A Indhu Madham Part3
A Indhu Madham Part3
A Indhu Madham Part3
Read in English......
A humble tribute of Dr.N.RAMANI to a great poet....
WARNING : The following excerpts of translation from original texts are parts of academic
exercises in translation.
No part of the same shall be used for purposes other than the academic without the
explicit permission of the authors and/or copyright holders.
BOOK III
Four
The Dharma of Family
I had read in a magazine.
A Tamil had been abroad. He met an American couple. They were in an embrace just
outside a hotel.
The American introduced her to the Tamilian as his third wife. He also said that he had
cut off the first two.
He told the Tamilian "It’s always better to sever connections when you can’t agree with
each other".
He also said, "Take life for what it is. Why ascribe an abstract culture to it?
"Because I have married a woman, what point is there in living with her, all the while
quarrelling? It’s fair to take in a new one".
The cattle do the same. But they don’t go to the Registrar’s Office for an marriage
registration. They also don’t go to the court for a divorce.
If we can live anyhow, there will only be animals called men and women.
There will be no place for cultured relationships.
But Hinduism stands out by virtue of such sustaining relationships.
The Hindu Dharma describes family life as a holy mission. That’s why Tamil named it
illaram - the holy domestic mission.
One can have as many wives as he pleases according to the Hindu dharma. But he is the
only husband to all of them.
Even if he has kept one of them out of his way, she remains his wife until death.
The husband has the obligation to satisfy her in all respects.
There are many who fail in these obligation.
They are to be taken only as these who had ignored their obligations. They are not
permitted to do so.
Even among the Hindus, a section had the custom of remarriage for women. It prevails
even at present.
But Hinduism does not approve of it.
How did this come to be?
It came to be out of a sense of vengeance between factions in conflict.
There is the habit giving a girl given in marriage into a family and taking a girl into one’s
own family from the other.
If two families have each a boy and a girl, the girl from the one is given in marriage to
the other family and the turn the other girl is taken in as the daughter-in-law.
When one such pair lives happily , the other pair may have a quarrelsome life.
If the quarrelsome husband returns his wife to her parents’ house, the other girl may also
be sent home in vengeance, in spite of happy married life.
If one of the girls is made to cut off her tali and marry another, the other girl is compelled
to do the same out of a spirit of vengeance.
The habit that was the result of anger became customary during later days.
But the Hindu Dharma does not approve of it even in stories.
It added family Dharma to the list of dharmas.
The husband has to satisfy the soul thirst of his wife rather than just her physical lust.
But the wife has to satisfy the husband’s lust and win his soul over to herself.
Though physical satisfaction was an obligation for man to be fulfilled, it was purely of
secondary significance.
If we were to acknowledge the fact, we should say that eighty out of a hundred men do
not satisfy the physical lust of the wife. If the same were to be the state of affairs abroad,
it would be reason enough for a divorce.
The Hindu wife considers the extent of satisfaction she gets as the extent of her desire.
Through such patience, at one point of time, she gets totally satisfied.
Let’s see the details.
During the early days of coition, the husband is satisfied.
The lust and heat of coition renders him weak.
If he keeps on with one woman only, his system gets over the weakness and he becomes
steadier.
The pent up fury of lust in the body of the wife, makes him weak and quickens his
ejaculation.
Repeated coition between a single pair for a long period of time brings them to
simultaneous discharge.
If the time of ejaculation and orgasm are simultaneous, such coition is called samakala
bogam - simultaenous enjoyment.
This simulatenous ejaculation renders them both equally steady.
When the rain water flows through a tank, the fish in the tank reach the street. Similarly
at the point of simulatenous ejaculation, the sperms in the semen reach the wife’s body
and the vaginal secretion enters the man’s body.
Only long cohahitation makes this possible.
This tightens the bond between them.
Healthy children are born.
They grow with filial affection.
There arises a happy family.
A healthy nation is built on such healthy families.
That’s why Hinduism advocates family life as a Dharma.
In family life, intercourse is only a part.
The other part is its relationship with the others.
