SUKA maha rishi by K. Balasubrahmanya Iyer. B.A., B.L., M.L.C.
The truth of Advaita rests not merely on the inherent validity of the
scriptures or the Vedas but on that of actual experience or anubhava. The
Great Śaṅkara Bhagavatpāda, who is the foremost expounder of the truth of
Advaita, clearly states in his commentary on the second Sūtra of the
Brahma-Sūtra (janmādyasya yataḥ 1.1.2) that unlike in the case of Dharma
the knowledge of Brahman rests also on experience (śrutyādayaḥ
anubhavādayaścha yathāsaṃbhavam iha pramāṇam). Again when discussing the
possibility of the existence in this world of jīvan-muktas or realised
souls he emphasises that the only test for the existence of such realised
souls in the human form is their own heart-experience, and such experience
cannot be questioned by arguments about the possibility or not of the
existence of jīvan-muktas after they have destroyed their karmavāsanās.
Hence it is that Śaṅkara postulates the necessity for initiation by a Guru
for the realisation of the truth of Advaita. As a corollary to this
proposition came the acceptance of a series of Gurus, who developed the
Advaita-saṃpradāya. Before initiation into the study of Vedanta, everyone
is expected to make a Śāntipāṭha, and in that one recites the
Guru-paraṃparā, from the beginning. God Nārāyaṇa himself is the first Guru,
next comes Brahmā, next Vasiṣṭha, then his son Śakti, then Sakti’s son
Parāśara, afterwards the son of Parāśara, the great sage Vyāsa, then his
son Śuka, afterwards Gáuḍapāda, his śiṣya Govinda Bhagavatpāda, and then
his śiṣya Śrī Śaṅkara Bhagavatpāda, and then his śiṣyas Hastāmalaka,
Sureśvara, Padmapāda, Totaka and others, and then downwards to one’s own
Guru under whom one gets initiation into the study of Vedānta. We find
therefore that Bhagavān Śuka occupies a highly honoured place in our
Guru-paraṃparā. In this Guru-paraṃar ā that has been handed down to us in
the Advaita tradition, all the Gurus are, as will be seen, realised souls
that have experienced the Advaita-tatva. When praising Vyāsa the famous
verse about him refers to him as the father of Śuka (śukatātam taponidhim).
This is a unique distinction for, usually, the name of the son is denoted
by the name of his father. Here Vyāsa is extolled by being mentioned as the
father of Śuka. This shows with what veneration the great devotees of
Advaita Vedānta looked upon Śuka. He is one of the greatest of
Brahma-Niṣṭhas. The story of Śuka’s wonderful birth and the way of his
realisation of Brahman are very graphically narrated in the Mahābhārata —
Śānti Parva-Adhyāya 323, and following Adhyāyas. It is said therein that
Bhagavān Vyāsa performed a severe penance for begetting a son. He meditated
on the great Śiva. Pleased with his austerities God Śiva blessed that a son
would be born to him who would be pure as fire, air, earth, water and
etheric space and that he would attain fame throughout the three worlds by
his spirituality. Having attained this boon from Lord Śiva, it is narrated
that Vyāsa began to produce fire from two sticks of wood (araṇi). At that
time the beautiful celestial dancer Ghṛtāchī appeared. Enslaved by Kāma on
seeing her, Vyāsa let fall his Vīrya on the fire produced from the sticks
of wood, and out of it a son was born. As the Apsaras Ghṛtāchī took the
form of a parrot (śukī) at that time, this son came to be known as Śuka.
This boy shone like effulgent fire and resembled Vyāsa in his appearance.
