Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7

(Charyapada)

AT least the names, "Natha-yogis" and "Siddhacharyas" must have been familiar to you, perhaps you may have heard about their writings too, the body of poetry known as caryapadavali. Today I would like to say something on this subject. This introduces us to a particular epoch in our history and its peculiar training and culture, where the human consciousness has found a particular expression for which one cannot find a parallel. It was what is known as the age of Tantric Buddhism. During this period, a special kind of spiritual discipline and culture had been growing as a result of the Buddhist influence. It extended mainly over north-eastern India, but the whole of north India and to a certain extent the South too came within its orbit.

This poetry is the record of an inner empire which, it is supposed, may have lasted from the eighth to the eleventh centuries. The story of the discovery of these writings is a fascinating one. Just a little over half a century ago, Pandit Haraprasad Shastri, a, truly gifted scholar and lover of the Bengali language and literature, had been doing some researches into the ancient history of Bengal and was earnestly engaged in the collection of old manuscripts in the villages and the libraries. In this connection he once went to Nepal and there he chanced across some ancient manuscripts, among which there was one that drew his particular attention. At first he thought it might be some work in an earlier form of Hindi and did not accordingly give it much attention.

But afterwards, when out of curiosity he read through the manuscript with care, he made the startling discovery that here was the earliest and a beautifully poetic form of the Bengali language. The manuscript contained fifty poems or songs; they were the work of a Tantric Buddhist group known as Siddhacharyas.

Later on, he made the further discovery that there was a Sanskrit commentary on these poems, for without a commentary it is difficult to get at their true import. They abound in suggestive symbols and illustrations of a line of spiritual discipline. Another curious thing about these poems was that he could discover a complete translation of these poems in Tibetan. This in itself indicates the importance and influence of these verses. In fact, these are not ordinary poems. They have the power of the Mantra, they are records of spiritual experiences and are helps to their realisation. Another thing: several pages were found missing in the particular manuscript that the Pandit had discovered, with the result that one or two of the poems were not to be found at all and one or two others were available only in fragments. Luckily, the commentary in Sanskrit and the Tibetan translation were available for the entire series, and with their help the missing parts have been reconstructed in full.

The spiritual discipline followed by these Siddhacharyas as also their culture were, as I have said, of a peculiar character. They did not follow the ordinary rules of conduct prevalent in society and normally accepted by all. There was no aura of tradition about them, like the aura that surrounds the Vedantic tradition; their science was not that of the learned and respectable upper strata of society, the Brahmin or the Kshatriya class. The science of which we speak here is an esoteric science; the path of spiritual discipline and inner practice to which it leads is not the Righthand but the Left-hand path. The Vedantist, one who follows the Vedantic path, says in clear terms: "That which

is Thy Face turned to the Right, by That protect me", yat te daksnia-mukhamh tena mam pahi nityam.

Vedanta is the path of Knowledge and of one who has the Knowledge; it is a Path of the awakened and enlightened intellect. Tantra, especially the Tantra of the Left-hand Path, has sought to guide and train man through another kind of discipline, along the lines of the vital, even the physical-vital movements that are common to all menthe natural lines of the natural man. Buddha had proclaimed his message to the common man, in the Prakrit dialects understood by all; he did not address it to the cultured and learned intelligentsia, in Sanskrit, the language of learning. Tantra follows in its discipline this line of popular appeal. That is why we find it so popular particularly in the lower strata of society. The Prakrit texts of Tantra as well as the Charyapadavali eulogise the "untouchables" – the Radi, the Dom, the Bede, the Chandala and the Sabara, they occupy the chief place. It is however true that afterwards, when the learned elite came to realise the importance and utility of this line of spiritual discipline, they laid their hands on it and sought to turn it round towards the Right-hand Path.

Thus, if Vedanta was the Path of the educated elite, Tantra was a discipline meant for the generality of men.

We shall now look a little deeper into the peculiarities of each and try to find out their distinctive features. The ultimate state of consciousness in the view of the Buddhists and those influenced by them is that of the Non-Self. Vedanta on the other hand takes its stand on the Self, the Conscious Being who is extra-cosmic and beyond all manifestation. Buddha did not take cognisance of this Self, the Buddhists have altogether denied Its existence. The followers of Tantra, whether Buddhistic or otherwise, have not sought to escape from the world into some extra-cosmic state, Nirvana or Self. They have brought down into this world and established here another kind of Self, an inner

conscious being. In their experience, Shiva has his abode (as the Jiva in the form of the inner Witness) within man and this earth. Creation or the manifested worlds include the earth, the earth includes man, and man is primarily the human body and life, his mind being an obedient servant of these two. The Tantrics have sought for the Power that rules over man's body and life.

