Pasuram 10.7.10

Tamil text and transliteration:

மங்க ஒட்டு உன் மாமாயை திருமாலிருஞ்சோலைமேய
நங்கள் கோனே! யானேநீஆகி என்னை அளித்தானே
பொங்குஐம் புலனும் பொறிஐந்தும் கருமேந்திரியம் ஐம்பூதம்
இங்கு இவ்உயிர்ஏய் பிரகிருதி மான்ஆங்காரம் மனங்களே.

maṅka oṭṭu uṉ māmāyai tirumāliruñcōlaimēya
naṅkaḷ kōṉē! yāṉēnīāki eṉṉai aḷittāṉē
poṅkuaim pulaṉum poṟiaintum karumēntiriyam aimpūtam
iṅku ivuyirēy pirakiruti māṉāṅkāram maṉaṅkaḷē.

English translation of verse 10.7.10:

My Lord in Tirumāliruñcōlai, You are my Saviour great,
Become one with me; from your mysterious tangle, the agglomerate
Of the surging senses five, the five sensory organs,
The motor organs five, the elements five, the spirit in conjunction
With the primordial matter, the great principle, called ‘mahān’,
Ego and the mind, do disentangle me and deliver.

Notes:

(i) In the preceding song, the Āḻvār pleaded lustily with the Lord that He should no longer desire his foul body but despise it. But the Lord could not desist from lavishing His affections on the Āḻvār’s body. In order to remedy this state of affairs, the Āḻvār had to bring home to the Lord the unwholesome composition of his

physical body and argue his case for the discarding of this body. The Lord would not, however, easily give in; if the Āḻvār’s soul was very dear to the Lord, so was the body containing that soul. Does any one break the jar containing the costly cosmetics? Surely, the container derives its importance from the thing contained. Finding the Lord arguing along these lines, the Āḻvār had perforce to expatiate on the imperative necessity of the Lord despising his material body which, if at all any eminence could be attributed to it, is eminently fit to be discarded. This is how the Āḻvār successfully argued his case for the Lord discarding the former’s Prākṛti (material) body, right here:

“My Lord, have You not Yourself stated, in Your Song Celestial, that it is impossible for anyone to cross beyond ‘Māyā’, the ‘Prakṛti’ set up by You, which usually hinders liberation by concealing Your real nature and helps only those who have taken refuge in You? May it, therefore, please you to desist from lavishing Your affections on this prākṛtik nest, You have woven around me. I need hardly remind You that the very purpose of Your coming down here, from the high Heavens, is to bring to the fore Your special trait of subservience to Your devotees and get it stabilised. You could as well have stayed on in the yonder land, if you mean to assert Your independence even at this end, without listening to my oft-repeated request not to cling to my foul body anymore; You need not have taken the trouble to secure a foot-hold on Mount Tirumāliruñcōlai. If ‘You’ have become ‘I’ and thus established perfect identity between us, what is not palatable to me should be equally so to You. But then, You seem to be in no mood to give up Your morbid fascination for my material body. Let me now restate my case, in greater detail, so as to impress upon you the despicability of this material body, You are doting on.”

(ii) So saying, the Āḻvār enumerates the twenty-four principles, comprised in this material body of ours, with all its dirt and stench, but nevertheless inducing the illusory attachment to it, with its meretricious charms. In VIII-8, the Lord had impressed upon the Āḻvār, rather imparted to him the experience or realisation of the true nature of the ‘Jīva the individual soul, too subtle to be comprehended even by the enlightened yogis through strenuous mental effort. Now, it is the turn of the Āḻvār to draw the attention of the Lord to the characteristics of ‘Acit’, the inert matter, a reversal indeed of the master-disciple relationship!