Saundarya Lahari Notes
Saundarya Lahari Notes
Saundarya Lahari Contents Notes Files
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CONTENTS OF "NOTES" FILES
The files are classified in folders for each year from 1969 to 1973.
Some of them contain material the Guru was also studying at the time, such as the poems and plays of Kalidasa, which are related to the erotic mysticism of the Saundarya Lahari. Other material in these notes is relevant as explaining the structural methodology which is essential to an understanding of these texts.
WE APOLOGISE FOR THE IMPERFECTIONS OF SOME STRUCTURAL DIAGRAMS.
WE ARE DOING OUR BEST TO REMEDY THIS.
IN ANY CASE, MOST OF THE DIAGRAMS ARE REPRODUCED IN AN IMPROVED FORMAT IN THE FINALIZED VERSION OF THE SAUNDARYA LAHARI VERSES WITH COMMENTARY
1969
Verses 1 to 11
Verses 11 to 42
Short list of Verses 1 to 100
Verses 59 to 62
Verses 1 to 41
Verses 1 to 10
Verses 44 to 50
Verses 42 to 44
Verses 51 to 60
Verse 61 to 70
Verses 71 to 80
Verses 81 to 90
1970
Film Generalities
Miscellaneous texts
Kalidasa
Darsana Mala
The Science of the Absolute
Miscellaneous texts
Texts on the Chakras
Kalidasa
Upanishads
Verses 1 to 15
Verses 17 to 30
Verses 31 to 41
1971
File slc1:
Verses 1 to 100
Film Generalities
Verses 32 to 36
Verses 6 to 10
Verses 80, 12,
Verses 42 to 50
Verses 10, 14, 15 to 41
Verses 50 to 100
1972
Verses 7, 14 to 39 with omissions
Kandukavati, from the Dasakumaracarita by Dandin
Verses 1 to 41 with omissions
Verses 66 to 100 with omissions
Various short texts
Verses 62 and 14
Kalidasa's Malavikagnimitra
Various texts:
Kalidasa
Science of the Absolute
Darsana Mala
Quran
Upanishads
Verse 56
1973
Verses 1 to 51
Verses 1 to 71
Verses 72 to 100
Saundarya Lahari Notes
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SAUNDARYA LAHARI
FURTHER EXPLANATORY NOTES
Introduction
Contents
Saundarya Lahari: 1969/ SLC2
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- Written by Patrick Misson
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http://advaita-vedanta.co.uk/images/stories/structure-slc2-p39-v3a.jpg
1969/ SLC2 - Saundarya Lahari: source C2
From Curran de Bruler's notes, dated 4/12 - 7/12/69
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1) What subject you are dealing with.
2) How does it relate to other subjects?
3) Does it lead to salvation?
VERSE 1
Siva, united with Sakti, becomes able to manifest,
If otherwise, this god knows not even how to pulsate,
How then could one of ungained merit be able to bow to, or even praise,
One, such as You, adored even by Vishnu, Siva and Brahma.
"I am not writing this for my salvation,
I am already a Brahmavit (a knower of the Absolute)".
Shakti, (the Goddess or Devi) is the specific manifestation of Shiva.
Shiva is living vertically and becomes manifested when united with the Devi.
The Devi's charge is to manifest the world.
The two parameters, vertical and horizontal, are revealed here, together with the subtle participation between them, and Sankara says he will focus on the negative aspect of the Absolute and treat of the lower Brahman (Apara-Brahman), not the higher (Para-Brahman).
But, he says, "I am outside the picture, I belong to no context".
SLC2-P1-VERSE 1
VERSE 2
The fine dust arising from Your lotus feet,
Brahma, gathering up, the worlds creates,
Vishnu incessantly bears them up somehow with his thousand heads,
And Siva, having shaken it up, accomplishes with it his ash-wearing rite.
This is a close-up of the three functions of creation, preservation and destruction. The author now examines the negative aspect, the phenomenal world:
Brahma finds powder at the feet of the Devi to create the universe,
Shiva, after destroying the universe, also puts three lines of powder on his head;
It is described as powder because the universe consists of small particles.
.
Brahma creates the world from pollen dust.
Vishnu, who represents stability, somehow supports it all on his thousand heads (representing horizontal plurality) and stabilizes it.
Shiva (Hara) destroys it all and wears the ashes on his forehead.
To inert ones, the mind-expanding ooze of sweetness within blossoms celestial,
While, for indigent spirits, you become a brood of philosophers' stones
And for those submerged in the ocean of birth and death, the very tusk of Vishnu's boar
The four quadrants are now introduced:
The four are:
The ignorant seeker.
The lazy fat man.
The man immersed in the ocean of necessity (samsara) (he is cut by the boar's tusk).
You alone do not act overtly, by gesture, the promises of refuge or boon
What is more, Your feet, o sole refuge of the worlds of beings,
Are alone expert indeed in yielding boons more than asked for.
Here, there is a reference to the world of bronze figures of goddesses, with hands making many different gestures,
He is saying, "These hands are not Yours, o Devi, abolish them.
You, o Devi, speak to me a different language, the language of Vedanta".
Think of all the possible gestures, boons or benefits from the gods on the Numerator side and abolish them.
Go to the negative side, the source of all things, at the feet of the Devi: this is the way to salvation, the "more than asked-for boon".
It is the Denominator, which saves: go to the Denominator cause, not to the Numerator effect.
SLC2- P2 - VERSE 4
VERSE 5
Other arms than Yours can confer protection or boon;
You alone do not act overtly, by gesture, the promises of refuge or boon
What is more, Your feet, o sole refuge of the worlds of beings,
Are alone expert indeed in yielding boons more than asked for.
Vishnu once took the form of a radiant woman, attracting Shiva by coming to the vertical axis.
The body of Eros (Kama Deva ) is licked by Rati's (his wife's) glances into a pearly beauty.
There is sometimes a confusion of values for these poor Rishis (sages), because of the overwhelming beauty involved.
SLC2-P3 - VERSE 5
Whatsoever grace he could; with flowery bow, bumble-bee bowstring,
And five-flowered dart and springtide for minister; all these as one withal:
Mounting the chariot of the mountain breeze , he victoriously reigns, that god of love.
Eros reigns victorious, because he got some fraction of grace from You, the Devi.
He is victorious on the numerator side and is going to fill the numerator side with content.
Eros has a chariot and the grace of the Goddess comes to him by her glance, slightly askance.
His power is absolute for a certain time, when all the right factors are present.
Resounding with waist-belt of jingle bells, recumbent by breasts
Like frontal bulges of a calf elephant, slim of waist, with autumnal full-moon mature face,
Holding aloft bow and arrow, noose and goad!
The Devi is here called Purushikaa - (a bold, virago-like figure) the counterpart of Shiva.
Her breasts are compared to the bumps on the forehead of a baby elephant.
She has a jingling waistband (a belt with bells).
She is slightly bent, implying torsion.
The breasts are like an elephant-head, again shown with torsion;
the waist is very thin.
The face is radiant, like the moon in spring.
She is the counter-ego of the City - Burner.
He is proud on the Numerator side; She represents the Denominator aspect of this,
The Numerator breasts with the pride of an elephant balance the Denominator breasts, which are heavy in order to feed a baby.
Placed within a mansion wafted round by the perfume of blossoms of Kadamba trees,
Located within a celestial grove on a pearly-gem island in the midst of a nectar ocean,
Some fortunate ones contemplate You as the upsurging billow of mental joy.
A Mandala comes in here, also seen in conics.
Fire in the Swadhisthana, air in the heart, with space above;
And amid eyebrows placing the mind, and breaking through the whole Kula path,
You do sport with your lord secretly in the thousand-petaled lotus.
There is interpenetration here between the Chakras:
it is the same thing happening, at whatever different level.
Sprinkling blessings over the worlds and again from that point of high intelligible values,
Turning Yourself into a snake form of three coils and a half,
You sleep in the hollow of the Kulakunda, Your proper ground attaining.
Nectar originates at the central O Point.
On the negative side is the existential world, receiving nectar, representing value, from the O Point.
"Becoming a 3 1/2 coil Kundalini snake..." - the negative side is a cavity.
The Numerator is not a cavity.
The full Kundalini is 6 (Chakras) plus 1 (intermediate neutral zone)
The snake can travel all the way up the vertical axis.
And severally the nine of prime nature, with eight and sixteen petals
Three circles and three lines, are thus complete,
The forty-three elements making up Your angular refuge.
There are 44 manifestations or elements in the Sri Chakra, which is the "angular refuge" referred to here.
At the centre there are 4 triangles pointing downwards and 5 upwards,
The 44 elements are later given monomarks and categorised.
VERSE 12
The best among poets, exercising their fancy, somehow created Brahma and others.
Eager Your beauty to see, heavenly damsels mentally attain to
What is hard even for ascetics to attain; the state of union with Siva
The Devi's attendants are able to merge with the Devi's personality because they already have an ontological relationship with her on the negative side.
The Devas (gods) are hypostatic, on the positive side, and have a tendency to diffuse away from the vertical axis
The gods are created by the poets, who were trying to describe Absolute Beauty.
The Devi's servants are closer to being fused with Her than the gods are.
The negative females are closer to the Devi than the poets who create numerator gods.
Falling within the range of Your side-glance, they follow, running in hundreds -
Young women, with hair disheveled, their rounded, shapely breasts by blown-off clothes revealed
Their waistbands bursting and silk garments in disarray.
The old sage, or Rishi, gazed at by the Devi's side-glance, attracts hundreds of maidens.
This is because he acts as a medium for Absolute Beauty.
The maidens forget the ugliness of the old man because of his absolute quality.
Their belts are bursting like a flash of lightning.
The Devi is in the Bindu or central locus, sending side-glances to the ugly old fellow, who gets some of the value-light of Absolute Beauty.
Sixty two for fire; for air fifty-four;
Seventy-two for ether; for mind sixty-four;
Are the rays, even beyond these are Your twin feet
Mandala language begins here.
The Devi's feet will be put in many places from now on.
Attached with crescent and with hands bearing refuge or boon-giving gesture, rosary made of crystal-clear beads and book:
How could anyone, worshiping You but once,
Not gain in flow of words somehow, the pleasing sweetness of honey, milk and grapes?
Before, the Devi's feet were above the mind at the positive limit of the vertical axis; here he descends to the level of the goddess Saraswati,
The Devi is here seen as hypostatic, with four hands, holding a rosary and a book. (traditional attributes of the goddess Saraswati,
Sankara is descending through the Chakras.
"Having at least worshiped this Goddess once, how could his words not have the sweetness of honey, milk and grape juice?
The numerator Goddess, when understood, will give this denominator benefit.
Saraswati must have the corrective principle, which is the absolute status given by Shiva's crescent moon, worn in her crown.
Resembling that of a forest of lotuses, when touched by the tender light of dawn:
He who can thus adore You, who are so dear to Brahma as magenta itself;
He, by profound words of most tender erotic content, shall please the same select ones
- of great poets.