Vedanta regards Brahman, the Supreme Reality, as if aloof from the created universe, above it and utterly transcending it. The result has been to declare the world to be a falsehood and an illusion, mithya, maya. Akin to this line of Vedantic thought is the doctrine of Sankhya which makes the Purusha or Conscious Being separate from Prakriti or Nature, places Purusha outside or above Prakriti, declares the Purusha as entirely conscious whereas Prakriti is unconscious. Tantra on the other hand places Purusha not outside or above Prakriti, but rather brings Him down into the heart of Prakriti and establishes Him there; Shakti is not transcended by Shiva, Shiva is within Shakti. Not even satisfied with that, Tantra reverses the position altogether by placing Shiva under the feet of Shakti.

The Vedantic discipline is in a sense comparatively simple and easy. For it takes one straight path to the heights by rejecting all with its formula of "not this", "not that", neti, neti, its method is to fix the consciousness in the head, at the centre of knowledge, and from there to move to the higher levels with the Purusha-consciousness as the mainstay. Tantra has clung to Mother-Nature, that is, it has not sought to reject and deny the existence of the vital and physical movements. Its aim has been to establish on a sound basis these so-called lower but stronger movements, by controlling them and purifying them into their true elements. The ordinary man, every man in fact, has to live with his body and vital being, with the physical life and the vital force as his main supports. Since these things exist, they must have a purpose. They alone can delve into the mystery of the

ordinary life who have been living the ordinary life. That is why this line of discipline is described as the line of the natural man; this is the Natural Path, the Way of Sahajiya. This Path has had greater attractions for the commonalty of men than for the learned men of intellect with their education and culture. It is among the lowest classes that it has found most votaries; there its influence has spread, there it has been best known.

In his inner make-up and outward activities man is a biune entity; here too as in the universe, there is an upper and a lower half. The upper half extends from the head to the chest, the lower from the navel to the feet. The upper half is represented by the Brahmin and the Kshatriya, and to the lower belong the Vaishya and the Shudra, including the Untouchable; the Shudra, says the Vedic text, was born of the Creator's feet, padbhyam sudra ajayata. The Veda and the Upanishads glorify the Brahmin and the Kshatriya; in Tantra, especially in the popular Tantra of the Siddhacharras, the greatness of the lower orders has been brought out.

But there is also another point to note. If we look at the question, not merely from the point of view of man's inner and outer make-up, but also take into account the lines of its historic evolution or development, we may plausibly come to the conclusion that the Tantric discipline represents a continuation or perhaps the remnant of a much older practice. Man did not come to live by his intellect from the very beginning, he at first lived by his vital instincts; he did not start on his march on earth with an assured knowledge and a refined mind, he had to begin his journey with his body and vital being as the main props. Therefore his first problem was to solve the riddle of his body and life. He did not at first seek for the Self or Supreme Being, first he had to discover his inner self, the indwelling lord of his body and life. I have spoken of Shiva in the form of Jiva within man, it would perhaps be more correct to speak of Shakti or Nature

assuming the form of Jiva. In fact, it is when Earth-Nature with matter and life as its base and primary instrument assumes a conscious form in man that we have the human soul. The awakening of this inner soul has been the driving force behind man's progress and development, his earthly evolution and inner unfolding. The secret Man dwelling within man, this Jiva in the form of Conscious Being, is what the follower of the Sahajiya Path have called the Beautiful Man, the Choicest Man, the Natural Man. With what affection and respect and in how many diverse ways have these followers of the Sahajiya Path, the Siddhacharyas, lifted the veil off this mysterious Entity! Herein lies the central principle and the keynote of their life and spiritual discipline.

