Hindu Festicals No 13A.

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Dear friends and devotees,

 

Bhakti is eternal,

 

13a. Sankara Jayanti

 

(Vaisakha Sukla Panchami)

 

Radiant Atman! We will observe the jayanti (birthday) of Adi-Sankaracharya,

one of the greatest of Self-realised souls and philosophers this world of ours

has produced. Leaving home, in a spirit of renunciation and aspiration to

realise the Reality, at the tender age of eight years, he completed an

unbelievable mission in the span of just a few years, passing away in his 32nd

year. During that period he did what is known, as digvijaya (conquest of the

quarters), carrying the banner of Advaita Vedanta, the supreme philosophy of

absolute monism, into the four, corners of India and overcoming all lesser

schools of philosophy through his convincing, irrefutable arguments. His

incredible work remains dynamically living, active and ever progressive even to

this day, more than 1200 years after he propounded his doctrine.

 

The quintessence of Advaita Vedanta is to affirm the truth and reality of your

essential, eternal, divine identity and to resolutely reject the error of

thinking of yourself as a finite human creature having a name and form,

beginning and end, and subject to changes such as birth, death, old age,

disease, decay, pain, sorrow, suffering, etc. Resolutely rejecting this error

and simultaneously affirming your eternal, unchangeable divine identity is the

centre of Advalta Vedanta sadhana (practice). They call it affirming and

rejecting, pushtikarana and nirakarana-neti, neti.

 

Sankara's most popular work, Vivekachudamani, is a call to discrimination

between the Self and the non-Self-atma-anatma viveka. Atman is sat (existence

absolute). Anatman is appearance only, temporary in time, limited in space,

perishable; it is kshara purusha (perishable being). Atman is akshara purusha

(imperishable being)-ajo nityah sasvato'yam purano na hanyate hanyamane sarire

(Unborn, eternal, changeless and ancient, the Self is not killed when the body

is killed). Thus the Vivekachudamani is a discourse, a treatise and a sadhana on

discrimination between the Self and the non-Self.

 

And a second work of his, Atma Bodha, is a light upon what the Self is. As you

discriminate between the Self and the non-Self, you get a good knowledge of what

the non-Self is, so you can reject it; you will not be deluded by it. You can

free yourself from the veil of delusion by knowing the nature of anatman. And

then, to be rooted in the Reality, to be fixed in it firmly, to be able to

think, reflect and meditate upon it and to awaken the correct awareness within

your consciousness, a thorough study of what the Self is of great importance and

value. To that end, Atma Bodha can be the way that God can gradually answer your

prayer, " tamasoma jyotir gamaya " and " dhiyo yo nah prachodayat " ( " From darkness

lead me unto light " and " May He illumine our intellects " ).

 

To avoid that which is wrong, we have to get a knowledge of what wrong is; and

to pursue and practice that which is right, we have the need to have a knowledge

and a grasp of what right is of what Reality and Truth is. Thus both the

negative and positive aspects of Vedantic admonition are of equal importance in

making the mind aware of its error and to make the intellect grasp the truth.

 

When Brahman is the reality to be attained, why unnecessarily know about the

world, prapancha, samsara? The answer is that because you want to free yourself

from the delusion of the world, you must know the tricks of this deluding

appearance. Indeed, you must know everything about it, because it comes in

numerous subtle ways. We think the world is outside us, but, by and large, the

world or prapancha or samsara is within us. We have to understand that. What is

it within us that makes us regard prapancha to be real and makes us move towards

it, get attached to it, get bound by it? What is it within us? That has to be

rooted out, eradicated first. Thus the study of avidya or maya within is the key

to freeing ourselves from delusion and rising from darkness to light.

 

Gurudev again and again reiterated: " Thou art immortal Soul. Thou art means

neither this body nor this mind. They are upadhis, limiting adjuncts temporarily

added on to you. They are there as part of your lesser personality, your earth

consciousness, but you are also there far beyond them, transcending them, a

divine personality, a superhuman spiritual reality, untouched by time and space,

not bothered by pain, sorrow and suffering. "

 

This, then, is to be heard, reflected upon and meditated upon. May you direct

all your attention to the practice of this truth which shall make you free. It

is this truth that arouses in us our kinship with the eternal, universal reality

and paramatma. May the grace of the Lord grant you success in this sadhana of

being what you really are and of resisting the pull of the lower mind to make

you imagine that you are something other than this Reality.

 

Constantly you have to reject the, attempts of the mind and its age-old,

inveterate tendencies to keep itself tied down to a lower level of ignorance and

mistaken identity. It should be given no quarter. By the strength of your

will-power, your positive, awakened consciousness and your resolute and

determined sankalpa (thought) to attain realisation in this very body, you must

keep this process up. You must shine with an effulgent inner awareness of your

own essential, immortal and imperishable divine identity. Your interior should

be a mass of effulgence, of jnana prakasa. There should be a state of jnana

bodha within, a state of wakefulness within-no slumber. For this you must pray,

and for this you must practice.

 

May the Sankara Jayanthi day be permeated by the spirit of Jagat Guru (world

teacher) Adi Sankaracharya, the Advaita Acharya, and may it have the effect of

successfully lifting up your consciousness from the present, ordinary, humdrum

human level of earth consciousness into a lofty, sublime higher spiritual level

of a divine spiritual consciousness!

(By Swami Sivananda)

 

With love and regards,

 

Sastry.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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