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Guru Vachaka Kovai
- Introduction
- Printed Version of the English Translation
- E-Book Version for Free Download
- Spanish Translation
Introduction
Guru Vachaka
Kovai (குரு வாசகக் கோவை) is the most profound, comprehensive and reliable collection of
the sayings of Sri Ramana, recorded in 1255 Tamil verses composed by Sri Muruganar, with an
additional 42 verses composed by Sri Ramana.
The title Guru
Vachaka Kovai can be translated as The Series of Guru’s Sayings, or less precisely
but more elegantly as The Garland of Guru’s Sayings. In this title, the word guru
denotes Sri Ramana, who is a human manifestation of the one eternal guru – the non-dual
absolute reality, which we usually call ‘God’ and which always exists and shines within each one of
us as our own essential self, our fundamental self-conscious being, ‘I am’ –, the word
vachaka means ‘saying’, and the word kovai is a verbal noun that means ‘threading’,
‘stringing’, ‘filing’ or ‘arranging’, and that by extension denotes a ‘series’, ‘arrangement’ or
‘composition’, and is therefore also used to denote either a string of ornamental beads or a kind of
love-poem.
Sri Muruganar first came to Bhagavan Sri Ramana in September 1923, and the next year he settled
permanently in Tiruvannamalai. So close was he to Sri Ramana that he came to be known as the
‘shadow of Bhagavan’, but his closeness was not only a closeness in terms of physical proximity. He
was truly close to the spirit of Sri Ramana, because he had surrendered himself entirely in the
perfect clarity of non-dual self-consciousness, which is the true form of Sri Ramana, and thus he
had merged and become one with him.
However, though he was inwardly one with Sri Ramana, outwardly he always behaved as a humble
disciple, and thus he exemplified the teaching that Sri Ramana has given us in verse 39 of
Ulladu Narpadu – Anubandham:
Always experience advaita [non-duality] in [your] heart, [but] do not ever [attempt to]
practise advaita in action. O son, [practising] advaita in the three worlds [that is,
before the three forms of God, Brahma, Vishnu and Siva, in their respective worlds] is [perhaps]
acceptable, [but] know that displaying advaita with guru is not acceptable.
That is, even though we may act as if we are one with Brahma, Vishnu or Siva, whose respective
functions are to create, sustain and dissolve this world-illusion, we should never act as if we are
one with guru, whose function is to destroy our self-ignorance, which is the root cause of
our primal illusion that we are this object-knowing consciousness that we call our ‘mind’, because
even though our mind may have the power to create, sustain or dissolve an entire world (as it does
in dream), it does not have the power to destroy its own self-ignorance, without which it cannot
exist. Moreover, advaita can never truly be practised in action, because it is an action-free
state of being. Action is possible only in a state of duality, because we can do action only when we
mistake ourself to be a body or mind, which are the instruments through which we seem to do action.
In accordance with this teaching of Sri Ramana, Sri Muruganar exemplified the humble state of being
a true disciple, and hence (as I have explained
elsewhere)
he never allowed anyone to consider or treat him as guru. Even after Sri Ramana had left
his physical body, Sri Muruganar discouraged devotees from considering either himself or any other
disciple of Sri Ramana as guru, saying that for devotees of Sri Ramana no other guru
is necessary, because he is always living within each one of us as our own self, guiding us
unfailingly towards our final goal, the egoless state of true self-knowledge.
All of us who sincerely wish to understand and practise the teachings of Sri Ramana have to be
grateful to Sri Muruganar not only for recording many of his precious teachings in
Guru Vachaka Kovai, but also for eliciting most of his finest verses
of upadesa or spiritual instruction, including all of
Upadesa Undiyar,
Ulladu Narpadu
and Anma-Viddai,
and many of the verses of
Ulladu Narpadu – Anubandham,
Ekatma Panchakam
and Upadesa Tanipakkal.
During the twenty-six years that he lived as the shadow of Sri Ramana, Sri Muruganar composed
thousands of verses recording his oral teachings, but unfortunately about a thousand verses were
accidentally lost, so we are now left with only 1255 of these precious verses. Of these extant
verses, about 850 were published in 1939 under the title
Guru Vachaka Kovai.
