of control over senses, if a Gruhasta is to give Gnaana Upadesa, it will only be giving full play to doubt and innuendo! When everybody is practicing hypocrisy in many ways, people are likely to easily mistrust and misinterpret his words. In this Kali Yuga there is virtually no control over the five inputting devices of the body and thereby on the mind. The pull of craving, greed and avidity of the senses is much more evident in this Kali Yuga. That is the reason why, the Ashrama of Vanaprastam (in which husband and wife live in a secluded place like in a forest without giving in to the pull of the senses but, observing various Vrata and Tapa of abnegation) is not recommended to be observed in Kali Yuga, as per the opinion of the Saastras. That is to mean that the Saastraas were reasonable enough not to recommend a practice that was bound to go by default anyhow, by not being observed! Till one is fully matured we are to remain in Gruhasta Ashrama and take Sanyaasa Ashrama when fully fit for the same in Kali Yuga. You may live within the social parameters of Gruhasta, while adopting the drills of abnegation of what you would have done, had you been in the Ashrama of Vanaprastha. That is the idea.
209. Most importantly, this Sankara Avatara has come about to underline and emphasise the final conclusion of the Upanishads that, Moksha can be attained only by getting Gnaana in the Nivrutti Marga! So, if this was to be highly recommended by someone still in Gruhasta, it would have been an irreconcilable aberration and contradiction! Thus for many of the reasons that I have elaborated, some 2,500 years after the ushering in of the Kali Yuga, it was a divine decision that God should take an Avatara and that Gnaana Avatara should be a Sanyaasi, who should do his Upadesa from that status throughout his life. At the time of Sri Krishna, the anomaly of Adharma was like the occasional covering of the Sun by the clouds in day time in summer, it was enough for him to just light up one or two lamps. Whereas now it was completely dark and so it was necessary for this Avatara Purusha to go on lighting up as many lamps as possible throughout his life time on earth. As the proclivities of human mind for aberrations and irregularities were more pronounced during this period, there was no chance for this Avatara to go through Gruhasta Ashrama so as to avoid giving any scope for doubts in people’s minds.
210. Our AachaaryaaL did not have even the normal life span of human beings. It may be known that he lived only for 32 years. That is, though the flow of Kali was very powerful, this limited life span of 32 years was sufficiently effective in terms of intensity and clarity of purpose that the achievement of the mission was so facile! Why talk about 32 years as too small, is there anything that cannot be achieved by the power of God in a matter of seconds? But, it just came about that for this human life time of an Avatara, was to be 32 years. Even that was with some unique twists of drama in it. If you wonder how, it was first doubled from eight to16 by his own decision when he was caught by the crocodile in the Poorna River in Kaladi in Kerala and requested his Mother to grant him Sanyaasa at once so that it will be as good as being reborn with a fresh life and that the crocodile will let him survive! Then when the 16 years were coming to an end, by the wish of Vyasa and Brhma, it was doubled again. Though these were part of Bhagawat Leela, the original plan was to live a life of 32 Years within which it was the intension to write all those copious flow of slokas, treatises and commentaries (on the ten Upanishads and Gita known as ‘Prasthana Thrayam’;) all full of devotion to God in various forms such as Ganesha, Subrahmanya, Siva, AmbaaL, and so on; and Adwaita Gnaana, covering all possible doubts as questions and clarifications as answers!
211. OK, all this is alright. Just 32 years is not the normal human life span which is about 100 years. Why could not this Avatara been of some 100 years or something like 85 or 90 years or so in which, having lived for some years as a married man, why could he not have taken the vow of abstinence of Sanyaasa? If that is your question, let me tell you that it was not supposed to have been a mix of Gruhasta Ashrama and Sanyaasa at all. If 32 years of life was required for achieving the purpose of the Avatara, all the 32 years should have been as a Sanyaasi. That is, the whole life was to have been for Gnaana Upadesa only. In this Kali Yuga Avatara not even the smell of Gruhasta Ashrama was to be mixed, as per Parameswara Sankalpa.
