VI

Continuing his weekly discourse on Adi Sankara’s Saundaryalahari Mr.Bharatha Sharma described saundarya as anga pratyanga saushtava. the symmetry of organs. Everything in creation has a symmetry. The rose has it and so does the thorn. Nothing is superior and nothing is inferior, right from the smallest to the biggest, everything in creation has its place, its role, its symmetriy, its beauty. Everything is permaated by the Supreme Mother.

Sage Leela Suka saw Lord Krishna as the one wearing Kasturi Tilakam as Adi Sankara saw the Supreme Mother. The Veena Venu and bhramari naadas take us into her presence. Saint Tyagaraja asks his mind to worship the beautiful saptaswaras.
The 18th sloka describes the powers given away by the Supreme Being to devotees who conceive her as one bathed in the red radiance of the rising Sun. Including Urvasi the most beautiful, born out of Lord Narayana’s thigh, all devavesyas would fall for those who pray to her.
The 19th Sloka describes the power which the Mother blesses her devotees with. Those who worship her as a triangle with her face as one point above and the breasts as the two points below imagining another triangle under it as a symbol of the half of Siva would electrify with desire all youthful women to run after her devotee. But this is nothing. The devotee would be able to lure the three lokas swarga, martya and patala.

The seer in these slokas offers a choice. The sadhaka, if he so wishes, can always go higher than achieving worldly desires.
In fact the slokas have a message deeper than the one readily perceived by many. Men who did not understand them properly reduced them to a tantric cult of ‘yoni pooja’ for achieving mean, worldly ends in utter ignorance following vamachara.

Adi Sankara’s message is clear. The sadhaka should set his aims very high. He should opt for shreyomarga which leads him to the divine as against the preyomarga which leads to short lived worldly comfort and to eventual sorrow and rebirth.

The Gita urges us to renounce the fruit of action to achieve unification with the divine. Those who crave for the fruit get happiness but they have to be reborn into the cycle of birth and death.

The red radiance is symbolic of rajoguna bhavana which would be a step for a larger, all time embracing conception which is called akhanda kaalabhavana.

Akhanda kaalabhavana enables the sadhaka to see mahakaala and mahakali, the sun and the moon as one at the same time.
Kubja, for example, did not set her aims high. She went the preyomarga and desired the lord to be her consort for a day. Akhanda kaalabhavana gives the sadhaka the ability to see the sun and the moon, Shiva and Shakti as the indivisible unity. The slokas chisel outminds and shape them to reach a condition of divine making.
19th April, 1986

VII

The guna pravaha of the Supreme Being inheres in it suddha sattva and siddha rajoguna. The Satya Loka Vishnu Loka and the Kailasa are all down below the highest of the region where Shiva and Shakti are stationed in their eternal, indivisible unity.

Sri Perala Bharatha Sarma, continuing his discourse, reiterated how the whole universe is permeated with the Supreme Being. When we think of it as masculine we call it parabrahma and when considered as feminine we call it shakti.

The 20th sloka brings out the grandeur of the wave like motion, that lahari which passes through every one of us engulfing and lifting us in the endless undulations. From the lims of the Sacred Mother issues forth a radiance from which nectar flows. The sadhaka who keeps the image built of mani kanthi will be able to contril and subdue all serpents alleviate fever and remove poison. He acquires the powers of Garuda, the chariot of Sri Mahavishnu.

This can be related to the way Sri Krishna as a mere baala, subdues kaleeya in Srimadbhagavatha. Sri Krishna, like the ideal sadhaka, wears the mani of the supreme mother after having soared upto the sahasraara chakra breaking the shat chakras.

The supreme being is a jyothiroopa - a lightining come alive. With eight kamalas which are eight chakras, with a thousand petalled lotus which is a huge forest of petals, the Supreme Being shines as a bindu in the middle of the ear stud. The 21st sloka is the highest achievement in terms of sheer poetic imagination.

Lahari is the manifestation of the Supreme, being the upalakshana of the bijakshara ‘lahareem’, Ravana tried to separate Sri Rama and Sita Devi who are none other than Shiva and Shakti. Hanuman, the true sadhaka demonstrated that it is impossible. Hanuman is anjanananda. All the rishis and the sages gave their various powers to Hanuman. Hanu means a jaw and anjananandam is the one who speaks out the naada. It is only through naadopasana that Hanuman goes nearer and near to the para shakthi.

