Criticism, Edward Said, Jagannatha Pandita

It seems in one way that Literature is the highest achievement of us as human beings, in whatever way different groups approach it and hold it. Just pure appreciation, involved and empathetic, is discounted nowadays in preference to operating upon the literary creation, dissecting, boring into, peeling off, dismembering and critical investigation. Many literary theories of all hues and purposes serve the modern transacting with Literature. Of course I am aware of the gains by such processings and I do appreciate to a large extent the panoply of theories applied. But when all operations are over and various readings got and verified, there is nothing to compare with the alter-awareness that we achieve through a pure, simple and straight aesthetic involvement in a literary piece. We may think of mixing the two ways but it will be a hard mix even then and the elements resisting each other. Man is not only a 'heady' being but also a 'hearty' being and it is perhaps an art really, how he manages the two beings of his own identity from the vantage of what being of his inner reality, supra or meta or composite. Perhaps solving this in the literary world will empower the human being to face more drastic issues of the concrete world with more wisdom. 

What is Criticism and that too literary criticism? Where does a Critic find his own position? Is it a simply negative stance or wakeful being in the now or an alteration between two negations? Is it just positioning oneself against all aesthetic appreciative involvement, a pretense to make good the absence of a heart quality? But I know too well the clarification that the critical theories give and also the pure delight in aesthetic involvement. What Edward Said is saying is very much adding to my cogitations on the status and efficacy of criticism in general.

"Criticism in short is always situated; it is skeptical, secular, reflectively open to its own failings. This is by no means to say that it is value-free. Quite the contrary, for the inevitable trajectory of critical consciousness is to arrive at some acute sense of what political, social. and human values are entailed in the reading, production, and transmission of every text. To stand between culture and system is therefore to stand close to - closeness itself having a particular value for me - a concrete reality about which political, moral, and social judgements have to be made and, if not only made, then exposed and demystified. If, as we have recently been told by Stanley Fish, every act of interpretation is made possible and given force by an interpretive community, then we must go a great deal further in showing what situation, what historical and social configuration, what political interests are concretely entailed by the very existence of interpretive communities.This is an especially important task when these communities have evolved camouflaging jargons.'
(Edward W Said, The World, The Text and The Critic pp 26, Harvard University Press, 1983)

Whereas in Sanskrit literature, critics have been distinguished from creative authors. Creative authors were attributed with creative spark of cognition, whereas the critics were attributed with critical reading and understanding spark of cognition. A great critic and creative genius of Sanskrit poetry, Jagannatha Pandita in his Rasa Gangadhara talks about the nature of poetic delight or elation of aesthetic communion, which in Sanskrit is called Rasa. He says Rasa is nothing but Consciousness made free of its blindfold of ignorance. This concept of Jagannatha Pandita teams with what Edward Said is trying to say above in the excerpt from his book.

***

Space stitions or super stition?

Mr A S Eddington in his book 'The Nature of the Physical World' writes a beautiful statement, which tells what all need be told about the micro and macro worlds in which and between which man lives or is supposed to be living.

'The atom is as porous as the solar system. If we eliminated all the unfilled space in a man's body and collected his protons and electrons into one mass, the man would be reduced to a speck just visible with a magnifying glass.'

So are we so solid as we think or ......one relative opaque space talking to another relative opaque space? in the meanwhile all the so called properties are in a way.......
'super+stitions'? There is much to Space than there is space to anything.

* 

Who is Vivekananda

Vivekananda, a biography, (Jan 2013), by Swami Nikhilananda, pp 326

"At one of the public meetings in New York, after addressing a tense audience for about fifteen minutes, the Swami suddenly made a formal bow and retired. The meeting broke up and the people went away greatly disappointed. A friend asked him, when he was returning home, why he had cut short the lecture in that manner, just when both he and the audience were warming up. Had he forgotten his points? Had he become nervous? The Swami answered that at the meeting he had felt that he had too much power. He had noticed that the members of the audience were becoming so absorbed in his ideas that they were losing their own individualities. He had felt that they had become like soft clay and that he could give them any shape he wanted. That, however, was contrary to his philosophy. He wished every man and woman to grow according to his or her own inner law. He did not wish to change or destroy anyone's individuality. That was why he had had to stop."

What a Man he was! 

"We are the worshippers of that God, who by the ignorant is called Man." so said he.

*

A small book of Vedanta in Tamil

I am astounded by a very small book published way back in 1908. The author is Thalavai Iramaswami Mudaliyar. He is one of the three sons of Thalavai Thirumaalaiyappa Mudaliyar. Some four hundred and fifty years back, Thalavai was a title awarded along with powers and functions by Krishna Deva Raya. The family has done many acts of charity and public cause. Our author Thalavai Iramaswami Mudaliyar, living in Tirunelveli during 1908 was so ardent and anxious in spiritual pursuits and the book bears evidence that he was very advanced in his knowledge of advaita books of reference. To assist aspirants who may toil and fret in future, he has beautifully capsuled very salient thoughts and rules of advaithic practice in just 30 pages, called Vedantha Sangirakam, in Tamil. Some nuggets for your touch-stone -

’வேதாந்த சாஸ்திராப்பியாசிகளான முமுட்சுக்களில் அதிதீவிரதர பக்குவிகளாயும், விரிந்தவை அல்லலென்று நினைப்பவர்களாயும் இருப்பவர்களுக்கு உபயோகப்படுமாறு பலசாஸ்திரங்களின் சாராம்சத்தைத் திரட்டி வசன ரூபமாயும், சுருக்கமாயும் வேதாந்த சங்கிரகம் என்னும் இந்நூல் இயற்றப்பட்டிருக்கிறது.’

so goes the preface. One Brahmmasri Narayana Swamigal, called Coimbatore Swamigal, has indited a stanza of praise like this -

’சற்சங்க ராமசா மித்தள வாய்ப்புனிதன்
நிற்சங்க மாநிரா லம்பமெய்தத் - தத்சங்க
நற்சுவையா வேதாந்த சங்கிரக நல்கினான்
சிற்சங்க மாகச் செறிந்து.’

The book proper -

’ஜெக ஜீவ பரத்தின் குணதோஷங்களை நன்றாய் ஆராய்ந்து அதன் உண்மையை அறிந்து அதனிடமாக வைத்த பற்றுக்களை நீக்குந்தன்மையே வைராக்கியமாம்.’

ஜெக சீவ பரம் மித்தை என்று அறிவதே வைராக்கியமாகும்’

’ஆத்துமாவில் தோன்றின அறிவு அதில் ஒடுங்குவதே முத்தி என்றறிந்து போக இச்சை ஜெகக் காட்சிகளை நீக்கினவனே பக்குவன்’

’அறிவதெல்லாம் அறிந்த மனதுக்கு அடைவு ஏதென்றால் போகங்களைத் தனது என்று எண்ணும் நினைவைத் தவிர்ந்து நிற்றலாம். இதுவே பக்குவம்.’

‘காளைப் பருவத்தில் உலகாசாரத்தை நீக்கித் தன்மனத்தில் உதித்த அற்ப விசாரத்தால் ஞானத்தில் மனதை நிலைபெறச் செய்வது ஆச்சரியம்.’

’பிரமமே உல்லாச லீலையால் சரீரம் உடையவனைப் போலவும், புமானைப் போலவும் பிரகாசிக்கும்.’

’பிரமமாகிற நமது ஆத்துமாவே, பிரமமென்றும் கூடஸ்தனென்றும் ஈசுரனென்றும் சீவனென்றும் நான்கு சைதன்னியமாகும்.’

So goes through all 30 pages full of aphoristic mint.

The Thalavai has been a Thalavai of Meignana also. And the small book is a great act of charity for even the yet-to-come souls pursuing non-dual realisation. My humble salute to the great soul, so generous. 

Namo Parama Rishibyo namo Parama Rishibyaha.

(Ref : Vedanta Sangirakam, Thalavai Iramaswamy Mudaliyar, 1908, Thirunelveli Siththivinaayakar acchuyantira saalai, pp 35)

***

A J Ayer and NDE

A great philosopher of the logical positivist school, A J Ayer, was uncompromising in his stand that statements which do not lend themselves to empirical verification or analytical exercise are quite meaningless. A great hit at the traditional metaphysics indeed. He was not a shy away philosopher when he confronted the unwanted advances of Mike Tyson on a new model in a party given by a fashion designer, saying 'I suggest we talk about this like rational men'. 

Just one year before his death, A J Ayer had a near-death experience. On recovery he said that the experience slightly weakened his conviction that his genuine death will be the end of him. Later he opined that he should have rather told instead 'my experiences have weakened, not my belief that there is no life after death, but my inflexible attitude towards that belief'.

Strange! We demand that we should experience ourselves to accept anything. But will we allow ourselves to accept our experiences?

***

Reality and Study

When we were studying High School or College, we were not having high tech resources of study materials. At the most some extra libraries some miles away and expecting perhaps half a day's journey to and fro to take one or two books of your choice or luck and another hour or two towards rest before you can zero in on your book load in some recluse corner in the rooftop. If it is a great find and hefty material of your interests then to share about it you have to wait till the next day when in the college you can chat over chaayaa. Naturally many authors worthy of note who belonged to the period from the end of 19th CE to the middle of 20th CE. But what we covered by way of college study and personal study and extra studies seemed sumptuous. Of course the mental culture had a great time to shape, enough rest and space to digest and progress. But after the internet what we covered in regular and extra curricular seem little and sparse.

Otherwise how to account for this man Mr L P Jacks, Lawrence Pearsall Jacks, whom I simply didn't hear about mentioned. But see his writing! If this is not sanity then what else?

"To say that the universe is a Rational Whole appears to me true. But to treat this as an adequate account of Reality appears to me false. I am equally averse to regarding the rationality of the universe as the fundamental or all-inclusive or even the dominant form of its self-expression.

What does form a Rational Whole and is adequately described by this term is the movement of thought throughout the ages—in a word, the History of Philosophy. To equate this movement with the universe to which it refers, to make the History of Philosophy into a History of Reality, appears to me an error. We are constantly tempted to make this equation, and constantly prevented from seeing its falsity, by the habit of treating speculative thought as a form of ours into which all experience must manage to fit itself."

(L P Jacks, The Alchemy of Thought, Williams and Norgate, 1911, Preface)

*** 

Some thoughts on Leadership - Management studies

The Management Science has been dealing so far with the question leadership vs management. Who is a leader? who is a manager? and like that. Now at last it seems management studies have striken paydirt by taking up the question of Followership.

