Saundarya Lahari

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SAUNDARYA LAHARI

 


PART I


ANANDA LAHARI

 

 

VERSES 1 TO 10 - THE MAIN STRUCTURAL FEATURES ARE INTRODUCED

 

 

VERSE 1

 

THE PARADOX BETWEEN VERTICAL AND HORIZONTAL IS POSED
THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE FIELD AND THE KNOWER OF THE FIELD IS WISDOM.

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शिवःशक्त्यायुक्तोयदिभवतिशक्तःप्रभवितुं
नचेदेवंदेवोनखलुकुशलःस्पन्दितुमपि।
अतस्त्वाम्आराध्यांहरि-हर-विरिन्चादिभिरपि
प्रणन्तुंस्तोतुंवाकथ-मक्र्तपुण्यःप्रभवति॥

 

sivah saktya yukto yadi bhavati saktah prabhavitum
na ced evam devo nakhalu kusalah spanditum api
atastvam aradhyam hari hara virincadhibhir api
pranantum stotum va katham akrtapunyah prabhavati

 

Shiva united with Shakti becomes able to manifest
If otherwise, this god knows not even how to pulsate.
How then could one of ungained merit be able to bow to, or even praise
One such as you, adored by Vishnu, Shiva and Brahma.

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This opening verse squarely poses the paradox of life. Sanskritic literary convention requires that the beginning of any work must indicate:

  1. the subject matter or content of the work,
  2. the context of the work, i.e. where it belongs in relation to other disciplines and kinds of literature,
  3. the overall purpose of the work,
  4. the type of person to whom the work will correctly apply.

These requirements are correctly kept in mind by Sankara in this opening verse of the "Saundarya Lahari".

 

A paradox always implies two rival positions, both of which could be true alternatively or when taken together dualistically. The wise man, the poet, the philosopher, or the spiritual guide have to face this paradox which lurks at the very core of life as its most central problem. It is of a highly subtle, speculative or philosophical order. Other problems belong to human life in its numerous everyday aspects. In every case an enigma lurks between two factors, such as appearance and reality, mind and matter, theoretical and practical,noumenal and phenomenal etc., as an endless series of antinomies. Man and woman, father and mother, husband and wife, cause and effect, are conjugates of the same kind; their relation in every case being of a subtle and enigmatic order. Even a word and its meaning belong to each other inseparably; for they cannot be thought of disjunctly from each other.

 

The Bhagavad Gita refers to this duality by its own terms, as the field (kshetra) and the knower of the field (kshetrajna). By abolishing the duality between them one attains the Absolute. Thus we come to a notion - the Absolute - which is the same as the Brahman in Vedantic philosophy, with which Sankara is most directly concerned. It is well known that he stood for Advaita Vedanta, a strictly non-dual philosophical position which admits of no reality outside itself. The doctrine of the "Saundarya Lahari" is the same philosophy that he has elaborated in all his great commentaries (bhasyas), although here it is presented in a non-verbose, visible and colourfully real protolinguistic form. Failure to appreciate this fact has made most scholars and authorities treat this work as pertaining only to the discipline of Tantra, rather than of Vedanta, thus resulting in a wholly wrong estimation . We have explained this fact in our "generalities" above. Sankara makes Shiva and Parvati represent between them the highest of human values, as easily recognizable even in everyday conjugal life known to all humankind anywhere in the world.

 

Shiva is not a demiurge here, but has his place as the counterpart of his own negative aspect, as represented by Parvati. The relation is a subtle and enigmatic one. The word and its meaning belong together. The word is merely nominalistic or conceptual, but its meaning must refer to human experience without being a mere abstraction. We call the abstraction a concept, while the experienced aspect of the same would be a percept. Thus nominalism and perceptualism, which Vedantins refer to more simply as "name and form" (nama-rupa) meet and fuse together, cancelling out into what we appreciate as the meaning, which is neither a concept nor a percept, but is the result of the two-sided participation between these two opposite sides.

 

To give an example; truth and beauty can be thought of as human values resulting from the participation and cancellation of what is visible with what is intelligible. The status of the resultant meaning, represented by the words "Truth" and "Beauty", written with capital letters, falls under the aegis of the Absolute. All human values can be treated in this way, as Spinoza says: sub specie aeternitatis.

 

In the "Saundarya Lahari", Sankara combines the beauty of Shiva and Parvati so as to give them together the human value of Beauty with a capital letter, by which it attains to an overwhelming absolutist status, as suggested by the title of the work itself. Sankara's aim here is to give to the abstract notion of the Absolute the content of absolute beauty. In doing so he reveals himself as a man of superior poetic genius, by virtue of which the Absolute, otherwise a mere abstraction, comes to have a concrete, real and visible, as well as a truly experienceable, content.

 

Colour is a reality, and the twilight colour, magenta, has a special status among all other colours, for it results from the meeting of the infra-red and the ultra-violet. We find as the central theme of each of the hundred verses the personification of the value of absolute Beauty in the form of the Goddess who is directly related with the colour magenta (aruna) (e.g. see Verses 23, 50, 84, 92, 93, 98). Thus, the author intends here to bring together two aspects: something fully real and visible on the one side, that is, the colour magenta; with, on the other side, as its counterpart, a highly thin and mathematical abstraction which also represents the Absolute, not in visible, but in purely intelligible terms. The universal concrete and the universal abstract are thus inserted into the same neutral or unified ground. By intersection we could say that magenta, as a universal reality, has a horizontal reference, where it inseparably participates at the core of the field of consciousness with its own vertical parameter of a highly fourth-dimensional order. Such theoretical matters will become clear as we proceed. Lesser degrees of abstraction and generalisation could be given as an endless series of intermediate positions. In a hierarchy of values, each position could then represent one item of value always coming under the aegis of the Absolute, when correctly placed and cancelled out within the four-fold structural situation. What we must understand is that Shiva and Parvati, who are mythological figures or divinities of theHindu pantheon with specific functions attributed to them in the traditional literature of Hinduism, are here being exalted by Sankara to the position of two ambivalent abstract principles - their intimate participation having a complementarity, a reciprocity, a compensation and a cancellability between them.

 

All overt action or activity is horizontal in status, and therefore must be relegated to the domain of the negative existential principle, which is the function of Parvati. Her reference is at the negative vertical limit of the four-fold structural whole previously described. This participation between Shiva and Parvati takes place at the very core of the total situation, ground or field. Shiva, as the positive principle within this same field, is to be visualized as a thin vertical parameter, having its reference at the hypostatic or positive vertical limit of this quaternion situation. No kind of action, except in the most purely mathematical sense, applies to him. He is a kind of "unmoved mover" of Aristotle, which, like the catalyst in chemistry, while acting, is not really acting at all.

 

The distinction here can be compared to a time-like and a space-like function. Horizontal action is space-like, while vertical action is time-like, spending itself in duration, which is partly conceptual in status. If we abstract this paradox of concept and percept even further, it abolishes itself by double assertion or by double negation, both of which attain that Absolute which is beyond paradox. Such are some of the subtleties which must be kept in mind by the intelligent reader who examines the content of this century of verses, starting from this very first one. Without doing so, the reader is likely to make the error of treating this work as a theological or cosmological scripture, or even a textbook of Tantra, meant only for religious or philosophical study by persons lesser in their cultural interests than the uncompromising Advaita Vedantin, like Sankara himself, who is to be kept in mind as the adhikari (the type of person for whom these verses are meant). It is in this sense that Sankara takes care to indicate that he is outside the scope of that kind of Vedic religious orthodoxy which thinks in terms of holiness or meritorious works when he says that he is incapable of praising or even saluting the Absolute Principle of Beauty here intended. The way of works and merit is unequivocally rejected by him in this verse as being outside his scope or intentions. We have to read this first verse together with the last verse of this series, where he again washes his hands of any intention to present a specific religious doctrine, which ordinary religious people might infer that he is tacitly supporting. The Absolute is proven by itself, and should be left alone to declare its glory to the world.

 

In this very first verse the reader can see that Sankara wishes to emphasize the necessity of thinking of Shiva and Shakti as belonging together to the one and only unitive content which is that of the value called Absolute Beauty. It is a great mistake to separate the functions of the twin counterparts that are meant to enter into a unified non-dual function here. Mother-worshippers in India are likely to make the mistake of saying that the beauty of the three worlds represented by the Goddess, sometimes referred to as Shakti or Tripura Sundari, is to be given primacy over the Shiva principle. They tend to forget that the basic cancellability of status between these two counterparts - male and female, positive and negative, vertical and horizontal, conceptual and perceptual etc. - is all-important to be kept in mind throughout the unfolding of this sequence of verses. To forget this idea is to fall into the error of duality, the most repugnant attitude for Advaita Vedanta. The Kaulins and perhaps the Samayins, were just such Shakti-worshippers, whose unilateral position Sankara must have wanted to correct and revalue by undertaking the present work.

 

Another point to notice in this verse is that when Shiva is not united with Shakti, he has no function at all. Some commentators say he has become sava - a dead body - when he is not united with the feminine principle. This is to forget that a correlating parameter running through the whole universe and able to ordain it, making cosmos out of chaos, is as important as any other function or aspect of the same Absolute.

 

Here, a form of pure verticalized action is implied as running through the world like the guiding thread of Ariadne, without which Theseus would never have been able to ascend out of the labyrinth of the Minotaur. Even the Mandukya Upanishad, which eliminates all functions and even predications when it refers to the highest Absolute in its final verdict - describing the ultimate Absolute as removed multi-dimensionally beyond all taint of relativity or predicability - still retains a certain auspicious value or attribute, referred to there as santam sivam advaitam (peaceful, auspicious, non-dual). A further qualification is mentioned immediately anterior to these final epithets by the words prapancopasanamreferring to that principle which abolishes the phenomenal world, that is, all that has a horizontal reference. Thus it is of great importance to clearly distinguish the implied paradox from the very start, so as to finally abolish it correctly without violating the requirements of an absolutist epistemology, methodology or axiology. Science and mathematics, physics and metaphysics, the visible and the intelligible, are all counterparts that have to be treated as belonging together to an Absolutist whole.

 

There is in this verse a reference to the three gods: Brahma,Vishnu and Shiva, who have three distinct functions to perform within the totality of the field in which Shiva and Parvati live together. The value of the union itself is the ground of the Absolute, and the three functionaries are to be inclusively contained therein as having only a secondary importance. With any number of other gods, permissible under the aegis of the Absolute, this eternal union of male and female represents the resultant of the absolute value of Beauty. In mathematical terms this union is just a cancellation taking place between the vertical and horizontal parameters, the latter of which can be thought of as a curved or asymptotic line or perimeter, while the former could be a straight line or parameter. The three main functionaries represented here are fully justified and they could be recognized even by strict scientifically minded persons when we treat them each as having the status of a factor with a function belonging to it, as when we say that y = f(s) in algebra. Thus, the mythological personifications can be disregarded as merely incidental to the exigencies of language. Other monomarks could be chosen to refer to these same functions, which are creation, preservation and destruction. These three functions are inevitable concepts in the context of the cosmological, psychological and axiological processes taking place in the universe within the self and the non-self, when thought of in most general and abstract terms. Mythology is less positive than mathematics, as Auguste Comte would put it. The positively-minded modern person need not take mythology seriously. These demiurges could be treated as monomarks for the three functions understood in the abstract, where the grand process of becoming in the universe can be thought of as coming under the inevitable functional phases or aspects of beginning, enduring and disappearing, to one or other of which three phases any process, inner or outer, must conform.

 

These three gods or demiurges belong to the Vedic religious context. Vedanta is outside mere Vedism, but does not conflict with it, just as a well could be hidden within an expansive lake. Vedism, with its distinctions of meritorious actions and sin, based on the notions of the sacred and the profane, could be inclusively transcended or submerged within the scope of the more open and generous dynamism of the Advaitic outlook. We have to distinguish the two limiting points within the scope of spiritual progress. Just so does the River Rhone expand into the lake of Geneva at one end but pass out at the other as a thin stream again - to use one of Henri Bergson's favourite examples. One could place oneself at the lower, expanding limit of the river or at the upper, contracting limit of the lake, in a vertical perspective, without coming into conflict with less absolutist, religious disciplines which are vitiated by hedonistic or relativistic considerations.

 

This first verse marks the lower limit. By the time the discussion reaches the last verse, spiritual progress through works has attained to its maximum maturation; thus effectively abolishing its own importance; just as the same water can transcend to become a simple river again. The three gods thus come into the picture only between the lower and the higher limits of the total situation to be kept in our minds here. Sankara himself prefers not to enter into the context where merits and demerits or causes and effects, or obligations and taboos, come into interplay within these two limits. The effects of good works accrue only at the upper limits. Sankara, at the start here, correctly places himself before any action or reaction of cause and effect begins to operate. He wishes to remain a strict absolutist, in keeping with his own neutral and normalized position, giving equal importance to both cause and effect, but taking his stand preferably before the causes even begin to operate. He is thus removed from all taint of the phenomenal process of becoming. Transcending this, he is again seen, at the end, to be outside the scope of the four-dimensional set-up in which alone good and bad could interact. This is the reason why he takes care to underline in this verse that he is one of unaccomplished merits, unlike the demiurges who are caught within the process and strive to attain the positive limit which is the culminating point of all meritorious actions.

 

Vedanta is a negative way (nivritti marga). That is a further reason why this description, evidently applicable to himself as well as to the correct reader, is treated as being outside the scope of both merit and demerit taken together. When speaking of himself in this manner, we are also justified in thinking that he is indirectly referring to the adhikari - the kind of person to whom this work applies - which refers to any member of the public having the same status as himself in the total situation to be visualized here. This could only be done by what is called extrapolation in mathematics. Thus, the subject matter of this work - the value of Beauty under the aegis of the Absolute - is correctly seen in the context of Vedantic tradition, which transcends the Vedic context in which the three gods aspire for perfection by works of religious merit, as being placed at the positive top limit of the structural vision. As a Vedantin, Sankara himself takes his position initially on the negative side of the total situation, opposed to all aspiration, as is in keeping with the nivritti marga (negative path) of Brahmavidya, the Science of the Absolute - as understood in the Upanishadic context. In the Upanishadic tradition there is a reference in Kena Upanishad (3rd Kanda) to the situation in which the three gods - Agni, god of fire, Vayu, god of wind and Indra, the chief of the gods - stand puzzled about the nature of a Supreme Spirit that presents itself in vacant space before them. This is the positive Absolute, which is approached closest by Indra, the best of the demiurges. The same space then suddenly reveals the beautiful form of Uma (as Parvati is also called), the daughter of the Himalayas, representing the negative aspect of the same Absolute without contradiction or mutual exclusion.

 

The beauty of Uma (The Devi, or Parvati), here treated as interchangeable in value with what the Absolute represents, thus affords us a correct precedent acceptable to the teachings of the Upanishads, of which the Saundarya Lahari could be treated as a correct continuation.

 

Shiva worship is proto-Aryan and chiefly of South Indian origin, but the Upanishadic tradition blends both Aryan and proto-Aryan and Dravidian cultures, as is unequivocally implied in Verse 75. These comments on this first verse are to be taken as important preliminary clarifications for the understanding of the remaining verses also.

