The Paramacharya

IT IS DIFFICULT to speak with due emotional restraint about the sage of Kanchi, since one’s feelings about this unique figure of our time resist any attempt at disciplining them. One is overwhelmed by the thought that one has known a Being nearly like God Almighty Himself, whose compassion and concern for all living things are most like God’s own! One can hardly think of Him without a feeling of deepest joy that one has known him in flesh, moving around in one’s own world with a look of un­earthly kindness and grace, blessing you all the time with His thoughts, words and deeds. He is like no other being one has seen in the flesh. The Brahma, the Upanishads speak of, and the Paramacharya seen are iden­tical. He is embodied satchidanand. How fortunate we of these times are to have had him in our midst, to have spoken to him, to have been spoken unto by him. This is a blessing be­yond all human estimate. For though all of us strive and struggle hard to live up to his considered advice and counsel to live simply and think on a plane of high ideals and values, no human being can reach the peaks of his perfection. But the ideals and val­ues are there, constantly, unremittingly beckoning to us reach­ing down to the very depths of our being. We struggle all the while to transform our weak selves, to strengthen our always fragile resolu­tion, to toughen our being against mischief and temptation. How few are the occasions when our better selves– and thank God, everyoneagrees that one has a better self, assert themselves! If even they succeed, it is because the Sage of Kanchi is tirelessly at work, coaxing us, cajoling us, exhorting us to become our real selves. Utthishta, Jagrata, says the Sage of Kanchi. And in some small way, almost unknown to ourselves, we seem to be growing more and more towards moral excellence in our daily lives.

Take his exhortation to us to lead lives of austere simplicity, of near ascetic freedom from show. He bade us to do this voluntarily by our own strenuous exertions to promote our moral growth. We pretended to listen but did little. The world around us has created unmitigable compul­sions. Today we face shortages, high prices, total lack of water for drink­ing, with a sense of horror over the failure of the governments to prevent these problems from arising at all. But if we had listened to the Sage, we could have imposed the needed disci­pline on ourselves and accustomed ourselves to it on our own. The Duhkha is the direct and predictable result of thrishna. There would have been neither of them if we had only listened to the Sage. Long ago, the Sage warned us against the mistake of multiplication of wants for prog­ress. Quality of life, he said, is the true measure of growth in the stan­dard of living. To live in terms of striving for satisfaction of our physi­cal wants is to live on the level of mere animals, to dehumanise and despiritualise ourselves. All the talk of planning for prosperity, he bade us distrust, because he knew that true growth is growth of the self, growth of spiritual awareness. He pleaded for a true swarajyasiddhi which would make all of us independent of a de­ceptive, dubious environment which would throw all kinds of temptations in our path.

He bade us give up a false no­tion of married happiness. The mar­riage ceremony still current, though in a truncated form, makes the groom assure his bride samrajni bhava (Be my Queen). This exhortation has nothing to do with women’s lib or the false or fallacious talk of domination of one sex over the other. A queen reigns in the heart of the groom. When she does so, will she need or care for aught else? The Sage said. “Don’t make your bride’s parents bankrupt, so that you may boast to your friends the cost of your marriage and unconscionable expensiveness of the celebrations. The current position is an exercise, a distressing exercise, in desacramentating one of the most important stages in a human being’s life. What is the best ornament of the patni? Patibhakti, loving regard for her husband. What is the role of the patni? She is a Dharmapatni, one whose service is indispensable to the correct and true practice of Dharma Vara dakshina, vara sulka, ‘reception’ etc., are a shameful exercise in vulgarity and commercialisation of a sacred rite. What were the treasure, that Sita, the ideal wife and woman received in the forest from Atri’s Patni, Anasuya the saintly woman? Not pearl necklaces, diamond tiaras, diamond bracelets – surely none of these. But those ornaments which promoted saumangalyaiva, pativratya. True, Sita told Anasuya of her father Janaka’s anxieties about getting her properly married and the humiliations and privations he might have to face. But what did Anasuya say to Sita? “Child, you have shown true womanly honour and courage in accompanying your husband to the forest, when he had been intrigued out of the throne of Ayodhya”. The Sage’s ideal is, doubtless, a high and noble one. But are we being fair to the Sage in mak­ing a contemptible show, an almost despicable show, of our paltry physi­cal wealth? These demonstrations at the time of a wedding are a defiance of Kanchi Paramacharya’s sagest counsel.

He bids us give up coffee. How many of us, claiming to be his devo­tees, have not clung, like a slave to his chains, to the coffee habit? But the wholesomeness of the advice is patent. To be a slave of some habit­-forming item – like coffee, cigarettes, alcoholic drinks – to make an irre­trievable voluntary surrender of our moral and spiritual freedom, to throw ourselves at the feet of a monster of madness, only to be crushed merci­lessly by this monster and to be de­humanised. We need to remember always that there is in our innermost being an Antaryamin whose counsel and guidance we, in our childishness, ignore, if not despise. This spirit in man is what gives dignity and mean­ing to our lives. The voiceless prompt­ings of this inner man seek always to guide, counsel and if need be, warn us for our waywardness and the need to pause and retrace our steps when we tend to stray away from the path of the immemorial values that give life its real significance, harmony and beauty.

It is not suggested that it is easy to live upto the Acharya’s teach­ings and guidance. He is a spiritual lighthouse and a powerhouse generat­ing spiritual power and radiating light across the pathways we tread. He is not obscurantist, as some high-placed, self-styled progressives have called him in the childish innocence of their self-delusion. On the con­trary, he is far ahead of us though in anguished concern for our tendency toward wayward and even disas­trously self-destructive courses of conduct. Is it obscurantism to pro­claim and to be Brahman? That great upadesamahavakya THAT THOU ART (Tat twam asi) is not just verbi­age but the goal that beckons to us. The great Ramana of Arunachala – who, by the way, was made known to the world by our Paramacharya, said – “Be as yourselves” – not our lower, corrupt and corrupting mean selves but as the Supreme Self, we really are though through our Avidya we ­seem not to know this.

The Acharya has, right before our very eyes, entered on the hun­dredth year of his glorious spiritual ministry, still, as ever radiating spiri­tual light ineffable.