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Saundarya Lahari

SAUNDARYA LAHARI - VERSE 61

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SAUNDARYA LAHARI

 

61-70: VERTICAL PARTICIPATION AT THREE LEVELS
INTIMATE PARTICIPATION AND ONE - ONE CORRESPONDENCE

VERSE 61

 

A HIERARCHY OF OVER-GENEROUS VALUES
 
असौ नासावंश-स्तुहिनगिरिवण्श-ध्वजपटि
त्वदीयो नेदीयः फलतु फल-मस्माकमुचितम् ।
वहत्यन्तर्मुक्ताः शिशिरकर-निश्वास-गलितं
समृद्ध्या यत्तासां बहिरपि च मुक्तामणिधरः
 
asau nasavamsas tuhina giri vamsa dhvaja pati
tvadiyo nediyah phalatu phalam asmakam ucitam
vahaty antar muktas sisirakara nissvasa galitam
samrddhya yat tasam bahir api ca muktamani dharah
 
O banner of the dynasty of the Himalayas, Your nose ridge, here as Your clan's flagstaff,
Let it ripen for us, standing so near below You, deserving fruit;
Inwardly wearing pearls as they do, and dropped by cool moonbeam respiration,
It bears, even outside, pearls due to the plenitude of the same.
 
The centre of interest now passes from the brightness of the face as a whole to the nose-ridge, which represents a vertical descending line. In Verse 47 the left fist and forearm of the God of Love were hiding the downward movement of the bowstring as it was being pulled along the vertical line across the face, corresponding to the ridge of the nose. In this position the target aimed at must be Shiva. If the hands of the God of Love belong to a three-dimensional grade of appearance, here the line of the nose-ridge could be said to mark the vertical amplitude within which subtler values reside.
 
A pearl is always used as an analogy for something precious, as when we say “a pearl of great price”. In Indian philosophy also, the pearl has been very dear to contempla­tive speculators as an analogy for the value of truth. Though the ocean may cont­ain gems which are equally precious; on a more hypostatic level, values are more aptly comparable to bright pearls. Iridescent hues that play on its surface give the pearl a silvery gleam, and Vedanta has used this peculiar quality as an analogy to explain the vain glamour of false appearances. The hard nacreous layer of the inner shell of an oyster, called the mother-of-pearl, is where the pearls are formed; but from a chemical standpoint, this layer is nothing other than calcium carbonate.
 
The Vedanta of Sankara in its methodology gives primacy to ontology as against higher, theoretical, values. Here, however, in the context of the beauty of the face of the Goddess, the pearl is compared to a prayer, which in turn is comparable to a wish-fulfilling tree called Devadaru, placed very high in the hypostatic scale of values. The corresponding wish-fulfilling factor belonging to the lower limit of existences is often referred to as Kamadhenu (the cow of plenty). In the face of the Goddess we are still on the side of the numerator values of life, so it is not unjustified here for the poet to use the image of a heavenly tree, at the bottom of which some supplicants can be imagined to be standing, praying for some kind of benefits to be dropped down to them by way of answer to their various prayers. God grants prayers, because there would have been no God in any of the world's literature if the opposite had been true in the experience of mankind.
 
In fact, any prayer unanswered could be answered by ourselves, because theology admits that the Kingdom of God is within oneself. In Vedanta, this dictum is quite acceptable, because the axiomatic overall dictum of all mahavakyas (great sayings) categorically asserts that “thou art That”. One receives what one deserves: “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap”. God, in his justice and generosity, cannot violate such overall laws, within the framework of which he himself is placed. No god can exist otherwise than by granting prayers because prayers alone can apply to possible boons or benefits. The axiomatic laws of reciprocity, compensation and cancellability in the overall structural context of the Absolute, make such a law binding equally for man and God at once, though only in a subtle, absolutist fourth-dimensional sense. It is to this order of values that the beauty of the Goddess belongs, where pearls are items of beauty representing benefits like fruits that could drop down from a heavenly tree for hungry children to pick up and eat. The production of fruit in such superabundance by a tree could not be explained if such a theory were to be discarded as completely fanciful.
 
The opening epithet, “Banner of the Dynasty of the Himalayas”, means that, since the Himalayas are already the highest of mountains, to erect a flagstaff to make them rise even higher indicates that such attributes as family honour or reputation can be produced, as far as one chooses, along a vertical positive parameter. Noblesse oblige is the rule: the nobler you are, the more your generosity is heightened. In the previous verse, we were still in the realm of values that belonged to the world of good literature; but here honour is a value that can reach even higher and subtler limits. The flagstaff analogy is thus very apt. In India we are justified in thinking of a bamboo flagstaff, because this verse implies that it must be hollow in order to allow the passage of moonbeams as well as air. The nose exists for breathing through, up or down. Here, waiting immediately below such a vertical nose, are those who are praying for benefits like fruits to fall down to the horizontal terra firma. The gods confer blessings from above, while the denizens of the earth wait to receive them. Such is the overall situation from which we have to extract the beauty-value of the centre of the face of the Goddess, still one degree above the mouth, which is slightly tilted hypostatically. The glory of the flagstaff could refer to the father of Parvati at its base; while the flag at the top could be a symbol that glorifies Shiva. Between these two limits there is an ascent and a descent taking place in terms of cool and pearly moonbeam respiration, in the context of sheer beauty. Such an abstracted respiration is like the alternation between space-like and time-like factors within the Absolute, where space can devour time and time space, in the eternal cosmic process of alternating phases, just as in human respiration.
 
Life matures with each act of breathing and fulfils itself in the form of that generosity which is basic to its overall nature. It is not just generosity, but over-generosity, like that of a gambler who gives his shirt when only his coat is asked for. Absolute Generosity cannot be compatible with the calculative caution of a hesitant man. In springtime, fruit trees overladen with flowers unquestionably reflect the generosity of nature. In tropical regions of palm trees and coral reefs, the many small coconuts that drop to the ground during the ripening process surely reveal such superabundance, within the context of which nature normally operates. Mango trees are sometimes so overladen with fruit that their branches are bent down to the ground. Such a picture has touched the heart of mystics like Narayana Guru, because there is beauty in such superabundant generosity. Because generosity is normally a subjective feeling, the analogy of pearls ripening inside the hollow of the flagstaff and dropping down to the supplicant subjectively, as if through a tube, would be justified. Absolute generosity in a fully Advaitic sense knows no limit of inside or outside. This distinction between inside and outside is dissolved or abolished by itself as generosity attains to its more absolutist quality. Sankara resorts to such a far-fetched analogy of pearls covering the outside and filling the inside of the nostrils of the Goddess. Pearl nose-studs worn by Indian women show a cluster of pearls, which look as if they are over­flowing from inside the nostrils. Poetry might have guided the jeweller´s art here, or vice-versa. For us, it is important to derive the lesson that generosity and beauty are inseparable.

 

MINOR CONSIDERATIONS

The opening line refers to the clan of the Goddess. A young woman is proud of her father´s clan, but after marriage her loyal­ties are transferred to her husband. The transition between the two loyalties; one turned retrospectively and the other turned prospectively, is a delicate one, and is sometimes seen to be very touchy in the case of sensitive women who feel easily insulted if a slight slur is cast upon their ancestry. Later, in Verse 86, we will see that this kind of touchiness is possible even in the relation between Shiva and Parvati. This is good advice for husbands: do not discredit your father-in-law.
 
The second line emphasizes the fact that the devotees are placed very near to the foot of the flagstaff, and that they can get only those benefits which they deserve. Cause and effect are vertically related by a law of reciprocal specificity. Clay is the material cause of the pot and the medium through which cause and effect are linked either way. One cannot make curds without milk, and no wave is possible without water. No illusion is possible without some basis for the illusion. Vedanta respects such a law of reciprocity as a categorical imperative. One cannot pray for something that one does not implicitly or explicitly deserve. A woman can only pray for a husband, not for a wife. We can see that any young woman´s prayer for a husband is generally answered sooner or later, the difference being only incidental, making allowances for accidental jolting in life. It is by the timely answering of prayers that humanity continues to live normally, generation after generation.
 
In the third line, the cool moonbeams are suggested as favourable to the dropping of ripe fruit from the trees. Wintering is as important for fruits as the heat of the sun for the putting forth of tender leaves and for giving an impetus to flowering. We see in the mango tree, for instance, that strong sunlight is required to usher in the best season for the fruit. Apple trees, on the other hand, require heavy winter conditions for the fruit to mature, The dropping of the fruit occurs only after they have first matured in sunlight. In this sense, it is not against nature to think that the cool breezes help to make the fruit drop down. The idea that moonbeams mixed with cool air pass through the cavity of a flagstaff to grant benefits to supplicants might seem far-fetched, but such a style is normal to the whole of this work, where creative imagination and poetic fancy are given the fullest freedom.
 

Finally, in the last line, where pearls cluster outside as well as inside the nostrils of the Goddess, the function of the poet surpasses itself. The only excuse for doing so is that Sankara thereby justifies his own Advaitic position in treating Absolute Beauty as an ultimate value. Internally and externally, as between the selfsame class or as between two classes, vijatiyaand sajatiya, Advaita tolerates no duality or difference. In these verses, which are often mistakenly considered to be merely part of Tantrism, such poetic excesses can be justified, according to us, only in the name of that uncompromising unitive stand so characteristic of Sankara's philosophy as a whole.

 

 

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS WITH STRUCTURAL DIAGRAMS RELATED TO THIS VERSE FROM SAUNDARYA LAHARI/NOTES.