The old adage goes - who knows how to obey knows how to lead. The art of intelligent obedience and following and definitely not the blind toeing. Good followership must be able to intuit the mind of leader. Not only that good followership knows how to park the ego with no loss to dignity in the dynamic flow towards efficient and effectual process. (Perhaps Sri Ramanuja can make you think not only as a manager, not simply as a leader but more so as an efficient follower when he says - Seshatva is having its pratikodi in Seshitva) That means a good and intelligent follower implies and presumes a true leader.

*

But 'followership' vis a vis 'Leadership', if it should not become reductive in understanding towards cultish behaviour and if really scientific understanding should happen in the context of organisations and business, another aspect equally important is that of 'Dissenting' or 'Deviant perception' or 'differing in view'. How a leader relates to this equally creative voice as that of intelligent follower matters not less. The art of intelligent followership is a great task. And equally tough and crucial is the task of 'meaningful dissent'. Being passionate towards impersonal vision and being intelligent and aware in personal relationships, motivated and defined by the vision and energised by the goal and results calls for great personal and group intuitive empathy and order which results from such intuitiveness. 

*

Large presence of Shakespeare

Shakespeare sits very large in our midst, huge and big centrally. We with all our creative pranks are only children trying to scale his laps, his back, his shoulders. We do pretend sometimes his absence sitting on his own shoulders and we proclaim also sometimes that we have outrun the Bard of Avon. We snob ourselves out with all sorts of badges, MODERN, POSTMODERN, POSTSTRUCTURAL, POST...this and that. No offence. It is our right. But universe itself has as it were connived to give us all lies at the end of day, if we are forgetting Shakespeare. But he sits cool, the Stage Bird, careless and casual in the centre big and vast. How else to react to this opening lines in A MIdsummer Night's Dream! -

'Theseus.-
What say you, Hermia? be advised, fair maid:
To you your father should be as a god;
One that composed your beauties; yea, and one
To whom you are but as a form in wax
By him imprinted and within his power
To leave the figure or disfigure it.
Demetrius is a worthy gentleman.

Hermia.-
So is Lysander.

The.-
In himself he is;
But in this kind, wanting your father’s voice,
The other must be held the worthier.

Her.-
I would my father look’d but with my eyes.

The.-
Rather your eyes must with his judgement look.

Her.-
I do entreat your Grace to pardon me.
I know not by what power I am made bold.
Nor how it may concern my modesty,
In such a presence here to plead my thoughts;
But I beseech your Grace that I may know
The worst that may befall me in this case,
If I refuse to wed Demetrius.'

***

Nietzsche! you may frown

Nietzsche! you may frown
But let me speak my mind now
I overheard the morning Sun
Self-repeating the evening Sun :
'I don't shine for you to praise,
neither for anybody to appraise
I just am the way I am Zaratushtra !
I neither rise up in the morn
Nor go down in the even,
Nor I go anywhere to the darker half
To make my shine in any way useful;
Beings and things rotate around me,
part time in light, part time in darkness.
Beings are yet to become fully of light;
Perhaps they need darkness as much as light;
Whatever, please act not under apparent sight;
When you know what you can know
there the light of knowledge shines;
when you know not what you cannot
there the light of ignorance shines.'
Nietzsche! you may frown
But I have spoken what was in my mind. 

*** 

This was written in reference to the opening section of Nietzsche's 'Thus Spake Zarathushtra'. 

some after thoughts - 

Poetry and Philosophy are perhaps the same Consciousness of opposite vectors. Poetry across sensuous reaches the transcendental. Philosophy translates the transcendental in terms of the sensuous. Or you may have it the other way also. - Poetry suggests the transcendental in the context of the sensuous and Philosophy makes sensational the transcendental

Meeting a great poem like a friend...

Sometimes you happen to meet a great friend or a great poem. One such is the paasuram, the poem of Tiruvaimozhi, TheerthanukkE.

'The Lord of Beauty sanctifies
and wins you for ever and ever;
knowing well that there is no other refuge,
mentally resolved, happy, restful in Him, the great refuge;
Satakopa of the rich land of Kurukur
has uttered these thousand sanctities,
these thousand poems pure;
of these, even this decad, if anyone masters,
that person will be worshiped
by the Eternal Citizens of Vaikunt
and those celestials will fondly
describe that person illustrious
as the walking purifiers
to their mates
in their thick moments of service
to the Great God.'

(Reflecting meekly the EEdu..)

The key word in this poem is the Tamil word 'Theerthan'.

Theertham - taan parisuddhamumaai, tannai Sparisittaarukku parisuddharaampadi paNNumatAyirRu.

Theertham - that which itself is pure and also again that which purifies whatever comes in contact with itself.

theerthanukkaRRapin - He has won over me by His beauty and has made me dislike everything else.

When the heart goes after Tirumaal
pleasures all lose their hold on me

who is crazy over Paramaatma and dislikes anything which makes one forget Paramaatma.

So intense devotion to God itself makes you detached from worldly things. That is the meaning of Theertha.

Nammazhvar's poems are personifications of such intense devotion and not only that, those who have mastered and dedicated their hearts to his poems are also forms of Theerthams.

***

Unlimited Grace in the context of limitations

A beautiful poem from Kalhana on the form of Ardhanaari of Siva.

'His form seems limited
by sharing his left with the daughter
of the Mountain-King;
On His head shines the moon
limited by digits few;
And He has a weapon
with a break in the middle;
But how does His grace abounds
unlimited on every being
taking refuge in Him !'
(tr mine)

text -
வபு: கண்டே கண்ட: ப்ரதிவஸதி சைலேந்த்ரதுஹிது:
சிகண்டே கண்டேந்து: ஸ்வயமபி விபு: கண்டபரசு:|
ததாபி ப்ரத்யக்ரம் சரணமுபயாதம் ப்ரதிவிபோ:
அகண்டோ வ்யாபாரோ ஜகதி கருணயா விஜயதே ||
(அர்த்தநாரீச்வர ஸ்தோத்ரம்)

*
The tension and the contrariety between the temporal and the eternal, the limited and the unlimited, the local and the universal, the atomic and the all-pervading, the imperfect and the perfect is captured poetically in the form of Siva. His grace alone is the bridge which connects the transient being with the ever-abiding. But nothing can limit that Grace, which is the only saving factor. All else, we do not know and perhaps we can never know.

***

A story about Kalidasa

Sometimes the stories about the poets are as poetical and interesting. Once an ordinary person approached the great poet Kalidasa and expressed his difficulties and dire need of money. Kalidasa had an idea. 'OK today is the birthday of our King. Go and bow down before him and say 'Let you be free of three hurdles'. Definitely you will get something. Don't show in the Sabha that you are known to me or that I have given you this hint.

The person came to the Sabha and bowed before the King and said forgetting the exact words 'Let you be three hurdles!' 

What will happen? Dare any person on the face of the King say that the King be three hurdles! Poor man he forgot the exact wordings - Let you be free of Three hurdles. The King became furious and was about to order something dangerous. But the presence of mind of Kalidasa ! Kalidasa told the King 'Oh Great Emperor of the world! The poor man has said only blessings on you but he has been too economical with his words. Some poets happen to be like that. You see what he said 'Let you be three hurdles" Yea when you sit on the throne he wishes you to face often the hurdle of standing up and welcoming extraordinary scholars to your court. That means he wishes for you the abounding of world-renowned scholars in your court. It is a blessing really even though it is worded as hurdle. It is a welcome hurdle.

And again, while eating he wishes you to face often the hurdle of being disturbed by the pranks of your children, rising up on your laps, snatching your morsels of food, taking sweets away from your plates and eating themselves. Again this hurdle is a blessing in reality. This person wishes such a hurdle for you.

Again in your bed you must be disturbed by your wife and thereby you must lose your sleep in dallying of pleasure. Again is it not a welcome hurdle, a real blessing?

So it is we who must read this person in the right way.'

Wow.. the person got rewarded in extra.

***

Mahabharata and medicine

Do you know Mahabharata? Yea.. you must be knowing. Mahabharata has been written in Tamil poems as Villibharatam by Villiputhurazhwar or Villiputhurar. Also by Nalla pIllai. Also there is one Perundevanar Bharatam, an old work in venba metre. But what I am going to tell is completely different.

This is Mahabharata. That too in Tamil. But it is a medical book. I will come again. This work deals with Vyasa's Mahabharata in so many parvams. Yea sure. And the story is the story of Mahabharata. But it is a medical book. :-) Perplexing?

That is the whole work which is called Theraiyar Maruttu Bharatam is loaded doubly, each verse with two senses, one of the story and one of the medical info. The prosody of Slesha Alankara has been used by Theraiyar to do this.

The book has come out in 1909 published by Mr K S Murugesa Mudaliyar in Vijaya Vikatan Press, Chennai. The book is called Theraiyar aruliya Maruttu Bharata Natakam.

மொழிந்த மருத்துப் பாரதத்தின்
முறை நாடகத்தின் உரை அருத்தம்
உன்னிச் சிலேடை இருபொருளும்
முடித்துக் கொள்ளுவார் பண்டிதரே....

மொழிந்த தேரப் பெருமானும்
உதவியாகப் பண்டிதர்க்கு இங்கு
உறுதி மரும நூல் உரைத்தான்
ஒன்றும் இனிமேல் உரையானே.

So this is perhaps the final work of Theraiyar in his series of medical works in different genres. Here in this work he has spun the epic and the medicine into one. Even the opening prayer song is doubly loaded.

வாதமாய்ப் படைத்துப் பித்த
வன்னியாய்க் காத்துச் சேட்பச்
சீதமாய்த் துடைத்துப் பாராந்
தேகத்திற் குடியாம் ஐந்து
பூத இந்தியமாம் ஐவர்
பூசைகொண்டு அவர்பால் விந்து
நாதமாம் கிஷ்ணமூர்த்தி
நமக்கென்றும் துணையாவாரே.

How very creative people have been down the time! But does anybody care for such rare things in our heritage? That too nowadays people have become highly cell-centric.

***

Ideology and human goodness

Anything which makes us more human, more awakened is good. If religion makes us more broad-minded and more humane then it is good. If what we read makes us more understanding and cognitive of democratic virtues and humane vales then our reading is in the right direction. But if our religion or studies make us more narrow-minded and tradition-bound then what good can come out of it? To become an educated fool cannot be the end of a really worthy life.

The spirit and the letter of a book, that too ancient books, are always different. The letter belongs to an age which is archaic. But if understood in the best of human interests, the spirit of the book may still be inspiring. When you try to understand the spirit, the 'authorities' of the letter become tense and expect you to apply for their sanction, nod and approval. According to them, preferably, you get the whole sense of the text from them. Generally people who are meek and who want easy ways to wisdom prefer to toe their guidance. But it need not be like that, especially if you prefer to retain your freedom of thinking and self-autonomy. Your sincere efforts and meticulous study are guidance enough to make you arrive at any essential and meaningful concept of any path. So don't load any 'authorities' over your head, when you are quite sufficient as a human being.

