Siddha Research: The Basic
Difficulties
by Dr. T. N. Ganapathy, Ph D
Director of the Tamil Siddha Yoga Research Project
Director of the Tamil Siddha Yoga Research Project
(The following article is excerpted from our forthcoming
book, "The Yoga of Tamil Siddha Boganathar" by Dr. Ganapathy)
There are certain basic difficulties, which every writer on
Tamil Siddhas has to encounter. The basic difficulties relate to:
1. The definition of the term "Siddha", the
classification of the Siddhas and their number;
2. The absence of reliable editions, the poetic form, and the language used by the Siddhas.
3. The number of siddhis and views regarding the siddhis;
4. The use of tantric yoga as the method of the Siddhas;
5. Identification of the Siddhas with the alchemists.
6. The philosophy of the human body and
7. A trustworthy biographical account.
2. The absence of reliable editions, the poetic form, and the language used by the Siddhas.
3. The number of siddhis and views regarding the siddhis;
4. The use of tantric yoga as the method of the Siddhas;
5. Identification of the Siddhas with the alchemists.
6. The philosophy of the human body and
7. A trustworthy biographical account.
Let us discuss the above basic
difficulties in detail.
1. The definition and
classification of the Siddhas.
The basic difficulty of a
study of the Siddhas begins with the term "Siddha" itself which has
several inter-connected and often overlapping meanings without any common
accepted usage. It is a Sanskrit term meaning "fulfilled". A Siddha
is a "videgdha", "fully boiled", i.e., perfect being. He
stands for the Indian ideal of perfection. The Tamils refer to four types of
mukti or liberation. They are salokya, the status of living in the world of
God, samipya, the status of being nearer to God, sarupya, the status of getting
the form of God, and sayujya, the status of being one with the God. The Siddhas
are those who have attained the last type of liberation. The first three types
of liberation are called padamukti by Tirumular and the last one is called
siddhi. Tirumular says that one whose mind is serene and clear like an ocean
without waves is a Siddha. In Tamilnadu it is customary among the Siddhas to
trace their origin to Siva, who is also called a Siddha.
A Siddha is one who has
realized the non-duality of jiva and Siva. He is the one who has realized Siva
in himself. He is one who has attained Sivanubhava. Sivanubhava stands for the
state of experience where there is non-dualism or oneness between the
experiencing jiva and Siva, a jiva-Siva-aikya. There is a Tamil saying
"Sittan pokku, Sivan pokku" meaning that a Siddha walks or follows
the way of Siva.
A Siddha is a yogin. Saint
Tirumular says that those who live in yoga and see the divine power and light
through yoga are the Siddhas.8 He is an experimental yogin who attains
perfection by the method of self-effort.9 As yogins the Siddhas are said to
have the triple control - the control of breath, the control of the seminal
fluid, i.e. the control of all passions and the achievements of desirelessness
- and the control of mind. A Siddha is one who has succeeded in stabilizing
these controls in oneself and maintains equanimity and a sense of equilibrium.
A Siddha is one who has attained siddhi, a special psychic
and supernatural power, which is said to be eightfold in the science of yoga.
The eight siddhis are :
(i)anima, the ability to become as minute as an atom;
(ii)mahima, the ability to expand infinitely;
(iii)laghima, levitation or the ability to float through the air;
(iv)garima, the ability to reach everywhere;
(v)prakamya, freedom of will, or the ability to overcome natural obstacles;
(vi)isitva, the ability to create or control;
(vii)vasitva, domination over the entire creation; and
(viii)kamavasayitva, the gift of wish-fulfilment or the ability of attaining everything desired or to attain the stage of desirelessness.
(i)anima, the ability to become as minute as an atom;
(ii)mahima, the ability to expand infinitely;
(iii)laghima, levitation or the ability to float through the air;
(iv)garima, the ability to reach everywhere;
(v)prakamya, freedom of will, or the ability to overcome natural obstacles;
(vi)isitva, the ability to create or control;
(vii)vasitva, domination over the entire creation; and
(viii)kamavasayitva, the gift of wish-fulfilment or the ability of attaining everything desired or to attain the stage of desirelessness.
