Kannadasan – A Realised Master (Part 3)

 

Could I possibly hope to escape your wrath after dragging L.R. Eswari into this? You would surely come after me with a stick! That said, please do not let your imaginations run wild with visions of extravagant club dances. Some of the songs I chose here may not be very popular. But many bloggers, YouTubers and writers may have already thoroughly analyzed the mostly famous melodies, and hence it is better to enter the new territory. What we are about to witness now is a rare song from the celebrated film *Vennira Aadai*, not a club dance song.

Not having watched the movies and knowing the story/characters in advance is a blessing, as I told you earlier. Listening to Kannadasan's lyrics directly over radio directly etched 'lines of spiritual wisdom' in my mind without the baggage of story/personalities. In any case, after reading this feature, those of you who have neither watched the film nor familiar with the song, please do enjoy the brisk dance visual in YouTube:

What is 'you'? What is 'I'?

“Nee Enbathenna?

Naan Enbathenna?”

Ramana Maharishi urged the seekers to find answer, going inward, for the question ‘Who Am I?” to reach the ultimate destination of Self-realization (Ref. Book of the same title and “Talks with Ramana Maharishi”). Kaviyarasar goes further to ask the most important question every human arrived on this planet must ask, i.e., “Who Are You?”  Mischievous Mahakavi brings profound spiritual wisdom in unlikely places such as, romance settings, Cabarete scenes, etc.

He takes it to a higher level by pointing to the futility of our memory in the ever-changing world, like the Buddha pointing to the “permanent impermanence of ALL things and conditions”.

What is a memory?

And why did we, too, arrive

Upon this transient stage of the world?

“Oru Ninaivu Enbathenna

Nilaiillathathoru Ulaga Medaiyil

Naamum Vanthadhenna?”

Going deeper Kannadasan concludes in the following lines, “having got a transient body here, let us carry wisdom on our way back” and this “self-enquiry cannot be understood by talking theoretically (or by reading books or listening to lectures), but ONLY be ‘experienced’ by each living being”:

We arrived in this world bearing only a physical form;

Now, let us depart carrying the wealth of wisdom.

For without truly internalizing it—

Merely speaking of it will never suffice.

“Oru Meni Kondu Vandhom

Ini Gnanam Kondu Selvom”

“Adhai Kollamal Sollaley

Sonnaley Theeradhaiya”

 

Did you notice the sheer philosophical wizardry the poet weaves into the song sung by a woman of unsettled mind? If those whose minds are fully unified are deemed *Siddhars*, then surely Kannadasan—who performs such feats of poetic magic—is a *Siddhar* himself, is he not? Observe how the *Kaviyarasar* (King of Poets) strikes us, line after line, until our minds are brought to absolute clarity!

Coming back to where we have started, the first line of the song asks: "Nee Enbathu Enna (“Who Am I?"). Let us now look at various Indian as well as Western spiritual masters have said about the most important question of human personality. After all this is the life-long baggage we carry and also want to protect somehow in ALL circumstances of life!

Eckhart Tolle, a contemporary Spiritual Teacher (Book “The Power of Now”) points to the phenomena that when we wake up in the morning, not only the world wakes up along with us, but our personality is readily uploaded with the past history as well as our future expectations and ambitions, denying the Present which is a PRESENT (Other books: “Present Moment Awareness”, “Stillness Speaks”).

He also reveals the truth everyone can easily find out in silence that our personality is the biggest fiction we generate and continue to invest in and reinforce every day, within the bone box above our shoulders between the ears. Eckhart funnily shows the endless chatter (self-talk) happening ‘inside’ during our waking hours, from dawn to dusk, (the non-stop-non-sense, or the old gramophone records) which is similar to a mad person’s blabbering, except that we don’t do it loud outside and ALL such internal monologues ‘appear’ very logical to us. Because the ‘context’ or ‘story’ created about us and by us is residing our memory which comes up every morning as a false personality.

Eckhart also teases us saying most of the ‘mental diarrhea’ comes out as ‘verbal diarrhea’ when the tongue is not under control. We throughout our lives, keep ‘broadcasting’ ourselves and our stories! Indian Spirituality prescribes Silence within and without to watch the riverlike mind. But “I can silence the mind!” say many.

How to stop the supposedly ‘non-stop’ mind? As a fun-trainer, I had written this (s)age-old technique in my last book “The Funwallah MBA” under the topic “Use the (attention) tool to stop the loose stool” as a mental regimen (Meditation Exercise) :

“Please look at intently inside yourself, as to what is going to be your next thought…. (pause). Your attention is at the mind looking for the next thought that is going to come up. You are looking as if a cat is looking into the dark mouse hole wherefrom a mouse (or thought) is going emanate…. (pause for few minutes).

Gently open your eyes. Some of you may like to share what happened in your mental space. Precisely, what was your next thought? (pause). Did it appear at all? Though for some of you the head would have become even more noisy than normal times, at least for some of you, you would have experienced a deep silence, even as your mind was shit scared of your attention and no thought was being placed in your Random-Access Memory,

For some of you, the moment I brought up the analogy of cat and mouse, your mind would have flashed the images of them or in some cases even the specific world-famous Tom and Jerry. For some the cartoon that you loved so much as a child would have played for few moments, only to be interrupted by my further instructions. The moment I gave a visual or personality which is available in your database, the mind jumped at it and started manufacturing or replaying the old tape on an auto pilot mode.

Stop the (Mental) Traffic

In this brief inward experience, as long as you intently observed your mind, it was frozen in fear waiting for YOUR next move, instructions so to say. If you maintained YOUR PRESENCE, it was waiting like your slave. The moment you lost energy or got distracted, it started its own journey. The surprising fact that the genie in us, like the well-known Aladdin Lamp ghost was waiting for your orders to be executed magically. If you don’t attend to it, it does its own thing all the time and you get hijacked by the various drama it shows, getting attached to each made-up-story called by our ancestors as Maya.”

Nisarga Datta Maharaj another realized master (Book: “I Am That”) asks this pertinent question to us: “Why you are believing yourself to be someone who is not?” He goes on to help us like this: "Just keep in mind the feeling ‘I am’, merge in it, till your mind and feeling become one. By repeated attempts you will stumble on the right balance of attention and affection and your mind will be firmly established in the thought-feeling ‘I Am’ (as opposed to ‘I Am This’ or ‘I Am That’)."

“Without the ‘I Mm’ there is nothing. All knowledge is about the ‘I am’. False ideas about this ‘I am’ lead to bondage, right knowledge leads to freedom and happiness.”

Indian Spirituality turns our outward pointer inwards to get to know ‘Self’. Many of the realized masters confirm that the panacea for ALL humanity’s illness is Self-Awareness or Consciousness.

Let us look deeper inside ourselves and the God phenomenon in the next episode with two famous songs of Kaviyarasar….