 

(Note that, although the following commentaries are drawn from different sources, they are almost identical in places. We have, however, preserved them as they were found in the original manuscripts, so that no detail is omitted. ED) 

Prayer comes from the Denominator side, and the fruit falling from the tree is the answer of God.
.
Connect the two sides together by a tube, which is the nose-ridge: magic is taking place there; prayers are being answered.

 

This verse refers to the Devi as the banner of the dynasty of the Himalayas; in legend, her father is the Himalayas.
 
.
.
Her nose contains pearls.
There is a bamboo flagstaff. There are pearls inside, sticking to the sides.
 
.
By the light of the moon, an abundance of these fall; they are Her beautiful thoughts.
There are two worlds here: one inside, one outside.
 

He has now, in this sequence of verses, come from the eyes to the ridge of the nose, described as the insignia of the family of the Himalayas. ("Your nose pretends to this").
 

"Let it confer blessings on those who are most intimately related to you."
The breath of the Devi is the cosmic breath, intimately related to our own breathing.
The pearls inside the tube are value-factors - let it give to each person what they deserve, by way of merit.

These pearls are deep down the hollow tube of the flagstaff; the tube is overflowing with value-pearls.
 

The moon is a hypostatic intelligent factor and its coolness or warmth causes the pearls, by some ineffable light, to be experienced intimately.
 

The pearls represent a richness of contemplative value-factors. Whether they are filling up from the bottom upwards or falling down from the top, the point is that there is an overflowing of contemplative value-factors in the vertical axis.

The cross-section level of these pearls depends on the inhalation or exhalation of the "breaths" of the moon, or of the breath of the Devi.
(Here the Guru indicates that all this is tentative - "Don't put the nails in yet").

The Guru refers to Narayana Guru, who said that the three garlands of Subrahmanya; glass, silver and pearls, are worn by Subrahmanya to abolish the unhappiness which may be inside me.


Shiva went to the lowly hut of a hunter, to find a wife for his son, Subrahmanya. She is the lowliest of black girls.
Hence, Narayana Guru calls him "O you black girl's husband, please enter within me and ease my suffering".
 
(Apart from the reference to pearls to abolish the unhappiness of the worshipper, this reference is puzzling. However, the reference to a black girl is interesting: Subrahmanya had two wives, one black and one white - this is a structural reciprocity or complementarity parallel to the fact that his brother, with whom he is structurally paired throughout the Saundarya Lahari has one tusk complete and one broken off to write all wisdom literature. ED)
 
 
 
Pearls are inside the tube or bamboo or nose of the Devi.
These represent introspective values.
The tube is a vertical axis.
 
 
 

Kalidasa talks of the bamboo in the Himalayas.
This bamboo has a banner floating high: this is one end of the axis.
At the middle of the tube is the intimacy, which will save the devotee: "Just know Brahman (the Absolute), and you will be saved."
He who knows Brahman becomes Brahman.

Joy is there as a glory, as ananda (bliss).
Moonbeams suggest intelligence; they are hypostatic.
The Devi is described here as the daughter of the Himalayas, underlining Her hypostatic status.
The Himalayas are the horizontal measuring rod of the universe.

It is "intimate" because Her values are all for the Absolute - and that means for each devotee.
Some of the pearls will fall to the bottom, some will overflow and some will stick, due to the coolness of the universal breath.
This is an exchange of hypostatic and hierophantic values.
 

The moon is presided over by Shiva.
 

Those who worship the Devi will have the experience of ineffable joy; of life more abundant.
Some of the pearls will fall to the bottom, some will overflow and some will stick to the tube.
You must have interaction between the hierophantic and hypostatic aspects, between the positive and the negative.

The glory comes from the Himalayas in the North, but the Devi is Dravidian, from the South; Sankara is bringing these two factors together.

If the images are fanciful, it is because Sankara is continuing the Sanskrit culture of Kalidasa.
He extends it to his version of Vedanta.
Narayana Guru says the same thing as Sankara, and Nataraja Guru says it again, mathematically.
 
(Nataraja Guru uses a structural methodology - protolanguage - rather than the verbal metalanguage used by previous writers. ED)
 
Value-factors thus sometimes drop to the bottom of the tube and sometimes overflow at the top.
.
.

"To us, who are standing so near to You..." - it is something intimate, not the hypostatic banner, but the nose, which is familiar and near the horizontal axis.


The Devi, as a flag, has both symbolic and actual value.
It will immediately bless the devotees - the nose is near the centre of consciousness and near the horizontal axis.
 

There is respiration in a figure-8, which fills the tube, uniting hypostatic and hierophantic aspects of value.

Absolute value is an interplay within consciousness; it completely fills the vertical axis.
The bamboo flagstaff is her nose; it contains pearls inside and has pearliness outside, because of the abundance of pearls inside.
 
 
A pearl nose-ring is often worn by Indian women.

What does it all mean?
"Hinduism is all a pretence, because they pretend they understand this.
They do not understand; they are telling lies morning, afternoon and evening."
Why pearls inside, and pearliness outside?
 

Pearls are quantitative and substantive, therefore horizontal.
Pearliness is qualitative and predicative, therefore vertical.

Pearliness, for the nose, is meant philosophically.
Iridescence is false - it shows the world of appearance, a false world.
 
(The gleam of the mother-of-pearl, which appears to be silver, when only calcium carbonate is really there, is a favourite Vedantic example of illusion or Maya, which is only "the universal category of error". ED)
 
Narayana Guru writes in Verse 8 of the Maya Darsana of the Darsana Mala:
 
8. suktikayam yatha'jnanam rajatasya yadatmani kalpitasya nidanam tattama ityavagamyate
 
As the ignorance about the mother-of-pearl
Is the basis of the silver-presentiment,
So too what in the Self is the basis (of the world),
That is known as darkness (tamas).
 
Didhiti Commentary:
Some people see the mother-of-pearl and mistake it for silver. The reason for this error is ignorance. In the same way, ignorance, which is the cause of the presentiment of the world, is darkness. When the Self is properly understood we come to know that it alone is real and the world is only a presentiment in the Self and is unreal. Just as darkness is the cause of error in perceiving silver in the mother-of-pearl, so the cause of the supposition of the world in the Self is that aspect of Maya called darkness.
 
Further elaboration of this subject is to be found in Chapter 4 of the Science of the Absolute.

 

The flagpole is a vertical axis: pearls stick inside through the Devi´s breathing.

This refers to the Devi as the banner of the dynasty of the Himalayas: She is the daughter of the Himalayas.
Her nose is described as containing pearls.

There is a bamboo flagstaff. There are pearls inside, sticking to the sides.
By the light of the moon, an abundance of these fall. (Beautiful thoughts).

There are two worlds, inside and outside the hollow bamboo.
Sankara has now come from the eyes to the ridge of the nose
- described here as the insignia of the family of the Himalayas.
("...Your nose pretends to this.")

"Let it confer pearls on those who are most intimately related to You".
The breath of the Devi is the cosmic breath - it relates intimately to our own breathing.

The pearls inside the tube are value factors
"Let it give whatever each person deserves, by way of merit".
These pearls drop down from the hollow tube or flagstaff.
The tube is overflowing with value-pearls.
The moon here is an intelligent hypostatic factor and its coolness or warmth causes the pearls - by some ineffable light - to fall.

This richness of contemplative value factors is to be experienced intimately.
Whether these value-factors, or pearls, are filling up from the bottom of the tube, upwards, or falling downwards from its top, the point is that there is an overflowing of contemplative value factors in the vertical axis.

The cross-section level of these pearls depends on the inhalation or exhalation of the "breath" of the moon or the breath of the Devi.
 
(The phases of the moon are compared to breathing in and out. ED)
 

In the hollow core of the tube is the intimacy that will save the devotee.
"Just know Brahman, and you will be saved".

"He who knows Brahman, becomes Brahman" (brahmavit brahmeva bhavati - one of the Mahavakyas or basic axioms of Vedanta)

Joy is there as a glory - ananda (bliss).

The moonbeams suggest intelligence. They are hypostatic.
The Devi is referred to as the "daughter of the Himalayas" - this means She is the daughter of the Himalayas as the horizontal measuring rod of the universe.
 
(The Himalyas are the horizontal measuring rod of the perceptual universe on the denominator side of the structure which is the domain of the Devi. ED)
 
 

It is "intimate" because Her values are all for the Absolute; and that means for each devotee.

Some of the pearls fall, due to heat, and some stick, due to the coolness of the universal breath.

This is an exchange of hypostatic values from above and hierophantic values from below.
 
 

This respiration is a figure-8 - sometimes there are hypostatic value factors, sometimes hierophantic: thus some pearls drop to the bottom of the tube and some of them overflow at the top.
 
"To us, standing so near to You..." means that this is something intimate,
It is not the hypostatic banner on the positive side, but the nose, which is familiar and near the horizontal axis.

The Devi, as a flag, has both symbolic and actual value.

She will "immediately" bless the devotees.
Her respiration makes a figure-8, which fills the tube, uniting the positive hierophantic and negative hypostatic aspects of value.

Absolute value is an interplay within the consciousness, which completely fills the vertical axis.
.

-

 

-

 
 
(EDITOR'S NOTE: the two structures above are present in the original manuscript, but seem unrelated to this verse, though they were maybe given by the Guru as examples of some point which is not clear to us. We include them in the interests of accuracy.)
 

From inside the pearls are real - shut your eyes to the rainbow appearance outside;
meditate on the reality within you.
 