The term "Siddha"
comes from the word "siddhi" which means the experience of Siva.
Siddhisvara, God of Siddhis, is a name of Siva. Siddhis indicate whether the
practitioners of yoga have attained a stage to reach the ultimate goal, namely,
liberation. It is wrong to think that the Siddhas are magicians or uncouth
ascetics credited with supernatural powers. They are not atheists or agnostics
as is commonly believed. They believe in God, but not a God of this or that
religion. For most of them there is a God, a Siva, without any limitation or
attributes, Siva is grammatically and philosophically an impersonal conception.
The real name for "Siva" is "It" or "Atu" or
"Thatness" or "Suchness". A genuine Siddha is beyond
atheism and faith (theism) alike.
A Siddha is a free thinker and
a revolutionary who refuses to allow himself to be carried away by any religion
or scripture or rituals. One Tamil Siddhas says: "A Siddha is one who has
burnt the sastras". This is to be interpreted not in the literal sense but
in the sense that for a jnanin, "the Vedas are not Vedas". A Siddha
is one who has attained a stage of realization where he is not bound by the
injunctions of the sastras, and where he has gone beyond the Vedas. At this
stage sastras become irrelevant trifles. There is always a gulf between words
and the experience, which they stand for. To seek enlightenment in words and
ideas is like expecting the sight of a menu card to reach and satisfy the inner
processes of a hungry man. A description can never in itself transmit
experience. All the sastras, Vedas, Puranas, and the various religious sects
turn humanity into conditioned animals. Truth is felt experience and it cannot
be translated fully in any sastra. As a Doha song says: "Looking at the
fruit in the tree is not smelling it. Does the disease fly away at the sight of
the physician?" The Siddhas seem to be opposed to the scriptures, but
their temper is devout. They are "pious rebels" inside the field of
religion and as such they are not atheists. Karai Siddhar draws a distinction
between a Siddha and a non-Siddha by saying that a Siddha points to the path of
the experience whereas a non-Siddha points to the path of scriptures.
A Siddha is one who enjoys
perfect bliss even while he is in his physical body. The body is treated by him
as the best medium of realizing the truth. Similar to the sacred rivers,
temples, mountains, etc., the body is a sacred passage to the ultimate Reality.
Sivavakkiyar raises a pertinent question: why should we go out to these places
when the threshold is in us.
Siddhas know how to preserve the body through
light rays ("mani" in Tamil) sound waves ("mantra") and
medicine ("marundu" or "ausadha" in Tamil). The technique
of the preservation of the body is called kaya sadhana: it is an attempt to
attain a perfect body called Siddha deha. In short, one who has obtained the
power of dematerializing and spiritualizing the body, and knows how to
transmute the corruptible physical into the incorruptible superphysical basis
of life is a Siddha.
A Siddha attains and possesses an eternal spiritual body
called the divya-deha and is one who finally breaks out of the karmic cycle and
attains deliverance from time. Using the expression of Mircea Eliade we may say
that the Siddhas are those "who understood liberation as the conquest of
immortality".
A notable feature that we find
among the Tamil Siddhas is the total absence of any local cult of the deity.
They are not "henolocotheists", believers in one local God. No
genuine Siddha in Tamilnadu including Tirumular, has sung in praise of any
local God or deity or personal God. This is a feature that distinguishes
Siddhas from other saints, especially Alwars and Nayanmars.
We may say that the
chief characteristic feature, the differentia, to determine a genuine Siddha
from a non-Siddha is to find out whether he/she has sung in praise of any local
God or Deity.
According to Sivavakkiyar a Siddha does not worship any deity in
the temple. As a Baul sings: "the road to the Absolute is blocked by
temples, mosques and the teachers. Markendaya Purana says that the knower of
yoga should not participate in pilgrimages to the shrines of gods.
Pambatticcittar also says that those who have built temples for local Gods and
have offered prayers are those who do not get at the feet of the real Lord.
