Om srstisthityantakarine namaha, Salutations to the Sun who the source of the functions of creation, maintenance and dissolution. All forms of life, mineral, plant, animal and human mirror the three phases of the Sun, and are birthed, sustained and brought to their end with the self-effulgent Sun!
glossary
srsti – creation
srsti-sthiti – creation and maintenance
sthiti – maintenance
anta – dissolution
anta – of dissolution
anta – destruction
Everything is Brahmam
The very young child reaches out and grasps everything it sees; relationships and artificial attachments form right from childhood. Humankind has to give up such assumed relationships and artificial attachments through rigorous analysis of their nature and give them up as quickly as possible. This is what the Sun teaches as the lesson of renunciation, srstisthityantakarine. Attachment breeds fear and egotism. Only the unwise would yield to such worldly fancies. The wise can never bow to the blandishments of objective desire. The wise recognise that the Sun as srstisthityantakarine is karaka, signifier of everlasting Truth – everything under the Sun will pass – and adhere to the immortal virtues that the Sun represents.
Time, patience and age bring us to wisdom – those who are slated to achieve wisdom this time. That is the task of the planets, as givers of magnetism, as givers of this or that quantity of light energy within, the self-effulgent light of the Paramataman whom they serve, and whom the Sun serves also. The Sun, as srstisthityantakarine is signifer of Brahman, the source of the origination, maintenance and disintegration [srishti, sthithi and anta] of this perceptible Cosmos. Brahmam is the entity from whom this Jagath [this apparently concrete ever changing product of the tendency of the mind to visualise] has originated. Just as the child is grasping all that it sees and forms attachments, so also, the mind assumes this Jagath (ever-coming, ever-going) Universe it perceives is unchanging and permanent; the impermanence of all things has not yet entered the mind. Maya, the curtain of illusion, is fed by the self-effulgent Sun, whom, as Suryanarayana, sheds its light within upon the wise and the ignorant.
This Universe which we perceive as unchanging is maintained as an organisation – a solar system, a galaxy, a Milky Way – in spite of the ever-present flux, by Brahmam. This ultimately subsides or merges in Brahmam Itself. Astronomers now realise due cosmic microwave background (CMB) – the electromagnetic radiation left over from an early stage of the universe in Big Bang – that there have been multiple Big Bangs in multiple Universes. Ekam sat, viprah bahuda vandanti: Should there not be One who designs and decides on some sort of control and regulation of this Universe? Underlying the three phases of the Universe – Jagath – mentioned above, one can cognise the inter-penetrating order and all-comprehensive Wisdom: Origination, Maintenance and Disintegration – from whom that is Brahmam.
We can know a great deal about the nature of the Cosmos. But the instrument of knowledge we possess is the human eye, is it not? Netra is Sastra, is it not? (What the eyes see is sacred scriptures, is it not?) Physical sciences have discovered much, but all that has been discovered by the human mind, is it not? They describe and analyse things as they are. However, how long do they exist as now? They are subject to modification each moment. The Sun, srstisthityantakarine, does its duty: self effulgent, it gives light, so that mineral, plant, animal and human life may birth, have being, plod toward their azimuth and pass, returning to dust. But, in spite of the inescapable change that affects all things, one is aware of a truth or fact that is not affected in the least. That unchanging principle is the basis on which the three phases are manifested. That Principle is Brahmam, the Eternal Base, the Unmoving, the One, the Sathya, Truth.
Download 108 Names of Surya, the Sun