It is said that the Way of Knowledge follows the Way of Works, Vedanta comes after Veda. This is as true from the outward, historical point of view as it is true of the lines of inner change. As I have already explained, man begins his career as a vital-physical being, becomes a mental being at a later stage. But the trouble is that when he goes beyond his vital being into the mental, he tends to pass beyond mind into the gnosis and forgets his life and body; this is what is known as Nihilism or the Vedantic Illusionism. But as a social being, man has remained what he was, a being of the physical and vital planes, and these cannot be ignored, nor is it proper to do so. It is here that Tantra steps in. That is why I have said that Tantricism has found a ready acceptance among those who are concerned particularly with the physical life, the "natural men". These men have been derided and despised by orthodox Vedantists and by men at the top of the social hierarchy. That is why the Tantrics have had to form esoteric groups and often remain for ages hidden like an underground stream; they have been submerged in the lower reaches of society. They have taken as their chosen deity, not Durga or Lakshmi, nor Brahma or Vishnu, but Kali and Karali, Chandi and Baguli. In the

words of one of these poets: .

For an entire epoch, the line of this particular form of spiritual discipline was practically restricted to people who were beyond the pale or on the fringes of civilised society. If you want to know in what manner, then listen to what one of its teachers, the poet Kahnupada has to say.

O thou Dom Woman, thy cottage is beyond the city

limits,

Where shaven-headed Brahmins roam.

I shall keep thee company,–

I who am a Kapalika Yogi, naked and without

compunctions.

There is only one Lotus with its sixty-four petals,

On which dances this Dom Woman with myself, the

Jiva.

Dom Woman, I ask thee a straight question:

On whose boat art thou coming and going?

This poor fellow no longer sells baskets or cat-gut,

For thy sake alone he has given up his actor's robe.

Thou art a Dom Woman and I a Kapalika;

Yet for thy sake have I put away my garland of bones.

I have broken into the lake and robbed it of its lotus

stalks to eat them.

I have given thee a beating, taken thy life.

Kahnupada gives here a vivid sketch, attractive and neat and clear, of the rural life of his age, the conditions of village society. And with this as the background, he lets us have an insight at once deep and clear into some details of his sadhana or spiritual endeavour. This sadhana, as I have already mentioned, was unacceptable to the upper reaches of society; derided by the learned elite, it was the esoteric sadhana of the "depressed" classes. That is why the Dom Woman has been taken as the Force behind the sadhana, the symbol of the Cherished Deity. The dark lady, this untouchable beauty may draw perhaps the greedy attentions of the learned elite and "high-class" Brahmins. But their enormously decorous attire, their learning and knowledge of scripture, their rites and observances have served to keep them away from that secret Power of Mother-Nature without an ornamental garb. That is why we find Kahnupada saying that he has divested himself of all kinds of decorative wear, has renounced all positions and titles, and has become a naked Kapalika, a nude ascetic in his body, mind and life. It is in this way that he has qualified himself' to meet his Supreme Beloved. What is to be their trysting-place? In the sanctuary of the inner heart where has blossomed forth a superb lotus with its sixty-four petals spread out to the sky. The sixty-four here must have been meant to symbolise the integrality of consciousness: four are the main levels or planes of consciousness – body, life, mind and all that is above

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mind – and the number sixty is their multiple and various divisions or lines of expression.

The ordinary ignorant man passes through life, plying the boat of his ignorant ordinary consciousness with its cargo of worldly cares. But the free inner consciousness moves along other paths. Kahnu would sail on the boat of that inner consciousness and take to those paths.

The world is as if a lake where lies hidden a lotus-stalk which is no other than the Cherished Deity of Kahnu. So we find him saying: "I shall churn the world-lake in Thy quest; it is like a prison-house, I shall break it and rescue Thee from there." This is as if one has to snatch away the Beloved Lady from the grasp of the enemy after a fierce fight. To claim and possess by sheer force heaven and its Deity – this is the heroic way of the hero-aspirant, vira-sadhaka.

Now look at another picture by another poet of this path. Here too taken as background is the daily life of the common man in his village environment:

The world-stream flows by, deep and fast,

Between its muddy banks the water is full to the brim.

A bridge has been built across by Chatilapada

for the sake of Dharma;

Now one can cross over to the other shore without fear. By cutting down the tree of Delusion its wooden floor

has been framed.

The axe has been your Self of Nirvana, grasp it firmly

to strengthen your sense of Unity.

Get on to the bridge, turn not to right or left.

Knowledge is near at hand, why go afar?

Those of you who wish to cross over,

Better ask Chatila, the supreme master,

the Self-realised man without a peer.

