Saundaryan Lahari Verse 5

haris tram aradhya pranata saubhagya jananim
pura nari bhutva pura ripum api ksobham anayat
smaro'pi tvam natva rati nayana lehyena vapusa
muninam apy antah prabhavatim mohaya mahatam


O Great Mother, once the great Mahavisnu, having
worshipped you (well known as the bestower of happiness on all those who are devoted to you),
changed himself into a woman of exquisite beauty.
He caused agitation even in the mind of the great Siva,
well known for his restraint as the burner of the three cities.
Kama, the god of love, whose body is invisible,
smears his erotic enjoyability on those whom he chooses;
they are licked by the goddess of erotics and thereby
confusion is caused, even in the minds of the great sages
who are well established in their meditations.




Commentary

The Universal Mother is praised here as the bestower of blessings on those who worship her. There are two other references: one to the myth of the Churning of the Milk ocean and the other to Kamadeva, the God of Love.

The Churning of the Milk ocean by the Devas and the Asuras produced the pot of the elixir of immortality. In Kalidasa's poem "Kumarasambhava", Siva burns Kama, the god of love, to ashes. Moved by the laments of Kama's consort Rati, the Goddess allows Kama to exist in a bodiless form. This has reference to the effect of love on a person, which like hunger has no particular location and can suddenly afflict a person. Kama is also known as Smara, which means memory, and Siva is also known as Smarahara, the destroyer of Smara. Memory preserves the continuity of our experience, but becomes an obstacle when we want to experience universal consciousness.

The Milk Ocean is the abode of Visnu and the realm of all specific values. Both the Devas and the Asuras, the bright and dark forces, are vying with one another for immortality and supremacy over life. Brahma the creator advised them to churn the ocean of life to gain the elixir of immortality. As the churning could not be done by any group separately, it was agreed as a joint venture. The great Mount Mandara was used as the churning rod. The beginningless ocean also has no bottom. Therefore it became necessary to find a ground for the churning rod to rest upon. Visnu being the preserver changed into a turtle and provided that ground. The rope used for churning was none other than the great serpent Ananta, endless time. The Devas held the tail and the Asuras held the head of the serpent.

As a result of the churning, fourteen precious things appeared one after the other: the celestial white elephant, airavata; the mace, gada; the parijata tree, kaumodaki; the white horse, uccaissravas; the desire-granting cow, kamadhenu; the conch shell, sankha; the crescent moon, candra; goddess of grace and abundance, Laksmi; the great bow, dhanuh; virgin of the stars, Astreya, the jewel of great luster, kasutubha; the celestial nymph of great beauty, Rambha; and finally the god of medicine, Dhanvantri, bearing a pot with the elixir of immortality, amrta.

The churning agitated the snake Ananta and it vomited the world poison, kalakuta. This terrified the Devas and the Asuras. To calm their fears Siva drank the poison and saved the world. Henceforth his neck turned blue because of the poison and he came to be known as Nilakantha, the Blue-Throated.

The Asuras snatched the pot of elixir from the god Dhanvantri and ran away. The Devas did not want the Asuras to become immortal by partaking of the amrta, elixir of immortality. Vishnu turned to the Universal Mother with devotion and appealed for help. By Her grace he was able to transform himself into the very incarnation of beauty named Mohini, the grand seductress. On seeing her charming form, the Asura who had snatched the pot of elixir gladly handed it over and thus the Devas were able to retrieve the amrta.

In this verse Siva is recalling the beautiful form of Vishnu when he had assumed the form of Mohini, the grand seductress, and wants to see that form again. This is referred to as Vishnu causing agitation to Siva.

According to Joseph Campbell, the function of mythology is to waken and maintain in the individual a sense of wonder and participation in the mystery of this finally inscrutable universe.

In this verse we come closer to the subject matter of the Saundarya Lahari which is erotic mysticism. Erotic mysticism is well developed in classical Indian culture. The ancient grassroot traditions existing from pre-Vedic times on the soil of India, worshipped the Goddess. From Babylonia to Egypt, from Crete to the Indus Valley Civilization, we find evidence of Goddess worship through numerous archeological discoveries. Classical Indian culture absorbed the ancient goddess into their culture. This is a very different history from the suppression of the goddess in Medieval European society. The earlier Pagan religions viewed Nature as a theophany, a manifestation of divinity, not a 'fallen' creation of the Creator. The Pagans recognized the female divine principle, called Goddess, with a capital G as well as, or instead of, the male divine principle, god. European Pagan culture also has elements of erotic mysticism but the unfortunate events during Medieval times virtually destroyed it. The rejection of the feminine in favor of the masculine godhead led to a radical shift in the culture and progess of Europe. The witch hunts of the 16th and 17th centuries across Europe finally decimated the grassroot goddess cultures and brutally replaced it with a rationally male mode of thought. The prudery of religion in modern times has alienated human beings from some of their basic biological urges. Among thinkers it was Rousseau who considered human beings to be naturally good, and blamed society as a corrupting influence

Religious doctrines that discredit the value of nature do a great disservice to the dialectical relationship between man and woman. When nature is somehow considered 'inferior' to god, who is turn is thought of as male, the relationship between man and woman becomes lopsided.

