Author Archives: Dennis Waite

The preservation of the sacredness of Kashi

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A letter from a guest writer pleading against planned desecration of the city of Varanasi.

Dear friends,

I write this as a lover of Kashi-Varanasi-Banaras, the city I have been living in since 1989.

From the time I first came to Kashi in 1982 and then resided here for more than 33 years, many changes have happened in the city. The most important is the great increase in population and the arrival of motorized traffic, which has collapsed the city to a great extent. For many years, no developments or renovations were done.

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mANDUkya upaniShad Part 3

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Mantra 2

*** Read Part 2 ***

सर्वं ह्येतद् ब्रह्मायमात्मा ब्रह्म सोऽयमात्मा चतुष्पात् || 2 ||

sarvaM hyetad brahmAyamAtmA brahma so.ayamAtmA chatuShpAt

sarvaM etad – Everything here
hi – (is)certainly
brahma – brahman.
ayam AtmA – This Atman
brahma – (is) brahman.
saH ayam AtmA – This very Atman
chatuShpad (= chatur + pAda) – (has) four aspects.

Absolutely everything is brahman. This Atman is brahman and has four aspects.

In the first mantra, OM was said to be everything. (How this is so will be analyzed in mantras 8 – 12.) The Upanishad now asks what is the nature of this Self, Atman; mantras 2 – 7 make this enquiry.

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bAdha versus nAsha

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The following was posted to the Advaitin List by Satyan Chidambaran, who has agreed for me to record it here.

There is a distinction between bAdha (sublation) and nAsha (destruction) that the tradition makes.

To know that a Pot is not real, and only clay alone is real, one shouldn’t need to destroy (engage in nAsha of) the Pot appearance. One just needs to know clearly that the Pot is just a name and form and Clay alone really exists. Therefore, even when seeing a Pot, a “Clay j~nAnI” knows clearly that the Pot is mithyA nAma rUpa and Clay alone is satyam. This is bAdha of the Pot.

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mANDUkya upaniShad Part 2

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*** Read Part 1 ***

Mantra 1

हरिः ॐ।
ॐ इत्येतदक्शर्मिदं सर्वं तस्योपव्याख्यानं भूतं भवद्ः भ्विष्य्दिति सर्वमोंकार एव।
यच्चान्यत्ः त्रिकालातीतं तदप्योंकार एव॥ १॥

hariH OM |
OM ityetadakSharamidaM sarvaM tasyopavyAkhyAnaM bhUtaM bhavadH bhaviShyaditi sarvamoMkAra eva |
yachchaanyatH trikAlAtItaM tadapyoMkAra eva || 1 ||

OM iti etad akSharam – Thus, this syllable OM
idam sarvaM – (is) all this.
tasya upavyAkhyAna – The explanation begins with this:
oMkAra – the syllable OM (is)
iti eva – thus truly
sarvaM – everything –
bhUta – past,
bhavat – present
bhaviShyat – (and) future.
yat cha anya – and what is other than
atIta – transcending these
trikAla – three time periods
tat eva – even is that only
oMkAra – OM
api – as well.

The syllable OM is everything. The explanation follows (with this Upanishad). All that is past, present and future is OM. And, whatever is beyond the three periods of time, that too is only OM.

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E-Books offer

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Just a brief notification that all my E-books are available at 50% off from the publisher’s website – a ‘Christmas Sale’ to promote their venture into E-commerce. Not all have been published as E-books but I can’t immediately say which.

Go to https://www.johnhuntpublishing.com/our-books/jhp-books/, or click on the direct link below, select your books and enter the discount code FESTIVE50 at checkout. (Note that my latest ‘Confusions’ book was not published by John Hunt.)

P.S. I have now managed to log in to the publisher database. I was surprised to find that only two of my books are not available as E-books. So you may obtain the following at 50% off:

Book of One (2nd edition)
Back to the Truth
Advaita Made Easy
A-U-M
Answers to the Difficult Questions
Sanskrit for Seekers
Western Philosophy Made Easy
Time For the Wind

Word by Word Scriptures

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From 2015 to 2017, I posted a series of ‘Notes on Tattvabodha’ (31 parts) by Dr. Vishnu Bapat. (Beginning at https://www.advaita.org.uk/discourses/bapat/bapat01.html.) These provided word by word translations of the Devanagari Sanskrit as well as an English commentary.

Dr. Bapat now has his own site at Vishnu Rao Bapat – Soulbliss where he has continued this practice and has similar translations of Bhagavad Gita, Atma Bodha, Dakshinamurti Stotram, Bhaja Govindam, Astavakra Gita, Amrita Bindu Upanishad and Devi Stotram.

Here, as an example, are two verses from the Bhagavad Gita. 

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mANDUkya upaniShad Part 1

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I have just started reading the massive commentary on the mANDUkya, Gaudapada kArikA-s and Shankara bhAShya (if it was Shankara) by Divyaj~nAna Sarojini VaradarAjan, so I thought it might be appropriate to post my own translation and commentary on the Upanishad itself from ‘A-U-M’.

The VaradarAjan book is in two volumes and, as far as I am aware, is only available from Exotic India at £65 to post to the UK. Only 500 copies were printed and these may sell out quickly as her Upanishad commentaries are unparalleled.

My own book ‘A-U-M: Awakening to Reality’ is a ‘by topic’ rather than verse by verse commentary, although it does cover all of the material. The specific translation and commentary on the 12 verses of the Upanishad itself are relegated to an Appendix, since the material is rather ‘dense’, and the tone less ‘conversational’ than the main body of the book. It is available from Amazon:

Book ($34.95): Buy from Amazon US; Kindle ($16.49): Buy from Amazon US

Book (£20.99): Buy from Amazon UK; Kindle (£6.99): Buy from Amazon UK

This series will post the whole of Appendix 1 of ‘A-U-M’ and, in general, each post will cover one verse of the Upanishad. This first post, however, covers the shAnti pATha – the traditional prayer at the beginning of an Upanishad – and Shankara’s introduction.

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Book Review: Peculiar Stories

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Peculiar Stories, Mora Fields
O Street Publishing, 2010, ISBN 978-0-9791416-1-4. (92 pages), Ages 6-10 and up.

Mora Fields Mora Fields has been an inquirer her entire life, although she didn’t always realize it, and translated her early wonderings about the nature of life into these stories of inquiry for children. She has long been a reader and admirer of the English philosopher/sage Douglas Harding. She co-authored a previous book called Aspects of the One: the 99 Names of God.

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The Final Paradox – ahaṃ brahmāsmi

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Shankara’s explanation in Bhagavad Gita bhāṣya 2.21

[Note that this is a ‘stand-alone’ article which nevertheless supplements the material asking ‘Who am I?’ in the pratibandha posts beginning https://www.advaita-vision.org/pratibandha-s-part-5-of-7/. It provides a response to Venkat’s challenge at https://www.advaita-vision.org/verse1-of-drg-drsya-vivek-an-analysis-of/#comment-9797]

Reality is non-dual. All Advaitins know that this is the teaching, even if they have not yet succeeded in reconciling this with the appearance of the world and their own apparent individuality.

The Self does not act. The jñānī knows this. The well-known statement in Bhagavad Gita 5.8-9 tells us that: The balanced person who knows the truth thinks: ‘I do nothing at all; it is only the senses relating to their sense objects,’ even whilst seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, eating, going, sleeping, breathing, speaking, excreting or grasping; even just opening or closing the eyes. It is all simply the ‘play of the guṇa-s’, name and changing form, like the movement of waves on the surface of the ocean – all is always only water.

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