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The art of living is to move forward in a continuous progression; this is what gives value to life. But the spiritual seeker and Yogin aims not merely at movement and progress. What he seeks is a crossing over, from this shore of the ordinary consciousness to the other shore of another kind of consciousness. This is commonly pictured as a ferrying, but the crossing can be done by building a bridge as well. The poet here speaks of such a bridge. He says, this world, this worldly life of ours is like a deep rushing stream bounded by muddy fiats, a play of all kinds of movements with their deep subconscient roots. You are to build a bridge across. For that you will need rafters. Man is caught in the network of delusions which firmly knit together like a tree have spread their shadow over the world. Tear it down, cut it up, get together the little bits of dead longings with the little life still left in them, gather them up, make them one-pointed, make of them a solid mass. The tree of Delusion felled down, the heart of desire having found the peace of Nirvana, a sense of solid Unity will dawn on this Nirvana consciousness. Just as the axe is indispensable as an implement for making a bridge, so is this urge to Nirvana essential for building the inner bridge, between the lower and the higher consciousness. You should move straight forward with this one-pointed aim, you are not to disperse the consciousness, your feet are not to waver in doubt. You will then find that the knowledge and experience that you seek will

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not take you far away from the world; they are here within your heart, near at hand. This is the unique truth that has been revealed by this Siddhacharya without a peer.

We have seen something' of the symbolic images of the life of siidhanii as they have been taken from the village life and natural environment of the times. I shall now give a few samples both amusing and instructive of the way in which the social and family customs of the age have served the same purpose with these poets.

We are familiar with the position occupied by the young wife in the household of her in-laws, not only in this but in other countries as well, although there are in this matter certain special peculiarities in our system. In the language of these poets, the household of the in-laws represents the confines of the ordinary ignorant consciousness; into these, confines has been introduced and kept imprisoned the inner Deity who is the Divine Being and Cherished Godhead. That is why the poet urges in tones of thunder: Give a good beating and make a clean sweep of all the in-laws, the father, the mother, the sister and the sister-in-law of the husband:

The wife will reign there in her glory without anyone to share her power. The in-laws' house is the body of man, the vehicle of his life and mind. Its ancient master and mistress have to be displaced, it has to be made neat and clean, and there you have to set up your Cherished Goddess, your innermost Self, the Divine Being – the Buddhists call her by another name, the Godhead of the Nihil or Non-Self.

There is another thing that we find interesting here. Even in those days the condition of the ordinary Bengali was perhaps as miserable as it is now. The Siddhacharya has introduced himself as a Bengali, and he says: Bhusuku, your lot is now truly that of a Bengali; for the robber bands have come and robbed you of your boat, broken into your house, even abducted your wife. Bhusuku, you have now become

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a veritable Bengali!

But this is not all that he means; the inner sense is this: O seeker, what you have lost through the robbers is your worldly possessions, the chains of ignorance. The robbers who came and did all the havoc were really a sign of Divine Grace. Your wife whom they have taken away was no other than your ignorant ego. Your true family and friends will be the companionship of your inner Self, the Beloved within.

The inner mysteries in every path of spiritual discipline are difficult to grasp, they are beyond all language and the mind. Words do not express them, mental thought cannot grasp them. The secrets of the sadhana of these Siddhacharyas are still more mysterious. One cannot understand them oneself, far less make them intelligible to others. So, we find Kahnupada saying: on this path the teacher is as if dumb, the disciple is like one who is deaf:

Now let us pass on to a different kind of feeling and tone, – a softer feeling and a sweeter tone, with a more intimate touch of the heart:

There is an incessant downpour of the streams of Grace; Gone is the strife of "Is" and "Is not";

In mid-heaven arises a strange Something.

Bhusuku, now look at your true Natural Being;

A glimpse of this breaks all the bonds of sense,

The heart is filled with a secret spontaneous delight.

By purification of the contacts with the objects of sense I now understand what is Delight:

It is as if the skies are bright with the moon.

This is the Essence of the three worlds.

Yogi Bhusuku has rent the Darkness asunder.

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The Divine Grace is descending from on High in a continuous stream, thus is obliterated the sense of Being and Non-Being, all doubts and difficulties as to whether It exists or not. On the screen of the individual consciousness there arises a strange Form, like Uma-Haimavati of the Upanishad. Bhusuku, this is your true Natural Form. Once you know and recognise It, all the bonds of sense are broken, the heart fills of itself with a supreme delight. This is the real purification of sense, this enables you to establish with the objects of sense, with all objects, your true and pure relation, giving as result the emergence of supreme Bliss. This is the Moon in your inner skies, the Delight within the three worlds of mind, life and body which spreads its moonshine on all your consciousness. Lo, there is left no trace of darkness in the Yogic mind of Bhusuku.

