Advaita Vedanta

 

SAUNDARYA LAHARI

 

 

SAMAYIN MONOMARKS
GARLANDS OF MONOMARKS

IN VERSES 33 TO 35, THE ADHARA IS THE RESULT
OF THE CANCELLATION OF COUNTERPARTS

 

VERSE 33

STRUCTURAL DYNAMISM STUDIED WITH MONOMARKS

 

स्मरं योनिं लक्ष्मीं त्रितय-मिद-मादौ तव मनो
र्निधायैके नित्ये निरवधि-महाभोग-रसिकाः ।
भजन्ति त्वां चिन्तामणि-गुणनिबद्धाक्ष-वलयाः
शिवाग्नौ जुह्वन्तः सुरभिघृत-धाराहुति-शतै

 

smaram yonim lakshmim tritayam idam adau tava manor
nidhayake nitye niravadhi mahabhogarasikah
bhajanti tvam cintamani gunani baddhaksavalayasa
sivagnau juhvantas surabhigrtaa dharahutisataih

 

Eros, Source, Wealth; this triplet placing first within your charm
O lone and eternal one, innumerable seekers of great enjoyments
Adore you, telling beads of philosophers' stone, ever sacrificing into the fire of Shiva
By hundreds of streaks of clarified butter oblations from the celestial cow.

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It is not difficult to see that this verse is dealing with the Samayins, as there is reference to the sacred cow (kamadhenu) and the Vedic ritual of the fire sacrifice (shivagni). We are called upon to use two degrees of abstraction in order to grasp the meaning of the situation described. We have to think of thousands of spoonfuls of ghee (clarified butter), derived from a celestial cow, being poured as offerings into a fire.

 

In performing this ritual act, the spoon, which contains the ghee, circles a thousand times in the hands of the Vedic votary. When abstracted, this circulation will resemble a rosary, but with the ghee as its value factor instead of the usual rosary such as one made of rudraksa beads, which is natural to the context of Shiva worship. As noted previously, the word aksa is made up of the first and last letters of the Sanskrit alphabet. An aksamala is a rosary, with the help of which votaries of divinities - whether in India or elsewhere - repeat mystical syllables, each representing a divinity, symbol or monomark. Instead of the A and Ksha, we could think of Alpha and Omega. An aksamala then, can be seen as a rosary consisting of some sacred items of value in the form of a "universal concrete", but derived from letters or syllables made up of signs of the alphabet. The first and the last, when fused together, would represent a value resulting from the reciprocal cancellation of counterparts.

 

If Verse 32 was nominalistic in its intention to name the various limbs of the Goddess in order to understand her both realistically and in an abstract form; then Verse 33 tends to be hedonistic rather than nominalistic.

 

Ancient Vedism was characterized by its love of the "good life". The drinking of Soma juice and the sacrificing of calves to propitiate one god or another was a natural form of behaviour to the Aryans. Later Vedism, however, began to eschew the infliction of suffering (himsa) and the shedding of blood as impure and unvirtuous. The Buddhist and Jaina doctrine of ahimsa (non-hurting) must have had its share in shaping this revised way of life through the ages.

 

Whatever their historical origin might be, Brahmins of the present day, at least in South India, do not lend their support to those items which are distinguished as the vamachara (left-handed) features of Tantrism. As a dialectical revaluator, Sankara evidently wishes to recognize the claims of both the Samayins and the Kaulins by treating them as representative rival schools and accepting what is laudable in each of them, so as to present them both without partiality, but in a form slightly revalued and restated. By this unitive approach, both these forms of prevailing spirituality can be brought into line with his own fully Advaitic standpoint. The Bhagavad Gita even speaks of the Vedas as being under the sway of the three Gunas (traigunya visaya veda) (II: 45).

 

Hedonism, relativism, ritualism and negativism are not defects in themselves, but they are capable of being revised in the name of a fully unitive absolutist standpoint. Clarified butter and the wish-fulfilling cow of heaven, kamadhenu, are natural to the Brahminical world of values. Pouring ghee into a "Shiva-fire" instead of into a "Brahman-fire" is to be understood as a slight concession made in this verse to the Shiva-Shakti context of South India, to which Tantrism must necessarily belong. There is no Tantrism that can be called purely Vedic and the conflict between Vedism and Tantrism is clearly evident in many parts of the pre-Vedic literature, as revealed in the writings of Sir John Woodroffe and others. Verse 32 represents an ascending movement from the actual or "universal concrete" to nominalism through conventional syllables applied to divinities used as monomarks, in the interest of taxonomy or nomenclature of the various aspects of the Goddess, as is usual in Tantrism.

 

Conversely the movement in Verse 33 is clearly one of descent from the value represented by the celestial cow toward actual benefits here on earth, in the name of bhoga, or enjoyment. By clarifying or enhancing the path of hedonism, Sankara here refers to bhoga in revised terms, as mahabhoga (great enjoyment), as seen elsewhere in Vedantic literature, such as the "Yoga Vasishta".