The child was later initiated into the study of the Vedas, and Vyāsa
instructed him in all Śāstras. The child was also instructed by Bṛhaspati
himself. Curiously enough in a short; time the boy attained the knowledge
of all branches of learning. But his mind did not move by the attractions
of the other two āśramas, of Gṛhastha and Vānaprastha. But he was intensely
longing for Mokṣa. Hence his father Vyāsa, advised Him to go and study
under the great Rāja Rishi Janaka at Mithilā. The Mahābhārata specifically
says that from the great āśrama the Himalayas, Śuka came all the way to
Mithilā on foot, even though he had the power to fly over the intervening
space between the Himalayas and Mithilā. When he went to the palace of
Janaka a discriminating gate keeper readily admitted, struck by his
attractive appearance. Śuka was received in the palace by the ministers of
Janaka and enjoyed the hospitality of the maids of the palace. Even then he
had absolute self control, and was indifferent to their attractions. In the
morning Śuka was received by Janaka and instructed on the path to Mokṣa.
Then Janaka portrays to him beautifully the characteristics of a realised
soul, how he is utterly devoid of jealousy and other evil qualities, how he
looks upon all people with the same eye, how he is devoid of the opposites,
praise and calumny, pleasure and pain, heat and cold, how he treats gold
and iron as same, and how he has mastered the mind and indṛyas.
Having thus been instructed in the Mokṣa-mārga by Janaka, Śuka
returned to his father. At that time his father Vyāsa was engaged in
teaching the four Vedas to Sumantu, Vaiśaṃpāyana, Jaimini and Paila. He
taught Śuka all the four Vedas as his fifth śiṣya. Then Śuka sought Nārada
as his Guru for being instructed in Rājayoga and Bhakti Yoga. Nārada taught
the way of Dhyāna, Abhyāsa and Bhakti. He emphasised the absolute
importance of jñāna and vairāgya. After obtaining the complete knowledge of
the way of realisation of Mokṣa through Yoga and Bhakti, Śuka entered into
austerities and attained Sūryaloka and became part of the effulgence of
Sūrya. In the same way he identified himself with the other elements, Vāyu,
Jala and Bhūmi, and finally he attained Brahman and wandered about.
Vyāsa was stricken with profound grief on account of the
separation from his son and ran after him.
It is during his journey following his son that a wonderful incident
occurred. The Heavenly dancers who were sporting in the water without
dress, remained unmoved when Śuka went along that path, and when Vyāsa
came, they hastily dressed themselves. When asked by Vyāsa the reason for
the difference in their conduct towards himself and his youthful son, they
said that Śuka was a person absolutely devoid of the knowledge of the
difference of sex, and that Vyāsa had not come to that stage. This incident
is mentioned with great enthusiasm in the Bhāgavata also. The greatest
achievement of Ś uka, according to the traditional story, is his reciting
the Bhāgavata to King Parīkṣit, who expecting death in a period of seven
days, on account of a curse uttered by a sage, was intently meditating upon
the Lord and was anxiously seeking for the way to attain the feet of God.
The Bhāgavata narrates that Parīkṣit was seated near the banks of the
Ganges surrounded by Ṛṣis and at that time Śuka made his appearance.
There is a beautiful description of Śuka who was of the age of
sixteen at that time. The Great Brahmaniṣṭha who never stayed even a short
time before any householder, stayed for seven days and instructed King
Parīkṣit in the famous Bhāgavata-purāṇa, The Bhāgavata goes into ecstasies
over the fine appearance of this lad of sixteen years with soft limbs of
beautiful proportion, with attractive eyes, and smiling face, saturated
with a mind absolutely tranquil and devoid of any desires. The whole
assembly of Ṛṣis rose to their feet on seeing this Great Brahmaniṣṭha and
made obeisance to him. Parīkṣit received him with great veneration and made
him seated and asked him to teach him the way of meditating upon the Lord
and concentrating on him. He said he was very fortunate in having Śuka to
instruct him when he was greatly anxious to attain the knowledge of the way
of salvation. Very much pleased with his desire to know the truth, śuka
congratulated him, and himself began to utter verses ending with tasmai
śubhadraśravase namo namaḥ. This Hymn to the Lord by Śuka, one of the
finest in the Bhāgavata is fit to be uttered by everyone desiring to
practice devotion to the Lord. In that Hymn Śuka emphasised the greatness
of Bhakti to the Lord. He declares that the path of Bhakti can be followed
by all irrespective of caste, creed or race.
kirāta hūṇāndhrapulinda pulkasā ābhirakaṅkā yavanāḥ khaśādayaḥ
ye anye cha pāpāḥ yadupāśrayāśrayāḥ śudhyanti tasmai prabhaviṣṇave namaḥ
He also stresses that the Goal of all religious systems is the realisation
of God and the different mārgas expounded by those who have realised God is
due only to their differences in the exposition of their experience due to
the varying degrees of their intellectual perception.