It’s other name is hospitality.
The householder is the one who sees off the departing guest awaiting the incoming one.
To be hospitable is to be civilised according to the Hindu Dharma
The husband and wife are expected not to eat for themselves unless they have fed at least
one guest.
The householders therefore will keep looking for a mendicant or a beggar.
Hinduism assigned a certain civilized attribute to the guest too.
It consists of appreciating whatever food is served however unpalatable may it be.
A still greater virtue is that of the wife taking her food only after having fed the husband
and eating of the same leaf.
There are people who say it is unhygienic.
The Hindu wife prefers as much health for herself as the husband enjoys.
If the husband is a consumptive, she prefers to become a consumptive herself and
therefore eats off the same leaf.
It is said that the people who lived in the submerged continent of Lemuria had the habit
of wounding the fingers of both the husband and wife and keeping them tied together.
It is meant to bring about the mixing of the blood.
The Hindu wife does it in the abstract.
She does not eat for herself before her husband, even if it be for days.
In the gluttonous West, it is a great thing if the husband gets what is left after the wife
had eaten for herself.
These days, family women wear jasmine flowers on their hair on all days.
But during those days, there was an excellent habit.
Those were the days when even the husband and wife went to bed unnoticed by others.
They will meet at midnight and sleep separately after coition.
The husband will understand the wife’s readiness even in the evening.
If she has no jasmine on her hair, she has menstruated.
Women in their menses period will usually stay in isolated rooms.
Where the husband and wife do not have privacy during the day, the wife makes use of
jasmine to indicate her physical condition of unpreparedness for coition, having no
jasmine on her hair.
If the wife were to become pregnant, she will not disclose it to her husband; her mother-
in-law has to inform her son of it.
This is the typical bashfulness of a married woman.
Moreover she does not refer to her husband as "My husband" while talking to others. She
will name one of the children and say "His father".
That’s the declaration of a promise.
"Thai ariyatha sul unto?" is a proverb.
("Which mother does not know whose child she’s carrying?")
She promises that the child from her womb is her husband’s own.
In our clan, when the wife bewails the death of her husband, she will call him "pinju
makkal ayya" (the father of unripe children).
Hinduism has framed excellent rules and regulations for family life.
The usual eruptions of anger and anxieties apart, every Hindu family is equal to two
thousand temples.
Five
The Knowledge of the Ultimate Truth
When we console a person in suffering, we usually say, "The mind construes everything.
Whatever has happened has already happened. Be quiet".
... ... ...
What we are able to obtain becomes the ordinary.
The scene of an easy life wears a deserted look.
The wife is prepared to be abed with the husband whether it is day or night. This
readiness by itself renders her not-so-beautiful and not-so-pleasurable.
When the pilgrimage to Kashi took three months, our forefathers longed to shorten it to
three weeks.
Now that we can go there in three hours, even the three hours appear too long.
With our feet planted on something and the eyes looking at something else, human life is
coursing through an illusion.
At times we feel, "There is happiness where we are."
At one point of time we become weary of life.
What then in permanent? What offers lasting bliss?
Swami Vivekananda says that neither our happiness nor our sorrows are real.
The wisdom to remain in the same forest, to bathe in the same river and to be cremated in
the same forest is not the privilege of all.
The desire to shift places; the desire for one women after the other; the constant
dissatisfaction with what one has and the desire for more - human life is like a leaf
floating in the wind slowly descending all the while; it does not fall down straight, like a
stone.
Birth is the result of an illusory passion; life is a process of illusive desires; ultimately the
distress of suffering an undesired death - such is human life.
In the midst of such spiritual darkness, Vivekananda lit the light of wisdom
(jnanadheepam) to lead us to the ultimate truth.
The one who has vomited after taking in "payasam’ one day (rice or barley boiled in milk
as sweetened, in semi liquid form) is scared of it for the rest of his life.
The one who has seen a scorpion at a particular place one day is sacred of the place for
the rest of his life.
The one who has found a gold ring one day expects to find a ring there everyday.