Bhavani is the one who was discovered by kamaraja. The sadhaka who begins to pray to Bhavani as a servant and begs for her blessings with bhavanamam would by the very utterance get elevated. The Supreme Being blesses the sadhaka with a condition of identity that is sayujya.
2nd May, 1986.

VIII

The Supreme Being is so graceful and charitable that She blesses the devotee with more than what he prays for. The moment the sadhaka begins saying bhavaneetwam, he is blessed to be one with her. He becomes part of the Supreme who gets the haarathi from the brightest crown jewels of Mukunda, Indra and Brahma.

The Adi Parashakti is akshara roopa, a being that is everlasting a being embedded in the naada of letters. Sage Valmiki sang the Ramayana with her blessing and became immortal. Pranavaagni samyoga is naada and naadi also.

Valmiki means a serpent, a symbol of kundalini. Sesha the serpent offers himself as sayya, a couch sayya is not merely the physical couch, it is also a vehicle of rhetorical communication of illuminating wisdom. It is the sayya of the seer - poet which makes him a singing bird (koil) and at times a lion (simha) roaring voicing forth absolute truth.

Even saint Tyagaraja realised her when he sang mooladharaja naada merugute paramardhamura. Knowing the naada born from mooladhara is the ultimate.

The sidelong glance of the Supreme Being would bless the poet with the permanence of the sun and the moon. The poet realises divyatwa through bhavana. In the lalitha sahasra the mother is extolled as bhavanagamya. She is the one who orders about Rudra.

The Sundarakanda is an exemplification of the wonderful qualities of the Mother. The chaitya prasada in the Ashoka vana with the thousand pillars is an illustration of the sahasrara kamala above which there is nothing. The name Sundarakanda comes from Sundari. Devi Sita is the sundari of the three puras Ayodhya, Mythila and Lanka. She is the sreemathi bala bhartru sandesa harshitha
The mother is described as Bhavaranys Kutharika.

Sri Sankara Bhagavatpada wonders whether the mother not satisfied with being half of Shiva, took the other half too. Her red radiance pervades the white radiance of Shiva.

The 23rd sloka deserves to be read with the 34th for its close relationship with it. Shiva is in Shakti and Shakti is in Shiva. Shiva having become a part of Her it is Her image that we see and at times Shakti having become part of Him we see the image of Shiva. The nine Vyuhaas of Shiva are kaala, kula, naama jnaana, chitta, naada, bindu, kala and seva. There are in her.

All through the ages woman has been progressively bearing the greater brunt of humiliation suffering and seperation. In Krita yuga, Damayanthi suffered separation and separation only But in Treta yuga woman was abducted by a demon. In Dwapara Yuga she is disrobed in public and in Kaliyuga she is raped. This is kalaparinithi as woman is suffering more and more.

It is enough if wwe learn about kshsema welfare, santhi, peace, susthithi elevation sareera, the body and chitanya that is consciousness.
Thus explained Sri Bharatha Sharma the intricacies in the great seer’s Saundaryalahari.
3rd May, 1986

IX

Continuing his weekly discourse on Sri Sankarabhagavatpada’s conception of the Supreme Being, Sri Bharatha Sharma said ‘bhavana’, visualisation, and internalisation alone can produce both understanding and the resultant power in the ‘sadhaka’. Contemplation and mananam make the absorption of the scriptures possible.

The 24th sloka brings out the glory of the Mother While Brahma the creator Vishnu the protector and Rudra the destroyer obey Sada Shiva the everlasting one Sadaa Shiva himself obeys the commands issuing forth from the Bhrukuthi brow, of the Supreme Being.

The Adhyatmic concept here is that the Mother’s brow is the ‘prakaasa bindu’ while Shiva’s is ‘vimarsa bindu’. The ‘aajna chakra’ in the middle of the Mother’s brow is attained after breaking the ‘rudra grandhi’. Shiva dhanurbharga by Sri Rama is symbolic of ‘rudragrandhi bedhana’. When this is accomplished the devotee attains ‘Shiva Shakti Saayujya’.