But the only way by which they have attained the knowledge of Brahman is
concentration through Bhakti-yoga on the feet of the Lord, by which their
mind is purified.
yadaṅghryanudhyānasamādhidhautayā dhiyānupaśyanti hi tattvamātmanaḥ
vadanti chaitat kavayo yathārucham sa me mukundo bhagavān prasīdatām
Bhagavān Śuka thus expounded the great message of Bhakti as the royal road
for all people irrespective of their intellectual attainment, for the
realization of God. This Bhakti, the Bhāgavata declares, is the he all and
end all of life. But this Bhakti according to the Bkāgavata must be
inspired by tattajñāna (the knowledge of the truth) and by the practice of
vairāgya accompanied by the pursuit of Rājayoga.
Śuka remains for all time as the foremost example of a Brahmaniṣṭha, who
realised God through jñāna, Bhakti, Vairagya and Yoga.
The Bhāgavata rightly extols Śuka as a Muni, a sage with the cosmic
universal heart, (sarvabhūtahridaya).
Therefore it is that both the Mahābhārata and the Bhāgavata state that at
the call uttered by Vyāsa the whole of Nature responded to the call,
(putreti tanmayatayā taravo’bhineduh). Even the trees, being united with
him, responded to his name. Even the great sage Tayumānavar refers to the
cosmic mind of Śuka and to the incident of nature resounding to the call of
his father Vyāsa. He reckons Śuka among the immortal yogis. Śuka is
undoubtedly the shining star among the illustrious galaxy of saints, who
attained the knowledge of Brahman and merged into the universal soul, even
during their sojourn on earth.
Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
GAUDAPADA by T. M. P. Mahadevan, M.A., PH.D.
1 Gauḍapāda, like most of the classical Indian thinkers, lives in our
memories mainly through his work. Tradition regards Gauḍapāda as Śaṅkara’s
paramaguru (preceptor’s preceptor). A verse which contains the succession
list of the early teachers of Advaita gives the names of those teachers in
the following order:
Nārāyaṇa,
the lotus-born Brahmā,
Vasiṣṭha,
Śakti,
his son Parāśara,
Vyāsa,
Śuka, the great Gauḍpāda,
Govinda-yogīndra,
his disciple Śaṅkarāchārya,
and then his four pupils
Padmapāda,
Hastāmalaka,
Troṭaka
and the Vārtikakāra (i.e. Sureśvara).From this list we learn that Gauḍapāda
was the preceptor of Govinda who was Śaṅkara’s guru. The first teacher is
Nārāyaṇa, the Lord himself; and the line of succession, which is from
father to son upto Śuka, consists more or less of mythical persons. The
first teacher of whose historicity we may be sure is Gauḍapāda; and from
him onwards we have the rule of sanyāsins succeeding to the Advaita
pontificate. With him commences, according to tradition, what may be called
the mānava-saṃpradāya in the present age of Kali; he was the first human
preceptor to receive the wisdom of the One and impart it to his pupils.
Ānandagiri in his gloss (ṭīkā) on the Māṇḍūkya-Kārikā-bhāṣya, says that the
teacher Gauḍapāda in those days spent his time in Badrikāśrama, the holy
residence of Nara-Nārāyana, in deep meditation on the Lord, and that the
Lord, Nārāyaṇa, greatly pleased, revealed to him the Upaniṣadic wisdom.
Bālakṛṣṇānanda Sarasvatī (17th Century A.D.) writes in his
Śārīrakamīmāṃsābhāṣya-vārtika that there was in the country of Kurukṣetra a
river called Hirarāvati, on whose banks there were some Gauḍa people
(people of Gauḍadeśa, the modem North Bengal); that the pre-eminent of
them, Gauḍapāda, was absorbed in deep meditation beginning from the Dvāpara
age; and so, as his proper name is not known to the moderns, he is
celebrated by the class-name of the Gauḍas.