*
You see, we take to reading to gain knowledge and expand our awareness. The immediate help are the books. Thank God, not like the olden days, when to read or study a work you have to devote a considerable part of your time to get the work from others in any form. Then aids to understanding are another task in those days. If you are fortunate you may get something. But our age has crossed all such miasma. Now chances for knowledge are plenty and free. Only thing is you must have that passion and need.

But while reading there are subtle games played by us, by society and by who not and by what not. When we are deep into any subject we tend to appreciate great people who have very clearly explained things. And we feel extremely grateful when we read the original masters who have given us various theories in various subjects. But so far so good. But the matter does not end there. Slowly we idolize the authors we like in our minds and develop what is called 'hero-worship'. Any worship makes you blind to the aspects of criticism in the person or the field. We tend to attribute only great and sweet things to our idols. That is either we must eulogize or spew hatred. These extremity-addiction is another virus that slowly gets into our mind. But all these show that we possess a bad self-confidence. If we are confident about ourselves we should be more creative in our reading and that too in our reading of very ancient masters to whom we think nothing but salutations should be in our minds.

Another thing, just because we identify something wrong in what has been said by a person contemporary or old need not disturb our general attitude of like or respect to that person. Perhaps we must be more realistic and compassionate both to that person and to us.

***

Swami Vivekananda's Chicago speech and Tamil translations of early decades

Some event in history becomes a sort of magnet-event, attracting the enthusiasm, efforts and involvement of contemporary and succeeding generations. Swami Vivekananda's speech at the Parliament of Religions, Chicago was one such event. Otherwise why should the owner of Anandabodhini journal Mr N Munisamy Mudaliyar ask the Tamil teacher of National College High School in Trichy, Mr E S Varadaraja Iyengar, to translate the Chicago speeches of Swamiji. This was happening in 1929. The Tamil teacher was living in Uraiyur, Saraswathy Nilayam.

Anandabodhini was given its name by His Holiness Karapatra Swamigal, who was at Sadhu Nilayam, Vyasarpadi. From 1915 it was running as a monthly, attracting a subscription of 20000, as the blurb in the backpages says. And when the translation of Chicago addresses was coming out in 1929, in the same year Sri Ramakrishna Math Chennai was bringing out a selection of Swamiji's words bearing on Nationalistic themes and about our country as .Namadu Thaainadu, selected and translated by Ra Krishnamurthy, with the foreword of Swami Yathiswarananda. In the Munnurai Swami Yathiswarananda says that the complete works of Swami Vivekananda was yet to come out in Tamil at that time, 1929 and opines that the said selection of Swamiji's words will well fill the gap in the meantime.

Already in 1921, Mr M S Nateson of Trichy brought out the Tamil translation of the paper on Hinduism by Swami Vivekananda, which forms part of Chicago speeches through The Vivekananda Publishing House, Teppakulam, Tiruchi.

I think even this itself will form a good research theme. i. e. various translations in various regional languages both during when Swamiji was living and after his time in the following decades. And also what were the reactions, informal and written or some comments occurring in some other places.

Yea .. An event having reverberations through time.

***

Something about old books in Tamil

Sometimes the uncle and nephew combination works in a great way in history. One person, who is the uncle is a great poet. He has sung the great epic Ramayana in a shortened form as 'Sangraha Ramayanam'. His name is Narayanaswamy Iyer. It was in, say, before 1908. In about 1000 stanzas in Tamil Mr Narayanasswami Iyer has wrought a miracle. The diction is chaste and the flow is streaming and the imagination is cool. One example is when Hanuman returns back to Sri Rama after seeing Seetha Devi. The famous line in Kambar starts with 'Kanadanan' 'Have seen'. So also here in Sangraha Ramayanam

கண்டனன் சனகன் குலமானைக்
கடுவா யரவங் கலைமதியை
யுண்டா லனைய முகத்தாளை
உணவுன் உணர்வாய் உடையாளை
வண்டார் பொழில்சூழ் இலங்கைநகர்
வனத்தோர் மரத்தின் வடமுகமாய்த்
தண்டா மரையா லுலகேழுந்
தந்தா யெந்தாய்த் தவநிலையை.

Seen the dearest girl of Janaka
with face sorrow-engulfed
like the moon swallowed by the nodes
Her only food is awareness of Thee
seated in the grove under a tree
of Lanka facing the direction north
seven-fold world begotten by Thee
through a Lotus yea I have seen
austerity itself as a form. (Tr mine)

Mr Narayanaswamy Iyer's nephew was one Govindaswamy Iyer. The nephew has written a beautiful life history of the great teacher of Advaita, Sri Sankara. His work is Sankara Vijayam in 767 verses in Tamil. How both are competing each other in diction style and rhythmic flow of poetic fibre! This book came in 1909. One example is when Govinda Yogi teaches Sri Sankara -

நான்கு மாமறை முடிப்பொருள் நான்கையும் நவின்று
வான்க ருப்பொரு ளொன்றிட உத்திகள் வழங்கித்
தான்கு றிப்பொடு பிரணவப் பொருளினைச் சாற்றி
ஊன்க ழித்திடு யோகமுந் தெளிவுற உரைத்தார்.

Teaching the great four Mahavakyas of the four Vedas and instructing on the methods of gaining the nondual identity and giving the secret special teachings about Pranavam and clarifying the salient steps of non-bodiness in Yogic practice Govinda Yogi taught the Great Teacher. (tr mine)

Such an uncle and such a nephew... sometimes it happens so. Is it not?

***

Goethe's Faust in Tamil...

A real character who lived about the first half of the sixteenth century in Germany, who was deep into magic, occultism and transcendent secrets soon became a legend and a myth about a person who was transacting with the devil and ultimately whisked away by the same devil itself and slowly became the main character of Christopher Marlowe's Dr Faustus. And this Marlowe's creation travelled back to Germany and metamorphosed into famous puppet-show on the streets. Seeing the puppet-show, one young genius of Germany was fascinated by the Dr Faustus and right from the twentieth year of Goethe Faust was in the making in the genius mind, written rewritten, adapted, changed to varying stages of life-realisation of the Master Goethe. All these stages reflected beautifully into the magnum opus. And it has become so to say, the soul of Europe, nay, a mirror to man's eternal agony if not to his ecstasy.

When the 100th anniversary of Goethe was celebrated one vibrant Tamil mind took fascination to Goethe's Faust. He was one A Duraiswami Pillai, who was close to Sir C P Ramaswamy Iyer. Perhaps discussions with Sir C P would have fanned his ardour much more and hence followed a beautiful translation of Faust of Goethe into Tamil as 'Vaasthu' in 1954. Mr Duraiswami Pillai thought it better to change the names of main characters of Faust into near-sounding Indian names like Faust to Vaastu, Wagner to Varagunan, Margaret to Maragatham, Valentine to Vijayan and so on.

(This of course I don't like generally. Any translation should not be made too homely in the receptor-language. The strangeness should be kept on to the essential limits, so that you are doing justice to both the cultures. If you make it too homely then you are hiding the difference instead of trusting the readers that they will appreciate those who are different from themselves. Moreover the very idea of translation is introducing the strange rather than a rendezvous of the familiar)

In the opening Faust is saying -

'I have, alas! Philosophy,
Medicine, Jurisprudence too,
And to my cost Theology,
With ardent labour, studied through.
And here I stand, with all my lore,
Poor fool, no wiser than before...'

The Tamil translation of Mr A Duraiswami Pillai speaks -

'சொல்லும் பொருளும் தொடரா ஒன்றின்
எல்லையைக் காண இரவும் பகலும்
தத்துவ சாத்திரம் மெத்தவும் கற்றேன்.
புத்தேள் இயற்கை இத்தகைத் தென்றிடும்
கொள்கைகள் ஒன்றோடொன் றொவ்வாச்சமய
சாத்திரம் பலவும் பார்த்துச் சலித்தேன்;
நீதிநூல் மருத்துவம் ஓதினேன் எனினும்
அறிவொரு சிறிதும் சிறந்திடக் காணேன்!
கற்றறி மூடனாய்க் கழிந்தேன்; அந்தோ!..’

Yea, we in our Tamilnad have never been lacking in our interests in Vedantha, Literature, Poetry, Arts and Science.

***

Preface and Grace !

Preface and Grace. What connection is there between these two? Preface introduces a book that follows. Grace introduces you to the God who follows. That is, before you are about to get realisation of God, Grace of God ccomes prior to that and prepares you for the great moment.

Preface comes to your level and takes you to the level of the book. In the same way Grace comes to your level and takes you to God's level.

This point is used as a simile by the author of Maran Alankaram, Thirukkurukur Perumal Kavirayar. Maran Alankaram is an old Tamil book about structural beauties and embellishments of a composition, mostly in verse. We can say it is an old form of structural literary theory in Tamil. In that book the author wants to impress on the minds of readers the necessity of a preface in any work. Any work big or small should be having a preface to facilitate the understanding of those who study the work. There in that work he says

'Just like literary features of any poem
And like truthfulness in the words of those who are well-read and clear in their understanding
Just like Grace which suits the God Narayana
So is apt and a must, a preface for any real book.'

பாவிற்கு அணிபோல்
பனுவல் தெளிவுணர்ந்தோர் நாவிற்கு வாய்மை போல்
நாரணம் ஆம் - தேவிற்கு
வாய்ந்த அருள்போல வாய்ந்ததே நூலகத்தாய்
ஏய்ந்த பொருட் பாயிரம்.’
(பாயிரம் - preface)

***

Vedantha with three meanings

When you are wondering about the great efforts taken in bringing out the first four sutras with the commentaries of Sri Ramanuja and Sudharsana Bhatta, how will you react to this one which came out in 1905. It is captioned 'Sankara Ramanuja Nilakanta bhashyangalai anusarittha padavurai koodiya Brahma sutra dravida bhashyam'. i.e. Tamil commentary of Brahma sutras which incorporates the meanings from the commentaries of Sankara, Ramanuja and Nilakanta. The meanings were translated from Sanskrit by Tarkatheerthar Sriman U Ve Singapperumal Kovil Maatabhoosi Ramanujacharya Swamigal, assistance in corrections was by Advaithappravanar Vidwan Seetharama Sastri and published by A Ananthacharya, printed in Sastra Sanjeevini Press. The book covers the whole Brahma Sutra of four Adhyayas in about 350 pages.

