Advaita Vedanta

SAUNDARYA LAHARI

VERSE 38

ANAHATA CHAKRA - MEANS "NEVER KILLED", OR " A BELL NOT STRUCK", OR "UNDISTURBED"

समुन्मीलत् संवित्कमल-मकरन्दैक-रसिकं
भजे हंसद्वन्द्वं किमपि महतां मानसचरम् ।
यदालापा-दष्टादश-गुणित-विद्यापरिणतिः
यदादत्ते दोषाद् गुण-मखिल-मद्भ्यः पय इव

samunmilat samvit kamala makarandaika rasikam
bhaje hamsadvandvam kim api mahatam manasa caram
yad alapad astadasa gunita vidya parinatir
yad adatte dosad gunam akhilam adbhyah paya iva

I adore those twin swans, intent on enjoying the nectar
Of the lotus blooming within the consciousness of certain great ones,
Moving within whose mind as a result of their elaboration, the maturation
Of the eighteen arts takes place, freed from dross, their goodness extracted as milk from water.

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In Verse 38 we have the picture of two swans swimming in a lotus pond, having at least one lotus blooming at its centre. The first thing to notice about this Chakra, besides the fact that its conventional name is omitted, is that there is no value that is especially spiritual that is referred to in its overall design. It is rather meant to be a normalized version of value, where spirituality and morality meet and cancel out into a picture representing beauty in a very real form. In parks and gardens anywhere in the world it is possible to see a pair of swans swimming in a pond, and it is not difficult to imagine a blooming lotus flower at its centre. Swans are animals that need food in the ordinary sense, and although water supports vitality in a deeper sense, other food, such as milk, is required for the sustenance of normal life here. The mind, with its two functions having a horizontal parity between them, one of which could be auditory and the other visual in its reference - as with music and dance - could be conceded here to be the ground on which one finds some sort of aesthetic pleasure or enjoyment. Mind-stuff is here compared to water, while something more nourishing, containing body-building elements of food, is necessary for the two swans to have their enjoyable active life within the pond. The classical theory of aesthetics belonging to Sanskrit culture comprises all enjoyable artistic values within the scope of a fan-like expansion or elaboration of the elements of interest that could be normal to human beings. These are supposed to be the nine essences, called rasas. The nine rasas are: srngara (love), vira (heroism), bibhatsa (disgust), raudra (anger), hasya (mirth), bhayanaka (terror), karuna (pity), adbhuta (wonder), and santa (tranquility). If nine rasas are given to the visual (actual) side, nine rasas must also be given to the auditory (virtual) side. Thus we have, between visual and audible arts, eighteen rasas spread out like a fan, resembling the order of colours in the spectrum. The colour red is always associated with passion, because the conventional language of colour is understood, if vaguely, even in common parlance. The point where horizontal values meet the vertical parameter is to be located exactly at the core of the lotus. The 180 degrees above the O Point could be divided into 18 sectors of 10 degrees on the plus and minus sides of the structural whole.

The long and beautiful necks of the swans can delve down into the mud to pull out the tender edible roots of the lotus plant, on which they are supposed to thrive. When swans migrate to the Himalayan regions it is conventionally understood that some edible parts of the lotus plant are carried in their beaks, at the tip of their outstretched necks. The swans reach Manasarovar, the "mind lake" located somewhere in the Himalayas, in due course, enabling them to live at a celestial level and on an earthly level alternately.

Highly evolved spiritual souls are compared in Hindu literature to a central locus of this kind when they are called paramahamsas, which means that they are very realistically related to the total context of absolute value. The two swans touch and do not touch the lotus, like spirits apart, by participating through subtle verticality only at the O Point.

1. "The nectar of the lotus" (kamala makarandam)
Nectar is something nourishing and enjoyable of which milk could be considered a particular instance. Nectar is more than milk by its added enjoyability. The extra elements of enjoyability result from the elaboration of aesthetic interests in the minds of the two swans treated as one.

2. "Certain great ones" (kim api mahatam)
The reference here is to perfected paramahamsas for whom the duality between real or virtual, and hypostatic or hierophantic values have all been normalized.

3. "The maturation of the eighteen arts" (astadasa gunita vidya parinatih)
There is a central locus in the neutral and absolute self, which is the source from which all enjoyment must start, whether in the visual or auditory arts. Even when the arts are withdrawn in higher samadhi, these outgoing items of elaboration could be thought of as each being withdrawn into its own source, which is again the central locus within the absolute self. Maturation should not be mixed up with the idea of evolution because of the use of the Sanskrit word parinama for both. Maturation here only increases its eidetic content without changing it horizontally; as when we say that twilight matures fully when the sun is four degrees below the horizon. A mango ripens and matures without changing its identity horizontally.

4. "Goodness extracted as milk from water" (adatte gunam akhilam adbhyah paya iva)
Milk has a horizontal value reference which is existential in status. Water, on the other hand, has a vertical reference because of its pure sapidity. Thus we get the two references in respect of value, within the amplitude of which we could insert the double spectrum of both auditory and visual arts radiating fanwise from a central core which is both a source as well as an epicentre for all manifestations or absorptions.