Gauḍapāda, after he was blessed with the intuitive wisdom of the Absolute,
must have taught those who gathered round him the truth he had discovered
and embodied it in a work which came to be called the Āgamaśāstra or
Gauḍapāda-kārikā. It is an exposition of a short but important Upaniṣad
called the Māṇḍūkya, which is counted as one of the principal Upaniṣads by
all the schools of Vedānta. Besides the Māṇḍūkyakārikā, other works are
also attributed to Gauḍapāda.
They are:
a vṛtti on the Uttaragītā,
a bhāṣya on the Sāṇkhyakārikā,
a commentary on the Nṛsiṃhottaratāpinyupaniṣad,
a bhāṣya on Durgāsaptaśati
and two independent Tāntric treatises, viz.,
Subhagodaya
and Śr-vidyāratnasūtra.
Since nothing definite can be said regarding the authorship of these other
works, we shall here attempt a study of the philosophy of Gauḍapāda as it
is set forth in the Māṇḍūkyakārikā.
2 Gauḍapāda’s Kārikā, which is more than a verse-commentary on the
Māṇḍūkya Upaniṣad, contains the quintessence of the teaching of Vedānta.
The work consists of 215 couplets arranged in four chapters. Following the
Upaniṣad, the first chapter, Āgama-prakaraṇa, analyses the three avasthās,
waking, dream, and deep sleep, and finds that the Self which is referred to
as the Turīya underlies and transcends these changing states. The second
chapter, Vaitathya-prakaraṇa, seeks to establish the illusoriness of the
world of plurality, on the analogy of dreams, and through a criticism of
creationistic hypotheses. The third chapter, Advaita-prakaraṇa, sets forth
the arguments for the truth of non-dualism, gives citations from scripture
in support thereof, and discusses the path to the realisation of
non-duality, called Asparśa-yoga. The last chapter, Alātaśānti-prakaraṇa,
repeats some of the arguments of the earlier chapters, shows the
unintelligibility of the concept of causality through dialectic, explains
the illusoriness of the phenomenal world, comparing it to the non-real
designs produced by a fire-brand (alāta) and pressing into service modes of
Bauddha reasoning, and establishes the supreme truth of non-duality which
is unoriginated, eternal, self-luminous bliss.
3 The central theme of Gauḍapāda’s philosophy is that nothing is ever
born (ajāti), not because ‘nothing’ is the ultimate truth, as in
Śūnya-vāda, but because the Self is the only reality. ‘No jīva is born;
there is no cause for such birth; this is the supreme truth, nothing
whatever is born’.[3] From the standpoint of the Absolute there is no
duality, there is nothing finite or non-eternal. The Absolute alone is; all
else is appearance, illusory and non-real. They are deluded who take the
pluralistic universe to be real. Empirical distinctions of knower and
object known, mind and matter, are the result of Māvā. One cannot explain
how they arise. But on inquiry they will be found to be void of reality. If
one sees them, it is like seeing the foot-prints of birds in the sky. The
Self is unborn; there is nothing else to be born. Duality is mere illusion;
non-duality is the supreme truth.
4 Gauḍapāda expounds his philosophy of non-origination or non-birth in
several ways and through many an argument. The reality of the non-dual self
he first establishes through an enquiry into the purport of the Māṇḍūkya
Upaniṣad, Though extremely brief, the Māṇḍūkya contains the essentials of
Vedānta. For the liberation of those who desire release, says the
Muktikopaniṣad, the Māṇḍūkya alone is enough. The Māṇḍūkya Upaniṣad begins
with the equation ‘Om=all=Brahman=self’ and proceeds to describe the three
states of the self, waking, dream and sleep, as well as the fourth (Turīya)
which is not a state alongside the others but the transcendent nature of
the self—the non-dual peace, the self per se. Gauḍapāda makes this
declaration of the Upaniṣad the basis of his metaphysical quest and seeks
to show through reasoning that non-origination is the final truth.