He gilds the passing with the lasting. He languishes, having lost his peace of mind, which
can be felt only in the awareness of the lasting.
When is Truth to dawn in these minds?
He has to reconcile the accounts of his life with the awareness that whatever have
happened are not to happen over again just as the full grown arms and legs do not grow
any further; with the awareness that whatever have already been obtained are not to be
obtained over again; with the awareness that it is futile to desire those not obtained so far.
Swami Vivekananda described this as the awareness of Truth.
If it has to be put in the simple and clear terms of our forefathers, realization of Truth
consists of concluding that nothing is of human volition; everything is only of his action.
(nammale avathu ethumillai, natappathellam avan ceyal)
Those who belong to the school of rationalism may refute this claim.
They may argue that nothing in beyond human accomplishment.
I would like to ask them.
How much of what they wanted to happen in their life had actually happened? How many
incidents had occurred in their lives even without their having willed them to occur?
Have they been satisfied at any stage in their lives?
Why do their desires keep on increasing year by year?
Why were they not prevented by their rational self?
When Paranthaman declared that Jnana (awareness) is better than Karma (action) Arjuna
asked, " What Karma then do you want me to perform?"
At that point, Paranthaman describes how jnana takes its origin at the end of karma.
The woman is beautiful indeed to look at! But a few days since going to bed with her,
syphilis attacks.
The awareness that one should not be carried away by physical beauty is realised only
then.
As it is understood in slow degrees that the physical feeling (mey unarvu) only creates a
mirage, true awareness (meyyunarvu) begins its advent.
[Note : "mey" in Tamil means both "the body" (udal) and Truth (unmai; sathiyam)]
It can be realised only through experience. But Swami Vivekananda realised it through
his knowledge. That’s why he had become enlightenment at a young age.
If aware, if enlightened, there is neither sweetness nor bitterness; neither likes nor
dislikes;
There is no happiness at birth and no sadness at death.
The spate of blows become those falling on a rock and not on the flesh.
The refrain of the aware is ponal pokattum pota (Let the bygones be the bygones).
There is nothing that can be prevented by tears.
There is nothing that can be obtained with laughter.
There is no atonement in writhing.
To live the life of a human being all the while remaining a stone is not to be enlightened.
To grow into the aware is to be enlightened.
The word mey means both the holy and truth.
But the body is not true.
Meyyunarvu (enlightenment) does not mean "awareness of the body" but only
"awareness of the Truth".
It is the awareness of the ultimate truth that is the right path unto the one who desires
peace for ever.
SIX
Humanism
Someone seems to have asked Vinayakar, "Sakthi and Sivan stand as the Arthanari.
Where did their other halves go?"
Vinayakar’s answer had been, "They have become men and women in the world".
I have read such a story somewhere.
Teivam manusa rupayana is a saying in Sanskrit.
Every man has taken his origin form the atom of the Paraman.
Every woman has taken her origin from the atom of Sakti.
That’s why the infant at birth knows not treachery, knavery, falsity and naivete.
The infant is the symbol of the divine atom.
Every child is born as the God.
But then why do some children grow into thieves while a few others grow into geniuses.
God wills to make the world a field for the interplay of passions. He wills to govern the
dynamics of the world.
If all children remain as they are born even as they keep growing, there will be no
meaning for worldly life.
If there are no conflicting passions, there will be no conflict of interests.
If there are no conflicts of interests there will be no realisation of Truth.
"Realise the goodness of shade while in the sunshine".
Strong sunshine is necessary to realise the comfort shade has to offer.
Drought is necessary to realise the necessity of rain.
Brutalism is necessary to realise the merit of humanism.
Man is necessary to realise the divine.
Men and women created by Uma and Maheswaran are of three kinds:
The brutish;
The human;
The divine;
Man stands between the ignoble and the noble.
While coming across brutality, humanism is longed for.
While coming across man, the necessity for the divine is felt.
If all become divine, the concept of divinity will die.
If all become brutish, there will be no necessity for the divine.
The man between the brute and the divine becomes the father of the dynamics of the
world.
