SAUNDARYA LAHARI

Details: Written by Patrick Misson; Parent Category: Content; Published: 20 October 2008; Created: 20 October 2008; Last Updated: 14 June 2016; Hits: 13273

VERSE 95

DISINTERESTED WORSHIP VERSUS WORSHIP FOR BENEFITS (SIDDHIS)

पुरारन्ते-रन्तः पुरमसि तत-स्त्वचरणयोः
सपर्या-मर्यादा तरलकरणाना-मसुलभा ।
तथा ह्येते नीताः शतमखमुखाः सिद्धिमतुलां
तव द्वारोपान्तः स्थितिभि-रणिमाद्याभि-रमराः

purarater antahpuram asi tatas tvac caranayoh
saparya maryada tarala karananam asulabha
tatha hyete nitah satamakha mukhas siddhim atulam
tava dvaropanta sthitibhir animadhyabhir amarah

You being the consort of Shiva, it is difficult indeed
For unsettled minds to attain the equivalent of the way of Your worship;
Whatever limitless gains they, the divinities such as Indra and others might have had,
Those psychic powers such as Anima, from just outside Your door they got them.

In Verse 95 Sankara intends to sound a warning about the superior example of absolute Beauty that he has been trying to hold up to view. He says now that there could be a majority of people for whom this way of looking at beauty, from a feminine and negative standpoint, might be prejudicial to their spiritual progress. Most human beings are interested in gaining some kind of advantage for themselves while they continue to live here on earth. Transcendental values can interest only rare individuals whose minds have been first established in the context of the true contemplation of the Absolute, in which salvation, and not any other hedonistic or relativistic advantage, is to be gained. This is because most people are likely to forget that the Goddess is to be treated as a correct counterpart of Shiva, who is well-known to be the greatest of austere personages. He is a model ascetic, so the Goddess, his consort, cannot be like any other woman. In order for Her to be in love with an ascetic of the superior quality of Shiva, there must be the same complementary quality present in the Goddess as a counterpart of such asceticism. This would mean that the worshipper of such a Goddess could not think in terms of gaining any advantage belonging to the three worlds of earth, heaven or the space between them.

Vedanta discountenances siddhis (psychic powers) such as anima and so on, which we have reviewed under Verses 30 and 31. Even Patanjali, though only belonging to the context of Samkhya philosophy, in his Yoga Sutras (111, 37) clearly states that interest in psychic powers (siddhis) has an effect unfavourable to the progressive establishment of samadhi, (absorption). The Bhagavad Gita also disdains siddhis as being paripanthinau (obstructions to the right path).

In the second half of this verse these siddhis are brought into relation with the Absolute Goddess. Does the Goddess grant siddhis to votaries that might propitiate her, or is she altogether outside such an inferior context? The answer in this verse is that such siddhis are not the kind of benefit to be prayed for in respect of the absolute Goddess who, as wife of Shiva, is not interested in granting siddhis that would only be advantageous in a hedonistic setup. She would only treat the granting of such psychic powers as incidental and not as her main function. Even Vedic gods, like Indra and others, like to have some advantages in the form of siddhis, with which they could dominate those who do not have such powers. Thus the Goddess here neither grants siddhis nor refuses to grant them. She leaves them outside the door of her temple for those who badly need them and serve themselves freely with them, if they should so insist, not knowing that siddhis are really detrimental to the fullest spiritual progress in the correct absolutist context of Vedanta, as distinct from the Vedas. The Vedic Gods themselves have been beneficiaries in this matter and have been helping themselves to the available siddhis discarded by the Goddess outside her temple door.

Most persons, who are referred to as being of unsettled mind and incapable of the proper way of worshipping the Absolute Goddess, could belong to the three kinds of Devi-worshippers, which are the Kaulins, the Uttara Kaulins, and the Samayins. All of these, like the hedonistic gods of the Vedas themselves, are motivated not by the desire for full emancipation granted by a Goddess who is the true wife of Shiva, but for relativistic benefits from various surrogate divinities who do not possess that absolute status without which true salvation will not be granted to supplicants. The whole of this picture in Verse 95 refers to the context of a temple worshipper whose interest in the Absolute has not yet attained the white heat of absolutism, which alone can insure that full emancipation that Shiva and Shakti united together can confer by the combination of their mutually cancelable functions.

(On Siddhis (psychic powers) see the Bhagavad Gita, Chapters 2, 3, 7 and 10. ED)

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

WORD FOR WORD
Pura ratah antah puram asi - You are the consort of Shiva, living in the inner apartments
Tata - by reason of this
Tvach charanayoh saparya maryada - as applied to Your feet the equivalent for worship
Tarala karananam - for those with unstable inner faculties
Asulabha - not easy
Tatha hi - this is surely
Ete shata makha mukhah - these here such as Indra and others
Nitah - they are led
Siddhim atulam - to unequaled psychic powers
Tava - (from) Your
Dvaropanta sthiti bhih - just outside Your door
Animadhya bhih - together with such as atomicity etc.
Amarah - those divinities

The poet says: "You are an uncompromising Absolute Goddess, Parvati, the real Absolute" - this is no numerator Brahmin girl.
Do not mix this up with benefits in this world such as psychic powers or siddhis.

(Nataraja Guru would say that psychic powers are to be looked at in the same way as the little plastic toys that one finds in a box of cornflakes - mildly entertaining but completely irrelevant to the main purpose - becoming the Absolute. ED)

This is Advaita Vedanta with no compromises.
Sankara says: "I am interested in wisdom, this is too difficult for you, go away!"
This is a tragic touch.

Show the gods taking some rejected articles from outside the Devi's door.
They do not go inside to see the verticalized Goddess in her Glory as Shiva's consort.

(The gods are horizontal and concerned with the phenomenal world of change and becoming - they are as irrelevant as their counterparts the psychic powers (or plastic toys) - " The Absolute alone exists and shines" (Darsana Mala). ED)