Tiruvidai Marudur Mummanik-Kovai (10).

The tree of knowledge of good and evil is the Karmic Life of the individual, made up of the accumulated acts performed by him remaining in a perfect and unchangeable chain of causes and effects, following the man close like his shadow, as distinguished from the tree of life which is the light in him. It is this Karmic existence, this tree of shadow which the Buddhists postulated, and not anything like the tree of Life or the true soul postulated by the theistic Hindu Schools, and they recognized nothing higher than this inpermanent though continuous (as a stream) Karmic Life. To them, all existence seemed only as sorrow and evil, and complete cessation or annihilation of this Karmic existence, by the attainment of mere knowledge, constituted their highest end. To them there was no joy in life, and no means of attaining to such joy, as they would not recognize the all-loving Powers of the Supreme Lord, who could grant them such Joy, out of His immeasurable Grace. The Siddhanta no doubt postulated with the Buddhist that his body (birth and death) must cease, his feelings must cease, his life must cease, his understanding must cease, and that his egoism must cease.

But how and whereby could this cessation be brought about? The means are set forth succinctly in the tenth and eleventh Sutras of Sivajnanabotha.

As the Lord becomes one with the Soul in its human condition, so let the Soul become one with Him, and perceive all its actions to be His. Then will it lose all its Mala, Maya, and Karma.

As the soul enables the eye to see and itself sees, so Hara enables the soul to know and itself knows. And this Advaita knowledge and undying Love will unite it to His Feet.

They are, becoming one with God, and dedicating one's acts to God, and unceasing Love and devotion to Him. By such dedication, one brings himself in harmony with the divine law, and loses his pride of self-knowledge, and his own ignorance and Karma cease to operate, the man's whole being becoming beauteous by the Flood of His Grace. As clearly distinguished from the Buddhist ethics and psychology, the Siddhanti belives that his salvation cannot be secured except by such self-renunciation, and love of the Supreme.

He is the one not comprehended by the Gods and the wise. He is the Life of all life. He is the supreme panacea for all the ills of the flesh; and obeying His Law, no one knows death or birth. He is the shining Light of our dark existence. He is the one Joy, but not born of life, not born of Prakriti guna, or the world and the transitory; and partaking of this Joy, our highest desires are completely fulfilled, unlike the joys of this world which ever create a flaming desire, a thirst after them, more and more like the unquenchable thirst of the confirmed drunkard. This supreme and resistless Joy as shown in other stanzas of the 'House of God', fills our hearts, like the flood brooking not its banks, when, in all humility and love, our body and heart melt in His service.

The contrast between the transient world's joy and the Joy that transcends all states without end,

is well brought out in the following stanza by the same Saint Manickavachakar.

Taste not the flower-borne honey drop tiny as a millet seed,

Sing thou of Him who showers honey of bliss

So as to melt one's very marrow-bones,

While thinking, seeing and speaking aye and ever.

When this joy fills him, then does he sport in God, delight in God as the Mundaka says, then "does he love God, delight in God, revel in God and rejoice in God" as the Chhandogya puts it. In this condition of Svaraj, when he can exclaim I am the glorious of the glorious' neither pain, nor pleasures of this world, nor the fruits of the forbidden tree, can touch or attract him, though he desists not from doing his duty, such as truthfulness, meditation, tapas etc, and in this condition, even "if he moves about there, laughing or eating, playing or rejoicing (in his mind), be it with women, carriages, or relatives," (chandog viii. 12. 3) these acts will not affect him, as fire cannot burn a man who is practised in agni-stumbha (see the principle stated in Sivajnana Siddhiyar. X 5 & 6).

Compare this with the Christian aspiration to divine joy.

"If to any the tumult of the flesh were hushed, hushed the images of the earth, and water and air, hushed also the ruler of heaven, yea the very soul be hushed to herself, and by not thinking on self surmount self, hushed all dreams and imaginary revelation, every tongue and every sign, and whatsoever exists only in transition, since if we could hear, all these say we made not to ourselves, but He made us that abideth for ever. If then having uttered this, they too should be hushed having roused our ears to him who made them, and He alone speak not by them, but by Himself, that we may hear His word, not through any tongue of flesh, nor angels' voice nor sound of thunder nor in the dark riddle of a similitude, but might hear Whom in these things we love, might hear his very self without these (as we too now strained ourselves and in swift thought touched on the eternal wisdom which abideth over all) - could this be continued on, and other visions of far unlike be withdrawn, and this one ravish and absorb and wrap up its beholder, and these inward joys, so that life might be for ever like that one moment of understanding which we now sighed after, were not this, enter in My Master's joy" (St. Augustine's Confessions Book ix).