तस्माच्चिदप्यचिद्रूपं चेत्यरिक्तं तदात्मनि । जगत्ता तादृगेवेयं तावन्मात्रात्मतावशात् ॥ २४ ॥
tasmāccidapyacidrūpaṁ cētyariktaṁ tadātmani | jagattā tādṛgēvēyaṁ tāvanmātrātmatāvaśāt || 24 ||
Translation
Hence awareness, empty of the knowable, is in its own self of the nature of non-awareness; and this worldness is just so, because its self is only so much.
Word by word
- tasmāt
- hence
- cid
- awareness
- api
- even
- acid
- non-awareness
- rūpaṁ
- of the nature of
- cētya
- of the knowable
- riktaṁ
- empty
- tad
- its
- ātmani
- in self
- jagattā
- worldness
- tādṛg
- (tādṛk) so
- ēva
- just
- iyaṁ
- this
- tāvanmātra
- only so much
- ātmatā
- its self being
- vaśāt
- because of
Meaning
A hard verse, and the commentary reads it carefully. Awareness and non-awareness (cit and acit) are terms that depend on each other; where non-awareness is wholly absent, awareness too is "non-awareness": not in the sense of being dull matter, but in the sense that the word "awareness", which marks it off from what is not aware, no longer has anything to mark it off from. When the world dissolves, awareness's being turned toward the world falls away, and with it the world's being an object for awareness falls away too: that is "worldness" (jagattā), and it ends with its counterpart. Another commentary says that words like "awareness" are used of That only in a secondary, borrowed sense. So it is "not awareness" only as it is "not light": the name that belongs to one side of a pair does not fit what has no second.