Only when man is duly perceived, the divine and the brute are realised for what they are.
That’s why Hinduism initiated the attempt to cultivate humanism among men.
That’s what’s exactly humanism.
The characters appearing in the ithihasas are human.
The man Rama became the divine Rama by virtue of his conduct.
The man Ravanan became the brute by virtue of his behaviour.
The Pandavas became the divine.
The Gauravas became the brutes.
If humanism prevails between man and man, God appears within the heart of each man.
The heart is the temple; the deity therein is humanism.
The jnanis dwelling in the forests were not in search of the God there in the forests; they
tried to find God within man.
The concept of Dharma is the means through which the god in the temple is transferred to
the heart of man.
The loving is the God.
The sympathetic is the God.
The chaste is the God.
The virtuous is the God.
Thus whichever is noble in man was attributed the status of the divine.
That’s why there was the necessity for the instituion of religion to bring man up from
lower appetencies to higher states of being.
Hinduism is the first of religions which had thus sprung.
Hinduism showed how a temple can be made of the place where man is, without
dissociating man from the routine duties of the average man.
She who brings rain about and makes the fleshy damp sheaths of the plantain tree burn is
not the sincerely virtuous.
She who ensures no flow of tears from her husband’s eyes and she who guards against
the flame of anger in her husband’s heart alone is the sincerely virtuous.
Even if she is in a hut, it becomes a temple.
He who materialises the holy ash from nowhere is not the enlightened. He who cultivates
the knowledge of truth in an empty heart is alone the enlightened.
He who usefully distributes what is cultivated is the scientist.
They alone know the mysterious ways of the divine. They alone can device the course of
any journey.
That’s why their souls become great souls while those of the others remain just souls.
To make a temple of one’s own dwelling is humanism. To promote such a humanism is
the business of religion.
Hinduism has a special distinction in this regard.
No philosophy prescribes either a particular number of pilgrimages or a particular
number of holy dips in particular temples.
We have devised such rituals for ourselves, for the sake of our own satisfaction.
Temples are places where those who can’t make temples of their own houses dump their
sufferings and cry out.
The temple tanks are meant to wash the body and pray unto Umapathy; they are meant
only for those who can’t wash their own hearts and see Maheswaran in themselves.
The congregation of people in the name of festivals has a definite purpose. When
thousands are witnessed in all their humility, such humility will come to be adopted by
everybody.
The mind that can’t be focussed while alone is focused in the temples.
Thoughts are diverted into acts of breaking coconuts in offering and lighting the camphor
only to guard it against possible confusion.
Hinduism has done its best to keep man as man.
If everyone becomes a Sankaracharya Swami, what respect will preaching have?
But those who are affluent can become a Pari or a Pachaiyappar or an Alakappar.
Those who have a clear head can become the leaders.
Those who are physically strong can extend manual service.
Those who could do nothing can at least remain within the four walls of their own houses
and maintain their household through honest means.
Non violence to such an extent as not even to step upon an ant; charitable nature as to
share whatever little or much one may have - Hinduism advocates such humanism.
Hinduism preaches refraining from stealing even in abject poverty.
If the minister loses his position, he vacates the house.
If man loses his position, he vacates the world.
But as long as he is alive, every man occupies a particular position.
When a minister goes wrong, an enquiry commission is constituted; When a man goes
wrong, only Maheswaran has to sit on judgement.
Lest he should stand with folded hands and hung head in the God’s court, Hinduism puts
man’s documents in order even here and now.
What is the gift of the humanism of Hinduism?
Extend the good unto those who have done well unto you. Forget the one who has
wronged you.
When you can’t do the good, refrain from the wrong.
Where every man adopts this principle, we will have a society where there is neither
animosity nor affliction.
The avowed objective of Hinduism is the making of such a society.
The truth that has been firmly established until the day is that a good Hindu has always
remained a good man.
SEVEN
The Snake in the Garland
The World is called the pirapancha in Sanskrit. The term is self explanatory in that the
five (pancha) elements have gone into the making of this world.
