THE SOUNDARYA LAHARI : Slokam-24 - Jagat guru Swami Sri Adi Shankaracharya’s Immortal Creation.
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Sunday, August 8, 2021. 7:10. AM.
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Slokam-24.
“Jagathsoothe Dhaathaa Hariravathi Rudraha Kshapayathe
Thiraskurvannethathsavamapi Vapureeshasthirayathi!
Sadaapoorvaha Sarvam Thadidamanugruhnaathi Cha Shivaha
Thavaagnaamaalambya Kshanachalithayobhoorlathikayoho!”
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Translation :
Jagat sute dhata - Brahma creates the world
Harihi avati - Vishnu preserves
Rudra kshapayate - Shiva destroys
Tiras kurvan etat svam api vapur - negating this and even his own body
Isah tirayati - the lord fades out
Sada purvaha - he who has eternity for prefix
Sarvam tad idam - all that results or remains here
Anugrhnati cha - he also blesses
Sivah tava jnam alambya - obeying Your order
Kshana chaliyator bhru lati kayoh - from Your instantly vibrating pair of eyebrow-twigs
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Tatvam (Essence ) of the Slokam :
“Brahma brings forth the Universe, Hari(Vishnu) sustains and protects it, Rudra destroys it, and Esha (Maheshwara) absorbs all these Deities (including the Universe in involution) into Himself and disappears into Sadashiva (the Ultimate Category). Then (when it is time for a new cycle of creation to begin) Adaashiva, on receiving the mandate from Thee by a movement of Thy creeper-like brows, blesses (i.e. manifests and restores) them into activity (as before in the previous cycle).”
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Commentary :
Thus what results; Shiva who has eternity for prefix (Sadashiva)
He blesses, obeying the orders derived from your instantly vibrating eyebrow-twigs.
This Slokam, placed correctly in its epistemological perspective, views the same process as in the previous verse, but from a partially reversed perspective. Here we go from the side of causes to the side of effects. Thus, when we say that Brahma creates, the reasoning process normally travels from the cause or source of creation, which is below, to a higher level where the effects of creation are more pluralistic or multiple. This function of creation, represented by Brahma, can be structurally imagined to be like a tree. When this process of creation has gone far enough, the divided multiplicity of entities creates a horizontal firm ground for human actions and reactions to operate upon, through which individuals could promote themselves further in the vertical scale of values. This is the Vishnu-world of graded value-stratifications, cutting through which at right angles, each man or woman attains to life's fulfilment, according to their desires or deserts. In every sentient being capable of aspiring for spiritual progress one could imagine a vertical parameter cutting through the horizontal sleeping Vishnu-world to the vertical Shiva-world.
Beyond these Vishnu stratifications of graded life-purposes lies the pinnacle point from which Shiva descends, flame in hand, to burn the various value-cities, so as to bring balance again between creation and its inevitable opposite. Shiva, conceived as the pinnacle of the situation, is not a mere abstraction, but participates in existence through Parvati, with whom he shares his own body as the androgynous god Ardha-nari-isvara (half-woman-god). Their relation here is one of back-to-back double correction, and not one of mere horizontal importance. Thus participating with his own counterpart at the O Point and sharing the horizontality, though only through the magenta of the previous verse, he is here represented as being interested in abolishing even this thinnest of absolute substances. This is what is indicated in the second line where Shiva fades out from the second to the third dimension. As a result, he attains to greater heights of abstraction and generalization where his more exalted condition justifies the term Sadashiva applied to him, rather than just "Shiva" who is an agent that destroys the second-dimensional world.
If this process of exaltation of Shiva should be accentuated further, even the various value worlds would stand in danger of being abolished altogether, leaving nothing by which the human soul could attain its purpose. Life has to be significant, if nothing else. Any philosophy that does not retain this, as the last residue at least, and deprives life of all its significance or purpose, becomes a philosophy that is empty of consolation and cancels its own raison d'être. Vedanta does not aim at such an ultimate bankruptcy of significance or purposes as might be claimed by other philosophies more thinly speculative, such as lukewarm "maybe, maybe not" attitudes, or systems which do not go beyond paradoxes to purposefulness in life.
It is to avoid this total bankruptcy of purpose that the "eyebrow-twigs" of the Goddess have the all-important role of saving the situation. She does not show her concern in any overtly gross terms, but Shiva can see from her "instantly vibrating eyebrow-twigs" that she is highly concerned about the possible destruction of all her progeny in the form of created beings. She, in principle, is in charge of all of them, and she cannot deny her own proper function. The world has to go on as it was in the beginning, now and forever, without end.
The blessing in the fourth line is to be treated as the combined operation of the function of the rays of Shiva and Parvati together, with no element of separation, in keeping with Advaita Vedanta.
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Conclusion :
To be continued ....
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