After this first edition of Guru Vachaka Kovai was published, Sri Muruganar continued to compose
verses recording the oral teachings of Sri Ramana, so in 1970, when Sri Ramanasramam decided to
publish a second edition, Sri Muruganar asked Sri Sadhu Om to gather and incorporate in it all such
verses that were not in the first edition. Therefore, when the second edition of
Guru Vachaka
Kovai was published in 1971, it contained 1254 verses composed by Sri Muruganar and 28
verses composed by Sri Ramana (which are numbered B-1 to B-28).
Subsequently Sri Sadhu Om found one more verse composed by Sri Muruganar (now numbered verse 592-a)
with a note indicating that it was to be included in
Guru Vachaka
Kovai, so he added it in the appendix of his
Tamil prose rendering, Guru Vachaka Kovai – Urai, which was published first in 1980 and
again in 1997. In the same appendix, he also included eleven other solitary verses composed by
Sri Ramana (now numbered verses 114-a, 224-a, 492-a, 603-a, 603-b, 1027-a, 1127-a, 1141-a, 1147-a,
1172-a and 1173-a), which were not included in Sri Ramana Nultirattu, the Tamil ‘Collected
Works of Sri Ramana’. Still later, in 1984, when he compiled all the twenty-seven solitary verses
composed by Sri Ramana that contained spiritual teachings but were not included in Sri Ramana
Nultirattu into a collection that he entitled
Upadesa Tanipakkal, Sri Sadhu Om decided that three more of these
verses should also be included Guru Vachaka Kovai, and these are now numbered verses 227-a, 420-a
and verse 603-c.
Therefore the third edition of Guru Vachaka Kovai, which was published in 1998 (along with Sri
Muruganar’s own Tamil prose renderings and explanatory notes for many verses), contains a total of
1297 verses, of which 42 were composed by Sri Ramana and 1255 were composed by Sri Muruganar. Though
some of the 42 verses composed by Sri Ramana were not composed specifically for inclusion in
Guru Vachaka
Kovai, many of them were, because when Sri Bhagavan read the verses composed by Sri
Muruganar, he occasionally decided to compose a verse of his own expressing the same idea in an
alternative form that was more compact, clear or beautiful.
Sri Muruganar showed all or at least most of the verses of
Guru
Vachaka Kovai to Sri Ramana as and when he composed them, and Sri Ramana read each
of them carefully and often modified them, changing some words or the manner in which some
ideas were expressed. Therefore, except Nan Yar?, which he rewrote as an essay,
Guru
Vachaka Kovai is the only record of his oral teachings that he checked and modified
with so much care and attention.
Thus we can confidently rely upon each verse of
Guru
Vachaka Kovai as being an accurate record of a teaching that Sri Ramana expressed
orally. Moreover, Guru Vachaka Kovai is not only a completely reliable record
of many of his oral teachings, but is also a very comprehensive one. Though many of the
verses that Sri Muruganar composed recording the sayings of Sri Ramana were unfortunately
lost, and though there are no doubt many important ideas that Sri Ramana expressed orally
but Sri Muruganar did not have the opportunity to record, this work nevertheless records
a very significant proportion of the most important teachings that Sri Ramana gave on a
broad range of subjects, and hence it is truly comprehensive both in terms of the breadth
of subjects that it covers and in terms of the depth of the teachings that it contains on
each of those subjects.
However, though Guru Vachaka Kovai contains such a vast wealth of important
teachings of Sri Ramana, for a long time it was a treasure-house that was accessible
only to relatively few of the many devotees who sincerely wished to understand and practise
his teachings. Not only was it recorded in Tamil, which is a language that most of Sri
Ramana’s followers unfortunately do not understand, but it was composed in a classical
style of Tamil poetry that many Tamil-speaking people find difficult to understand. Knowing
this difficulty, Sri Muruganar himself wrote Tamil prose renderings and explanatory notes
for some of the verses, all of which have now been included in the third edition of the
original Tamil text.