HERE WE HAVE A HIERARCHY OF OVER-GENEROUS VALUES
.
Another version:
TRANSLATION
O banner of the dynasty of the Himalayas, Your nose ridge, here as Your clan's flagstaff,
Let it ripen for us, standing so near below You, deserving fruit;
Inwardly wearing pearls as they do, and dropped by cool moonbeam respiration,
It bears, even outside, pearls due to the plenitude of the same.

-

 
There is plenitude inside and outside.
 
(We must notice the parallel with Verse 74, which also deals with pearls, but on a more denominator level, between the Devi's breasts.

"Your mid-bust region, wearing a slender garland of pearly beads,
Derived and worked out by some elephant-demon vanquished by Shiva
The semblance bears of his reputation with added redness of lips
And an inner brightness presenting a picturesque charm."
.
 
There is a structural diagram which refers to the present verse and contrasts them.
 

Below is the commentary to this structure.

(The above structure is extremely interesting. The banner at the top of the vertical axis refers to Verse 61:


"O banner of the dynasty of the Himalayas, Your nose ridge, here as Your clan's flagstaff,
Let it ripen for us, standing so near below You, deserving fruit;
Inwardly wearing pearls as they do, and dropped by cool moonbeam respiration,
It bears, even outside, pearls due to the plenitude of the same".

 

This verse describes numerator pearls produced by the Devi's breathing descending upon the situation.

 

The two arrows along the horizontal axis indicate that the pearls inside the elephant's skull are a verticalisation of horizontal elements - the Guru would say that space was like sitting inside an elephant -  four elephants (dik gajas) are used to indicate the four cardinal directions of space. ED)

 

 

SAUNDARYA LAHARI - VERSE 62

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SAUNDARYA LAHARI

 

 

 

VERSE 62

 

THE THING AND THE THING SIGNIFIED HAVE A DANCING PARITY BETWEEN THEM

 

प्रकृत्या‌உ‌உरक्ताया-स्तव सुदति दन्दच्छदरुचेः
प्रवक्ष्ये सदृश्यं जनयतु फलं विद्रुमलता ।
न बिम्बं तद्बिम्ब-प्रतिफलन-रागा-दरुणितं
तुलामध्रारोढुं कथमिव विलज्जेत कलया

 

prakrtya raktayas tava sudati dantacchada ruceh
pravaksye sadrsam janayatu phalam vidruma lata
na bimbam tad bimba pratiphalana ragad arunitam
tulam addhyarothum katham iva vilajjeta kalaya

 

O One of Goodly Teeth, of Your parted lips naturally red I shall declare the similitude;
Let the coral reef bear fruit by reflection from its original model
With which desiring to climb to the point of mid-parity,
However could it avoid being abashed at least by a degree?

 

In Verse 62 the bindusthana, or central locus, is to be placed between the parted lips, where the beautiful teeth of the Goddess are revealed. The play of participation between the pearly teeth and the coral-red lips is the central theme of this verse. Sanskrit poets are fond of one analogy in particular for the luscious, rich and fully red lips of a voluptuous maiden, which is the bimba fruit (the bright red fruit of the plant Momordica Monadelpha), so a beautiful girl is often called “one of bimba-fruit-lips”.

 

Here the poet steps down from the platform, as it were, to speak intimately with his audience by means of the analogies that are most fitting to the beauty of the lips and teeth, which blend their colours both ways to create a non-dual form of absolute Beauty by mutual participation. The teeth are hard like coral, while the lips are naturally soft and supple like a bimba fruit. The problem is to establish a parity or one-to-one correspondence between them to fulfil the requirements of a central Advaitic value which should always be the same, at whatever level, inside or outside. The beauty of the Goddess is going to be appreciated by the poet himself here. By stepping down from the platform to talk to the reader, he throws off his formal status, and seems to say that between the reader and the poet an intimate understanding could be established on a certain basis. Both of them are equally interested in finding the nearest analogy to the beauty that emerges at that particular locus where the parted lips reveal the brightness of the teeth. The object of the poet here is to show that the magenta colour of coral and that of bimba fruit seem to rival each other in establishing superiority over some other analogy that another poet might suggest.

 

Thus, the situation is one that involves a subtle intrigue between rival poetic tastes. The solidity of the teeth would make it reasonable for a poet to think that the analogy of hard coral applies more aptly to the teeth than to the bimba fruit; which by common-sense standards would naturally belong to the side of the lips. It is clearly stated in the first line that the poet is trying to find the right analogy for the teeth and the lips and, because the teeth are hard and solid, he suggests that if the coral reef could have a fruit, that would establish a parity between the teeth and the lips to reveal the non-dual beauty that suggests itself in that region. The coral reef does not have fruit, but we could suppose a soft fruit in order to suggest that the redness of the fruit permeates into the region of the teeth and thus makes them look like fruit by borrowed light, one degree removed from the suggested analogy.

 

The attributes of solid coral and those of a luscious fruit are here meant to be cancelled out into a state of parity or equality. The teeth, in trying to establish equality in respect of brilliant reddishness, do not fully succeed in doing so. It is even suggested that they shyly hesitate in the attempt. This hesitation implies that at one moment they are equal in beauty with the lips, and at another moment they are not, in the opinion of the teeth themselves.

 

An element of ambiguity is thus purposely retained by Sankara here in order to underline the doctrinal principle of indeterminism or non-predicability that applies when two conjugates are involved as rival factors to the same absolute value. The analogy of the energy and velocity of particles in quantum mechanics is supposed to represent such a principle of indeterminism. They cannot both be fixed at the same time and place to give a value that is fully determined. Vedanta accepts this indeterminism as basic to nature itself, when viewed from the side of physics rather than of metaphysics. Either physics is right or metaphysics is right, at any given time. For both to be right at the same time, the Absolute must step in as a normative and a re-normative reference. The shyness and hesitation in the matter of establishing an equality of beauty between the solid teeth, which resemble coral ontologically, but which wish to attain an equality of beauty with the luscious fruit-like lips which are more qualitative or teleological in their status, presents an enigma which refuses to be abolished. The vestige of a paradox exists at the core of even the notion of the Absolute, however much we might try to fix its meaning finally. Such a paradoxical element is considered permissible as a last residue in the Bhagavad Gita. The Absolute is a mystery and a wonder, and it is a rare value within the mind of yogis capable of medita­ting on it. An alternating figure-eight movement belongs to the Absolute value-content until meditation abolishes even the least duality between the Self and the non-Self aspects of the same content - but the mystery is never to be abolished. Within the core of such a mystery, the stable term is to be marked, if at all, by that finalized experience in which the meditator becomes none other than the object meditated upon, by cancellation. The term of all meditation is thus attained as a supreme yogic experience. Even mind and matter can be said to meet here, as well as ends and means.

 

It is to bring out this subtle Vedantic position that Sankara leaves the contested equality of beauty between lips and teeth, one shining by the borrowed light of the other, in the form of a rhetorical question in terms of shyness, where ontology and teleology may be said to be playing a game of hide-and-seek through all time. Such a situation is called anyonya adhyasa (mutual conditioning). The favourite example of adhyasa (condi­tioning) is that of a clear, colourless crystal placed on a piece of red satin. Without becoming red, the crystal is made to look red throughout. The teeth and the luscious fruit comple­ment each other, as do quality and quantity, and the indeterminism that would persist in the form of hesitation or shyness is itself a value to be equated with the absolute Value and not to be abolished. The two limbs of an equation need not be abolished for a trained mathematician to understand its import. The duality between the limbs of the equation is no drawback to the equation itself.

 

The final meaning is the message to be sought in the experience of the yogi. It is a form of unitive understanding and nothing more. Pluralism can coexist with the notion of unity, so that the philosopher could cancel them both out into the non-dual Absolute. All propositions must contain terms which it is the task of the logician to resolve into a middle term. Such a middle term is the Absolute. To recognize the ambiguity between terms so as to abolish them correctly is preferable to just saying, as logicians often do, that one should not believe in many gods. Dialectical methodology would admit both the references of thesis and antithesis for arriving at a final synthesis. Even Hegelianism admits of such a method, of which Engels is only a continuator.

 

If time and space are conjugates, we can see through their amorphous articulation a being which, like a flame or a dancing Nataraja, gives us a functional picture of a figure-of-eight. This idea is similar to the shyness of the teeth to resemble the lips. Thus, one attains the Absolute through abstracting rival aspects of beauty. Truth is both a way as well as a fact. Ends and means unite in it into an experience. We must be careful not to bind down with hide the ambiguity of this dancing flame. Fixing it as a doctrine will only result in “Lord, Lordism”. As the Bhagavad Gita says, “It is a wonder and a mystery”. That is as far as one can understand it. We must leave it as a value of this kind and not solidify it into a doctrine.

 

The Guru comes in naturally because people attached to wisdom have an automatic affiliation. Guru and disciple are like the two limbs of an equation. They are equal, in principle, like comrades.

 

This language of such a high degree of fancifulness is natural to man, and perfectly acceptable to children. If the financial world can speak of the “dancing pound” or say that the “dollar is shy”, why cannot Sankara use such terms in an absolutist context?

 

The ontological teeth, as effect, lag slightly behind the teleological lips, as cause, in the figure-eight participation. This is poetry bent to speak for the philosophy of Vedanta in a way which Westerners would claim to be unfair. There is a subtle trick played here by Sankara. The interplay here is between quanti­tative and qualitative aspects of beauty, and the event could be described as inter-subjective as well as trans-physical.