Tirumular also refers to Siddhas as those who have not tried the path of any
(sectarian) religion. The Tamil Siddhas do not belong to any religion or
samayam. "Samayam" in Tamil means "convention",
"rule".
The songs of the Siddhas do
not show any trace of collective thinking; neither is there any suggestion of
preaching; they indicate only the direction. One can discern certain common
characteristics among the Siddhas, which make them distinct from the
"learned" poets on the one hand and sectarian religious poets on the
other. To be a Siddha, sectarian affiliation is irrevelent. Their philosophy is
enlightenment as distinct from doctrine; it is not a theoretical and formalist
approach to problems.
The Tamil Siddhas are not system-builders; their whole
technique is to jolt people out of their intellectual ruts and their
conventional, barren, morality. They laid before their audience an abrasive,
shocking, uncompromising message exhorting them to shed their delusions,
pretensions, and empty orthodoxies in favour of an intense, direct, personal
confrontation with truth. They are the "untethered", non-conformist,
spiritual aspirants, yearning for a direct and natural approach to, and a more
intense experience of, the absolute truth. They reject, the value and prestige
of the scriptures, which remain the privilege of the few in Hinduism. The Tamil
Siddhas may be considered as "scriptureless" or "bookless"
or nirgrantha school of Hinduism, as they are detatched from any scriptual
authority.
The Tamil Siddhas belong to a
non-conformist, "counter-tradition". What is meant by "counter
tradition" is not that "which opposes tradition". But the
"tradition which opposes".
The Siddhas challenged many of the
accepted beliefs and practices of the Hindu society and thought. They denounced
idol and ritualistic worship and petitionary prayers as fetters holding back
the soul from liberation. Their language was as unconventional as were their
lives. This led many people to think that the Tamil Siddhas were Buddhists in
disguise, since Buddhism also criticized vehemently the doctrines of the
Hindus.
Siddha, sectarian affiliation
is rather unnecessary and irrelevant. Yet it is customary to classify Siddhas
into the above groups. The Hatha-Yoga Pradipika, a classical text on hatha
yoga, contains a list of Maha-Siddhas beginning with Adinatha. Adinatha is the
mystical name for Siva. The Siddhas belonging to the school of Adinatha are
called Natha Siddhas. They are known as kan-phatta, because they have to pierce
the cartileges of their ears and pass a heavy ring, known as darsana, around
which by its weight cut longish slits upto their ear lobes. Gautama Buddha was
having this mark on him. The Natha Siddhas originated in North India, and their
literature contains a number of hatha yogic texts of which the famous are the
Hatha Yoga Pradipika, the Gheranda Samhita and the Siva Samhita. They had the
agnomen of Natha added to their proper names. The term "Natha" in its
theological sense is restricted to a Saiva preceptor just as the surname of
gosain is confined to the teachers of the Vaishnava faith. In this connection
it would be interesting to note the view that the term "Natha" is
derived from the Prakrit word "Nattha" meaning the nose-string used
for controlling an animal. This term probably has been adopted by the Siddhas
to refer to one who has controlled his mind through yoga.
