Thyagaraja’s Dilemma
This article was first published by Sruti: the India Music and Dance Society, Philadelphia, PA, USA in Thyagaraja Aradhana Souvenir 2016.
There are two kritis of Thyagaraja, which suggest that he was bothered by a fundamental dilemma. They are E dAri sancarinturA in rAga Sruti ranjani and dvaitamu sukhamA in rAga rItigowla. Let us look at their meanings briefly before discussing them.
Kriti 1: E dAri sancarinturA
Phrase by Phrase Meaning
pallavi: E dAri sancarinturA? = Which (E) path (dAri) shall I tread (sancarinturA)? ika palkarA! = Do tell (palkarA) now (ika)!
anupallavi: SrIda = O Bestower (da) of Prosperity (SrI) Adi-madhya-anta rahita = One without (rahita) a beginning (Adi), middle (madhya) or end (anta) sItA-samEta = One who is together with (samEta) with sItA guNa+Akara = One who is the form of (Akara) of virtues (guNa) nEnu + E dAri sancarinturA = Which path should I (nEnu) tread
caraNam: anni tAnu+anu mArgamuna canitE = If I go along (canitE) the path of (mArgamuna) everything (anni) being Myself (tAnu+anu), nannu vEDanu bhAramu + ani encEvu = You reckon (encEvu) saying (ani) it is burdensome/difficult (bhAramu) to save (vEDanu) me (nannu), nannu brOvarA sadA anTE = If I say (anTE), always (sadA) save (brOvarA) me, dvaituDu+anEvu = You say (anEvu) that I am dualistic (davituDu), tyAgarAja nuta, E dAri sancarinturA = One worshipped by (nuta) Thyagaraja (himself or Siva), which path shall I tread?
Overall Meaning
Do tell me!
Which path should I tread?
O Bestower of Prosperity!
One without begin-middle-end!
One with sItA!
The very Form of Virtues!
Which path shall I tread?
If I go along the path of everything being Myself, You say that it is difficult to save me!
If I ask You to always save me, You say that I am dualistic!
O rAmA, which path shall I tread?
Kriti 2: dvaitamu sukhamA
The second kriti under consideration here is “dvaitamu sukhamA” in rItigowLa rAga. The full pallavi is “dvaitamu sukhamA advaitamu sukhamA”, which simply asks “Is the dvaita comfortable or advaita comfortable?” The anupallavi and caraNam do not elaborate on the conflict between dvaita and advaita anymore, but simply express Thyagaraja’s admiration of the qualities and virtues of SrI rAma. As it is not directly relevant to the present discussion, I am omitting their inclusion here.
Discussion
As you must see by now, both kritis are talking about the conflicts and contradictions posed by dvaita and advaita.
At first, I thought that Thyagaraja’s dilemma was about which of these is ‘true’. As you likely know, dvaita and advaita are two very different answers for the fundamental question of all philosophy: what is the nature of the world, including the external world and the internal self. dvaita claims that there are fundamentally two entities, jIvAtma and paramAtma, with the internal self being jIvAtma and the external world being a multi-faceted manifestation of paramAtma. advaita claims that there is but only the paramAtma. As in dvaita, the external world in advaita also is a multi-faceted manifestation of a single paramAtma, but unlike in dvaita, advaita claims that internal self is also a manifestation of the paramAtma. The reason we, as individual selves, are not aware that we are the paramAtma is the mAya or ignorance.
On further deliberation, I realized that Thyagaraja was actually not debating which of dvaita or advaita is true — but rather which of the two paths to take (in kriti-1) and which path would be more comfortable (kriti-2)!
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In the caraNam of the E dAri sancarinturA kriti, Thyagaraja quite beautifully describes the conflict and contradiction of the dvaita and advaita paths. “If I go along the path of everything being Myself, You say that it is difficult to save me! If I ask You to always save me, You say that I am dualistic!”. This deserves a little more deliberation.
If one takes the path of “I am everything”, then there can be no ‘other’ entity, including God, to ask help from! Even assuming such an entity ‘God’, He/She would be quite justified in saying “you are on your own — I cannot help you: because you claim you are All, and that position does not allow my “separate” existence and therefore dismisses any possibility of Me helping you”! It is like a student that insists that he can solve the problem all by himself. What can the teacher do, other than saying it is hard or impossible for him to help the student?
Now, if one takes the other path that says “I am your devotee” and asks God to ‘savehim’ (brOvarA-anTE), then God again can say that He cannot do so, because one is now a dvaita. This, I could not understand easily for a longtime (perhaps even now!).
