Amritanubhava is his masterpiece
Every new day brings you surprises,though you think that your life is under your control.Once you are out of your home,you are not even sure of whom you will meet or what is going to happen to you.So,I avoid morning and evening walks.There are trucks on the NH which go to the Willingdon Island.My neighbor breathed his last under a truck while crossing to buy masala dosas from the hotel just opposite.Though Shakespeare has said,life is a tale told by an idiot,full of sound and fury signifying nothing,I was enamored by a single line in the Jnaneswari by Sant Jnaneswar:Life is death in disguise.Swami Ranganathananda quotes an English poet repeatedly in his discourses:Beating of the heart is the bugle of the funeral which began at the time of birth.He has not named the poet.Maybe John Donne.
The surprise is,I found there is another book by Jnaneswar:Amritanubhava-Ambrosial Experience.I got it from the bookshop in the sprawling Sreeramakrishna Ashram in Mylapore.My daughter was sitting in an examination hall in Thiruvanmiyur.My wife and myself decided to spent the next three hours in serendipity.
Serendipity is a word coined by Horace Walpole in 1754,for an unexpected discovery.I first encountered this word in a book by Gay Talese.We went to the Sri Anantha Padmanabhaswamy temple in Adyar, Ashtalakshmi temple in Basant Nagar and then I asked the auto driver to straight away go to Mylapore.I also bought the english translation of Tirumular's Tirumanthiram from the Ashram.
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| John Higgins |
Great literature has flowed from outcastes or people from the lower rungs of society.Jnaneswar was an outcaste from Brahmins;Kambar was son of a widow and Kankadasa,who composed Krishna Nee Begane Baro(listen to John Higgins singing it)in front of the Udupi Sreekrishna temple was from the low warrior caste and the brahmin fundamentalists didn't allow him to enter the temple.The legend has it that he prayed from outside and the wall of the temple broke giving him darshan.So in Udupi,we see Sreekrishna through a window! Higgins was also restrained from entering the temple;Like Kanakadsa,he sang it from outside.But there was no opening of another window.
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| Kanakadasa |
Jnaneswar (1275-1296) was a Maharashtrian hindu saint,philosopher and yogi connected with the Nath tradition.Both Bavartha Deepika(Jnaneswari) and Amrithanubhava written by him are masterpieces of Marathi literature.One of the first original philosophers in Marathi,he was born before the Muslim invasion,during the Yadava kings,who nurtured art and literature.He was the second of four children of Vithal Pant Kulkarni and Rukmini from Apegaon near Paithan on the banks of Godavari.Vithal knew vedas.He married Rukmini,daughter of Sidhopant Kulkarni from Alandi,30 kilometres from Pune.Kulkarnis are traditional revenue officials.
On a pilgrimage to Kashi,Vithal met Ramananda Swami and asked him for an intiation into sanyasa.After doing it,the Swami who went to Alandi
found Vithal had lied that he was a brahmachari and asked him to go back to his family.
Vithal,who broke from asceticism was excommunicated by brahmins.
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| Jnaneswar |
The couple had four children,Nivrithi,Jnandev,Sopan and Mukta.The family went on a pilgrimage to Thryambakeshwar near Nashik.There in a whirlwind,Nivrithi disappeared,found his Guru Gahini Nath in a cave and became his disciple.When the time was ripe to do upanayana (sacred thread ceremony) Vithalnath went to the brahmins and begged to take them back.They refused and ordered the couple to jump into the waters at Prayag were Ganga and Yamuna embrace eachother.Even after their suicide the brahmins remained adamant. They asked the children to go to Paithan,the spiritual centre ,and apologise to the brahmin leaders there.They appeared before the religious court.The scholars ridiculed Jnaneswar.When the trial was on,an ass passed by.When asked,legend says,Jnaneswar made the ass to recite vedas!He proved the Almighty resides everywhere,has no caste or creed.The brahmin verdict was they wont take the children back because they are superiors.
Nivrithinath,elder brother who initiated Jnaneswar,instructed him to go to Nevasa,Ahmed Nagar .He gave discourses in the Adimaya temple and completed the commentary of Bhagavat Gita,Bhavartha Deepika.He was just15.Amritanubhava followed.Then,Jnaneswar with Namdev and other saints went on a pilgrimage.The fame of Jnanadev spread everywhere and hat yogi Changdev tested Jnaneswar by sending a blank note to him.Jnaneswar laughed and wrote 65 verses,the quintessence of vedanta,on it.This is called Changdev Pasashti.Another legend:Changdev rode on the back of a tiger with a cobra as whip and came to Jnaneswar again.The siblings were sitting on a masonry wall.When Changdev arrived,Jnaneswar made the wall to move up!Whipping up of animal instincts through knowledge.
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| jnaneswar |
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| Changdev and moving wall |
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| procession from Alandi |
bles and immovables is the creation of the Supreme for himself to enjoy;the difference which is experienced as the seer and the object of seeing is not real.Even his seeing is not real because when he sees he sees not and when he does not see,he sees.The speech transcends the silence of silence.
Amritanubhava is a text of 800 verses.In it he has repeated the simile of mirror and reflection 25 times and the illustration of camphor 10 times.Reflection in the form of the universe is caused by one's face alone and it makes one realize one's own face in its place;similarly the colour,lustre and fragrance of camphor are all aspects of camphor only.You know the simile of Serpent and the rope of Adi Sankara-it is the same.It is a misreading of the rope as serpent.Maya.If you know Sankara,you are very close to Jnaneswar.The two books of him are Marathi epics.I have not seen such sublime poetry in any literature in the world.I quoted Shakespeare;You may read the Song of Myself in Walt Whitman's epic,Leaves of Grass:
My respiration and inspiration
The beating of my heart
The passing of blood and air
Through my lungs....
Same heart beat. It reverberates through the sublime to the Absolute.
Reference:
Amritanubhava/Translation by Ramachandra Keshav Bhagwat
Jnaneswari/Translation by M P Chandrasekharan Pillai
Leaves of Grass/Walt Whitman