The concept of sacrifice is
connected with this number, and "eighteen" appears to be the symbolic
equivalent of man as sacrifice. According to the Chinese mythology there are
eighteen lohans(arhats). From the point of view alchemy eighteen is an
important number. In Rasesvara Darsana eighteen modes of elaboration of mercury
or eighteen modes of treating quick silver are discussed. In the Ramayana the
war took place for eighteen days: and that there are eighteen Agamas, eighteen
consonants, etc. There is another view that the number "eighteen" may
also refer to the "eighteen" worlds of ordinary human beings - the
six sense organs, the objects of the six sense organs and the six forms of
consciousness of eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and mind. The Siddhas are those
who have gone beyond, transcended these eighteen worlds of ordinary men. Hence
they are referred to as "eighteen Siddhas" i.e. people who have
conquered the "eighteen worlds". In Siddha medicine number
"eighteen" has a special place. Macchamunmi says that there are
eighteen important herbs. In kundalini yoga "eighteen" is a
significant number; kundalini after reaching sahasrara has to cross further
through eighteen mahavidyas. That is eighteen energized subtle centres
encircling the sahasrara region, finally to unite with Siva, in an act known as
maithuna yoga In Sattaimuni Jnanam the Siddha refers to the
"eighteen" letters that are part and parcel of valai, i.e. the kundalini
sakti. In his work Padinen Siddhar Yogakkovai Parayanappa, Yogi Ramaiah says
that the number "eighteen" represents eighteen different aspects of
yoga though he has not explained them. He also says that out of the eighty four
Siddhas, the most important are eighteen and hence this tradition of yoga is
called Padinen Yoga Siddha Tradition. All these internal evidences from Siddha
yoga and medicine have been taken to show that "eighteen" in the
"eighteen Tamil Siddhas" does not refer to the number of Siddhas (because
Siddhas are innumerable) but to the attainments of a Siddha. But it seems to
the author that the number "eighteen" refers to the eighteen siddhis.
The Siddhas are those who have attained the eighteen siddhis. In short, the
numeral "eighteen" is a holy number among the Tamil Siddhas. There is
a verse which says that Siddhas know eighteen languages. Here language means
siddhi.
Copyright. Babaji's Kriya Yoga
and Publications. December 2001
Yoga of Siddha Bogarnathar by Ganapathy
T. N. Ganapathy, trans. The Yoga of Siddha Boganathar.
St. Etienne de Bolton, Quebec: Babaji’s Kriya Yoga and Publications, 2003 and
2004. Paperback, vol. 1, xvii + 355 pages; vol. 2, xv + 523 pages. Vol. 1: US
$24.45 / CAN $32.16; Vol. 2: US $30.95 / CAN $34.72. Prices include shipping
(and local taxes for orders from Canada).
The teachings of the Siddhas (
Sitthars) of Tamilnadu are little known among Western Yoga practitioners, and
there are only a handful of research organizations that investigate this branch
of the yogic heritage. Also, few researchers are qualified to translate the
Tamil scriptures on Yoga, because the Siddhas generally use highly symbolic and
covert language to speak about their experiences and realizations. Among those
rare scholars is Prof. T. N. Ganapathy, who is head of the newly created Yoga
Siddha Research Centre in Chennai, which was launched in 2003 in collaboration
with Babaji’s Kriya Yoga Order of Acharyas ( Canada).
Boganathar, or simply Bogar,
is said to have been the guru of the famous Babaji Nagaraj, founder of
Kriya-Yoga. Prof. Ganapathy has devoted an entire chapter to Bogar’s life and
teachings. The fact is, very little is known of this adept’s lifestory, and the
little we know stems from autobiographical comments in Boganathar’s own work
(i.e., The 7000 [Verses] ofBogar), which the translator has diligently
scanned for every last scrap of relevant information. Bogar appears to have
been born into a family of gold-smiths, was initiated into Kundalini-Yoga by
Kalangi (a disciple of the famous Tirumular), and gained Self-realization and
all the great paranormal abilities of an adept.
Bogar further claimed to have
acquired a golden-hued “divine body” ( divya-deha), which he kept alive for
thousands of years and in which he traveled in many foreign lands, notably
China (some pundits even think that Bogar is identical with Lao Tzu. In his
poetry, he also speaks of such anachronisms as a parachute, an airplane, a
steamship, and a self-propelled car. Did the adept gaze into the future? Given
this kind of self-testimony, Prof. Ganapathy abstained from fixing Bogar’s life
chronologically. But if Bogar was indeed a disciple of one of Tirumular’s
pupils, he can be placed sometime between the 300 and 600 A.D. Indian
traditionalists, however, disagree with the conventional scholarly dating of
Tirumular and place this Siddha in the third millennium B.C. and earlier.