Kaala Spandana, the pulsation of time, issuing forth from the ‘bhrukuti’ accounts for birth growth and decay Brahma, Vishnu and Rudra also face ‘Layam’ extinction kaala is above all these and Sada Shiva is mahakaala, the obverse and reverse of the same coin.

The 25th sloka show how ‘sristhi, and ‘laya’ manifest in ‘satwa’ ‘rajo’ and ‘tamo gunas’ emanate from the Supreme Being. Brahma Vishnu and Rudra do obeisance at the ‘paadha peetha’ of the Mother. A flower offered to her is offered to all the three and also to Shiva.

Sloka 26th leads us to climax expounded in sloka 31 where ‘sada shiva tatwam’ is explained. In ‘pralaya’ the deluge everything is extinguished and wiped away but ‘kaala’ remains, kaala is the unity of Shiva and Shakti Everything is devoured by kaala and everything is merged in it. Just as a liquid remains even after dissolving various powers in it, when everything gets absorption, ‘leena’, in to it kaala remains. It is ‘nityapravaha’.

For the ‘sadhaka’ the body itself is the temple of the Mother. He prays to Her in all humility and devotion with the utmost piety. Let everything done by me be a worship My speech mantrarchana, my movements pradakshina the food that I ingest ‘aahuthi’ and my slumber samadhi.

Everyone who drank ‘amrutha’ , nectar, passed away while the one who drank ‘garala’ poison remains. The reason is that Shakti can not be disunited from Shiva. The sheer power of mother’s tatankas’, ear studs, make Shiva sada shiva. Kaala is incapable of making the ear studs drop for they are none other than the sun and the moon. The mother remains ever auspicious. Shiva is rendered Sadaa Shiva by the paathivratya mahima of the Mother.
16th May, 1986

X

In his discourse on Saundaryalahari, Sri Perala Bharatha Sharma said that vidya includes sphurana and its roopa envelops sruthi mati and buddhi. Abhyasa practice, pratibha, spark and vyutpatti erudition are the components of vidya. Vidya is to know Sruthi relates to what is learnt through hearing mati relates to manana and buddhi relates to logical discrimination. Buddhi completes education.
The Supreme Mother is a lotus in a forest of lotuses. Her face is a lotus, Her eyes are lotus-like and Her mouth and everything about her is a lotus.

The 28th sloka describes how the attendants of the mother suggest caution and pray to her to avoid stepping on the crowns of Brahma, Vishnu and Mahendra. The sadhaka prays, let those words protect, Commentators praise the sloka as one with the figure of speech of sublimity - udattalankara.

The resplendent poet in Sankarabhagavatpada speaks of Indra’s crown with vivid detail suggestive of a subtle kind of humour. Indra is spoken of as one who killed the demon Jambha. The idea is that the crown studded with the rarest and purest of gams and made of hard gold may do harm to the soft lotus feet of the mother.

The inner significance of the sloka lies in the fact that were the Mother not merciful the crowns would be trampled into dust. The Mother is Kalli and it is Her grace that makes Brahma, Vishunu and Mahendra keep their respective crowns and positions. The sloka brings out the supremacy of kaala-time.

Poet Bhartuhari wrote ten stanzas on kaala mahima. Shiva and Shakti perform the cosmic dance and their movements cause the cycle of day and night. The time units ranging from a trice to an aeon are the paricharikas maid servants of the supreme Shiva - Shakthi unity Brartruhari conceives the earth as a chess board on which the Supreme Being plays with human beings and things as chessmen.

Sloka 30 is replete with meaning. The slokas are never repetitive. Each takes us farther, deeper and higher. While the trampling of the Mother destroys everyone and everything, those who emerge from the radiance of the eight siddhis or powers (anima mahima, garima, laghima ,praapti prakamya, eesatwa and vasitwa) find even the pralayagni, the deluge of fire, a mere harati.

They become immortal and live everlastingly. They are the blessed ones who get identification with her. For such even Shiva appears as one ordinary. They live for ever like those blessed poets Valmiki and Kalidasa in Akshara roopa.
17th May, 1985