SAUNDARYA LAHARI
VERSE 24
PLUS AND MINUS COMPENSATION
DOWNWARD NORMALIZATION
THE TRANSCENDENCE OF PHENOMENAL FUNCTIONS IN BRACKETS
जगत्सूते धाता हरिरवति रुद्रः क्षपयते
तिरस्कुर्व-न्नेतत् स्वमपि वपु-रीश-स्तिरयति ।
सदा पूर्वः सर्वं तदिद मनुगृह्णाति च शिव-
स्तवाज्ञा मलम्ब्य क्षणचलितयो र्भ्रूलतिकयोः
jagat sute dhata harir avati rudrah ksapayate
tiraskurvann etat svam api vapur isas tirayati
sada purvas sarvam tad idam anugrhnati ca sivah
tavajnam alambya ksana calayitor bhrulatikayoh
Brahma creates the worlds, Vishnu protects, Shiva destroys;
Negating all this and his own body, the Lord fades out,
Thus what results; Shiva who has eternity for prefix (Sadashiva)
He blesses, obeying the orders derived from your instantly vibrating eyebrow-twigs.
This verse, 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.
ADDITIONAL COMMENTS WITH STRUCTURAL DIAGRAMS RELATED TO THIS VERSE FROM SAUNDARYA LAHARI/NOTES.
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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See Bergson's image of entering Notre Dame cathedral, rather than observing it from the outside.
The Absolute is not an object, but the result of cancellation.
Items of value, endless series of items of value strung on a string or vertical parameter, are equal to God.
Whatever a yogi is doing, he sees the Absolute always.
The Absolute is a universal value, just as magenta it is a Universal Concrete. (see Hegel).
(For Hegel, only the whole is true. Every stage or phase or moment is partial, and therefore partially untrue. Hegel's grand idea is "totality" which preserves within it each of the ideas or stages that it has overcome or subsumed. Overcoming or subsuming is a developmental process made up of "moments" (stages or phases). The totality is the product of that process which preserves all of its "moments" as elements in a structure, rather than as stages or phases.
Sadashiva (supreme Shiva) is the highest Omega point, but has to be cancelled against the Devi at the Alpha Point.
Brahma creates, Vishnu sustains, and Mahesvara (Shiva in his relativistic horizontalized aspect) destroys.
He triumphs as a mathematical entity and escapes from his body.
Sadashiva (the Supreme Shiva) is even beyond the Omega Point and is eternal.
He takes orders at once from the vibration of Her eyebrows.
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Total negation is denied validity.
You cannot say that Brahman (the Absolute) is nothing.
This means that there has to be some compassionate content to the Absolute.
Shiva is just mathematical, with no compassion.
- He creates the world (the god Brahma)
- Hari (Vishnu) saves (it) (sustains it)
- Rudra (Shiva) destroys (it)
- Cancelling this
- Your own body also (Devi's)
- The lord causes to disappear
- Having the word eternal as prefix to it (Sada-Shiva) (Sadashiva is different from just Shiva)
- Shiva all these blesses too
- Having respected Your (Devi's) orders
- Momentarily moved
- By creeper (slim) eyebrows
The function of horizontalising - Rudra (Shiva) coming to destroy things -
Brahma creates them.
- Brahma creates the world
- Vishnu saves
- Shiva destroys (See Verse1)
- Inverting (??) this also his own body
- The Lord (Ishah) makes all fade out
- The one with eternity for prefix (Sada purvah)
- All of this state (arrived at by the previous line)
- He bestows benediction upon also / Shiva (normal)
- Resorting to Your mandate
- Instantly vibrating (at great frequency)
- Instantly vibrating (at great frequency)
- Of the twin eyebrow-twigs
The trinity of the three gods - Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva (in his demiurge aspect as the destroyer) is Vedic, but the negative function of Sadashiva is Vedantic.
The three functions belong to the phenomenal aspect.
But percepts can be conceptualised, so the degrees of conceptualisation and perceptualisation in the schemas or structures can vary.
Thus here, we put the three functions in the Denominator to avoid two schemas.
The negative side contains the horizontal principles - the zone of ontological richness - while the Numerator is ontologically indigent and teleologically rich.
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You can have gods at different conceptual levels.
The Absolute as Paramatma (the Supreme Spirit) - Sada Shiva - is impersonal.
As Shiva, he is a god - the normal Absolute - and as Isa (Lord), he is concerned with human affairs.
So, Shiva can be placed at several points on the vertical axis.
Burn the seed, so that it can never sprout - that is Sadashiva.
The eyebrows of the Goddess are at the negative limit
She is the normalizing negative limit.
Respect and devotion are due in this order: "God, Guru, Father, Mother, martyrs to Truth, those who aid justice": these are all the grades of devotion in this world, as stated in the Darsana Mala of Narayana Guru, Chapter 8, Bhakti Darsanam, Vision of Contemplation, Verse 9 & 10. Parampara Bhakti - a hierarchy of devotion.
Spiritual teacher, father, mother,
Towards the Founders of Truth, and
Towards those who walk in the same path;
And those who do good to all -
What sympathy there is, is devotion here,
While what here belongs to the Self Supreme is the ultimate
Sadashiva is "Obeying Your orders" - this means he is looking to the Devi for permission to function.
Shiva and the Devi are something in two perspectives, the relation is interchangeable.
Here the value is the same, it is only seen from two perspectives.
Here, no matter how great Shiva becomes, Devi's influence is still there, as the eyebrows.
This is called reconstructing the Absolute.
Double assertion starts with Shiva,
Double negation starts with the Devi.
By double assertion we attain the Absolute, but there is the slightest bit left over and this is the benefit of Value.
If there is nothing, then there is nothing to write.
But there is something - value - and that is called Brahman.
Value is the irreducible factor at the core of the Absolute.
The point is that the only thing that is left is the horizontal
- the Devi's eyebrows and the vertical Sada Shiva.