 

(See bottom of this page for the relevant extract from Kena Upanishad. ED)

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

EDITORIAL NOTE: these notes, as they are taken from different sources, do not present a sequential whole - there are repetitions and near-repetitions in many places. Rather than over-edit and perhaps lose something, we have left them as they are. Anyway, this is a very difficult and subtle subject and repetition will probably help understanding.

WORD FOR WORD
Shivah = Shiva (numerator factor).
Shaktya = with Shakti - the phenomenal factor in the centre of the Absolute.
Yukto-yadi = when united, unified (i.e. when participating vertically and horizontally with each other).
Bhavati Shaktah = becomes able (Shiva).
Prabhavitum = to realize himself, become fully himself, attain full plenitude.
Nachedevam devah = if likewise this god.
Nakhalu kushalah = is not capable indeed
Spanditumapi = even to oscillate like a straw (?) to or (illegible)
Atah stvam = thus to or for you.
Aradhyam = worthy of worship
Harihara virinchadhibhir api = (illegible)
Prananthum = to adore
Stothum va katham = even to praise, how.
Akritapunya = one who has no merits of good acts.
Prabhavati = become specified.

EDITORIAL NOTE: throughout this commentary, where the Guru's notes, as extracted from the source material found in saundarya lahari/notes (see saundarya lahari/index) are used, there are many passages that were taken down by students in a form which is not immediately clear to the general reader - that is, to anyone who was not a full-time student of the Guru's and familiar with the background material. Therefore we have provided explanatory notes - clearly labeled "EDITORIAL NOTE and/or signed "ED.", and written in italics, and we have also corrected or reconstructed some structural diagrams. Without this, we think that it would be impossible to make these brief notes understandable. THESE ADDITIONAL NOTES AND MODIFICATIONS REFLECT OUR PERSONAL OPINION AND ARE IN NO WAY TO BE TAKEN AS DIRECT STATEMENTS OF THE GURU. However, we have been studying and teaching this text for 44 years and hope that they will clarify matters.

According to Purva Mimamsa, the first verse of a work must say:
1) What subject you are dealing with.
2) How does it relate to other subjects?
3) Does it lead to salvation?

All of this is stated in Verse 1.

(Purva Mimamsa: For purposes of classification, Vedic lore has been divided into Purva, or former, earlier; and Uttara, later, divisions. This division has to be understood both in the historical and literary sense. The Purva Mimamsa (Earlier Critique) is where ritualist injunctions and obligatory rules are discussed critically by Jaimini. (see Uttara Mimamsa).

Vedas: The early Sanskrit writings in praise of Indra, Varuna and phenomenal gods of nature; later displaced by the philosophical concept of the Absolute Brahman in the Upanishads. The four chief Vedas are the Rig, Sama, Yajur and Atharvana. ED)  

 

The Main Themes of Verses 1 to 10: 

Verse 1 - Vedanta is radical; do not ask me to come into the temple, there are no rituals in Vedanta. 

 (Sankara places himself outside the ritualistic, relativistic or religious context of the three gods. The Advaita Vedanta he represents is concerned with wisdom, not ritual actions of worship. ED) 

Verse 2 - In Vedanta the world is a monde affiné as Bergson calls it - a flux; a world of particle physics, not as actual as it seems. 
Verse 3 - Put Absolute Beauty at the bindu (central locus) of the quaternion, do not put a comparative or relativistic goddess there: there is a fourfold structure.
Verse 4 - In Vedantic Methodology primacy is given to cause - do not get lost in effects. There is a borrowed light of Absolute Beauty, a reflected glory as when Vishnu takes on a women's form as Mohini. (And seduces Shiva. ED) 
Verse 5 - Erotic occasionalism; the arrow of Eros can hit Shiva if it is aimed vertically.
Verse 6 - There is a four-dimensional abstraction and generalization.
Verse 7 - The Goddess as Purushika with four limbs bearing noose and goad, bow and arrow. 
Verse 8 - Conic sections: getting away to the negative side is .....(? - the original faded manuscript appears to read "...to the negative side is loud" which seems meaningless ED) 
Verse 9 - There is a stable ascending series of cross-sectional positions known as Chakras. 
Verse 10 - There are ramified sets of values within the Absolute on the positive and negative sides: 

Two trees of Porphyry, one growing upwards and the other downwards, representing existential and subsistential values. 
(Here are examples of trees of Porphyry, by way of illustration only. ED)
 
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Sankara is dealing with Shiva and Shakti (literally "power" - another name for the Devi): this is the content of Verse 1.

 
a) This verse deals with the conceptual and phenomenal aspects of the universe.

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Sankara says: "I am not writing this for my salvation, I am already a brahmavit (a knower of the Absolute)".
 
(Sankara's Advaita Vedanta or Brahma Vidya (Science of the Absolute) is outside the context of salvation - all it is concerned with is understanding. The phrase "Unitive Understanding" is sometimes used as a translation of "Advaita Vedanta". ED)
 
b) There is a paradox between Para and Apara Brahman, (the immanent and thetranscendent absolute) as between mind and matter, the conceptual and the phenomenal, reality and appearance.

Shakti, (the Goddess or Devi) is the specific manifestation of Shiva.
Shiva is living vertically and becomes manifested when united with the Devi. 
 
c) If Shiva is not united with the Devi, he cannot have even the slightest vibrating horizontal movement.
 
(To give the reader some familiarity with what Shiva and the Devi represent in the Indian tradition, we present below some representations from classical sculpture; from medieval art and from popular folk-art prints. ED)

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d) The three gods, in the process of becoming, are in charge of creation, preservation and destruction - the three functions of nature - and the Devi is in charge of them.

 

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(To assist the reader, as above, here are some representations of these three gods. ED)

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Brahma.

 

 

 

(Brahma: One of the members of the Indian pantheon as the first creator and source. He is four-faced, representing the four directions (with an up and down, zenith-nadir fifth sometimes added). As creator he is distinguished from the neutral Brahman, the Absolute, which is no god, but a philosophical Reality. ED)

 

 
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Vishnu.
 
(Vishnu: The second of the so-called Hindu Trinity, of which Brahma the creator is first and Mahesvara or Shiva is the last. Shiva is also the destroyer. Vishnu is referred to as the preserver, although taken by themselves each of them is in turn preserver and destroyer. These result from the fusing of three cosmological and psychological currents of religious thought in India. ED)
 
 
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Shiva.
 
(Shiva: The ancient hero-God from the times of prehistory, associated with radical virility and renunciation. He is an unconventional god like Dionysius, wearing skins and dancing in ecstasy, drunk with cosmic consciousness. He is the most ancient and the most important figure of the Indian pantheon, and occupies his seat in Benares and Kailasa. ED)
 
The Devi's task is to manifest the world.
The two parameters, vertical and horizontal, are revealed here, together with the subtle participation between them, and Sankara says he will focus on the negative aspect of the Absolute and treat of the lower Absolute (Apara-Brahman), not the higher (Para-Brahman).
 
(Para: Beyond; pertaining to the Ultimate or Supreme; as opposed to the immanent here-and-now aspect of reality which is apara. It could mean transcendent. (cognate with the English word "far").
 
The Devi, as manifester of the perceptual world, can be equated with Apara-Brahman, the negative perceptual aspect of the Absolute and the subject of the Saundarya Lahari. ED)
 
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But, Sankara says, "I am outside the picture, I belong to no context".
 
(Sankara is saying he is a Vedantin, concerned with the Science of the Absolute (Brahma-Vidya) not a ritualistic Vedic practitioner (Brahmin).

Brahmin: One who conforms to the religion of the Vedas and initiated or confirmed by the bestowal of the sacred thread which causes him to be known as a "twice-born" (dvija) and fit thereby to assist at ceremonies of burnt offerings to the Gods of the Vedas. Socially he is the highest of the types of castes, statically viewed, in the Indian world of caste hierarchies, the others being Kshatriya (warrior), Vaishya (merchant) and Shudra (servant). Vedic learning and ritual accompanied the Brahmin as priest in the formation of society as it stratified with the penetration of the Aryans into the Indian matrix, about 1500 BC. ED).

 

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Shiva and Parvati.

 

 

 


ALL OF LIFE IS A LOVE AFFAIR
 
Absolute Beauty is the result of cancellation.
 
Beauty emerges when two sides meet and cancel.

Creation, which exists, subsists and has value, is beauty.

Fill your mind completely with overwhelming Absolute Beauty and you are a mystic.
You meditate on the Devi and establish a bi-polar relationship with the Absolute.

A yogi can meditate on a certain abstract principle of Absolute Beauty, leading to an understanding without logic - through the emotions and intuition- something you can experience: then you will establish a relation between the Non-Self and the Self which will cancel out into a joy forever.
 
 
All proper meditation is erotic; anyone who says that it is not so does not know what he is talking about.
 
The contribution of Indian Civilization to spirituality is Erotic Mysticism - it was not repressed by patriarchal and prophetic religions that frowned on sensuality.

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SANKARA IS OUTSIDE THE PICTURE
 
BELOW WE HAVE A REPRESENTATION OF THE WORLD OF PERCEPTS IN THE STRUCTURE ABOVE
  

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IN A SERIES OF STRUCTURES DEPICTING VERSE 1 THROUGH TO VERSE 41 DESCRIBED AS "ANANDA LAHARI MANDALAS"

 

VERSE 1 IS REPRESENTED AS BELOW:

 

 
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There is a participation of horizontal and vertical factors.
On a homogenous ground there is complementarity.
 

A) Shiva can pulsate only with the Devi´s collaboration.
The Devi is being worshipped by the three gods; Shiva is just one of these.

(There is a distinction between Shiva seen as one of the three gods representing creation, preservation and destruction - relativistic demiurges dealing with the world of change and becoming - and Sada Shiva -  "Sada" implies eternity - who is the counterpart of the Devi, or Absolute Beauty. A demiurge is an artisan-like figure responsible for the fashioning and maintenance of the physical universe ED)


Sankara is in meditation below the Alpha Point at the negative vertical pole, while thinking only of the Omega Point at the top of the vertical axis.


He is verticalized -This is like Bergson's image of the Rhone river expanding to form Lake Geneva and then contracting into a river again


Sankara is outside the whole picture.

The horizontal contains a fanwise expansion of the vertical, that is all.

 

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For purposes of comparison, here is an earlier version of a translation of Verse 1:


TRANSLATION
Shiva = mathematical, general
by specific function = shaktya, representing the two phenomenal factors;
wave length and vibration, res cogitans and res extensa (Descartes' thinking substance and extended substance, similar to mind and matter)
(only) when united = yukto
if he (should) become able to manifest in becoming
if not thus, this god
is not indeed expert (in the matter)
even to pulsate (pulsation)
it being thus, You (the Devi)
are being worshipped
even by (api) Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva (Vedic, relativistic gods)
to prostrate, even to praise
(Now Sankara is outside the Vedic context - below it)
one of unaccomplished merit
specifically attain (?)

 

BELOW IS AN EXTRACT FROM THE EARLIEST COMMENTARY ON THE SAUNDARYA LAHARI BY NATARAJA GURU

 

VERSE 1, from an article in "Values" Magazine.

Their paintings (The artist couple he was visiting), some of which I also saw, were of a non-representational kind where the human form, when faintly present, blended with geometric patterns and cancelled out with them in glorious symmetrical designs of colour and form.

I at once thought of the possibilities of a colour language to serve as a lingua mystica(mystical language) proto-linguistically, to explain the verses of the Saundarya Lahari (the Upsurging Billow of Beauty) of Sankaracharya, whose cryptic verses had recently intrigued me highly and lured me towards attempting a structural analysis of this much-misunderstood yet truly Vedantic text, hitherto lost to the pseudo-scientific esoterics of Tantrism and the Shakti cult of post-Buddhist decadent India.
 
Further scrutiny of about forty verses, with comparative study of interpretations by scholars, including the verse translation of the same by the famous Kumaran Asan (A poet from Kerala), has convinced me that all of them have fallen short of a truly critical estimate of this masterpiece. Sankara himself must have thought in terms of a structuralism then understood, belonging to the Tantra and Shaktya (Goddess-worshipping) background, whose remnants still persist as remains of past culture, both in Kerala as well as in Bengal,at the present day.

This stratum, with its precious esoterics, has been more or less overcovered by other debris accumulated and deposited in other parts of India, where the chequered rule of emperors and kings or chieftains, with greater or lesser Muslim permeation, has succeeded in covering up even the outcrops of this stratum.
 
The Tantra school has its proto-linguistic traditions. The Mother Goddess is also a favourite in the esoterics of Yoga.
 
Thus we touch here a rich deposit of ancient wisdom of rare beauty and quality. Proto-linguistic speculation excels itself here.

Having thus struck upon a rich vein of treasure trove, I have been directing my interest in scrutinising and analysing some of the verses structurally. Even the title has been intriguing and elusive enough to attract my interest.
 
The words "Saundarya Lahari", which are the title of these hundred verses in classical Sanskrit, suggests both the intoxication arising from beauty as well as a general overwhelming upsurge of the aesthetic sense in the contemplation of the Absolute Self. This aesthetic sense, arising out of the supreme Bliss-Value, is of the essence of the emotional content of the Absolute. Ethics, aesthetics and penetrating metaphysical analysis meet here in the upsurging of the sense of beauty within the contemplative, as understood by Sankara.
 
In this composition Sankara proves to be fully absolved from the possible charge as a dry-as-dust philosopher, with which appellation he is associated in the popular mind because of the exegetics and logistics in which he indulges in most of his commentaries.
 
Although Shakti-Tantrism is evidently the assumed background of the composition before us, there is unmistakable internal evidence to suggest that Sankara, the well-known Advaitin, is its author. His seal can be discovered as imprinted on every verse by the clear absolutism revealed and by the classical finish of the verses, as inimitable as in the case of Kalidasa. In order to give the reader just a foretaste of the delicacies and delights of this composition from a master philosopher and dialectician, we translate here the first verse of this series:
 
If Shiva should, only when united with Shakti,
Get the power to manifest in becoming;
If again, without such, he has no ability even to pulsate,
How then could one of unaccomplished merits
Have the privilege of bowing to, or even to praise
One such as You, adored even by Hari, Hara, Virincha and others.
 
Here we have more than one rhetorical question by which Sankara fulfills the conventional requirement of adoration of a deity. As an Advaita Vedantin, his praise has necessarily to refer to no other high value than the Absolute. The Upanishadic way does not give primacy to ritualistic or meritorious works for emancipation.
The structural and literary requirements of the Vedic context are, however, retained for linguistic purposes here, as useful in a negative way; by default rather than by open obligation for direct worship or praise of a single goddess or deity.
 
The goddess here belongs to the context of Brahman (the Absolute).
This, and every other verse of the series, approaches the Advaita by the negative way of omission rather than by recommending adoration of the Goddess Parvati or Shakti as the followers of the Tantra school, more properly so called, might do. The Tantra background, however, is seen here to be taken advantage of and adapted to serve the requirements of the highly suggestive and structural language proper to the lingua mystica of Vedanta.
 