Ventures big and small, comprehensive and in depth have been always there to take Vedantic knowledge to the people through Tamil. Whether it is Vedantic anthology many centuries ago or Jnaana vaasittam with commentaries or translations in Tamil of Sanskrit Commentaries, the continued efforts and activities and the team-work of scholars and enthusiasts are astounding.

***

Tirumaal Kural

And who is this man, Punnai Maadabhoosi Srinivasachariyar? Tamil Pandit of Chennai Presidency College in the year 1899. He has written a very small book in Tamil, 'Tirumaal Kural', just 14 pages in print, containing 108 kurals or short couplets on Tirumaal or Sri Vishnu. Who would have read this book... perhaps he gave the copies away as complimentary. But some would have really read this small book at least in his own days. Why I am asking is this, nobody has referred such a beautiful little composition in Kural metre on the theme of Tirumaal. I have heard nobody mentioning such a work or such an author, even in devotional circles not to speak of in academic. And really Oh me! the couplets are a real treat.

திருமா மகளிருக்குஞ் சீர்மார்பன் பாத
மருமா மலர்பணிந்தேன் மன்.

விடகோப வாயரவின் மேவுபிரான் பாதச்
சடகோபா நீயே சரண்

அவந்தீர வென்னெஞ்சே யானைமருப் பீர்த்த
நவநீதக் கையனையே நாடு

ஆங்கமல நீர்போ லமைந்தும் பிரிந்திருப்பார்
தாங்கமலை மார்பன் றமர்.

அருளா லுலகெல்லா மன்றளக்க நீண்ட
கருளக் கொடியானே கா

குஞ்சரநீள் கையெடுத்துக் கூவக் குளக்கரைவா
யஞ்சலென வந்தா யளி.

... so on and on... it goes in doubles till 108

புகலரிய நான்மறைக்கும் போற்றரியாய் நிற்குக்
குகன்றம்பி யானதுமோர் கூத்து

அருளொழுகுங் கண்ணினையு மம்புயநேர் வாயும்
மருளறயான் காணவெதிர் வா

வாயுனையே வாழ்த்துகவுன் வண்ணத்தைக் காண்கவிழி
மாயவுன்பேர் கேட்கசெவி மற்று.

And the whole work runs in Andaadi, previous ending beginning the next.

***

Non-antagonistic Awareness....

I am going to tell you a unique story. Story..? Nay.... it happened in reality. So how can it be a story? But while narrating about it we have to make some story-line you know. Some 700 hundred years ago (some may say no no 600, some others 500, some again 400...) but as per the editors of the book 'Sivappirakasap Perunthirattu' K Vadivelu Chettiyar and M Shanmuga Mudaliyar, the book of anthology of Vedantic verses available in Tamil some 700 years ago was made by one Swarupanandar in the name of his Master Sivappirakasar. Hence the name Sivappirakasap Perunthirattu - which means 'The Great anthology of Sivappirakasa'. Swami Swarupanandar has made this anthology of Vedantic poems and verses out of nearly more than 140 Tamil works of Vedantha which were all available then. How many of those have survived the flow of Time, nobody knows. But whatever verses have been included in this anthology are a net gain to us. This anthology was published in 1912, printed in Chennai Komaleswaranpettai Press. Nearly all the poems are nuggets of gold in Vedantha. We can be really proud of our Vedantic heritage in our Tamil. One verse caught my attention somehow. It is this.

’எடுத்த எம் மதம் எந்நூல்கள் யாவையும் தமதாய் ஆங்கு
வடித்த நற்பொருளே கொண்டு வளம்பட மகிழ்வதல்லால்
படித்து ஒரு பொருளைப் பற்றிப் பாங்கினால் அதில் ஒதுங்கிப்
பிடித்தது பிடித்துக் காதும் பேதைமை பெரியோர்க்கு இன்றே.’

Meaning -
'Great men consider whatever ideologies and whatever books they come across, they read those books deeply and make whatever good thoughts in those books and ideologies they are able to find, their own and rejoice in such good things. Such men never become partisan and take sides with any single thought in the books they read and they never make quarrels based on their likes and dislikes.'

What great sentiments and mature approach !

And by the by this verse comes in an old Vedantic Tamil work, viz., 'avirOdabOdam', meaning may be 'Non-antagonistic Awareness'

*

"If there is one feature more than another, which characterises Hindu thought, it is its hospitality to the different conceptions of reality. Man's attempt to comprehend the truth, which is limitless, is bound to result in different views. To take our stand on one limited view and make it adequate to the vast reality is the mistake which all dogmatists make. The acceptance of a limited view becomes a barrier to the understanding of truths. A seeker should recognise the immensity of reality and the inadequacy of limited views and formulas."
(Sir S Radhakrishnan, Foreword to Darsanodhaya of Mahamahopadhyaya Panditaratnam Lakshmipuram Srinivasachariar)

***

Something not here and not there...!

Oh, me! I am stuck in focus on these lines of Bert Meyers -

"Once, in autumn, I saw the sun
pause in the wrinkles of a tree
like passion on an old man’s face...."

What lines! You feel the rough skin of the trees rubbing on words. As if the universe of words overstepping the universe of things ! 

***
It seems there are quite a number of victims of History in the field of thought. One such seems to be Herbert Spencer. He is one who wrote about evolution years before Darwin. But of course minus the part of natural selection. But more comprehensive than Darwin's, in that, Herbert Spencer was able to talk about evolution in the spheres of society, culture. What he wrote seems to be that evolution works towards more perfection, from the gross and banal and militant towards being more cooperative, finer and humane mutual transactions. But, lo...! history being sometimes reckless and devoid of any considering... has branded HS with the idea of 'social darwinism'.
( History..! sometimes you do not read your texts well... be good and behave well..! :-) ) 

*
A great philosopher of the logical positivist school, A J Ayer, was uncompromising in his stand that statements which do not lend themselves to empirical verification or analytical exercise are quite meaningless. A great hit at the traditional metaphysics indeed. He was not a shy away philosopher when he confronted the unwanted advances of Mike Tyson on a new model in a party given by a fashion designer, saying 'I suggest we talk about this like rational men'.

Just one year before his death, A J Ayer had a near-death experience. On recovery he said that the experience slightly weakened his conviction that his genuine death will be the end of him. Later he opined that he should have rather told instead 'my experiences have weakened, not my belief that there is no life after death, but my inflexible attitude towards that belief'.

Strange! We demand that we should experience ourselves to accept anything. But will we allow ourselves to accept our experiences? 

* 

Francis Thompson is as usual rocking! He has always an unexpected twist and tinge of mystic note.

This is unusual about poets -

'Thou canst foreshape thy word;
The poet is not lord
Of the next syllable may come
With the returning pendulum;
And what he plans to-day in song,
To-morrow sings it in another tongue.
Where the last leaf fell from his bough,
He knows not if a leaf shall grow;
Where he sows he doth not reap,
He reapeth where he did not sow;
He sleeps, and dreams forsake his sleep
To meet him on his waking way.'

How different in tone and timbre this one ! --

'I sprinkled a few drops of verse,
And said to Ruin: 'Quit thy hearse;'
To my Loved: Pale not, come with me;
I will escort thee down the years.
With me thou walk'st immortally.'

And in the Echo of Victor Hugo these beautiful lines --

'Life's a veil the real has:
All the shadows of our scene
Are but shows of things that pass
On the other side the screen.

Time his glass sits nodding by;
'Twixt its turn and turn a spawn
Of universes buzz and die
Like the ephemeris of the dawn.'

***

Philosophy of English Grammar

Usually people think that English grammar is not so nuanced and if you familiarize yourself with some subject, predicate, object ok the working English is ready at hand. But it is not so. There are very many nuances in the structure of English sentences which pay attention to aspects of psychology, cognition and culture. For example the adjectives and the noun. You cannot put adjectives before nouns in haphazard manner. There is a priority and scaling spanning from right to left preceding the noun itself. There are seven such positions receding to left from the noun. An adjective of material of which the noun is composed or an adjective of origin from which the noun has come should take the immediate preceding position before the noun. Then any adjective which describes the colour; then the adjective which informs about the age; then the adjective which describes the state or condition of the noun; then the adjective of shape; then the adjective which tells about the size; then in the last place to the left comes adjectives of our opinion about the noun. Just think about the philosophical chain connecting the observer and the object. The adjectives scale from the most subjective which is nearer to the observer to the most objective which is nearer to the object - left to right. And seen otherwise from the most objective next to the noun to the most subjective near to the speaker - right to left. The chain of observation is scaled subjective to objective by the adjectives. Thank God I didn't become an English teacher ! 

***

Hindu Philosophic Thought

There is a very great potential in Hindu philosophic thought, which opens up only when you engage in it in all seriousness. And comparative philosophical study can provide a great tool to cognize the depth and implications. Of course it need not be said that bromides are hurdles in the path of right understanding.

Take the case of 'will and desire' as Spinoza juxtaposes them or 'language and thought' as Wittgenstein will put it. Let us imagine the whole human being as an intricate machine and nothing else. Let us say that desire is just the bio-face and the cognition by the brain in flux-mode. i.e. a set of impulses read with the tag 'value' by the nature's computer is what is felt as desire. Just let us suppose. Then what is will? i.e. the set of thrusts which come inside out in efforts of attaining or obtaining the 'desired'? Now we have slipped a word 'effort'. So 'willing' 'taking effort' all depend on and at the initial point of cognizing. If all these are only bio-processes superannuating one over another linearly or recursively, if we ever think so, then we can heave a sigh of relief which will be only short lived. Because the fundamental problem of the core of being which cognizes, wills and/or engage in action still crops up all the more brutally after our suave attempts at reductive burial into matter. Hindu philosophic thought openly admits and recognises this problem of infinite regression and straight-away admits it. Instead of positing shilly shally stands Hindu thought says that the core of being where all these infinite regressions inhabit is what is called soul. The Atman is defined by these basic energies or potencies of 'knowing' willing' and 'acting'. Jnana, Icchaa, Kriya sakthis.

In the spectrum of world when you are able to read features of knowing, willing and acting you can honestly admit of the soul rather than attempting makeshifts.

In this train of thought one book shadows up in memory with its cover and first page, which I read in District Central Library Chennai some years ago- Language and Silence by George Steiner. Not that the book may have any bearings on this but sometimes the vague memories team up or the vague memory steams up. any way.

