jagat (īśa 1)

The īśāvāsyopaniṣad starts as follows:

īśāvāsyam idaṁ sarvaṁ yatkiñca jagatyāṁ jagat || 1

All this should be covered by the Lord, whatsoever moves on the earth. (Panoli’s translation)

The word jagat is usually translated as “the world”, and bhāṣyakāra’s explanation, carācaram is usually translated along the lines of “everything moveable and immoveable”. This is a simple enough expression which didn’t warrant any additional explanation from ānandagiri.

However, understanding the word jagat and bhāṣyakāra’s explanation along the lines of the śānti-mantra adds another dimension to our understanding. This jagat is idam, and as we saw previously, idam is nāmarūpopādhi-viśiṣṭam. It is along these lines that we should understand carācaram.

The maṇiprabhā has this to say:

kārya-kāraṇātmakaṁ jagat carācara-lakṣaṇam

thus cara is kārya or the effect, and acara is kāraṇa or the cause. And this whole jagat, which bhāṣyakāra calls anṛtaṁ is a world of causes and effects, i.e. kārya-kāranātmakam. The prasāda commentary says the same thing using much simpler symbolic language where gacchati = kāraṇam and prāpnoti = kāryam.

yat jagat gacchati prāpnoti, idam …

and we can now string together all three commentaries to round out the picture.

caraṁ kāraṇaṁ gacchati, acaraṁ kāryaṁ prāpnoti iti jagat

It is always amazing to see the shades of meanings behind bhāṣyakāra’s words.