Part 2 - Important Couplets From Vedanta Panchadasi By Sri Vidyaranya Swami

Translated by Swami Swahananda Published by Sri Ramakrishna Math, Chennai

III. THE DIFFERENTIATION OF THE FIVE SHEATHS

3. The body which is produced from the seed and blood of the parents, which are in turn formed out of the food eaten by them, grows by food only. It is not the Self, for it does not exist either before birth or after death.

5. The vital airs which pervade the body and give power and motion to the eyes and
other senses constitute the vital sheath. It is not the Self because it is devoid of
consciousness.

6. That which gives rise to the ideas of ‘I’ and ‘mine’ with regard to one’s body,house and so forth, is the mind sheath. It is not the Self because it has desires and is moved by pleasure and pain, is subject to delusion and is fickle.

7. The intellect which has the reflection of pure consciousness, and which pervades the whole body up to the tips of the fingers in the waking state but disappears in deep sleep, is known as the intellect sheath. It also is not the Self because it too is changeable.

8. The inner organ functions as the agent and also the instrument. Hence though
one, it is treated as two, viz., the intellect sheath and the mind sheath. Their fields of operation are the inner world and the outer world respectively.

9. There is a position or function (of the intellect) which, at the time of enjoying the fruits of good actions, goes a little farther inward and catches the reflection of the bliss and at the end of this enjoyment, merges in deep sleep. (This is what is known as the sheath of bliss).

10. This bliss sheath also cannot be the Self because it is temporal and
impermanent. That bliss which is the source of this reflection is the Self; for it is
eternal and immutable.

11. (Objection): By granting that the sheaths beginning with that of food (body) and
ending in that of bliss (joy or sleep) are not the Self, yet (when they are negated),
no further object remains to be experienced.

12. (Reply): True, bliss sheath etc., are experienced and not anything else. Yet who
can deny that by which these are experienced ?

13. As the Self is Itself of the nature of experience only. It cannot be an object of experience. Since there is no experiencer nor any experience other than It, the Self is unknowable – not because It does not exist but because It cannot be an object of experience.

IV. THE DIFFERENTIATION OF DUALITY

2. The Svetasvatara Upanishad says: ‘Know Maya as Prakriti and Brahman associated with Maya as the great Ishvara’ (who imparts existence and consciousness to it and guides it). It is He who creates the world.

3. The Aitareya Upanishad says that before creation there was Atman only, and He thought, ‘Let me create the world’, and then He created the world by His will (to create).

4. The Taittiriya Upanishad says that from the Self or Brahman alone arose in succession the whole creation including Akasa, (ether), air, fire, water, earth,vegetation, food and bodies.

5. The Taittiriya Upanishad says that desiring ‘I shall be many, so I shall create’, the Lord meditated; and thus created the world.

20. Objects created by Ishvara (e.g., gems) do not alter; they remain the same. But
gems may affect different people differently according to their mental states.

21. One man may feel happy on obtaining a gem, whereas another may feel disappointed at failing to obtain it. And a man uninterested in it, may only look on and feel neither happy nor disappointed.

22. The Jiva creates these three feelings of happiness, disappointment or
indifference with regard to the gem, but the nature of the gem as created by Ishvara
remains the same throughout.

23. Through personal relationships, one and the same woman appears differently as
a wife, a daughter-in-law, a sister-in-law, a cousin and a mother; but she herself
remains unchanged.

24. (Objection): These different relationships may be seen, but no changes in the
woman’s appearance are seen to result from other people’s ideas about her.

25. (Reply): Not so. The woman has a subtle body as well as a physical body
composed of flesh etc. Although other people’s ideas about her may not affect her
physical body, yet they can change her mental state.

27. (Reply): True, Acharya Shankara, Sureshvara and others acknowledge the fact that the mind assumes the form of the external object with which it comes into contact and modifies that form to suit its purposes.

29. Or just as sunlight assumes the forms of the objects which it illumines, so the
mind assumes the forms of the objects which it perceives.

33. In dream, when external (material) objects are absent, man is bound by the intellect to pleasure and pain, although outer objects are not perceived. In deep sleep, in a faint and in the lower Samadhi (when the mental functions are temporarily suspended), no pleasure or pain is felt inspite of the proximity of outer objects.

34. A liar told a man whose son had gone to a far-off country that the boy was dead,although he was still alive. The father believed him and was aggrieved.

