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.