Mandalam Musings Day 8
Three Schools of Spiritual Philosophy
In the story of Hanumanji, he has compellingly told Sri Rama about the three bhavas – three paradigms – with which he sees the Lord. In the first aspect as a humble servant of the Lord, Hanuman is ready and willing to be an obedient follower of the Lord’s commands. Here the Lord and the disciple are distinctly different and each one is playing roles with unique goals. It can be a relationship like that of a child and her mother or a disciple and a master. This is the Dwaita School – literally meaning, the School of Duality.
In the second aspect, Sri Hanumanji talked about, as a living and throbbing entity – Jeeva - that imbibes energy from nature and inspiration from the Lord, He is practicing Vishista Dwaitha – Qualified Duality. Here the Lord and the devotee are separate, but the devotee is basking in the reflected glory of the Lord. He gets his vital energy from the Lord and so does all the other millions of living and non-living entities in the universe.
The third affirmation Hanumanji makes is very special. He proclaims that at the level of Atma- the soul, ‘I’ and the Lord are inseparable. is the Adwaita School (school of non-Duality). There is no concept of ‘two’ entities here. It is this level of oneness, that the Ayyappa Pilgrimage is motivating all devotees to attain. Interestingly, Jesus also had the vision to proclaim, “I and my Father are one”. In the Islamic Sufi tradition also, such aphorisms are there.
Modern science is in agreement that all objects in the universe are made up of the same ‘stuff’; that is, matter is nothing but energy in different forms. In the ultimate analysis, at the molecular and atomic level, unity can be observed in entities that are movable and immovable. The diversity is only in the expressions and the names we have given to those expressions.
During the 41 days of austere life, each
devotee Ayyappan wants to emulate the qualities of Lord Ayyappa
and try to be worthy of addressed by that name. Here the devotee and the Lord
are aiming to be one and “Tat Tvam Asi” is practiced as expounded
in the Adwaita philosophy. But it is not easy to achieve this level of
clarity for mere mortals. As the saying goes, imitation is a way of
appreciating and emulating what you want to be. A devotee Ayyappa is
trying to emulate the Lord Ayyappa, first by being a humble devotee,
practicing the Dwaita school; then move to basking in the Ayyappa glory,
being part of the Lord, practicing Vishista Dwaita with the hope that he
can feel one with the Lord. As he undertakes the strenuous pilgrimage and gets
the Darshan of Ayyappa, he may get an instant of realization of
the Adwaita state. Adwaita is not
a philosophy or lifestyle you practice, but it is the awareness you realize, the
state of your real being.
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