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The image Vacaspati uses in verse 7, of the waters falling into the Ganges, is striking: the commentaries are, as it were, above the Bhasya,and lie stagnant except when purified through a descent into that purifying source. If one can compose a commentary so carefully as to return the reader constantly to Sankara, down into his Bhasya, then one has written pure, purifying Advaita; were a treatise to present itself as an improvement on or substitute for the Bhasya,its writing would be only a stagnant pool, a source of disease, confusion. The reader who reads/works through the commentaries is thus guided: commentaries are stagnant if taken as independent treatises, but become purifying waters when they lead us to Sankara; like the holy guide who leads the pilgrim to the Ganges, good commentaries guide to the source the reader previously lost in mere words and mere debates. |
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Vacaspati's claim is amplified by Amalananda in his commentary on the Bhamati, the Vedantakalpataru. His opening verses affirm the characteristic Advaita positions that Brahman is knowledge, ignorance the problem to be faced, and scripture the path to knowledge: |
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1. That which is unknown by humans, which sustains the unsteadiness of this varied world, which is like the sky that foolish people think to be impure, which is manifest knowledge, expansive joy, the existent Brahman, the highest, which is manifest in hundreds of key scripture passagesto that we render obeisance! |
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2. By hundreds of rays of awareness he pierces that obscuring covering, the lack of awareness found in the interior space of the heart; he is the moon ever rising which makes rise the ocean of wisdom; he destroys misery born as the thousand rays of this miserable world; his form is auspicious; he is pure, worthy of consideration by the wise, benevolentto his lotus feet, I attach myself! |
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3. That man-lion whose form is undivided joy and existence, adorned with the light of liberation, become manifest to shatter the forehead of the elephant of intoxicating delusion; whose praises were sung by Prahlada, whose divine form came forth most emphatically from |
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