Obscure Religious Cults as Background of Bengali Literature c8.43

c8.43

Bhusuka-pāda says in another song,—‘The great tree of Sahaja is shining in the three worlds; every thing being of the nature of void, what will bind what? As water mixing with water makes no difference, so also, the jewel of mind enters the sky in unity of emotion. Where there is no self, how can there be any not-self? What is increate from the beginning can have neither birth, nor death nor any kind of existence. Bhusuka says, or Rāuta says,—this is the nature of all;—nothing goes or comes,—there is neither existence nor non-existence there (in Sahaja).’⁴ Kaṅkaṇa-pāda says in a song,—‘When the void (i.e., the three-fold void of impurities) will merge itself in the void, (i.e., the fourth or the perfect void)⁵ the ultimate nature of all the objects will come within realisation. ……The bindu and the nāda do not enter the heart and by seeing one (viz., vacuity) the other (viz., mind) is destroyed. ……All clamour, says Kaṅkaṇa, merges into the roaring of Tathatā (thatness).¹ The *bindu* may be explained as the principle of subjectivity; the principle of objectivity is the *nāda*.² This conception of the Śūnyatā as the negation of the knower and the knowable is the same as is found in the doctrine of the Vijñāna-vādins. In another song of Kānha-pāda the mind has been compared to a tree of which the five branches represent the five senses, and hopes and passions are the innumerable leaves and fruits. Kānha says,—" Cut the tree down with the axe of the great preceptor's instructions so that the tree may not shoot forth any more. The tree grows up in the water of good and evil and the wise cut it down with the instructions of the preceptor. Those fools who do not know how to cut the tree and to split it, go astray and have to accept existence (and bondage with it). The tree is of the (defiled) void, and the axe is of the perfect-void,—cut the tree down, so that no root or branch be left."³ Our mind becomes deeply entangled in the notion of existence and all the impurities associated with it, and the notion of good and evil acts as the dynamic principle of disturbance behind the realm of the mind. In destroying this mind we should not try only to suppress the modes and modifications of the mind (compared to the branches of the tree), but the roots of the tree, *i.e.*, the Vāsanās should also be eradicated. Jayānandi-pāda says in another song that as we perceive in dream or in the mirror objects which have no reality in them, so also is the illusion of this world. When the mind is free from this illusion, all coming and going are stopped. At that stage none can be burnt, none can be wetted, none can be cut into pieces.¹ But alas,—inspite of all these, inspite of seeing this, foolish people firmly bind themselves to illusion;—they perceive it—yet they bind themselves to this self-created false world. It is indeed astonishing that people would discard milk and take poison.²