Life Is A Play – My Sanskrit Poem

life is a play

 

जीवनं कश्चित् नाटकम्

तस्मिन् लगु नटकोऽहम् ।

वायुना नीता वाणीव​

सञ्चराम्येतस्मिन् मीरे ॥

  • Shanmugam P

 

Transliteration:

jīvanaṃ kaścit nāṭakam

tasmin lagu naṭako’ham ।

vāyunā nītā vāṇīva​

sañcarāmyetasmin mīre ॥

 

Meaning:

Life is a play; I am a small player there.

Like how a cloud is led by wind, I move in this ocean of life

Author: Shanmugam P

I am a blogger and a self-published author. My book "The Truth About Spiritual Enlightenment: Bridging Science, Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta" is a guide to the ultimate freedom, bliss and oneness. The book is based on my own experience. My book "Discovering God: Bridging Christianity, Hinduism and Islam" shows how all three major religions of the world lead to the same truth. I am a past student of Sri Jayendra Saraswathi Swamigal Golden Jubilee Matriculation Higher Secondary School, Sankarnagar, Tirunelveli District.

21 thoughts on “Life Is A Play – My Sanskrit Poem”

  1. does enlightenment improves one’s IQ or does it make a person intelligent as said by Osho…

    And if it does, why didn’t any of the enlightened beings have ever contributed to science or other any other field(excluding spiritual).
    Does it kill all your passion or interest in fields other than spiritual let say science, engineering, medical, etc which are necessary for the overall development of the humanity? (Plz don’t take my question wrong…by no means, I am denying the fact spiritual path in itself is the biggest development for humanity).

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  2. Life is a play- Doesn’t life stops being playing.Why so foolishly playing unnecessarily.Have rest.
    I am a small player there- ‘I’ is enjoying the emphasis of small..see the subtle gratification.’there’,it is never there it is always here and now.This moment.
    Like how a cloud is led by wind- Yes the ‘cloud’ mind is always led stray by ‘wind’ thoughts. Don’t presume the ‘let go’ is here in these lines.Lines are still coming from backdoor of mind,not spontaneous.
    I move in this ocean of life-See ‘I’ is still there,much like the peepal plant,how many times you cut,it is still arising.Can’t you see? There has never been an ocean and why partial with life,death is there,too.

    Refining of your mind can go on till eternity,science, spirituality,this,that,those.
    Final benediction is not there, so instead witness this cunningness happening within you.You have already gathered much dust of knowledge and new ‘scriptures’. Stop being pundit of Osho and enlightened being of present times.

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    1. Thats a quite funny interpretation… Not sure why you have used my name to comment. 🙂 Sometimes I see the existence as God and myself as devotee; it is especially true whenever I see how miraculous this existence is… Whenever I see how much vast and infinite this existence is. Whenever I see the beauty of the leala, the divine play, my mind fills with gratitude. Because, once I was a miserable human being and I never thought that whatever that happened would have happened in my life. So, here the wind is the force of the absolute or God itself.

      I am just a puppet. So, whatever questions you have, please ask the divine which is actually moving this puppet.

      This may seem contradictory to advaita, the oneness. But that is the beauty of it. In one sense, there is an inseparable oneness, in another sense there is a flow of gratitude which can be only expressed this way, the way this poem has been written.

      The moment you said ‘enlightened being of present times’, I can somehow guess that you are a follower of someone who has told you something which is not true… There is really nothing like ‘enlightened being of present times’… But there are some gurus who give the implication that they are the only ones who are enlightened in this whole world. They constantly show themselves as somebody who is so special. Self-realization is the way out of suffering and it can happen to anyone. There are thousands and thousands of other people like me. I know that you will also interpret this by saying ‘Do you see you are still seeing thousands, multiplicity instead of oneness’? …Language is dual and it can be only used by provisionally accepting duality.

      There is nothing to witness anymore. I am both the witness and the witnessed.

      It is pretty possible to read scriptures just like gathering dust, get identify with them and carry a burden of concepts, ideas etc inside the head and this actually happens to people a lot. But my case is different. After seeing the truth directly, I also see the same truth expressed in many of our scriptures.

      Kindly don’t waste your time in giving me advice. I live like there is no tomorrow and there is nothing I can do about it.

      Liked by 1 person

  3. I am still waiting for an answer…both of the above comments doesn’t clarify my doubt. Also, I have mailed you Shanmugam through your contact tab in your blog. But I didn’t get any response from it either. Looking forward to your reply.

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    1. Let me ask you a question… are you seeking improved IQ or spiritual enlightenment?

      I have been getting many questions about things which do not matter for a spiritual seeker and I am usually less inclined to answer those questions. Anyway, if you ask about me, I am able to function with my fullest potential and use anything including my intellect to its fullest potential. But IQ (intelligent quotient) is different and I am not a expert on it; neither do I have the complete statistics of all the enlightened people and their before/after IQ levels. So I would be very careful to make such statements. I disagree with many statements made by Osho; he himself said that he may not be factually correct and his only intention was to make people aware, meditative and turn in. So, don’t take whatever Osho says for granted.

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    2. The above comments are not for you… The first comment with the name ‘Shanmugam P’ is not me.. 🙂 My comment is the one where you see my picture..