35. If, on the other hand, his son had really died abroad but no news had reached
him, he would have felt no grief. This shows that the real cause of a man’s bondage
is his own mental world.

38. (Objection): If the mind causes bondage by giving rise to the phenomenal world,
the world could be made to disappear by controlling the mind. So only Yoga needs to
be practised; what is the necessity of knowledge of Brahman ?

39. (Reply): Though by controlling the mind duality can be made to disappear
temporarily the complete and final destruction of the mental creation is not possible
without a direct knowledge of Brahman. This is proclaimed by the Vedanta.

45. ‘An intelligent person, who has studied the scriptures and has repeatedly
practised what they enjoin should renounce them after knowing the supreme
Brahman, just as a man throws aside a flaming torch at the end of his journey’.
[Amritanada Upanishad]

46. ‘An intelligent person, who has studied the scriptures and has practised what
they enjoin should discard them after experiencing Brahman as his Self, just as a
man discards the husk when he has found the grain’. [Amrita-Bindu Upanishad]

47. ‘A wise man, having experienced Brahman as his Self, should keep his higher intuitive faculty (prajna) united with Brahman. He should not oppress his mind with many words, for they are a mere waste of energy’. [Brihadaranyaka Upanishad]

48. It has been clearly told in the Shruti: ‘Know that One and give up other talks’ [Mundaka Upanishad] and ‘A wise man should restrain his speech and keep it within the mind’. [Katha Upanishad]

52. You may say: Let there be no liberation in life; I am satisfied if there is no birth anymore. We reply: Then (if the desires remain), you will have births also. So be satisfied with heaven only.

53. If you say that the pleasures of heaven are defective, having waning and
gradation, and so are to be renounced, then why don’t you give up this source of all
evils, the passions ?

55. Sri Sureshvara says that one who pretends to be a knower of Brahman and yet lives without moral restraint is like a dog that eats unclean things.[Naiskarmyasiddhi-IV-62]

66. If sometimes owing to actions performed in previous births the mind of a
reflective man is distracted by desire, then it may be brought back to a peaceful
state by the constant practice of spiritual meditations.

V. FIXING THE MEANING OF THE GREAT SAYINGS

2. The one consciousness which is in Brahma, Indra and other gods, as well as in
human beings, horses, cows, etc., is Brahman. So the consciousness in me also is
Brahman.

VI. THE LAMP OF THE PICTURE

7. On consciousness are superimposed various forms. In each of them there is a reflection, i.e., a special function of consciousness. They are known as the Jivas and are subject to the process of birth and death.

12. Therefore one should always enquire into the nature of the world, the individual Self and the supreme Self. When the ideas of Jiva and Jagat (world) are negated, the pure Atman alone remains.

13. By negation it does not mean that the world and Jiva cease to be perceptible to
the senses, it means the conviction of their illusory character. Otherwise people
would be automatically liberated in deep sleep or in a faint.

14. ‘The supreme Self alone remains’ also means a conviction about Its reality and
not non-perceiving of the world. Otherwise there would be no such thing as liberation
in life.

69. The Buddhists believe that the Atman consists of the momentary states of the intellect, because the intellect, endowed with the faculty of understanding, is the basis of the mind and through it the mind grasps matter.

70. The internal organ (Antahkarana) has two kinds of vrittis, viz., the ‘I’-
consciousness, and ‘this’ consciousness. The first constitutes the intellect, the
subject-consciousness and the second the mind, the object-consciousness.

75. Quoting the Shruti, ‘In the beginning all this was non-existent (Asat)’, the Buddhists say that perception and the objects of perception are the creations of illusion.

76. The Vedantins refute them by saying that there can be no illusion without a
substratum which is not an illusion. The existence of the Atman must be admitted.
Even the void has a witness; if not, it would be impossible to say, ‘There is a void’.

94. The first of the sheaths, the bliss-sheath which persists in the state of deep sleep and which does not manifest consciousness fully, is taken as Atman by the followers of Prabhakara and some logicians. What they state to be the nature of the Self, is in fact, characteristic of the bliss-sheath.

95. The followers of Bhatta hold that consciousness is hidden in Atman and that its
nature is both consciousness and unconsciousness. This is inferred from the fact of
the remembrance of sound sleep by the awakened man.

96. ‘I became unconscious and slept’, such feeling expresses the memory of that inert state which he actually experienced. But this remembrance of unconsciousness in deep sleep would not be possible unless there were at the same time a conscious element.

Source: http://www.celextel.org/othervedantabooks/panchadasi.html