Harināma Kīrtanam · Verse 3

The third verse is the most precisely phrased prayer in the work. Two lines, one request, and a back-up request in case the first cannot be granted. Do not let the I-thought arise in me. If a thought must arise, let only this one arise: I am all of this. The Sanskrit-Malayalam grammar is precise; the heart inside the grammar is precise; even the Lord is named three ways before the request begins. Bliss-consciousness. Hari. Beloved of the gopikas. The verse begins with bhakti and ends with the highest non-dual statement, both in the same breath, and refuses to choose between them.

If you have been told for years that the ego is your problem, that the I is the wound, that all spiritual work is the silencing of self, this verse is for you. It does not silence the I. It gives the I a different address. The instruction is not be no one; it is, if you must be someone, be everything.

If you have come to this verse exhausted by self-blame, the verse is gentler than you. It does not require you to have already won. It is a prayer for the moment when the I-thought has just risen and you have caught yourself, again, identifying with one small piece of the world. The verse hands you the redirect. I am all of this. That sentence, said with the breath, can do what argument cannot.

The Living Words

Ānandacinmaya hare gopikāramaṇa. O bliss-consciousness, Hari, beloved of the gopikas. Three names in three idioms. Ānandacinmaya is the Advaita name: bliss as nature, consciousness as the same nature, the two not distinguishable in the Self. Hare is the bhakti name: the taker-away, the one who carries off the listener's sins and the listener's burden. Gopikāramaṇa is the līlā name: the lover of the gopikās, the cowherd-girls of Vrindavan (the cowherd country where Krishna grew up), the one who turned their attraction into recognition. The Harināma Kīrtanam is alphabet-keyed; verse 3 begins with ā, the long vowel of ānanda. Joy is the syllable that opens this verse.

Ñāna-enna-bhāvam. The thought I am. Krishna Priya names this move: bhāvam is what arises in the chest before the mind frames it as a sentence, a felt-sense rather than a logical proposition. Ezhuthachan does not ask the Lord to suppress the I am tired, I am unworthy, I am alone sentence; he asks the Lord not to let the bhāvam itself rise. The redirect happens before the sentence forms.

Tōnnāy‌kavēṇam. Let it not arise. Tōnn is the Malayalam verb for appearing in the mind, occurring as a thought. Vēṇam is I want, please. The phrase is gentle. Not abolish, not destroy, only let it not appear. The verb anticipates that the bhāvam will keep trying to rise. The prayer is for it not to land.

Tōnnunnatākilakhilaṁ ñānitennavaḻi. If it must arise, let it arise as I am all this. The Malayalam akhilaṁ is the cousin of the Sanskrit akhila, whole, entire, undivided. Ñānitu is I am this. Vaḻi is way, here used as in the manner of, as. The phrase is the redirect: let the I-thought, if it rises, take its true shape; let it rise as the universe itself. The Sanskrit canon has a name for this redirect. The Iśa Upaniṣad calls it yas tu sarvāṇi bhūtāni ātmany evānupaśyati, the one who sees all beings in the Self alone.

Varada. Boon-granter. The verse ends in a request, not in an assertion. Varada is the divine name for the form that gives. The verb-form tōnnēṇamē, let it arise, is in the optative mood; the Malayalam grammar carries the same grace as the Sanskrit prapadyante (they take refuge). The seer does not produce the recognition. The recognition is granted, and Ezhuthachan ends his line by naming the form of the Lord that grants it.

Scripture References

The Heart of It

To ask, of the Lord himself, that the I-thought not arise is to admit something the seeker has already discovered: the mind cannot use the mind to silence the mind. The verse is a prayer because the seeker has hit that wall. The I-thought rises. The verse does not ask you to suppress it. It asks the Lord to redirect it. The redirection is itself the boon-asking.

