Vivek Chudamani

Author(s): Chandrashekhar Bharti Swami, P Sankaranarayan
Publisher: Bharatiya Vidyabhavan

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VIVEKACŪĻĀMANI
canonical literature on super-sensuous Reality.5 The Vivekacūḍāmani is a compendious vade mecum giving between its covers the quintessence of Advaita Vedanta in a convincing manner. In providing his Commentary on it, Śri Candrasekhara Bharati has brought out at every turn by appropriate quotations the Upanisadic sources in support of the truths affrmed in the work. Nuances of expression with their grammatical peculiarities are explained as they arise and this adds to the inherent richness of the statements of Śrī Bhagavatpada. Parallel explanatory passages from the Bhagavad Gita, the Brahma Sutras and other Sastraic works elucidate the Commentary much to the edification of the reader. And above all, where necessary, he helps to remove doubts and difficulties that may arise in regard to various topics of the original as, for instance, the relative importance of karma and samnyasa, of the place of vairagya, bodha and uparati in the scheme of sadhanas of a mumuksu, of the hindrances of ānātmavāsanas and the way to get over them etc. The distinctive value of this Commentary is that it is by a person in whom saintliness was combined with scholarship. With him the reader is able to go through the entire gamut of śrutis and smrtis relevant to the understanding of the original work in an atmosphere of guru-śişya relation which he is able to create for himself as he reads the original with the Commentary which is as lucid as it is enlightening, underscored by the anubhava of a jīvanmukta.
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Vivekacuḍāmani is a philosophical treatise expounding the cardinal truths of Advaita Vedānta, according to which, liberation or mokṣa can be secured only through jñāna which, in the first instance, begins with the discrimination between the eternal and the transient, nityānityavastu-viveka. The work itself is called the 'Crest Jewel of Discrimination'-Viveka-cudamani-to emphasise the paramount importance of such viveka in the quest for liberation. According to Advaita Vedānta, like all Hindu systems of philosophy and religion, the cycle of birth and death, which is called samsara, is the effect of actions of individuals, whether it is punyakarma or pāpakarma. For, one has to take another birth if the effects of both these karmas are not worked out in the present life itself. Action is prompted by desire, kāma. Kāma arises from a sense of incompleteness in the individual, who, identifying himself with the things
5 Thus repudiating the claim fathered on him that he is the originator of Advaita Vedanta. He was only its exponent systematising the material found in its sources.