How will it be to get lost in God-consciousness forgetting this world, forgetting worldly
bonds, affections, happiness, sadness and all thereof?
How to obtain that jnana?
Even if a beautiful woman were to be within sight, not she but only the God within her is
to be seen.
Even if crores of currency notes are heaped in front of us, not the wealth in it but only
God in it is to be seen.
Even if you were to get the highest office in the world, not the bliss of power but
Supreme Being (paramporul) is to be seen in it.
Even if you were to see the kith or kin lying dead, not a corpse but the God of justice in
his bed is to be seen.
He’s there is all happiness. He’s there also in all sadness; He’s there in birth; He’s there
in death too.
He should appear to your eyes as the all pervasive, negating the sense of here and there;
as the bright embodiment of happiness.
How is this possible?
If a beautiful deerling were to be dead, remove the flesh, inside and keep its skin cured.
What if the sun shines or it rains on a piece of rock?
What if you pour cold water or hot water on a sculpture.
That’s the state of equipoise, free from any vacillation whatsoever.
God is to be seen in that state of equipoise.
Arjuna asks Kannan what prompts man to commit sins. Kannan identifies it as desire.
The "Gita" says:
Innumerable are the kinds of lust, malice, arrogance and envy.
Nothing of them are fulfilled.
We are not able to give up anything satisfied with it at any point of time.
Our thoughts fetter us all around and keep dragging us along.
There is disharmony in the music of the veena of man.
Hinduism shows the way to get rid of thousands of snares and unite with God.
There’s a pleasure in it, there’s a fearlessness in it.
If worldly life consists of being dead while living, jnana consists of living like the dead.
Hinduism illustrates this attitude with the metaphor of a drop of water on a lotus leaf.
Hinduism also shows the way to the stillness like the stillness of water which transcends
even detached life.
The sweet becomes bitter at a particular point of continuous consumption.
When the bitterness of life is tasted, aversion towards life comes to be.
This aversion grows in magnitude and the heart is afire.
Desire alone is responsible for this development of affairs.
There is a pleasure indeed in the jnana yoga nirvikalpa samathi in which one detaches
oneself from the passions of the world and becomes neither happy at birth nor sad at
death.
You may turn round and ask me if it is possible to keep living in this world and still be
away from the fetters of worldly phenomena.
I’m about to explain the same.
I saw a film in production some time back.
It’s title was Sita Kalyanam (Sita’s marriage).
As soon as I saw the character of Sita on the screen, my mind flew into the
Kambaramayanam.
I don’t remember what I saw on the screen.
The eyes were glued to the screen; but the mind was reminded of Mithilai Katchi
Padalam in the Kambaramayanam.
I found it very difficult to bring myself back to what I was seeing on the screen.
That is an instance of how the mind which gets involved in something comes to ignore
everything else around. To get involved in something is again an illusion of the mind,
suspension of a sort.
If we get involved in God, we get rid of the entire phenomenal distractions of the world.
The Vanati Pathippakam has published a book of 900 pages compiling the thoughts of
Kanchi Parameswara Swamikal, with the title The Voice of God (theivathin kural).
Let me quote an instance in whole; it will clarify many concepts.
The essay is such that, not a single line can be dispensed with.
The title of the chapter is Kannan as well as Kamban have said (it) (kannanum sonnan;
kambanum sonnan).
I will quote it in its entirely.
"If atman is the basis of all, how is it said to transcend even itself? It is puzzling. Krishna
Paramathma confuses the mind with contradictions on many occasions in the Gita but
finally makes everything explicitly clear.
"In one instance Krishna says that He is in everything and everything is in Himself.
(Yoman pacyati sarvatra, sarvam samayi pachyathi). If everything is within Himself, He
becomes the basis of each one of them, their atman. But if He is in everything, they
become His basis. Which of the two claims is correct? This confusion is quite natural.
"Swami or atma is the basis of all. That will be the correct understanding of the text.
Because He is said to be in everything, it should not be taken to mean that each of them
sustain Him. They get their form and life from Him. They don’t have an existence
independent of His existence. So they are not His basis. It’s only He who governs
everything. Sri Krishna himself is explicit about this.