However, Sri Muruganar wrote explanations in Tamil prose for only some of the many verses
of this important text, and since the style of his Tamil prose is as classical as the style
of his poetry, even well-educated Tamil-speaking people find that his prose is almost as
difficult to understand as his poetry. Therefore in the 1960’s, when some Tamil devotees
of Sri Ramana asked Sri Muruganar to explain to them the meaning of the verses of
Guru
Vachaka Kovai, he advised them to ask Sri Sadhu Om to explain their meaning, because
he knew that Sri Sadhu Om clearly understood his Tamil poetry and was adept in explaining
the teachings of Sri Ramana in a simple style of Tamil that any Tamil-speaking person could
easily understand.
Thus at Sri Muruganar’s request Sri Sadhu Om began to explain the meaning of all the verses
of Guru
Vachaka Kovai, and those who heard his explanations found them so valuable that they
asked him to dictate a prose rendering for each verse. In this way over a period of several
years Sri Sadhu Om’s Tamil prose rendering and explanatory notes for the whole work came to
be written.
In the meanwhile Prof. K. Swaminathan had begun to translate
Guru Vachaka Kovai into English for serial publication in
The Mountain
Path, but since he had difficulty understanding many of the verses, he often wrote to
Sri Sadhu Om asking for clarification, particularly with regard to the meaning of rare words
or words that Sri Muruganar used in a special sense. Therefore, to assist him in his translation,
Sri Sadhu Om began to send him gradually his Tamil prose rendering for each verse, along with
a padacchedam (a splitting of each verse into individual words) and an arumpadavurai
(a note giving the meaning of each rare word)1.
During the last eighteen years of Sri Muruganar’s bodily life, Sri Sadhu Om worked with him
very closely, helping to copy, preserve, copy-edit and classify all his unpublished verses, and
assisting him in the editing and proof-correction of several of his books. Finally, before he
passed away in 1973, Sri Muruganar said that all the manuscripts of his unpublished works
should remain in the care of Sri Sadhu Om, and that if any of them were to be published, they
should be published only under his supervision.
Knowing the great value of Sri Muruganar’s verses and of Sri Sadhu Om’s Tamil prose rendering
of Guru
Vachaka Kovai, Prof. Swaminathan wanted all of them to be published, so he managed to
obtain a grant of financial assistance from the Government of India, Ministry of Education,
to enable Sri Ramana Kendra, New Delhi, to publish both Sri Ramana Jnana Bodham, a
nine-volume collection of all the previously unpublished verses of Sri Muruganar, edited
and arranged by Sri Sadhu Om, and Guru Vachaka Kovai – Urai, Sri Sadhu Om’s
Tamil prose rendering of Guru Vachaka Kovai.
The printing of Guru Vachaka Kovai – Urai and the nine volumes of Sri Ramana Jnana
Bodham took more than ten years to complete, because Sri Sadhu Om had to do most of the
editing, copy-editing and proof-correction without any assistance. The printing of Guru
Vachaka Kovai – Urai was completed in 1980, and most of the volumes of Sri
Ramana Jnana Bodham were printed by 1985, when Sri Sadhu Om suddenly passed away.
Fortunately, however, he had finished editing the remaining volumes in preparation for
print, so the entire project was completed a few years later.
When I first met Sri Sadhu Om in 1976, I found that much of his time was taken up by a steady
stream of visitors, who came to ask him questions about the teachings of Sri Ramana, but
whenever he was on his own he would take the opportunity to work either on the editing of
Sri Ramana Jnana Bodham or on the revision of Guru Vachaka Kovai – Urai in
preparation for print. If I came to him during such quiet moments, I would ask him about
the verses he was reading, and he would explain to me their meaning. I was fascinated by
the wealth of profound ideas expressed in the verses of
Guru
Vachaka Kovai and Sri Ramana Jnana Bodham, but I hesitated to visit Sri
Sadhu Om too often, because I did not wish to interrupt the rare moments that he had to
attend to his work on these texts.
