Purpose of Jyotiśa, duḥkhatraya and ṣaṭ ripu, planets and impact with examples. Devi Baglāmukhi.

Purpose of Jyotiśa, duḥkhatraya and ṣaṭ ripu, planets and impact with examples. Devi Baglāmukhi.

The primary purpose of jyotiśa enquiry is to find out the cause of suffering or duḥkha. All other reasons come back to this purpose. So what is duḥkha?  

According to sāṃkhya kārikā:

दुःखत्रयाभिघाताज् जिज्ञासा तदप१घातके हेतौ ।

दृष्टे सापार्था चेन् नैकान्तात्यन्ततोऽभावात् ॥ १॥

We are confronted with the three kinds of sufferings, so there is a desire to know the means of its removal (where Jyotiśa is a good tool). And if it is argued that the enquiry is unessential because some obvious means are available (E.g. Medicine), we must realize that these other means are neither complete nor everlasting.

The three categories of suffering are: ādhyātmika (caused by the body or mind of oneself), ādhibhautika (caused by other living beings) and ādhidaivika (caused by divine intervention) 

However, modern Jyotiśīs never enquire this, nor the seekers do ask for this. For e.g. someone is worried about relation. Here the seeker is looking at fruits of a tree. So is the case with the jyotiśa, both ignore to see the roots of this ādhibhautika duḥkha? It is like modern science which started from apple falling down and now moving towards self-enquiry.

The self is subject to ṣaṭ ripu. However these three duḥkha needs to be analysed first and then the shad ripu needs to be understood to remove this duḥkha. Ṣaṭ ripu are:

Kāma (Desire), krodha (anger), moha (Delusion), lobha (Greed), ahaṃkāra (arrogance) matsara (jealousy). However self-enquiry reveals that they are not outside. For e.g., you do not like a person and you get angry, then anger is your enemy or ripu, it is not that person. So is the case with other. For example, you love someone, then this delusion is your ṣatru not the person. People usually fight with others, but they do not realize that ṣatru is inside. All these ṣaṭ ripu are modes for karma and we are inflicted with three kinds of sufferings called duḥkha.

The sole purpose of jyotiśa is to find out the root cause of these sufferings. For example someone is suffering from a disease, so one must find out the cause of that disease. Whether it is in mind, others or there is some hidden divine reason. Once you find that out only then the remedies can be planted. For example, Venus is Kāma (ripu) and with ketu is causes duḥkha called moha Bhanga and the person become devadāsa, Mars is anger (ripu) and with Rāhu it causes volcanic eruptions of fire. But Mars is not the cause, neither the person who makes you angry, it is inside anger inside the body that needs to be cured.

These six sins are the root cause of troubles. In jyotiśa the planets and their placements gives us root cause of trouble. For e.g., a female was not getting married despite of her best tries. Mars was sitting in a bad house in Praśna and was connected to bādhā lord. So I enquired that did she rejected or break off with many boys. She told me that she has left many boys after affairs and one of them were very sad. One of those has actually cursed her and that is why the marriage was delayed. Here root cause is her (Kāma) which lured her into committing this mistake. If she cured her desires and then arrogance then the curse would not have taken birth.

So these curses originate from our six enemies sitting inside us. Not from other people, not from things or desires. The real purpose of mahāstaṃbhinī (Devi) is not to defeat the people or ṣatru, here real purpose is to defeat the six ripu inside us.  The sadhak who invokes her thinking that she will curb the enemy actually forgets, that the real enemy is we ourselves.