 

If bhoga is derogatory, mahabhoga is not so, because the word maha (great) lifts its meaning to a status sub specie aeternitatis, or "within the scope of the eternal", thus taking away any stigma that might be attached to enjoyment as a brute reality in life. In other words, mahabhoga is not to be treated as just bhoga. Verses 32 through 35, when read together in the structural perspective we are presenting, reveal two opposite movements between positive and negative counterparts in the context of the scrutiny, analytic or synthetic, of the same high value of absolute beauty which is always the subject matter or object matter of these verses. When we give primacy to effect, as in Verse 34, a new element is introduced into beauty. When we give primacy to cause, as in Verse 35, our reference is to the source of all things, already existing in the past.

 

The reference in the second half of Verse 35 is to a simple wife of Shiva, although it is to be understood in the light of the rightful dignity of an eternal feminine principle. We find that the body of Shiva referred to in Verse 34 has the epithet "new" applied to it. By this attribute, one has to understand that it refers to the effect side and not to the cause side of the total situation.

 

The double movement in these four verses taken together will be progressively abolished in purer epistemological terms of non-dual cancellation. In the coming verses, which refer to the actual Chakras, such as Ajña and so on, we will find the principles of compensation, reciprocity and complementarity (or milder forms of ambivalence and parity) presented in a certain epistemological and methodological sequence by Sankara. Verses 32 through 35 are meant to reveal the structural dynamism before the same stands revealed in its fully revalued Advaitic form, from Verse 36 onward.

 

Samaya is the conventional name applied to the Vedic Goddess as implied in the revised Tantric context, while the term Kaula would suggest a more popular approach to the Tantrism of pre-Vedic times. On final analysis, whether we employ an ascending or a descending dialectical approach, it is the same Sri Chakra that is implied in both the movements, positive and negative. Advaita Vedanta does not admit of any duality between part and whole, cause and effect, substance and attribute. Unitive vision, at whatever level, refers to one and the same Brahman. All references to higher and lower Brahman have to be left behind when the doctrine is to be stated in its finalized form.

 

What is gained on one side is lost on the other, as between immanent and transcendent values, leaving behind a constant always to be understood under the aegis of the same absolute self-hood. Neither epistemological, methodological nor axiological duality is to be allowed to taint, even in the least, the status of the non-dual Absolute. This is required by Sankara's position as an Advaita Vedantin.

Narayana Guru endorses this in Verse 60 of his Atmopadesa Satakam:

"Even when knowledge to egoism is subject in any predication
And one is unmindful of the ultimate verity of what is said,
Yet as with the truth however ultimate, such knowledge
Can never fall outside the scope of the knowing self."

 

The language of abstraction and generalisation has various degrees and dimensions, always within the scope of the four states of consciousness as described in the Mandukya Upanishad - the gross, the subtle, the causal and the "fourth" (sthula, suksma, karana, turiya).

 

Hedonistic motives might be reprehensible ordinarily, but as we have pointed out already, the qualification maha added to bhoga rasikah, which all together means : "lovers of great delights", absolves the devotee from any charge of hedonism. Also, when the duality between ends and means is abolished, his worship becomes at least as dignified as the kind of worship envisaged in the previous verse.

 

In these two verses, 32 and 33, Sankara succeeds in revaluing and restating both the Kaulin and Samayin ways of worship without detracting anything from either of them, by giving them their full status in the light of the intentionality natural to Advaita Vedanta. If intentions are good, the actions themselves have also necessarily to be good , according to the doctrine of the Bhagavad Gita (IX:31). There Krishna says: "My disciple will never perish, because his intentions are good". This doctrine of grace is the most touching thing a god can say to a human being. This is not found in Buddhism. If you are dedicated to Brahman (the Absolute), ends and means will cancel out by your intention.

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Bhagavad Gita, Chapter II

45
traigunya vishaya veda
nistraigunyo bhava 'rjuna
nirdvandvo nitya sattvastho
niryogakshema atmavan

 

The Veda treats of matters related to the three
gunas (modalities of nature); you should he free
from these three modalities 0 Arjuna; free from
(relative) pairs of opposites, established ever in
pure being, without any yoga (discipline) or well-
being (as dual factors, but remain) one (unitively)
Self-possessed (atmavan).

 

Bhagavad Gita, IX,

31
kshipram bhavati dharmatma
sasvachchhantim nigachchhati
kaunteya pratijanihi
na me bhaktah pranasyati

 

Instantaneously he becomes established in his own right
nature and enters into eternal peace. Believe Me in all
confidence, 0 Son of Kunti (Arjuna), that one affiliated
to Me with fidelity knows no destruction.

 

 

 

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

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(All values, from the taste of a banana to the joy of the Absolute, have their place on a vertical scale of values, from the most negative and concrete to the most abstract and numerator. Cancellation takes place at every level between the Self and the non-Self, and cancellation is cancellation, at whatever level. ED)

 

 

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Laksmi and Eros are on the numerator side.
Wealth (Lakshmi)
Source
Eros

 

Lakshmi.

 

Kama Deva (Eros) tempting Shiva by firing his arrow.

 

Kama Deva.