Vivek Chudamani

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

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VIVEKACŪDĀMAŅI
involvement will arise only by the annulment of ajñāna by jñāna. Such jñāna must be acquired, here and now, in this life itself, leading to the liberation from samsāra. Then alone, will moksa be meaingful and of value to the individual. Hence the Advaita Vedānta's insistence of the concept of jīvanmukti. That such a mukti is not merely necessary as a corollary of Advaita Vedānta, but that it is also possible is detailed extensively in the pages of this work as of other works on the subject. Great names in the spiritual tradition of our country, both in purānic and historical times, have borne testimony to the fact of jīvanmukti. Suka, Vāmadeva and Prahlāda were illustrious jīvanmuktas even from their birth. Śrī Śamkara Bhagavatpāda was a jīvānmukta par excellence who vouched for it from his own experience. In that tradition have followed other jīvanmuktas in recent times like Śri Sadaśiva Brahmendra, Sri Ramana Maharși, Sri Seshadri Swamigal, Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and the worshipful author of this Commentary not to speak of many adorable personages among the living like Śrī Candrasekharendra Sarasvati of Kāñcī. Kāmakoți Pītha. These are only a few that come to our lips of the hundreds of such jīvanmuktas that have sanctified our land in different periods of history and set the seal of their personality on this great truth of Advaita Vedānta.
VII
It must be remembered that the path of jñāna which is prescribed as the way to liberation involves mental disciplines which are exacting and uncompromising. The sādhana-catuştaya includes not only the intellectual discrimination between what is nitya and anitya, the eternal and the transient, but also moral disciplines of a high order among which vairāgya or non-attachment to material things is the foremost. That is why Vedāntavicāra is said to be possible only for samnyāsins, who have renounced the world and do not have to perform religious karmas.10 Rigorous as such discipline is, great is the fruit that awaits the sādhaka at the end. The guru in the Vivekacūļāmaņi insists on this again and again
9 Vide his statement in his Bhāşya on the Brahma Sūtra IV.1.15. Prie 4 Ferri gari TCU U sa r a! When one feels in his heart that he has realised Brahman and yet holds the body, how can this be denied by another? It is obvious that here Sri Samkara refers to himself.
0 In fact, the Brahmasutras of Badarāyaṇa, which are codified texts of Vedāntic tradition epitomising the śrutis are known as Bhikṣu Sutras. But this does not preclude persons belonging to other aśramas from studying Vedānta to cultivate the appropriate samskära and vāsanā that, now or later, will qualify them for samnyāsa.