Avian Atman

Change of weather has brought migrating orioles to the garden. Their liquid lute-like calls remind your columnist of the famous twin birds' verse from the Rig Veda. "Two birds, close companions, beautiful of wing, cling to one common tree," says the Vedic seer. (Dwa suparna sayuja sakhaya samanam vrikshyam'

The birds in the verse are probably orioles, writes K N Dave in his Birds in Sanskrit literature, considering the epithet 'suparna' and thefact that one of the birdseats figs from the branch while the other is merely content to watch on.

In contrast, the great Vedic commentator Sayana looked upon the two birds as a metaphor for the vital and the supreme spirit, both dwelling in the same body. The vital spirit enjoys the fruit or rewards of actions while the Supreme Spirit is supposed to be a passive spectator.

Other scholars have interpreted the term two fair-winged birds ( dwa suparna) fancifully as "two species of soul; day and night; the Sun and Moon and even as stars or as sacred metres".

The Vedic verse itself, however, clarifies that the bird that eats is the individual immersed ( nimagno) in the world and, hence, has sorrow. When it sees the other golden-winged detached companion sitting poised upon the branch, its sorrow passes as well.

Shaking off from its wings both sin and virtue, the golden bird reaches its own supreme identity. As Rabindranath Tagore said, both birds are within us: the objective one with its business of life; the subjective one with its disinterested joy of vision. Their merger results into the Unified Whole.