Vedanta - Discussion Forum I (introductory))

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The following may be relevant here especially after the following

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->In the same way even if the impression of difference negated by the non-dualistic illumination persists, it cannot impel one to activities such as teaching; for the object
to whom the instruction is to be imparted is discovered to be unreal. The
idea is that just as the discovery of the non-existence of water in a
mirage stops all effort to get water from it, so also when all duality is
sublated by illumination, no activity like teaching disciples etc., can take
place <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->


Kanchi Paramacharya in his explanation on Soundarya lahiri, answers .

Not sure whether AKji got time to read this when Sunderji posted. Being a Shakta, he may really enjoy it.
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“How could Adi Shankara, who preached the jnAna mArga, have
promoted this work (Soundaryalahari) of bhakti? It cannot be his,” say
some who profess ‘Philosophy’. But our Acharya was not a professor
who isolated philosophy as a separate discipline. Having written very
profoundly on advaita and its deepest implications in his several
commentaries and the other works of his, he promoted the spiritual
pursuit of the common man by writing and talking about the need to
follow one’s swadharma by Karma and Bhakti. His intent was to raise
the common man from his own level. For this purpose he went from
one pilgrim centre to another all his life and composed hymns after
hymns and also established yantras in temples.

The philosophers argue: JnAni says everything is One. But Bhakti
can happen only when there is the duality of the devotee and the deity.
Therefore, they say, the jnAni can never be a bhakta. These
philosophers cannot themselves claim to have the Enlightenment of
advaita ! But there have been those who could have so claimed, like the
sage Suka, Madhusudana Saraswati or Sadasiva-brahmam. If we
carefully study their lives we will know that they had been devotees of
God in the fullest sense of the word and have themselves written works
of Bhakti. Even in our own times Ramakrishna Paramahamsa has been
a great devotee of Mother Goddess. Ramana Maharishi has done works
of devotion on God Arunachalesvara. Again, on the other side, great
devotees like Manikka-vasagar, Nammazhvar, Arunagiri-nathar,
Tayumanavar, etc. have themselves been convinced advaitins, and this
is reflected in innumerable flashes in their compositions.

If a jnAni should not do a Bhakti composition, then I would say
that he should not also do a work of jnAna. Why am I saying this? Let
us go back to the definition of a jnAni. ‘ The world is all mAyA; the
thinking of people as if they were separate separate jIvAtmAs is nothing
but Ignorance’ - with such a conviction through personal experience,
they have thrown away that Ignorance as well as its basic locus, the
mind, and they live in the non-dualistic state of ‘ ‘I’ am everything’ –
such should be the status of the jnAni; shouldn’t it be so? Such a
person preaching, or writing a book, even if it be about the subject of
jnAna – is it not a contradiction? Unless such a person thinks there is a
world outside of him and there are jIvAtmAs outside, how can he think
of ‘teaching’? Teaching whom? And when we look at it this way, all
those great teachers of jnAna should really not be jnAnis ! What power
will there be for such a teaching about jnAna from teachers who are not
jnAnis themselves?

On the other hand what do we observe in our experience? Whether
it is the teaching about jnAna in the Gita, or the Viveka Chudamani of
our Acharya, or the Avadhuta Gita of Sri Dattatreya or the teaching in
the Yoga-vASiShTa, or a song of Tayumanavar – even as we just read
these we feel we are being taken beyond the curtain created by mAyA to
some distant peaceful state of Calm. Just by reading, in one’s spiritually
ripe stage, such teachings, there have been people who have renounced
the world and reached the state of Bliss-in-one-Self! If these teachings
had not been written from that spiritual apex of Experiential Excellence,
how could such things have ever happened?

Therefore, however much by our intellectual logic, we may argue
whether a jnAni can get bhakti, how the jnAni can do any preaching
and so such possibilities cannot exist and so on, these are certainly
happening, by the Will of the Lord which is beyond the Possible and the
Impossible.

<b>It is only the Play of the Lord that, the jnAni, who is non-dualistic
internally, appears to do things in the dualistic world. His mind may
have vanished, mAyA might have been transcended by him; but that
does not mean the outside world of jIvAtmAs has disintegrated. What do
we gather from this? There is a Super-Mind which does all this and in
some mysterious way is compering and directing the entire universe. And
it also means it is the same Supra-Mind that is making the minds of
men revolve in the illusion of mAyA. It is that Power which is known in
advaita scriptures as saguNa-brahman or Ishvara. In the scriptures
devoted to Shakti or Shiva , whenever they call the Actionless nirguNa-
Brahman as ‘ShivaM’ they call this saguNa-brahman as ‘Shakti’, ‘parA-
shakti’ or ‘ambAL’. Just as that nirguNa-Brahman exhibits itself and acts
</b>

as the saguNa-brahman, so also, it must be presumed, that the
enlightened jnAni also does his external actions and that again, is the
work of the saguNa-brahman!

