This is a complete version of the blog on the poem by Bulleh Shah along with its explanations.
Explanation to Bullah Ki Jana main kaun
1.Max Mueller
Ancient philosophy, particularly if we consider that it exists now, and seems always to have existed, under three different forms, the Advaita school(non-duality school), the Visishta-advaita school(non-duality school, with a difference), and the Dvaita school (real duality school). The Advaita or non-duality school, chiefly represented by Samkara and his followers, holds that there is and there can be one reality only, whether we call it God, the Infinite or the Absolute, the Unknowable or Brahman, so that it follows by the strictest rules of logic that whatever is or seems to be, can be that one Absolute only, though wrongly conceived, as we are told, by Avidya or Nescience. The human soul, like everything else, is and can be nothing but Brahman or the Absolute, though for a time misconceived by Avidya or Nescience. The desire of each individual soul is not, as commonly supposed, an approah to or a union with Brahman, but simply a becoming what it has always been, a recovering and recollection of its true being, a recognition of the full and undivided Brahman as the eternal basis of every apparently individual soul.
The second school, called Visishta-advaita, or Advaita, non-duality, with a difference, was evidently intended for a larger public, for those who could not bring themselves to deny all reality to the phenomenal world, and some individuality likewise to their own souls.
Brahman does not possess any qualities(visesha), not even those of being and thinking, but it is both being and thought. To every attempt to define or qualify Brahman, Samkara has but one answer- No, No! When the question is asked as to the cause of what cannot be denied, namely, the manifold phenomenal world, or the world as reflected in our consciousness, with all its individual subjects, and all its individual objects, all that Samkara condescends to say is that their cause is Avidya or Nescience.
Avidya is neither real nor unreal, but is something exactly like our own ignorance when, for instance, we imagine we see a serpent, while what we really see is a rope, and yet we run away from it in all earnestness as if it were a real cobra. This creative Avidya once granted, everything else proceeds smoothly enough. Brahman(or Atman), as held or as beheld by Avidya, seems modified into all that is phenomenal. Our instruments of knowledge, whether senses or mind, nay, our whole body, should be considered as impediments or fetters rather, as Upadhis, as they are called, which one feels tempted to translate by impositions. And here the difficulty arises- are these Upadhis, these misleading organs of knowledge, the cause or the result of Avidya?
The omniscience and omnipotence of the Atman are hidden by its union with the body, that is, by the union with the body, senses, Manas(mind), and Buddhi(thought), the objects, and their perception as such. And here we have the simile: As fire is endowed with burning and light, but both are hidden when fire has retired into the wood or is covered with ashes, in the same manner, through the union of the Self with the Upadhis, such as body, senses, i.e., with the Upadhis formed by Avidya from Namarupa, names and forms, there arises the error of the Atman not being different from them, and this is what causes the hiding of the omniscience and omnipotence of the Atman. It is under the influence of that Avidya that Brahman assumes or receives names and forms. Then follow the material objective elements which constitute animate or inanimate bodies, in fact the whole objective world. But all this is illusive. In reality there are no individual things, noindividual souls (givas); they only seem to exist so long as Avidya prevails over Atman or Brahman.
2. Adi Shankaracharya
From the noumenal point of view, the description of neti, neti applies to maya also.
We can illustrate it thus
1. Gold is glittering yellow to our eyes and is valuable to us in our life. In itself, what it is who can say? It has no colour or glitter to the touch etc. It has no value to a baby or an animal. To the physicist it is only Protons and Electrons in a particular combination. These are mere relativistic conditional statements, real from a particular point of view only.
2. The sun is brilliant to the eyes and enables them to see. But if the eyes are not there, who can say whether the sun is really brilliant? The ears do not know it as brilliant. Further our idea of the sun is conditioned by distance, our astronomical and scientific knowledge, etc.
3. A book in itself is simply cut and bound paper, with ink spread on it in a particular way. It contains knowledge only to those who know the knowledge and script symbolized in it. the 'book' itself does not know anything; for the white ants it is only food. Thus 'we take out what we have put in', that is, all empirical knowledge is valid from a particular point or points of view. Similarly, our experience of the nature of maya and all its products is relative to, and is conditioned by, the state of our knowledge of Reality. As such, who can say, what maya really is in itself noumenally, and what is its nature from an unconditional absolut point of view in the non-dual state? And who is there to assert about maya itself when there is no experience of the universe or personality in the deep-sleep state or in samadhi, as long as one is in that state? That is why Sankara says maya is anirvacaniya rupa.
