Aitareya Upanishad : 6. T.N.Sethumadhavan.

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Thursday, August 11. 2022. 10:10. 

Chapter I - 

Section 2 :  Cosmic Powers in the Human Body

Post - 6.

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atha aitareyopanishadi prathamadhyaye dvitiyah khandah

Chapter I. 

Section 2 :  Cosmic Powers in the Human Body

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Mantra 1 :


"ta eta devatah srishta asmin mahatyarnave prapatan 

tam-asanaya pipasabhyam-anvavarjat,

ta enam-abruvann-ayatanam nah prajanihi 

yasmin pratishthita annam-adameti ."


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Commentary :

These deities, thus created, fell into this great ocean. 

He, the Creator, subjected the Person (Virat in the form of a lump) to hunger and thirst. 

They (the deities) said to Him (the Creator): 

"Find out for us an abode wherein being established we may eat 
food." 

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From now on the word ‘Creator” is being used in place of ‘Atman’. 

The first-born Purusha, from whom the instruments of perception and deities were separated out was subjected to hunger and thirst. 

We have to understand that as the Purusha was afflicted with hunger and thirst, His offspring, the deities, were also subjected to them. 

The deities then asked for an abode where they could live and grow. 

This allegory emphasizes the basic fact of life that desires, want and their fulfillment are applicable to the whole of  creation and none is immune to them. 

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Swami Adi Sri Sankaracharya’s commentary here is highly illuminating and hence it is quoted in full as follows. 


“The created Beings fell into the Great Ocean i.e., samsara or the phenomenal world where the great water-currents consist of miseries created by ignorance, desire, and action and which is filled with vicious crocodiles in the shape of painful diseases, senility and death.

 Without beginning or end, shoreless and without bottom, it affords 
relief in the form of the fleeting joy produced from the contact of the senses with their objects. 

Alas, this ocean is full of high waves of hundreds of evils lashed by the wind of  the intense longing of the senses for their objects and it roars with the deafening noise of the anguish and cries arising from its numerous hells.

But there lies in the ocean, a raft of knowledge, in which are stored the provisions of  many goodly virtues, such as truthfulness, integrity, charity, compassion, non-violence,control of the body, restraint of the mind, and determination and also a track in the form of holy company and renunciation, which leads to the shore of Liberation”. 

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The gods or cosmic divinities also belong to the phenomenal world.

 Therefore, the attainment of oneness with them, as a result of practice of meditation and rituals cannot destroy the miseries of samsara. 

This being so, the aspirant seeking liberation from the 
phenomenal suffering, should realize the Supreme Brahman as his own self and the self of all beings. 

There is no other way to emancipation. 

*****
Next- Mantram 2.3
To be continued ....


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