Only after that frame is set can the loop the prayer escapes be named honestly. I am the one who is becoming free of the I-thought. Even the trying is the I-thought trying. Every effort to silence the speaker confirms that there is a speaker doing the silencing. The Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad, sixteen centuries before Ezhuthachan, recorded the move that ends this loop. Brahman knew itself: aham brahmāsmi, I am Brahman. Tasmāt tat sarvam abhavat, therefore it became all that. The recognition produces the universe; the universe does not produce the recognition. Four lines into a sixty-eight-verse poem, Ezhuthachan asks for that recognition as a prayer. Let the I-thought, if it rises, rise as the all. He is asking for the Bṛhadāraṇyaka in his own chest.

If you have come to this verse and felt that the recognition is too high for the way you actually live, the verse does not pretend the recognition can be argued into place. It acknowledges the I-thought will keep rising. It simply asks that when it rises, it rise in its true shape. The shape is the universe. I am this body is the small I; I am all of this is the same I with its true address. The instruction is not to abolish the speaker; it is to widen the speaker until the boundary disappears. The Chandogya Upaniṣad calls this sarvaṁ khalv idaṁ brahma: all this is verily Brahman. The phrase is not a labelled mahāvākya like aham brahmāsmi or tat tvam asi; it is the cultivation, the bhāvanā a seeker holds while waiting for the recognition to land.

The Iśa Upaniṣad, in its sixth verse, names what Ezhuthachan is praying for. Yas tu sarvāṇi bhūtāny ātmany evānupaśyati, sarvabhūteṣu cātmānaṁ, tato na vijugupsate. One who sees all beings in the Self alone, and the Self in all beings, no longer shrinks from anything. Vijugupsate is the Sanskrit verb for recoils, draws back, flinches. The Iśa is naming the result of the recognition: the recoiling stops. Krishna Priya, in her devotional gloss on this Malayalam verse, writes the same Sanskrit teaching in Indian English. As I feel the universe as me, I do not feel any particular attraction or hatred toward anyone or anything. Two readings, eight centuries apart, one teaching.

The Bhagavad Gītā, sixth chapter, names the practitioner. Sarva-bhūta-stham ātmānaṁ sarva-bhūtāni cātmani īkṣate yoga-yuktātmā, sarvatra sama-darśanaḥ. The one whose self is integrated by yoga sees the Self in all beings, and all beings in the Self, and sees the same everywhere. Sama-darśana, the equal vision, is the practical fruit. When the I-thought has been redirected from the body to the all, the gaze that follows it is no longer divided. The seer who walks through a market, or a hospital, or a battlefield, does not flinch at one and lean toward another. The leaning has nothing left to land on.

If you have come to this verse and felt the recognition is too far, here is one thing to notice. The verse says let only this thought arise: I am all of this. It is offering you a sentence to use. Not a state to attain. The Yoga Vāsiṣṭha calls this bhāvanā: the cultivation of a feeling-thought. The feeling-thought is not the recognition; the feeling-thought prepares the soil. Each time the I-thought rises and you say to yourself, in the breath, I am all of this, the soil is being turned. The recognition arrives when the soil is ready. Varada, the boon-granter, is the form of the Lord that gives the recognition. The seeker brings the soil. The Lord brings the seed.

Krishna Priya's reading insists on one more thing. The Lord here is not only the Advaitic ānanda-cit; he is also the gopikāramaṇa, the lover of the cowherd-girls. The verse holds bhakti and jñāna in the same breath, and the holding is the teaching. The girls of Vrindavan, in the Rāsa Pañcādhyāyī of the Bhāgavata, came to Krishna with the small I: I am the one who loves him. He did not silence the I; he answered the I with himself, until the I could not say I love him without becoming what was loved. That is also the redirect. The Iśa Upaniṣad is the philosophical form of what the gopis lived as a body. Ezhuthachan, naming both names in the same line, is saying: the way of the Iśa and the way of the gopis lead to the same place.

If you have come to this verse with an I that will not stop saying I am tired, I am stuck, I am not enough, the verse hands you a single substitution. I am all of this. You are tired and the room. You are stuck and the road. You are not enough and every other thing in the universe that has, somehow, been enough for the universe to keep arising. The substitution sounds like a trick at first. Try it for an hour. The mind protests. Try it for a day. The mind quiets. The boon is not on a calendar. The boon is in the asking.