In the last line, reference is made to the triple gods Vishnu, Shiva and Brahma, who have the functions of preservation, destruction and creation, respectively, in the theological and mythological context of Hinduism. He implies here that, as a devotee praising the Goddess as the negative absolute factor coupled with Shiva (who is positive, as the counterpart of the negative feminine principle), he is not on the same footing as the Vedic gods who only belong to the context of relativistic and meritorious Vedic ritualism.
 
The schematic analysis of the diagram below will reveal some of the structural implications applicable to the aesthetic value of the Absolute, when viewed from a negative rather than from a fully positive perspective.

 

insert images

 

Note here that it is the totality that is indirectly adored or praised.
The question of merit does not even arise when the total Absolute Value is intended here. The manifesting function is that of the horizontal negative, and the pure Absolute itself is beyond action, as it is comprised within pure verticalized positivity.
 
There is thus only indirect praise of the Absolute initially at the start of the work, from a negative viewpoint.
 
insert images
 
 
Saundarya means "value", and the highest abstract value is beauty.
Sankara under-focuses on the negative side, or the side of Maya. He talks about beauty, and through Axiology, Methodology and Epistemology arrives at a description of the Absolute Upsurge of Beauty, as "Saundarya Lahari" can be translated. Sankara first shows the map with all the gods etc., then wraps it up by showing the dynamism of the circulation between the parts. If he uses mythological language, it is only to build up a structure, the understanding of which reveals the Absolute.
 
Sankara is saying,
"Do not say that I believe in all these gods - I have used them only to praise the Absolute (via ideograms)."

Reciprocity, compensation and cancellability are all operative here. 
 
 
 
 

NEW SAUNDARYA LAHARI ILLUSTRATED COMMENTARY

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SAUNDARYA LAHARI ILLUSTRATED COMMENTARY

 

 

 

INDEX OF COMMENTARIES ON THE VERSES OF THE SAUNDARYA LAHARI

  

 

This is the last version of Nataraja Guru's commentary on the Saundarya Lahari, derived from a typescript  which he revised in person. It must be emphasized that he always said that no verbose or "metalinguistic" commentary could do justice to this work, which could only properly be made understandable by "protolinguistic" means, in some form of "expanded cinema", as he termed it.

 

The interested reader is therefore strongly urged to consult the various earlier commentaries in "Saundarya Lahari Notes" which, though fragmentary, will prove invaluable to understanding this most difficult work.

 

These additional comments by the Guru, together with the structural diagrams accompanying them, have been left as they were given by the Guru. There are repetitions in many places, and almost-identical passages and diagrams, but we think it is better to leave them as they are and not lose something potentially valuable by over-zealous cleaning up and streamlining of the material.

 

The commentary on each verse is intended, as far as possible, to stand alone; thus there are many repetitions of definitions etc. to enable the reader to grasp the references to the Indian tradition and to Western science and philosophy.

 

We wish to apologize for the lack of standardization and occasional flaws of the structural diagrams. Our only excuse is the fact that the editor is not a graphic designer and has had to learn as he goes along; and also that he is alone and unaided in producing this website. We are constantly revising and correcting these shortcomings.

 

Please note also that we have preserved the original variations of spelling of the transliterations of Sanskrit words as they appear in the original manuscripts, e.g. "Shiva" may appear as "Siva" (the original Sanskrit consonant is somewhere between the two); "Svadhisthana" as "Swadhisthana" etc.

 

At the bottom of this page, you will find the translated text of the 100 verses to make it easier to identify the verse required, together with short titles for the verses.

 

The original Sanskrit text can be found at http://www.vignanam.org/veda/soundarya-lahari-devanagari.html

 

A transcription of the text into roman characters can be found at http://www.vignanam.org/veda/soundarya-lahari-english.html

 

An index of various versions and comments on the Saundarya Lahari can be found at index.php/content/247-saundarya-lahari-index

 

A note on hyperlinks: by left-clicking on highlighted words, hyperlinks will appear; some of them are to places within the website itself; others, however, are to articles on the internet, many of which do not reflect the position of Advaita Vedanta but are provided as background information: for example, the god Shiva may be completely unfamiliar to non-Indians, so we have provided links to articles and pictures which will enable the reader to place him in the proper cultural and historical context.

 

A note on the illustrations: Nataraja Guru said many times that the Saundarya Lahari could only be explained properly through a film rather than through verbose commentaries. We are not yet able to create a film, but we have provided occasional pictures to give some idea at least of what a visual  treatment of this poem might be. ED.

  

"Even Shiva is not as great as you when you understand. This is the highest water mark of spirituality; you can abolish Shiva and the Devi. The fire of Shiva worships you and Parvati put together. You understand the Absolute and that is all; you become the Absolute. There is no birth, no duration of life, no death, these are only name and form. The Saundarya Lahari  says only that you are the Absolute. The fire of destruction of the world becomes the waving lights of worship for that man who can say of the Devi: "I am You"." 

Nataraja Guru 

 

"There are many different kinds of yogi; but the rarest and most fortunate of all are those who can see the Absolute in a woman's body." 

Nataraja Guru. 

 

Nataraja Guru: "Why should I be afraid of the Devi ("The Goddess" a.k.a. the Absolute), she is just a woman"

A disciple: "Just any woman?" 

Nataraja Guru: "Yes, any woman" 

 

"Put the beauty of your girlfriend together with the beauty of the sunset and you get God." 

 Nataraja Guru

 

 

Introduction to the Commentary on the Saundarya Lahari

 

Commentary on the individual verses:

(A translation of the verses is available for ease of reference) 

 

 

S LAHARI VERSE1

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SAUNDARYA LAHARI

 


PART I


ANANDA LAHARI

 

 

VERSES 1 TO 10 - THE MAIN STRUCTURAL FEATURES ARE INTRODUCED

 

 

VERSE 1

 

THE PARADOX BETWEEN VERTICAL AND HORIZONTAL IS POSED
THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE FIELD AND THE KNOWER OF THE FIELD IS WISDOM.

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शिवःशक्त्यायुक्तोयदिभवतिशक्तःप्रभवितुं
नचेदेवंदेवोनखलुकुशलःस्पन्दितुमपि।
अतस्त्वाम्आराध्यांहरि-हर-विरिन्चादिभिरपि
प्रणन्तुंस्तोतुंवाकथ-मक्र्तपुण्यःप्रभवति॥

 

sivah saktya yukto yadi bhavati saktah prabhavitum
na ced evam devo nakhalu kusalah spanditum api
atastvam aradhyam hari hara virincadhibhir api
pranantum stotum va katham akrtapunyah prabhavati

 

Shiva united with Shakti becomes able to manifest
If otherwise, this god knows not even how to pulsate.
How then could one of ungained merit be able to bow to, or even praise
One such as you, adored by Vishnu, Shiva and Brahma.

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This opening verse squarely poses the paradox of life. Sanskritic literary convention requires that the beginning of any work must indicate:

  1. the subject matter or content of the work,
  2. the context of the work, i.e. where it belongs in relation to other disciplines and kinds of literature,
  3. the overall purpose of the work,
  4. the type of person to whom the work will correctly apply.

These requirements are correctly kept in mind by Sankara in this opening verse of the "Saundarya Lahari".

 

A paradox always implies two rival positions, both of which could be true alternatively or when taken together dualistically. The wise man, the poet, the philosopher, or the spiritual guide have to face this paradox which lurks at the very core of life as its most central problem. It is of a highly subtle, speculative or philosophical order. Other problems belong to human life in its numerous everyday aspects. In every case an enigma lurks between two factors, such as appearance and reality, mind and matter, theoretical and practical, noumenal and phenomenal etc., as an endless series of antinomies. Man and woman, father and mother, husband and wife, cause and effect, are conjugates of the same kind; their relation in every case being of a subtle and enigmatic order. Even a word and its meaning belong to each other inseparably; for they cannot be thought of disjunctly from each other.

 

The Bhagavad Gita refers to this duality by its own terms, as the field (kshetra) and the knower of the field (kshetrajna). By abolishing the duality between them one attains the Absolute. Thus we come to a notion - the Absolute - which is the same as the Brahman in Vedantic philosophy, with which Sankara is most directly concerned. It is well known that he stood for Advaita Vedanta, a strictly non-dual philosophical position which admits of no reality outside itself. The doctrine of the "Saundarya Lahari" is the same philosophy that he has elaborated in all his great commentaries (bhasyas), although here it is presented in a non-verbose, visible and colourfully real protolinguistic form. Failure to appreciate this fact has made most scholars and authorities treat this work as pertaining only to the discipline of Tantra, rather than of Vedanta, thus resulting in a wholly wrong estimation . We have explained this fact in our "generalities" above. Sankara makes Shiva and Parvati represent between them the highest of human values, as easily recognizable even in everyday conjugal life known to all humankind anywhere in the world.

 

Shiva is not a demiurge here, but has his place as the counterpart of his own negative aspect, as represented by Parvati. The relation is a subtle and enigmatic one. The word and its meaning belong together. The word is merely nominalistic or conceptual, but its meaning must refer to human experience without being a mere abstraction. We call the abstraction a concept, while the experienced aspect of the same would be a percept. Thus nominalism and perceptualism, which Vedantins refer to more simply as "name and form" (nama-rupa) meet and fuse together, cancelling out into what we appreciate as the meaning, which is neither a concept nor a percept, but is the result of the two-sided participation between these two opposite sides.

 

To give an example; truth and beauty can be thought of as human values resulting from the participation and cancellation of what is visible with what is intelligible. The status of the resultant meaning, represented by the words "Truth" and "Beauty", written with capital letters, falls under the aegis of the Absolute. All human values can be treated in this way, as Spinoza says: sub specie aeternitatis.

 

In the "Saundarya Lahari", Sankara combines the beauty of Shiva and Parvati so as to give them together the human value of Beauty with a capital letter, by which it attains to an overwhelming absolutist status, as suggested by the title of the work itself. Sankara's aim here is to give to the abstract notion of the Absolute the content of absolute beauty. In doing so he reveals himself as a man of superior poetic genius, by virtue of which the Absolute, otherwise a mere abstraction, comes to have a concrete, real and visible, as well as a truly experienceable, content.

 

Colour is a reality, and the twilight colour, magenta, has a special status among all other colours, for it results from the meeting of the infra-red and the ultra-violet. We find as the central theme of each of the hundred verses the personification of the value of absolute Beauty in the form of the Goddess who is directly related with the colour magenta (aruna) (e.g. see Verses 23, 50, 84, 92, 93, 98). Thus, the author intends here to bring together two aspects: something fully real and visible on the one side, that is, the colour magenta; with, on the other side, as its counterpart, a highly thin and mathematical abstraction which also represents the Absolute, not in visible, but in purely intelligible terms. The universal concrete and the universal abstract are thus inserted into the same neutral or unified ground. By intersection we could say that magenta, as a universal reality, has a horizontal reference, where it inseparably participates at the core of the field of consciousness with its own vertical parameter of a highly fourth-dimensional order. Such theoretical matters will become clear as we proceed. Lesser degrees of abstraction and generalisation could be given as an endless series of intermediate positions. In a hierarchy of values, each position could then represent one item of value always coming under the aegis of the Absolute, when correctly placed and cancelled out within the four-fold structural situation. What we must understand is that Shiva and Parvati, who are mythological figures or divinities of the Hindu pantheon with specific functions attributed to them in the traditional literature of Hinduism, are here being exalted by Sankara to the position of two ambivalent abstract principles - their intimate participation having a complementarity, a reciprocity, a compensation and a cancellability between them.

 

All overt action or activity is horizontal in status, and therefore must be relegated to the domain of the negative existential principle, which is the function of Parvati. Her reference is at the negative vertical limit of the four-fold structural whole previously described. This participation between Shiva and Parvati takes place at the very core of the total situation, ground or field. Shiva, as the positive principle within this same field, is to be visualized as a thin vertical parameter, having its reference at the hypostatic or positive vertical limit of this quaternion situation. No kind of action, except in the most purely mathematical sense, applies to him. He is a kind of "unmoved mover" of Aristotle, which, like the catalyst in chemistry, while acting, is not really acting at all.

 

The distinction here can be compared to a time-like and a space-like function. Horizontal action is space-like, while vertical action is time-like, spending itself in duration, which is partly conceptual in status. If we abstract this paradox of concept and percept even further, it abolishes itself by double assertion or by double negation, both of which attain that Absolute which is beyond paradox. Such are some of the subtleties which must be kept in mind by the intelligent reader who examines the content of this century of verses, starting from this very first one. Without doing so, the reader is likely to make the error of treating this work as a theological or cosmological scripture, or even a textbook of Tantra, meant only for religious or philosophical study by persons lesser in their cultural interests than the uncompromising Advaita Vedantin, like Sankara himself, who is to be kept in mind as the adhikari (the type of person for whom these verses are meant). It is in this sense that Sankara takes care to indicate that he is outside the scope of that kind of Vedic religious orthodoxy which thinks in terms of holiness or meritorious works when he says that he is incapable of praising or even saluting the Absolute Principle of Beauty here intended. The way of works and merit is unequivocally rejected by him in this verse as being outside his scope or intentions. We have to read this first verse together with the last verse of this series, where he again washes his hands of any intention to present a specific religious doctrine, which ordinary religious people might infer that he is tacitly supporting. The Absolute is proven by itself, and should be left alone to declare its glory to the world.

 

In this very first verse the reader can see that Sankara wishes to emphasize the necessity of thinking of Shiva and Shakti as belonging together to the one and only unitive content which is that of the value called Absolute Beauty. It is a great mistake to separate the functions of the twin counterparts that are meant to enter into a unified non-dual function here. Mother-worshippers in India are likely to make the mistake of saying that the beauty of the three worlds represented by the Goddess, sometimes referred to as Shakti or Tripura Sundari, is to be given primacy over the Shiva principle. They tend to forget that the basic cancellability of status between these two counterparts - male and female, positive and negative, vertical and horizontal, conceptual and perceptual etc. - is all-important to be kept in mind throughout the unfolding of this sequence of verses. To forget this idea is to fall into the error of duality, the most repugnant attitude for Advaita Vedanta. The Kaulins and perhaps the Samayins, were just such Shakti-worshippers, whose unilateral position Sankara must have wanted to correct and revalue by undertaking the present work.

 

Another point to notice in this verse is that when Shiva is not united with Shakti, he has no function at all. Some commentators say he has become sava - a dead body - when he is not united with the feminine principle. This is to forget that a correlating parameter running through the whole universe and able to ordain it, making cosmos out of chaos, is as important as any other function or aspect of the same Absolute.

 

Here, a form of pure verticalized action is implied as running through the world like the guiding thread of Ariadne, without which Theseus would never have been able to ascend out of the labyrinth of the Minotaur. Even the Mandukya Upanishad, which eliminates all functions and even predications when it refers to the highest Absolute in its final verdict - describing the ultimate Absolute as removed multi-dimensionally beyond all taint of relativity or predicability - still retains a certain auspicious value or attribute, referred to there as santam sivam advaitam (peaceful, auspicious, non-dual). A further qualification is mentioned immediately anterior to these final epithets by the words prapancopasanam referring to that principle which abolishes the phenomenal world, that is, all that has a horizontal reference. Thus it is of great importance to clearly distinguish the implied paradox from the very start, so as to finally abolish it correctly without violating the requirements of an absolutist epistemology, methodology or axiology. Science and mathematics, physics and metaphysics, the visible and the intelligible, are all counterparts that have to be treated as belonging together to an Absolutist whole.