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Concluding Remarks:

In this verse the language of conventional clichés has been used in an unobtrusive manner, by which it is possible to see that what is real could be the same as what is ideal, when viewed neutrally and normally, as between perceptual and conceptual values. The yogi has nothing to add or subtract here. The "Brahma Sutras" recommend such an attitude, in which nothing is to be explained away from life or added as an idea to embellish reality. One has neither to paint lilies nor gild gold. Vedanta is not a form of idealism as some scholars tend to think. It is fully realistic, as this verse of Narayana Guru's "Darsana Mala" clearly underlines:

"Of this world there is certainly nothing to be rejected nor accepted,
As for the Self, it is self-luminous.
Having understood thus, one should withdraw from all functionings.
Thereafter, function does not repeat itself."

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

 

WORD FOR WORD
Samun milat samvit kamala makaranda - (blooming) lotus in consciousness enjoying the nectar
Ika rasikam bhaje - (I adore) intently
Hamsa dvandvam - the pair of swans
Kim api mahatam - of certain great ones
Manasa charam - moving within the mind
Yad alapat - as a result of whose elaboration
Ashtadasa gunita vidya parinatihi - the maturation of the eighteen arts takes place
Yad adattedoshat - which extracts from dross
Gunam akhilam - all goodness (therefrom)
Adbhyah paya eva - like milk from water.

 

In Verse 39, we have this contrasting picture:

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There is a lake in the mind of some great man - two swans are drinking from a lotus - they leave the dross behind.

 

Horizontally, there is perfect parity and bilateral symmetry.
Here, the Anahata Chakra is where vertical meets horizontal.

The 18 branches of learning give completeness and maturity.

 

(The 18 Vidyas or vidyās (Sanskrit: विद्या) primarily means science, learning, philosophy, knowledge, scholarship, any knowledge whether true or false.

Its root is Vid (Sanskrit: विद्) which means - to reason upon, knower, finding, knowing, acquiring or understanding. ED)

 

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The lotus blooming within the consciousness of certain great ones.

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When swans migrate to the Himalayas it is traditionally believed that the finest central threads of the lotus plant's stalk (the mrinala tantu) are carried in their beaks to Manasarovar the "mind lake" located somewhere in the Himalayas. (This thread could be seen to represent the vertical axis. ED) in due course, enabling the swans to live at a celestial level and on an earthly level alternately.

 

We can imagine an ordinary city garden, where there are two swans in a pond.
Art is interesting and worthwhile for human life, like milk.
Water is negative and milk is positive.
Milk is negentropy and water is entropy.
This is the cancelling point.

 

 

The Numerator is specific: the particular art that humans enjoy.
The Denominator is the meshwork of all the arts.

Anahata means "never killed, whole".

 

(In Sanskrit, anahata means "unhurt, unstruck and unbeaten". In traditional Vedic lore Anahata refers to the concept of unstruck sound (the sound of the "celestial realm"). Ananhata is associated with a calm, serene sound devoid of violence. ED)

 

Shiva and Parvati receive a higher status of parity in this verse - as two birds.

 

(In the previous verse, 37, the Devi is, from a certain point of view, seen as a partridge on the negative side. Here the two swans have absolute parity between them, floating together on the lake. ED)

There is a lake of mystical geography referred to.
At the very end, there is another analogy.
This is a most effective locus.

There are two birds drinking, separating milk from water.
Two swans are swimming in the pond of consciousness, drinking honey from the centre of the same lotus, taking the essential and leaving the superfluous.

Swans are traditionally supposed to be able to separate the milk and leave the water.
There are certain people who are good poets and of a rare quality and in the minds of these people these swans will be found in their absolute parity.

They are enjoying the essence of Sanskrit culture and learning.

These swans are not like the chakora or partridge, of the previous verse - they have been promoted to a higher Chakra.

We have a pond, with at the centre a lotus.

 

In the lotus' heart, the heart of consciousness, is the concentrated essence of wisdom.

The two swans of equal status are both drinking of this honey, enjoying that which only a few people can enjoy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Whereupon knowledge is divided into two parts: nine for Shiva and nine for Parvati.

As they suck the honey, the 18 arts are elaborated in the wings of each swan.

 

 

These two birds are taking the Absolute Value - or milk - and are leaving the extraneous disciplines - water.

For example:
pure mathematics is Numerator,
grammar or syntax is Denominator.

 

 

 

 

 

That is: milk represents the absolute value factor, which is separated from the extraneous water: this is discrimination.

 

(This is to be seen as the discrimination between lasting and transient values which, according to texts such as the Viveka Chudamani of Sankara (Verse 19) is the preliminary qualification required before one enters contemplative life. ED)

Shiva and Parvati are elevated from their position in the last Chakra to absolute parity in this Chakra.

 

In the previous verse, Shiva and the Devi are like this:

 

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In this verse they are like this:

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The eighteen vidyas (arts) are divided equally between them, becoming manifested, as they suck the honey, in the feathers of their wings.

Complementarity - one thing complements or completes the other - there is also reciprocity, cancellability, compensation.