***

The Writer and the Society

Do writers change the society around them or is it perhaps the writers rise to the silent demands and expectations of the public? That means the about-changing society creates a silent need which the writers fulfill by their creative ventures. Or is it just a writer writes something and the society wakes up by that and goes in a new direction? Yea we can think a lot both ways. This thought was occurring to me having the great poet Bharathi in mind, when I was reading the introduction written in the DeLuxe edition of Joseph Addison's Essays. Perhaps it is written by John Richard Green who has edited it. Of course an old book. And Joseph Addison is a master of language of the yester-years. But so what, the crux of the problem is still fresh.

'If Marlborough and Somers had their share in shaping the new England that came of 1688, so also had Addison and Steele. And to the bulk of people it may be doubted whether the change that passed over literature was not more startling and more interesting than the change that passed over politics. Few changes, indeed, have ever been so radical and complete. Literature suddenly doffed its stately garb of folio or octavo, and stepped abroad in the light and easy dress of pamphlet and essay. Its long arguments and cumbrous sentences condensed themselves into the quick reasoning and terse easy phrases of ordinary conversation. Its tone lost the pedantry of the scholar, the brutality of the controversialist, and aimed at being unpretentious, polite, urbane. The writer aimed at teaching, but at teaching in pleasant and familiar ways; he strove to make evil unreasonable and ridiculous; to shame men by wit and irony out of grossness and bad manners; to draw the world to piety and virtue by teaching piety and virtue themselves to smile. And the change of subject was as remarkable as the change of form.'

Then he draws attention to what change of subject was there. It is interesting that such attentive writing has been done about the abstract features of the social interests and expressions.

'Letters found a new interest in the scenes and characters of the common life around them, in the chat of the coffee-house, the loungers of the Mall, the humors of the street, the pathos of the fireside. Every one has felt the change that passed in this way over our literature; but we commonly talk as if the change had been a change in the writers of the time, as if the intelligence which produces books had suddenly taken of itself a new form, as if men like Addison had conceived the Essay and their readers had adapted themselves to this new mode of writing. The truth lies precisely the other way. In no department of human life does the law of supply and demand operate so powerfully as in literature. Writers and readers are not two different classes of men: both are products of the same social and mental conditions: and the thoughts of the one will be commonly of the same order and kind as the thoughts of the other.'

He has put forth his observations in a clear and forceful way. And I was thinking of the situations as applied to the days of Bharathi and his times. It is easier to think that a writer comes as a lever to push ahead the society and the society gains momentum only at that instant. Or should we think in more details and only then we arrive at the real picture.?

***

Old and ever new !

And Anne Bronte(sister of Charlotte Bronte) of the olden years.(mid 19th C E). but the lines feel fresh as hidden leaves in the rain --

'I'll rest me in this sheltered bower,
And look upon the clear blue sky
That smiles upon me through the trees,
Which stand so thickly clustering by;

And view their green and glossy leaves,
All glistening in the sunshine fair ;
And list the rustling of their boughs,
So softly whispering through the air.

And while my ear drinks in the sound,
My winged soul shall fly away;
Reviewing long departed years
As one mild, beaming, autumn day' 

*
Francis Thompson is as usual rocking! He has always an unexpected twist and tinge of mystic note.

This is unusual about poets -

'Thou canst foreshape thy word;
The poet is not lord
Of the next syllable may come
With the returning pendulum;
And what he plans to-day in song,
To-morrow sings it in another tongue.
Where the last leaf fell from his bough,
He knows not if a leaf shall grow;
Where he sows he doth not reap,
He reapeth where he did not sow;
He sleeps, and dreams forsake his sleep
To meet him on his waking way.'

How different in tone and timbre this one ! --

'I sprinkled a few drops of verse,
And said to Ruin: 'Quit thy hearse;'
To my Loved: Pale not, come with me;
I will escort thee down the years.
With me thou walk'st immortally.'

And in the Echo of Victor Hugo these beautiful lines --

'Life's a veil the real has:
All the shadows of our scene
Are but shows of things that pass
On the other side the screen.

Time his glass sits nodding by;
'Twixt its turn and turn a spawn
Of universes buzz and die
Like the ephemeris of the dawn.'

*
And how oft we have run after strange ideals and stranger visions! All in the passionate longing that we must reach those one day. We profess in our progressive youth many plans for our future. And all at last how oft many have returned back to their childhood faith! However simple and however unpretentious the childhood idol beckons and quite unsung and feeling no need of noise we lay our heads on its laps. Our fevers assuaged, our world reassured.. our childhood thickly remembered.

Thomas O'Hagan has something to say on this -

'Hearts oft bow before strange idols,
Strength of power and breath of fame,
And forgetful of life's morning
Dream of noontide's gilded name;
But the idol that I cherish
Knows no glory e'en in part—
'Tis the simple faith of childhood
Long grown strong within my heart.

In the darkest hour of trial,
When each star has veiled its face,
Turn I fondly to my idol,
Full of heavenly light and grace;—
Then my step grows firm and steady
Down the mystic path of night.
For the simple faith of childhood
Guides me, leads me ever right.'

Perhaps the adage is true - 'Child is the father of man.'

***

The message of the stars !

A life-time of extensive and deep and intense scholarship makes one a good student at last. Education's humility just makes you come to senses.

What a wonderful collection is this The World's Best Poetry - set of ten volumes which came in 1904, published by John D Morris and Company! In the first volume I came across the full form of that old beautiful nursery poem - 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star...'

Who has written this, perhaps nobody knows. The author is given as anonymous.

'TWINKLE, twinkle, little star;
How I wonder what you are!
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky.

When the glorious sun is set,
When the grass with dew is wet,
Then you show your little light,
Twinkle, twinkle, all the night.

When the blazing sun is gone,
When he nothing shines upon,
Then you show your little light,
Twinkle, twinkle, all the night.

In the dark-blue sky you keep,
And often through my curtains peep;
For you never shut your eye
Till the sun is in the sky.

As your bright and tiny spark
Lights the traveller in the dark,
Though I know not what you are,
Twinkle, twinkle, little star! '

What sentiments! And what passion with nature !. All along the child's mind and outlook is kept intact. And with that all which need be told is told. My salutations to the poet whoever he might have been.

***

Full Moon of the Masters

People are wondering, 'can a single man write so much? is he one author or many called by the same name?' All such bewilderment is meaningless. For one Vyasa, you are thinking like that. What about such persons of extensive calibre, not one but many down the time? Some persons write one or two books in their lifetime. But some write not one or two, but libraries of books. Occasions have been many even till our own time. Otherwise how can you explain a Ganganatha Jha? Do you know what he has produced?

A scholar who has translated into English the tough commentary of Logic, Vatsyayana's Nyaya Bhashya. And he has written his own commentary. In our scale, simply a job of lifetime. Even this alone.

And again he has translated that still more tough and dry commentary of Purva Mimamsa, Sabara Bhashya. In my scale it is a job of two lifetimes. Not only that. There is a commentary on Sabara Bhashya by Kumarila Bhatta. One commentary? Nay but two. Slokavartika and Tantravartika. All these are running into more than 1000 pages 1500 pages or 2000 pages when translated and put into printed pages. Can you imagine the tediousness of translating, that too from a highly technical treatise in Sanskrit? It is a real challenge to your powers of imagination.

The giant is not satisfied with doing all these immense jobs. He has translated Manusmriti with commentaries in five volumes. And of course he has also translated Yoga Sastra with its commentary. And there is another book, Buddhist, Tattva Sangraham by Santarakshita with the commentary of Kamalasila. Our G Jha has translated the whole text and commentary into English in two volumes, all more than 1500 pages. And Chandogya Upanishad with the commentary of Sankara translated. I am trying to list only what comes to my mind. There are many more.

In addition to all these herculean tasks, our 'Vyasa' has written a lot of original treatises, which are superb and sine qua non. Books like Purva Mimamsa in its original Sources, Sources of Hindu Law, Prabhakara School of Purva Mimamsa and again many more.

In addition, yea, in addition to all these, he has edited innumerable texts. And not to speak of hundreds of articles written for scholarly journals.

As for me, Vyasa has always been a Present Tense in our history. And he will remain so for ever. Salutations to Vyasa on this Full Moon of the Masters.

***

Some bits of thought....

Oh, me! I am stuck in focus on these lines of Bert Meyers -

"Once, in autumn, I saw the sun
pause in the wrinkles of a tree
like passion on an old man’s face...."

What lines! You feel the rough skin of the trees rubbing on words. As if the universe of words overstepping the universe of things !

***

No matter to what high you rise, to what low you sink, you can never escape discovering yourself where you are in the logging of the Life Divine. What a giant book and what sympathy the Super-Yogi should have had on human beings in pursuit, to have taken so much pains and time to have penned it! Thanks is a very self-shy meek word when one realises more and more the importance of the Book.

***

A great philosopher of the logical positivist school, A J Ayer, was uncompromising in his stand that statements which do not lend themselves to empirical verification or analytical exercise are quite meaningless. A great hit at the traditional metaphysics indeed. He was not a shy away philosopher when he confronted the unwanted advances of Mike Tyson on a new model in a party given by a fashion designer, saying 'I suggest we talk about this like rational men'.

Just one year before his death, A J Ayer had a near-death experience. On recovery he said that the experience slightly weakened his conviction that his genuine death will be the end of him. Later he opined that he should have rather told instead 'my experiences have weakened, not my belief that there is no life after death, but my inflexible attitude towards that belief'.

Strange! We demand that we should experience ourselves to accept anything. But will we allow ourselves to accept our experiences? 

***

It seems there are quite a number of victims of History in the field of thought. One such seems to be Herbert Spencer. He is one who wrote about evolution years before Darwin. But of course minus the part of natural selection. But more comprehensive than Darwin's, in that, Herbert Spencer was able to talk about evolution in the spheres of society, culture. What he wrote seems to be that evolution works towards more perfection, from the gross and banal and militant towards being more cooperative, finer and humane mutual transactions. But, lo...! history being sometimes reckless and devoid of any considering... has branded HS with the idea of 'social darwinism'.
( History..! sometimes you do not read your texts well... be good and behave well..! :-) )

***

The human gaze has the power of conferring value on things; but it makes them cost more too.
- Ludwig Wittgenstein

என் நெஞ்சினால் நோக்கிக் காணீர், என்னை முனியாதே ! 

- நம்மாழ்வார்

(The modern artists may say, 'look! don't ask for meaning. You confer meaning by your Gaze...:-) - just for kidding...)

What is it to 'Know'?

What is it to 'Know'? Knowing is not a linear acquisition or a log of tasks finished or a line of books read. It is always being present in awareness in the present tense. It is better explained negatively as becoming aware of one's ignorance. Gadamer is right when he says "But this is not the way of human wisdom. A knowledge of our own ignorance is what human wisdom is." when he is trying to explain what exactly the socratic method consists in. Taking great pains to know you end up by realising that you have been unsuspectingly ignorant even in things which you thought you knew very well.