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  4. thanks, Shanmugam but you didn’t clarify the second part of the question, why didn’t any of the enlightened beings have ever contributed to science or other any other field(excluding spiritual). I mean they are at their full potential as you said.

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    1. I think you are oversimplifying it too much… A person who is self-realized may be anybody, he may be a farmer, a singer, a shopkeeper, a wanderic ascetic, an employee in an IT company etc. There are many factors which decide how his life will be after realization. Also, not everyone who says he is enlightened are enlightened, and not everyone who doesn’t say that are not enlightened. Not everyone who has contributed something to the world is popular and not everyone who is popular has really contributed something worthwhile to this world.. The world is too big to oversimplify things this way.

      Anyway, what exactly is the actual reason or concern of this question?

      Liked by 1 person

  5. I am very much interested in both science and spirituality. And its all about clarity and awareness of a person in both the fields. I have already mailed you my actual reason for this question.

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    1. If you are interested in both, then the life after self-realization will allow both of them to find expression… I can say this much.. You are totally unique, with unique capabilities and that uniqueness will certainly find its expression.

      I might have read your email. I do receive more emails these days and I am not able to respond to each one of them or remember all of them.

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  6. then why this uniqueness does not reflect in any of the enlightened ones. like why they all just talk about spirituality or relates fields only. I am not aware of any enlightened person who has contributed in such fields other than spirituality. Please throw some light on it.

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    1. Didn’t I already answer this question? You are talking as if you have the measuring scale to determine who is enlightened and who is not. You are also talking as if you know all the 7 billion people of the world very well.. You are also talking with an assumption then every enlightened person makes himself known as enlightened.. Come back with the details of all the people in the world who are self-realized (including the people who live in Congo, North Korea, Brazil, Mauritius, Vatican city and many other countries of the world that people usually never take into account when they talk about the ‘whole world’….

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  7. Thank you for answering that again. One more question :
    do all enlightened beings are on the same level (their experience of reality)as for say Buddha, Ramana Maharishi, Krishnamurthi, Osho, Vivekananda and many more. Does your experience exactly resonate with all these beings and there with each other.

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  8. My experience of reality resonates with how people like Adhi Shankara, Ramana Maharshi, J.Krishnamurthi, Osho and Nisargadatta Maharaj talked about it. Buddha rarely talked about experience and I haven’t read much of Vivekananda’s work recently. But based on what Buddha says, I can certainly say with confidence that his experience was also the same.

    But, it sounds like you may have a different understanding of what enlightenment is all about. Enlightenment is going beyond all the levels… It wouldn’t really make sense to talk about any levels here… Who is there is proceed to the next level?

    Many people approach enlightenment for wrong reasons. They think of it as another goal or ambition. They assume that there is still going to be a personal goals and ambitions after enlightenment. For me, spiritual path was the only choice there was. The path to spirituality opened up for me only when I completely ran out of any motivation to continue to live my life. About 16 years ago, all I wanted to do was completely disappear. There was no choice for me other than surrender to what is. It was a painful, miserable, and hellish life back then. But this doesn’t mean that this is how it happens for every person. It all depends on his nature and nurture. Traditionally, this is what people call as karma.

    Let me first ask you a question.. Why do you want enlightenment? What do you think it is going to give you? Will you trade your interest in spiritual path for 1 million dollars? If I tell you that I will give you 1 million dollars but you should not worry or talk about spiritual path or enlightenment ever in your life, will you agree? If no, please explain why…

    Liked by 1 person

  9. That’s not a bad deal, by the way ;). Actually, it’s not about money, IQ or anything that you may have assumed out of my questions. It’s about quenching the burning questions about life, cosmos, existence, consciousness and many more. But I think I am trying to understand things which are just meant for the experience.
    How authentic is this video? Did Vivekananda had deliberately left his body?

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  10. Notice the way sadhguru respond to her….. spontaneously in anger, when she tries to dig a bit more about this mind reading thing…..

    Is it true, about that tab thing….

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  11. hey Shanmugham,
    How can one validate that the experience of reality by an enlightened being is not due to their altered state of consciousness?
    let’s take an example of a person on LSD. He has all types of hallucinations and things going crazy in his reality if he is seeing a person that does not exist in reality, is because of a very chemical thing going in his head.
    So how to validate that the experience of non-duality by enlightened being is not just a chemical thing in their brain and their experience of reality is true reality.
    Also, let’s say a car is going hit an enlightened being but in his mind, the car and himself are one and the same thing, but he obviously can’t phase-out through the car, he has to step aside. And if fear is triggered because it is a safety mechanism of the body.
    Is it really the game played by this bliss molecule-DMT?

    Please, you can make a video on this if you want but do answer it.

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  12. Firstly, thanks a lot Shanmugham for your such efforts to explain things ,like you were completely bathed in sweat while making that video….might be you were in bathroom…please find a place where you are comfortable, also you can use mobile stand that will ease the pain in your arm while making these videos…….
    Secondly as I have told you, that may be my confusion and questions are the result of me thinking logically, or trying to understand things which are just meant to be experienced….
    And once again thanks buddy….

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