 

(Adhyasa, according to one definition: from "adhi", above, over, + the verbal root "as" "to throw, cast". A misconception or erroneous attribution, the significance being that the mind casts upon facts, which are misunderstood, certain mistaken notions; hence false or erroneous attribution. Equivalent to adhyāropa. Simply put, adhyasa means superimposition or false attribution of properties of one thing on another thing. See below for more on this concept, which is very important in Advaita. ED)

 

 

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS WITH STRUCTURAL DIAGRAMS RELATED TO THIS VERSE FROM SAUNDARYA LAHARI/NOTES.

 

(Note that, as with the previous verse and others, although the following commentaries are drawn from different sources, they are almost identical in places. We have, however, preserved them as they were found in the original manuscripts, so that no detail is omitted. This is particularly important as this verse is one of the most difficult and elusive of all. ED)

 

WORD FOR WORD
Pravaksye - I am going to tell you
Let the real creeper have a fruit
Na bimbam - not the original of a reflection
Tad bimba etc. - what is reddened by being a reflection of its original
Tulam etc. - the equal scale to mount (?)
Katham iva etc. - in what way should it become ashamed
Kalaya - by a fraction
 
WORD FOR WORD TRANSLATION (CONFUSED)
Having redness by its very nature...
Tava - Your
O bright-dented one
Of the brightness belonging to the lips
Sadrshyam - resemblance (by appearance)
Pravyaksha - I state (assert)
Janayatu phalam vidrumalata - let it bring about the effect of coral (reef)
Na bimbam - not reflected - or not another fruit which is red of a reef
Tad bimba pratiphalanaragad arunitam - made into that (deep hue) belonging to the pink of dawn, by reflection of its colour.
Tulam adhyarodhum - to climb to a mid-position between two rival colour-factors
Katham iva vilajjeta kalaya - why should it not in some way be ashamed even by its partial shade.
 

This is a figure-8 dance in search of parity between the redness of the teeth and of the lips.

 

Adhyasa is the only way to give any meaning to this verse.
Adhyasa is attributing something to something else.
The Bimba fruit is red. Coral is also present.
 
(Adhyasa: means superimposition or false attribution of properties of one thing on another thing. According to Advaita Vedanta error arises on account of the superimposition of one reality on another. Sankara defines Adhyasa as "the apparent presentation, to consciousness, by way of memory of something previously observed in some other thing".
 
In the glossary on this website, we find:
 
Adhyasa: Superimposition; false attribution; illusion. Adhyasa is of two forms:
Svarupa-adhyasa and Samsarga-adhyasa.
Svarupa-adhyasa consists in superimposing an illusory (mithya) object on something real.
Example: Seeing a snake on a real rope, or of superimposing ignorance (avidya), that is, the empirical world, upon Brahman, which is an example of a foundational error.
 
Here it is the redness of the lips by which the white teeth are also tinged (by adhyasa). There is a comparison to be made with Verse 64:
 
"By incessant repetition of a muttered charm glorifying Your Lord;
As offering, the flower-red shade of Your tongue triumphs;
The pure, clear, crystal outline image of Saraswati,
While seated at Your tongue-tip, o Mother, in turn attains to rubyhood in its bodily form." ED)
 

.
"Your teeth are white and reflect the coral colour of the lips..."

 

The teeth are "ashamed" of being compared to the coral colour.
The magic is the juxtaposition of all these four together:
1) Bimba fruit,
2) Coral, which bears no fruit,
3) Lips of coral colour,
4) Teeth, which reflect the coral colour and are ashamed.
.
 
There is VERTICAL participation between the lips and teeth,
HORIZONTAL participation between the Bimba and Coral.

Cf. prathiti. (Means "celebrity".  - with reference to what? ED)

 

These four are brought in only for the quaternion structure.

The teeth are ashamed because they are white and pure - "why do you call me a cheap imitation red?"
The delicate interplay between the teeth and lips is the point here.
The teeth are ashamed because their colour is borrowed from the coral.

Magenta glory results from this participation: this participation between two colours is like the participation between mind and matter.
 
(“I think that mind and matter are merely convenient ways of grouping events”'  Bertrand Russell.
 
"Where consciousness exists, there the
Object of consciousness exists, where
Consciousness exists not, its object neither.
Thus, both by agreement and difference, certitude comes."

From Bhana Darsana, from the Darsana Mala by Narayana Guru.
 
(Consciousness and the object of consciousness are, of course, just other names for mind and matter. ED)
 

The teeth are hard, and have a borrowed colour; the lips have the original colour: this is bimba and pratibimba (pratiphalana)
 
("Tad bimba pratiphalana ragad arunitam - made into that (deep hue) belonging to the pink of dawn, by reflection of its colour." ED)
 
There are word-plays here in Sanskrit

(Pratibimba - a reflection. In logic, "bimba" is the object itself, with the "pratibimba" being the counterpart with which it is compared. ED)

Sankara gives this much importance because it settles the question of the participation of this world and the other.

So, there is shame, because the imitation can never equal the original.

He makes a fuss about this because pratyaksha pramana (meaning empirical evidence or the evidence of the senses) is a very important question in Vedanta.
Empirical evidence is not excluded from Vedanta, as is sometimes claimed.
 
(Is the evidence of the senses to be trusted or not? It involves the world of percepts, - the thing seen, a paddy-field, for example; and the world of concepts in the mind of the person who sees. ED)
 
THIS IS IMPORTANT- HOW DOES THE FLESHLY EYE SEE THAT PADDY FIELD?

It is a participation of mind and matter: this is the problem dealt with in this verse.
 
(See the Occasionalism of Descartes, dealt with in previous verses; see also Verse 1; the Bhagavad Gita refers to this duality by its own terms, as the field (kshetra) and the knower of the field (kshetrajna). ED).
 
(Occasionalism is a philosophical theory about causation which says that created substances cannot be efficient causes of events. Instead, all events are taken to be caused directly by God. The theory states that the illusion of efficient causation between mundane events arises out of God's causing of one event after another. However, there is no necessary connection between the two: it is not that the first event causes God to cause the second event: rather, God first causes one and then causes the other. ED)
 
How can consciousness appreciate the outline of that paddy field?
By mutual participation on a homogeneous ground: this is called sama-adhikarana : empirical evidence, the evidence of the senses, or pratyaksha pramana. (sama - same, adhikarana - category)
 
(A pramana is a source of valid knowledge e.g., the senses, inference, analogy etc. ED)

 

There must be a neutral substance between mind and matter.
The empiricist cannot explain this participation between mind and matter without postulating a neutral substance between the two: this is the soul. This is the neutral monism of Bertrand Russell.
 
Thus Vedanta is not mere Idealism, but also uses the empirical approach, it does not discount the evidence of the senses: thus Plato and Aristotle are put together.
 
(Empiricism: the practice of basing ideas and theories on testing and experience.
Idealism:  a theory that ultimate reality lies in a realm transcending phenomena.
or
a theory that the essential nature of reality lies in consciousness or reason.
 
Plato emphasized numerator, conceptual factors - concepts - his "Ideas" - Aristotle gave more importance to the perceptual denominator side - percepts. ED)
 
 
So the teeth are ashamed for not being able to establish a perfect bi-polar relationship with the lips and their colour: the neutral centre wants to be established, but there is one degree of difference.

This is much more delicate than you think it is.

 

"Wants to attain the middle ground..." this is the neutral point, as between mind and matter: it is one thing to go to one side of the road (shame); it is worse if the side you go to is also the wrong side.
 
(To leave the middle ground would imply deviating from the neutral Vedantic position. ED)

Re the versification: Sankara wants you to be confused as between the two factors.

 

An actual fruit of magenta colour would be ashamed to be compared to a coral of the same colour.
The lips of the Devi are so bright that the teeth also appear to be red.

Similarly, the mind conditions the body, and the body conditions the mind.
He uses the two opposite examples; whichever way you put it; the beauty is the same.
 
 
 
He is helping the mind to make a kind of figure-8, to unite subject and object.
They must participate equally, this is Advaita.
Sankara plays a wonderful trick here, delicate and beautiful.

 

"Na bimbam" means "not Bimba fruit" or "not original" - a word play.
The teeth are not the original of the red colour.
The original colour is the coral of the lips.
This is a transferred epithet: e.g. "he spent the whole night on a weary pillow."

Here there is a dialectical interchange between subject and object.
The predicative (the attribute) and the substantive (the thing) are interchangeable.
Here the lips are the original ontology and the teeth reflect the colour.
Suppose the coral had a fruit; it would have been ashamed of the fraction of difference between them.
 
 
So, the creeper has its effect - it is a qualitative aspect of the cause.
(The creeper which bears the bimba fruit, of course. ED)

Red is the original, redness is the effect.
Supposing the coral has an effect upon the truth (originating in the lips).
The teeth are ashamed of the colour of the lips.

 

The Numerator is afraid of the adjective by a slight fraction.
The original coral of the lips and the reflected coral of the teeth want to be in perfect balance.

The teeth are ashamed in the matter of attaining the middle ground
- sometimes it feels better, sometimes worse. Shame is a confusion.
It is not able to attain the middle ground.

The "shame" is due to a disturbance of the absolute equilibrium.
There is a fractional tilting of the balance, thus there is shame.
Pure magenta colour is the same, whether reflected or original.
Here Sankara says: "I decide", "I shall declare the similitude", not "I consider", that is: "I am a philosopher writing poetry".

