Taittiriya Upanishad Bhashya Vartika

by R. Balasubramanian | 151,292 words | ISBN-10: 8185208115 | ISBN-13: 9788185208114

The English translation of Sureshvara’s Taittiriya Vartika, which is a commentary on Shankara’s Bhashya on the Taittiriya Upanishad. Taittiriya Vartika contains a further explanation of the words of Shankara-Acharya, the famous commentator who wrote many texts belonging to Advaita-Vedanta. Sureshvaracharya was his direct disciple and lived in the 9...

Sanskrit text and transliteration:

स्वप्नवन्न सुषुप्तोऽतः स्वत एवाद्वयत्वतः ।
द्रष्टुर्दृष्टेर्न लोपः स्यात्सत्यमेवं श्रुतेर्वचः ॥ ५६८ ॥

svapnavanna suṣupto'taḥ svata evādvayatvataḥ |
draṣṭurdṛṣṭerna lopaḥ syātsatyamevaṃ śrutervacaḥ || 568 ||

English translation of verse 2.568:

So, the state of deep sleep is not like the dream state because the Self (therein) is non-dual by its very nature.

Notes:

Only thus the utterance of the śruti text that the vision of the witness can never be lost will be true.

It may be argued that deep sleep is on a par with dream in so far as both of them are alike states of the Self. If the dream state is mithyā the state of deep sleep also, the critic urges, is mithyā, for there is nothing to distinguish the one from the other.

But this argument will not do. There is no parity between the state of deep sleep and the dream state While the dream state of the Self is due to other external factors, the state of deep sleep of the Self is not dependent on other factors. The Self in deep sleep remains nondual of its own accord. It is not conscious of anything in that state. It should not be thought that there is no Self in the state of deep sleep as nothing is seen at that time. In fact, Indra at one stage entertained this doubt when he was listening to Prajāpati’s instruction about the Self, as narrated in the Chāndogya (VIII, xi, 1). Prajāpati said: “When a man is asleep, composed, serene, and knows no dream, that is the Self, that is the immortal, the fearless. That is Brahman.” When Indra thought over this, he came to the conclusion that, if the Self does not know itself or the things external to it in the state of deep sleep, it has really gone to annihilation (vināśamevāpīto bhavati). It does not mean that there is no Self in the state of deep sleep. What is absent in this state is specific cognitions (viśeṣa-vijñāna) of objects, and not the Self itself. The Self “has gone to his own”, i.e., remains in its natural state of non-duality at that time. That the Self is not absent in deep sleep is clearly brought out in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka (IV, iii, 23) which is quoted in the second line of the verse, "The vision of the witness is never lost, because it is immortal.”

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