Kaarikaa

Maandookya Upanishad and the Kaarikaa on it. Bhaashya and Kaarikaa are required because the language and the presentation in the Vaidik literature is not easily understood by ordinary people.

Kaarikaa are long expository treatises and the Maandookya Kaarikaa is by Gaudaapaad (Param Guru of Aadi Shankar). Shankar has commented upon the Upanishad as well as on the Kaarikaa. Maandookya Kaarikaa is called Aagam Shaastra also.

Gaudaapaad has used this Upanishad in his Kaarikaa to expound A-Dwait Vedaant. This Kaarikaa has a total of 215 verses divided into four Prakran. These are -
1. Aagam Prakaran,
2. Vaitathya Prakaran,
3. A-Dwait Prakaran,
4. Alaata shaanti Prakaran.

Aagam Prakaran comments on the entire Upanishad, while the next three Prakaran are expositions of A-Dwait Vedaant from different angles. Vaitathya Prakaran deals with the unreality of the world and analyses the three states of consciousness. A-Dwait Prakaran establishes that Brahm is the one and only reality.

Alaata Shaanti Prakara refutes different schools of philosophy which existed at Gaudaapaad's time. It gives an example of lighted torch (Alaata) which when rotated appears like a circle of fire though no circle exists. In the same way, the Dwait Prapanch - the world of duality - is only an appearance.

The Kaarikaa ends with with a definition of Moksh or liberation as discovery of true nature of Aatmaa as Brahm. There is a description of the liberated man. There is gloss (by Aanandagiri) on the commentary of Shankar which elucidates it further.

3-5
Just as the air confined in various closed jars is not affected by the contamination within the jar, in the same way, even though a person, along with other human beings, contains the fraction of the same Supreme Soul, the other individual souls do not get contaminated by the deeds of a person who is steeped in self serving pleasure seeking.
[Commentary - This passage is part of Gaudaapaad's Maandookya Upanishad Kaarikaa.]

END OF MAANDOOKYA UPANISHAD