That is why many persons are not convenient about 'knowing as such'. It always disturbs. Great efforts are put only to come up with a realisation of one's ignorance, unsuspected so far. So rather they compromise and become comfortable with a pseudo. That is, words, quotations, others' books as authority. 

Study the books rather and attain the scholarship. So tangible and a permanent credit score, is it not? So the unambiguous explaining of Books becomes the fashion and a silent substitute. The process of real 'Knowing' is so threatening. Every moment, every time you are shown that you have been ignorant. Bah! you can't happily recline on your 'credits gained easy chair' !

But 'Knowing' knows no compromise. If you want to know you must be ready for being humiliated by the reality any time and what time one does not know. Humility becomes a better definition of you to yourself.

***

On translating Sri Bhashyam into Tamil...

Srirangam.... some 82 years ago. A great savant of Sri Vaishnavism, Kaarappangaadu DesiVaradhacharya Swamigal, who was residing at Srirangam then, was giving a series of lectures along with a close reading of Sri Ramanuja's Sri Bhashya.

Sri Bhashya is the commentary written by Sri Ramanuja on the Brahma Sutras of Maharishi Vyasa, explaining and establishing the VisishtAdvaitic theory of Vedanta. After Sri Ramanuja, a great follower of the Acharya, Vyasaacharya as called by Periya Perumal (VyAsAcharyA's real name was Sri Sudarsana Bhattar) wrote a commentary on the commentary of Sri Ramanuja. It is called SrutaprakAsikA. SrutaprakAsikA explains word by word, phrase by phrase Sri Bhashya of Sri Ramanuja. So the two commentaries together make the meaning of Brahma Sutras clear and distinct and establish the Visishtadvaitic school of interpretation.

Needless to say, the commentaries, the text everything is in Sanskrit and that too in very terse and technical parlance. That means every word is seen in its etymological, grammatical, linguistic-philosophical and logical senses. In my young age I have seen many scholars studying this great Library of Vedanta every day at fixed hours sitting before a teacher, who used to meticulously explain line by line, passage by passage, para by para, i e taking the meaning-units into focus. It is a great way of close and intense reading of the texts. The study runs into years and when one batch of students finish their course, the next batch is ready, sitting on the same old Thinnai. Their 'read-aloud, repeat and explain' rigmarole accented by only the notes of the sparrows picking at grains and the daylight growing into midday. Sometimes our pebble-play used to irritate the scholars and we used to get chastening hisses silencing us.

I was telling about the Kaarappangaadu Swami. Yea. And those who were regularly hearing his lectures given at Udayavar Sannidhi were becoming terribly interested in Sri Bhashya. They thought of a great project. People who were well-versed in Sanskrit and people who did not know that language, all of those came together and decided to bring the great system of learning accessible to all anxious persons, solving the problem of language by translating the Work into Tamil.

Sometime before 1930, during one Iraappatthu festival, a great committee of savants and important people of the town of Srirangam and other Divyadesams was formed. And who was the Chairman?

'SriBhashyam Tamizh Mozhipeyarppu Sangam' so was the name of the committee called and its President was Prapanna Vidwan Sriman T D Ramaswamy Naidu of ThiruppuRambiyam. He was so earnest that he put in a great part of his money into the project along with many like-minded donors. As the initial part of the project, the first four sutras of Brahma Sutra were taken for translation into Tamil, SriBhashya along with the supra-elaborate commentary on that viz., SrutaprakAsikA. The first four sutras or aphorisms of BS forms the introduction part of the Vedanta Sutras. The said four as a group is called UpOdgAtam, preface or foreword. And every sutra in the first four forms an adhikarana by itself. An adhikarana is so to say 'a topic'. Usually many sutras form one addhikarana. But in the case of the first four sutras or aphorisms, every sutra by itself is a topic apart.

The first sutra or the first topic is explained very elaborately and as a result, you have a whole book-size portion of commentaries attending to the first. Translated, the commentaries SriBhashya and SrutaprakAsikA for the first sutra comes to more than 800 pages. And the book is large size, microprint, the Tamil translation occupying all the space in the pages. And this for the very first sutra alone. The translation of SriBhashya in a bigger font-size and the SrutaprakAsikA in a smaller font, the translation is stupefying and extraordinary. The first sutra was translated by Mahamahopadhyaya Srimat U Ve T V Srnivasacharya, Head of the Department of Sanskrit in St Joseph's college Trichy. All these happened in 1930.

And it is not the end of the story. Sri Villiputhur Kanthadai Srimat U Ve Srinivasacharya of Nampillai Sabha, Tiruchi conducted a continued Kalakshepa based on the Tamil translation, perhaps to make a test run of the Tamil book.

And enthusiasm is contagious you know! Seeing these people deep into the project, a Trichy Advocate Mimamsaratnam, Srimath U Ve A V Gopalacharya joined the project. He at a stroke finished the commentaries for the remaining three sutras in the Introduction part of four sutras. The second volume containing 2nd, 3rd, and 4th adhikaranas came out in 1937. What a glorious decade ! 1928 to 1938. And who will say that He is a Sleeping God! No never.

And who collated, fair-copied, collected and streamlined the regular installments from the translators? He was a silent giant. Srimat U Ve N K Raghavacharya, a teacher in Srirangam Boys High School. He was Prapandha Upadhyaya in the School. And another great silent soul who took charge of publishing and other managerial matters related was Sriman R A Bangaruswami Naidu, Honorary Magistrate, Srirangam at that time. And it was printed in SriVilasam Printing Press by Srimat U Ve S M Sundararaja Iyengar.

No details as to whether the project ran its full course completing the whole canon. At least as to my knowledge of the matter so far. But the work done, even though it is only for the Upodgatham of first four sutras, 840 + 390 pages of a large size book of micro size print, for the first time translation into Tamil was done, test run and the project for the introduction part of four sutras completed.

Are they of a different race, giant and extra terrestrial ! And all sections of people coming together in a great project... is it not what is signified by all common social worships and celebrations !

***

We Start from Where We Stand !

The meaning of the word Ishta Devatha Nishta is - 

Ishta - one's own liking; Devatha -- Godhead
Nishta -- deeply involved practice.

So this 'deeply involved devotion towards one's Choice of Godhead' is never allowed to become, in any way, fanaticism. Because, even from the Vedic times, the Universal Idea has been firmly implanted in the Hindu's mind.

'There is but one Truth; Sages have been calling it by different names'

'The water falls from the Sky and flows through many ways to the self-same Sea; likewise the devotions towards many Gods ultimately reach the self-same Kesava'

The same thought is given in a sloka of Siva Mahimna stotra.

So the General and Universal aspect of Hinduism always worked in tandem with the individual worships of Chosen Gods. This two layered structure was organic rather than artificial. It was not an outwardly agreed upon arrangement but something which was evolved through the internal exercise of coupling the vast spiritual freedom with inevitable human limitations. The human nature was at no time ignored. The transcendence of abstractions was at no time lost sight of. The whole field of Religion was a veritable education for the Hindus.

Any human being can start anywhere and go by his own path unhampered by any sort of sojourners' pressure.

You unto your path
Me unto mine
And for us there is
Always the Divine.

***

Complete and Creative !

The Devotee's passion is to see his Chosen God as the Ultimate and God Almighty of the universe. The Jnani's passion is to merge in the Ultimate. Both ways are seeing the same thing from different perspectives, provided, you don't get sabotaged by fanaticism or snobbery of intellectualism.

If by becoming narrow in your chosen devotion, you become more spiritual, then your narrowness is blessed. If by becoming more universal and more abstract in your inner most mind, you go nearer to the Ultimate Soul, then your universal and abstract outlook is blessed. What matters is, are you going towards the Centre?

If the circumference takes you towards the centre, then it serves its central Soul. If the radii take you away from the Centre, then the radius is wretched. But Hinduism is a Beautiful Circle. The radii never take you away. And the circumference never makes you dry.

Did I say a beautiful circle? Yes, and more than that, an enchanting spiral and an engulfing spherical. An expert artist is fond of free variations of his tunes. Never is he content in striking a mono chord. The God of the Hindus is highly aesthetic.

Art seems to be Its passion. It rejoices in the sight of the ardent soul. It comes unseen as the abstract vastness.
It hides Itself in the heart as the possessing Love.
Treading the solo path, the soul takes to wings every now and then. To arrest it in any single walk may become an injustice to the Infinite. To feign a vastness where you have to feel pangs of Love may be an act of deserting the Centre.
Who knows which soul is in what delicate equilibrium of spiritual growth?

It is this mystical humility, the real concern imbued with spiritual expectation, that is at the heart of all the systems and paths of Hinduism.

What are The Texts ?

It is great and grand enough to be universal and all inclusive, just like the Sky and the Sea. Hinduism is of course a beautiful circle. But are there any books of reference, in times of preparatory years and the beginning steps of one's spirituality. Any definite anchor to stay floating and not to drift aimlessly.

Even birds which fly inter-continentally, do carry some chart of instincts in their flights. The Soul after all, does have its beginning in self-realization, in the mortal coil. Books are indispensable in any religion, even in those religions which have dispensed with gods.

Hinduism prescribes three prime most important books. It has garnered all its spiritual values in there, in those three books. Upanishads, Brahma Sutras Bhagavath Gita.

Upanishads proper are called the Vedantha, the culminations and conclusions of the Vedic inquiries. Vedanthas are also called the Sruthis, the Revelations heard. These three books are called Prasthana Thraya. Three Books based on the primacy of three facets of spiritual quest.

What are those? Sruthi, Yukthi, Anubhava

Revelation, Reasoning, Experiencing.

The Book that is based on the Revelation is Vedanthas or Upanishads. The Book that is based on Reasoning is Brahma Sutras. The Book that is based on Experiencing is Bhagavath Gita.

Man comes to know of God only when He informs of His presence through some ways. He is not of the category of concrete things. He is definitely abstract. He is the abstraction of abstractions. So He is known more clearly through Words. For only words can connote more than concrete the abstractions. Hence the Book of Revelations.
Then comes the Book of Reasoned out arguments on the Upanishadic concepts. Human Reason is given full scope to analyze and understand the Heard Book of The Divine.
Textual exegesis and hermeneutics form very important tools along with the philosophical understanding of the Grammar.
Only then ensues the study of Brahma Sutras or Vedantha Mimamsa. Then comes the Book of Experiencing, viz., Bhagavath Gita. The whole Gita pours out of the involved experiencing of Sri Krishna, the greatest Vedanthic teacher ever born.