Among the great culture creating civilization of the ancient world we have the Egyptian, the Indian, the Greek and the Chinese. These civilizations have vanished, but they have left their imprints in the consciousness of humanity. Modernism has developed in Europe and America and its progress has been fueled by the discovery and utilization of fossil fuels along with scientific and technological developments.

Classical Indian culture excelled in erotic mysticism. The epic Mahabharata has many stories of spontaneous eroticism narrated with honesty. Both dance forms and temple iconography, depicted the gods and goddesses with anabashed eroticism. Classical Indian culture recognized the intrinsic unity of truth, goodness and beauty - satyam, sivam, sundaram. Erotics, srngararasa, is considered to be the most superior and is placed highest amongst the nine aesthetic moods, navarasas. Classical dance and iconographical representations mirror each other, one is fluid and the other frozen -- still images of a dancer's continuous movement -- moments of eternal flux captured in space-time. A talented artist liberates the latent energy of form into freedom through the medium of delightful expression.

Greek culture on the other hand, developed tragedy out of the proto-tragic dithyrambs. The tragic plays of Aeschylus were witnessed by the public who experienced a cathartic release of their suppressed pain and suffering. The emotion release that tragedy provided gave the audience relief from their stress, hardship and privation. Early cinema of the 1940s and 1950s often depicted tragedy. Vittorio De Sica's neorealistic films as well as some early Indian cinema often depicted the reality of life as a tragedy. Shakespeare was deeply influenced by Greek tragedy to write his own tragedies in Elizabethan England. Literature is replete with examples of romantic love, often ending in tragedy. Even today real life love tragedies are reported in daily newspapers.

The modern world massaged by the media prefers glamor and comedy, while tragedy is almost entirely absent from both the cinema and theater. With modern medicine and technology increasing longevity, providing better physical and mental health, and easing the physical drudgery, the accent has moved away from the tragic to the entertaining. Relief is sought in entertainment, recreation, and having fun. Television coverage brings real life tragedy daily into our lives from all over the world and so there is no need for cinema or theatre to point out the nihilistic dimension of life.

Rather than the tragi-comic polarity, classical Indian culture polarised the ascetic with the erotic. Thus Siva is both a supreme ascetic, seated in deep meditation on Mt. Kailasa, and he is also the greatest of lovers depicted in Kalidasa's Kumarasambhava. This inclusive dialectic of "this and that" rather than "this or that" stems from deep understanding of the dialectical interdependence of the apparently polarized nature experienced as the world phenomena. One of the finest depiction of love between Radha and Krishna in found in Jayadeva's "Gita Govinda". As Krishna pulls Radha closer for an embrace in the secrecy of the bower by the banks of the Yamuna river, she shyly resists his embrace, pushing him away with her hands, but is unable to conceal the faint smile of assent on her downturned face. Here is a juxtaposition of innocence and eros, the paradox of love where two opposites unite into a blissful cancellation of counterparts. Their relationship is an expression of Divine Eros, a verticalized sexuality, which inspires music and poetry, dance and romance. This is Keat's "Thing of beauty" that is enjoyed age after age. This is very different from earthly Eros which is horizontal and transient. Earthly eros tends to be gross while heavenly Eros is divine and uplifting. From time immemorial refined cultures around the world have sought the aegis of heavenly Eros as their guiding norm. Divine Eros is grounded in the eternal - the undiminishing well-springs of consciousness, bliss, value, knowledge, sat, cit ananda. There is a continuum, a perennial joy associated with Divine Love. This is called bhauma. Earthy eros has a temporality, a limitation of space and time and a termination followed by recurring need. There is a blissful, explosive ecstatic experience, followed by a diminishing and a fading away, like an elusive moment which can be repeated, but cannot be grasped. This is called tucham, or alpa, small, meagre, little. When the pull of the vertical dimension is weak and the horizontal aspect is preferred, there is physical attraction and gratification, a pleasure pain cycle which ultimately leads to dissipation.