 

There is in this verse a reference to the three gods: Brahma,Vishnu and Shiva, who have three distinct functions to perform within the totality of the field in which Shiva and Parvati live together. The value of the union itself is the ground of the Absolute, and the three functionaries are to be inclusively contained therein as having only a secondary importance. With any number of other gods, permissible under the aegis of the Absolute, this eternal union of male and female represents the resultant of the absolute value of Beauty. In mathematical terms this union is just a cancellation taking place between the vertical and horizontal parameters, the latter of which can be thought of as a curved or asymptotic line or perimeter, while the former could be a straight line or parameter. The three main functionaries represented here are fully justified and they could be recognized even by strict scientifically minded persons when we treat them each as having the status of a factor with a function belonging to it, as when we say that y = f(s) in algebra. Thus, the mythological personifications can be disregarded as merely incidental to the exigencies of language. Other monomarks could be chosen to refer to these same functions, which are creation, preservation and destruction. These three functions are inevitable concepts in the context of the cosmological, psychological and axiological processes taking place in the universe within the self and the non-self, when thought of in most general and abstract terms. Mythology is less positive than mathematics, as Auguste Comte would put it. The positively-minded modern person need not take mythology seriously. These demiurges could be treated as monomarks for the three functions understood in the abstract, where the grand process of becoming in the universe can be thought of as coming under the inevitable functional phases or aspects of beginning, enduring and disappearing, to one or other of which three phases any process, inner or outer, must conform.

 

These three gods or demiurges belong to the Vedic religious context. Vedanta is outside mere Vedism, but does not conflict with it, just as a well could be hidden within an expansive lake. Vedism, with its distinctions of meritorious actions and sin, based on the notions of the sacred and the profane, could be inclusively transcended or submerged within the scope of the more open and generous dynamism of the Advaitic outlook. We have to distinguish the two limiting points within the scope of spiritual progress. Just so does the River Rhone expand into the lake of Geneva at one end but pass out at the other as a thin stream again - to use one of Henri Bergson's favourite examples. One could place oneself at the lower, expanding limit of the river or at the upper, contracting limit of the lake, in a vertical perspective, without coming into conflict with less absolutist, religious disciplines which are vitiated by hedonistic or relativistic considerations.

 

This first verse marks the lower limit. By the time the discussion reaches the last verse, spiritual progress through works has attained to its maximum maturation; thus effectively abolishing its own importance; just as the same water can transcend to become a simple river again. The three gods thus come into the picture only between the lower and the higher limits of the total situation to be kept in our minds here. Sankara himself prefers not to enter into the context where merits and demerits or causes and effects, or obligations and taboos, come into interplay within these two limits. The effects of good works accrue only at the upper limits. Sankara, at the start here, correctly places himself before any action or reaction of cause and effect begins to operate. He wishes to remain a strict absolutist, in keeping with his own neutral and normalized position, giving equal importance to both cause and effect, but taking his stand preferably before the causes even begin to operate. He is thus removed from all taint of the phenomenal process of becoming. Transcending this, he is again seen, at the end, to be outside the scope of the four-dimensional set-up in which alone good and bad could interact. This is the reason why he takes care to underline in this verse that he is one of unaccomplished merits, unlike the demiurges who are caught within the process and strive to attain the positive limit which is the culminating point of all meritorious actions.

 

Vedanta is a negative way (nivritti marga). That is a further reason why this description, evidently applicable to himself as well as to the correct reader, is treated as being outside the scope of both merit and demerit taken together. When speaking of himself in this manner, we are also justified in thinking that he is indirectly referring to the adhikari - the kind of person to whom this work applies - which refers to any member of the public having the same status as himself in the total situation to be visualized here. This could only be done by what is called extrapolation in mathematics. Thus, the subject matter of this work - the value of Beauty under the aegis of the Absolute - is correctly seen in the context of Vedantic tradition, which transcends the Vedic context in which the three gods aspire for perfection by works of religious merit, as being placed at the positive top limit of the structural vision. As a Vedantin, Sankara himself takes his position initially on the negative side of the total situation, opposed to all aspiration, as is in keeping with the nivritti marga (negative path) of Brahmavidya, the Science of the Absolute - as understood in the Upanishadic context. In the Upanishadic tradition there is a reference in Kena Upanishad (3rd Kanda) to the situation in which the three gods - Agni, god of fire, Vayu, god of wind and Indra, the chief of the gods - stand puzzled about the nature of a Supreme Spirit that presents itself in vacant space before them. This is the positive Absolute, which is approached closest by Indra, the best of the demiurges. The same space then suddenly reveals the beautiful form of Uma (as Parvati is also called), the daughter of the Himalayas, representing the negative aspect of the same Absolute without contradiction or mutual exclusion.

 

The beauty of Uma (The Devi, or Parvati), here treated as interchangeable in value with what the Absolute represents, thus affords us a correct precedent acceptable to the teachings of the Upanishads, of which the Saundarya Lahari could be treated as a correct continuation.

 

Shiva worship is proto-Aryan and chiefly of South Indian origin, but the Upanishadic tradition blends both Aryan and proto-Aryan and Dravidian cultures, as is unequivocally implied in Verse 75. These comments on this first verse are to be taken as important preliminary clarifications for the understanding of the remaining verses also.

 

(See bottom of this page for the relevant extract from Kena Upanishad. ED)

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

EDITORIAL NOTE: these notes, as they are taken from different sources, do not present a sequential whole - there are repetitions and near-repetitions in many places. Rather than over-edit and perhaps lose something, we have left them as they are. Anyway, this is a very difficult and subtle subject and repetition will probably help understanding.

WORD FOR WORD
Shivah = Shiva (numerator factor).
Shaktya = with Shakti - the phenomenal factor in the centre of the Absolute.
Yukto-yadi = when united, unified (i.e. when participating vertically and horizontally with each other).
Bhavati Shaktah = becomes able (Shiva).
Prabhavitum = to realize himself, become fully himself, attain full plenitude.
Nachedevam devah = if likewise this god.
Nakhalu kushalah = is not capable indeed
Spanditumapi = even to oscillate like a straw (?) to or (illegible)
Atah stvam = thus to or for you.
Aradhyam = worthy of worship
Harihara virinchadhibhir api = (illegible)
Prananthum = to adore
Stothum va katham = even to praise, how.
Akritapunya = one who has no merits of good acts.
Prabhavati = become specified.

EDITORIAL NOTE: throughout this commentary, where the Guru's notes, as extracted from the source material found in saundarya lahari/notes (see saundarya lahari/index) are used, there are many passages that were taken down by students in a form which is not immediately clear to the general reader - that is, to anyone who was not a full-time student of the Guru's and familiar with the background material. Therefore we have provided explanatory notes - clearly labeled "EDITORIAL NOTE and/or signed "ED.", and written in italics, and we have also corrected or reconstructed some structural diagrams. Without this, we think that it would be impossible to make these brief notes understandable. THESE ADDITIONAL NOTES AND MODIFICATIONS REFLECT OUR PERSONAL OPINION AND ARE IN NO WAY TO BE TAKEN AS DIRECT STATEMENTS OF THE GURU. However, we have been studying and teaching this text for 44 years and hope that they will clarify matters.

According to Purva Mimamsa, the first verse of a work must say:
1) What subject you are dealing with.
2) How does it relate to other subjects?
3) Does it lead to salvation?

All of this is stated in Verse 1.

(Purva Mimamsa: For purposes of classification, Vedic lore has been divided into Purva, or former, earlier; and Uttara, later, divisions. This division has to be understood both in the historical and literary sense. The Purva Mimamsa (Earlier Critique) is where ritualist injunctions and obligatory rules are discussed critically by Jaimini. (see Uttara Mimamsa).

Vedas: The early Sanskrit writings in praise of Indra, Varuna and phenomenal gods of nature; later displaced by the philosophical concept of the Absolute Brahman in the Upanishads. The four chief Vedas are the Rig, Sama, Yajur and Atharvana. ED)  

 

The Main Themes of Verses 1 to 10: 

Verse 1 - Vedanta is radical; do not ask me to come into the temple, there are no rituals in Vedanta. 

 (Sankara places himself outside the ritualistic, relativistic or religious context of the three gods. The Advaita Vedanta he represents is concerned with wisdom, not ritual actions of worship. ED) 

Verse 2 - In Vedanta the world is a monde affiné as Bergson calls it - a flux; a world of particle physics, not as actual as it seems. 
Verse 3 - Put Absolute Beauty at the bindu (central locus) of the quaternion, do not put a comparative or relativistic goddess there: there is a fourfold structure.
Verse 4 - In Vedantic Methodology primacy is given to cause - do not get lost in effects. There is a borrowed light of Absolute Beauty, a reflected glory as when Vishnu takes on a women's form as Mohini. (And seduces Shiva. ED) 
Verse 5 - Erotic occasionalism; the arrow of Eros can hit Shiva if it is aimed vertically.
Verse 6 - There is a four-dimensional abstraction and generalization.
Verse 7 - The Goddess as Purushika with four limbs bearing noose and goad, bow and arrow. 
Verse 8 - Conic sections: getting away to the negative side is .....(? - the original faded manuscript appears to read "...to the negative side is loud" which seems meaningless ED) 
Verse 9 - There is a stable ascending series of cross-sectional positions known as Chakras. 
Verse 10 - There are ramified sets of values within the Absolute on the positive and negative sides: 

Two trees of Porphyry, one growing upwards and the other downwards, representing existential and subsistential values. 
(Here are examples of trees of Porphyry, by way of illustration only. ED)
 
insert images

 

 

 

Sankara is dealing with Shiva and Shakti (literally "power" - another name for the Devi): this is the content of Verse 1.

 
a) This verse deals with the conceptual and phenomenal aspects of the universe.

insert images

 

 

 

Sankara says: "I am not writing this for my salvation, I am already a brahmavit (a knower of the Absolute)".
 
(Sankara's Advaita Vedanta or Brahma Vidya (Science of the Absolute) is outside the context of salvation - all it is concerned with is understanding. The phrase "Unitive Understanding" is sometimes used as a translation of "Advaita Vedanta". ED)
 
b) There is a paradox between Para and Apara Brahman, (the immanent and the transcendent absolute) as between mind and matter, the conceptual and the phenomenal, reality and appearance.

Shakti, (the Goddess or Devi) is the specific manifestation of Shiva.
Shiva is living vertically and becomes manifested when united with the Devi.
 
c) If Shiva is not united with the Devi, he cannot have even the slightest vibrating horizontal movement.
 
(To give the reader some familiarity with what Shiva and the Devi represent in the Indian tradition, we present below some representations from classical sculpture; from medieval art and from popular folk-art prints. ED)

insert images

 

 

d) The three gods, in the process of becoming, are in charge of creation, preservation and destruction - the three functions of nature - and the Devi is in charge of them.

 

insert images

 

 

(To assist the reader, as above, here are some representations of these three gods. ED)

insert images

 

 

 

 

Brahma.

 

 

 

(Brahma: One of the members of the Indian pantheon as the first creator and source. He is four-faced, representing the four directions (with an up and down, zenith-nadir fifth sometimes added). As creator he is distinguished from the neutral Brahman, the Absolute, which is no god, but a philosophical Reality. ED)

 

 
insert images
 
 
 
 
Vishnu.
 
(Vishnu: The second of the so-called Hindu Trinity, of which Brahma the creator is first and Mahesvara or Shiva is the last. Shiva is also the destroyer. Vishnu is referred to as the preserver, although taken by themselves each of them is in turn preserver and destroyer. These result from the fusing of three cosmological and psychological currents of religious thought in India. ED)
 
 
insert images
 
 
 
 
Shiva.
 
(Shiva: The ancient hero-God from the times of prehistory, associated with radical virility and renunciation. He is an unconventional god like Dionysius, wearing skins and dancing in ecstasy, drunk with cosmic consciousness. He is the most ancient and the most important figure of the Indian pantheon, and occupies his seat in Benares and Kailasa. ED)
 
The Devi's task is to manifest the world.
The two parameters, vertical and horizontal, are revealed here, together with the subtle participation between them, and Sankara says he will focus on the negative aspect of the Absolute and treat of the lower Absolute (Apara-Brahman), not the higher (Para-Brahman).
 
(Para: Beyond; pertaining to the Ultimate or Supreme; as opposed to the immanent here-and-now aspect of reality which is apara. It could mean transcendent. (cognate with the English word "far").
 
The Devi, as manifester of the perceptual world, can be equated with Apara-Brahman, the negative perceptual aspect of the Absolute and the subject of the Saundarya Lahari. ED)
 
insert images
 
 
 
 
But, Sankara says, "I am outside the picture, I belong to no context".
 
(Sankara is saying he is a Vedantin, concerned with the Science of the Absolute (Brahma-Vidya) not a ritualistic Vedic practitioner (Brahmin).

Brahmin: One who conforms to the religion of the Vedas and initiated or confirmed by the bestowal of the sacred thread which causes him to be known as a "twice-born" (dvija) and fit thereby to assist at ceremonies of burnt offerings to the Gods of the Vedas. Socially he is the highest of the types of castes, statically viewed, in the Indian world of caste hierarchies, the others being Kshatriya (warrior), Vaishya (merchant) and Shudra (servant). Vedic learning and ritual accompanied the Brahmin as priest in the formation of society as it stratified with the penetration of the Aryans into the Indian matrix, about 1500 BC. ED).

 

insert images

 

 

 

Shiva and Parvati.

 

 

 


ALL OF LIFE IS A LOVE AFFAIR
 
Absolute Beauty is the result of cancellation.
 
Beauty emerges when two sides meet and cancel.

Creation, which exists, subsists and has value, is beauty.

Fill your mind completely with overwhelming Absolute Beauty and you are a mystic.
You meditate on the Devi and establish a bi-polar relationship with the Absolute.

A yogi can meditate on a certain abstract principle of Absolute Beauty, leading to an understanding without logic - through the emotions and intuition- something you can experience: then you will establish a relation between the Non-Self and the Self which will cancel out into a joy forever.
 
 
All proper meditation is erotic; anyone who says that it is not so does not know what he is talking about.
 
The contribution of Indian Civilization to spirituality is Erotic Mysticism - it was not repressed by patriarchal and prophetic religions that frowned on sensuality.

insert images

 

 

SANKARA IS OUTSIDE THE PICTURE
 
BELOW WE HAVE A REPRESENTATION OF THE WORLD OF PERCEPTS IN THE STRUCTURE ABOVE
 

insert images

 

 

 

 

 

IN A SERIES OF STRUCTURES DEPICTING VERSE 1 THROUGH TO VERSE 41 DESCRIBED AS "ANANDA LAHARI MANDALAS"

 

VERSE 1 IS REPRESENTED AS BELOW:

 

 
insert images
 
 
 
 
 
There is a participation of horizontal and vertical factors.
On a homogenous ground there is complementarity.
 

