4.UNCERTAIN EXISTENCE:-

Life ever unstable:-

"The water-drop rolling on a lotus petal has an extremely uncertain existence; so also is life ever unstable. Understand, the very world is consumed by disease and conceit, and is riddled with pangs."

 

 

Death, wealth, women, in the last three stanzas, now Acharya sees human life to be as uncertain as a minute drop of water trembling/unbalanced at the tip of Lotus petal. Life is uncertain in itself, and even during its uncertain existence it is consumed by disease and conceits, persecuted by a hundred different voiceless pangs!

 

In the first half of the slokam, Swamiji is pointing the mortality of individual existence. In the second half of the stanza, Acharya  points the pain-ridden nature of the world itself.  This is a typical example of pratipaksha  bhavana upon the individual and the total life.

 

 

Since life is so uncertain, and the world is in a sense nothing but sorrow, the general import of the verse is that there is no time to waste. Death rarely announces his visit, and unannounced he enters cities and hamlets, flats and fields. He respects neither the person nor the place that he visits. Therefore, strive right now. Now and here seems to be the urgency behind the slokam. "All is misery, all is momentary, momentary."

 

Swami Sankaracharya symbolises the extreme uncertainty of life, the analogy of a drop of water shakily rolling on the lotus petal has a deeper vadantic suggestion. This is unavoidable because Swamiji was at once the incomparable Advaita teacher of the world.

 

The lotus grows in water, exists in water, is nurtured and nourished by the waters. Ultimately, it is to perish in water. Naturally, the flower is nothing but an expression of the waters, sprung forth to manifestation due to the seed that was at the bottom!

 

Brahmam the infinite, the One-without-a-second, itself expresses as the lotus of the subtle-body ( Sushma Sareeram = The inner instruments of feelings and thoughts, constituted mainly of the mind-intellect equipment) due to its own sankalpa. Existing in the infinite Consciousness, divine and all-pervading, a minute ray of it (Atma) functioning in and through the lotus-of-the-intellect, is the unsteady, over agitated individual (jiva) which, when it leaves and transcends the intellect, comes back to merge with waters of Consciousness around. Students of Advaita philosophy can easily recognise in this picture an ampler suggestion .

The return of the shaky drop back to the waters of the lake is the culmination indicated by the Maha   Vakya, "THAT THOU ART"."