SAUNDARYA LAHARI
VERSE 38
ANAHATA CHAKRA - MEANS "NEVER KILLED", OR " A BELL NOT STRUCK", OR "UNDISTURBED"
समुन्मीलत् संवित्कमल-मकरन्दैक-रसिकं
भजे हंसद्वन्द्वं किमपि महतां मानसचरम् ।
यदालापा-दष्टादश-गुणित-विद्यापरिणतिः
यदादत्ते दोषाद् गुण-मखिल-मद्भ्यः पय इव
samunmilat samvit kamala makarandaika rasikam
bhaje hamsadvandvam kim api mahatam manasa caram
yad alapad astadasa gunita vidya parinatir
yad adatte dosad gunam akhilam adbhyah paya iva
I adore those twin swans, intent on enjoying the nectar
Of the lotus blooming within the consciousness of certain great ones,
Moving within whose mind as a result of their elaboration, the maturation
Of the eighteen arts takes place, freed from dross, their goodness extracted as milk from water.
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In Verse 38 we have the picture of two swans swimming in a lotus pond, having at least one lotus blooming at its centre. The first thing to notice about this Chakra, besides the fact that its conventional name is omitted, is that there is no value that is especially spiritual that is referred to in its overall design. It is rather meant to be a normalized version of value, where spirituality and morality meet and cancel out into a picture representing beauty in a very real form. In parks and gardens anywhere in the world it is possible to see a pair of swans swimming in a pond, and it is not difficult to imagine a blooming lotus flower at its centre. Swans are animals that need food in the ordinary sense, and although water supports vitality in a deeper sense, other food, such as milk, is required for the sustenance of normal life here. The mind, with its two functions having a horizontal parity between them, one of which could be auditory and the other visual in its reference - as with music and dance - could be conceded here to be the ground on which one finds some sort of aesthetic pleasure or enjoyment. Mind-stuff is here compared to water, while something more nourishing, containing body-building elements of food, is necessary for the two swans to have their enjoyable active life within the pond. The classical theory of aesthetics belonging to Sanskrit culture comprises all enjoyable artistic values within the scope of a fan-like expansion or elaboration of the elements of interest that could be normal to human beings. These are supposed to be the nine essences, called rasas. The nine rasas are: srngara (love), vira (heroism), bibhatsa (disgust), raudra (anger), hasya (mirth), bhayanaka (terror), karuna (pity), adbhuta (wonder), and santa (tranquility). If nine rasas are given to the visual (actual) side, nine rasas must also be given to the auditory (virtual) side. Thus we have, between visual and audible arts, eighteen rasas spread out like a fan, resembling the order of colours in the spectrum. The colour red is always associated with passion, because the conventional language of colour is understood, if vaguely, even in common parlance. The point where horizontal values meet the vertical parameter is to be located exactly at the core of the lotus. The 180 degrees above the O Point could be divided into 18 sectors of 10 degrees on the plus and minus sides of the structural whole.
The long and beautiful necks of the swans can delve down into the mud to pull out the tender edible roots of the lotus plant, on which they are supposed to thrive. When swans migrate to the Himalayan regions it is conventionally understood that some edible parts of the lotus plant are carried in their beaks, at the tip of their outstretched necks. The swans reach Manasarovar, the "mind lake" located somewhere in the Himalayas, in due course, enabling them to live at a celestial level and on an earthly level alternately.
Highly evolved spiritual souls are compared in Hindu literature to a central locus of this kind when they are called paramahamsas, which means that they are very realistically related to the total context of absolute value. The two swans touch and do not touch the lotus, like spirits apart, by participating through subtle verticality only at the O Point.
1. "The nectar of the lotus" (kamala makarandam)
Nectar is something nourishing and enjoyable of which milk could be considered a particular instance. Nectar is more than milk by its added enjoyability. The extra elements of enjoyability result from the elaboration of aesthetic interests in the minds of the two swans treated as one.
2. "Certain great ones" (kim api mahatam)
The reference here is to perfected paramahamsas for whom the duality between real or virtual, and hypostatic or hierophantic values have all been normalized.
3. "The maturation of the eighteen arts" (astadasa gunita vidya parinatih)
There is a central locus in the neutral and absolute self, which is the source from which all enjoyment must start, whether in the visual or auditory arts. Even when the arts are withdrawn in higher samadhi, these outgoing items of elaboration could be thought of as each being withdrawn into its own source, which is again the central locus within the absolute self. Maturation should not be mixed up with the idea of evolution because of the use of the Sanskrit word parinama for both. Maturation here only increases its eidetic content without changing it horizontally; as when we say that twilight matures fully when the sun is four degrees below the horizon. A mango ripens and matures without changing its identity horizontally.
4. "Goodness extracted as milk from water" (adatte gunam akhilam adbhyah paya iva)
Milk has a horizontal value reference which is existential in status. Water, on the other hand, has a vertical reference because of its pure sapidity. Thus we get the two references in respect of value, within the amplitude of which we could insert the double spectrum of both auditory and visual arts radiating fanwise from a central core which is both a source as well as an epicentre for all manifestations or absorptions.