A) Shiva can pulsate only with the Devi´s collaboration.
The Devi is being worshipped by the three gods; Shiva is just one of these.

(There is a distinction between Shiva seen as one of the three gods representing creation, preservation and destruction - relativistic demiurges dealing with the world of change and becoming - and Sada Shiva -  "Sada" implies eternity - who is the counterpart of the Devi, or Absolute Beauty. A demiurge is an artisan-like figure responsible for the fashioning and maintenance of the physical universe ED)


Sankara is in meditation below the Alpha Point at the negative vertical pole, while thinking only of the Omega Point at the top of the vertical axis.


He is verticalized -This is like Bergson's image of the Rhone river expanding to form Lake Geneva and then contracting into a river again


Sankara is outside the whole picture.

The horizontal contains a fanwise expansion of the vertical, that is all.

 

insert images
 
 
 
For purposes of comparison, here is an earlier version of a translation of Verse 1:


TRANSLATION
Shiva = mathematical, general
by specific function = shaktya, representing the two phenomenal factors;
wave length and vibration, res cogitans and res extensa (Descartes' thinking substance and extended substance, similar to mind and matter)
(only) when united = yukto
if he (should) become able to manifest in becoming
if not thus, this god
is not indeed expert (in the matter)
even to pulsate (pulsation)
it being thus, You (the Devi)
are being worshipped
even by (api) Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva (Vedic, relativistic gods)
to prostrate, even to praise
(Now Sankara is outside the Vedic context - below it)
one of unaccomplished merit
specifically attain (?)

 

BELOW IS AN EXTRACT FROM THE EARLIEST COMMENTARY ON THE SAUNDARYA LAHARI BY NATARAJA GURU

 

VERSE 1, from an article in "Values" Magazine.

Their paintings (The artist couple he was visiting), some of which I also saw, were of a non-representational kind where the human form, when faintly present, blended with geometric patterns and cancelled out with them in glorious symmetrical designs of colour and form.

I at once thought of the possibilities of a colour language to serve as a lingua mystica (mystical language) proto-linguistically, to explain the verses of the Saundarya Lahari (the Upsurging Billow of Beauty) of Sankaracharya, whose cryptic verses had recently intrigued me highly and lured me towards attempting a structural analysis of this much-misunderstood yet truly Vedantic text, hitherto lost to the pseudo-scientific esoterics of Tantrism and the Shakti cult of post-Buddhist decadent India.
 
Further scrutiny of about forty verses, with comparative study of interpretations by scholars, including the verse translation of the same by the famous Kumaran Asan (A poet from Kerala), has convinced me that all of them have fallen short of a truly critical estimate of this masterpiece. Sankara himself must have thought in terms of a structuralism then understood, belonging to the Tantra and Shaktya (Goddess-worshipping) background, whose remnants still persist as remains of past culture, both in Kerala as well as in Bengal, at the present day.

This stratum, with its precious esoterics, has been more or less overcovered by other debris accumulated and deposited in other parts of India, where the chequered rule of emperors and kings or chieftains, with greater or lesser Muslim permeation, has succeeded in covering up even the outcrops of this stratum.
 
The Tantra school has its proto-linguistic traditions. The Mother Goddess is also a favourite in the esoterics of Yoga.
 
Thus we touch here a rich deposit of ancient wisdom of rare beauty and quality. Proto-linguistic speculation excels itself here.

Having thus struck upon a rich vein of treasure trove, I have been directing my interest in scrutinising and analysing some of the verses structurally. Even the title has been intriguing and elusive enough to attract my interest.
 
The words "Saundarya Lahari", which are the title of these hundred verses in classical Sanskrit, suggests both the intoxication arising from beauty as well as a general overwhelming upsurge of the aesthetic sense in the contemplation of the Absolute Self. This aesthetic sense, arising out of the supreme Bliss-Value, is of the essence of the emotional content of the Absolute. Ethics, aesthetics and penetrating metaphysical analysis meet here in the upsurging of the sense of beauty within the contemplative, as understood by Sankara.
 
In this composition Sankara proves to be fully absolved from the possible charge as a dry-as-dust philosopher, with which appellation he is associated in the popular mind because of the exegetics and logistics in which he indulges in most of his commentaries.
 
Although Shakti-Tantrism is evidently the assumed background of the composition before us, there is unmistakable internal evidence to suggest that Sankara, the well-known Advaitin, is its author. His seal can be discovered as imprinted on every verse by the clear absolutism revealed and by the classical finish of the verses, as inimitable as in the case of Kalidasa. In order to give the reader just a foretaste of the delicacies and delights of this composition from a master philosopher and dialectician, we translate here the first verse of this series:
 
If Shiva should, only when united with Shakti,
Get the power to manifest in becoming;
If again, without such, he has no ability even to pulsate,
How then could one of unaccomplished merits
Have the privilege of bowing to, or even to praise
One such as You, adored even by Hari, Hara, Virincha and others.
 
Here we have more than one rhetorical question by which Sankara fulfills the conventional requirement of adoration of a deity. As an Advaita Vedantin, his praise has necessarily to refer to no other high value than the Absolute. The Upanishadic way does not give primacy to ritualistic or meritorious works for emancipation.
The structural and literary requirements of the Vedic context are, however, retained for linguistic purposes here, as useful in a negative way; by default rather than by open obligation for direct worship or praise of a single goddess or deity.
 
The goddess here belongs to the context of Brahman (the Absolute).
This, and every other verse of the series, approaches the Advaita by the negative way of omission rather than by recommending adoration of the Goddess Parvati or Shakti as the followers of the Tantra school, more properly so called, might do. The Tantra background, however, is seen here to be taken advantage of and adapted to serve the requirements of the highly suggestive and structural language proper to the lingua mystica of Vedanta.
 
In the last line, reference is made to the triple gods Vishnu, Shiva and Brahma, who have the functions of preservation, destruction and creation, respectively, in the theological and mythological context of Hinduism. He implies here that, as a devotee praising the Goddess as the negative absolute factor coupled with Shiva (who is positive, as the counterpart of the negative feminine principle), he is not on the same footing as the Vedic gods who only belong to the context of relativistic and meritorious Vedic ritualism.
 
The schematic analysis of the diagram below will reveal some of the structural implications applicable to the aesthetic value of the Absolute, when viewed from a negative rather than from a fully positive perspective.

 

insert images

 

Note here that it is the totality that is indirectly adored or praised.
The question of merit does not even arise when the total Absolute Value is intended here. The manifesting function is that of the horizontal negative, and the pure Absolute itself is beyond action, as it is comprised within pure verticalized positivity.
 
There is thus only indirect praise of the Absolute initially at the start of the work, from a negative viewpoint.
 
insert images
 
 
Saundarya means "value", and the highest abstract value is beauty.
Sankara under-focuses on the negative side, or the side of Maya. He talks about beauty, and through Axiology, Methodology and Epistemology arrives at a description of the Absolute Upsurge of Beauty, as "Saundarya Lahari" can be translated. Sankara first shows the map with all the gods etc., then wraps it up by showing the dynamism of the circulation between the parts. If he uses mythological language, it is only to build up a structure, the understanding of which reveals the Absolute.
 
Sankara is saying,
"Do not say that I believe in all these gods - I have used them only to praise the Absolute (via ideograms)."

Reciprocity, compensation and cancellability are all operative here.
 
 
 
 
 
 TEXT TO BE INSERTED HERE
 
 
 
 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

S LAHARI VERSE 1 PART 2

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SAUNDARYA LAHARI VERSE 1 PART 2

 

 A word-for-word translation in the Guru's handwriting.

 

WORD FOR WORD
Shivah = Shiva (numerator factor).
Shaktya = with Shakti - the phenomenal factor in the centre of the Absolute.
Yukto-yadi = when united, unified (i.e. when participating vertically and horizontally with each other).
Bhavati Shaktah = becomes able (Shiva).
Prabhavitum = to realize himself, become fully himself, attain full plenitude.
Nachedevam devah = if likewise this god.
Nakhalu kushalah = is not capable indeed
Spanditumapi = even to oscillate like a straw (?) to or (illegible)
Atah stvam = thus to or for you.
Aradhyam = worthy of worship
Harihara virinchadhibhir api = (illegible)
Prananthum = to adore
Stothum va katham = even to praise, how.
Akritapunya = one who has no merits of good acts.
Prabhavati = become specified.

 

EDITORIAL NOTE: throughout this commentary, where the Guru's notes, as extracted from the source material found in saundarya lahari/notes (see saundarya lahari/index) are used, there are many passages that were taken down by students in a form which is not immediately clear to the general reader - that is, to anyone who was not a full-time student of the Guru's and familiar with the background material. Therefore we have provided explanatory notes - clearly labeled "EDITORIAL NOTE and/or signed "ED.", and written in italics, and we have also corrected or reconstructed some structural diagrams. Without this, we think that it would be impossible to make these brief notes understandable. THESE ADDITIONAL NOTES AND MODIFICATIONS REFLECT OUR PERSONAL OPINION AND ARE IN NO WAY TO BE TAKEN AS DIRECT STATEMENTS OF THE GURU. However, we have been studying and teaching this text for 44 years and hope that they will clarify matters.

 

According to Purva Mimamsa, the first verse of a work must say:
1) What subject you are dealing with.
2) How does it relate to other subjects?
3) Does it lead to salvation?

 All of this is stated in Verse 1.

 (Purva Mimamsa: For purposes of classification, Vedic lore has been divided into Purva, or former, earlier; and Uttara, later, divisions. This division has to be understood both in the historical and literary sense. The Purva Mimamsa (Earlier Critique) is where ritualist injunctions and obligatory rules are discussed critically by Jaimini. (see Uttara Mimamsa).

Vedas: The early Sanskrit writings in praise of Indra, Varuna and phenomenal gods of nature; later displaced by the philosophical concept of the Absolute Brahman in the Upanishads. The four chief Vedas are the Rig, Sama, Yajur and Atharvana. ED)

  

The Main Themes of Verses 1 to 10:

 
Verse 1 - Vedanta is radical; do not ask me to come into the temple, there are no rituals in Vedanta.

  (Sankara places himself outside the ritualistic, relativistic or religious context of the three gods. The Advaita Vedanta he represents is concerned with wisdom, not ritual actions of worship. ED)

  

Verse 2 - In Vedanta the world is a monde affiné as Bergson calls it - a flux; a world of particle physics, not as actual as it seems.

  

Verse 3 - Put Absolute Beauty at the bindu (central locus) of the quaternion, do not put a comparative or relativistic goddess there: there is a fourfold structure.

 

Verse 4 - In Vedantic Methodology primacy is given to cause - do not get lost in effects. There is a borrowed light of Absolute Beauty, a reflected glory as when Vishnu takes on a women's form as Mohini. (And seduces Shiva. ED)

  

(Verse 5 - Erotic occasionalism; the arrow of Eros can hit Shiva if it is aimed vertically.

  

Verse 6 - There is a four-dimensional abstraction and generalization.

  

Verse 7 - The Goddess as Purushika with four limbs bearing noose and goad, bow and arrow.

  

Verse 8 - Conic sections: getting away to the negative side is .....(? - the original faded manuscript appears to read "...to the negative side is loud" which seems meaningless ED)

  

Verse 9 - There is a stable ascending series of cross-sectional positions known as Chakras.

  

Verse 10 - There are ramified sets of values within the Absolute on the positive and negative sides:

 


Two trees of Porphyry, one growing upwards and the other downwards, representing existential and subsistential values.

  

(Here are examples of trees of Porphyry by way of illustration only. ED)
 

IMAGE

 

TEXT MISSING HERE

 

 

Shiva.

 

 

 

(Shiva: The ancient hero-God from the times of prehistory, associated with radical virility and renunciation. He is an unconventional god like Dionysius, wearing skins and dancing in ecstasy, drunk with cosmic consciousness. He is the most ancient and the most important figure of the Indian pantheon, and occupies his seat in Benares and Kailasa. ED)

 

 

 

The Devi's task is to manifest the world.
The two parameters, vertical and horizontal, are revealed here, together with the subtle participation between them, and Sankara says he will focus on the negative aspect of the Absolute and treat of the lower Absolute (Apara-Brahman), not the higher (Para-Brahman).

 

 

 

(Para: Beyond; pertaining to the Ultimate or Supreme; as opposed to the immanent here-and-now aspect of reality which is apara. It could mean transcendent. (cognate with the English word "far").

 

 

 

The Devi, as manifester of the perceptual world, can be equated with Apara-Brahman, the negative perceptual aspect of the Absolute and the subject of the Saundarya Lahari. ED)

 

 

IMAGE

 

But, Sankara says, "I am outside the picture, I belong to no context".

 

 

(Sankara is saying he is a Vedantin, concerned with the Science of the Absolute (Brahma-Vidya) not a ritualistic Vedic practitioner (Brahmin).

 


Brahmin: One who conforms to the religion of the Vedas and initiated or confirmed by the bestowal of the sacred thread which causes him to be known as a "twice-born" (dvija) and fit thereby to assist at ceremonies of burnt offerings to the Gods of the Vedas. Socially he is the highest of the types of castes, statically viewed, in the Indian world of caste hierarchies, the others being Kshatriya (warrior), Vaishya (merchant) and Shudra (servant). Vedic learning and ritual accompanied the Brahmin as priest in the formation of society as it stratified with the penetration of the Aryans into the Indian matrix, about 1500 BC. ED).

 

 

IMAGE

 

ALL OF LIFE IS A LOVE AFFAIR
 

 

Absolute Beauty is the result of cancellation.

Beauty emerges when two sides meet and cancel.

Creation, which exists, subsists and has value, is beauty.

 


Fill your mind completely with overwhelming Absolute Beauty and you are a mystic.

 

 

IMAGE

 

You meditate on the Devi and establish a bi-polar relationship with the Absolute.


A yogi can meditate on a certain abstract principle of Absolute Beauty, leading to an understanding without logic - through the emotions and intuition- something you can experience: then you will establish a relation between the Non-Self and the Self which will cancel out into a joy forever.

 

  
All proper meditation is erotic; anyone who says that it is not so does not know what he is talking about.

 

The contribution of Indian Civilization to spirituality is Erotic Mysticism - it was not repressed by patriarchal and prophetic religions that frowned on sensuality.

 
IMAGE
 
SANKARA IS OUTSIDE THE PICTURE

 

 

 

BELOW WE HAVE A REPRESENTATION OF THE WORLD OF PERCEPTS IN THE STRUCTURE ABOVE

 

 

 

 

IMAGE

 

IN A SERIES OF STRUCTURES DEPICTING VERSE 1 THROUGH TO VERSE 41 DESCRIBED AS "ANANDA LAHARI MANDALAS"

 

VERSE 1 IS REPRESENTED AS BELOW:

 

IMAGE

There is a participation of horizontal and vertical factors.
On a homogenous ground there is complementarity.
 

A) Shiva can pulsate only with the Devi´s collaboration.
The Devi is being worshipped by the three gods; Shiva is just one of these.

