Shri Lalitha Sahasranamam: Namam 300: Shri Nama rupa vivarjita (OM nAmarUpavivarjitAyai namaH)

In Namams 275 to365, the Divine Mother’s  many forms providing benefits to Her devotees in great details are discussed. 

The Divine Mother has no real name or form. She is identified or called in many rupa forms depending on the circumstances and need. 

The Divine Mother is beyond Namam and rupa. The sound is the initial part of the universal creation; that has a name attached to it. Things are called by names by their usefulness to mankind. The learned people in ancient days, when naming the objects had considered the sound created by the objects; then they appropriately named the objects to reflect their usefulness. 

Any object with a name is subjected to time, space and its usefulness. The Divine Mother is not subjected to any such constraint. 

Sea has waves reaching its shores. Major part of the seas is way beyond the waves reaching the shores; sea is very wide. The Divine Mother’s infiniteness cannot be mentioned or explained by any means. Even this 1000 Names Sahasranamam explains only a very small fraction of the Her total true self. She is true Supreme Self. 

When we realize that the five attributes of the universe namely are: existence (sat), knowledge (cit), bliss (ananda), name (namam) and the form (rupa) within the Divine Mother, which helps for us to understand Her better. She has the sat cit form within Her. She is eternal, not changing, shows no difference to various maturity level universal creatures, not decaying nor having any rupa. Due to names and rupas, the universe looks different at various locations. She is not in such names; She is there forever as Brahman. Of the five attributes referred earlier, in first three (sat-cit-ananda) are in Brahman and the other two are in the physical world. 

After calling the Divine Mother in earlier Namam 299 as Nada rupa (one having the sound form), saying that She does not have any form here looks contradicting. For anything that has been perceived by human senses, name and form are unavoidable. All things in this universe have names and forms; they are explicit manifestations of Brahman; we know the Supreme Brahman or Existence is without a given name or form. So there is no real contradiction in describing the Divine Mother without form or name or rupa.

 

                                                          Goddess Madurai Meenakshi 

with golden kreedam.

C  N Nachiappun          

Singapore, 20 November 2020.

 

References:

1.       The Thousand Names of the Divine Mother published in English by Mata Amritanandamayi Center, San Ramon, California, USA, with Commentary by T. V Narayana Menon

2.       Shri Lalitha Sahasranama Stostram published in Tamil by N. Ramaswami Iyer charities’ societies, Trichirapalli, India, with Commentary by C. V. Radhakrishna Sastry.

The Lalitha Sahasranamam published in Tamil by Shri Ramakrishna Thapovanam, Thiruipparaithurai, Trichy District, Tamilnadu, India with commentary by Shrimath Swami Sithbavandar