The magenta colour represents the Absolute; you abolish the paradox between Numerator and Denominator.
Suppose the coral had a fruit - it would be the effect of the coral.
The effect is the result of a specific thing; thus, it is qualitative.
(text almost illegible here. ED)

A fraction of the element of pure shame exists between the colours.
Here we have colour as a cause and colour as an effect - between these there is shame, trying to find a middle ground
- a normalized and re-normalized magenta colour.
(A reference to quantum electrodynamics. ED)

He is cancelling these factors out against each other.
The bimba fruit is red.
The red coral is there too.
"Your teeth are white and reflect the coral colour of the lips of the Goddess"
The teeth are ashamed of being compared with the coral colour.
The magic is to juxtapose all these four with each other
There is vertical participation between lips and teeth, and horizontal participation between bimba-fruit and coral.
 

 

 

These four factors are brought in only for the quaternion structure.
 
(Definition of Quaternion:
1.
a group or set of four persons or things.
2.
Bookbinding. four gathered sheets folded in two for binding together.
3.
Mathematics.
  1. an expression of the form a + bi + cj + dk, where a, b, c, and d are real numbers; i 2= j 2= k 2= −1; and ij = −ji = k, jk = −kj = i, and ki = −ik = j.
  2. a quantity or operator expressed as the sum of a real number and three complex numbers, equivalent to the quotient of two vectors. The field of quaternions is not commutative under multiplication. ED)

 
 
 
 
 
 
Some examples of quaternions.
 
(This quaternion structure of even mathematical concepts, which conform to the methodology used throughout this work, should demonstrate to the reader that, despite its abstruse, poetico-mythological language, the Saundarya Lahari has a fully scientific methodology, epistemology and axiology. ED)

The teeth are ashamed because they are white and pure:
"Why do you call me a cheap imitation red?"

 

The delicate interplay between teeth and lips is the point here.
The teeth are ashamed because their colour is borrowed from the coral.
Magenta glory results from this participation:
this participation of the two colours is like the participation between mind and matter.

The teeth are hard and have a borrowed colour;
the lips have their original colour: this is "bimba tad bimba pratiphalana..."
Sankara gives this much importance because it settles the question of the participation of this world and the other.
So there is shame, because the imitation can never equal the original.
 
Thus the teeth are ashamed of not being able to establish a perfect bi-polar relationship with the lips and their colour: the neutral centre wants to be established, but there is one degree of difference between the two.
(This is much more delicate than you think it is.)
He wants to attain the middle ground, the neutral point:
it is one thing to go to one side of the road (shame);
it is worse if the side you go to is the wrong side.

 

There is a deliberate paradox present in the analogy.
Both the horizontal and vertical are made as thin as possible and cancellable.

But a slight prejudice in favour of reality must be there.
Reality is a necessary reference in life.
 
("Reality" may be taken to refer to the lips. The imagery here is very subtle and complex and perhaps left purposely vague or ambivalent by Sankara. ED)
 
 
 
 
(In Vedanta, ontology on the negative side is more important than teleology on the positive side - this is the principle of satkaranavada, as opposed to satkaryavada.
 

Satkarana-Vada: That mode of argument or doctrine which gives primacy to cause as against effect. Advaita Vedanta as understood by Sankara is essentially of the Satkarana-Vada tendency in its methodology.

Satkarya-Vada: That mode of argument or that doctrine in which primacy is given to effect as against cause. All Vaiseshika schools in the Indian philosophical scene conform to this mode. ED)

 

Re versification-
Sankara wants you to be confused as between subject and object,
cause and effect etc., for in Vedanta they are interchangeable
and are finally resolved into a neutral mid-point.

.

Another version:

 

WORD FOR WORD TRANSLATION (CONFUSED)
Having redness by its very nature...
Tava - Your
O bright-dented one
Of the brightness belonging to the lips
Sadrshyam - resemblance (by appearance)
Pravyaksha - I state (assert)
Janayatu phalam vidrumalata - let it bring about the effect of coral (reef)
Na bimbam - not reflected - or not another fruit which is red of a reef
Tad bimba pratiphalanaragad arunitam - made into that (deep hue) belonging to the pink of dawn, by reflection of its colour.
Tulam adhyarodhum - to climb to a mid-position between two rival colour-factors
Katham iva vilajjeta kalaya - why should it not in some way be ashamed even by its partial shade.
 
 
 
.
 
Coral.
.
.
A Bimba fruit.
.
 
.
An actual fruit of magenta colour will be ashamed of being compared to a coral of the same colour.
The lips of the Devi are so bright that the teeth also appear to be red.
The mind conditions the body and the body conditions the mind.

So, he uses these two opposite examples - whichever way you put it, the beauty is the same.
He is helping the mind to make a kind of figure-8, to unite subject and object.
They must participate equally; this is the secret of Advaita.
So Sankara plays a wonderful trick here, delicate and beautiful.

 

The coral is North India.
The fruit is South India.
 
 
 
They can also be compared to the two wives of Subrahmanya,
One high caste, one Sudra (low caste).
(The Guru then talks about the caste system and decides that the women support it.)

A common woman can also be beautiful.
The fancy woman with jewels is her opposite counterpart.

"The whole of life is flowing in a verticalized flux and I am a martyr to wisdom".

"Red, by its own natural colour is Yours, o One having beautiful teeth".
There is a similarity between the lips and the teeth: "I am going to tell you..."
"Let the coral-creeper produce fruit" - not the original, in order to equalise the two counterparts.

 

There is a word play in the original Sanskrit: "na bimbam" means "not Bimba fruit" or alternatively "not original".
The teeth are not the original of the red colour.
The original colour is the coral of the lips.
By a fraction, the teeth are "ashamed".

 

There is a transferred epithet here, as in the phrase:
"He spent the whole night on a weary pillow".
Here there is a delicate interchange of subject and object.

Predicative (attribute) and substantive (thing) are interchangeable.
Here the lips are the original ontology and the teeth reflect the colour.

Sankara is saying: "Suppose the coral had a fruit, it would have been ashamed of a fraction of difference between it...."

" Pravaksye..." means "I am going to tell you..."
" Let the coral creeper give rise to fruit..."
" Na bimbam" - not the original of a reflection.
" Tad bimba..." - what is reddened by being a reflection of its original.
" Tulam addhyarothum..." - the equal scale to mount.
" Katham iva..." - in what way should it become ashamed.
" Kalaya..." - by a fraction.

 

So the creeper bearing the bimba fruit has its effect - it is the qualitative aspect of the cause.
(There is also the quantitative aspect of the effect which is horizontal, while the cause is qualitative and vertical. ED)
 
 

Red is the original; redness is the effect.

Supposing the coral has an effect upon the teeth, originating in the lips:
it is "Ashamed of the colour of the lips..."

 

The noun is ashamed of the adjective by a slight fraction.

The original coral of the lips and the reflected coral of the teeth want to be in perfect balance.
The teeth are ashamed, in the matter of attaining the middle range.
Shame is due to the disturbance of the Absolute balance "by a fraction":
there is a tilting of the balance. Thus there is shame.

Pure magenta colour is the same whether reflected or original.
Likewise, the Absolute.

Here Sankara says, "I decide", not "I consider"
- that is, "I am a philosopher writing poetry".

The magenta colour represents the Absolute.

You abolish the paradox between Numerator and Denominator.
This is the paradox at the core of the Absolute - there is only one Absolute, when Numerator and Denominator are cancelled out.
.
"Suppose the coral has fruit..." - it would be the effect of the coral.
"Effect" is the result of a specific thing; thus it is qualitative.

There is here a fraction of the element of pure shame, between the colours.
Colour as a cause and colour as an effect - between them there is shame,
They are trying to find the middle, the normalised and re-normalised magenta colour.

 

 

 

SAUNDARYA LAHARI - VERSE 63

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SAUNDARYA LAHARI

 

 

VERSE 63

PARTICIPATION IN TERMS OF ENJOYING MOONLIGHT
 
स्मितज्योत्स्नाजालं तव वदनचन्द्रस्य पिबतां
चकोराणा-मासी-दतिरसतया चञ्चु-जडिमा ।
अतस्ते शीतांशो-रमृतलहरी माम्लरुचयः
पिबन्ती स्वच्छन्दं निशि निशि भृशं काञ्जि कधिया
 
smitas jyotsnajalam tava vadana candrasya pibatam
cakoranam asid atirasataya cancu jadima
atas te sitamsor amrta laharim amlarucayah
pibanti svacchandam nisi nisi bhrasam kancika dhiya
 
Your smile, like a moonbeam cluster out of Your moon-bright face,
Partridges, on drinking, by surfeit of sweetness
Numbness of tongue they got; thus presently do they imbibe eagerly
The nectar thereof, treating it as sour brew, night by night.
.
In Verse 63 we find a further accentuation of the ambiguous ambivalence implied in the shyness of the previous verse. There is a certain variety of partridge common in India known as the chakora, which keeps sleepers awake throughout bright moonlit nights by its repeated noises from trees around homes. Such a partridge is inserted into the context of beauty-appreciation in this verse. There are certain aspects of beauty that can produce surfeit, and there are others that are enjoyable in a different, even negative, sense. Connoisseurs are aware of this difference, as between sweet and dry wines. Moonbeams as a numerator value have to be compensated by the taste of the same moon­beams as understood from the inside of a partridge suffering from surfeit. At the beginning of the night, the partridges indulge in the positive aspect of sweetness and when they are fed up with such sweetness, their power of enjoyment becomes numbed. Their taste is reversed, and they begin to prefer the negative aspect of the same taste.
 