(There is a distinction between Shiva seen as one of the three gods representing creation, preservation and destruction - relativistic demiurges dealing with the world of change and becoming - and Sada Shiva -  "Sada" implies eternity - who is the counterpart of the Devi, or Absolute Beauty. A demiurge is an artisan-like figure responsible for the fashioning and maintenance of the physical universe ED)


Sankara is in meditation below the Alpha Point at the negative vertical pole, while thinking only of the Omega Point at the top of the vertical axis.


He is verticalized -This is like Bergson's image of the Rhone river expanding to form Lake Geneva and then contracting into a river again


Sankara is outside the whole picture.

The horizontal contains a fanwise expansion of the vertical, that is all.

 

IMAGE

For purposes of comparison, here is an earlier version of a translation of Verse 1:


TRANSLATION
Shiva = mathematical, general
by specific function = shaktya, representing the two phenomenal factors;
wave length and vibration, res cogitans and res extensa (Descartes' thinking substance and extended substance, similar to mind and matter)
(only) when united = yukto
if he (should) become able to manifest in becoming
if not thus, this god
is not indeed expert (in the matter)
even to pulsate (pulsation)
it being thus, You (the Devi)
are being worshipped
even by (api) Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva (Vedic, relativistic gods)
to prostrate, even to praise
(Now Sankara is outside the Vedic context - below it)
one of unaccomplished merit
specifically attain (?)

 

BELOW IS AN EXTRACT FROM THE EARLIEST COMMENTARY ON THE SAUNDARYA LAHARI BY NATARAJA GURU

 

VERSE 1, from an article in "Values" Magazine.

Their paintings (The artist couple he was visiting), some of which I also saw, were of a non-representational kind where the human form, when faintly present, blended with geometric patterns and cancelled out with them in glorious symmetrical designs of colour and form.

I at once thought of the possibilities of a colour language to serve as a lingua mystica (mystical language) proto-linguistically, to explain the verses of the Saundarya Lahari (the Upsurging Billow of Beauty) of Sankaracharya, whose cryptic verses had recently intrigued me highly and lured me towards attempting a structural analysis of this much-misunderstood yet truly Vedantic text, hitherto lost to the pseudo-scientific esoterics of Tantrism and the Shakti cult of post-Buddhist decadent India.
 
Further scrutiny of about forty verses, with comparative study of interpretations by scholars, including the verse translation of the same by the famous Kumaran Asan (A poet from Kerala), has convinced me that all of them have fallen short of a truly critical estimate of this masterpiece. Sankara himself must have thought in terms of a structuralism then understood, belonging to the Tantra and Shaktya (Goddess-worshipping) background, whose remnants still persist as remains of past culture, both in Kerala as well as in Bengal, at the present day.

This stratum, with its precious esoterics, has been more or less overcovered by other debris accumulated and deposited in other parts of India, where the chequered rule of emperors and kings or chieftains, with greater or lesser Muslim permeation, has succeeded in covering up even the outcrops of this stratum.
 
The Tantra school has its proto-linguistic traditions. The Mother Goddess is also a favourite in the esoterics of Yoga.
 
Thus we touch here a rich deposit of ancient wisdom of rare beauty and quality. Proto-linguistic speculation excels itself here.

Having thus struck upon a rich vein of treasure trove, I have been directing my interest in scrutinising and analysing some of the verses structurally. Even the title has been intriguing and elusive enough to attract my interest.
 
The words "Saundarya Lahari", which are the title of these hundred verses in classical Sanskrit, suggests both the intoxication arising from beauty as well as a general overwhelming upsurge of the aesthetic sense in the contemplation of the Absolute Self. This aesthetic sense, arising out of the supreme Bliss-Value, is of the essence of the emotional content of the Absolute. Ethics, aesthetics and penetrating metaphysical analysis meet here in the upsurging of the sense of beauty within the contemplative, as understood by Sankara.
 
In this composition Sankara proves to be fully absolved from the possible charge as a dry-as-dust philosopher, with which appellation he is associated in the popular mind because of the exegetics and logistics in which he indulges in most of his commentaries.
 
Although Shakti-Tantrism is evidently the assumed background of the composition before us, there is unmistakable internal evidence to suggest that Sankara, the well-known Advaitin, is its author. His seal can be discovered as imprinted on every verse by the clear absolutism revealed and by the classical finish of the verses, as inimitable as in the case of Kalidasa. In order to give the reader just a foretaste of the delicacies and delights of this composition from a master philosopher and dialectician, we translate here the first verse of this series:
 
If Shiva should, only when united with Shakti,
Get the power to manifest in becoming;
If again, without such, he has no ability even to pulsate,
How then could one of unaccomplished merits
Have the privilege of bowing to, or even to praise
One such as You, adored even by Hari, Hara, Virincha and others.
 
Here we have more than one rhetorical question by which Sankara fulfills the conventional requirement of adoration of a deity. As an Advaita Vedantin, his praise has necessarily to refer to no other high value than the Absolute. The Upanishadic way does not give primacy to ritualistic or meritorious works for emancipation.
The structural and literary requirements of the Vedic context are, however, retained for linguistic purposes here, as useful in a negative way; by default rather than by open obligation for direct worship or praise of a single goddess or deity.
 
The goddess here belongs to the context of Brahman (the Absolute).
This, and every other verse of the series, approaches the Advaita by the negative way of omission rather than by recommending adoration of the Goddess Parvati or Shakti as the followers of the Tantra school, more properly so called, might do. The Tantra background, however, is seen here to be taken advantage of and adapted to serve the requirements of the highly suggestive and structural language proper to the lingua mystica of Vedanta.
 
In the last line, reference is made to the triple gods Vishnu, Shiva and Brahma, who have the functions of preservation, destruction and creation, respectively, in the theological and mythological context of Hinduism. He implies here that, as a devotee praising the Goddess as the negative absolute factor coupled with Shiva (who is positive, as the counterpart of the negative feminine principle), he is not on the same footing as the Vedic gods who only belong to the context of relativistic and meritorious Vedic ritualism.
 
The schematic analysis of the diagram below will reveal some of the structural implications applicable to the aesthetic value of the Absolute, when viewed from a negative rather than from a fully positive perspective.

 

IMAGE

 

Note here that it is the totality that is indirectly adored or praised.
The question of merit does not even arise when the total Absolute Value is intended here. The manifesting function is that of the horizontal negative, and the pure Absolute itself is beyond action, as it is comprised within pure verticalized positivity.
 
There is thus only indirect praise of the Absolute initially at the start of the work, from a negative viewpoint.
 

IMAGE

Saundarya means "value", and the highest abstract value is beauty.
Sankara under-focuses on the negative side, or the side of Maya. He talks about beauty, and through Axiology, Methodology and Epistemology arrives at a description of the Absolute Upsurge of Beauty, as "Saundarya Lahari" can be translated. Sankara first shows the map with all the gods etc., then wraps it up by showing the dynamism of the circulation between the parts. If he uses mythological language, it is only to build up a structure, the understanding of which reveals the Absolute.

  

Sankara is saying,
"Do not say that I believe in all these gods - I have used them only to praise the Absolute (via ideograms)."

 


Reciprocity, compensation and cancellability are all operative here

 

 

AN EARLY TRANSLATION OF VERSE 1:
The god Shiva (as a great numerator factor) and Shakti (the horizontalizing principle on the negative side)
When united only (or unified) - (when participating vertically and horizontally with each other).
(Shiva, he) becomes able - (at best participating nominally). (only when he participates does he become able)
To realize himself (in any specified way), (to become fully himself) (attaining all plenitude), (only when he participates does he keep from evaporating), (will only be an absurd mathematical figurehead).
If likewise this god is not capable indeed (wavelength means horizontal movement).
Even to oscillate (like a straw) - horizontal, as opposed to vertical movement.
Thus how can for You (Devi).
Worthy of worship (by).
Even by Vishnu, Shiva and Brahma (representing the three relativistic functions: preserver, destroyer and creator), but only as demiurges of a base order.
You are not only on the negative side of the vertical axis, but You also touch the finger of Shiva, thus representing the Absolute - and thus being worthy of worship by the three demiurges.

  

And below is another version:

TRANSLATION
Either to praise or worship You (how?).
One who has no merits of good acts - (I am not a Brahmin or a learned man), (how can I ever attain to the Absolute beyond all words?).
How can I become a specified personality? - (Either I must fill it with the content of beauty, via protolanguage*).
I am not a priest (Brahmin) who performs meritorious deeds.
How can I praise You? (Vedanta is not just giving alms and going to temples).
I will have to put You into relationship with Shiva, the Logos or Omega Point.

 

If You are not touching Your husband (participating vertically) he is just a theoretical, mathematical Omega point.

  

*(In the terminology of Nataraja Guru, these terms, proto- and meta-language, have a different meaning 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)

  

MATTER AND METHOD FOR MAKING A FILM OF THE SAUNDARYA LAHARI:
Double negation is "shining like a polished door"; "prize me no prizes, for my prize is death "
It is like Milton's "dark-splendid": there is no real poet who does not know this double negation.
  
Double negation is "shining like a polished door"; "prize me no prizes, for my prize is death "
It is like Milton's "dark-splendid": there is no real poet who does not know this double negation.
 
 
 
(The Guru now makes a comparison with another example of Erotic Mysticism in Sanskrit Literature. ED)
 
In the case of the abhisarika(tribal) woman, (in Kalidasa's Ritusamhara) the lightning does two things: it lights her path and it helps her to appreciate the vertical aspect of her passion.
(She is walking in the Himalayas to meet her lover. ED)
 
 
 
 
She represents the Self, which has two references, vertical and horizontal.
 
 
 
 
 
 

The abhisarika (tribal) woman in Kalidasa - horizontally, she breaks the pearl necklace and the pearls drop one by one onto the ground.
She wants go both horizontally and vertically: the fire to copulate has another reference, vertically placed, it is represented by sunlight.

Vertical and horizontal aspects of her passion participate and reveal the Absolute.
When you can appreciate this, you are a mystic.
 
She says: "It may be the Himalayas, it may be midnight, but I am going anyway because I badly want a child". Passion is what is found in her heart and sunlight reveals the vertical aspect of the same.
 
 
 
 
 
(There is a discrepancy in the original documents, from saundarya lahari/notes: in the text of the Ritusamhara, the Abhisarika woman is walking across the mountains in the moonlight; however, some of the notes say "sunlight". It is probable that the student who originally wrote the notes was confused and wrote "sun" for "moon". We have reproduced both versions as they appear in the original notes - in any case, it is not all that important - what is important is that there is a light from above descending vertically upon the scene with the love-sick woman providing the horizontal counterpart. ED)
 
 
  
 
 
(Further comments on Kalidasa's Ritusamhara can be found in Saundarya Lahari Notes, 1970 SLC8, Page 23. ED)
 
Kandukavati, Nataraja, thunder and lightning, the Abhisarika woman; they can all be telescoped together into a paradigmatic cliché to be repeated over and over again after the basic portions of the cassettes on which the Saundarya Lahari can be produced.
 
(Nataraja: The dancing Shiva. The virile cosmic principle which Shiva stands for is seen dancing on a demon, representing ignorance, in the familiar bronze statues. The Shiva dance is referred to in various mythic contexts, where the glory of Shiva is emphasised as against later intrusions into this prehistoric tradition. ED)
Below is a depiction of Nataraja:
 
 
 
 
 
A tribal or Abhisarika woman:
 

 

 

("Kandukavati" refers to the description of a dancing girl from the Dasakumaracarita of Dandin (Page 105). Dandin was a 6th-7th century author of Sanskrit prose romances. A commentary on this passage is to be found in Saundarya Lahari Notes, 1972, File SLP2, pp.4-30. ED)

 

 
 
 
 

 

 
 
On Kandukavati and her dance, Nataraja Guru said: "There is no Indian Spirituality without the Dancing Girl. Take away the dancing girl and there is nothing left."

(In South India, a "devadasi" (Sanskrit: servant of deva (god) or devi (goddess) ) is a girl "dedicated" to worship and service of a deity or a temple for the rest of her life. The dedication takes place in a Pottukattu ceremony which is similar in some ways to marriage. Originally, in addition to taking care of the temple and performing rituals, these women learned and practiced Sadir (Bharatanatya), Odissi and other classical Indian artistic traditions and enjoyed a high social status as dance and music were essential part of temple worship. ED)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
To make this passage understandable, one must introduce some well-thought-out representative clichés or ideograms: put three circles around them and treat them as Chakras.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
There is a common subject-matter to Verses 1 and 2: the phenomenal and the noumenal, and the cancellation of the three functions of creation, preservation and destruction.
 
In the "Darsana Mala" by Narayana Guru there is cancellation into absolute value.
In his "Atmopadesa Satakam" the pure Absolute is at the Omega Point.
 
In Verses 3 and 4: Ontology is contrasted with a teleological approach - there is a normative centre.
 
 
 
 
 
Atmopadesa Satakam deals with Triputi (the" tri-basic prejudice" of seer, sight and seen), it is like the the Darsana Mala, but with bipolarity.
 
(Triputi: the aspects involved in the event of knowing something, namely: the knower, the known and the act of knowing. Literally "the three-petalled one" or "having three bases". It is a technical term in Vedanta referring to three aspects of cognition, namely the subjective, the objective and the process itself. The knower of the pot; the object called the pot; and the knowledge of the pot, would illustrate the three ways by which the same cognition could be viewed. Absolute knowledge is without this triple-based difference. ED)
 
Although the methodology for all Vedanta is roughly the same, we can find a doctrine appearing in different places: it can come at the beginning or at the end.

Narayana Guru fixes the Omega Point, at the top of the vertical axis, in the first verse of the Atmopadesa Satakam.
 

VERSE 1 OF ATMOPADESA SATAKAM:

Rising even above knowledge, what within the form

Of the one who knows, as equally without, radiant shines,

To that Core, with the eyes five restrained within,

Again and again prostrating in adoration, one should chant.

 
Thus, Nataraja Guru, from this point on, gives up trying to treat all three works together, he will work only on the Saundarya Lahari verses.

In Verse 1 of the Saundarya Lahari, all of life is a love affair.

Absolute Beauty is the result of cancellation.
Creation, which exists, subsists and has value, is beauty.
 
She is superior to the three gods.
The worshipper in this verse, Sankara himself, is a man without merits - an akrta punya, ("a man of ungained merit" - outside the context of sin and good deeds. ED) a man of no relativistic virtue.
Sankara is not a religious man.
 
Shiva shaktya yukto... (Shiva united with the Devi) - an arc lamp bursts into flame
There is a paradox between two factors, plus and minus.
 
Atah stvam = thus to or for you.
Aradhyam = worthy of worship
...imagine a globular mirror with pictures of the three gods prostrating.

The three gods, being Vedic, are in the context of religious merit, sin and virtue.  Sankara does no belong there; he is outside the religious context.

The relationship between Shiva and Shakti is a paradox.
 
Bowing down is existential.
"How can I praise?" is subsistential.
 
 
 
 

As the text states in a later verse, Verse 4:

"Other arms than thine are explicitly expert in giving boons..." She grants boons through Her feet - ontology is superior to teleology.