There is a kind of parity between these two birds.
They are reciprocal, having a parity between them.
If they are equal, why talk about the two of them?

 

Parity is dealt with in the Schroedinger equation - the hydrogen atom.
"Parity of wave function" is given quantum number in Kaplan's "Nuclear Physics".

Parity comes from "pair" and "reflection".
It is more of a structural entity than anything else.
It implies the actual and the virtual.

 

 

 

These twin swans who drink from the same intellectualised fountain-source of wisdom are both somewhat theoretical and also related by parity.

 

Knowledge here is a lotus, rather than a sea, so that we can establish a bi-polarity between Self and knowledge; then they are put together.

The two swans seem to be on the same horizontal level, although quite high up on the vertical axis, at a conceptualized, mathematical level.

The same laws of nature hold good on one side of the mirror as on the other: mathematics, the speed of light, etc.

So this parity is one of the four relationships which we normally use in our structural methodology: parity, reciprocity, complementarity and cancellation.

Ambivalence - the first level, the actual, Subrahmaniam and Ganesha are ambivalent.
Reciprocity - the second level; Saraswati and Lakshmi.
Complementarity - the third level, the Devi with callosities - she wants to establish the final cancellation with Shiva, here, she is his complementary counterpart.
Cancellation - the fourth level, the final operation - Shiva and Shakti united.
Parity - refers to the horizontal alone; bilateral symmetry.

The swans are swimming together on the same lake of the mind, drinking from the same source and absorbing the same benefits.

They are related in the sense that one swan is original and the other not (It is a virtual mirror-image of the other. ED), and vice-versa, depending on which quality you consider - as between actual and virtual qualities.
This parity is a very thin relationship.

 

(The physicists Yang and Lee say that it does not matter whether a particle is real or not: in some cases it will respond to certain mathematical laws.).

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Cancellation is 2/2 = 1
Complementarity is like two halves of a broken eggshell.
Compensation is like the two sides of a pair of scales.

 

The laws of nature are said to be represented in Schroedinger's equations, and all equations can be represented by graphs so the laws of nature can be demonstrated structurally - see Bergson and Eddington.

 

 

A law of nature is simply a generalization and an abstraction.

There are two swans swimming on a wisdom-lake; they are equally beautiful and there is parity between them.

Why two? Because they represent Shiva and Parvati: they are enjoying something intellectual, dividing the eighteen artistic disciplines between them.

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Another version:

 

TRANSLATION
- Fully blossomed lotus of wisdom consciousness (the final stage of knowledge)
- The ambrosia unique
- As enjoying
- I worship (or meditate upon)
- The pair of swans
- In certain great ones

(i.e. these exist in the minds of certain great or wise ones, capable of enjoying them)
- As moving in the mind-lake (this all happens in the mind)
- By the elaboration of which (of that joy)
- The matured form of the eighteen disciplines (grammar, syntax, etc.)
- Which draws out (these two swans draw it out - away)
- From what is no good
- All the essence
- Like milk from water

 

They take the essence and leave the dross from the centre of the lotus on the lake of the mind.
These birds are sharing an "un-shareable" experience - one actually, the other virtually.
They are mathematically elevated to the world of the intelligibles.

 

In this verse, we have parity in Actual Aesthetics.

This Chakra, in the descending process, becomes very real.
Here, the two swans are floating in the mind-lake, and are in charge of all aesthetic values - the Kalas.

 

 

(The "mind-Lake" is Manasarovar in the Himalayas, where the swans are supposed to fly, bearing the finest filament of the lotus. ED)

Half of the Kalas belong to one swan and half to the other - and there is a perfect parity between them.
E.g., if you can sing poetry, the music belongs to the Devi and the thoughts of the poetry belong to Shiva.

 

 

All of the Kalas (arts) are distributed evenly between these two swans.
The Kalas can be seen as all concentrated in the lotus flower in the centre.
Here we are looking at the horizontal parity of the swans within the Chakra.
The lake is what gives them the unity.

 

 

Another version:

 

TRANSLATION
- As solely interested in the nectar of the knowledge-lotus beginning to bloom.
(they are united in the same purpose - aesthetics, ananda or bliss)
- I adore that pair of swans
- In certain (kim api)
- Great minds moving
- By the further elaboration of which (i.e. suppositions)
- The perfection (or maturation ) of the eighteen-fold arts
- What separately draws out (extracts)
- From dross
- As from water, milk

ALL THE WORLD OF ART CAN BE SEEN AS INTERACTION BETWEEN TWO BIRDS
- ONE REPRESENTING CONCEPTS, AND THE OTHER PERCEPTS.
SO, EVERY ART IS THE RESULT OF TWO FACTORS INTERACTING IN THE MIND.

Milk and nectar are mixed on the denominator side.
The swans stretch their wings and virtual and actual meet.
Light changes from fluorescent moonstone to pearly lustre.

 

See Verse 17:

"He who can contemplate those word-bearing elements of broken moonstone lustre,
Joined with Vasinis, having an elusively fluid gleam;
He becomes, o Mother, the author of great poetic works,
Adding sweet charm to the lotus face of the Goddess of the Word."

 

 

 

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