Note: In Ramalingam’s view, falling into forgetfulness and descending into the dark abyss of ignorance of the existence of OmniLight is the original calamity.
Arutperunjothi Agaval: Couplet: 395
உயிருறு மிருவினை யுறுவிரி வனைத்தும்
அயர்வற வடக்கு மருட்பெருஞ் ஜோதி
Good,
Bad,
Pleasurable,
Painful,
Two-fold causality,
Two-fold chain
Of
Karma,
Coiling,
Encircling,
Exhausting,
Binding,
Beings.
Forked
Streams
Of
Karma,
Flowing,
Spreading,
Rising
Currents
Of
Suffering,
Or,
Satisfaction,
Baneful,
Or,
Blissful,
Controlled,
Curbed,
Capacitating
Conquest
Of
Karma,
Eliminating
Exhaustion,
Consummately
By the Supreme Compassion Of OmniLight!
Note: The key expression “இரு வினை” (Iru Vinai) refers to the two-fold karma: (1) karma generated by morally good actions which leads to pleasure or happiness, and (2) karma created by morally bad actions which results in pain or suffering.
This couplet affirms that the effects of all causal or Karmic chains initiated by the actions of living beings are subject to the supreme dispensing, regulating, controlling, curbing powers (அடக்குதல் – adakkudhal) exercised on the cosmos, universe, world, and body by OmniLight in accordance with self-determined laws. The eventual liberation of souls from the bonds of karma, not their endless entrapment in good or bad karma, is the keynote of this supremely compassionate regulative action of the OmniLight.
These couplets imply that order in the universe, and in any world, is the result of the supremely compassionate controlling, curbing, and regulating action of OmniLight. Law-governed dissolution or destruction of physical, or material, forms or structures is an aspect of this constructive action.
The need for this controlling, curbing, and regulating action by OmniLight arises because of the nature of the stuff of the habitat of souls developing from a state of ignorance toward knowledge. This is the அசுத்த மாயை (Asuddha Mayai) or the original dark stuff of our universe and its tendency to produce random variations, distortions, and deficiencies (“மாயையின் விகற்ப ஜாலங்கள்“, as Ramalingam puts it in his essay “JeevaKarunya Ozhukkam” on compassion for living beings). It is also the basis of the phenomena of suffering of living beings.
It may be that the condition of ignorance in the consciousness of individual souls has tainted and warped the matter or stuff of the universe in which they have taken birth to progressively achieve freedom from that original ignorance. I will pursue this topic in other posts.
The Arutperunjothi Agaval is Ramalingam’s magnum opus of enlightenment poetry composed in 798 couplets in 1872.
In later posts, I will offer commentaries on these verses.
THE IMMORTALIZING WAY OF OMNILIGHT (அருட்பெருஞ்ஜோதி பெருநெறி) 