"All created beings are like the puppets in a puppet show. God remains within each of
them and accounts for their dynamics. (isvara sarva bhuthanam hruthe dese Arjuna
dhishtatha bramyam sarva budhani yanthraru doni mayaya).
"Bhagavan who clarifies thus in the Gita again teases the mind. He who says that He is in
everything and everything is within Himself also says that nothing is with Him and He is
also not in anything. (nasa math sthani na saham dheshu avasthitha). What is spoken
about here is the philosophy of the transcendence of the atman.
"What a puzzle is this? There is no puzzle.
"Not all are able to understand me.
"(na aham prasake sarvasya) That is my yoga maya (yoga maye samavrutha)" he
declares.
"What kind of a philosophy is this? I’m not able to make anything out of it" - do you feel
so?
"If you think deeply, you can resolve the puzzle. If the God has said that he will not be
understood by anyone, he may have meant that if there had been a thousand, none of the
thousand would be able to understand Him. But when he says "not all are able to
understand me", He means to say that at least one among the thousand may become
aware of Him. He did not say that He would be understood by none. He only meant that
not all would be able to understand him. (kasyapi / sarvasya) So he is understood by
some.
"Who are those few? They are the jnanis unaffected by the yoga maya he has referred to.
Only these jnanis can resolve the contradiction in terms in the claim.
"I am in everything and nothing is with me".
"There is a garland on the street. It is lying in semidarkness. Someone who came that way
happens to step on it and cries, "Snake, a snake!" in fear.
"Whatever is the garland or the snake, is the same. When he realises that it is only a
garland, he understands that there is no snake. But what was the basis of the existence of
snake? It had been the garland.
"Just as the garland is taken for a snake, the ignorant look at the unitary Brahman as the
divergent world and are deluded. The basis of the world is Brahman.
"What is the meaning of the saying "I am in the world. The world is within me"? It is like
saying that the snake is in the garland and the garland is in the snake - Aren’t both the
claims true?
"The snake has swallowed the garland to the one who cried "Snake" in fear. The basis of
his perspective is the non existent snake. When ignorance is dispelled and it is understood
for the garland that it is, the garland hides the snake within itself. The garland becomes
the basis of the perspective. Even if the world is taken for the ultimate reality deluded by
illusion, Isvaran alone sustains the world, Himself remaining its basis.
"To him who dispels the illusory appearance of the world with the help of his jnana,
Isvaran becomes everything and himself as well. At the stage of nirvakalpa samathi,
other than the vision of God, no other vision including that of the world, will be
registered. When there is no world at all unto them, is it not stupidity to talk in terms of
the relationship of the non existent world with the only existent reality, God? During the
period of lack of true wisdom, everything like the body, the breath, mind and knowledge
are distinctly felt. At the advent of jnana, when atmananda is felt, none of these exists. In
fact that stage is a transcendent stage, transcending all these. That’s why Krishnan
standing at the threshold of jnana had declared, "There is nothing with me; I am also not
in anything". Just because an ignorant man had felt that there was a snake in the garland,
can it be taken to indicate that there was a snake actually in the garland or there was a
garland actually in a snake?
Kambar writes about this is Suntara Kantam:
alankalil tonrum poymmai
aravu ena putam aintum
vilankiya vikarap pattin
verupaturra vikkam
kalakuva tevaraik kantal
avar enpar kaivil enti
ilankaiyil porutar anre
Maraikalukku imtiyavar.
"alankal" is garland, "aravu" is snake. Alankalil tonrum poymmai aravu - the apparently
real but illusory perspective of the snake in the garland. Likewise the five elements have
in different combinations created the illusion of a world and deluded the mind.
Ramachandramurti is the one at the sight of whom this delusion will be dispelled and the
garland, Isvaran alone will appear to be.
The staunch Vaishnava Kambar has thus spoken of the manifest form of God in such
clear advaitic terms.
Eight
Put the Log in the Water
Nine
LUST