Childhood is lost into adulthood with the first signs of passionate desire to unite with the opposite sex. The playful innocence of childhood is transformed into an irresistible passion, a longing to experience the thrilling dimension of togetherness. But the thrill can be accompanied by negative counterparts like fear and attachment, while social forces can conspire to ruin the relationship. Hunger has no particular location and can affect the entire body. Similarly, the pangs of love afflict the entire personality of a young man or woman. This is the work of the God of Love, whose bodiless form can cause great agitation even in the mind of a great ascetic like Siva.

The union between a man and awoman is akin to the coming together of heaven and earth. Woman is considered closer to nature, while man represents the heavenly spirit. Through the dialectical pairing of man and woman life continues on the planet. Each feels incomplete without the other. The lover and the beloved fulfill each other to experience a sense of wholeness. There is a complementarity, reciprocity, contradiction and cancellation in their dialectical relationship. In the togetherness of their close embrace they slip through time and glimpse the timeless. The dialectics of man and woman, which is at the very foundation of our very existence, is also the fecund ground of paradox. We speak of marriage being made in heaven, or "falling in love". Both these expressions accept the irrational and sudden nature of love between woman and man. Kamadeva shoots his flower-arrows at whomsoever he pleases.

It is said that the language of nature is mathematical. The effects at the experiential level are supported by causal laws that govern the universe. These laws are deterministic and have been understood by mathematicians and scientists and are classified as physical, chemical and biological laws. When we come to human nature we arrive at the threshold of paradox. Within the ambit between wisdom and ignorance there is the possibility of a great amount of variation, making up a composite matrix, displaying a vast range of behavior patterns that can be rational, irrational, stoic, emotional, etc.

In this verse the Devi is using her tongue to lick Kamadeva, the God of Love, into existence. Licking into shape is a very delicate, subtle and intimate way of shaping the god, rather than using the force of the hands or a crude tool. The Goddess's supreme power and position is emphasized here, along with her power to enchant and to enlighten. This has reference to the power of women to generate excitement in the minds of men. Even ascetic minded people find it difficult to avoid the influence of Kamadeva, the God of Love. Visnu takes the form of a beautiful woman to distract the demons when they snatch the ambrosia of immortality from god Dhanvantri as it emerged from the churning of the milk ocean. When Vishnu assumes the form of a grand seductress, Mohini, the demons drop the pot and pursue the beautiful form, which was only a phenomena, a superimposition on Visnu, who was not a woman at all. So is the world a phenomenal projection on a more fundamental reality which is quite different. The foolish are enchanted by the phenomena and in trying to grasp it forget the hidden splendor of their own Self. Such is beauty - a deluding and an emancipating force. Such is the paradox of life around which center problems like the One and the many, being and becoming, and the transcendental and the immanent.

Saundarya Lahari - Preface

I was introduced to the Saundarya Lahari in the 1980s, and have been drawn to the composition over time, often after long gaps. In spite of its allure it did not make much sense to me. Later I was involved in proofreading, indexing and publishing. A serious study only began in 2009. Earlier I had pondered over the text, admired friends who understood its meaning and hoped to have a better understanding myself someday. I had worked on the Index and Bibliography of Nataraja Guru's commentary and I also contributed to the cover design and the structural diagrams for the first 24 verses..

In 2009 I began to chant the first ten verses every evening before retiring for the day. After several weeks of this practice, I began to notice a quantitative change in my consciousness. It was as if something new was being revealed, which was also giving me a very different perspective of life. It was around this time that my good friend Sashi Chandran suggested that I give an introductory class to an interested group in Coimbatore. As we were deciding on a convenient date, I met university scholars in Bangalore and Delhi who were involved with the Saundarya Lahari. It was as if inner and outer circumstances were aligning themselves and gradually the commentary began to yield glimpses of structure and meaning. I found myself feeling a little confident to attempt an interpretation of the first three verses. These verses subsequently became the first class given to a group of twelve women at the Nitya Gurukula, Coimbatore, on 2nd April, 2010. (They are yet to be transcribed for the blog).

The outcome both surprised and inspired me to continue the study and interpretation of the text. It has not morphed into an online commentary which will, I hope, by the Grace of the Supreme Goddess, culminate in a book in due course of time. It is an interesting coincidence that I am commencing this writing in Cambridge, Massachusetts, not far from Harvard University, where Prof. Norman Brown translated and commented on the Saundarya Lahari in 1958 as part of the Harvard Oriental Series.

Saundarya Lahari
Introduction

India has always presents a complex matrix of cross-crossing cultural currents to both the visitor as well as many of her residents. The paradoxical juxtaposition of opposites, often seen side by side, forms a rich tapestry rather than a homogeneous society with easily defined parameters. Any attempt to unravel some of the contradictions draws the seeker at least 30 centuries into the past. Even then the mystery might get even more intriguing rather than resolved. The German philosopher Hegel thought that India did not possess any history as such. True, the records of historical events are rather sketchy and the hagiographical accounts of the past cannot be considered as true history. Yet customs have persisted from the Bronze Age and one can see the happy coexistence of the various strata of history in the practice and the philosophy of the people.