Therefore I began to read Prof. Swaminathan’s translation of
Guru
Vachaka Kovai in old issues of The Mountain Path, but as I read it I found many verses that I wanted
to understand more clearly, so I occasionally went to Sri Sadhu Om to ask him for clarification.
He patiently answered all my questions, and eventually one day in May 1977 he suggested that
since I was so interested in the meaning of each verse, we could begin to make a fresh
translation together.
From that day onwards I visited him every day, and he would explain to me the meaning of
the verses one by one. At first I would write the meaning as he explained it to me, but
after a few days he began to write the meaning on a slate in his own style of English, and
I would ask for more clarification, and would then rewrite his translation in clearer English.
Unfortunately in those earlier days I was only just beginning to learn a little Tamil, and my
understanding of Sri Ramana’s teachings was still quite superficial, so my rewriting of his
rough English translations produced a less than perfect result. However we continued to work
on our translation for several years (alongside various other translations that we commenced
in the meanwhile), and as time went by my understanding both of Tamil and of Sri Ramana’s
teachings improved, so our translation of the later verses is more accurate than our
translation of the earlier ones.
Printed Version of the English Translation
Sri Sadhu Om and I intended to revise the first draft of our translation, but unfortunately
we never had time to do so. Therefore I hope that one day I will have time to revise it
thoroughly and to bring out a new and more accurate translation. In the meanwhile, however,
many people who read the existing first daft of our translation found it to be very useful
and sufficiently clear, so they suggested that it should be published as it is. Therefore a
few years ago, when David Godman
asked me if he could post our translation on his
website,
I agreed, but asked him to mention that it is only a rough first draft, and that I hope to
revise it thoroughly in future.
I am grateful to David Godman
for taking the initiative to post it on his website, because this made it available to
much wider audience, and eventually lead to its publication in print. After reading it
on his website
some Australian devotees of Sri Ramana offered to finance the printing of it, so it was
published as a book in 2005 by
Sri Arunachalaramana Nilayam in Tiruvannamalai.
Copies of this printed book can be obtained from
Sri
Ramanasramam Book Stall,
Sri Arunachalaramana Nilayam or the
Buy Books page of David Godman’s website, as explained in more detail in the
How
to buy books by Sri Sadhu Om and Michael James section of the
Books page
of this website. Other information about this book is given by David on the
Guru
Vachaka Kovai – printed book page of his website.
E-Book Version for Free Download
The e-book
copy of Guru Vachaka Kovai that I have posted
here
was created by John Manetta in 2004 (before it was printed as a book) for the use of the
members of the Ramakrishna-Vedanta Study Circle in Athens. John created this neatly
formatted e-book from the six PDF files2
of this translation that David posted on his
website, and
he compiled a hyperlinked table of contents and bookmarks for each chapter. He also included
in it a copy of David’s introduction.
In order to download this e-book, you can either left-click on the following link to open it
in your web browser, after which you can save a copy, or you can right-click on this link
and select ‘Save Target As…’ from the pop-up menu:
Guru Vachaka Kovai – e-book
Spanish Translation
This English translation by Sri Sadhu and me has been translated into Spanish by
Pedro Rodea. An e-book copy
of his translation is available on his
website, and can be accessed by clicking on the link
Guru Vachaka Kovai (La Coleccion de Enseñanzas de Sri Ramana
Maharshi. Por Sri Muruganar). Information about the printed copy of this translation
and where it can be purchased is available on the Sri
Ramana Maharshi page of the Ignitus section of his website.
_______________
NOTES
- This padacchedam and arumpadavurai for each verse are
now included in the third edition of the original Tamil text of
Guru
Vachaka Kovai. [To return to text, click here.]
- Guru Vachaka Kovai 1-153,
Guru
Vachaka Kovai 154-265, Guru Vachaka Kovai 266-383,
Guru
Vachaka Kovai 384-501, Guru Vachaka Kovai 502-877 and
Guru
Vachaka Kovai 878-1254. [To return to text, click here.]
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