Thus, maya-Power, being the principle of Relativity, is experienced in some states and not experienced in others. But though maya, which is posited as an empirical fact, can be negated as an experienced fact in a particular state, the awareness of the Self(Atman) is always there; none can ever in any state negate Brahman as Atman, because it is his very Self, the Ground of all experience. Even to assert its absence, one must be there to witness its absence. However, maya is certainly experienced as long as the phenomenal personality is there and the universe is perceived, just as gold is yellow and valuable to us in life whatever it be in itself, or to the animals or to scientists. The fire may not feel itself hot, but others do feel and describe it as hot. A shadow is non-entity as it is experienced.
3.Chapter X of Srimad Bhagavad Gita
3. He who knows Me as the beginningless, the unborn and the Master of the worlds-he among mortals becomes undeluded, and he is freed from all sins.
4-5. Intelligence, knowledge, sanity, patience, truth, sense-control, mind-control, pleasure, pain, birth, death, fear and austerity, benevolence, fame and obloquy-all these diverse modes of the mind seen in all beings proceed from Me alone, their ultimate sanctioner.
4.Chapter 3 of Avadhuta Gita by Dattatreya, son of Atri and Anasuya
21. I have no such division as long or short. I have no such divisions as wide or narrow. I have no such divisions as angular or circular. I am the nectar of Knowledge, homogeneous Existence, like the sky.
22. I never had a mother, father, son, or the like. I was never born and never did I die. I never had a mind. The supreme Reality is undistracted and calm. I am the nectar of Knowledge, homogeneous Existence, like the sky.
25. How shall I, the pure One, the "not this" and yet the not "not this" speak? How shall I, the pure One, the endless and the end, speak? How shall I, the pure One, attributeless and attribute, speak? I am the nectar of Knowledge, homogeneous Existence, like the sky.
45. I am neither of the nature of the void nor of the nature of the nonvoid. I am neither of pure nature nor of impure nature. I am neither form nor formlessness. I am the supreme Reality of the form of its own nature.
5.Kahlil Gibran
The reality of the other person is not in what he reveals to you, but in what he cannot reveal to you. Therefore, if you would understand him, listen not to what he says but rather to what he does not say.
Half of what I say is meaningless; but I say it so that the other half may reach you.
When my cup is empty I resign myself to its emptiness; but when it is half full I resent its half-fulness.
The real in us is silent; the acquired is talkative. Only once have I been made mute. It was when a man asked me, "Who are you?"
6. ASH-WEDNESDAY (1930) by T. S. Eliot
If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
If the unheard, unspoken
Word is unspoken, unheard;
Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,
The Word without a word, the Word within
The world and for the world;
And the light shone in darkness and
Against the word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word.
O my people, What have I done unto thee.
Where shall the word be found, where will the word
Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence
Not on the sea or the islands, not
On the mainland, in the desert or the rain land,
For those who walk in darkness
Both in the day time and in the night time
The right time and the right place are not here
No place of grace for those who avoid the faceNo time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny the voice.
7.Adi Shankaracharya
Universe with its beings does not arise because we superimpose them on Brahman or the Self, as it is mistakenly thought of by some, which is an absurd position, but on the contrary, our conceptions of a given (to us) universe and an equally enigmatic personality, which we find ourselves associated with, the real nature of both of which we do not know, we always superimpose according to our various and ever-changing empirical notions, on the Brahman and the Self. It is illustrated by the common experience of our super-imposing, unwittingly, the notion of a snake on the not-clearly-visible rope in semi-darkness. When we bring in light and see clearly, we find the rope only, the notion of snake with regard to the rope disappears. That does not mean snakes do not exist. But it was not there where we had thought it was. It was not snake but rope only. Similarly, in the transcendental noumenal state, when one has realized one's true nature as Atman or Brahman, no universe is cognized in Brahman and no personality in Atman, there is only Pure Awareness (Prajnanam Brahma). But empirically speaking, the appearance of the universe and the personality may continue to be experienced by others who have not realized the Truth, since the given universe is beginningless and endless and is not the projection of any person within the universe and everyone finds oneself in it.
