Taittiriya Upanishad Bhashya Vartika
by R. Balasubramanian | 151,292 words | ISBN-10: 8185208115 | ISBN-13: 9788185208114
The English translation of Sureshvara’s Taittiriya Vartika, which is a commentary on Shankara’s Bhashya on the Taittiriya Upanishad. Taittiriya Vartika contains a further explanation of the words of Shankara-Acharya, the famous commentator who wrote many texts belonging to Advaita-Vedanta. Sureshvaracharya was his direct disciple and lived in the 9...
Verse 2.227
Sanskrit text and transliteration:
तथा देहस्य दाहादौ दग्धोऽस्मीति च मन्यते ।
श्यामोऽस्मीति च देहस्य श्यामत्वं मन्यतेऽबुधः ॥ २२७ ॥
tathā dehasya dāhādau dagdho'smīti ca manyate |
śyāmo'smīti ca dehasya śyāmatvaṃ manyate'budhaḥ || 227 ||
English translation of verse 2.227:
Similarly, when the physical body is burnt, the ignorant man thinks, “I am burnt.” And also ascribing the blackness of the body to his Self, he thinks, “I am black.”
Notes:
Just as the Self must be differentiated from the subtle body, so also, it has to be differentiated from the gross body (sthūla-śarīra).
An ignorant person is one who is incapable of discriminating the Self from the physical body. He superimposes the characteristics of the body such as its birth and death, its blackness and whiteness, on the Self. When the body is burnt he thinks that the Self or the "I” is burnt. Finding that the body is black in colour, he thinks that the Self or the “I” is black. It is in terms of the erroneous identification of the Self with the body, which is not-Self, that we have to explain the locutions of the ignorant man: “I am burnt,” “I am black.”