Shloka 9
Daśa-lakṣaṇam: The Ten Topics, Virāṭ-Puruṣa Sense-Manifestation, and the Supreme Shelter (Āśraya)
एकमेकतराभावे यदा नोपलभामहे । त्रितयं तत्र यो वेद स आत्मा स्वाश्रयाश्रय: ॥ ९ ॥
ekam ekatarābhāve yadā nopalabhāmahe tritayaṁ tatra yo veda sa ātmā svāśrayāśrayaḥ
ဤသုံးပါးအခြေအနေတို့တွင် တစ်ခုမရှိလျှင် အခြားတစ်ခုကို မသိနိုင်; သုံးပါးလုံး အပြန်အလှန် မှီခိုနေသည်။ သို့သော် အားလုံးကို သက်သေခံ၍ ‘အားထားရာ၏ အားထားရာ’ ဖြစ်သော ပရမాత္မာသည် အားလုံးမှ လွတ်လပ်ပြီး၊ ထိုအရှင်သည် အမြင့်ဆုံး အားထားရာ ဖြစ်သည်။
There are innumerable living entities, one dependent on the other in the relationship of the controlled and the controller. But without the medium of perception, no one can know or understand who is the controlled and who is the controller. For example, the sun controls the power of our vision, we can see the sun because the sun has its body, and the sunlight is useful only because we have eyes. Without our having eyes, the sunlight is useless, and without sunlight the eyes are useless. Thus they are interdependent, and none of them is independent. Therefore the natural question arises concerning who made them interdependent. The one who has made such a relationship of interdependence must be ultimately completely independent. As stated in the beginning of the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, the ultimate source of all interdependent objectives is the complete independent subject. This ultimate source of all interdependence is the Supreme Truth or Paramātmā, the Supersoul, who is not dependent on anything else. He is svāśrayāśrayaḥ. He is only dependent on His self, and thus He is the supreme shelter of everything. Although Paramātmā and Brahman are subordinate to Bhagavān, because Bhagavān is Puruṣottama or the Superperson, He is the source of the Supersoul also. In the Bhagavad-gītā (15.18) Lord Kṛṣṇa says that He is the Puruṣottama and the source of everything, and thus it is concluded that Śrī Kṛṣṇa is the ultimate source and shelter of all entities, including the Supersoul and Supreme Brahman. Even accepting that there is no difference between the Supersoul and the individual soul, the individual soul is dependent on the Supersoul for being liberated from the illusion of material energy. The individual is under the clutches of illusory energy, and therefore although qualitatively one with the Supersoul, he is under the illusion of identifying himself with matter. And to get out of this illusory conception of factual life, the individual soul has to depend on the Supersoul to be recognized as one with Him. In that sense also the Supersoul is the supreme shelter. And there is no doubt about it.
FAQs
It teaches that the true Self is the underlying reality that makes the triad (such as knower–known–knowledge) possible; without the Self, the other elements cannot be perceived. That Self is the ultimate support—independent and the shelter of all.
To emphasize the Supreme’s absolute independence: all beings and principles depend on Him, while He depends on nothing outside Himself—He is self-established and the foundation of every other shelter.
By practicing steady remembrance and inquiry—seeing that experiences, thoughts, and identities change, while the witnessing Self (and ultimately the Supreme Self) is the stable foundation—one becomes less anxious and more devoted, grounded, and detached.