- those good men who see in the forest of lotuses in their minds.
- You, who are no other than Aruna (magenta).
- for good ones, they give pleasure
- by means of Saraswati's noble words of love content.
They recognize also that the words of love poetry give pleasure to the wise.
There is one wise man who hears the words and another who appreciates it.
The joy of the thing heard and the thing experienced is the same.
Saraswati and Aruna are the same.
P9
Joined with Vasinis, having an elusively fluid gleam;
He becomes, o Mother, the author of great poetic works,
Adding sweet charm to the lotus face of the Goddess of the Word.
There are certain principles which are the points of origin of all words (on the numerator side),
In the bottom half of the structure is a real taste or magenta colour.
These two, word and meaning, can be put together.
This picture involves refraction, reflection, diffraction: the total glow of light on a beard, for example.
This same diffraction can be seen in the cut moonstones which are brought together.
So Numerator words and Denominator experience are brought together.
And the whole earth submerged within magenta glory;
That man, able to contemplate You thus, wins You over with Urvasi and how many, how many other
Heavenly nymphs, having gentle, startled, wild deer eyes.
This is praise of the Aruna (magenta) colour: anyone who can fill both Numerator and Denominator with this colour will fall down in mystical ecstasy.
Indra, as a relativistic deity, is chased by the Kanyas (heavenly nymphs):
he can attract the most beautiful of these if he realizes that both heaven and earth (both Numerator and Denominator) are magenta in colour.
Any man who can appreciate that can attract any woman.
(Aruna (magenta) = Karuna (kindness), Ed.)
And below still, as the better half of Siva; meditating on Your erotic aspect,
Without delay he can stir the hearts of women; this is but slight
And at once agitates even Her of the three worlds, when sun and moon form Her twin breasts.
The author is saying: "I will tell you something negligible; I will also tell you something wonderful.
It is not enough to contemplate this erotic aspect - the lower half is negligible (it only gives the power of conquering women).
But, if he can supply the sun and moon on the numerator side, he will "conquer the three worlds".
Into his heart like a moonstone-made statue,
He can quell the pride of serpents like the King of Birds
And a fever patient cure by his very look of ambrosial streak.
The limbs of the Devi shine like moonstone. She diffuses light all around from all Her limbs.
And as placed even above the six lotuses in a great lotus grove;
Those great ones, as seers of such, Your aspect, free from dross and ignorance
They experience the upsurging billow of ultimate delight.
The lightning flash is Absolutist: down with relativistic Kaulin (Tantric) meditation!
Thus intending to adore, no sooner one begins saying:
"O Goddess, You"; You grant him that state of identity with You
The same as what Vishnu, Brahma and Indra accomplished by the waving of the lights on their diadems.
Before the sentence is uttered, the boon is granted by the Devi.
This is the highest teaching of the Upanishads.
The three crowns of the Numerator gods are shedding some light on the hypostatic (positive) side
But, when you utter that sentence, you wish for the light of the Absolute Devi to descend on you.
This is none of your relativistic Vedic praise of a divinity.
The very intention to understand the Absolute makes one greater than all the Brahmins of the world.
The other, I surmise, became absorbed also; therefore,
This Your form, having three eyes and bent by twin breasts,
Wearing crescent bedecked crown, became of magenta glory.
Once again, "slightly bent" at the waist.
Here the Devi devours the left half of Shiva, then absorbs the other half.
Her form becomes completely magenta, with three eyes.
The two breasts are bent into a sinus curve or a Yin-Yang figure.
Brahma creates, Vishnu sustains, and Mahesvara (Shiva in his relativistic horizontalized aspect) destroys.
He triumphs as a mathematical entity and escapes from his body.
Sada Shiva (the Supreme Shiva) is even beyond the Omega Point and is eternal.
Their worship of You, o Consort of Siva, would alone be worship
Offered to Your twin feet; it is indeed thus when they do so,
Standing eternally beside Your gem-decked foot-stool, joining bud-like their hands well above their crowns
The three Vedic gods worship the Devi, with their hands folded above their crowns.
"The gods, born of the three Gunas, do worship at Thy pearly footstool".
"Puja-puja": that is the real Puja (worship), which is offered at the feet of the Devi.
They are standing there eternally, because the Devi is eternal.
The existential footstool is at the bottom of the vertical axis - it is the basis of ontology.
VERSE 26
The God of Death destruction meets; the God of Wealth becomes bankrupt;
the great Indra becomes functionless, with half-shut eyes;
In this great doom, he sports, o constant spouse, Your lord alone.
Here all the functions of the gods and the fourteen Manus (lawgivers) cease to be operative "in the great dissolution".
All of the horizontal factors are disintegrated.
The Devi remains chaste - only the vertical factor remains; thus Shiva remains - the integration of positive and negative is never lost.
Destroy Samsara, the relativistic horizontal world and only the vertical remains.
Verticality is the greatest virtue in anyone.
Circumambulations, food offerings, inclination, adoration by lying down
All such enjoyments, as coming within the scope of self-surrender,
And thus synonymous with worship of You, let such be what from me
might shine forth
Sankara says: "do not treat these as separate items, but as all coming from the Self as a form of self-surrender".
Let this Puja be brought under the aegis of "Self-Puja".
The whole of this shining thing, let it be related to the Numerator non-Self".
This is an equation of Self and non-Self.
"Let this all be one master-worship".
They reach their doom, all such gods as Brahma or Indra;
On even swallowing that terrible super-poison, for Siva, time's function is not operative:
The source here being the power of Your marital string.
The greatness of your neck-thread (a symbol of marriage - the equivalent of a wedding-ring) saves Shiva, even when he drinks poison
- even though the gods die, even when drinking only nectar,
Shiva does not die, nor does he die when drinking poison:
this is double negation, a negation of a negation.
The source of this negation is the Devi, with Her thread, representing ABSOLUTE Negation.
VERSE 29
You are going to hurt his hard headgear: bypass Indra's crown"
As inclining in front of You, they remain, at that very moment for him on his homecoming,
You are about to rise. Such words of Your retinue , they do ring supreme.
Attendants say: "Remove the crown of Brahma, do not hurt the diamond-hard crown of Vishnu, transcend Indra's crown".
"They are bowing down to You."
"The utterings of Your entourage reign victorious".
Here the Alpha and Omega Points meet in the Absolute.
Attendant on You, o Eternal One, one who contemplates these in terms of oneself:
What wonder for him that all benefits from the three-eyed one should only be worth rejection,
And that the fire of doom should perform for him in turn the light-waving rite.
Do not be surprised, I am going to say that all of Shiva's wealth is as a piece of straw to the devotee of the Devi.
When Shiva burns the three worlds, that fire is merely as Puja lights being waved for the Devi.
"I have transcended all the siddhis (psychic powers) which surround the Devi.
I am not worshiping the Devi; I am equating my Self with the Devi (who is the non-Self). I have no other object than that equation."
Then the burning of the worlds is as the waving of Puja lights to the devotee.
I want only Tat tvam asi ("That You Are" - "that" being the Absolute).
The worshiper becomes the worshiped.
He is a Paramahansa; the white swan who rises to the Numerator side, drinking from the milk-ocean,
Transcending the whole world while remaining immobile,
The Lord of Beasts, again, by Your insistence, by that free expertness of Yours,
Caused to be brought down this firm earth for the unified fulfilment of all life purposes.
Two opposite universal functions are here brought into the picture.
Mantra is Numerator.
Yantra is the means of implementing the 64 Tantras (know-how factors)
Shiva disperses, the Devi brings together.
Each of these 64 generates a specific power or siddhi.
Siddhis (psychic powers) are for Shiva, the life aims of mankind (purusharthas) for man.
God of Love, swan and Indra; Para, Mara and Hari;
With these three sets, with their heart monomarks suffixed,
They adore Your letters, o Mother, by way of naming Your component limbs.
These are categories, each with its sound, the letters, one for each.
You can schematise and generalise the Devi using letters as monomarks for each of the schematic sections. It is an "Esprit de finesse".
VERSE 33
O lone and eternal one, innumerable seekers of great enjoyment
Adore You, telling beads of philosopher's stone, ever sacrificing into the fire of Siva
By hundreds of streaks of clarified butter oblations from the celestial cow.
This is a related verse to the previous VERSE 32.
They go to the Denominator, worshiping the Numerator with the milk of Kamadhenu, the celestial cow.
VERSE 34
Yourself, I surmise, o Goddess, as a new sinless self.
Therefore, by mutual complementarity, this relation remains one of common reciprocity
Between You two, participating on equal terms of transcendent bliss.
There is complementarity and reciprocity between Shiva and Shakti, as also interpenetration, parity and one-to-one correspondence.
You are the water, as well as the earth; apart from Your manifest form there is nought else indeed!
You, in order to manifest Your own self, by taking a universal form
Of mental bliss substantial, do assume the role of Siva-bride, and thus triumphant rule.
What is in the Numerator is also in the Denominator.
Here the Denominator is filled with Shiva Kanyas (Shiva-maids).
The Devi is always manifesting horizontally, having an extreme lower limit,
and the young women have their place here as the Devi's attendants.
But there is no Brahma Parinama.
We are at the Absolute Negative and nothing is left over in the Numerator.
Of millions of suns and moons, whose flanks are illumined by the light of the intelligibles beyond;
Whom, worshiping with devotion, lifted beyond the reach of sun, moon and fire,
In that shining domain above all need, one lives indeed in that bright world of light
Now we begin with the Chakras: here it is the numerator Ajna Chakra,
with the sun and moon within it. This is bilateral symmetry.
"Inside Your Ajna Chakra I find the brightness of Shiva (millions of suns and moons)".
The two sides are illumined by this ultimate mind-stuff.
The devotee is raised to an "other-worldly ground" at the Omega Point (Sahasrara Chakra) at the positive limit, by worshiping in Ajna Chakra.
Permission is required of Parvati, it is her Chakra.
The content is Shiva, the container is Parvati.
I adore Siva and the Goddess also, with a parity of status with Siva
By whose combined, streaming, moonbeam-like fluorescence,
With banished inner dross, like a female partridge, the world hereunder shines.
Here, the Visuddhi Chakra is clear and shining.
Here moonbeams stream downward; in VERSE 36 they were radiating.
Again this Chakra is "Yours", (the Devi's).
Visuddhi Chakra comes in at the level of akasha - space or ether.
Shiva and the Devi have final equal status.
The flowering radiance of these two together, a descending light,
has a resemblance to the moon - it is subjective, more interior.
There is no inner dross at this level - it is "dusted off".
The Chakora bird (partridge) is the enjoyer of all this, drinking it in.
Of the lotus blooming within the consciousness of certain great ones,
Moving within whose minds as a result of their elaboration, the maturation
Of the eighteen arts takes place freed from dross, their goodness extracted as milk from water.
Anahata Chakra. Here two swans are floating on the milk ocean of Wisdom -Value: they are Shiva and Parvati.
They drink the honey from the heart of the lotus.
Anahata is the "Eternal Now"; the crossing of the vertical and horizontal axis.
By this, all the 18 artistic disciplines in the Absolute become matured or perfected.
The two swans cause their maturation, and drink their essence.
Things extraneous to wisdom are left behind.
VERSE 39
Ever looking upon it as the great fire of doom, and placing there her also called Samaya,
So that when the worlds are burning due to his anger,
Her mercy-moist regard renders to it the cooling touch of early spring.
Swadhisthana Chakra - The base of the Devi.
The word translates as "one's own base"- within the scope of existence.
Here there are two principles: burning and cooling.
The eternal fire of destruction is due to the joint regard of these two
This Denominator fire is meant to cancel the Numerator fire of Shiva.
But the Devi's glance gives a certain wintry aspect to the picture.
I adore that dark cloud of Yours, as traversed by forceful lightning,
Banishing darkness and shining, bursting into sparks with the varied gem-decked brightness of Indra's bow,
While over the three worlds, agonised by the heat of Siva-sun, it sheds its showering waters.
Now, the Manipura Chakra: "With great force, having the power of lightning - those rays which are the enemy of darkness...."
The rainbow is a manifestation of the power of the Devi.
Thus, the burning earth is cooled and allowed to exist - the three worlds are preserved.
Given to her light-step dance, as also that great bold-step dancer;
Giving expression thereby to all nine aesthetic interests, thus by their joint lordship,
By mercy ordaining the rebirth of the world, they confer on it the renewed status of having both father and mother.
Now, the Muladhara Chakra.
Shiva and the Devi dance here - it is the foundation, the beginning.
Samaya is the female Absolute of the Samayins.
"Lasya" is the dance of Samaya: it is horizontal, like a wavelength.
By these two partners together the whole world is re-created by kindness.
Each becomes the mistress or master of the other.
The world began to have a new status of having parents - no more is the world an orphan.
The vertical axis becomes the parenthood.
They are parents "by mutually possessive lordship.
He who can praise thus Your golden crown, o Daughter of the Snowy peak
Would he not have then in his mind the impression of the bow of Indra
When, by reflected glory, a slender crescent is produced by the gems imbedded therein?
"Having attained to ruby-hood, (red, magenta, dawn)..."
The Saundarya Lahari proper begins here, coming out of Space (the Akasha), with the sun and moon.
Twelve suns are referred to as ornaments of Her crown, they are Numerator factors.
These 12 suns are very close together - they merge, like the12 months and the seasons.
Do not separate them, but know that there are twelve of them, pressed together into one.
"This crown is golden, O daughter of the Himalayas; anyone who wants to praise you, will he not think of that"?
The rubies reflect on the crescent.
He is saying what any Indian poet will begin by saying: that there is this ruby light reflecting on the crescent moon.
PRELIMINARY STRUCTURAL DYNAMISM.
1) Vertical-Horizontal
2) Particle World
3) Quaternion
4) Square-root-of-minus-one Ontology
5) Reflected Glory
6) Erotic Occasionalism
7) Structural Dynamism - KEY VERSE
8) Inner Beauty Unit
9) Series of such Units
10)Ascent and Descent of Values
The problem is to treat the Denominator side of the first verse so as to be sure that it has a fully cancellable status with the vertical axis of Shiva.
You need both a horizontal line and an Alpha Point reference.
SRI CHAKRA AND ARUNA
12) Conceptual Versus Perceptual Beauty.
13) Aegis of the Absolute
14) Numerological Structuralism
15) Vedic Devi
16) Magenta Cancellation - CENTRAL VERSE
17) Scintillating and Fluorescent Light
18) Complete Aurora - CENTRAL VERSE
19) Unilateral and One-sided Shakti Worship
20) Finding the Heart Locus
THIS IS THE SECRET.
INTERSUBJECTIVE AND TRANS-PHYSICAL REVERSIBILITY
OSMOTIC INTERCHANGE, COMPLEMENTARITY, ETC.
22) Reversibility - CENTRAL VERSE
23) Reciprocity
24) Plus and Minus Compensation
25) Alpha to Omega modes
26) Negative Becoming
27) Reversible Ritualism - CENTRAL VERSE
28) Dignity of the Fourth Dimension
29) Ascending to Omega Point Dignity
30) Reversibility of Psychic Dignity
The physical is the moving of the lips; the subjective is what you understand.
Thus, when two people are talking, it is an inter-subjective and trans-physical interchange.
32) Monomarks and letters
33) Garlands of monomarks
34) Vertical participation
35) Descending set of values
36) Ajna
37) Visuddhi
38) Anahata
39) Swadhisthana
40) Manipura
41) Muladhara
The whole of the Kula-path is passed in review.
VERSE 35 provides the amorphous material for the Chakras.
THE FACE AS DIAL OR INDICATOR OF VERTICAL AND HORIZONTAL FACTORS
THE FACE IS THE INDEX OF THE SOUL
43) Omega Point Darkness Cancelled
44) Vertical Line Upwards
45) Bees Around Lotus Face
46) Two Crescents
47) Eros' Bow
48) Day and Night - CENTRAL VERSE
49) Value Cities
50) Jealous Mid - eye
51) The Nine Rasas
The most important thing is that someone is shooting arrows, and there is nothing to do but to learn how to fall down in the right way.
Forbidden fruit, concupiscence, original sin etc. are all dealt with properly here.
FOUR GRADES OF STRUCTURES SUPERIMPOSED ON THE FACE
53) Homogeneous Structures
54) Flux of Three Gunas
55) Open and Shut, Figure 8
57) No Direct Favouritism
58) Structural Dynamism Within Four Limits
59) Two Chariots
60) Medium and Message
As seen when Your ear ornaments are reflected on Your shining cheeks;
Surmounting which that great hero Kama assails the Lord of Hosts,
Who, with sun and moon for foothold, mounting the globe for chariot, is fully ready to give him battle.
The gold ear ornaments of the Devi are described here as reflected in her face, thus yielding four wheels.
These are the 4 wheels of the chariot, with two real and two virtual wheels.
This is the chariot for Eros to ride in when he fights Shiva.
In the previous VERSE 58, Eros fires his arrows horizontally.
Shiva will descend in a two-wheeled chariot, with the sun and moon as wheels.
He will descend in a logarithmic spiral, like a helicopter, to fight Eros.
The Devi is about to break down in emotional crisis, her eyebrows bending, smitten by love.
The two-wheeled chariot is a verticalized version of the four- wheeled one.
Of the four wheels, the virtual ones are the gold ear-ornaments, since they are ornamental, near the ears (conceptual) and not a part of the Devi.
The reflected rings on her temples or cheeks are sure to be the real ones as they are a part of the Devi herself.
Kama Deva (Eros), in the past verses has been gradually overcoming the face of the Devi.
A retrospective review.
"Of hibiscus-red shade, your tongue-tip triumphs"
Fourier Mathematics.
Fancy and fact.
As seen when Your ear ornaments are reflected on Your shining cheeks;
Surmounting which that great hero Kama assails the Lord of Hosts,
Who, with sun and moon for foothold, mounting the globe for chariot, is fully ready to give him battle.
A dialogue between Mukambika and Saraswati, between Numerator and Denominator,
The stretching of the ears means that Saraswati is saying something very difficult to understand
There is a telephone call from Saraswati to Mukambika, when great secrets are given; this is metalanguage.
Mukambika then responds that she understands by using protolanguage.
"Eva" means: "It looks as if it is a response": so it is still an analogy, it is still vertical:
Thus there is no duality, there are no two goddesses, and it is simply structural.
This is because the people who first discovered this structure of a woman's body were meditating for eroticism,
Shiva's face is the whole globe, with his feet firmly planted on the sun and moon.
One Denominator - Eros and the face of the Devi.
One Numerator - Shiva and the conceptualized globe.
Everything has to be shining and reflecting for purposes of schematismus or structuralism.
Thus Eros mounts the chariot of the face:
The wheels are the ear ornaments and their pale reflection in the cheeks, where they are horizontalized.
Shiva is the counterpart - his circle is the globe, he is standing on the sun and moon.
Then the face of Shiva has to come to the face of the Devi:
Eros is the hero, while Shiva is only "prepared" to meet the attack, although the attack may be only for one moment,
The Numerator and the Denominator are Absolute; when they confront each other there is a participation and a cancellation.
Because of this Eros, Shiva can look at the face of his wife without duality.
How do you justify this business of fighting between husband and wife?
There are two vehicles, enemies, confronting one another.
What is the word in the text that excuses the fight? It is "face".
There are no chariots, but only the face of the Devi and the face of Shiva.
This "concept" of earth, with sun and moon behind, is hypostatic - the heavenly orb; it is descending to meet the face of the Devi.
The meaning consists in bringing the globe down to meet the face.
True because it cannot be otherwise: this is rtham, the name of the truth, not the argument.
How do you know the child loves the mother? (mathematical)
It is the same thing as "reductio ad absurdum".
True because you can "touch" it: this is satyam: existent truth. (Satyam as opposed to rtham: two Sanskrit terms for truth )
These are two opposing things neutralising each other: 4/4 = 1; if they were fighting, the result would be 0, but it is not 0 but 1
Let it ripen for us, standing so near below You, deserving fruit;
Inwardly wearing pearls as they do, and dropped by cool moonbeam respiration,
It bears, even outside, pearls due to the plenitude of the same.
This refers to the Devi as the banner of the dynasty of the Himalayas: she is the daughter of the Himalayas.
Her nose contains pearls.
There is a bamboo flagstaff. There are pearls inside, sticking to the sides.
By the light of the moon, an abundance of these fall (Her beautiful thoughts).
There are two worlds here: one inside, one outside.
He has now come from the eyes to the ridge of the nose,
Let it confer blessings on those who are most intimately related to you.
The breath of the Devi is the cosmic breath, intimately related to our own breathing.
The pearls inside the tube are value factors - let it give to each person what they deserve, by way of merit.
These pearls are deep down the hollow tube of the flagstaff; the tube is overflowing with value-pearls.
The moon is a hypostatic intelligent factor and its coolness or warmth causes the pearls, by some ineffable light, to be experienced intimately.
This is a richness of contemplative value-factors.
Whether they are filling up from the bottom upwards or falling down from the top,
The cross-section level of these pearls depends on the inhalation or exhalation of the "breaths" of the moon, or of the breath of the Devi.
(Here the Guru indicates that all this is tentative - "Don't put the nails in yet").
Shiva went to the lowly hut of a hunter, to find a wife for his son, Subrahmanya. She is the lowliest of black girls.
Hence, Narayana Guru calls him "O you black girl's husband, please enter within me and ease my suffering".
These represent introspective values.
The tube is a vertical axis.
Kalidasa talks of the bamboo in the Himalayas.
This bamboo has a banner floating high: this is one end of the axis.
At the middle of the tube is the intimacy, which will save the devotee: "just know Brahman (the Absolute), and you will be saved."
He who knows Brahman becomes Brahman.
Joy is there as a glory, as Ananda (bliss).
Moonbeams suggest intelligence; they are hypostatic.
The Devi is described as the daughter of the Himalayas.
The Himalayas are the horizontal measuring rod of the universe.
It is "intimate" because Her values are all for the Absolute - and that means for each devotee.
Some of the pearls will fall to the bottom, some will overflow and some will stick, due to the coolness of the universal breath.
This is an exchange of hypostatic and hierophantic values.
The moon is presided over by Shiva.
Those who worship the Devi will have the experience of ineffable joy, of life more abundant.
Some of the pearls will fall to the bottom, some will overflow and some will stick to the tube.
You must have interaction between the hierophantic and hypostatic aspects.
The glory comes from the Himalayas in the North but the Devi is Dravidian, from the South; Sankara is bringing these two factors together.
If the images are fanciful, it is because Sankara is continuing the Sanskrit culture of Kalidasa.
He extends it to his version of Vedanta.
Narayana says the same thing as Sankara, and Nataraja says it again, mathematically.
So, this respiration is a figure-8 - sometimes hypostatic, sometimes hierophantic:
not the hypostatic banner, but the nose, which is familiar and near the horizontal axis.
The Devi, as a flag, has both symbolic and actual value.
It will immediately bless the devotees - the nose is near the centre of consciousness and near the horizontal axis.
There is respiration in a figure-8, which fills the tube, uniting hypostatic and hierophantic aspects of value.
Absolute value is an interplay within consciousness; it completely fills the vertical axis.
The bamboo flagstaff is her nose; it contains pearls inside and has pearliness outside, because of the abundance of pearls inside.
What does it all mean?
"Hinduism is all a pretence, because they pretend they understand this.
They do not understand; they are telling lies morning, afternoon and evening."
Why pearls inside, and pearliness outside?
Pearls are quantitative and substantive
Pearliness is qualitative and predicative
Pearliness, for the nose, is meant philosophically.
Iridescence is false - it shows the world of appearance, a false world.
The flagpole is a vertical axis: pearls stick inside through the Devi´s breathing.
VERSE 62
Let the coral reef bear fruit by reflection from its original model
With which desiring to climb to the point of mid-parity,
However could it avoid being abashed at least by a degree?
Adhyasa* is the only way to give any meaning to this verse.
The Bimba fruit is red. Coral is also present.
"Your teeth are white and reflect the coral colour of the lips...":
The magic is the juxtaposition of all these four together:
1) Bimba fruit,
2) Coral, which bears no fruit,
3) Lips of coral colour,
4) Teeth, which reflect the coral colour and are ashamed.
HORIZONTAL participation between the Bimba and Coral.
*Adhyasa is attributing something to something else. C.f. prathiti.
The teeth are ashamed because they are white and pure - "why do you call me a cheap imitation red?"
The delicate interplay between the teeth and lip is the point here.
The teeth are ashamed because their colour is borrowed from the coral.
Magenta glory results from this participation:
this participation between two colours is like the participation between mind and matter.
The teeth are hard, and have a borrowed colour; the lips have the original colour: this is bimba and pratibimba (pratiphalana)
Sankara gives this much importance because it settles the question of the participation of this world and the other.
So, there is shame, because the imitation can never equal the original.
Important: how does the fleshly eye see that paddy field?
How can consciousness appreciate the outline of the paddy field?
It is participation between mind and matter.
This occurs by mutual participation on a homogenous ground: this is called samana adhikarana.
He makes a fuss about this because pratyaksha pramana (meaning empirical evidence) is a very important question in Vedanta.
Empirical evidence is not excluded from Vedanta.
There must be a neutral substance between mind and matter.
The empiricist cannot explain this participation between mind and matter without postulating a neutral substance between the two: this is the soul.
This is the neutral monad of Bertrand Russell.
Thus Vedanta is not mere Idealism, but also uses the empirical approach:
thus Plato and Aristotle are put together.
So the teeth are ashamed for not being able to establish a perfect bi-polar relationship with the lips and their colour:
This is much more delicate than you think it is.
Re Verification: Sankara wants you to be confused as between the two factors.
Partridges, on drinking, by surfeit of sweetness
Numbness of tongue they got; thus presently do they imbibe eagerly
The nectar thereof, treating it as sour brew, night by night.
Tava - Your
Sadrsyam - resemblance (by appearance)
Pravaksye - I state (assert)
Janayatu phalam vidruma lata - let it bring about the effect of coral (reef)
Na bimbam - not reflected - or not another fruit (Bimba) which is red of a green leaf (?).
Tad bimba pratiphalana ragat arunitam - made into that deep hue belonging to the pink of dawn, by reflection of its colour.
Tula maddhyarothum - to climb to a middle position, balanced between two rival colour factors.
Katham iva vilajjeta kalaya - why should it not in some way ashamed even by its partial....
2 Karali
3 Mari....(illegible)
5
6
7
The lips of the Devi are so bright that the teeth also appear to be red.
The mind conditions the body, and the body conditions the mind.
He uses the two opposite examples; whichever way you put it; the beauty is the same. He is helping the mind to make a kind of figure-8, to unite subject and object.
They must participate equally, this is Advaita.
Sankara plays a wonderful trick here, delicate and beautiful.
Coral is North India, fruit is South India.
It is also to be compared to the two wives of Subrahmanya, one high-caste and one Shudra (low-caste).
(Guru talks about the castes, decides the women support it.)
A common woman can also be beautiful.
The fancy woman with jewels is her opposite counterpart.
"The whole of life is flowing in a verticalized flux and I am a martyr to wisdom..."
Really its own natural colour - "Your" - "One having beautiful teeth".
The similarity between lips and teeth - "I am going to tell you..."
"Let it produce the coral-creeper bearing fruit, not the original, to equalise the two counterparts".
The teeth are not the original of the red colour.
The original colour is the coral of the lips.
This is a transferred epithet: e.g. "he spent the whole night on a weary pillow."
Here there is a dialectical interchange between subject and object.
The predicative (the attribute) and the substantive (the thing) are interchangeable.
Here the lips are the original ontology and the teeth reflect the colour.
Suppose the coral had a fruit; it would have been ashamed of the fraction of difference between them.
Pravaksye - I am going to tell you
Let the real creeper have a fruit
Na bimbam - not the original of a reflection
Tad bimba etc. - what is reddened by being a reflection of its original
Tulam etc. - the equal scale to mount (?)
Katham iva etc. - in what way should it become ashamed
Kalaya - by a fraction
Red is the original, redness is the effect.
Supposing the coral has an effect upon the truth (originating in the lips).
The teeth are ashamed of the colour of the lips.
The original coral of the lips and the reflected coral of the teeth want to be in perfect balance.
The teeth are ashamed in the matter of attaining the middle ground
- sometimes it feels better, sometimes worse. Shame is a confusion.
It is not able to attain the middle ground.
The "shame" is due to a disturbance of the absolute equilibrium.
There is a fractional tilting of the balance, thus; shame.
Pure magenta colour is the same, whether reflected or original.
Here Sankara says:"I decide" not "I consider":
that is: "I am a philosopher writing poetry".
The magenta colour represents the Absolute; you abolish the paradox between Numerator and Denominator.
Suppose the coral had a fruit - it would be the effect of the coral.
The effect is the result of a specific thing; thus, it is qualitative.
(text almost illegible here)
A fraction of the element of pure shame exists between the colours.
Here we have colour as a cause and colour as an effect - between these there is shame, trying to find a middle ground
DESCRIBED AS ANANDA LAHARI MANDALAS
Homogenous ground; complementarity.
Three functions.
A refuge.
One cause as against multiple effects.
The Denominator breasts are humble. The waist is slightly bent.
Omega has two degrees: Shiva and Parama Shiva.
There is one-to-one correspondence between Numerator and Denominator.
The ocean of value is plenitude itself: Ananda or bliss
- the crystal is formed therein for our meditation.
Here Sankara revises Patanjali.
He is anti-Samkhya.
We have here top view and side views.
There is a Kundalini snake of 3 1/2 coils
Experimental Denominator and Axiomatic Numerator.
Put them in two compartments and equate them.
Nominator words correspond with the Denominator experience of the Aruna colour.
Saraswati as Numerator (poetry etc.). Aruna colour fills the whole picture.
Denominator moonstones are pressed together.
Balance the Kaulin's Devi with a Numerator, conceptualised Devi.
Moonstone is a stream of Intentionality flowing from the Devi in the moonstone Bindu (central locus).
The power of the Goddess is uniformly homogenous.
Numerator and Denominator can interact.
Slow progress in spirituality is discarded.
Put all chakras into one integrated whole.
Intentionality is respected above all relativistic prayers.
The light of the boon is complete - also having the Numerator factor included in it - and becomes the Absolute.
Hypostatic values are added as being secondary.
It occurs even before the sentence is completely uttered.
The crown and the third eye compensate for any weakness in the Numerator by the Denominator.
This is reduction into Absolute Unity.
Three compartments are abolished into the quaternion.
The whole ground becomes magenta and homogeneous.
Total negation is denied validity.
You cannot say that Brahman (the Absolute) is nothing.
It is Absolute as opposed to relativistic worship.
Transcend the three Gunas or nature modalities (this is implied).
The Pati - Sati (Shiva-Shakti) union avoids final dissolution.
There is reciprocity of Sati and Pati (the faithful wife and Her spouse).
It is an equation between Self and Non-Self.
This is double negation of evil by an essentially negative Goddess.
The power is at the Alpha Point.
This whole destruction will be waving as Puja to me; thus the worshiper is worshiped.
The wealth of Shiva is as nothing. The tables are turned.
The reversibility of the equation is implied in Tat Tvam Asi.
It offers a firm ground to those who want a chance to work out their salvation.
Shiva evaporates everything in the form of effects.
The Devi provides some firm ground, some reality, by creating a cross-section to the general flux of life.
She is providing a horizontal axis.
Hamsa, Sakra, Vishnu. Para, Mara, Hari.
This is taxonomy - a nomenclature of categories structurally understood and named with letters for each - in groups of 3, punctuated by "hrim" (heart).
Agnihotra (fire-sacrifice) for enjoyers of life (Vedic Brahmins).
This Brahmin wants Maha Bhoga (great enjoyment), making hundreds of offerings and always telling beads. This is Vedism revised and excused.
Maha bhoga is great enjoyment; if he has attained maha bhoga, then he is not all bad.
Maha bhoga is Absolute. Put the Numerator and the Denominator together.
"How to be a Vedic ritualist on Absolutist lines."
Sun and moon are principles in the Numerator relation - relata complex.
"By common features, you participate mutually".
Descending dialectical movement within the consciousness of the Devi, without losing absolute parity with Shiva.
Shiva descends without changing status.
He descends within Her consciousness, without losing Absolute content.
Bilateral symmetry is recognised. The two sides are bright.
The Chakora is Denominator. Visuddhi Chakra.
There must be an enjoyer - the Chakora bird "drinks" the moonlight.
The Devi is sitting in perfectly equal status.
Horizontally, there is perfect parity and bilateral symmetry.
Anahata Chakra - where vertical meets horizontal.
The 18 branches of learning give completeness and maturity.
They burn by the joint glance of the Devi and Shiva's anger.
There is a paradox here between fire and water.
Lightning has a rainbow which is Indra's bow.
"I worship the man who meditates on the Manipura..."
The Numerator heat of burning is balanced by cooling rain.
Tandava and Lasya - the two different dances of Shiva and the Devi - are vertical and horizontal waves.
Everything comes into being from this dancing.
As creators, they change the status of the universe as parents: they are the first parents of humanity.
Saundarya Lahari: 1969/ SLC3
- Details
- Written by Patrick Misson
- Parent Category: Content
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1969-9/SLC3
.
Source SLC3
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December 26 1969
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CONTENTS:
VERSES 1 - 10, Brief commentary,
STRUCTURES and WORD-FOR-WORD, 18 Pages
P1- Verse 1
P2- Verse 2
P4- Verse 3
P5- Verse 4
P6- Verse 5
P9- Verse 6
P11- Verse7
P13- Verse 8
P15- Verse 9
P17- Verse 10
P1
VERSE 1
Siva, united with Sakti, becomes able to manifest,
If otherwise, this god knows not even how to pulsate,
How then could one of ungained merit be able to bow to, or even praise,
One, such as You, adored even by Vishnu, Siva and Brahma.
(This is the finalized translation of this verse, from 1973, and is given here for reference purposes, as will be the case in the rest of this document.)
A) Shiva can pulsate only with the Devi´s collaboration.
The Devi is being worshipped by the three gods; Shiva is just one of these.
Sankara is in meditation below the Alpha Point at the negative vertical pole, while thinking only of the Omega Point at the top of the vertical axis..
He is verticalized -This is like Bergson's image of the Rhone river expanding to form lake Geneva and then contracting into a river again
He is outside the whole picture.
B) The horizontal contains a fanwise expansion, that is all.
VERSE 1
TRANSLATION
Shiva = mathematical, general
by specific function = shaktya, representing the two phenomenal factors;
wave length and vibration, res cogitans and res extenso
(only) when united = yukto
if he (should) become able to manifest in becoming
if not thus, this god
is not indeed expert (in the matter)
even to pulsate (pulsation)
it being thus, you
are being worshipped
even by (api) Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva (Vedic)
to prostrate, even to praise
(Now Sankara is outside the Vedic context - below it)
one of unaccomplished merit
specifically attain
SLC3 - P2
VERSE 2
The fine dust arising from Your lotus feet,
Brahma, gathering up, the worlds creates,
Vishnu incessantly bears them up somehow with his thousand heads,
And Siva, having shaken it up, accomplishes with it his ash-wearing rite.
TRANSLATION
by the superfine dust
what had its origin in Thy feet, Brahma
gathering together, created
the worlds
without imperfection bears them aloft (avikalam vahati)
these
Vishnu, somehow or other
by thousand heads
Shiva, having well mixed them
observes, accomplishes
the ash-wearing ritual
This is a "monde affiné" (c.f. Bergson) there is no actual firm ground - all is composed of dust.
C.f. Eddington, "standing on the threshold..." in his famous passage.
Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva represent three functions here.
1) Brahma, with his four heads is seated on a lotus and creates the universe from pollen dust.
2)Vishnu supports it with his thousand heads - making a terra firma
3)Shiva destroys it - turns it into smoke and ashes - this is the evaporation of everything into mathematics
Brahman, the Absolute, can be numerator as Parabrahman, the transcendent Absolute - then it is impredicable.
So: Parabrahman, the transcendent Absolute, is impredicable
Aparabrahman, the non-transcendent Absolute, is predicable
STRUCTURE SLC3 - P2 - V2
P3
You can ascend or descend. This work is ascending from Apara (the non-transcendent absolute) to Para (the transcendent absolute): from perceptual to conceptual, from the known to the unknown.
Sankara has taken the trinity of Indian gods, Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, and given them three separate representative functions in this verse, which introduces the stratifications of the vertical axis with the three gods each having their place on it.
Some kind of interesting value-content must go into the Absolute, such as creation, subsistence and destruction, here represented by the three gods.
The pollen is pressed together into a firm ground and is supported by Vishnu.
The final third aspect is the destroying fire and smoke of Shiva.
Experience first Aparabrahman, the non-transcendent absolute - as per Narayana Guru.
STRUCTURE SLC3 - P3 - V2
P4
VERSE 3
To the uninstructed You are the light-city, inner darkness banishing, mid-ocean placed
To inert ones the mind-expanding ooze of sweetness within blossoms celestial,
While for indigent spirits you become a brood of philosophers' stones
And for those submerged in the ocean of birth and death, the very tusk of Vishnu's boar
STRUCTURE SLC3 - P4 - V3
In the inner circle is what each of these four men dreams of.
The object here is to see the four-fold structure within the Absolute.
The movements of these circles can be reversed etc.
One man may be in all four of these positions at different times.
VERSE 3
TRANSLATION
1) for the ignorant an island city of sunlit (island) of inner darkness
2) for inert persons of the mind-blossom the heavenly honey-streak flow
3) for the indigent a collection of philosophers' stones
4) for those who are about to be immersed in the ocean of phenomenal becoming the (cutting) tusk of Vishnu's boar (antasti mira mihira)
- thou, o Goddess
P5
VERSE 4
Other arms than Yours can confer protection or boon;
You alone do not act overtly, by gesture, the promises of refuge or boon
What is more, Your feet, o sole refuge of the worlds of beings,
Are alone expert indeed in yielding boons more than asked for.
1) Vertico-horizontal reciprocity. (Complementarity, compensation, cancellability)
2) Phenomenal functions fitted into context.
3) The four sectors of values with the corresponding types.
4) The square root of minus-one.
Sankara is not concerned with numerator values and boons, but with the bottom of the vertical axis, the square root of minus-one.
Karana - (Karana is cause, Karya is effect; Vedanta goes from effects to cause)
"Ontological reality is at Your feet, not in Your hands".
Sankara is a Satkaranavadin, not a Satkaryavadin.
(a believer in the reality of causes and not of effects)
TRANSLATION
other than yours
by hands
conferring refuge and boons
the whole ensemble of divinities (demiurges)
you alone are not like that
(hand gestures are not important to the Devi, her feet will do.)
Exhibiting dramatic action of (conferring) boon or refuge
to save from fear
to confer benefit
as also to confer favours in surplus to what has been prayed for
of all possible worlds, o the sole refuge
yours indeed, the (pair of) feet are expert in
(put your faith in the feet, the square root of minus-one;
not in the hands of numerator gods.)
P6
In Vedanta, we go from the multiplicity of effects (horizontal)
to the cause (vertical).
This is a fundamental aspect of Vedanta: go from effect to cause,
this is Vedantic methodology: causes before effects - Satkaranavada, as opposed to Satkaryavada
VERSE 5
Once Vishnu, having adored You, the mother who bestows blessings on
those who worship you,
Taking womanly form, caused agitation even unto the City-Burner.
Eros, too, on worshipping You, with body licked into reality by the glances of Rati,
Even to the minds of great recluses, confusion of values brings.
Grace can operate directly or indirectly.
The reference here is to the churning of the milk-ocean, when Shiva is tempted to fall in love with the female form of Vishnu.
The point is; you can fall in love with Absolute Beauty, even Shiva can
- when it is in the vertical axis.
STRUCTURE SLC3 - P7 - V5
Beauty comes from the O Point.
If Vishnu is in the vertical axis, Shiva has to fall in love - it is communication with the Devi.
VERSE 5 WORD FOR WORD
Hari (another name for Vishnu)
having adored You
the source of prosperity of those who worship You
having once become a woman
even the burner of cities
caused to have passion
Smara (Kama Deva, Eros) also
having prostrated to You
by a body licked into shape by the consort of Eros (Rati)
the mind of even recluses
triumphs indeed
conducive of confusion, even to the great (Munis)
Kama Deva (Eros) derives his beauty from the Absolute, indirectly.
P7
STRUCTURE SLC3 - P7 - V5A
P8
Why does Kama Deva (Eros) triumph over the minds of the Munis (recluses or ascetics)?
Rati confers a beauty on him, which is derived from the Absolute.
The ascetics are overcome by the reflected beauty of Smara (Kama Deva, Eros).
They are simple people on the denominator, practising austerities in the Himalayas.
They are attracted to his beauty.
Even Shiva falls in love with Vishnu (Hari), who falls in the vertical axis.
There are two stories here: 1) Direct light - Shiva falls in love with "himself" - vertical axis.
STRUCTURE SLC3 - P8 - V5B
2) Reflected light - Eros and Rati. (Eros is more horizontalized. Ed.)
STRUCTURE SLC3 - P8 - V5C
The Munis (ascetics) are peripheral horizontally on the denominator side.
They are attracted even by the reflected, also peripheral, light of Eros. They now see both the perceptual and conceptual aspects of beauty - where generally they see only the perceptual aspect (because they are peripheral and horizontalized. Ed.)
P9
VERSE 5
Once Vishnu, having adored You, the mother who bestows blessings on
those who worship you,
Taking womanly form, caused agitation even unto the City-Burner.
Eros, too, on worshipping You, with body licked into reality by the glances of Rati,
Even to the minds of great recluses, confusion of values brings.
Occasionalism, as in the philosophy of Descartes, is what is operative here.
Eros, riding in his battle-chariot, triumphs due to the side-glance of the Devi.
He has an aide who whispers into the ears of lovers in the springtime.
There is an implied conflict here between horizontal Kama and vertical Shiva.
(The aide or adviser is Springtime, whispering to Eros to shoot his arrow at Shiva.)
P9
STRUCTURE SLC3 - P9 - V6
This is the situation favourable to love affairs; flowers, pleasant breezes, bees that suck honey - also, there is a conspiracy to give battle with chariots. The whole situation conspires for love to triumph.
Do not treat any of these as distinct parts, they are one, a unit or gestalt.
You cannot stop people falling in love: first with the above factors and then with the sanction of the Absolute (the side-glance of the Devi).
P10
VERSE 6
O Daughter of the Snowy Peak, just deriving from Your glance askance
Whatsoever grace he could; with flowery bow, bumble-bee bowstring,
And five-flowered dart and springtide for minister; all these as one withal:
Mounting the chariot of the mountain breeze , he victoriously reigns, that god of love.
TRANSLATION
the bow flowery
the string made of bees
five-flowered dart
springtide (is) minister
the western mountain breeze
war chariot
notwithstanding (their distinctness)
everything (here) treated as one
o daughter of the Himalayas
some sort of grace (kam api krpam)
from Your side-glance
obtaining
Eros ("the limbless one" - HE IS A MENTAL STATE) reigns supreme over this world
So, given certain conditions, Eros must be successful, when the grace of the Devi is there.
An example of occasionalism is divine will.
Even given all the other factors, the final occasionalism is the grace of the Devi - Her sidelong glance.
There is a war-chariot because there is a conflict.
The conflict is the paradox between the vertical and horizontal factors involved in falling in love.
There is always a struggle to resolve a paradox - thus, the war-chariot.
Shiva is not completely free of eroticism - this is the element of paradox here.
P11
VERSE 7
O let Her appear before us, that proud counterpart of the City-Burner
Resounding with waist-belt of jingle bells, recumbent by breasts
Like frontal bulges of a calf elephant, slim of waist, with autumnal full-moon mature face,
Holding aloft bow and arrow, noose and goad!
Here there is an absolute balance between male and female.
The Devi is here called Purushikaa (cognate to purusha - a man): the term implies a kind of pride - the Devi is as much masculine as feminine. She is neutral, like Joan of Arc.
VERSE 7
TRANSLATION
with waist-belt jingling
bent by breasts resembling the frontal knobs of a young elephant
slender at middle (waist)
having face like the full moon of early spring (sarat)
bow, arrow, noose, goad also (for the Devi's functions)
bearing (aloft)
by hands
before (as presented to the view of the devotee)
for us
of the city-burner
what wonder this purushika
The Devi's waist is slim; there is a Purushika pride.
The waist is also bent. She has a full, round face (in the Bindusthana or central locus).
A prayer is made coming from the down-and-out Alpha point at the negative pole, desperate for a four-handed Purushika.
This vision is seen when the moon is about to die.
The weapons of the Purushika appear held aloft in her four hands as seen by the person who is making the prayer as he is about to die.
The weapons are the last things to be seen.
Human beings want a saviour, that is a natural desire.
P12
The devotee is having a vision, meditating on the Devi.
1) Completely structural, the gist of the Guru's structuralism.
2)
3)
4) A logical parameter passing through the waist; faces in phases.
FILM MATERIAL
The Goddess is to be stretched (Numerator and Denominator factors separated), making the waist a thin vertical parameter; the two halves of the Goddess to be rejoined.
The S-shaped figure will change into a figure-8, also into Yin-Yang counterparts eating one another. (This could introduce a screaming woman).
The face of the Goddess is to appear as a moon with its different phases.
Appropriate music is to be chosen for each phase of the action.
There will be four elephants preceding all this: their trunks to become the legs of a girl, the knobs on their foreheads to become her breasts.
Then pass her through a ring, when she begins to become thin.
Purushikaa should be wanting to kill you from the other side.
Her pride and glory, with very loud drumming and the trident of Shiva, is a numerator glory.
Woman must be screaming in her heart -(show perhaps Medea killing her children or Kannagil burning Madurai - these are real tragedies; all of human life has suffering at the core.)
The moon in different seasons can be imagined here, with clouds, but also without.
Here come light effects.
Also, she must shoot arrows in two different directions, because she is Purushikaa.
P13
VERSE 8
Seated on a couch of Siva-form and having the Supreme Siva for cushion;
Placed within a mansion wafted round by the perfume of blossoms of Kadamba trees,
Located within a celestial grove on a pearly-gem island in the midst of a nectar ocean,
Some fortunate ones contemplate You as the upsurging billow of mental joy.
Vertical transformations take place in this verse.
Shiva is made into a cot, and the Supreme Shiva (Paramashiva), even higher at the positive pole of the vertical axis, is called a cushion on the cot.
The cot is stable - the numerator Shiva is here changed into a denominator cot.
The cot and cushion are for the Devi to sit on.
VERSE 8
TRANSLATION
mid ambrosial nectar ocean
by grove of celestial arbours surrounded, within a gem island
in a mansion of thought, with a garden of Kadamba trees around
in a cot representing Shiva form
placed on a cushion of Paramashiva
they adore
certain persons of religious merit adore You
as the upsurging billow of the bliss of understanding
What is true of the Numerator side is not true of the Denominator
- this is the secret.
Sartre rejected essence in favour of existence, but the transfer from Numerator to Denominator is not an easy one.
STRUCTURE SLC3 - P13 - V8
Existence and essence belong to the same Absolute - and the Absolute is a flux, flowing in one direction or another.
You can reverse the current, and thus revise the direction.
Numerator values are not of the same nature as denominator values
- although they are reciprocal parts of the same whole.
P14
What is a value in the Numerator can become transformed in the Denominator into a complementary factor.
In the previous verse, the Devi is seen as positive or numerator - as Purushikaa.
Here, Shiva is brought to the Denominator
MATTER FOR THE FILM
There is one-one correspondence between Numerator and Denominator;
conic sections are implied; the footstool is interchangeable with Shiva:
how to justify this? See VERSES 22, 27, 25, 30.
Method: A Pujari (priest), who waves ritual lights here and there and then downwards,
showing you how to see the Numerator and Denominator as the same,
intersubjective and transphysical.
Applications of these lights have somehow to be shown.
This verse describes a beautiful woman in a garden, surrounded by Kadamba trees,
Placed in the midst of a nectar-ocean is the abode of the Devi, a fool's paradise for the audience to melt into; a place of luxury.
The Devi is to be presented, not as a sanyasini (female ascetic),
but as a full-blooded, buxom, healthy woman.
The point is that numerator and denominator factors - back-to-back and by double correction - are interchangeable. This is a secret.
The footstool is as good as Shiva. This is also found in the Tarot: that which is above is analogous to what is below, etc., and both are component and integral parts of the whole.
In the Gita, the inverted tree refers to the same great secret.
This is represented by the Pujari priest (a performer of Puja - ritual worship) and his waving of lights. (This is the secret of temple ritual).
Here, bring in some Tantra, as also the throwing of baskets of flowers for so long that the Pujari falls down for some time as if dead from overwhelming devotion.
P15
VERSE 9
The earth placed in the Muladhara, water in the Manipura,
Fire in the Swadhisthana, air in the heart, with space above;
And amid eyebrows placing the mind, and breaking through the whole
Kula path,
You do sport with your lord secretly in the thousand-petaled lotus.
Non-dual Yoga and Patanjali´s Yoga are here revalued.
Here the Chakras are taken together, and dealt with in one stroke - burst through.
Do not say at any point that there are two realities - anyone who sees more than one, "he goes from death to death".
The Advaitic approach is to burst through all the six Chakras at on stroke.
Duality between ends and means is not admitted.
When we say Kundalini, we refer only to the denominator side.
Khecari Mudra, on the Numerator, must be dealt with at some other time.
VERSE 9 TRANSLATION
the earth
in the lowest of the series of Adharas (stable positions)
(Muladhara)
the water
in the second of the Adharas from below (Manipura)
fire
established
in the third (Swadhisthana)
in the heart
the air
space
above that (it is) in the fourth
also the mind
between the eyebrows
everything breaking through the Kula path
in the thousand-petalled lotus
together, secretly, with Your lord
You do sport
P16
THE REVOLUTIONARY APPROACH IN THIS VERSE IS THAT WE BURST THROUGH ALL THE CHAKRAS, INSTEAD OF TREATING THEM AS STAGES, AS IS USUALLY THE CASE.
ABOVE ALL OF THEM IS THE SAHASRARA - THE THOUSAND-PETALED LOTUS
Then, in descending order, we have:
6) AJNA CHAKARA, Manas, or mind
5) above the heart - space - VISUDDHI
4) heart - air - ANAHATA
3) fire - SWADHISTHANA
2) water - MANIPURA (SWADHISTHANA and MANIPURA are inverted here)
1) earth - MULADHARA
There is complete reversion in this verse: there is no ascent here,
the Absolute is sufficient unto itself, at any level.
There are three ideas of Yoga:
1) Patanjali's eight-stage Yoga,
2) Samkhya,
3) Kapila.
SHAD-ADHARAS (The six adharas or chakras) - these are six levels or ways of looking at things; a hierarchy of syndromes, c.f.psycho-somatic medicine and the Wehr-Fechner laws of psychophysics.
One has to go "up the tube" through the chakras - ascending like the Kundalini snake - between the snake and the tiger - there are two nadis or passages rising vertically - one is actual, the other is virtual or subtle.
The nearest thing to this in physiology is the sympathetic nervous system, c.f. Mc Dougal.
Here the process of ascent favoured by the Samkhya school is eliminated at one stroke.
There is no process of evolution here.
MATTER FOR THE FILM
The four kinds of Yoga must be shown here - almost as a lesson.
Four kinds of Gurus can be shown as the method.
Fifteen minutes can be given for this section, due to the widespread interest in the subject.
Each philosophy plays with certain categories.
There are six basic categories ("schools") of Hindu philosophy:
they reach their glory in the Advaita of Sankara. (c.f. Brahma Sutras)
The Mahavakyas (great sayings), aphorism such as tat tvam asi ("You are That (the Absolute)")
- these are the basic dicta of Advaita.
Transcend and generalize and abstract;
if you are good at this, you attain the Absolute.
P17
VERSE 10
With streaks of ambrosial essence streaming from between Your twin feet,
Sprinkling blessings over the worlds and again from that point of high intelligible values,
Turning Yourself into a snake form of three coils and a half,
You sleep in the hollow of the Kulakunda, Your proper ground attaining.
Here there is a participation between hierophantic and hypostatic value-worlds.
"Abhina nimittopadana sojatiya vijatiya bheda smuga "
This is Sankara's position, nailing down the doctrine of non-duality.
In the previous verse, both male and female principles are equated in the highest Chakra.
Here, something is now stated in reverse order.
In the Muladhara Chakra, there is snake sleeping in 3 1/2 coils.
So we go from the top to the bottom.
Behind the soft palate is the "hole" through which the Kundalini snake can pass.
This is the point of light.
STRUCTURE SLC3 - P17 - V10
VERSE 10
TRANSLATION
by the flow of ambrosial streaks
streaming from in between the two feet
created) five-fold world (understood in the contemplative context)
sprinkling ritualistically (Vedic ritual context)
then again (after doing that)
from the (great blissful) source of high intelligible values (such as the Vedas)
attaining
one's proper ground
like a snake
with 3 1/2 coils
Your (proper) self
making
You sleep in the Kula cavity/having a cavity, i.e. hollow
P18
There is some question over the translation of the last line: "Kulakunde...
We place the two feet at the central O Point where there are certain ambrosial essences being sprinkled down onto the denominator worlds, the streaks of ambrosia forming ramified sets - by Her blessing, everything becomes a member of a ramified set, related to some source at the O Point.
By this, all relativistic worlds are brought together into the realm of the Absolute Devi.
A ramification of blessings is being sprinkled on the created worlds.
The Kundalini snake goes to the point of highest bliss, then coils backwards.
Then again, from the great blissful source, it descends to its own proper source.
The 3 1/2 coils exist on the denominator side, and the snake is sleeping, where there was "sporting" in the previous verse.
STRUCTURE SLC3 - P18 - V10A
All of these points have to be justified: some immortal value is oozing out from between the feet of the Goddess; how to justify these "ambrosial streaks"?
These are value-streams or ramifications, sprinkling over the physical world which is going to be abolished, since it is unreal.
There is an amorphous veil covering the whole universe - it is vague and subtle.
The Kundalini participates between the Numerator and the Denominator which is its own true ground.
The Kundalini here reaches the Sahasrara (the thousand-petaled lotus) at the positive limit of the vertical axis; this is to be seen in the light of Yoga.
1) The "real world" is to be abolished.
2) The vertical parameter is the Kundalini here.
3) The snake's length and coils depend on the limit attained.
4) Out of 6+1 (six chakras and the Sahasrara), 3 1/2 coils are justified.
5) Essence and Mahas (rasamnaya mahasah in the verse) are below the O Point and between the feet.
(This may also require a rather long lesson in the film as also explanation of the upper and lower limits, often not clarified.)
Saundarya Lahari: 1969/ SLC4
- Details
- Written by Patrick Misson
- Parent Category: Content
- Hits: 13531
.(NOTE: PAGE NUMBERS BEGIN AT 23 IN ORIGINAL)
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Outflowing into a stream, to resemble Your parted hairline,
With vermilion dust bedecked, keeping apart the strong growth of tresses
As if in bondage held by anti-darkness gangs, to reveal the tender rays of dawn
The rays represent the effulgence of Her face.
Now I want to call together artists and put together some visual images of the first 44 verses.
This wisdom can only be put over to the public through the cinema.
These Mandalas are inner space.
The thickness of the growth of hair is proportional to the thinness of the parting or parameter.
The thickness of the hair represents ignorance or the horizontal,
while the parting is the vertical axis running through all and abolishing our ignorance.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Outflowing into a stream, to resemble Your parted hairline,
With vermilion dust bedecked, keeping apart the strong growth of tresses
As if in bondage held by anti-darkness gangs, to reveal the tender rays of dawn
There are dark curls around it, representing bumblebees.
The face is round and the lips are slightly parted.
Shiva, the killer of Kama Deva (Eros) is looking up amorously at Her face.
We are travelling from Ananda Lahari to Saundarya Lahari ( from the first to the second part of the poem)
- thus the round face, surrounded by curls.
- By its own nature curly
- Like black bumblebees
- Curls
- Your face which is surrounded
- Mocks (puts into ridicule)
- The beauty of lotus flowers
- Slightly parted in a smile
- Of which (lotus face)
- Adorned by pollen (i.e. teeth representing pollen)
- Perfumed
- Attain to infatuation of joy
- Those bees which are the eyes of the burner of Eros
This is a verticalized version of the love of Shiva;
thus there are no erotic sentiments involved.
In this transitional verse we still have the schematic language left over from the previous verse.
This is a transition from Mandala language to pure language.
The petals at the centre are half-open to signify the delicate aspect at the very core of Beauty - thus the parted lips.
Shiva's eye is drawn to the core of Beauty, with the teeth as pollen.
The curls represent the bees and are involved in a purely vertical love.
The paradox is resolved - how can one person love and one not?
This is because Kama Deva is absorbed in Shiva and loves in a purely verticalized way.
Killing Eros was a process of absorption.
Shiva is a lover without contradiction.
He appreciates only Absolute Beauty.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
As a second crescent to that other frail one fixed to Your crown,
So that reversed in position, both as knit one-to-one,
Results the form of a fully-matured moon, emanating soft ambrosial essence.
This is "far out", "too much".
You have to take the crescent moon and turn it round, so that it will form a circle with your forehead, which is also shining.
Do not put the two crescents back to back, put them belly to belly - a double correction.
"Your" forehead has one crescent, turned horns downward;
Shiva's is the other way round, just put the two together (integrating physics and metaphysics) and you get the Absolute.
This is the poet's fancy, as he describes Absolute Beauty.
Take the top crescent of Shiva and turn it upside down
Turn it upside down and it will contain something.
Together with the other crescent this will make a circle - close the brackets.
- Forehead.
- By the brightness of the beauty very pure.
- It shines.
- That which constitutes your second.
- I consider.
- Fixed onto the crown.
- The frail bit of a crescent.
- By reversing position.
- Both together.
- Having thus intimately joined together.
- The fullness of sweetness (permeated fully by nectar sweetness)
of ambrosia (besmeared).
- Becomes.
- A (fully developed) full moon.
One crescent is shining on her forehead, the other on the crown.
Which one has primacy?
(Note the parallel with the Devi´s earrings reflected on her cheeks as chariot wheels. ED)
I consider the crown-crescent of Shiva to be the reference
- it is the abstract mathematical concept.
So the Devi's crescent is secondary, as compared to Shiva's.
But there is no difference in gradation.
There is no question about their equality.
Epistemologically they are the same.
The approach must have a proper methodology.
Her forehead-crescent is methodologically secondary to the crescent on Her crown.
Ganesha can also have the same crown - it is not just the realm of Shiva.
STRUCTURE SLC4 -5-V46B
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
As a second crescent to that other frail one fixed to Your crown,
So that reversed in position, both as knit one-to-one,
Results the form of a fully-matured moon, emanating soft ambrosial essence.
The bent eyebrows of the Devi are like the curves of a bow,
when held by the left hand they represent her compassion for the whole world.
The eyes show some libidinous emotion.
The left hand of Eros holds the bow at the bridge of the nose.
The eyebrows begin to quiver with compassion.
The eyes are black, negative and tragic, they are like bees.
They are filled with tears.
Compassion stems from the libidinous essence of the Devi
- it sublimates into compassion for the whole of humankind.
Have the Devi go into the boudoir and look at herself in the mirror with her eyebrow pencil - then reduce and fade
- suddenly reduce it into a cubist picture, or Chinese impressionism.
You can go from realism to surrealism,
- to the colours of Picasso, Goya, Van Gogh, and Rembrandt (black and red).
The face, instead of glowing, becomes Mandalas and lotus petals, as in the previous 40 verses.
Then between the eyes comes a burst of light.
Eros must be introduced in the beginning of the film, so that onlookers may be... (ends here)
As long as Eros is on the vertical axis, he is safe from being burnt by Shiva (as by an electric current).
But if he crosses the vertical at right angles to the current, then he is in trouble - just as in electricity, where magnetism is also at right angles.
She says: "You fool! Don't you know my function? I am a baby-protector and feeder, thus I must have this bow and arrow!"
The eyebrows bend slightly, like bows, when a beautiful woman is crying.
The bowstring passes through the eyes.
She is concerned about the fear of created things, wishing to preserve their lives.
The eyebrows vibrate with emotion.
Eros is responsible for this - that is, the primary motivation can be due to an erotic tendency, playing on the emotion of the Goddess.
She is only capable of emotion when it touches the whole of humanity.
The verse just suggests bent eyebrows - She is about to cry - but she is not crying; however the eyebrows are vibrating.
An arrow is about to be shot at someone.
There is bilateral symmetry here: you can put the right hand of Kama Deva there, in the middle.
The Sanskrit reads: "with the other hand".
Anyway, when you pull the bowstring, the bow vibrates slightly, like the eyebrows of the Devi, in infinite compassion.
- The pair of eyebrows, slightly bent.
- Of thine, sorrowfully concerned with the banishment of fear
from all living beings.
- By Her eyes (not dual "pair", but plural).
- Like the brilliant beauty of bumblebees (a row of bumblebees is the string).
- Gaining a bowstring.
- I assume to be the bow.
- Of that counterpart of love, which is the other of the pair.
(Parity, but not primacy).
- Forearm and fist alone.
- When it hides - hidden inside.
- O Goddess - Umé.
- why does he not indicate the hand?
And why does he say "the husband of the Goddess of Love"?
Because this is important to the total structure in the mind of Sankara.
He is saying: "the counterpart hand" - no left or right is indicated, rather, simply, "the other".
Thus an extraneous horizontal factor is hiding the Absolute to a certain extent.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
It generates daytime; the left one, presiding over night, creates its three vigils;
While the third eye, like a half-open golden lotus bud,
Ushers in the twilight time, moving between day and night.
while the third eye presides over twilight.
Before, the vertical parameter began at the parting of the hair.
Now, we have the face, with the sun and moon as eyes and the third eye, of a golden colour, as the meeting point.
There is a golden flower at the very centre of the situation.
Do not strain yourself in meditation with open or closed eyes,
but have them half-open, half closed. (Which means normalised).
- Gives birth to daytime.
- Your eye which is not the left (the vaguer the better in this schematic language)
- By being identical with the sun.
- That tripartite divisional factor (the whole night).
- Your left one (eye).
- It creates (manifests).
- The presidentship over night (by being the moon).
- Thy third eye.
- Of slightly opened golden lotus beauty.
- Ushers into being the twilight dusk.
- Of day and night moving between (it lives and moves).
The day is presided over by the sun.
Put the third eye at the neutral centre point.
This is the small golden lotus, which represents the central value.
(no schemas or commentary given)
"Thy right eye, being of the form of the sun, begets the day,
While the left (eye), of the form of the moon, begets the night;
Thy third eye, which resembles a slightly blossomed golden lotus,
Brings forth the twilight, which introduces day and night."
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Ayodhya the invincible, by blue lotus bound; Kripadharadhara, on mercy's fountain founded;
A certain Madhura, the sweet; Avanti, of saving power; Bhogavatika, enjoyment affording;
All such names of various cities of lasting fame, within Your total regard they do reign triumphant
- unconquerable, agitating, etc.
These eight reign victorious.
Functions and values are indicated by the names of cities.
The Devi can have eight attitudes
- these are the subdivisions of value with their functional aspects of Absolute Beauty.
So this verse adds distinct value-functions to the notion of the Absolute.
- Named Expansive - Visala.
- Auspicious - Kalyani.
- With crystal clarity of character.
- Invulnerable - fortified - because of blue lilies.
- By the force of blue lotus flowers. (Ayodhya - horizontal).
- Of the overflow of kindness the support.
- A certain city of sweetness.
- Of enjoyment (e.g. Paris)
- Saving (this touches the Alpha Point).
- Your regard.
- Is thus triumphant with the expanse containing many cities.
(All these enumerated names must be put into the one consciousness of the Devi: they are triumphant.)
- Intransient - the totality of these names triumphs.
This final beauty of the Absolute reigns supreme.
The glance of thine eyes is all comprehensive (Visala);
spells prosperity (Kalyani);
serenely dazzles and as such cannot be faced in battle( A-yodhya),
by blue lilies is the fountainhead of the stream of mercy (Dhara),
is superbly sweet (Madhura),
enjoys immense happiness (Bhogavati),
is the saviour (Avanti)(of the devoted);
outrivals in extensiveness (Vistaravijaya) several (other) cities;
and is indeed capable of being (appropriately) indicated by their respective names.
All glory to it!
Each, qualitatively, represents part of the beauty of the Goddess.
All can be fitted into a schema, which will produce values when meditated upon.
Do not throw away the real - it is not enough to create a vacuum called the Absolute.
The eight qualities of Her eyes are graded in a certain way.
This is a method employed by Sankara to show that anything can be reduced from the actual to the vertical.
Category - Schema
Eight cities give names to eight aspects of the beauty of the eye of the Devi:
Avanti
Abhogavati
Madhura
Kripadhara
Ayodhya
Kalyani
Visala
Antagonising
Exorcising
Subjugating
Infatuating
Melting
Attracting
Agitating
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Do not give up the bases of Your ears, mellowed by the play of the nine aesthetic interests,
Remaining like aptness with poets, wholly absorbed in drinking the honey within a spray of blooms;
Your mid - forehead lotus-bud eye, by jealousy touched, seems magenta - tinged
The (third) eye on thy forehead is somewhat red (as though) influenced by jealousy,
seeing that thy two young-bee like obliquely glancing (eyes) in their eagerness to swallow the verse rasas (poetic sentiments)
do not leave off thy pair of ears, which chiefly delight in the honey of the cluster of flowers of poetic composition.
The eyes are like bumblebees - doubly dark.
The eyes are tragic, full of life with tragic import.
When she hears what the poets sing of erotic mysticism,
About her beauty, her eyes turn to the ears in enjoyment
- but her third eye becomes red in protest at the lewdness of the poetry.
It is saying to the two eyes, stop being horizontal: "why don't you verticalize yourself? I am a Goddess".
This represents the same eye and power by which Kama Deva was burned by Shiva.
Pure love is to be extolled.
This is like Schroedinger's picture. (This reference is not clear to ED.)
Every verse can be reduced and reconstructed.
Go from the real to the schema.
From the schema to the real.
At the extremities of her two eyes there are two bumblebees hiding.
The Devi does not approve of these horizontal tendencies to appreciate the erotic aspects of poetry.
She has superior, Absolute, taste in her consciousness;
She feels that she should verticalize the tendencies.
VERSE 50
- For poets
- That master taste enjoying in the total situation compared to a nectar-bearing bunch of blossoms.
- The extremes of the side-regards putting on the appearance of twin
small bumblebees
(they are horizontal - the bees of the eyes are whispering to the ears)
- Never leaving the ears (always whispering of eroticism).
- Agitated by the effects.
- The nine factors of taste.
- By having a touch of jealousy.
- The forehead eye.
- Has somewhat a magenta touch.
The Guru decides that the two bees are extracting a horizontal factor from the poetry - but not necessarily the erotic factor - just any horizontal aspect.
Why pick on the erotic aspect?
Disgust towards those who praise …. (illegible: ashes?)
Resentment at the Ganges for coming near to Shiva - she is surprised
Wonder at Shiva's exploits - Girisa
Dread at the snakes of Hara - fear.
Eclipses the beautiful colour of the Lotus.
Smiles for her comrades who consort with Shiva
Full of grace towards me (Sankara)
So the Devi's eyes have all of these qualities.
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He who can praise thus Your golden crown, o Daughter of the Snowy peak
Would he not have then in his mind the impression of the bow of Indra
When, by reflected glory, a slender crescent is produced by the gems imbedded therein?
These twelve diamonds - to the ordinary man - represent twelve distinct suns.
But the poet sees one reflected glory - a river of diamonds.
Sankara says: "surely the poet will make the mistake of seeing a bow in these diamonds - because that is nearer to the truth than just seeing diamonds".
There are twelve suns as a numerator fact: "Is it not just and fair that the poet sees one diamond's light permeating another? I am sure that he will see Indra's bow in these diamonds."
Sankara is saying that schematically all his flights correspond to the Absolute.
A river of diamonds is not the same as another river.
- At the Omega point all individual things tend to merge.
You cannot be a poet without being a philosopher and vice-versa.
AXIOMATIC THINKING IS AT THE CROWN OF THE DEVI.
EXPERIMENTAL THINKING IS IN THE LEGS OF THE DEVI.
Chakras - the value factor is always the same.
(Guru describes how Woodruff wrote his Tantra Shastra at second hand. (As interpreted to him by some Bengali Pundits. ED))
The Malayali pundit says that up to verse 41 it is Ananda Lahari, after that it is Saundarya Lahari.
The first 41 verses are conceived as Chakras and these are (were?) unknown in the North of India.
Thus this area of the Chakras of esoteric Devi worship has been geographically isolated.
He had to go along the neglected Kerala coast - the home of esoterically minded Devi-oriented people.
because they do not like the Tantra there.
The only difference between the first 41 and the last 59 is in style.
The first 41 verses are concerned with Chakras and are Dravidian),
Then in the latter part he goes on to a more descriptive language.
Pandits want to say that the first part was written by a Dravidian, the last by an Arian. But it is not true.
Sankara must have travelled all along the Kerala coast (and been familiar with the Tantra practised there. ED).
41 verses are esoteric, from Kerala - the rest speak the language of the Himalayas.
- Gone to rubyhood.
- By virtue of the sky-suns (12 suns) of each month.
- The crown closely knit. (With gems)
- Your golden. (Gold is a numerator value - known to all people)
- O daughter of the Himalayas (because he is turning to the
Hypostatic side)
- He who (intends to) praise.
- He (the poet).
- In the crown, what shade.
- Mixed radiance.
- Making a crescent.
- The bow.
- Of Indra.
- Is this not.
- Fixed.
- In his mind.
- he is sure to see in them Indra's bow.
The poet's job is to conceptualise
- and for the Indian poet, all brilliance and hypostatic beauty is Indra, the King of the Gods.
"I am also an Indian poet, and I am sure to do it. Don't you understand that any poet will do it".
This is an explanation of the first 41 verses.
It is natural for a poet to schematise.
HE IS CHANGING NOW FROM WHAT YOU SEE INSIDE TO WHAT YOU SEE OUTSIDE;
GOING FROM PSYCHEDELIC INNER SPACE TO A NORMAL DESCRIPTION OF THE DEVI.
Here, he is making a transition from one style to another.
Kerala, in the South, is one cultural region - it is fond of Mantras, Tantras and Esoterics.
Sankara first writes in the style of Kerala - about hierophantic inner space (on the negative side)
- and then goes to the more conceptual, hypostatic and positive Arian context.
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O Siva-consort, banish the darkness within us
To gain whose natural fragrance those other flowers of the garden of Indra,
As I can guess, take their place within Your tresses.
Now the transition is taking place.
He is beginning to describe the actual Goddess - starting with the hair.
This is a hypostatic, rather than a hierophantic approach.
"Dark hair - no, double dark - will abolish my ignorance
- through double negation, it is dark-splendid".
Even darkness, like tragedy, can be enjoyed - and you can see something bright.
There is a natural perfume in the hair, coming from inside the body,
(an esoteric secret found in the Shiva Purana).
participates with the fragrance of lilies (Denominator, negative).
These have the same unitive status.
Sankara wants you to see that you can travel from one to the other without contradiction.
He is changing his style now.
He has been indulging in the Tantric structuralism of Kerala
- now he adopts the traditional Sanskrit method, here he begins at the head and goes downwards, describing each part as he goes:
- he establishes an equation between Self and non-Self
- they have the same structure
We equate ourselves with something pure.
How can the hair of the Devi banish our ignorance?
There is a natural perfume as a counterpart to the perfume of the hair of the Devi.
The darkness here is a double darkness, which is bright and dark-splendid.
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P28
"Thick, shining and soft" - not black.
Sankara is saying there is no duality between hypostatic and hierophantic values.
The denominator holiness of the flowers is the same as the numerator holiness of the hair.
- Let it clear (wipe away the blot).
- Our ignorance.
- Expanse of blooming blue lilies.
- Thick, shining and soft, the growth of hair.
- Your, o Consort of Shiva.
- This, which is the natural perfume.
- To gain (for themselves).
- Flowers.
- Live in it (with the intention of getting some of the natural perfume).
- The garden of Indra
In Indra's heavenly garden there may be luxuries, but they are not comparable to the Absolute Beauty of the Devi.
The Tantra Shastra of the first 41 verses is essentially negative in character.
Now, Sankara is going to use the language of Vedic culture
- because he was a Sanskrit scholar and knew the Shastras (scriptures) etc.
Now the hair is thick, soft and brilliant (shining) and resembles an expanse of blue lilies - blue is the hypostatic end of magenta.
Blue from the positive side and red from the negative side blend to make magenta.
There is an exchange - "we correct the darkness of our ignorance by the shining brilliance of your hair."
Indra's flowers want the perfume of the hair of the Devi - hers is an Absolute Perfume - the perfume of the flowers is relative.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Outflowing into a stream, to resemble Your parted hairline,
With vermilion dust bedecked, keeping apart the strong growth of tresses
As if in bondage held by anti-darkness gangs, to reveal the tender rays of dawn
This is a point of punctuation.
The preceding Tantric approach has been terminated.
It says that the parting of the hair (a "semantome"), which would generally be white, is decorated with magenta powder.
Sankara is referring to more than convention - he says, "Let this line save us.
It can save us because it is a vertical parameter, while the horizontal is negative.
The Devi's face is thus a bright parameter - it is a correlation.
As for the pundits, they will say: "there is nothing to be emotional about, it is all a joke and it is all Maya".
Ignorance is like darkness - the Devi parts it - then she paints the parting in Her dark hair in magenta to add vitality and beauty to an otherwise mathematical parameter.
So let us be saved by this parameter.
We do not need Zeus or God; this line will save us. (It is the vertical axis. ED)
A parameter is solely mathematical in nature and the whole universe can be related to it.
"The world is a machine for creating Gods" - Bergson.
- Let it confer happiness on us.
- Like the streak of the overflow.
- Of the beauty of Your face.
- The ceremonially decorated streak of women.
- Bears the vermilion.
- The gangs of enemies of
- The darkness represented by the strong hair growth.
- Ever bound
- As if it is a streak of morning sunlight (pink dawn).
- breaking barriers like a streak of white light.
SOMETHING IS ADDED TO THE WHITE COLOUR IN ORDER TO NORMALIZE IT FROM THE "JEHOVAH" PRINCIPLE INTO SOMETHING KIND.
A group of factors of darkness have tried to overbind even that (white) parameter - they are ganging up against the Absolute Beauty and Wisdom of this magenta-coloured parameter.
This neutral magenta streak is there to save you from ignorance.
It gives you knowledge of the Absolute and knowledge is the saving factor.
Because it is Numerator light.
May it bless us, the upsurging billow of the beauty of Your face,
Overflowing as a slender stream to resemble Your parted hair-line,
With vermilion dust bedecked, keeping apart the strong growth of tresses,
As if in bondage held by an anti-darkness gang to reveal the tender rays of dawn.
The parameter is not a road or path, which simply lies there.
Water overflowing from below, sunlight overflowing from above.
Then the magenta colour.
The magenta colour is Eros' colour
EVEN HERE THE DEVI CRIES FOR ALL BABIES.