If the Absolute is enjoyable, it is not so in a dull mechanistic sense. The ambivalent aspects of enjoyment have to enter into an alternating interplay, even in the joy of the contemplation of beauty. It is in this sense that tragedies can be entertaining, and that we pay to see films that make us shed tears throughout. Adversities have their sweet uses. Beauty could be one-sided and insipid in the same way. Kalidasa harps on this in almost every descrip­tion of his heroines, as when he says that the beauty of the lotus is enhanced when it is set amongst moss. Sweet and savoury items have to alternate at good parties for the same reason of numbness of tongue referred to in this verse.
 
The main point is contained in the last line, which says that it is the chakora's attitude of mind that removes the numbness or contributes to it, whatever the numerator value in itself might contain by way of sweetness or sourness. It is an alterna­tion established between the sweet and sour tastes playing between overt and innate factors in a figure-eight movement which alone can secure a happiness that can endure through day or night, or early and later moonlight tastes, both of which tend to alternate trans-subjectively and inter-physically.
 
We note from the first line that we are still at the locus of the teeth of the Goddess, when they are revealed to view by her sweet smile. If the moon has a sweet brightness, the teeth add to the sweetness as an attribute to the totality of the face. The moon's orb can be sweet, but the smile makes it more specifically or qualitatively sweet. To both these sweetnesses, which coexist on the positive side of the total situation which we could call absolute Beauty, we have to insert a negative aspect of the same beauty in subjective terms before we could integrate the value of beauty as a totality in which opposites coexist. This requirement is accomplished in the last half of the verse. When put together by abstraction and generalization, absolute Beauty can emerge into view and enter into our own consciousness at one and the same time. Relative or partial beauty thus becomes raised to the status of Absolute Beauty by the cancellation of its own positive and negative sides. Surfeit is supposed to be reached at a certain time of night, whether subjective or objective, where moonlight could be partial or complete. Compensation works both ways: the mind supplies what is not there; and what is there compensates for what the mind hankers after. Thus we have the same constant of Absolute Beauty, though placed within the context of night rather than of daytime. The structural and alternating aspects remain the same, whatever the conjugates involved might be, but the conjugates must belong to the same class, context or order, within a phenomenologically understood epoché or situation.
 
The first line suggests a multiplicity of moons within a general moonlight; each bright tooth representing a unit of beauty set within the totality of the beauty of the moon itself. Substance and attribute can belong together, as also unity and multiplicity. One implies many and many can imply one. Parmenides and Zeno know of this kind of dialectics, by which duality is finally abolished through a correct methodology and not just doctrinally, as for example, in monotheism. The eagerness of the last line is meant to balance the surfeit of the second line; they cancel out into a middle state when the equation is understood.
 
(Epoché is an ancient Greek term which, in its philosophical usage, describes the theoretical moment where all judgments about the existence of the external world, and consequently all action in the world, is suspended. Husserl elaborates the notion of "phenomenological epoché" or 'bracketing' in Ideas I. Through the systematic procedure of phenomenological reduction, one is thought to be able to suspend judgment regarding the general or naive philosophical belief in the existence of the external world, and thus examine phenomena as they are originally given to consciousness. ED)

.

 

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS WITH STRUCTURAL DIAGRAMS RELATED TO THIS VERSE FROM SAUNDARYA LAHARI/NOTES.

 

It is not the fault of the Absolute that there is an alternating figure-8 in the Apara Brahman (non-transcendental Absolute).

 

 

The Absolute constantly emanates the same ambrosial nectar.
Only the subjective Self perceives it as alternating between sweet and sour: in this verse the Chakora bird represents this subjective self.

.

.

 

"Moonbeam cluster": there is a "bunch" of moonbeams, just as there is a bunch of grapes - they are both something sweet.

By trying to enjoy the bright daylight beauty - the overt radiance - each tooth of the Devi is a brightness, a beauty.

The bird is enjoying the bright beauty of the teeth and suddenly has satiation of the tip of the tongue, which becomes numb or tired.

It continues to drink, but the task is no longer a sweet one.
This is something like rice pudding that has been left all night and gone sour.
The world over, there are two tastes: sauerkraut and sweet things - dry and bitter as opposed to sweet.

In the heart of reality, there are good and bad together.

Sweetness is the Numerator.
Sourness is the Denominator.
 
(There is a vertical figure-8 alternation here, see the structure below. ED)
 
 
 
THIS TAKES PLACE WITHIN THE DOMAIN OF APARA BRAHMAN - THE NON-TRANSCENDENTAL OR PHENOMENAL ABSOLUTE
 

The birds must drink from both of them.
.
.
.
The partridges have had too much sweetness of numerator moonlight.
On the denominator side is a more "shaded" moonlight, which is like a sour brew.
 
Inside the bird, the colours change as she changes from sweet to sour; consciousness is changing, the same interest cannot be sustained, some alternation is necessary.
.
Narayana Guru: every pleasure in this world is due to alternation.
You cannot go to the prostitute every night, it requires correct phasing: allow for the figure-8 operating between the two sides: do not break your nervous system by one-sidedness.
 

 

(NOTE: In the diagram below, the original manuscript has "SUN" at the top of the vertical axis. As there is no sun in the text and the sun is only incidentally mentioned in the Guru's commentary, we suggest that, maybe, "MOON" should be put in its place, which perhaps fits in better with the original text and commentary. ED).

 

A PROPOSED REVISED STRUCTURE BY THE EDITOR:

 

SAUNDARYA LAHARI - VERSE 64

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SAUNDARYA LAHARI

 

 

VERSE 64

PARTICIPATION AT THE TIP OF THE TONGUE (ADHYASA)
 
अविश्रान्तं पत्युर्गुणगण कथाम्रेडनजपा
जपापुष्पच्छाया तव जननि जिह्वा जयति सा ।
यदग्रासीनायाः स्फटिकदृष-दच्छच्छविमयि
सरस्वत्या मूर्तिः परिणमति माणिक्यवपुषा
 
avisrantam patyur gunaganakathamredana japa
japuspac chaya tava janani jihva jayati sa
yad agrasinayah sphatikadrsad acchacchavimayi
sarasvatya murtih parinamati manikya vapusa
 
By incessant repetition of a muttered charm glorifying Your Lord;
As offering, the flower-red shade of Your tongue triumphs;
The pure, clear, crystal outline image of Saraswati,
While seated at Your tongue-tip, o Mother, in turn attains to rubyhood in its bodily form.
 
Prayers could be expressed in words or, as in India, through the throwing of flowers, the favourite colour being red or magenta. Such is the underlying idea with which we have to understand the meaning of this verse. Whether said in words or in flowers, it is the same absolute devotion that is implied. To put it in another way, we could say that the word-language participates with the flower-language and vice-versa. Words are more on the side of the intelligibles, while coloured flowers represent the perceptibles or the medium aspect of language. There is a thin line of demarcation separating these two aspects of medium and message, which it is the purpose of the present verse to treat unitively. It is the tip of the tongue that repeats muttered mantras or charms. In South Indian temples there is the practice of dipping flowers in holy water and throwing them at idols. Such an action, which is visible, is accompanied by a corresponding muttered charm in the form of a predicative description of the god to be propitiated. Baskets, or sometimes forests of flowers are offered as "stainless shrines" and, as Sir Edwin Arnold eulogizes for Buddhism, countless millions of lips repeat the formula, "I take my refuge in Buddha." Such a flower language is proper to the context of idol worship as practiced to this day, especially in South India, The devotee forgets himself and is never satisfied with the number of times that he repeats such a gesture and its corresponding mutterings.
 
In this verse the Goddess is worshiping her own husband in the same way. The duality between the muttered inward charm and the outward offered flowers is to be effectively abolished here. The poet finds a rather ingenious way of making the two events, verbal and non-verbal, belong together, either as cause (the flowers) or effect (the words), to one and the same context. The world of words properly belongs to the Goddess Sarasvati, to whom all colour is to be considered extraneous, because concepts, as such, are colourless; while percepts could belong to the colourful side of the same situation. If we should think of a small crystal-clear image of Sarasvati as representing the side of concepts, we could well imagine the tongue tip, where the mantra is articulated an endless number of times, as the ground on which the message could touch the medium. Thus we can see the relevancy of the analogy in this verse which put the red tip of the tongue of the Goddess at the bindusthana, or locus, around which Absolute Beauty is to be visualized.
 
This series of verses favours the negative or perceptual perspective of the Absolute as against the merely conceptual one. It is for this reason that the second line proclaims that the red shade of the tip of the tongue is the locus of Absolute Beauty. On the tip of such a magenta-red tongue one has to imagine that someone has placed a crystal-clear image of the Goddess of the Word, Sarasvati.
 
This image is also to be visualized in all its beauty as a universally concrete clear concept. The form of a concept and the name of a concept cannot be separated from one another. Every name must suggest some form or other, at least as a weakness of the constitution of our minds. One has to overcome the duality of both visual and conceptual conditioning habits of the mind to be able to transcend both, and to think without name or form at all. The Bhagavad Gita says in Chapter XIII that such a task of focusing attention on the formless and the nameless is difficult to accomplish. We are embodied human beings, it says, and therefore anthropomor­phism is a corollary to our thought forms, especially about God. This is the reason why God is referred to by the third person masculine pronoun, “He”, in most scriptures, as a concession to a natural way of thinking, though strictly speaking it is questionable. Anthropomorphism is thus a necessary evil, and can therefore be overlooked. The idolatrous imagery employed here is excusable only on the basis of a similar reasoning. Sarasvati, the Goddess of the Word, has a traditional form known to the conventional Hindu mind. Unless we have some specific reasons to reject it, there can be no objection to the use of such an iconographic representation.
 
