|
|
| Home
> Books > Guru Vachaka Kovai |
| |
|
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 Book Trust 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.]
|
|
|
|
