Friday, January 3, 2020

AVG 4.2

Chapter 4 (A seeker's perspective into the beauty of self-awareness): Verse 2
यत् पदं प्रेप्सवो दीनाः शक्राद्याः सर्वदेवताः ।
अहो तत्र स्थितो योगी न हर्षमुपगच्छति ॥ ४-२॥

PURPORT:
Ahh! the true renunciate, steadily abiding
within that state of pure awareness,
does not feel the need to sift and unearth
any higher levels of bliss and elation;
levels that even anointed gods perhaps
covet, and thus, remain disconsolate.

TRANSLITERATION:
यत् पदम् प्रेप्सवः दीनाः शक्राद्याः सर्वदेवताः ।
yat padam prepsavaḥ dīnāḥ śakrādyāḥ sarvadevatāḥ । 
अहो तत्र स्थितः योगी न हर्षम् उपगच्छति ॥ ४-२॥
aho tatra sthitaḥ yogī na harṣam upagacchati ॥ 4-2॥

MEANING:
yat (यत्) = that which
padam (पदम्) = state (reference here is to a state of pure self-awareness)
prepsavaḥ (प्रेप्सवः) = longing for/wishing to obtain/hankering after
dīnāḥ (दीनाः) =  the afflicted and disconsolate/the one who is unhappy
śakrādyāḥ (शक्राद्याः) =  starting with Indira (compound of śakra (शक्र) meaning 'relating or belonging or sacred to or addressed to indra' and आद्याः (ādyāḥ) meaning 'beginning with' ). Indra, in Hindu mythology, is considered the king of the pantheon of Hindu gods. He is commonly considered to be the equivalent of the German Wotan, Norse Odin, Greek Zeus and Roman Jupiter. Indra is supposed to bring rain as the anointed 'god of the thunderbolt', and is commonly considered in the epic mythologies to be that warrior who conquers powerful superhuman demigods with good or bad qualities (called Asuras in the same epic mythologies)
sarvadevatāḥ (सर्वदेवताः) = all of the gods/potential/skills/faculties (compund of  sarva (सर्व) meaning 'all' and  devatāḥ (देवताः) quite literally meaning 'gods')।
aho (अहो) =  ah! (implying joyful or painful surprise - in this case, a heartening exclamation)
tatra (तत्र) =  there
sthitaḥ (स्थितः) = steadily abiding
yogī (योगी) =  yogi - practitioner of meditation in Indian religions; the feminine form is 'yogini'. The Bhagavad Gita defines it thus: “The true renunciate and the true yogi are those who perform dutiful actions without desiring their fruits, not those who, eschewing self-offering, act with ego-motivation, nor those who (in the name of renunciation) eschew action.”
na (न) =  not
harṣam (हर्षम्) =  delight/elation
upagacchati (उपगच्छति) = attains/a means of approaching realization ॥ 4-2॥

COMMENT:
Janaka continues with his assertion here and compares the yogi (the mindful renunciate) who understands and practices awareness to be the one who has achieved a state that even the imaginary gods (that we might conjure) would aspire towards. That renunciate does not see any continuity in their thoughts and they understand that thoughts themselves are atomic and discrete events that seek to be linked up (and seem to be linked up) across time and space; additionally, the one with awareness understands that thoughts themselves are disjointed, autonomous creations that spring up within our minds irregardless of volition. The mindful one understands that the entity that you and I call 'me' or the 'self' or the 'soul' is fundamentally illusory and discerns that such an illusory 'self' strives to attain a measure of solidity within our psyches by chaining the disparate thoughts that arise spontaneously using and appropriating the individual's culturally conditioned learning of sense objects and name-and-form linkages that are naturally imbibed over the course of ones life. This is commonly referred to as 'knowledge'.
Within the framework of this so-called knowledge that is assimilated by the person from such conditioning, arises the self. Again, it is the same cultural knowledge that 'creates the self' when the seeker looks to interrogate and somehow 'find the self' (as opposed the mindful ones who does not see such a self despite rigorous interrogation). In the same vein, the person of awareness understands that culture, society and its ilk are internally constructed entities derived from recurring motifs observed in externalities that seem to allow for the stable perpetuation of such an illusory self across time and people.

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AVG 15.6

Chapter 15 (A Celebration of the Seekers Native Self): Verse 6 सर्वभूतेषु चात्मानं सर्वभूतानि चात्मनि । विज्ञाय निरहंकारो निर्ममस्त्वं सुख...