Viśva, Taijasa, and Prājña are the names by which the self is known in the
three states, waking, dream, and sleep.
Viśva is conscious of the external world, enjoys what is gross and is
satisfied therewith.
Taijasa is conscious of what is within, enjoys what is subtle and finds
satisfaction there.
Prājña is a consciousness-mass without the distinctions of seer and seen;
its enjoyment and satisfaction is bliss.
The three, Viśva, Taijasa, and Prājña, are not distinct selves. It is one
and the same self that appears as three. To show that all the three aspects
are present in waking, Gauḍapāda assigns localities to them.
Viśva has its seat in the right eye;
Taijasa in the mind;
and Prājña in the ether of the heart.
And the three should also be thought of as identical with the three cosmic
forms of the self, Virāṭ, Hiraṇyagarbha, and Avyākṛta or Īśvara. It is to
indicate this identity that the Maṇḍūkya Upaniṣad describes the Prājña-self
as the lord of all, the knower of all, the controller of all, the source of
all, the origin and end of beings. The recognition of Viśva, Taijasa, and
Prājña in the waking state, and the identification of the three individual
forms of the self with the three cosmic forms, are for the purpose of
realising non-duality.The non-dual reality is the Turīya. It has no
distinguishing name; hence it is called ‘the fourth’ (turīya).[ It is the
self-luminous self, changeless, non-dual, one without a second. The states
that change and pass, with their words and enjoyments, are illusory,
products of Māyā.Māyā is two-fold in its functioning; it veils the one and
projects the many. Non-apprehension of the real (tattvā-’pratibodha) and
the apprehension of it otherwise (anyathā-grahaṇa) . For the Prājña in the
state of sleep there is non-apprehension alone, and not misapprehension. It
knows neither the self in its real nature nor the not-self. The Turīya is
free from both the aspects of Māyā. It is consciousness per se, without
even a trace of ignorance. It is an unfailing light, omniscient sight. The
metaphysical implication of sleep is that it hides the truth, and of dreams
that it projects the untrue. Viśva and Taijasa are associated with dream
and sleep; Prājña is associated with dreamless sleep; for the Turīya there
is neither dream nor sleep. Real awakening comes with the realisation of
the Turīya, with the transcendence of Māyā in its double role of veiling
the real and showing up the non-real. When the jīva wakes from the
beginningless sleep of illusion, it knows its true nature as unborn, as
that in which there is neither sleep nor dream nor duality.
In the Alātaśānti-prakaraṇa, Gauḍapāda teaches the same theory of the three
avasthās, employing Bauddha terminology. Waking, dreaming, and sleep are
called laukika, śuddha-laukika, and lokottam respectively. The difference
between the first two is that while in the former there are external
objects (savastu), in the latter there is none (avastu); but in both there
is consciousness of duality (sopalambha) . In the lokottam there is neither
the external world of things nor the internal world of ideas, and
consequently there is no apprehension of duality; ignorance, however,
persists. It is only he who knows these three as non-real states that knows
the truth. For him there is no duality, nor ignorance, the seed of duality.
When the real is known, there is not the world of duality
5 As a result of the inquiry into the avasthās it must be evident that
the pluralistic world is illusory, as the self alone is real. That the
world which we take to be real in waking is illusory, Gauḍapāda seeks to
establish in the Vaitathya-prakaraṇa on the analogy of the dream-world.
Judged by the standards of waking, it will be readily seen that the world
of dreams is unreal. A person may dream of elephants and chariots; but on
waking he realises that all of them must have been illusory because they
appeared within him, within the small space of his body. The dream-contents
do not form part of the external world which we take to be real in waking;
and so they are illusory. Nor do they conform to the laws of space and time
which govern the waking world. In a trice of waking time one may travel far
and wide in dream. There is no real going to the place of dream, for on
waking one does not find oneself there. Nor are the objects experienced in
dream real, for when the dream-spell is broken one does not see them
Because chariot, etc., seen in dream are non-existent, they are illusory. K
RAJARAM IRS 18924 PART3
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