 

VERSE 4

Other arms than yours can confer protection or boon;
You alone do not act overtly, by gesture, the promises of refuge or boon
What is more, your feet, o sole refuge of the world of beings,
Are alone expert indeed in yielding boons more than asked for.

 

THE PARADOX BETWEEN VERTICAL AND HORIZONTAL IS POSED IN THIS FIRST VERSE OF THE SAUNDARYA LAHARI

Kshetra - the field - is horizontal.

Kshetrajña - the knower of the field - is vertical.

 

 

 

 THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE FIELD AND THE KNOWER OF THE FIELD IS WISDOM.


Both Shiva and Shakti have equal importance.
Shiva is not active, he is only a catalyst, a parameter like the thread of a pearl necklace, a correlating principle at the Omega Point.

 

 

Maya is spreading from the Alpha Point to the virtual and actual sides.

(Understanding the concept of Maya is of the greatest importance to understanding Advaita Vedanta. Nataraja Guru has variously defined it as: the universal category of error, illusion, ignorance. A fuller definition is to be found in the Glossary on this website:


"Maya: Connotes a factor of epistemological and methodological importance in Sankara's Vedanta especially, and in Upanishadic lore generally. Whatever is postulated as the cause of the unreal, spoken of in the most generic of categorical terms in philosophy, as against theology, is to be laid at the door of maya. It is the basis of duality or synergic antinomies. The nearest Western equivalent is the Negativität of Hegel's system".

It is also important to keep in mind the identification of the Devi with Maya in Verse 97:

"As the Goddess of the Word, Veda-knowers speak of You as Brahma's wife
Lakshmi is Vishnu's wedded one, and the Mountain Daughter is Shiva's consort;
Certain others as the unattainable and boundless fourth state refer to You;
While you remain as the great Maya, making the universe go round, as queen of the Ultimate Absolute." ED)

 


The Numerator is only a thin parameter and a crescent moon:
It cannot pulsate without the Devi.

 

Shiva is a catalyst, he does not change. Shiva is a magnet
Shiva is a fire which is not affected by heat, but which heats an iron ball.

(The iron ball would represent the Devi or the manifested Absolute in this image. ED)

 

FROM KENA UPANISHAD

3rd KANDA

 

Once upon a time, Brahman, the Spirit Supreme, won a victory for the gods. And the gods thought in their pride, 'We alone attained this victory, ours alone is the glory;

Brahman saw it and appeared to them, but they knew him not. 'Who is that being that fills us with wonder?' they cried.

And they spoke to Agni, the god of fire: '0 god all-knowing, go and see who is that being that fills us with wonder.'

Agni ran towards him and Brahman asked: 'Who are you?' I am the god of fire,' he said, the god who knows all things.'

What power is in you?' asked Brahman. 'I can burn all things on earth.'

And Brahman placed a straw before him, saying: 'Burn this.' The god of fire strove with all his power, but was unable to burn it. He then returned to the other gods and said: 'I could not find out who was that being that fills us with wonder'

Then they spoke to Vayu, the god of the air. '0 Vayu, go and see who is that being that fills us with wonder.'

Vayu ran towards him and Brahman asked: 'Who are you?' 'I am Vayu, the god of the air,' he said, 'Matarisvan, the air that moves in space.'

'What power is in you?' asked Brahman. 'In a whirlwind I can carry away all there is on earth'

And Brahman placed a straw before him saying: 'Blow this away.' The god of the air strove with all his power, but was unable to move it. He returned to the other gods and said: 'I could not find out who was that being that fills us with wonder.'

Then the gods spoke to Indra, the god of thunder: '0 giver of earthly goods, go and see who is that being that fills us with wonder.' And Indra ran towards Brahman, the Spirit Supreme, but he disappeared.

Then in the same region of the sky the gods saw a lady of radiant beauty. She was Uma, divine wisdom, the daughter of the mountains of snow.

 

BELOW ARE SOME EXAMPLES OF STRUCTURAL METHODOLOGY AS USED IN VARIOUS FIELDS:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 
 
 

 

 

 

 

A FINAL SL INDEX

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SAUNDARYA LAHARI FINAL ILLUSTRATED COMMENTARY

 

 

INDEX OF COMMENTARIES ON THE VERSES OF THE SAUNDARYA LAHARI

  

This is the last version of Nataraja Guru's commentary on the Saundarya Lahari, derived from a typescript  which he revised in person. It must be emphasized that he always said that no verbose or "metalinguistic" commentary could do justice to this work, which could only properly be made understandable by "protolinguistic" means, in some form of "expanded cinema", as he termed it.

The interested reader is therefore strongly urged to consult the various earlier commentaries in "Saundarya Lahari Notes" which, though fragmentary, will prove invaluable to understanding this most difficult work.

These additional comments by the Guru, together with the structural diagrams accompanying them, have been left as they were given by the Guru. There are repetitions in many places, and almost-identical passages and diagrams, but we think it is better to leave them as they are and not lose something potentially valuable by over-zealous cleaning up and streamlining of the material.

The commentary on each verse is intended, as far as possible, to stand alone; thus there are many repetitions of definitions etc. to enable the reader to grasp the references to the Indian tradition and to Western science and philosophy.

We wish to apologize for the lack of standardization and occasional flaws of the structural diagrams. Our only excuse is the fact that the editor is not a graphic designer and has had to learn as he goes along; and also that he is alone and unaided in producing this website. We are constantly revising and correcting these shortcomings.

Please note also that we have preserved the original variations of spelling of the transliterations of Sanskrit words as they appear in the original manuscripts, e.g. "Shiva" may appear as "Siva" (the original Sanskrit consonant is somewhere between the two); "Svadhisthana" as "Swadhisthana" etc.

At the bottom of this page, you will find the translated text of the 100 verses to make it easier to identify the verse required, together with short titles for the verses.

 

 

A note on hyperlinks: by left-clicking on highlighted words, hyperlinks will appear; some of them are to places within the website itself; others, however, are to articles on the internet, many of which do not reflect the position of Advaita Vedanta but are provided as background information: for example, the god Shiva may be completely unfamiliar to non-Indians, so we have provided links to articles and pictures which will enable the reader to place him in the proper cultural and historical context.

 

A note on the illustrations: Nataraja Guru said many times that the Saundarya Lahari could only be explained properly through a film rather than through verbose commentaries. We are not yet able to create a film, but we have provided occasional pictures to give some idea at least of what a visual  treatment of this poem might be.

 ED.

 

"Even Shiva is not as great as you when you understand. This is the highest water mark of spirituality; you can abolish Shiva and the Devi. The fire of Shiva worships you and Parvati put together. You understand the Absolute and that is all; you become the Absolute. There is no birth, no duration of life, no death, these are only name and form. The Saundarya Lahari  says only that you are the Absolute. The fire of destruction of the world becomes the waving lights of worship for that man who can say of the Devi: "I am You"."

 Nataraja Guru

 

"There are many different kinds of yogi; but the rarest and most fortunate of all are those who can see the Absolute in a woman's body."

 Nataraja Guru.

 

Nataraja Guru: "Why should I be afraid of the Devi ("The Goddess" a.k.a. the Absolute), she is just a woman"

 A disciple: "Just any woman?"

 Nataraja Guru: "Yes, any woman"

 

"Put the beauty of your girlfriend together with the beauty of the sunset and you get God."

  Nataraja Guru

 

 

 CONTENTS

Introduction to the Commentary on the Saundarya Lahari

 

         Verse 1

         Editorial comment on Verse 1

 

TRANSLATED TEXT OF THE VERSES

 

VERSE 1
Shiva, united with Shakti, becomes able to manifest,
If otherwise, this god knows not even how to pulsate,
How then could one of ungained merit be able to bow to, or even praise,
One, such as You, adored even by Vishnu, Shiva and Brahma.

 

VERSE 2
The fine dust arising from Your lotus feet,
Brahma, gathering up, the worlds creates,
Vishnu incessantly bears them up somehow with his thousand heads,
And Shiva, having shaken it up, accomplishes with it his ash-wearing rite.

 

VERSE 3
To the uninstructed You are the light-city, inner darkness banishing, mid-ocean placed
To inert ones the mind-expanding ooze of sweetness within blossoms celestial,
While for indigent spirits you become a brood of philosophers' stones
And for those submerged in the ocean of birth and death, the very tusk of Vishnu's boar.

 

VERSE 4
You alone do not act overtly, by gesture, the promises of refuge or boon
Other arms than Yours can confer protection or boon;
What is more, Your feet, o sole refuge of the worlds of beings,
Are alone expert indeed in yielding boons more than asked for.

 

VERSE 5
Once Vishnu, having adored You, the mother who bestows blessings on those who worship you,
Taking womanly form, caused agitation even unto the City-Burner.
Eros, too, on worshipping You, with body licked into reality by the glances of Rati,
Even to the minds of great recluses, confusion of values brings.

 

VERSE 6
O Daughter of the Snowy Peak, just deriving from Your glance askance
Whatsoever grace he could; with flowery bow, bumble-bee bowstring,
And five-flowered dart and springtide for minister; all these as one withal:
Mounting the chariot of the mountain breeze , he victoriously reigns, that God of Love.

 
VERSE 7
O let Her appear before us, that proud counterpart of the City-Burner
Resounding with waist-belt of jingle bells, recumbent by breasts
Like frontal bulges of a calf elephant, slim of waist, with autumnal full-moon mature face,
Holding aloft bow and arrow, noose and goad!

 

VERSE 8
Seated on a couch of Shiva-form and having the Supreme Shiva for cushion;
Placed within a mansion wafted round by the perfume of blossoms of Kadamba trees,
Located within a celestial grove on a pearly-gem island in the midst of a nectar ocean,
Some fortunate ones contemplate You as the upsurging billow of mental joy.

 

VERSE 9
The earth placed in the Muladhara, water in the Manipura,
Fire in the Swadhisthana, air in the heart, with space above;
And amid eyebrows placing the mind, and breaking through the whole Kula path,
You do sport with your lord secretly in the thousand-petaled lotus.

 

VERSE 10
With streaks of ambrosial essence streaming from between Your twin feet,
Sprinkling blessings over the worlds and again from that point of high intelligible values,
Turning Yourself into a snake form of three coils and a half,
You sleep in the hollow of the Kulakunda, Your proper ground attaining.

 

VERSE 11
With the four of Shiva and of Shiva-maids five,
And severally the nine of prime nature, with eight and sixteen petals
Three circles and three lines, are thus complete,
The forty-three elements making up Your angular refuge.

 
VERSE 12
O Daughter of the High Peak, to estimate the equal of Your beauty,
The best among poets, exercising their fancy, somehow created Brahma and others.
Eager Your beauty to see, heavenly damsels mentally attain to
What is hard even for ascetics to attain; the state of union with Shiva.

 

VERSE 13
A man over-aged, uninteresting to the view, inert in sport;
Falling within the range of Your side-glance, they follow, running in hundreds -
Young women, with hair disheveled, their rounded, shapely breasts by blown-off clothes revealed
Their waistbands bursting and silk garments in disarray.

 

VERSE 14
Fifty-six for earth; for water fifty-two;
Sixty two for fire; for air fifty-four;
Seventy-two for ether; for mind sixty-four;
Are the rays, even beyond these are Your twin feet.

 

VERSE 15
Clear as autumnal moonbeams, with matted hair-made diadem,
Attached with crescent and with hands bearing refuge or boon-giving
gesture, rosary made of crystal-clear beads and book:
How could anyone, worshipping You but once,
Not gain in flow of words somehow, the pleasing sweetness of honey, milk and grapes?

 

VERSE 16
That beauty residing within the minds of superior poets,
Resembling that of a forest of lotuses, when touched by the tender light of dawn:
He who can thus adore You, who are so dear to Brahma as magenta itself;
He, by profound words of most tender erotic content, shall please the same select ones.

 

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.

 

VERSE 18
With shades of Your bodily form enriched by the tenderly sunlit dawn,
And the whole earth submerged within magenta glory;
That man, able to contemplate You thus, wins You over with Urvasi and how many, how many other
Heavenly nymphs having gentle, startled, wild deer eyes.

 
VERSE 19
O Shiva Consort, making Your face the locus with twin breasts below,
And below still, as the better half of Shiva; meditating on Your erotic aspect,
Without delay he can stir the hearts of women; this is but slight
And at once agitates even Her of the three worlds, when sun and moon form Her twin breasts.

 

VERSE 20
He who can bring You, as emanating nectar out of Your limbs all around,
Into his heart like a moonstone-made statue,
He can quell the pride of serpents like the King of Birds
And a fever patient cure by his very look of ambrosial streak.

 

VERSE 21
As lightning-streak-bodied, made of sun, moon and fire,
And as placed even above the six lotuses in a great lotus grove;
Those great ones, as seers of such, Your aspect, free from dross and ignorance
They experience the upsurging billow of ultimate delight.

 

VERSE 22
O Goddess, You, on this Your servant bestow a kind look:
Thus intending to adore, no sooner one begins saying:
"O Goddess, You"; You grant him that state of identity with You
The same as what Vishnu, Brahma and Indra accomplished by the waving of the lights on their diadems.

 
VERSE 23
Absorbing the left half of the body of Shiva and unsatisfied in mind still,
The other, I surmise, became absorbed also; therefore,
This Your form, having three eyes and bent by twin breasts,
Wearing crescent -edecked crown, became of magenta glory.

 

VERSE 24
Brahma creates the world, Vishnu protects, Shiva destroys:
Negating all this and his own body, the lord fades out.
Thus what results: Shiva who has eternity for prefix (Sadashiva)
He blesses, obeying the orders derived from Your instantly vibrating eyebrow-twigs.

 

VERSE 25
Of the three gods, who are originated from Your three nature modalities,
Their worship of You, o Consort of Shiva, would alone be worship
Offered to Your twin feet; it is indeed thus when they do so,
Standing eternally beside Your gem-decked foot-stool, joining bud-like their hands well above their crowns.

 

VERSE 26
Brahma regains his pure quintuple nature; Vishnu becomes passionless;
The God of Death destruction meets; the God of Wealth becomes bankrupt;
the great Indra becomes functionless, with half-shut eyes;
In this great doom, he sports, o constant spouse, Your lord alone.

 

VERSE 27
Incantations, mutterings, ritual acts, hand gestures, gait,
Circumambulations, food offerings, inclination, adoration by lying down
All such enjoyments, as coming within the scope of self-surrender,
And thus synonymous with worship of You, let such be what from me might shine forth.

 

VERSE 28
Even on partaking of nectar, so potent against fear, old age and death;
They reach their doom, all such gods as Brahma or Indra;
On even swallowing that terrible super-poison, for Shiva, time's function is not operative:
The source here being the power of Your marital string.

 

VERSE 29
"Remove Brahma's crown from before, and that of him called Vishnu;
You are going to hurt his hard headgear: bypass Indra's crown"
As inclining in front of You, they remain, at that very moment for him on his homecoming,
You are about to rise. Such words of Your retinue, they do ring supreme.