Let us here trace a fairly simple pathway based on current scholarship as well as the insights afforded by the huge body of texts that have survived and the complex practices that are still being followed on the subcontinent.

The earliest strata surviving in the modern world is made up of various tribal communities. Indigenous peoples such the Mundas and the Gonds have a rich tradition of folklore, art and craft as well as knowledge of medicinal plants. This ancient strata forms the earliest layer and the basis for the development of myths, legends, and traditional medicine, which were further refined and classified by later generations.

With the discovery of the The Indus Valley civilization a highly developed urban culture, with refined handicrafts, sophisticated agriculture and contemplative traditions was established. The contemplative proto-Siva model comes from this time, as well as the worship of the goddess. The Indus Valley Civilization was followed by the Vedic overlay, which introduced a host of new gods, new customs and a new social stratifications. Not everybody agreed with the Vedic way and there were notable differences, such as Buddhism. The Vedic teachings themsevles underwent considerable revaluation and were restated in the more contemplative teachings of the Upanisads. The polytheism of the Vedas is absorbed into the montheistic philosophy of the Vedanta. Vedanta developed into the most refined philosophical system based on the teachings of the Upanisads.

A long spell of Buddhism dominated the Indian subcontinent with Asoka being the most prominent king to be deeply influenced by the Buddha's teachings. A long line of Buddhist scholars and teachers refined the teachings of the buddha and established a distinct school of Buddhism.
In the 8th Century there arose in Kerala a brilliant thinker named Sankara who traveled the length and breadth of India and was able to establish his school of Advaita Vedanta based on the work done by an earlier Guru named Gaudapada whose commentary on the Mandukya Upanisad, called the Mandukya Karika, became the basis for Sankara's own philosophy of non-dualism. With the establishment of Sankara's Advaita Vedanta, Buddhism lost its potency in India.


The next significant cultural pattern was the Islamic empire during Medieval times. This was followed by British colonization in the modern era.

In the course of this mixing and sifting, blast and counterblast, juxtaposition and revaluation, many ideas were gained ascendancy and others declined. A quest for the truth persisted though these outward upheavals and the desire to know the ultimate knowledge continued to inspire the best minds. The perennial questions of "Who am I?" and "Whence the world?" never ceased to engage the intelligent person.

Vedanta became the Weltenshuaagen of the elite, while the grass-root masses preserved their own ritual, folklore and non-vedic traditons. Yoga, Sri Vidya and Tantra belong to the non-vedic sources. While the elite found their solace in abstract and sophisticated philosophy, the grass-root masses happy followed their own patterns of behavior and their own belief systems. It was not possible to ignore the attraction of non-Vedic traditions. It is this tension between a sophisticated elite culture and the popularity of grass-root movements that is resolved by Sankara in the Saundarya Lahari.

Saundarya Lahari, "The Upsurging Billows of Beauty" is a composition by Shankara. It is in Sanskrit and consists of 100 verses.

Ever since serious scholars have studied the Saundarya Lahari, there have been controversy about the authorship of this work. Sankara is a staunch Advaita Vedantin and a composer of many Sanskrit classical works including commentaries on the major Upanisads and the Bhagavad Gita.

The Saundarya Lahari is a poem in praise of the Universal Goddess, or Shakti. The work is rich in images, metaphor and allegory and hence it roused a lot of controversy about the authorship of Sankara. While Advaita Vedanta speaks of the highest as having no form or name, the Saundarya Lahari describes the beauty of the feminine form.

Nataraja Guru confirms that the Saundarya Lahari is indeed a composition of Sankara and he also gives us the insight that the work is written in proto-language which is the primordial form of communication using symbols. The other works by Sankara are written in meta-language, which is language about language. Today symbolic language presents to us a new possibility of communicating as the world gets rushed and there is lack to time to read through voluminous texts.

Once the work is seen as a proto-linguistic expression it begins to reveal the possibility of teaching Vedanta through the symbols of Beauty.

Advaita Vedanta is the culmination of an inquiry that has its basis in the Upanisads. Earlier in the Vedas there are references to the Ultimate Being. This notion is developed in the Upanisads.

Saundarya is Beauty. Lahari is the Upsurging billow. Beauty can be represented in several ways. In the mineral world we have gems as the most beautiful; in the botanical world it is flower that is considered most beautiful; and in the human world the woman is considered most beautiful.