With a brilliant intellect and a charming personality, with a heart burning with a desire for the Divine union, Mahadeviyakka was joined to the Divine Lord in an eternal wedlock.
The present Sampadane is more a picture of Mahadeviyakka's growing personality than a discussion of topics. In this, this Sampadane seems to be unique.
.
Akka Mahadevi
She was a born mystic. In a way she can be compared to Chennabasavanna:
How at very birth,
Its perfume is so like a ball of scent!
and again:
Lord, that a baby born today
Should just today have grown to youth!
If Chennabasavanna is a born Knower, Mahadeviyakka is a born Lover. Not that she ignored the knowledge aspect of the Divine realisation. Her acquaintance with the path of knowledge is clear from her vachanas and other works, and her Yoganga Trividhi bears witness to her yogic lore.
With a brilliant intellect and a charming personality, with a heart burning with a desire for the Divine union, Mahadeviyakka was joined to the Divine Lord in an eternal wedlock.
The present Sampadane is more a picture of Mahadeviyakka's growing personality than a discussion of topics. In this, this Sampadane seems to be unique.
First, as to love or desire (kama). For Kinnarayya, Prabhudeva, Basavanna and for almost all the sharanas, the problem of sex is one which defies all attempts to master. But for Mahadeviyakka, sex, desire, greed and all other passions do not seem to be problems at all. Her purity of heart and mind, soul and body, she seems to inherit from her parents. She was born in a world surcharged with love and devotion, knowledge and practice as a result of the sharana movement. She had found in Chennamalikarjuna, or Chennamallesha, a great spiritual teacher: ''Within the holy teacher's palm I had my birth.'' So, the sharana way of life had seized her entire being. The idea of having God as a lover appealed to her and grew more firm and intense as she grew older. Her Lord Chennamalikarjuna appeared to her virgin vision with a divine radiance and beauty, as the only bridegroom. The Grace received at the hands of her spiritual teacher completed this process. In vachana No. 14 she says:
Guru was kinsman to officiate;
Linga the bridegroom, I the bride;
This all the worlds do know:
My father and my mother were
The innumerable saints;
Behold, they gave me to a groom,
Becoming Prabhu's house.
Therefore, Chennamalikarjuna is my lord:
No other husbands in the world
Are aught to me, Prabhu!
When she was burning with this divine aspiration, King Kaushika's proposal came to her as a blessing in disguise and precipitated her renunciation. She renounced the world and left Udutadi to seek the Bridegroom at Kalyana.
How is it that Mahadeviyakka excaped the snare of love? It is easy enough to talk of conquering sex; but to conquer it in actual fact is as difficult as to break ice at the poles. Man's experience stoutly testifies to this fact. A Sanskrit poet wisely remarks, ''If you can control your passion of love, then surely does the Vindhya float on the ocean.'' True, for a man or woman dominated by the animal nature, that is, the lower prakrti, it seems impossible. But for one who has subdued the lower nature and whose entire being is illumined by the Divine Love and Knowledge, it is child's play. When the sharanas speak of Sharana as the spouse and of Linga as the lover, it denotes the relationship that obtains between the individual self and the transcendent Self. Mahadeviyakka, awakened to this hidden Self, could not but give it her whole heart. Before this love all external loves became meaningless.
In the study of Mahadeviyakka's life another problem raises its head. Mahadeviyakka has chosen the Divine for her spouse. Her love filled her entire being and there was no room in her heart for anyone else. But its complete expression demanded that she should approach him stripping herself of all her earthly coverings. And she went further; as her vachanas indicate, she also stripped herself of her body, life, mind and soul. She did more than this. The Union required that she bare herself of the elements, which are the grosser trappings of the individual. As she declares, she loved the Most Beautiful, infinite and eternal, untouched by death or destruction and hungered for union with Him. Basavanna's vachanas explain everything:
1. Once she has effaced the body's fancied shame;
Destroyed the lie
Of the soul's shame;
Consumed in fire the very thought
Of the mind's shame;
Knowing that the union of the naked will
Alone is true, her ardent love has little truck
With the world's mart...
O Kudala Sangama Lord,
Behold the majesty
Of Mahadeviyakka,
The mother who gave me birth,
O Prabhu!
2. Does one who has loved
The One without form
Have need of body?
Does one who has loved
The One without mind
Have need of shame?
Does one who has loved
The sky-clad One
Have need of girdle-cloth?
O Kudala Sangama Lord,
A devotee like Mahadeviyakka
Needs no encumbrances at all:
Mark that, Prabhu!
But, it may be asked, why did not the other sharanas behave in the same fashion? The answer is, that every sharana acts according to his inner dictates; he does as he pleases.
Prabhudeva poses one more question at this point. When Mahadeviyakka says, ''...Therefore, I have entered my Lord Chennamalikarjuna and merged in him'', Prabhudeva asks how could one talk of union when one is already one with the Absolute. Can a river have separate existence after it has joined the ocean? Does not such language indicate division and separateness? Is not this egoism of the knower a brilliant darkness?
