Swami Chidananda

Here we shall throw light on light itself. kim jyotih? What is light, asked Sri Adi Shankara in a composition called ekashloki. A whole lot of spiritual insights are packed in a single verse. And that single verse embodies a dialogue.

The teacher asked the student, ‘tell me, what is light?’

The student says ‘during daytime light comes from the sun, at night from various lamps.’

The teacher says ‘that’s wonderful, but when there is sunlight or light of various lamps, how do you see that there is sunlight? How do you see that there is a lamp?’

The student says ‘Oh that is through my eyes, so my eyes are the light.’

The teacher doesn’t stop there, ‘when you open your eyes and when you close your eyes, how does knowing takes place? Light is where knowing take place, in darkness we would not know.’  So taking light in that sense the teacher persists.

The student says, ‘Oh yes, well, in knowing the opening and closing of eyes for me the source of knowledge is my mind, my mind knows, my eyes are open, my eyes are closed.’

‘Oh. And what is the light in which you know your mind itself?’ asked the teacher.

The student is really made to think very deeply or probably not think very deeply, even go beyond the thoughts. ‘How do I know my thoughts?’ and he says, ‘ tatraaham I am the light, I know thoughts’. To know objects there is sunlight or the light of lamp, but that is not enough. My eyes help me to know, behind the eyes there is mind and behind thoughts I am.’

And the teacher says ‘yes, you said it. You are therefore the supreme light. You are. And you are aware. As you are and you are aware, the mind, the eyes and then with the help of these accessories knowing takes place. The first and foremost knowing principle is you, yourself.  You are the light of all lights.’     

 That’s how Sri Krishna pointing to the Truth of our existence in the 13^th chapter of Bhagavad Gita calls it jyotishaam api tad jyotih lights of all lights.

    All work and all talk of co-operation are not really meaningful unless we eliminate, by noticing first and then eliminating this self centeredness in us.

 Behind all action there is hidden motive in us. We need to notice these undercurrents of seeking power, pleasure and position. Even while paying a tribute to somebody, in deeper level in us there is a calculation. So to notice these motives and undercurrents within us, a subtle Awareness is required and thus we take up this issue of Attention and Awareness, how it can transform our living.  Deep transformation is not through thought as it is through Awareness. So we shall try to throw light on these intricacies where the nature of Attention and Awareness will be clarified.  And we shall labour to show, this Awareness is not really a tool. Attention or Awareness is not an instrument, it is not something that we can bring and then drop.

     Attention or Awareness is not something with a beginning in time and ending in time.

 All else, including thoughts which are very subtle have a beginning and an end. And we are not to conceive Awareness as something in us yet another faculty. We are very prone to categorize it as another faculty, ability, a hidden resource, we have this jargon. We would like to call everything as resource, like we would call time as a resource. We have all these jargon in clever living.  We talk of various resources and classify them as tangible, intangible resources. Alas! All that classification is an indulgence of this over grown head of ours and Awareness is not within our head. Where is Awareness then?

Vedanta would say, ‘we are Awareness’. If we think Awareness comes in and goes out, it is like saying, ‘we are extinct or absent or dead in between’.

     Life is Awareness.

 Yet we shall show that there is some sense in talking about ‘paying attention’, ‘failing to pay attention’ etc.  What is meant by that?  In fact paying attention is not really bringing something into play, it is undoing certain obstacles. The Sun is always shinning. It happens. Clouds come and go. We can’t say, ‘the Sun wasn’t there in between’ though in ordinary language we do say, we might say the Sun is playing hide and seek today. But was the Sun doing anything at all?  It was the clouds which were moving. In the same way sometimes we do say, ‘I was not attentive, I was attentive, I was aware, I was not aware.’

     But more precisely Awareness is our very nature and all this needs to be understood as how there took place identification with some thoughts.  We as though descended into thoughts and saw things from the screen of thoughts.

 So we shall go into the nature of Attention and Awareness and try to appreciate how it can transform us.

Life is a whole lot of relationships. From the cradle to the grave, Life moves on in and through relationships. We are related to our own family members, neighbours, people at work, and people in the society at large. We are related to plants and animals, that is life. Very notably and therefore of practical importance is our suffering; typically, is in terms of relationships. If we have a sense of all love us, we feel like being on top of the world. All love us; makes me feel very good and sense of someone does not like me causes a jitter in me. And what do we do generally? There is an attempt on our part to usually react and take things in our hands and find a solution, do something about it. Or some of us want to go to a corner, meditate and change ourselves. We got a model, we have a picture—‘I will change myself. On one hand by intense meditation I will eliminate all my past hurt and pride etc. on the other, I will come back to relationship, thanks to meditation I will be a mature person and in that maturity there will be no more hurt, no more pride, I shall be moving through relationship without likes and dislikes.’  And that is the message we get from lot of scriptures, guru, tradition.