The Saints Who Walked This Road

If you have ever loved someone and felt yourself disappear into the loving, you have already touched what this verse names. The cry of aham brahmāsmi and the cry of I am the one who loves him converge here. Four saints, each on a different soil, made the convergence audible.

Āṇṭāḷ, the only girl among the twelve Tamil Ālvārs, lived this verse in the gopikā-voice. Raised by her foster-father Periyāḻvār at Tiruvilliputtur in the ninth century, she wove flower garlands every dawn for the temple deity. The tradition records that she would secretly try the garlands on herself first, looking into a vessel of water, before sending them to the shrine. When her father discovered the practice and was horrified, the deity told the priests in a dream: I will only accept the garlands she has worn. The story is not about a girl's vanity. It is about the gopikāramaṇa turn made visible. Āṇṭāḷ knew she was a gopi. The Lord, who is the beloved of the gopikas, accepted the body that loved as a gopi loves. Her Tiruppāvai, thirty pre-dawn verses sung in the gopikā-voice to this day, is the I am all of this in the gopikā-voice: we are the cowherd-girls; we are the cattle; we are the river; we are the Krishna who is in all of these. She walked into the inner sanctum at Srirangam at the end of her life. The Śrīvaiṣṇava tradition says she was received into the deity there.

Eknāth, sixteenth-century Maharashtra, learned the same teaching at Paithan on the bank of the Godāvarī. He was a Brahmin and a scholar of the dharma-śāstra; he could have lived a clean orthodox life. The tradition records that he saw a dying low-caste man on the riverbank, picked him up, carried him home, washed him, fed him. When the orthodox Brahmins came to his house in protest, his answer was the verse-3 redirect in plain Marathi: I see Pāṇḍuraṅga in him. (Pāṇḍuraṅga is the form of Vitthal worshipped at Pandharpur, the central deity of the Varkari tradition.) Another story is sweeter. Pāṇḍuraṅga himself, the tradition says, came to Eknāth's house as a young Brahmin servant called Śrīkhaṇḍyā. For twelve years he lived in the kitchen, washed the dishes, served the family, only revealing his form on the day he had to leave. The teaching is the same in either story. The I-thought that says I am the Brahmin scholar is a small I. The I-thought that says I am the dying pariah; I am Śrīkhaṇḍyā the dish-washer; I am Pāṇḍuraṅga in both is the I-thought in its true address.

Tukārām, seventeenth-century Maharashtra, made the same recognition into a body of song. A grocer of Dehu ruined twice by famine, he sat on the bank of the Indrāyaṇī river and composed thousands of abhangas. One of them, the second-thousand-and-seventy-seventh in the Gāthā, says: the Vedanta has said the universe is filled by God; the sants have told us; Tuka indeed is playing in the world uncontaminated by it, like the sun standing transcendent. The body image is the cymbals he held, the loose dhoti, the dust of the Pandharpur road. He walked the wārī twice a year, and he saw Vitthal in every fellow walker, in the dust, in the heat, in the rain. The tradition records that on the day of his death he stood at the river and called out the Name and ascended bodily into a vimāna sent by Vitthal. The legend is unprovable. The historical-critical view, in the work of R.D. Ranade and S.G. Tulpule, treats the disappearance as more likely a death by drowning. The abhangas, which carry the same teaching as Iśa Upaniṣad 6, are not in dispute.

Ramana Maharṣi, twentieth century, did not write much; he sat. He had been a sixteen-year-old boy in Madurai in 1896 when, alone in the upper-floor room of his uncle's house, he had the death-experience that most descriptions of him begin with. The boy laid himself flat on the floor as if dead, watched the body lose sensation, asked: something in me is dying, what is it, and what is it that is watching the dying? He felt the shock that the I survived the body. He left school six weeks later, took the train north to Tiruvannamalai, and never went back. To every visitor for the next fifty-four years he gave the same instruction: find the source of the I-thought, and you will find it has no source. The verse-3 prayer (do not let the I-thought arise) is the Sanskrit form of his Tamil instruction Nāṉ yār?, Who am I?. The body image is the small couch in the old hall on the lower slope of Aruṇācala, the eyes that watched without strain, the silence that finished the questions before the questions were spoken aloud.