Why can not God ‘save’ one if one is a dvaita? Afterall, God should, by definition, be the all powerful to do ‘anything’. Perhaps then, the key is the word ‘save’: If one is asking to be saved from worldly problems (health, wealth, relationships etc), God should be able to help. Not only because God is all powerful, but also because it is not inconsistent for a God in the dvaita philosophical system to help a devotee. On the contrary, it seems to be, verily, the core idea of dvaita system — that the devotee prays to God and with His Grace, the devotee is saved.
So, what is the ‘saving’ that Thyagaraja is seeking that would be rendered impossible by the dvaita-system of philosophy? Strangely enough, it seems to me that it can only be the advaita maxim, that all is One (and not Two)! For, any other ‘saving’ would be within the capacity of the all-powerful paramAtma. So, we are forced to interpret Thyagaraja’s asking to be ‘saved’ as wanting to be saved from the ignorance of mAya and realize the fundamental advaitic claim (which can be stated in two equivalent ways: that all, including the self, is one; or that the self is but all.)
So, returning to the kriti, if one is asking God to help remove the mAya, God says that you are under a dualistic mode of behavior, in which there are always Two. So long as the devotee insists that he I separate from the Other, how can the Other make him see that he is All? It is logically self-contradictory!
Eventually then, it seems that in either path, we get no help from ‘God’ to realize the advaitic Truth and we are on our own for that purpose!
This is also what bhagavat gIta says in sloka (Chapter 6, Sloka 5) that is advocates such absolute self-reliance. “ uddharEdAtmanAtmAnam nAtmAnamavasAdayEt, Atmaiva hyAtmanO bandhurAtmaiva ripurAtmanah” meaning “One must be delivered by oneself alone; one must not become degraded; one alone is one’s friend; and one is also one’s enemy”.
Philosophizing a bit beyond the title of this essay, how does one help oneself? What does it mean? Going by the advaitic system, one has to work by oneself to discover the “reality” of mAya, which then reveals itself as being “unreal” and causes it to disappear, leaving the original state of Oneness. This is what is also phrased as seeing the ‘unreality in the reality’, by the teacher jiDDu krishNamUrti. He singularly and almost extensively addresses this aspect in all his teachings: What does this ‘process’ of self-discovery involve? What is “not” the process? What comes in the way of conducting the ‘process’? etc.
Finally, it is also the question that has become synonymous with the core teaching of ramaNa maharshi “Who am I?”.
Whose dilemma is it anyway?
Based on the above two kritis of Thyagaraja, I would like to conclude that Thyagaraja probably believed in the advaitic Truth as the ultimate destination and was only conflicted between the paths to reach that destination: jnAna marga of self inquiry or bhakti-mArga of self-surrender. Furthermore, the discussion above suggests that in either case, the sincere seeker has to rely entirely on oneself, since it is logically impossible for one to receive help from outside in such an endeavor.
Was it only Thyagaraja’s dilemma? I believe it is shared by many honest seekers then & now. As artists generally do, Thyagaraja gives through his music a beautiful expression for this latent and possibly unrecognized confusions in the broader humanity.
Epilogue
With all this said, am I left with the final conclusion that jnAna-mArga of self-inquiry alone is the ‘path’? ramaNa maharshi’s words negate this conclusion. He says the paths of ‘self-inquiry’ (advaita/jnAna-mArga) and ‘self-surrender’ (dvaita/bhaktimArga) are equivalent and lead to the same goal! How such seemingly contradictory approaches can lead to the same destination is a paradox and dilemma lives on!
November 8, 2016: Added graphic elements and YouTube video to enhance the online publication of this essay.
For more essays, please visit www.thyagaraja.org. Written by Prabhakar Chitrapu, Formatting/Design by Anil Chitrapu
Footnote
In some texts, the word vEDAnu (to save) [TKG, CR&VR] is written as vIDanu (to leave or let-go) [VG, MVS]. Clearly, these meanings are quite different and lead to profoundly different interpretations of the meaning of the phrase and the entire song itself! That is how important words and pronunciations can be! For example, V. Govindan [VG] translates the line as “If I go in the path of advaita — all is One’s Self only, You say that it is difficult to cast off ‘I’ (Ego)”, and Maddali Venkata Subbayya [MVS] as “If I take the path of assuming that “I am ALL”, you may say “I am rid of (carrying) this load”. In my opinion, these interpretations are not flaw-proof and I shall prefer to assume the word ‘vEDanu’ and proceed with the discussion of the kriti.