*** 

Three and Four Again !

To speak of abstractions is good. But life happens to run on details. That too daily, domestic concerns and cares.
We are impelled to actions more out of necessity than out of intellectual commitment. Human being is an acting being as much as a willing being, as much as a knowing being. To know, to will and to act form the three facets of the self-same soul.

Jnathruthvam - the faculty of knowing; karthruthvam -- the faculty of acting; bhogthruthvam -- the faculty of enjoying
describe the three facets of the Soul. These three facets form the basic psychology of any individual. So any spiritual practice must incorporate in itself different strands of these triads. Hinduism has devised four such modus operandi -- viz., the four Yogas -- the Jnana Yoga, the Karma Yoga, the Bhakthi Yoga and the Raja Yoga or the psychological Yoga proper.

***

That Which Sustains is Dharma !

All the world religions talk about something in Heaven, which man must reach. Religion is other-worldly, according to them.
They compensate that aspect of their religions by doing social service, as the main practice of their faith. Of course they combine it with propaganda. But the main idea is that Divinity is something from above into man or from outside into man's life. So religion as an institution of training men to mourn and wish for a super reality is inherent in world religions.

But Hinduism never talks of religion as such. It always speaks of Dharma. Dharma is the reality as it is in principles.
From atom to cosmos Dharma runs like a golden thread.
The sustained, becomes the sustainer, through out nature.
It is best for man to find out as early as possible his place in this universe. Fulfill your place in nature and that in turn will fulfill your nature as a man. According to Dharma, you have the final beatitude always in you, carrying it through all stages of the growth. The troubles start when you act in neglect of your value in Dharma.

Divinity is not somewhere. It is, has been, and will be shining in your heart. In the heart of every being, He resides and moves the world. 

***

Red Green and Amber !

Divine Revelation Debating Reason Devotional experience
These are the triple lights that form the basic canons of Hinduism. Vedas or Shruthi is the light of Divine Revelation.
Brahma Sutras is the light of debating Reason. Srimad Bhagavad Gita is the light of Devotional Experience. All the three lights bring to vision the same reality.

What Reason understands of the Revelation, Experience confirms. Shruthi, Yukthi, Anubhava are the words used by the great Adisankara for Revelation, Reason and Experience.
But what is the basic proof of Religion according to Hinduism? Is it reading, debating, being emotional, building an empire of the faith? Not anyone of these. They mean nothing, if the basic proof is not there. The basic proof is not believing something. It is 'Seeing God'.

To see God is the basic proof of Religion. It is the Vision, which the words explicate. Beholding is the base, believing may be only a prop on the way. The Vision is not concrete. It is the Transcendental Vision.

Words are not mundane but they descend to the earth carrying the pure warmth of Divinity, only to form the ascend back along with men.

Some years back I wrote dealing with what is devotion this observation -- Unless and until one understands that Bhakthi is something which encompasses man's reason totally, it should be understood that his dawn is yet to come.

Hinduism is the project of man, which started when he discovered that there is really, God.

***

Master for the Young !

Books have been written aplenty in any school of thought in Hinduism. Abstract treatises abound on any strand of thinking. Even on Sri Vaishnava Sampradaya, the books I have may fill up a library. But all the books, all the treatises, on all the schools have their bearing, have their anchor in Vedantha. Even the Agamas which centre their ideology on temple worship and theology have their locus in Vedantha.

Knowing Vedantha is knowing its methodology. Knowing Vedantha is explicating the world of Upanishads into consistent study of the Ultimate Truth. The commentaries of the old, tutor this methodology and inculcate the Vedanthic thinking. But we have a blessing in Swami Vivekananda. He is the great Master of Modern Hinduism. His complete works provide a cogent text book of Hinduism and lends an efficient work table to improve oneself upon. For the young generations and coming ages there is no other workable hypothesis better than reading the Great Sage.

Ever and the River !

We have been talking of Sruthi and Smrithi. Canons of the Universal Principles and Books that deal with the customs, mores and habits of the people. That which deals with the eternal principles are the Vedantas or Upanishads or the philosophical Vedas. They tell us about Atman, Jeeva, Paramatman and the eternal life beyond. Why is Jeeva born in this world and what is his goal and how to reach it?

And basically who is Jeeva really? What is his real nature?
Your real nature determines what you must attain and in what way you must do it? If your real nature is something temporal. i.e., you exist by your very nature for sometime and simply go out of existence with nothing surviving, then you cannot think of eternal life and so on. When you yourself is just temporal, there is no point in breaking your head about that nature. But if your real nature is not temporal but eternal, then you must realise that nature and strive to attain the eternal life, which is your right by the very fact of your real nature. If you are really the eternal soul then what is that goal which you must reach?

What is the nature of that Almighty and what relationship connects you two? And what is that Way which you must choose? What causes the delay? and what are the impediments on the way? All these are explained in detail in Vedanta. These questions never change in time. They are the eternal spiritual principles of man's life.

But the social questions, viz., the social divisions, the problems of man and woman, the problems of the ruled and the ruler, the questions of family, the relationships of social living, all these are social problems which change with the time and they have to be updated based on the social realities and necessities by the societies concerned. The Books of Memory which deal with such things are the Smrithis, which are changeable in time and must be changed by the social heads retaining the best of the past and adapting to the present.

*** 

Deep Within and Beyond !

The canons of Hinduism categorize between the changing and the unchanging aspects of the religious life. Srutis cater to the eternal questions. Smritis deal with the changing problems of the society and human beings. This is quite comparable to the dual aspects of the God Hinduism preaches. God according to Hinduism is both immanent and transcendent in nature. He is even inside an atom. He transcends even the widest stretch of the Cosmos.

aNOr aNeeyAn mahatO mahIyAn. Even in the micro space He resides in total Fullness. Again in the macro space He encompasses the entire details. Perhaps this Vision of God has inspired the very structure of Hinduism.

Hinduism is particular in its Universality and universal in its Particularity. Just because He is immanent in all things, we cannot say the world is spiritual. And just because He is Transcendent to the world, the World in no way becomes secular.

Actually God is the Totality, - the spiritual, the mundane, the cognizing souls, the created objects - everything forms part of the Totality, which is God. In what way all these things share in the Totality makes the inter-related Whole share with the indwelling parts in more than many ways. We have to find out our place in this Totality. Or rather we have to yield ourselves so that the Totality may find its domain inside us.

*** 

Twicely Good !

The God of Hinduism is both transcendent and immanent.
The canons of Hinduism talk about the changing and the unchanging aspects of the human life. The Religion of Hinduism is both universal in philosophy and private in practice. The people of Hinduism are austere in celebrating and celebrating in austerities. They call this world as the Vibhuti of God. Vibhuti means manifested splendour.

So to shine in this world devoid of God is to court deprivation and poverty of Spirituality. And to shun this world as something despicable is to dishonour His splendour. And to claim this world as one's own is to commit robbery. And to think of oneself as the property of the ego, forgetting the true owner viz., God is to commit ontological theft. But to enjoy this world as belonging to the God and to realise oneself as the property of Him are sure ways of securing Prosperity and Spiritual Felicity.

Abhyudaya, i.e., Prosperity is to see this world as belonging to the God.

Nisreyasa, i.e., Spiritual Felicity is to see oneself as His possession.

*** 

Four Track Way of the Soul

In Hinduism any living being is called Jiva. Ji is to live. Any being that lives is Jiva. Jiva has three aspects in existence.

First is - Jiva is a knowing subject. It is capable of knowing that which is. It is capable of knowing itself. That is, Jiva has Knowingness or Jnathruthva. Jiva is an acting agent. It is capable of action. It is capable of adopting means towards ends. Jiva has Actingness or Karthruthva. Jiva is also an enjoyer. It is capable of enjoying the pleasures and it covets the pleasures. Jiva has Enjoyingness or Bhogthruthva.

Jiva is a Knower; an Acting Agent; an Enjoyer. To act and to enjoy are nothing but more special forms of the Knowingness of Jiva. So to liberate Jiva is to make it free to express itself fully by way of knowing, acting and enjoying. Hence Hinduism designs the paths toward liberation in such a way that all the three faculties are put to use towards freedom.

Four such paths have been shown to the soul, viz., the Path of Knowledge, the Path of Action, the Path of Yoga, the Path of Love. They are called Jnana Yoga, Karma Yoga, Raja Yoga and Bhakthi Yoga respectively. All the four elements are in each and every one of the four, but with varying accents.
This Four Way Road is the National Highway of Hindu Religious practice.

*** 

I Know, I Do, I Will !

The four fold paths of Yoga, viz., Jnana Yoga, Karma Yoga, Raja Yoga and Bhakthi Yoga have their anchor steeply laid in one important element of the nature of the Soul, which is the possession of the three faculties. The faculties are Knowledge, Action and Enjoyment. But what is the nature of the Soul as such? Or is there anything as Soul in human living, not to speak of general life as it is.

Hinduism points out how in our own experience we have assumed and accepted the presence of the Soul before we venture to talk anything me or mine. The very human experience of its own beingness becomes impossible if we dare to doubt the primemost premise of the reality of the Soul. Of course here and hereafter we would like to mean by the word 'Soul', not its original Greek concept but what Hinduism means by the word 'Atman'. Atman or Soul has as its innermost essential characteristic, 'Chaitanya'. Chaitanya is the fact of being the 'Chit'.- 'Conscious Core'.

Consciousness is the tool we use in Knowing. Applied Consciousness is Knowledge. Potential Knowledge or the potentiality to know is the Consciousness. So, according to Hinduism, Jiva, the living being, irrespective of its being a human or any other living being, is intrinsically Atman or Chit. Any living being is a conscious being in essence. How far any living being manifests its essence of being conscious, in actuality, makes all the difference between a human being and other living beings. Of course the problem of the sophistication of the Sarira or the Body scales down the spectrum of Life on Earth.

The main idea is - Jiva is not only something which lives but also quite as essentially, if not more, a being which is conscious, and also, a being which enjoys. The degree may differ with the species but the nature of the kind is universal to the Jivas.

*** 

Are you the rwenty-fifth ?

Jiva, the word for the living is synonymous with Chit, the word for being conscious. The whole world can be classified into the living and the non-living. Hinduism differentiates between the conscious and the non-conscious, the Chit and the Achit. Only the God and the Soul come under the classification of the Chit. The being of Chit is Chetana. God is Parama Chetana.