Let us move a little farther, into the realm of a deeper principle, into the mysteries of a mote complicated symbolism. Here is a specimen of riddling verse:

It does not become an "Is", nor does it turn out to be

"Is not":

Such being the Supreme Knowledge, who can put his

faith in It?

Luipada says it is an incomprehensible Science.

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Its Illumination consists of three elements,

But It cannot be grasped.

I do not know what colour It has, what signs, what

form –

How shall I explain it with reference to scripture?

Whom shall I ask, and what?

It is as if the shadow of the moon in water –

neither real nor unreal.

Lui says: what shall I meditate on?

Of That which makes up my "I" I find no hints.

It cannot be said that It exists, it cannot be said that It does not exist. Can such a thing be grasped by any hidden faculties? It is a Light made up of three elements, and yet It has no colour or form or distinguishing marks. The reason is that the outer sense-organs cannot reach It, nor can the mind grasp It no matter how well-versed in scripture it be. The reflection of the moon in water looks fine and cool and sweet – it exists and is yet unreal. Likewise, in the inner skies of our consciousness It appears as Beauty and Delight, but It transcends all thought or image; who then can unravel Its mystery?

The three elements here may well represent the body, life and mind, and the Light is the inner Consciousness that rules over them. The Vedantin may say that this Light is no

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other than his Brahman whose attributes are Existence, Conscious Power and Bliss, saccidananda. It is remarkable that the Rishis of the Upanishads too speak somewhat in analogous style and. language of an Ineffable Something, which is "difficult to be seen, a secret immanent lying as in a cave or deep cavity", durdarsyam gudham-anupravistam guhahitam gahvarestham. Long before the Upanishads, the Rishis of the Rigveda also have spoken of a similar experience: Non-Being was not there nor was Being. Who was, or what it was, who can tell? Only He can tell who is the overlord of all this. Or perhaps, He too cannot tell – ye asya adhyaksa parame vyoman, so anga veda yadi va na veda.

So we see that our ancient Rishis were not so far removed after all from these Siddhacharyas. There was something about these non-conformist Tantriks that was of the essence of Vedanta; those who to an apparent view seem to have lived beyond the pale have shown themselves to be the peers

of the "respectable" classes in their manner and style as in the richness of their experience; the untouchables have made themselves as worthy of respect as the Brahmins. As we read of their experience and listen to their words, there come to mind the lines of Rabindranath:

But, as I have said in the beginning, in one respect the realisation of these Siddhacharyas has gone farther than that of the Upanishadic seers, they have taken two or three steps ahead. The Upanishads and the Vedantins stop with the realisation of the Ananda plane; saccidananda has been their limit. But these Siddhacharyas of the esoteric cult have passed beyond the realm of Delight to that of Divine Love; this Love too has changed from an inner experience to a divine Passion and Joy in the physical body. In other words, they have arrived at the experience of bodily delight with the full consciousness of the heights, effected a unique marriage

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of pure consciousness with gross matter. Theirs is not the lotus that blooms in heaven without a stem, it blossoms on earth with its roots deep in the mud. With the beauty and fragrance of the lotus petals have mingled the sap and scent of earth's soil. .

The Nihilism of the Buddhists and the Illusionism of Shankar a have cast a long shadow on these Charyapada verses. Nihil and Sahaja are often taken as being one and the same. But actually the two elements run like water and oil in separate streams in both. Nihil is no other than the Illusion of the Vedantin, but Sahaja gives a definite form to the mystic principle of the Body. That is why the Siddhacharyas say that Nihil is not an entire Negation, it is the perfect Integer, Illusion is not Unreality, it is the indivisible Whole. One of them says in clear terms that the true Nihil is that from which all irrelevant parts and fractions have fallen off: it is not the complete negation of things. In the words of Kahnu:

My mind has found the fulfilment of Nihil in Sahaja.

Who says, Kahnu does not exist?

He is always immanent in the universe,

as cream is in milk.

Are things wholly destroyed when they get broken?

Does the unending breaking of the surf make the ocean dry?

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