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Concluding Remarks:
In this verse the language of conventional clichés has been used in an unobtrusive manner, by which it is possible to see that what is real could be the same as what is ideal, when viewed neutrally and normally, as between perceptual and conceptual values. The yogi has nothing to add or subtract here. The "Brahma Sutras" recommend such an attitude, in which nothing is to be explained away from life or added as an idea to embellish reality. One has neither to paint lilies nor gild gold. Vedanta is not a form of idealism as some scholars tend to think. It is fully realistic, as this verse of Narayana Guru's "Darsana Mala" clearly underlines:
"Of this world there is certainly nothing to be rejected nor accepted,
As for the Self, it is self-luminous.
Having understood thus, one should withdraw from all functionings.
Thereafter, function does not repeat itself."
ADDITIONAL COMMENTS WITH STRUCTURAL DIAGRAMS RELATED TO THIS VERSE FROM SAUNDARYA LAHARI/NOTES.
Samun milat samvit kamala makaranda - (blooming) lotus in consciousness enjoying the nectar
Ika rasikam bhaje - (I adore) intently
Hamsa dvandvam - the pair of swans
Kim api mahatam - of certain great ones
Manasa charam - moving within the mind
Yad alapat - as a result of whose elaboration
Ashtadasa gunita vidya parinatihi - the maturation of the eighteen arts takes place
Yad adattedoshat - which extracts from dross
Gunam akhilam - all goodness (therefrom)
Adbhyah paya eva - like milk from water.
In Verse 39, we have this contrasting picture:
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Horizontally, there is perfect parity and bilateral symmetry.
Here, the Anahata Chakra is where vertical meets horizontal.
The 18 branches of learning give completeness and maturity.
Art is interesting and worthwhile for human life, like milk.
Water is negative and milk is positive.
Milk is negentropy and water is entropy.
This is the cancelling point.
The Denominator is the meshwork of all the arts.
Anahata means "never killed, whole".
Shiva and Parvati receive a higher status of parity in this verse - as two birds.
There is a lake of mystical geography referred to.
At the very end, there is another analogy.
This is a most effective locus.
There are two birds drinking, separating milk from water.
Two swans are swimming in the pond of consciousness, drinking honey from the centre of the same lotus, taking the essential and leaving the superfluous.
Swans are traditionally supposed to be able to separate the milk and leave the water.
There are certain people who are good poets and of a rare quality and in the minds of these people these swans will be found in their absolute parity.
They are enjoying the essence of Sanskrit culture and learning.
These swans are not like the chakora or partridge, of the previous verse - they have been promoted to a higher Chakra.
We have a pond, with at the centre a lotus.
In the lotus' heart, the heart of consciousness, is the concentrated essence of wisdom.
The two swans of equal status are both drinking of this honey, enjoying that which only a few people can enjoy.
For example:
pure mathematics is Numerator,
grammar or syntax is Denominator.
Shiva and Parvati are elevated from their position in the last Chakra to absolute parity in this Chakra.
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Complementarity - one thing complements or completes the other - there is also reciprocity, cancellability, compensation.
There is a kind of parity between these two birds.
They are reciprocal, having a parity between them.
If they are equal, why talk about the two of them?
"Parity of wave function" is given quantum number in Kaplan's "Nuclear Physics".
Parity comes from "pair" and "reflection".
It is more of a structural entity than anything else.
It implies the actual and the virtual.
These twin swans who drink from the same intellectualised fountain-source of wisdom are both somewhat theoretical and also related by parity.
The two swans seem to be on the same horizontal level, although quite high up on the vertical axis, at a conceptualized, mathematical level.
The same laws of nature hold good on one side of the mirror as on the other: mathematics, the speed of light, etc.
So this parity is one of the four relationships which we normally use in our structural methodology: parity, reciprocity, complementarity and cancellation.
Ambivalence - the first level, the actual, Subrahmaniam and Ganesha are ambivalent.
Reciprocity - the second level; Saraswati and Lakshmi.
Complementarity - the third level, the Devi with callosities - she wants to establish the final cancellation with Shiva, here, she is his complementary counterpart.
Cancellation - the fourth level, the final operation - Shiva and Shakti united.
Parity - refers to the horizontal alone; bilateral symmetry.
They are related in the sense that one swan is original and the other not (It is a virtual mirror-image of the other. ED), and vice-versa, depending on which quality you consider - as between actual and virtual qualities.
This parity is a very thin relationship.
Complementarity is like two halves of a broken eggshell.
Compensation is like the two sides of a pair of scales.
There are two swans swimming on a wisdom-lake; they are equally beautiful and there is parity between them.
Why two? Because they represent Shiva and Parvati: they are enjoying something intellectual, dividing the eighteen artistic disciplines between them.
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- Fully blossomed lotus of wisdom consciousness (the final stage of knowledge)
- The ambrosia unique
- As enjoying
- I worship (or meditate upon)
- The pair of swans
- In certain great ones
- As moving in the mind-lake (this all happens in the mind)
- By the elaboration of which (of that joy)
- The matured form of the eighteen disciplines (grammar, syntax, etc.)
- Which draws out (these two swans draw it out - away)
- From what is no good
- All the essence
- Like milk from water
These birds are sharing an "un-shareable" experience - one actually, the other virtually.
They are mathematically elevated to the world of the intelligibles.
This Chakra, in the descending process, becomes very real.
Here, the two swans are floating in the mind-lake, and are in charge of all aesthetic values - the Kalas.
Half of the Kalas belong to one swan and half to the other - and there is a perfect parity between them.
E.g., if you can sing poetry, the music belongs to the Devi and the thoughts of the poetry belong to Shiva.