In Hinduism the whole world has been classified into 24 Tathvas. The natural elements 5 - Earth, Water, Fire, Wind, Space The sensory organs 5 - Eye, Ear, Tongue, Nose, Skin
The sensations 5 - Sight, Sound, Taste, Smell, Touch
Organs of action 5 - Hands, Feet, Speech, Anus, Sexual organs

Organs of mind 4 - Mental Stuff, Mind, Intellect, Ego

So the world that comes to knowledge is comprised in these 24 principles, viz., the natural elements, the sensory organs, the sensations, the organs of action and the organs of mind.
The Knower, the Chit or the Atman is the 25th principle that comes after enumerating all the principles of the Known.
So Atman itself is sometimes referred to as the Twentyfifth Principle in the Sastras of Hinduism.

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Brevity, Sankhya and Vedanta

Sankya philosophy spanned the whole world of things and knowledge about those simply in 24 principles. And nearly all the schools of Hinduism take the Sankyan clarification of the known world as the base of their enquiry. In 24 principles you just grasp the whole universe.

Who is 'the one who grasps'? That is the knower? Yea really it is the soul or Jivatman. And he stands as the 25th principle. And he does stand apart different in kind. The previous 24 principles are all belonging to one classification - viz., 'Objects Known'. Whereas the 25th, i e., the knower, Jivatman, is not an object known. He is the knower who knows all things and objects.

And you can just think further about an encompassing whole which comprises all these, - known objects and the knowing soul, who are different in kind, but go to make our picture of the world. But what do you think, the nature of that encompassing whole? Will it be different in kind from these two, objects and the knower soul? Surely is it not? That Whole cannot be of the same kind as the objects known or the knower, Jivatman. But the nature of the Whole must be such that, the natures of the member-categories, viz., the objects and the soul are included within. That Whole cannot be totally 'Object' and also that Whole must house the object also inside itself. If that Whole cannot be just object, then the Whole must be more akin to the nature of the knower soul. But if it is just another soul, how can it include within itself different kinds like objects, which are known and Jivatman which actually knows the objects? So it becomes obvious that that Whole should be of a nature, which transcends the natures of member-categories like objects and knower, but which includes all the while these member-categories.

Hence the Whole is named as Supreme Soul, Param Atma. The whole includes objects but also transcends the nature of objects. Hence it is called Para Vastu - Param Porul or Supreme Substance. And Vedanta, which is the methodology which inquires into the real import of the Revelations, for instance, Vedas, likes very much the brevity in the number of basic principles involved and to be studied. Some sects give a very detailed listing of basic principles, so that pinning down all shades and variations as separate principles. But Vedanta lays down as one of its basic dictums - Lagava or brevity is essential. The principles must be reduced to most essentials and just multiplication of principles will not in any way enhance one's enquiry and also will not help in understanding.

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Workbook 1

Born in a great temple town in a family having dynamic and meaningful proportions of tradition and modernity I was saved from so many hurdles that may face one otherwise. For that I must thank my father and mother. And also the tradition of Sri Ramanuja provides one a climate of knowledge-as-a-value. Of course you must care to make use of that. If you do, then, the webbing atmosphere acts positive to that or at least does nothing to stifle your enthusiasm towards acquiring knowledge. My life should have passed for, set in the regular ways of domestic indulgence, job-finding and getting settled in life. But the fatal moments do happen in some people's life. Only thing is I do not regret that moment in my life. My balance sheet ticks that moment as positive, of course after balancing various aspects. A chance reading of some reader in Tamil printed in 1942 or so, dusting in the family rafts of a Sunday afternoon deposited a saying of Sri Ramakrishna, assuring one of God vision if only that person craves and cries for three days. Whatever that saying meant, it was imprinting on the mind of a school student the idea of God as possible reality. I realised that that saying got stuck in my mind only when an occasion happened, when I had to stress the possibility of God-realisation to another boy in our hot discussions across the streets of a December night. Trying to convince him, I was caught. Or I was set in the path of freedom you may say.

Slowly I started rummaging my father's collection of books, half of them lined on a raft in the hall and the rest in another room or godown of various things. In fact I was thinking at that time that how M K T Bhagavthar had written something in English, seeing a photo in an old edition of The Study of Religion by Swami Vivekananda, Udbodhan Office, one of my father's acquisitions. I corrected myself only after some time. And when that book was brought to common use between myself and another friend of mine, an old lady seeing that photo by chance exclaimed 'Oh! is it M K T Bhagavathar!'. Anger rushed at the first instant only to subside at the next, for, was I not her senior in that impression?

Browsing through my father's collections was followed by purchasing of small booklets and low-priced books of Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda. The money was out of savings of chance windfalls that may happen to a school student. May be some happy moments of the mother, or some sudden visits by grandmas and aunts, or some sudden offers of gifts by uncles - something was happening making it possible to acquire books more and more on one's own. The temple shops were a blessing. And I was becoming slowly a reputed customer to be treated with deference. It was a nice feeling to have in that age of trousers. A book-reading boy is not someone to be trifled with. So when the books were growing in number, the old corner of my school bags and things were not enough space for a blossoming scholar. So I had to clean the godown room and make space for my precious library, growing day by day. Local book-shops in the temple premises were not enough. Also having a like-minded friend is great company, if you decide to walk all the way to distant places for big book-shops. From booklets to thin booklings to big books, which we were calling as 'kills', the intellectual life slowly stretched in more extense. Book-reading is a bad habit, bad in the sense it makes you venture tougher and bigger books and sometimes abstract genres. Is it so with every reader, I do not know but it was exactly so with one reader. Reading consumed that reader, one can say. But no regrets at all. When chance comparing with childhood friends show you in bad lights as one who does not know how to live, so what, even if the life is deemed as waste? Taking to the next big book or subject in the line makes you forget all such self-demo reports and you are high in your own world. You can compare it with getting drugged, so what, you get amazing understanding of things and subjects. But what about life? We will leave that and you can write me as a failure on that account. No bother.

And you do not stay content with one sort of books, if you fall into reading. But one thing I must tell you. In reading I had a special talent of going deep into the moods and sentiments of an author, whoever he or she may be. I realised this tangibly only later and also I heard it pointed out by one friend, who took a great liking to hear me reading his pet authors. How I got this and why are things beyond me but such a talent makes one's reading time creative. This is curious. Actually reading is half passive always but for me the experience was different. Not only the authors but also concepts were becoming very transparent in my reading forages. So If I took one book and phased my back in a convenient corner I could escape the reality around and along with that escape the relevant cares and responsibilities too. Such an addiction makes you hate rash changes in life pattern. So naturally you limp back in the race of life or life passes you by inevitably. But the life sounded various warnings at various times through events and persons to a boy who was becoming more and more reckless lost in the world of ideas. I do not want to justify my choices or the effects. I am just awake to my reality and more so I do not feel any persistent sorrow or remorse.

Reading has not been indiscriminate too with me. That is any book just like that didn't hop up into my reading time. The selection, was it conscious or partly so, I do not know. I have been thinking that I always decided on what books but it is only a part of the story. Some books jumped in by chance. I remember very well the case of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. I have heard about her even very early in my eighth standard in High School. But only when I was about to finish my college years I picked that book from my friend's table just as a curiosity, with both the title and the author striking new to me. Only when giving a look-over to the book back and front I vaguely remembered the author mentioned many years ago along with her book The Virtue of Selfishness. But reading Atlas Shrugged straight through for one full week completely changed me from a theist to an atheist and clarified and confirmed my stand on reason.

And also I must say, books have been acting like ghosts on me. When they possessed me it was really radical. That was the case with Ramakrishna Vivekananda literature which started in my fourteenth year. You begin to see, perceive, opine and feel as if you are a character coming in the genre of books that is holding you at that time. Even you begin to feel that you are privy to even some unwritten aspects of the persons you are holding in hero-worship at the time. It is like, 'what if.. it is not written over there?... I know it... I feel it...' it is like that. Then your being assumes a mystic meaning. Some half-legible and half-hidden transcendent purpose activates you from behind.

But reading is only one of the activities of life, that too a mental activity. Why should that take such a place in my life is mysterious to myself. May be astrology can explain such mysteries rather than rational analysis. But astrology appealed to me very late in time. Reason will always be at loggerheads with such unusual methods. But trying to understand the mystery of living is something different; risky but I think it defies any formulas. Really as per my deep interest in Ayn Rand and the thought I had that I had reached the final in her philosophy, I must conclude that I have degraded from being rational. But again this is another bad habit in me, that I take to anything which makes me understand my life, usual or unusual ways. Sometimes I think that I am a confused personality. But I am quite happy with the way I operate even though I do not measure up to fixed standards.

One thing alone I find it difficult, being neither to my liking nor in my element. That is, believing, taking something on faith. My way of worshiping the Divine has always been trying to understand. Of course I believe in cooperating with the methodology but it is always provisional. Any final dictum which precludes my understanding loses me from its subscription. Has no faith any efficacy in transcendental efforts of understanding? When accosted like that I may not be able to counteract but somehow I am not able to feel at home with such a demand as a final writing-off. I am not able to think of the Divine as resenting my efforts to understand it, especially when it is being stressed repeatedly in the transcendent literatures that the Divine is essentially Gnosis. If it is full and full Knowledge in form, how else to approach it relevantly rather than by knowing. Alright, let us say we dispense with any effort of understanding as a way and rather take to faith. After that when we are participating in the Divine level, what will we do if we have discarded understanding, knowing once for all. Even at that level to understand the greatness of the Divine and its inexhaustible goodness, should we not have unhampered function of knowledge? Do not the scriptures various say that our knowledge is hampered in this world but it becomes unlimited in the transcendent levels.? But I am able to understand the place of faith as part of provisional preparations and only as that.

But instead of breaking one's head like this it was so easy and full of relief for me when I became deeply involved in Ayn Rand's Objectivism. All these questions, I was able to shove off as meanderings of the mystics and not meriting any serious concern except as something detrimental to human living. But getting into Ayn Rand's novels and ideas and phasing ourselves with some heroic character consciously or unawares fixed a viewpoint binocular vision on our eyes on others and the outside world and also our own spontaneous actions and thoughts. A detective eye of well proven standards was always wide open in the mind. But slowly I was changing from that, at first imperceptibly and later more definitely. The world which became thin and constricted was again getting colours and curves. What was failing on the basis of reason was entering back by way of culture. To be a strict Ayn Rand enthusiast, who was already a sober person, made me very miserly on my emotions and highly judgmental on others around, especially one's near and dear kins. So as a result I was becoming more and more unpopular in my own domestic fronts. Of course I was more than compensated by being well-armed By AR's clarifications on reason and individuality and the social complexes structured around altruism, which otherwise was not available anywhere down the time or across the globe.