212. {(KTSV Adds: It seems PeriyavaaL is inevitably reviewing his own life too. The earlier Pontiff of Kamakoti Peetam had died in office, having identified him as the successor from the common folk, but died before he could be officially brought to the Matam. To get the child so identified installed as the Head of the Matam and train him would have taken some time and so the responsible administrators of the Matam installed another person who had completed Adhyayanam in a Gurukulam, already available in the Matam. That person also died within a fortnight of being installed as the ‘Jagat Guru’. So it came about that Chandra Sekharendra SwamigaL was established officially as the Head of the Kamakoti Peetam, without further ado! Thus he was the Jagat Guru at the age of thirteen!) For a few minutes PeriyavaaL was just closing his eyes in apparent contemplation. Then he continued.}
213. Though I said that this whole life time was to be in Sanyaasa and Upadesa, it was not entirely so really. For some years initially he was in Brhmacharyam with complete Vidya Abhyasa in Gurukulam; then only Sanyaasa and Upadesa. I was not very correct when I said that for the work of the Avatara 32 years were required. It was actually some eight years less, that was good enough to serve the purpose. Suddenly if a child was to do Upadesa, it would have been declared to be some divine miracle. That would have been contrary to what an Avatara should have ideally been, as a mix of human and divine. How could the general populace have followed a ‘divine child’ as a model to be emulated? How could they have received his advices to be practically possible for just human beings without any divine powers? The Avatara as a child so elevated to sudden stardom also would have been denied his desires for moving and interacting with the masses! The very job of being Upadesa Guru itself means a high pedestal and a certain amount of isolation from others. To be true to the requirements of Yama and Niyama advising others about dispassion and Gnaana, one cannot move around with much intimacy as other Avatara-s do anyhow. Then whatever minimum freedom could have been possible would have also been forbidden if he is born with the label of being a miracle! So, ‘though there is much to teach by being a ‘model householder’, which has been denied to us, let us at the least be a model Brhmachari and show’, the Avatara could have decided.
214. There was one more reason for going through the Brhmacharya Ashrama. The mission of the Avatara being the re-establishment of the Vedic ways, he could not have been just a Sanyaasi without any exposure to the teachings of the Vedas, isn’t it? Though the Sanyaasi is well aware of the Maha Vaakyaas of the Vedas and so to that extent is connected to the Vedas, still, that is not something with which the general public could have related! The things with which the general public could have related to or concerned about are the various duties of the Pravrutti Marga. That was now worse than what it was at the time of Sri Krishna. Only now after the time of Sri Krishna, there were many religions spreading rapidly which advocated the doing away with the Varna Vibhaga totally and were hurting the Vedic religion at the grass roots level, thus affecting the conduct of Karma Anushtaana seriously!
215. Had this Avatara coming into being at this critical juncture, managed to advice only some matured individuals the value of the philosophy of Adwaita and gone; how could this have been good enough at all? Otherwise, how could the mission of general re-establishment of Dharma been achieved? Though the main mission to be accomplished by this Avatara was to point out clearly ‘Gnaana’ as the be all and end all of the Nivrutti Marga; how could one have proceeded, without firmly re-establishing the need for preparatory Karma Anushtaana and the middle of ensuring the continuous conversion of Karma Marga into Karma Yoga (like the graduation from primary to secondary and further studies)? Unless the majority of people are made interested in the refinement of Pravrutti Marga, not many could have been expected to graduate to the end stages of Nivrutti! When the systems had failed and people had gone over to doing things contrary to the dictates of the Saastraas, there was a crying need to re-invigorate their interest for ‘Karma as per Saastraas’! So, keeping the need for impressing the minds of majority of people, it was the divine intension, that this Avatara should be able to rekindle their interest in Vedic Karma Anushtaanaas and Varna – Ashrama arrangements while generally improving the levels of Bhakti and Gnaana. It was not enough to simply say so and advice, the person advising had to be a living example, so as to increase the power of his words. How could a Sanyasi without any Vedic Karma Anushtaana be able to be a living example? So, this Avatara had the onerous job of being a Sanyasi after a period of life as a Brhmachari.
(To be continued.)
Sambhomahadeva.