 

VERSE 30
Out of the rays arising from Your proper body, representing psychic powers such as atomicity,
Attendant on You, o Eternal One, one who contemplates these in terms of oneself:
What wonder for him that all benefits from the three-eyed one should only be worth rejection,
And that the fire of doom should perform for him in turn the light-waving rite.

 

VERSE 31
By sixty-four know-how factors, each capable of generating its own psychic power;
Transcending the whole world while remaining immobile,
The Lord of Beasts, again, by Your insistence, by that free expertness of Yours,
Caused to be brought down this firm earth for the unified fulfillment of all life purposes.

 

VERSE 32
Shiva, Parvati, Eros and earth; sun, moon,
God of Love, swan and Indra; Para, Mara and Hari;
With these three sets, with their heart monomarks suffixed,
They adore Your letters, o Mother, by way of naming Your component limbs.

 

VERSE 33
Eros, source, wealth; this triplet placing first within Your charm
O lone and eternal one, innumerable seekers of great enjoyment
Adore You, telling beads of philosopher's stone, ever sacrificing into the fire of Shiva
By hundreds of streaks of clarified butter oblations from the celestial cow.

 

VERSE 34
You, who are the body of Shiva, having sun and moon for twin breasts
Yourself, I surmise, o Goddess, as a new sinless self.
Therefore, by mutual complementarity, this relation remains one of common reciprocity
Between You two, participating on equal terms of transcendent bliss.

 
VERSE 35
The mind You are, the sky, the wind too, also the charioteer of the winds
You are the water, as well as the earth; apart from Your manifest form there is nought else indeed!
You, in order to manifest Your own self, by taking a universal form
Of mental bliss substantial, do assume the role of Shiva-bride, and thus triumphant rule.

 

VERSE 36
I adore that Shiva ultimate, as placed in Your willing centre, shining with the brilliance
Of millions of suns and moons, whose flanks are illumined by the light of the intelligibles beyond;
Whom, worshipping with devotion, lifted beyond the reach of sun, moon and fire,
In that shining domain above all need, one lives indeed in that bright world of light.

 
VERSE 37
In Your Vishudhi Chakra, crystal-clear and sky-generating,
I adore Shiva and the Goddess also, with a parity of status with Shiva
By whose combined, streaming, moonbeam-like fluorescence,
With banished inner dross, like a female partridge, the world hereunder shines.

 

VERSE 38
I adore those twin swans, intent on enjoying the nectar
Of the lotus blooming within the consciousness of certain great ones,
Moving within whose minds as a result of their elaboration, the maturation
Of the eighteen arts takes place freed from dross, their goodness extracted as milk from water.

 

VERSE 39
O Mother, I praise, placing in Your Svadhisthana the fire of sacrifice
Ever looking upon it as the great fire of doom, and placing there her also called Samaya,
So that when the worlds are burning due to his anger,
Her mercy-moist regard renders to it the cooling touch of early spring.

 

VERSE 40
As found in certain contemplatives who take full refuge in Your Manipura,
I adore that dark cloud of Yours, as traversed by forceful lightning,
Banishing darkness and shining, bursting into sparks with the varied gem-decked brightness of Indra's bow,
While over the three worlds, agonized by the heat of Shiva-sun, it sheds its showering waters.

 

VERSE 41
I meditate on Your new self, as placed at Your Muladhara, together with Samaya,
Given to her light-step dance, as also that great bold-step dancer;
Giving expression thereby to all nine aesthetic interests, thus by their joint lordship,
By mercy ordaining the rebirth of the world, they confer on it the renewed status of having both father and mother.

 

VERSE 42
These sky orbs twelve attained to rubyhood and placed close together
He who can praise thus Your golden crown, o Daughter of the Snowy peak
Would he not have then in his mind the impression of the bow of Indra
When, by reflected glory, a slender crescent is produced by the gems imbedded therein?

 

VERSE 43
Let the blooming blue-lotus forest growth of Your thick, glossy and lustrous locks
O Shiva Consort, banish the darkness within us
To gain whose natural fragrance those other flowers of the garden of Indra,
As I can guess, take their place within Your tresses.

 

VERSE 44
May it bless us, the upsurging billow of the beauty of your face
Outflowing into a stream, to resemble Your parted hairline,
With vermilion dust bedecked, keeping apart the strong growth of tresses
As if in bondage held by anti-darkness gangs, to reveal the tender rays of dawn.

 

VERSE 45
Your face, exuding perfume, as it gently smiles,
Having Your bright teeth for filament, when surrounded by Your natural curls
Like so many revelling, honey-licking bees; each the eye
Of the Eros-Burner, puts to shame the beauty of the lotus.

 


VERSE 46
I fain would treat Your forehead, shining with radiant beauty,
As a second crescent to that other frail one fixed to Your crown,
So that reversed in position, both as knit one-to-one,
Results the form of a fully-matured moon, emanating soft ambrosial essence.

 

VERSE 47
O Uma, ever pained in concern for banishing the fear of all creatures
And thus with eyebrows somewhat arched, with eyes of bee-like beauty below
I do surmise them as making up the bowstring for this bow
Of the Lord of Love, held by his other hand, his arm and fist hiding the middle part.

 

VERSE 48
That eye of Yours, in essence the same as the sun and other than the left,
It generates daytime; the left one, presiding over night, creates its three vigils;
While the third eye, like a half-open golden lotus bud,
Ushers in the twilight time, moving between day and night.

 

VERSE 49
Vishala the expansive, Kalyani the auspicious; Sphutaruchi the clear of taste
Ayodhya the invincible, by blue lotus bound; Kripadharadhara, on mercy's fountain founded;
A certain Madhura, the sweet; Avanti, of saving power; Bhogavatika, enjoyment affording;
All such names of various cities of lasting fame, within Your total regard they do reign triumphant.

 

VERSE 50
Seeing Your baby bumble-bee-like pair of eyes which, while seeming to cast glances,
Do not give up the bases of Your ears, mellowed by the play of the nine aesthetic interests,
Remaining like aptness with poets, wholly absorbed in drinking the honey within a spray of blooms;
Your mid - forehead lotus-bud eye, by jealousy touched, seems magenta - tinged.

 

VERSE 51
Moved by sentimental love for Shiva, resentful to any other person;
With anger of jealousy towards Ganges and with transports of wonder at Shiva's story;
With fearful surprise for the snakes of Hara, and for friends a jestful smile;
As such a source of lotus-red grace, Your regard, o Mother, for me will remain one of kindliness.

 

VERSE 52
Drawn fully to the ear-limits, like gleaming Eros arrows, with lashes looking like
Arrow-base feathers; these Your eyes, having the effect
Of disturbing the complacent detachment of the City-Burner,
Make for Your glory as the highest clan of the Mountain King.

 


VERSE 53
The tricolour distinctness of Your eyes, o beloved of Ishana (Lord)
Presented in clear threefold relief by the use of collyrium,
Would seem to create afresh the gods Shiva, Vishnu and Indra,
Bereft of passion and having the qualities of Rajas, Sattva and Tamas.

 

VERSE 54
O one of kindly, sympathetic regard, Your heart being
Given over to the Lord of Beasts: of rivers such as Shona, Ganga and Yamuna,
Coloured red, white and black:
Their sacred waters You do blend indeed into sinless confluence for our purification.

 

VERSE 55
With eyes open or shut, You can effect, as saints say,
The being or non-being of the world, o Daughter of the Earth-Supporting Lord;
What thus came to be as you opened them, this entire world, without anything left,
To save, I now surmise, You remain now with eyes unwinkingly withdrawn.



VERSE 56
O Aparna, afraid of the gossip carried to Your ear bases by Your lengthened eyes
Surely they lie merged unwinking in water like the female Sapherika fish
This Lakshmi too, leaves behind at dawn the closed petal doors of water lilies,
And at dusk, forcing them open, She re-enters therein.

 

VERSE 57
With Your long-extended regard having the beauty of water-lilies just opening,
O Shiva-Consort, do bathe with mercy even me steeped in misery far off
Thus shall I be blessed with no loss to You;
The moonbeams do fall on forest and mansion with equality.

 

VERSE 58
The two sets of curved limiting lines of Yours, o Daughter of the King of Mountains,
Who is it that will not fancy them as the bow of the flower- arrowed one;
Where, placed obliquely, and reaching beyond the path of hearing,
As it shines, adhering to Your side-glances, it gives the impression of the fixing of the arrow.

 

VERSE 59
This, Your face, I consider Kama's chariot with four wheels,
As seen when Your ear ornaments are reflected on Your shining cheeks;
Surmounting which that great hero, Kama, assails the Lord of Hosts,
Who, with sun and moon for foothold, mounting the globe for chariot, is fully ready to give him battle.

 

VERSE 60
The good sayings of Saraswati, exuding nectar sweetness,
Ever absorbing as with slow interest, You bend Your ears to them, o Blessed One
Each bright wit therein approving with nods,
While Your series of earrings seem to applaud them with their high-pitch jinglings.

 

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.

 

VERSE 62
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?

 

VERSE 63
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.

 

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.

 

VERSE 65
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 66
Starting as You do to sing with Your vina, with head movements,
Of the varied exploits of the Lord of Beasts, You, as the Goddess of the Word
The one of lovely speech, You promptly cover up to silence
Your instrument as mocking the sweetness thereof by sounds of strings.

 

VERSE 67
Affectionately touched by the tip of the hand of the Mountain king,
And lifted again and again by that Shiva out of desire
To drink of the lips thereof, that which makes the handle
For Your face-mirror, how could we ever speak of it, Your peerless chin.

 

VERSE 68
Incessantly embraced by the arms of the City-Burner,
And thrilled to thorny bristling of the hair of Your neck,
It shows a lotus-stalk grace ,smudged by excess of dark cosmetic paste
By itself it retains beneath the creeper-tendril suppleness of the pearly necklace lotus core.

 

VERSE 69
Those three lines on Your neck, o One fully expert in time, syncope and melody;
They are the counter-grounds of Your marital thread of strands and sub-strands,
As they do shine as the ground wherein is born many a melody;
Giving position, regulation and limitation for the three groups of musical keys.

 

VERSE 70
Of the lotus-core tender beauty of Your fourfold hands,
He sings the praise, the lotus-born god, trembling the while because of Shiva's nails
That once of yore nipped off his extra head, he (Brahma) intending now to pray for
Your refuge-granting hand- gesture for each of his remaining heads.

 

VERSE 71
Shining by the brilliance of Your fingernails that mock the colour of
Just-opening lotus buds, how could we speak of the beauty of Your hand?
Granted be, o Uma, that the lotus could have one shade less of parity with it
If at all, and that, alas, only when touched by the magenta paste of the sole of Lakshmi as she plays thereon.

 

VERSE 72
Let it banish our misery, o Goddess, your twin breasts,
Ever being sucked equally by Skanda and Ganesha;
Of which, seeing their milk-spouting fronts, Ganesha causes laughter
As he feels his own front with misgivings in his mind.

 
VERSE 73
O banner of the King of Peaks, Your breasts, shoulder-borne
Are nectar-bearing ruby pots indeed, without any trace of doubt:
These two, Skanda and Ganesha, both innocent of the pleasures of marital contact
Drinking from them they remain thus child-like to the present day.

 

VERSE 74
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.

 

VERSE 75
Your breast milk, I consider, o maiden born to the Earth-Supporting Lord,
As if it were word-wisdom's ocean of nectar, flooding from out of Your heart
Offered by one who is kind, which, on tasting,
This Dravidian child, amidst superior poets, is born a composer of charming verse.

 

VERSE 76
That mind-born god, once, on his body being engulfed
In the fire of Shiva's ire, into the deep lake of Your navel,
O Mountain Daughter, he dived, and on re-emerging,
The smoke thus raised, the people look upon as Your rows of hair.

 
VERSE 77
O auspicious Mother, that something revealed at Your slender waist
Looking like ripples on the surface of the river Kalindi,
Looms in the mind of contemplatives as space reduced to ethereal particles
Entering into the cavity of Your navel, and produced by the friction of Your pot-like breasts.

 
VERSE 78
O mountain-born, your navel reigns supreme
As a stilled Gangetic whirlpool, as the fecund flowerbed of Your breast-bud-bearing creeper
As the sacrificial fire-pit for Kama, and for Rati as her pleasure- bower
While to the eyes of the Mountain Lord the cavern mouth for his austerities.

 
VERSE 79
For Your waist, naturally slim, fatigued by weight of bust form,
Bending by form and on the point of breaking,
Equal in state to a tree on a collapsing brook bank;
O mountain-born one let there be security forever.

 

VERSE 80
O Goddess, having made Your twin breasts gain the beauty of gold pots,
Rubbing at the upper arms, bursting the bodice and presently perspiring,
The God of Love, now wanting to save your threefold waist from breaking, saying: "enough",
With three strands of a wild creeper, he presently binds.

 

VERSE 81
Ponderability and extensiveness Shiva once bestowed on You as dowry
Cutting them off from his own hips; thus it is this
Yours here, both weighty and expansive, cancels out the whole world
And by prior substantiality confers lightness on it too.

 

VERSE 82
Beating both the best of elephant trunks, and groups of golden banana stems,
By thighs and by knees having goodly callosities, due to daily devotions
To Your lord, even the twin frontal knobs of the heavenly elephant
You out-do, o Mountain Daughter triumphant.

 

VERSE 83
His quiver duplicating as Your twin legs, looking like pillars
Made by the God of Love, for giving battle to Shiva,
They show at their knees ten arrowheads, simulating nails,
Sharpened only on the whetstones which are the crowns of gods.

 

VERSE 84
Mother, Your twin feet, marking as they do the crest point of wisdom,
Wearable as head ornament by You as by me, kindly place both upon my head
Water for their ablution comes from the stream in Shiva's matted hair
And the red paste on their sole comes from the magenta glory of Vishnu's crown.

 

VERSE 85
Spoken words of worship do we offer to these Your lotus feet,
Beauteous as they are to view, smeared over with paste of magenta glory
Extremely jealous is he, the Lord of Beasts, of that Ashoka tree
In Your pleasure grove, for desiring to be kicked by them.

 

VERSE 86
On having inadvertently defaulted in respect of Your family name,
While stooping in shame, Your husband's forehead as You kicked with Your lotus feet,
That enemy of Shiva, wholly giving up his rancour, his victory celebrates with clamour of many jingle bells.

 

VERSE 87
Capable of being killed by snow, and fully at home on the snow peak;
Sleeping at night, and in bloom both at dawn and after;
Making Lakshmi's bowl overgenerous to Your Vedic worshippers,
Such the twin lotus of Your foot, it triumphs: what wonder herein?

 

VERSE 88
Your foot is the seat for good repute, o Goddess;
How then from danger to safety did it come? The wise treat it as of tortoise-shell hardness;
How then was it that Shiva,
At his wedding, could lift it with a tender mind to place it on the ritual stone?

 

 

 

  1. SAUNDARYA LAHARI FINAL ILLUSTRATED COMMENTARY
  2. VERSES OF THE SAUNDARYA LAHARI TRANSLATED
  3. Saundarya Lahari Index
  4. Other Texts on Erotic Mysticism