Upadesa Saram Verse 2: Comments by Dr. Suryanarayana Raju

Verse2: Kriti mahodadhou patana karanam phalam ashashvatam gati nirodhakam.

kriti – maha – udau : The vast ocean of actions
patana karanam: is the cause for fall [spiritual fall]
phalam ashashvatam: The result is transient.
gati nirodhakam: acts to stop spiritual progress.

The reason for someone’s not progressing in spiritual path is getting lost in the ocean of actions.

Verse 2:

“Vast Ocean of actions cause us to fall from uninterrupted blissful self awareness which is our natural state to mere object knowing consciousness and result of the action is transient and obstruct our goal to posit the mind in the Pure conscious being.”

Comment:

To be in a state of bliss is inherent in every human being. When a person forgets the blissful nature of his self he tries to gain happiness through actions which cause comfort to the body and which satisfy the psychological needs of the mind. In the pursuit of happiness he indulges in actions which may give him pleasure which is always transient and always associated with the shadow of misery.

Pleasure and pain are always together in any action. Any form of action involves seeming movement of attention away from the self whose nature is bliss, towards an object which does not have the property of bliss intrinsically. So the pursuit of pleasure which is the result of self ignorance involves action which obstruct the recognition of our natural state of blissful self awareness. Actions always leads to formation of tendencies which obstruct our natural state of self conscious being.