When all these considerations are conceded, it will be seen that this verse does not offer any major difficulty, even for the modern reader. The underlying Advaitic doctrine is all that Sankara is interested in revealing, in a protolinguistic form. This is another example of anyonya adhyasa (mutual participation or conditioning). It is on the side of giving primacy to ontology that, if at all, this approach may be said to err. We have to remember that it is from a negative perspective that we are examining the content of the Absolute throughout this work, as we have been cautioned even from Verse 4, where the feet have been given primacy over the hands.
 
Why the Goddess should indulge in incessant repetition of the name of her Lord, when She herself is of a divine status, might be a relevant question. The answer is that methodological consistency requires that the counterparts have the same homogeneous richness so that they could cancel out against each other. Incessant repetition is needed to give to concepts the same ontological richness that is conferred by nature from the perceptual side. Ruby-hood and crystal clarity condition each other at the tip of the tongue; where medium and message meet unitively.

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ADDITIONAL COMMENTS WITH STRUCTURAL DIAGRAMS RELATED TO THIS VERSE FROM SAUNDARYA LAHARI/NOTES.

 

Constant repetition makes the tongue red and it passes to the numerator side.
 

 

The same tongue-tip is used both for the abstract (metalanguage, or the spoken words of the charm) and the concrete (protolanguage, or structuralism): perceptual and conceptual meet there.
 
(There is the "muttered charm", which is numerator metalanguage, and the flowers, which are denominator protolanguage. The tongue and the statue to which it gives colour would occupy a central position, where the two factors of numerator words and denominator flowers cancel out. ED)
 

(In the terminology of Nataraja Guru, the terms, meta- and proptolanguage are used differently from their usual definitions in linguistics: the structural methodology used throughout his works is protolanguage. The Cartesian co-ordinates are protolinguistic in essence; so also are the longitudes and latitudes of maps. Symbols are protolinguistic; signs are metalinguistic. Alphabets belong to metalanguage and geometrical elements such as angles, points, lines or concentric circles can be used protolinguistically. ED)


Events take place at three levels:
1) Repetition of the words
2) Placing of the image
3) Throwing of red flowers.
 
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The tongue is praising Shiva's exploits, unceasingly.
The Devi is a denominator factor here, as opposed to Saraswati, who belongs to the numerator side, where the metalinguistic praise of Shiva's exploits takes place.
The words the Devi utters make up "the crystal-clear image of Saraswati"

Saraswati is the Goddess of the numerator world of words.
 

This is the division between non-prophetic (negative) and prophetic (positive) religion.
Numerator and denominator are here clearly defined.
 
This is adhyasa, which means to have the colour of something else.
 

The favourite example of adhyasa (condi­tioning) is that of a clear, colourless crystal placed on a piece of red satin. Without becoming red, the crystal is made to look red throughout.
 
(See Verse 62 for several notes on adhyasa, as also Verse 92.
A more complete study of adhyasa is to be found in "An Integrated Science of the Absolute", in the Prologue to Chapter 5 and in the Epilogues to Chapters 6 and 7. ED)
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AS NO STRUCTURAL DIAGRAM IS PRESENT IN THE ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT, THE EDITOR PROPOSES THE DIAGRAM BELOW, WHICH APPEARS FULLY JUSTIFIED BY THE TEXT. IT IS A TENTATIVE PROPOSAL BY THE EDITOR, AND NOT ORIGINAL, AND MAY THUS BE IN ERROR.
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SAUNDARYA LAHARI - VERSE 65

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SAUNDARYA LAHARI

 

 

VERSE 65

POLYVALENT PARTICIPATION BY SKANDA
 
रणे जित्वा दैत्या नपहृत-शिरस्त्रैः कवचिभिः
निवृत्तै-श्चण्डांश-त्रिपुरहर-निर्माल्य-विमुखैः ।
विशाखेन्द्रोपेन्द्रैः शशिविशद-कर्पूरशकला
विलीयन्ते मातस्तव वदनताम्बूल-कबलाः
 
rane jitva daityan apahrta sirastrah kavacibhir
nivrttais candamsa tripuraha nirmalya vimukhaih
visakhendro pendrais sasivisada karpura sakalah
viliyante matas tava vadana tambula kabalah
 
O Mother, they merge, those mouthfuls of betel-juice of Your face,
As Skanda, Vishnu and Upendra, returning from vanquishing demons in battle,
Taking off their headgear and armour, they return, discountenancing
That Shiva's portion of offering meant for Chanda which are Moon-bright bits of camphor.
 
Verse 65 seems at first to be a complex jumble of mythological imagery and mixed metaphors superimposed on one another. No wonder, therefore, that most commentaries have missed the mark in proposing even an approximately acceptable meaning for it. We have to place it in its proper context and perspective first; and secondly we should not make the mistake of thinking that what belongs to the canvas belongs also to the painting. There are four epistemological and methodological layers here, each implying its own degree of abstraction and generalization. These four possible ways of abstraction were known to Vedantic speculation many centuries before modern physics began to use this same kind of four-dimensional reference.
 
1 - A mythological reference to three gods who are engaged in some kind of battle is the first film to be separated from the other deeper layers.
 
2 - Then comes a layer in which the gods (devas) and the demons (asuras) are arranged on two opposite sides, each representing their own system of life-values.
 
3 - This axiological view has a still deeper layer hiding behind it, in which we have to discover why Subrahmanya (Visakha) and the other two gods reject some of the holy tokens of offering while accepting others.
 
4 - Still deeper, in fourth-dimensional abstraction, we have to imagine that the whole of this story has its central locus in the mouth of the Goddess, who is engaged in chewing betel nuts. Camphor is also an ingredient of the mixture that she is chewing, and the red juice is swallowed into her own inside, each time the mouthful is fully turned to magenta.
 
We have also to remember that it is in the mind of the contemplative, as he meditates on the betel-chewing mouth, that more peripheral wheels or Chakras of thought present themselves before his mind's eye, all having the same epicentre or locus, which is the mouth of the Goddess. In its chapter on the vision of the universal principle of Time, the Bhagavad Gita presents a similar picture, where the heads of warriors and kings are being mercilessly crushed like nuts between the teeth of the All-Pervading One (Xl: 26-27). The idea here is not unlike that vision. It is a war that is being waged between the forces of good and evil, although the Absolute itself is not to be divided into two groups. The conflict between the forces of good and evil has to be understood, at least schematically, and a line, however thin, demarcating the two sides has inevitably to be presupposed, at least for the sake of argument. This line is no other than that between the two rows of teeth of the Goddess, where nuts representing the skulls of heroes of one side or the other are being crushed, so that Time could proceed on its destructive onward progression, like the car of Jagannath in the famous Puri festival. Time´s arrow cannot be reversed except in terms of very pure memory. The forward-flowing breeze of Time could play sometimes on silken sails, but must inevitably imply harsh facts belonging to the stern stuff of duty or historical necessity. The magenta colour, moreover, is highly suggestive of flesh and blood; if we should add skulls and armour to the picture, we have the option of imagining more grades of concreteness or abstraction than the four that we have already mentioned.
 
The three gods, who appear after giving battle to the evil forces, have removed their headgear out of respect for the presence of the Absolute Goddess. They remove only half the accoutrements that make for a warlike situation. The three gods are willing to respect the presence of the Goddess, but they are not willing to negate the function for which they were born. This applies especially to the case of Subrahmanya (Visakha), whose function, by the very circumstances of his birth, consists in teaching a lesson to the denominator factors of Evil. He represents the highest possible Omega Point of values within the setup of divinities of the Hindu pantheon, Vedic or non-Vedic. Subrahmanya is here represented as highly conscious of the function or duty that properly belongs to him. A policeman's duty is to arrest thieves and not to pardon them.
 
In the previous verses we have been thinking of the mouth region of the Goddess in various degrees of verticalized value gradations. Here we come to a grade where retrospective memories as well as prospective imagination enter into the picture with equal force, from both poles of the total situation. As the contemplative meditates on this picture of the betel-chewing Goddess, associations crowd into his mind, each set having its own epistemological self-consistency. We can imagine three concentric circles, as in the Sri Chakra, separating the inner zones from the outer ones. Magenta colours of different saturation, brilliance and shade can distinguish the zones, but historical or mythological events are all to be grounded in the self-same Chakra which the contemplative constructs in order to appreciate intelligently the absolute non-dual beauty of the Goddess.
 
We could imagine a heroic or epic (puranic) scene here being acted out within the mouth of the Goddess which could also be seen as a temple or cave in which somebody is offering worship to the absolute Goddess. As it is impolite to wear headgear in pride when approaching a sacred place dedicated to God, the three divinities here are represented as conforming to the requirements of good behaviour by taking off their headgear. They retain the rest of their armour, however, with the excuse that they are still in the overall context of battle.
 
Within the temple scene, we could imagine a priest who brings to these three divine supplicants that which they are meant to accept as a token of respect for the supreme principle as they understand it, each from his own standpoint, with its own frame of value-reference. The absolute Goddess does not take sides, but her son (Subrahmanya) cannot deny his duty, being born historically or mythologically to teach a lesson to the evil forces. The “Kumarasambhava” makes this role very clear, although Subrahmanya is not lacking in his knowledge of Vedantic absolutism. He is even said to have taught the meaning of AUM to his own father, Shiva.
 