What is the path of jnAna? It is the effort through self-enquiry and
meditation for the eradication of the mind and vanquishing of mAyA.
But the other path is to dedicate oneself and all one’s thoughts and
actions to that very parA-shakti (who produced this mAyA on us) with an
attitude of devotion. It is like giving the house-key to the thief himself !
However much the parA-shakti may play with you and toss you and your
mind hither and thither, Her infinite compassion cannot be negated.
Only when we separate and rejoin, we realise the value of that union. To
pray to Her for that reunion and for Her to get us back to Her in answer
to our prayers – this is the great LeelA of Duality wherein She exhibits

Her Infinite Compassion ! So when one prays with Bhakti for such
release She releases Him by giving Him that Wisdom of Enlightenment.
It is wrong to think that the goal of Bhakti lies in the dualistic
attitude of being separate from God. It is by this wrong assumption that
people ask the question: How can a jnAni exhibit Bhakti? In the very path
of Bhakti wherein it appears there is an embedded duality, the same
Bhakti would lead the practitioner to the stage where he will ask: Oh
God! May I be one with You! This is the subtle point which the
questioning people miss. When that stage comes to the devotee, the very
parA-shakti known as kArya-brahman or saguNa-brahman will bless him
with that jnAna that takes him to the non-dual kAraNa-brahman or
nirguNa-brahman.

Not everybody can practise the path of jnAna that brings the
realisation of the mahA-vAkyas by sravaNa (hearing), manana (thinking
and recalling) and nididhyAsana (contemplating). Only when the mind
vanishes one can realise the Self as the Absolute Brahman. If that is so,
the real question is: How to kill the truant mind, which refuses to be
subdued, much less vanquished ? The very effort of vanquishing the
mind has to be done by the mind only. How can it kill itself ? The palm
can slap another; but it cannot slap itself. Though we are thus brought
to a dilemma, there is a supreme power which has created all these
minds. So instead of self-effort to kill our minds, we should leave it to the
parA-shakti and surrender to Her. Instead of falling at the feet of the
witness for the prosecution we fall at the feet of the prosecutor himself !
Then She will help us quell the mind; She will grace us with the
necessary jnAna.

Either She might totally eradicate your mind and give you the
peaceful state of ‘I am shiva’ (shivoham) or She might tell you from
within:

“Look, after all, all this is My Play. The Play appears real to you
because of mAyA. I shall totally erase that mAyA-view for you. Then you
can also be like me, with that calm non-dual bliss inside and having on
the outside a mind which is untouched by mAyA. Thereby you can also
be a witness to all this worldly Dance. You will thus see yourself in Me
and see Me in all the worldly multiplicities. In other words instead of
making the mind non-existent, your mind will then be full of Me”
And She might make you just exactly that way. But I know your
worry. You constantly worry about the impossibility of transcending
mAyA, of eradicationg this worldly vision and of vanquishing the mind.

You keep worrying to the extent of almost weeping over it. To such a
weiling seeker She replies:
“Why do you worry and weep like this? You are worrying that you
cannot discard the world from your view. But you forget that the world
was not your making. This Sun and Moon, mountains, trees, oceans,
animal kingdom, and the millions of living beings and categories – all this
was not created by you.
“When that is so, you are worrying about the little ‘you’ that you
are, and you forget that this little ‘you’ also was not your creation.
Instead of thinking all this is not only one but one with Me, your mAyA-
clouded view makes you think they are all different and distinct. And
even that mAyA-view that clouds you, again was not your making!
“My dear child, you are caught up in the web of the world, a mind
and a MAyA-cloud -- all this is My making. Did I not make Krishna say
to you: mama mAyA duratyayA ? (My mAyA is intranscendable). I have
also told you there that it is ‘daivI’ (made by the Power of God). If you
had made it all, then you could have overcome them. But it was all made
by Me in the fullness of Power.
“You jIvas have only little fragments of that Power. So if you cannot
eradicate the world, the mind and the MAyA that I have made, you don’t
have to cry over it. It is not in your Power. It has to take place only by My
Grace. Come nearer to Me through Devotion ! I shall do the eradication
in proper doses for you.
“That somebody is able to control his mind and is able to walk on
the path of jnAna – that again is My own Grace. It is I who have granted
that privilege to him. What appears as many and different must be seen
as one. To crave for that view is what is called ‘advaita-vAsanA’. One gets
it only by My Grace”.
(Now the Mahaswamigal, who has been talking in the words of the
Mother Goddess, continues on his own).
There is another novelty here. Even the jnAni who has had the
non-dual Enlightenment, still enjoys the play of mAyA. He sees the
different things; but knows they are all one. Just as a spectator of a play
who is not playing any role in it, the jnAni enjoys the playful novelties of
mAyA and revels in his devotion to that parA-Sakthi who is the author of
it all. To be keeping such jnAnis in this dual-non-dual state is also the
A Digest of Discourses on Soundaryalahari 6
work of Mother Goddess. Mark it. It is not that the jnAni is showing
Devotion just for the sake of others only. No, By himself he is indeed
thinking
( I think the Mahaswamigal is here
letting out an autobiographical tip !)
‘What a pleasure to witness this dualistic play of the non-dualistic
One ! What a multiplicity of beauty, panoramic variety and continuity of
Love !’ . Thus revelling in that blissful vision, he continues to pour out
his own love (bhakti) to that Transcendental Power from the bottom of his
heart. This tribute to the jnAni has been given by the great Teacher Suka
himself.
(Cf. Bhagavatam 1-7-10:
AtmArAmAshca munayaH nirgranthA apy-urukrame;
kurvanty-ahaitukIm bhaktim itham-bhUta-guNo hariH. – meaning,
Those who revel in the Self, even though rid of all attachments,
show a causeless bhakti towards the Lord, just naturally.)
On the one hand the devotee who has yet to get the
Enlightenment enjoys the devotional state for the very reason of getting
the Enlightenment; on the other hand, the one who is already
enlightened and is a jIvan-mukta shows his bhakti for the sake of
enjoyment of that bhakti and not for any other reward or purpose.
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Link : Sundar A(I)ya, can u help with the link: