Advaita Vedanta

 

 

SAUNDARYA LAHARI

 

 

 

VERSE 62

 

THE THING AND THE THING SIGNIFIED HAVE A DANCING PARITY BETWEEN THEM

 

प्रकृत्या‌உ‌உरक्ताया-स्तव सुदति दन्दच्छदरुचेः
प्रवक्ष्ये सदृश्यं जनयतु फलं विद्रुमलता ।
न बिम्बं तद्बिम्ब-प्रतिफलन-रागा-दरुणितं
तुलामध्रारोढुं कथमिव विलज्जेत कलया

 

prakrtya raktayas tava sudati dantacchada ruceh
pravaksye sadrsam janayatu phalam vidruma lata
na bimbam tad bimba pratiphalana ragad arunitam
tulam addhyarothum katham iva vilajjeta kalaya

 

O One of Goodly Teeth, of Your parted lips naturally red I shall declare the similitude;
Let the coral reef bear fruit by reflection from its original model
With which desiring to climb to the point of mid-parity,
However could it avoid being abashed at least by a degree?

 

In Verse 62 the bindusthana, or central locus, is to be placed between the parted lips, where the beautiful teeth of the Goddess are revealed. The play of participation between the pearly teeth and the coral-red lips is the central theme of this verse. Sanskrit poets are fond of one analogy in particular for the luscious, rich and fully red lips of a voluptuous maiden, which is the bimba fruit (the bright red fruit of the plant Momordica Monadelpha), so a beautiful girl is often called “one of bimba-fruit-lips”.

 

Here the poet steps down from the platform, as it were, to speak intimately with his audience by means of the analogies that are most fitting to the beauty of the lips and teeth, which blend their colours both ways to create a non-dual form of absolute Beauty by mutual participation. The teeth are hard like coral, while the lips are naturally soft and supple like a bimba fruit. The problem is to establish a parity or one-to-one correspondence between them to fulfil the requirements of a central Advaitic value which should always be the same, at whatever level, inside or outside. The beauty of the Goddess is going to be appreciated by the poet himself here. By stepping down from the platform to talk to the reader, he throws off his formal status, and seems to say that between the reader and the poet an intimate understanding could be established on a certain basis. Both of them are equally interested in finding the nearest analogy to the beauty that emerges at that particular locus where the parted lips reveal the brightness of the teeth. The object of the poet here is to show that the magenta colour of coral and that of bimba fruit seem to rival each other in establishing superiority over some other analogy that another poet might suggest.

 

Thus, the situation is one that involves a subtle intrigue between rival poetic tastes. The solidity of the teeth would make it reasonable for a poet to think that the analogy of hard coral applies more aptly to the teeth than to the bimba fruit; which by common-sense standards would naturally belong to the side of the lips. It is clearly stated in the first line that the poet is trying to find the right analogy for the teeth and the lips and, because the teeth are hard and solid, he suggests that if the coral reef could have a fruit, that would establish a parity between the teeth and the lips to reveal the non-dual beauty that suggests itself in that region. The coral reef does not have fruit, but we could suppose a soft fruit in order to suggest that the redness of the fruit permeates into the region of the teeth and thus makes them look like fruit by borrowed light, one degree removed from the suggested analogy.

 

The attributes of solid coral and those of a luscious fruit are here meant to be cancelled out into a state of parity or equality. The teeth, in trying to establish equality in respect of brilliant reddishness, do not fully succeed in doing so. It is even suggested that they shyly hesitate in the attempt. This hesitation implies that at one moment they are equal in beauty with the lips, and at another moment they are not, in the opinion of the teeth themselves.

 

An element of ambiguity is thus purposely retained by Sankara here in order to underline the doctrinal principle of indeterminism or non-predicability that applies when two conjugates are involved as rival factors to the same absolute value. The analogy of the energy and velocity of particles in quantum mechanics is supposed to represent such a principle of indeterminism. They cannot both be fixed at the same time and place to give a value that is fully determined. Vedanta accepts this indeterminism as basic to nature itself, when viewed from the side of physics rather than of metaphysics. Either physics is right or metaphysics is right, at any given time. For both to be right at the same time, the Absolute must step in as a normative and a re-normative reference. The shyness and hesitation in the matter of establishing an equality of beauty between the solid teeth, which resemble coral ontologically, but which wish to attain an equality of beauty with the luscious fruit-like lips which are more qualitative or teleological in their status, presents an enigma which refuses to be abolished. The vestige of a paradox exists at the core of even the notion of the Absolute, however much we might try to fix its meaning finally. Such a paradoxical element is considered permissible as a last residue in the Bhagavad Gita. The Absolute is a mystery and a wonder, and it is a rare value within the mind of yogis capable of medita­ting on it. An alternating figure-eight movement belongs to the Absolute value-content until meditation abolishes even the least duality between the Self and the non-Self aspects of the same content - but the mystery is never to be abolished. Within the core of such a mystery, the stable term is to be marked, if at all, by that finalized experience in which the meditator becomes none other than the object meditated upon, by cancellation. The term of all meditation is thus attained as a supreme yogic experience. Even mind and matter can be said to meet here, as well as ends and means.

 

It is to bring out this subtle Vedantic position that Sankara leaves the contested equality of beauty between lips and teeth, one shining by the borrowed light of the other, in the form of a rhetorical question in terms of shyness, where ontology and teleology may be said to be playing a game of hide-and-seek through all time. Such a situation is called anyonya adhyasa (mutual conditioning). The favourite example of adhyasa (condi­tioning) is that of a clear, colourless crystal placed on a piece of red satin. Without becoming red, the crystal is made to look red throughout. The teeth and the luscious fruit comple­ment each other, as do quality and quantity, and the indeterminism that would persist in the form of hesitation or shyness is itself a value to be equated with the absolute Value and not to be abolished. The two limbs of an equation need not be abolished for a trained mathematician to understand its import. The duality between the limbs of the equation is no drawback to the equation itself.

 

The final meaning is the message to be sought in the experience of the yogi. It is a form of unitive understanding and nothing more. Pluralism can coexist with the notion of unity, so that the philosopher could cancel them both out into the non-dual Absolute. All propositions must contain terms which it is the task of the logician to resolve into a middle term. Such a middle term is the Absolute. To recognize the ambiguity between terms so as to abolish them correctly is preferable to just saying, as logicians often do, that one should not believe in many gods. Dialectical methodology would admit both the references of thesis and antithesis for arriving at a final synthesis. Even Hegelianism admits of such a method, of which Engels is only a continuator.

 

If time and space are conjugates, we can see through their amorphous articulation a being which, like a flame or a dancing Nataraja, gives us a functional picture of a figure-of-eight. This idea is similar to the shyness of the teeth to resemble the lips. Thus, one attains the Absolute through abstracting rival aspects of beauty. Truth is both a way as well as a fact. Ends and means unite in it into an experience. We must be careful not to bind down with hide the ambiguity of this dancing flame. Fixing it as a doctrine will only result in “Lord, Lordism”. As the Bhagavad Gita says, “It is a wonder and a mystery”. That is as far as one can understand it. We must leave it as a value of this kind and not solidify it into a doctrine.

 

The Guru comes in naturally because people attached to wisdom have an automatic affiliation. Guru and disciple are like the two limbs of an equation. They are equal, in principle, like comrades.

 

This language of such a high degree of fancifulness is natural to man, and perfectly acceptable to children. If the financial world can speak of the “dancing pound” or say that the “dollar is shy”, why cannot Sankara use such terms in an absolutist context?

 

The ontological teeth, as effect, lag slightly behind the teleological lips, as cause, in the figure-eight participation. This is poetry bent to speak for the philosophy of Vedanta in a way which Westerners would claim to be unfair. There is a subtle trick played here by Sankara. The interplay here is between quanti­tative and qualitative aspects of beauty, and the event could be described as inter-subjective as well as trans-physical.

 

(Adhyasa, according to one definition: from "adhi", above, over, + the verbal root "as" "to throw, cast". A misconception or erroneous attribution, the significance being that the mind casts upon facts, which are misunderstood, certain mistaken notions; hence false or erroneous attribution. Equivalent to adhyāropa. Simply put, adhyasa means superimposition or false attribution of properties of one thing on another thing. See below for more on this concept, which is very important in Advaita. ED)

 

 

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

 

(Note that, as with the previous verse and others, although the following commentaries are drawn from different sources, they are almost identical in places. We have, however, preserved them as they were found in the original manuscripts, so that no detail is omitted. This is particularly important as this verse is one of the most difficult and elusive of all. ED)