Śrī Aruṇācala Aṣṭakam verse 4: Be and shine in my heart as one without a second

This article is also available in a clearer and more easily readable format on my main website:
Śrī Aruṇācala Aṣṭakam verse 4: Be and shine in my heart as one without a second

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In continuation of my previous four articles, Śrī Aruṇācala Aṣṭakam: Tamil text, transliteration and translation, Śrī Aruṇācala Aṣṭakam verse 1: When, by its wonderful act of grace, Arunachala enchanted and pulled my mind close, I saw as this is acalam, Śrī Aruṇācala Aṣṭakam verse 2: When investigating within the mind who he who saw is, I saw what remained when he who saw was completely non-existent and Śrī Aruṇācala Aṣṭakam verse 3: When thinking of your form without thinking, form will cease, in this article I will explain and discuss the meaning and implications of the fourth verse:

Śrī Aruṇācala Aṣṭakam verse 3: When thinking of your form without thinking, form will cease

This article is also available in a clearer and more easily readable format on my main website:
Śrī Aruṇācala Aṣṭakam verse 3: When thinking of your form without thinking, form will cease

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In continuation of my previous three articles, Śrī Aruṇācala Aṣṭakam: Tamil text, transliteration and translation, Śrī Aruṇācala Aṣṭakam verse 1: When, by its wonderful act of grace, Arunachala enchanted and pulled my mind close, I saw as this is acalam and Śrī Aruṇācala Aṣṭakam verse 2: When investigating within the mind who he who saw is, I saw what remained when he who saw was completely non-existent, in this article I will explain and discuss the meaning and implications of the third verse:

Śrī Aruṇācala Aṣṭakam verse 2: When investigating within the mind who he who saw is, I saw what remained when he who saw was completely non-existent

This article is also available in a clearer and more easily readable format on my main website:
Śrī Aruṇācala Aṣṭakam verse 2: When investigating within the mind who he who saw is, I saw what remained when he who saw was completely non-existent

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In continuation of my previous two articles, Śrī Aruṇācala Aṣṭakam: Tamil text, transliteration and translation and Śrī Aruṇācala Aṣṭakam verse 1: When, by its wonderful act of grace, Arunachala enchanted and pulled my mind close, I saw as this is acalam, in this article I will explain and discuss the meaning and implications of the second verse:

Śrī Aruṇācala Aṣṭakam verse 1: When, by its wonderful act of grace, Arunachala enchanted and pulled my mind close, I saw as this is acalam

This article is also available in a clearer and more easily readable format on my main website:
Śrī Aruṇācala Aṣṭakam verse 1: When, by its wonderful act of grace, Arunachala enchanted and pulled my mind close, I saw as this is acalam

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In continuation of my previous article, Śrī Aruṇācala Aṣṭakam: Tamil text, transliteration and translation, in this article I will explain and discuss the meaning and implications of the first verse of this song, and in subsequent articles I will do likewise for each of the other seven verses:

Śrī Aruṇācala Aṣṭakam: Tamil text, transliteration and translation

This article is also available in a clearer and more easily readable format on my main website:
Śrī Aruṇācala Aṣṭakam: Tamil text, transliteration and translation

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In continuation of my translations of other works of Bhagavan, such as Nāṉ Ār?, Upadēśa Undiyār, Upadēśa Sāraḥ, Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu, Upadēśa Kaliveṇbā, Appaḷa Pāṭṭu, Āṉma-Viddai, Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu Anubandham, Aruṇācala Tattuvam and Dīpa-Darśaṉa Tattuvam, Śrī Aruṇācala Navamaṇimālai and Śrī Aruṇācala Padigam, this is my translation of ஸ்ரீ அருணாசல அஷ்டகம் (Śrī Aruṇācala Aṣṭakam), and in the coming months or years I hope to be able to revise and post here my translations of all his other original writings.

Śrī Aruṇācala Padigam: Tamil text, transliteration and translation

This article is also available in a clearer and more easily readable format on my main website:
Śrī Aruṇācala Padigam: Tamil text, transliteration and translation

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In continuation of my translations of other works of Bhagavan, such as Nāṉ Ār?, Upadēśa Undiyār, Upadēśa Sāraḥ, Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu, Upadēśa Kaliveṇbā, Appaḷa Pāṭṭu, Āṉma-Viddai, Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu Anubandham, Aruṇācala Tattuvam and Dīpa-Darśaṉa Tattuvam and Śrī Aruṇācala Navamaṇimālai, this is my translation of ஸ்ரீ அருணாசல பதிகம் (Śrī Aruṇācala Padigam), and in the coming months or years I hope to be able to revise and post here my translations of all his other original writings.

Śrī Aruṇācala Akṣaramaṇamālai verse 19

This is the nineteenth in a series of articles that I hope to write on Śrī Aruṇācala Akṣaramaṇamālai, Bhagavan willing, the completed ones being listed here.

Śrī Aruṇācala Akṣaramaṇamālai verse 17

This is the seventeenth in a series of articles that I hope to write on Śrī Aruṇācala Akṣaramaṇamālai, Bhagavan willing, the completed ones being listed here.

Śrī Aruṇācala Akṣaramaṇamālai verse 12

This is the twelfth in a series of articles that I hope to write on Śrī Aruṇācala Akṣaramaṇamālai, Bhagavan willing, the completed ones being listed here.