Prabhudeva's question seems unanswerable. Can a corpse cry out, ''I am dead'? How could there be any 'I' to talk of union? This is what the sharanas call chidahamte or chidahambhava. Mahadeviyakka is not baffled. ''Yes'', she says, ''even the dead body, sometimes, can cry out.'' When one is asleep, one is practically dead to the outside world, or perhaps even to oneself. A man dreams a dream and, when he gets up, he narrates the dream to others. Such is the unioned state of a sharana. But there seems to be a flaw in Mahadeviyakka's argument. Having enjoyed the union (samarasya), she emerges to relate her experience. Is this not separateness? But we shall do well to remember that similes and metaphors or even simple words travesty the reality of mystic experience. Language is invented for a world of duality. Muktayakka and Siddharamayya made against Prabhudeva the same charge of 'babbling'. As Prabhu says to Muktayakka, the word is the Effulgent Linga. When the individual self is merged in the Supreme, words can still flow without actual contradiction. It is her spouse that speaks, it is He that acts. Her words no longer take their rise in the world of duality.
As regards self-knowledge, Mahadeviyakka has something brilliant to say which is evidently born of her self-experience. No knowledge is of any avail unless it is grounded in self-knowledge.
The ancient Indian sages spoke about the twofold knowledge – the higher and the lower. Self-knowledge was the supreme knowledge and all other knowledge inferior. So too Mahadeviyakka held fast to Self-knowledge from the beginning. It is as if she had said: What does it avail a man if he gains the whole of knowledge and loses his Self-knowledge? To quote her own words:
What profit is it to know
All that there is, unless one knows
Oneself? When Consciousness becomes
One's own possession in oneself,
What need to learn from other lips?
As you, O Chennamalikarjuna,
Appeared to me as Consciousness yourself,
Through you I knew yourself, O Prabhu!
One more aspect of Mahadeviyakka's way of life reveals itself during her discussions with Prabhudeva and Basavanna. It is the due importance she has given to the body in the process of spiritual realisation. When Prabhudeva asks her how one attached to the form of body, life and mind can attain union with the formless Parabrahma, Mahadeviyakka's reply is that there is no harm in housing the Formless in the formed being. The body's passions are indeed dangerous, but if you fully understand the nature of the flesh and eliminate its passions, it serves as a means to your cherished end. The body, emptied of its earthly qualities, ceases to be the body. The same applies to the mind, life, senses and so on. Then alone are they fit for the Lord's habitation. Mahadeviyakka makes this point more clear:
While still in body's company,
I have become
Linga's companion;
And while in Linga's company,
I am
Body's companion.
Transcending the company of both,
I have attained to peace.
After forgetting this cluster of words,
What if one lives
An integral life?
Once I am joined
To Lord Chennamalikarjuna,
I do not recognise myself
As anything!
This vachana gives, perhaps, the essence of a sharana's life. Only through the body does he establish association with Linga. The Linga he wears is symbolic of the sharana's all-round activities being conduced in conformity with the Divine Will. He cannot go astray, because he is firmly and inseparably tied to the Divine Linga. And thus the earthly life is transformed into the Divine.
Mahadeviyakka's stay at Kalyana and her association with the great sharanas prepared her fully for the consubstantial union. At their feet she learnt the art of Divine life. Her vachanas in praise of the sharanas at Kalyana tell how the full growth of her personality was due to her personal contact with the Anubhava Mantapa.
Mahadeviyakka's departure from Kalyana to Shrishaila is in sharp contrast to the scene of her departure from Udutadi. Now we see her majestic personality, no more of this world. Vachana No. 76 marks her growth step by step:
Within the holy teacher's palm I had my birth;
I grew up in the grace
Of the innumerable ones:
Behold, they fed me on
The milk of live, on wisdom's ghee,
On sugar of the ultimate Truth!
On these three kinds of nectar they nurtered me
To surfeiting ...
My marriage you performed;
Gave me to a worthy groom; and you,
The innumerable ones, came out in crowds
To send me to my husband's house...
I act in that house so as to please
Basavanna; with hands knit
To Chennamalikarjuna's, I bring
Flowers for your heads; but, listen pray,
Never a straw; let all your feet
Do me the grace of going back ...
Hail, hail! I bow to you!
The vachanas she sang on the way to Shrishaila and at Shrishaila itself in the presence of her Lord are, apart from exquisite lyrical beauty, gems of mystic utterance.
Note:
Some attempts have been made in recent times to publish the original Shunyasampadane in Kannada; but for the benefit of non-Kannada readers, a
comprehensive edition with an English translation of each vachana and an introduction in English was felt to be necessary. This suggestion was,
in fact, made by Shri Kumarswamiji of Navakalyanamath of Dharwar. He also offered to help translate these vachanas into English and to write a
general introduction to the work. At that time, he was Honorary Professor of Veerashaiva Philosophy at the University; but owing to pressure of
other commitments he had to give up the teaching work in the University and also that of editing Shunyasampadane as he originally desired to do.
So an independent committee consisting of Dr. S.C. Nandimath, Prof. Armando Menezes and Dr. R. C. Hiremath was formed. This committee has now
completed the first volume of the work, consisting of the first three chapters of the Shunyasampadane. The remaining chapters will be published
in about five further volumes in the course of the next year or so.
Karnatak University
Dharwar, July 15, 1965
This article 'Shunya Sampadane - Sampadane of Mahadevi Akka' is taken from SHUNYASAMPADANE, Volume IV, 1970, KARNATAK UNIVERSITY, DHARWAD.
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