Camphor, especially of the soft variety, is an ingredient used to flavour betel nuts. Camphor is also an integral item among the holy ingredients making up a temple offering to be brought out by the priest after the waving of lights before an idol. Camphor is unique in that it is both a solid and potentially a flame of light; so it is used as an analogy for the process by which material substance turns into the intelligent factor, symbolized by the flame. Moon-bright bits of camphor left on the salver brought by the priest for Subrahmanya represent a value meant to give a flavour or perfume to betel chewing. As a solid, it belongs to the side of existence, so in this form, before being lit, it belongs to the denominator context of the asuras (demons) and not to the devas (gods) of the numerator context. Like the “thinking substance”, camphor combines within itself substantiality and thought.
 
Since Subrahmanya represents the numerator aspect, he does not approve of the offered camphor because it is incompatible with his main function of teaching a lesson to the opposite side. He does not wish to pretend to be an absolutist prematurely and inconsistently with his own personality; just as Arjuna is not to leave the battlefield by pretending or claiming prematurely to be a sannyasin. Duty in this sense is sometimes called “the stern daughter of the voice of God”, though this dictum need not be binding on anyone who can claim correctly and completely to be an absolutist. Subrahmanya was born as an answer to the prayer of the gods, to protect them from the excesses of the demons at that time. His function comes under the category of historical necessity, not in terms of ordinary history, but at least in the order of cosmic evolution, as depicted in the great epics in Indian literature, which are called itihasas, of which the model in the West could be the Odyssey of Homer.
 
Chanda is another name for a divinity represented by the Moon. Shiva himself, representing the numerator aspect of the Absolute, carries moonlight on his head. The camphor bits could, by the same token, be considered as representing the Moon principle on the denominator side. Chanda (the God of the Moon) and Chandra (the Moon) thus become interchangeable as cause or effect aspects of light. As for the three gods portrayed here, which are slightly different from the usual Vedic trinity, the name Upendra can simply denote Vishnu or it can also mean “second in command to Indra.”. Visakha or Skanda could represent Shiva, because he is born from Shiva's middle eye. Vishnu occupies the central place as representing lasting enjoyable values. Aryan and Dravidian divinities are thus seen here to be put together in a revised form, without violating their triple principal functions of creation, preservation and destruction.
 
In the first line, the word “merge” is to be understood as representing the act of swallowing flavoured red betel juice, with camphor added as a subtly pervasive ingre­dient. The mouthfuls, when they merge, could be imagined as permeating upwards into the world of prospective or creative imagination, or as emerging retrospectively into the totality of memories of past years already contained as a vertical dimension within the presence of the beauty that the Goddess represents. The gods are returning from some past event already accomplished and are seen now to be standing at a neutral point in the present. They could be said to be returning from deeper negative levels of the vertical axis. They do not remove all their warlike accoutrements because they are still within the context of a war situation. Subrahmanya could remove his armour only when he goes to his abode nearer to the positive limit of the vertical axis.
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From the Bhagavad Gita, Chapter XI:

26
ami cha tvam dhritarashtrasya putrah
sarve sahai 'va 'vanipalasamghaih
bhishmo dronah sutaputras tatha 'sau
saha 'smadiyair api yodhamukhyaih

27
vaktrani te tvaramana visanti
damshtrakaralani bhayanakani
kechid vilagna dasanantareshu
samdrisyante churnitair uttamangaih

 

All these sons of Dhritarashtra, with hosts of rulers, Bhishma, Drona, and that son of a charioteer (Kama), with our warrior chiefs are rushing into Your fearful mouths terrible with teeth; some are found sticking in the gaps between the teeth with their heads crushed to powder.

 

 

 

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS WITH STRUCTURAL DIAGRAMS RELATED TO THIS VERSE FROM SAUNDARYA LAHARI/NOTES.

 

This is a very wonderful verse in which the Devi is chewing hard nuts, camphor and brittle leaves.
She swallows and it is digested.

 

 

This is very complex image: the hard nuts are like the hard helmets, which the three gods have taken off.

 

 


The Gods are returning from battle and are not willing to receive the ritual camphor from the priest - this is a kind of ceremonial gift - because they are rajasic (active and horizontalized) and do not know how to receive it.

(Hindus worship a holy flame by burning camphor, which forms an important part of many religious ceremonies. As a natural pitch substance, it burns cool without leaving an ash residue, which symbolizes consciousness. ED)


"Some such imagery is there: this is not fixed".

Subrahmanya (Skanda, by another name), Vishnu and Indra (a.k.a Upendra) are returning from a battle between the plus and minus sides, wearing their iron helmets.
 

There is a war between the Devas (gods) and the Asuras (demons), this much is quite clear.
The Devi is swallowing mouthfuls of betel juice.

Subrahmanya, Vishnu and Indra throw away their armour but keep the heads of their enemies.
They won't take the camphor bits, which belong to the Devi.

The Devi is chewing the camphor bits, which have been refused by the gods and, by her chewing, is merging them with their positive and negative qualities and with the magenta colour of betel.
 
(Notice the similarity with the previous verse, where the positive and negative sides are merged when the Devi's tongue-tip colours the moonstone statue. There is cancellation inside her mouth in both cases. ED)

The two aspects become merged within Her.
Cancellation occurs between them.
 
 
 

There is no distinction between the denominator ontology of the camphor and its moon-like quality, which belongs to the Numerator side.

There is an analogy between the face and the battle: you have to find the four aspects of the quaternion and put them in their proper places.

When She swallows is when the merging takes place.
 
Bits of camphor are merged in the four directions in the mouth of the Devi.
The face represents the entire battlefield.

Colour: in the atman there is a jagat floating. (In the soul there is a universe floating)
Colour within you corresponds to the blue in the sky.

There is a colour-solid inside, blue and rainbow colours outside.
These are colours at the core of the universe.

Thus the colour of a magenta flower comes from within the flower and is not subject to climate, etc. The same seed will always give a flower of the same colour.
 
There is reference here to the Devi chewing betel to redden her lips.
 
The hypostatic numerator gods have had a battle with the ruffian denominator gods.
Betel nut prepared for chewing contains nuts that crack and also leaves that produce a magenta-like colour.
One is Numerator, the other Denominator.
 
The true gods belong to the Numerator.
Shiva is far beyond these.
We are now at the mouth - which is sensory and also produces speech.
It gives an opportunity to unite Numerator and Denominator.
 
 
Shiva Lingam.
 
The lower gods are still Shiva's people - the Shiva Lingam (Shiva's phallic symbol) represents his negative aspect.
The divine hypostatic gods could not defeat these shudras (low-caste beings).
Subrahmanya kills certain Dravidians, and takes their heads as trophies
- but not their headgear, nor the garlands used by them.
 
Chewing of betel is like crushing the heads of bad people.
The host of Subrahmanya, Indra etc., which is on the positive side, is fighting against the ruffian shudras (low caste people) on the negative side.
 
(See the verses from the Bhagavad Gita quoted above. ED) 

Camphor is a very hypostatic, positive, item; it is used in puja-offerings to the Devas (gods).

The numerator gods represent the upper teeth, which crush down on the lower teeth.
The bright forces are opposing the dark.
 
The numerator gods come down the vertical axis to fight with their denominator counterparts.

After the battle, they leave behind the helmets and other ritual articles for the negative worship of Shiva.
Numerator and denominator values are mixed by chewing.

The crystalline camphor, karpura, is completely mixed with the magenta colour of the betel juice in the Devi's mouth.

In Her mouth of the Devi there are two factors; numerator camphor and denominator betel nuts, being chewed and completely mixed together.

She takes neither side, everything is merged in magenta (betel juice is a purplish colour, close to magenta. ED).
 
Subrahmanya refuses the camphor bits belonging to the negative side.
The warfare takes place in the mouth of the Devi, two rows of teeth grind the warriors without distinction.

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Camphor is a pagan factor; Subrahmanya (Skanda) says, "I am glad that you offer it, but I am a Brahmin on the positive side, and born for the purpose of fighting the Asuras (demons) on the negative side; I have agreed to fulfil a certain function and cannot compromise my position".
 
MacArthur was appointed to fight in Korea and had no choice anymore; if he did not do it, someone else would. You have a certain function within the Absolute, do not compromise it.
Subrahmanya is meant to act as a warrior in this situation.
 
The Devi can abolish paradox because She is the Absolute, but it is not Skanda's job to abolish paradox.
He has accepted a function, and has to fulfil his svadharma (conduct according to one's own nature; your own dharma - karma verticalized. ED), at a certain epoch in a total situation.
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(ED notes: To understand the four levels of abstraction that need to be kept in mind if one is to understand this verse, it might help to look yet again at Eddington's famous example of the quaternion structure:

THE FOUR LIMBS OF THE QUATERNION;

 

1. THE ACTUAL CHAIR in which the actual man can sit; this chair will exclude another chair, and occupies a particular space.

2. THE VIRTUAL CHAIR, in which a virtual man can sit; much like a mirror reflection.

3. THE ALPHA-POINT CHAIR, the form of the chair generalized,
It excludes all other chairs.
This is the universal concrete version, it excludes horizontally but not vertically.

4. THE OMEGA POINT CHAIR: the word "chair" in the dictionary, purely conceptual. )

 

 

 

  1. SAUNDARYA LAHARI - VERSE 66
  2. SAUNDARYA LAHARI - VERSE 67
  3. SAUNDARYA LAHARI - VERSE 68
  4. SAUNDARYA LAHARI - VERSE 69