Śrī Aruṇācala Akṣaramaṇamālai verse 6

This is the sixth in a series of articles that I hope to write on Śrī Aruṇācala Akṣaramaṇamālai, Bhagavan willing, the completed ones being listed here.

Śrī Aruṇācala Akṣaramaṇamālai: pāyiram, kāppu and verse 1

‘அருளும் வேணுமே. அன்பு பூணுமே. இன்பு தோணுமே’ (aruḷum vēṇumē. aṉbu pūṇumē. iṉbu tōṇumē), ‘Grace also is certainly necessary. Be adorned with love. Happiness will certainly appear’, sings Bhagavan in his concluding statements of the final verse of Āṉma-Viddai, and as he often said, ‘Bhakti is the mother of jñāna’, thereby implying that all-consuming and heart-melting love (bhakti) is the sole means by which we can know and be what we actually are. This truth is implicit in all his teachings, but in no other text does he express it as clearly, emphatically and heart-meltingly as he does in Śrī Aruṇācala Akṣaramaṇamālai.

The nature of ego and its viṣaya-vāsanās and how to eradicate them

A friend wrote to me about an experience that happened to him one evening in a particular set of circumstances:

As I was walking home, my mind suddenly entered into a very quiet state. The rate of new thoughts arising became very slow, and I found that with only a tiny amount of effort, I could just remain in the quiet space without verbal thoughts.

Upadēśa Undiyār verse 16: a practical definition of real awareness

In the article I posted a couple of days ago, Is there any difference between being self-attentive and sitting down quietly in meditation?, I ended by quoting and explaining verse 16 of Upadēśa Undiyār:

வெளிவிட யங்களை விட்டு மனந்தன்
னொளியுரு வோர்தலே யுந்தீபற
      வுண்மை யுணர்ச்சியா முந்தீபற.

How to merge in Arunachala like a river in the ocean?

In verse 3 of Śrī Aruṇācala Pañcaratnam Bhagavan says:

அகமுகமா ரந்த வமலமதி தன்னா
லகமிதுதா னெங்கெழுமென் றாய்ந்தே — யகவுருவை
நன்கறிந்து முந்நீர் நதிபோலு மோயுமே
யுன்கணரு ணாசலனே யோர்.

Ego seems to exist only when we look elsewhere, away from ourself

In a comment on one of my recent videos, 2019-11-02 Sri Ramana Center, Houston: discussion with Michael James on Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu verse 34, a friend asked, “At 50:50 you say that asking why the ego has arisen or how it has arisen is like asking how was the son of the barren woman born. Isn’t ‘how the ego arose’ a permissible question, considering that Bhagavan has explained it in Uḷḷadu Narpadu himself, this question of how the ego came into existence? Can a good understanding of how the ego came into existence also help us in our attempts to destroy it with vichara?”, in reply to which I wrote:

The role of grace in all that ego creates

In a comment on one of my recent articles, Is there any such thing as ‘biological awareness’?, an anonymous friend suggested that it is not correct to say that ego has projected or created anything, because though the world appears when ego emerges, it ‘appears by the power of higher power and is also the higher power’, and ‘The higher power enables everything and manifests as everything’. Therefore this article is written in reply to that comment.

How can there be any experience without something that is experiencing it?

In four comments on one of my recent articles, In what sense and to what extent do we remember what we were aware of in sleep?, a friend called Lewis asked several questions about awareness, experience, ego and appearance that can be adequately answered only by carefully considering some of the fundamental principles of Bhagavan’s teachings, so in this article I will try to answer his questions in the clear light of those principles.

Is it possible to have a ‘direct but temporary experience of the self’ or to watch the disappearance of the I-thought?

Last year a friend wrote to me saying that it seems distortions and misinterpretations of Bhagavan’s teachings are inevitable, and that nowadays the internet is sadly inundated with misinformation and confused ideas about them, and concluding, ‘I suppose this is the nature of mind’, to which I replied:

Yes, the mind is māyā, so its nature is to distort and confuse, making what is simple seem complicated, what is clear seem clouded, what is plain seem obscure, what is obvious into something mysterious and what is subtle into something gross. The only way for us to overcome this natural tendency of the mind is to persistently turn within to see what we actually are, which is not this mind but just the clear light of pure and infinite self-awareness.

After the annihilation of the ego, no ‘I’ can rise to say ‘I have seen’

In Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu verse 33: the ‘I’ that rises to say ‘I have seen’ has seen nothing, which is the final section of one of my recent articles, There is only one ego, and even that does not actually exist, I quoted a Tamil saying, ‘கண்டவர் விண்டில்லை; விண்டவர் கண்டில்லை’ (kaṇḍavar viṇḍillai; viṇḍavar kaṇḍillai), which means ‘those who have seen do not say; those who say have not seen’, and then verse 33 of Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu, in which Bhagavan says:

When the ego seems to exist, other things seem to exist, and when it does not seem to exist, nothing else seems to exist

In several comments on one of my recent articles, The difference between vivarta vāda and ajāta vāda is not just semantic but substantive, a friend called Ken argued that the ego does not exist even in a relative sense, but that vāsanās and other phenomena do exist in a relative sense, though not in an absolute sense. However one of the fundamental principles of Bhagavan’s teaching is that since all phenomena seem to exist only in the view of this ego, they seem to exist only when it seems to exist (as in waking and dream), and when it does not seem to exist (as in sleep) nothing else seems to exist. Therefore in this article I will reply to some of Ken’s comments and try to explain this fundamental principle to him in more detail.