Looking Out Through the Pot of Holes
There is a practice in the south Indian temples that during the nights in the month of kArtIka (usually coinciding with the month of November), a lamp is hung up high on a lamp post, usually contained in a pot with several holes so as to allow sufficient air to the lamp. Flickering rays of light pass out through the holes, giving a pleasant ambience. This provided a good metaphor for Shankara to explain an important philosophical concept about the limitations of human knowledge.
We are familiar with our five senses, and we know that all living beings also have some of the faculties to different degrees. In some cases they have more acute sensory perception than humans and in some cases some senses are totally absent. When we say that there are five senses we are talking from a human standpoint. We can’t be sure about the total number of senses which all living beings have.
Whatever be the number of senses, the question is whether the ‘knowledge’ derived through different senses is different. Admittedly the taste of a dish is different from the sight of a beautiful object and different from the smell of a flower; they relate to different objects, but what we term as ‘knowledge’ is the same. When we light a lamp in a dark room, all the objects in the room are illuminated, but the same light which is illuminating the cot is illuminating the jug or any other object. The sun illuminates all objects in the world but the nature of sunlight is same. Similarly, according to advaita, it is the ‘consciousness’ reflected through the antaHkaraNa, or the mind in common parlance, is what illumines the objects. The consciousness which illumines the sense of sight is the same which illumines the sense of taste or the sense of touch and so on. The ‘ear behind the ear’, ‘the eye behind the eye’ ‘the mind behind the mind’ – as the kenopaniShad(1-2) says – is the eternal consciousness. It manifests as the ‘I’ in the individual, and the ‘I’ which sees is the same ‘I’ which hears, and the same ‘I’ which tastes. The senses are merely the doors of perception.
It is also wrong to call it ‘perception’ because it involves a perceiver and an object independent of the perceiver. Advaita accepts one single consciousness and the apparent differences are due to different delimiting factors which are technically called upAdhi-s. Every individual or every object is limited by space and time which are the limiting factors. Just as vessels of different shapes are limiting factors for the same entity called space, similarly all the objects we ‘perceive’ are manifested in consciousness only. The consciousness associated with the mind is called vRRitti – or a mental modification or thought as a result of such modification. This is the means of knowledge and the link between the object and the subject, the person who perceives. As the consciousness is one and one alone, it follows that the so-called difference between the object, the subject and the means of knowledge should not exist, or even if exists, it is for the sake of vyavahAra – at a transactional level only. It is in this context that Shankara employs the metaphor of pot in the dakShiNAmUrti stotram:
nAnA-chChidra-ghaTodara-sthita-mahA-dIpa-prabhA-bhAswaram
j~nAnaM yasya tu chakShurAdi-karaNa-dwArA bahiH spandate.
jAnAmIti tameva bhAntam-anubhAtyetat-samastaM jagat
There is a pot with several holes, in which there is a bright lamp shining, and the rays of light pass through the holes illuminating the objects here and there. Similarly the eternal Consciousness is gleaming through the holes called senses and enveloping the objects around and giving a feeling – ‘I know’, ‘I know’, which we see in everyday life. There appears to be a sense of mockery in Shankara’s expression ‘jAnAmIti’ – ‘I know’. Man is identifying himself with his limited sensory knowledge by holding that ‘he knows this and that’. It is the consciousness associated with the mind – called pramAtRRi chaitanyam, which is flowing through the senses in the form of vRRitti chaitanyam, enveloping the object, otherwise called viShaya chaitanyam, and is giving a feeling of knowledge.
The tArkika-s (like the present day rationalists) hold that knowledge is ‘born’ – jAyate – in the mind because of the interface of sense with the object. Knowledge is a guNa – a characteristic or quality of the mind according to them. Vedanta disputes this. Knowledge is not a quality but consciousness itself, limited by certain limiting factors. When we say – ‘the pot exists’, the clock exists’ etc. we are referring to the permeating principle of ‘sat’ – ‘the existence’ – in all the objects. No object has an independent existence, it is only a manifestation of one ‘sat’.
Consciousness or Brahman is the material cause and efficient cause for everything and hence all knowledge consists in Brahman. It follows that there is no independent existence to objects apart from the existence of Brahman. In order to realize this, we may go back to the quote from the kenopaniShad which says that one should quit identifying with the sensory knowledge. atimuchya dhIrAH, it says, meaning that the sense of ownership in the sensory knowledge has to be given up and it is possible for people of resolute mind.
Keeping aside Vedanta for a minute, even a skeptical mind would admit that the knowledge received by the senses is highly limited. Human eye can only see light in a particular band-width, can hear up to some decibels, and likewise with other senses. During earthquakes or cyclones the donkeys and other animals are the first to detect and run for shelter. Bats and such other animals have ‘extra-sensory perception’ when compared to humans. In other words, they are more ‘intelligent’. It should follow that the senses are not final, and that there is something beyond. It is also true that a particular sense responds to a particular element (as per most Indian philosophers there are five elements – the space, air, fire, water and earth), like the eye can see only light which is a modification of fire, nose can only smell a thing which is invariably a modification of earth and so on. Vedanta holds that the five senses are but modifications of the five elements.
The five elements, in turn, are the modifications of the Consciousness as we see in the Upanishads. It is clearly brought out in pa~nchadashI (2-59) by Vidyaranya while dealing with the ontological status of the five gross elements. He says: varNA bhittigatA bhittau chitraM nAnAvidhaM yathA – which means that the five elements and the variegated universe they create are but modifications – vikAra – on the Consciousness just as a painting on the wall creating several images by use of different colours. Vidyaranya devotes 290 stanzas in another chapter of the same book to explain it in different ways.
Teachers of Vedanta are fond of elaborating on the above image. They give the example of a painting of a mountain where trees, brooks and birds are painted, and on one of the trees there is a bird sitting perched on a small branch. If we ask the viewer as to where the bird is, he will say – ‘on the branch’. Where is the tree? It is on the mountain. Where is the mountain? Now the wisdom dawns that the substratum for the entire drawing is the canvas on which they are all painted. Similarly Vedanta observes the substratum, which is the consciousness whose modifications are the five gross elements.
The holes in the pot are the indriya-s – the five senses and when the consciousness flows through them as do the rays of light, it gets transformed into an object and such process of transformation is called vRRitti, or mind’s modification. ‘Vedanta Paribhasha’ says that the means of knowledge, the knower and the known are consciousness only. Looking out through the holes and identification with them would mean identifying with the pot which is only an upAdhi, an incidental factor, which gives a limited view of reality. Giving up identification with them is the inward view or antarmukhatwam which leads to liberation. This is what we saw above in the kenopaniShad’s statement. This would mean removal of the pot (the veil of ignorance?) and be the luminous Self. Probably this is what the kArtIka lamp also indicates.
