The verse and its meaning · Gaudapada's Karika · Gaudapada — Not Two

A Made Thing Cannot Last

Gaudapada Karika 3.21

न भवत्यमृतं मर्त्यं न मर्त्यममृतं तथा । प्रकृतेरन्यथाभावो न कथंचिद्भविष्यति ॥ स्वभावेनामृतो यस्य भावो गच्छति मर्त्यताम् । कृतकेनामृतस्तस्य कथं स्थास्यति निश्चलः

Meaning · English

The deathless never becomes mortal, and the mortal never becomes deathless. A thing's own nature can in no way turn into something else. If one whose nature is deathless were to pass into mortality, his deathlessness would be something made. How could a made thing stay firm and unmoving?

Three words carry this. Amrita means deathless, literally not-dead. Martya means mortal, bound to die. Prakriti means nature, what a thing is made of from the start, from a root meaning to put forth. Svabhava is close to it: one's own way of being. Kritaka means made or produced, from the root kr, to do or make. Gaudapada's first claim is that a nature cannot be swapped. What is deathless does not turn mortal, and what is mortal does not turn deathless. The second claim is the trap. Suppose someone says the deathless self first becomes mortal and is later freed. Then the deathlessness was never its own nature. It was produced, like a pot or a bridge. Anything produced has a beginning, and anything with a beginning has an end. So that deathlessness could never be steady. He teaches this because the opponents in the surrounding verses grant that the self is unborn and still say it is born. His reply is that the two cannot both stand. Shankara's reading is that this is a argument from the nature of things, and the commentators take it as a test any claim of liberation must pass. Nagarjuna also argues that an own-nature cannot come and go, though he draws different conclusions from it. The listener is asked to see that what is truly one's own cannot be gained or lost.

A sandcastle stands on the shore, and the evening tide takes it. The beach beneath it was never built by anyone and is not taken. A deathlessness that had been built would be the castle, going with the first wave. Gaudapada points to the beach.

1. Tonight, take an old photo of yourself from ten or more years ago and look at it for five minutes. 2. Say aloud, one by one, what has changed: face, size, job, opinions, fears. 3. Then notice who is looking at the photo, and whether that one feels newly made or just the same one looking. 4. Write one line on what you found and leave it unargued.

A man of fifty sits with a shoebox of old photographs. He is the boy on the cricket field, and he no longer has that boy's knees, hair, or certainty. He feels a small lurch, as if someone has been replaced. The verse gives him a way to hold the lurch. Ordinary experience confirms that body, mood, and opinion shift at every age. He can list each change honestly and then notice that the one doing the listing has not been listing itself as one more change. The text calls that unchanging witness the nature that was never made, and so cannot be unmade. He does not have to defend the boy or mourn him, because what he is looking from was present in both pictures. The verse does not promise that the lurch will vanish, that the knees will mend, or that grief for a lost time will stop. If the heaviness stays for weeks, or sleep and appetite fail, a doctor is the right person to see.

अर्थ · हिन्दी

In this book

• Before: The Deathless Cannot Die · Gaudapada Karika 3.19
• Next: Born by maya alone · Gaudapada Karika 3.23
• All of Gaudapada's Karika · Ask Krishna about it

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