Luckily, Tirumular’s and also
Bogar’s exact dates are quite irrelevant when it comes to appreciating their
respective works. If it is claimed, however, that the latter practiced
Kundalini-Yoga as does Prof. Ganapathy, then we must also place Bogar into the
appropriate era. Kundalini-Yoga, as he wrote about it, did not come into its
own until c. 500 A.D., with the full emergence of Tantra as a scriptural
tradition. Without stating so, Prof. Ganapathy appears to favor such a date
himself, since he interprets Bogar’s reference to the “twelve religions” in
verse 13 of the Jnana Pujavidias including the Madhyamaka and Yogacara
Schools of Buddhism, which belong to the second and fourth centuries A.D.
respectively. Bogar also claimed to have seen the disciples of Jesus, which,
unless we assume he was able to travel into the future or possessed the faculty
of remote-viewing or precognition, also confirms his later date. In this case
we may take his statement as indicative of his ability to “visit” the past in
deep meditation.
Be that as it may, Bogar’s
teaching is not only profound (as one would expect of a Tantric teaching) but
also illuminating for anyone wishing to penetrate the secrets of
Kundalini-Yoga. As one might expect, his yogic teaching in many ways parallels
what we can glean from the Sanskrit scriptures of Tantra and Hatha-Yoga. The
advantage of studying Bogar’s work is that it was clearly authored by a master
of the Tantric tradition, and his words have a special power.
The claim made by Marshall
Govindan Satchidananda in his foreword to volume 2 that this is the first
rendering into English of any of Boganathar’s writings is incorrect, as the
American Tamil scholar Layne Little published a selection of this great adept’s
verses some years ago. However, the present two-volume rendition has at least
three advantages. First, it is the most extensive anthology on Boganathar
available today. Second, the translation was prepared by a scholar who over
many years has immersed himself deeply into the Siddha literature and spiritual
teachings. Third, each of the two volumes includes the Tamil text in
transliteration, a word-by-word translation, the excellent translation itself,
a summary, and an all-important commentary without which many of the verses
would remain unintelligible to the lay reader.
Tamil is a very challenging
language, and the Tamil Siddhas are especially difficult to translate. Even an
accomplished scholar and translator as Prof. Ganapathy has had to struggle at
times to ferret out the meaning of a verse or find the right words to express
it in English. Fortunately, he was added in his labors by flashes of insight in
the middle of the night—a gift from the Siddhas themselves, perhaps.
Bogar—yogi, miracle-worker,
and healer—is one of the most colorful figures in the long history of India’s
spiritual heritage. One can only hope that Prof. Ganapathy’s translation will
reach many Western students of Yoga, and Kriya-Yoga in particular, and that it
will serve as a stepping-stone to a complete English rendering of Bogar’s7000.
Until then, we are greatly indebted to the present translator for his
pioneering efforts.
The two volumes can be ordered
from: Kriya Yoga Publications, 196 Mountain Road, P.O. Box 90, Eastman, Quebec,
Canada J0E 1P0.
Copyright ©2006 by Georg
Feuerstein. All rights reserved.
Reproduction in any form requires prior permission from Traditional Yoga Studies.
Reproduction in any form requires prior permission from Traditional Yoga Studies.
Treasure Trove of Tamil Yoga Siddha
Manuscripts Released
|
on 2016/2/3 19:03:15 ( 1388
reads )
|
Source
INDIA, January 31, 2016 (Babaji's Kriya Yoga): "The Treasure Trove of Tamil Yoga Siddha Manuscripts" is a guide and a large collection of verses composed by Tamil Yoga Siddhars during the medieval Sangam period. These verses, found only on palm leaf manuscripts, were collected, scanned, transcribed into modern Tamil and edited by an eminent team of scholars and manuscriptologists during the past 15 years. The guide is a valuable resource, not only for lovers of Siddha poetry, but also for scholars, translators and researchers in the fields of Yoga and Tantra. All 13,276 verses on 1,677 pages are included in a compact disc inserted in the rear cover. This new publication will be released at a function in Chennai, India, on February 6, 2016, at 6:30 pm organized by Babaji's Kriya Yoga Order of Acharyas and the Yoga Siddha Research Centre. For more information, click "source" above. |
No comments:
Post a Comment