 However, as our own observation and our own understanding evolves, without blaming anyone, without blaming any scriptures, we find ‘hey, there is a greater depth to scriptural statements’. My personal understanding of scriptures today is that the scriptures arrange and organize thoughts on different levels depending on our maturity, we get locked. However, the scriptures have much more to say.  The very same scriptures which talk heavily in the language of punya-paapa right and wrong, dharma-adharma also has portions where they talk of stillness, where they talk of ‘no division’. So there is an array of various ideas.

     Right in the midst of relationship, right when someone hurts us not later on, not as a post mortem exercise, could we handle it? Could we be noticing not just the superficial layer of the hurt but our mind in its entirety?

 ‘I am hurt’, what does it mean? He said something in the light of which it appears I am not at all competent and I would like to be pictured as competent. I am attached to my image as a competent person, as a pious person. In terms of may be functional skills or in terms of moral fibre. In both there is a commonality, whether you put me down saying,  ‘You have the position of assistant professor of Mathematics but you do not deserve to be a lecturer in the institute, it’s through political string pulling that you arrived here everybody knows it, Ok!’ someone says.  So my knowledge of Mathematics is questioned and it hurts me. Or somewhere else the character, ‘you are very clever, very learned and very smart but you have no moral scruples, morally speaking you are unscrupulous fellow’ somebody says. So what is questioned there?  What is shaken? My picture of myself as an upright person. And the mind springs into reactions.  ‘Alright, I am not Gandhi or Vivekananda but I am better than him, how dare he says that?’ ‘First of all it is none of his business to make comments’ and so many reactions. So mind reacts in many ways.

 As there are reactions, as there is stimulus and as many things happen, that is where Attention and Awareness can come into picture in a very significant way. If we put what we should do with the situation as something to be done is another compartment. Now I am boiling but I say ‘I shouldn’t be getting angry, I shouldn’t be getting agitated’ but I am getting agitated. In this way what happens is, you lose an opportunity to get first hand understanding of who you are. You have certain sensitivity, certain sensibility, you have what is called touchy areas, you have certain things which you hold very dear to yourself, you have your dreams, you have your aspirations and it is quite a large mass of features. There is something we need to understand.  This may be rather challenging, this may be staggering and this may be rather hard for most people. At that time when we are hurt, when there are agitations we just don’t have control over anything. So we feel we need to something after we come home, after everything is done and when we are dying ducks and we have no energy at all. Why compartmentalize? Why judge ourselves as not really competent?

     To understand our mind when it is shaking, to understand the engine when there are sparks, when there is noise go and open the hood. Let the engine be on and see why is this peculiar sound coming?  Then you have a great chance of knowing the engine and here knowing the self, ego, the little self, the center of desire, fear and therefore hurts and disappointment, elation and feeling good. This is a structure of thoughts.

 The tragedy in our living has been there is always some kind of urgency. Look at what we do for so called earning a living. When we are in high school parents also tell us, we too believe; ‘first I must get into such and such course otherwise I miss the boat now, this is very crucial, critical year and when I get into such and such course, then I will look at the life as a whole.  Now shut your eyes to everything else and just this’.  So this problem of fire fighting, there are so many apparently immediate needs, there are immediate problems and we need to have an immediate solution and one after another. I would say if not always, most of these immediate problems and immediate solutions keep us in a superficial living. They prevent us from living in some amount of depth. And depth is possible by Awareness. This propaganda – this is important, this is immediate, this is urgent, one last time, push yourself, push yourself a little more is by thought what is called thinking. We think and think and think and the thinker in us is himself a heavily conditioned entity. The thinker is not pure, unbiased entity, therefore my thinking differs from your thinking, and my priorities differ from your priorities. How? Because one who sets the priorities here, one who sets the priorities there, one who defines the priorities there, is a programmed entity. We generally don’t look at that programming, that shell is not pierced, we look outward. So can we go a bit slower? Not at the cost of efficiency.

     Can we go slowly about life, so that we can understand an activity when it is taking place and not later on?

 Don’t do an introspection at night 11.30 pm, how I lived the day? Introspect as you are acting.  Right now for example, are you fully aware, why are you here? And am I fully aware why I am giving all these talks?

In fact to equate spirituality with giving lectures, talking, conducting some group activity is not very acceptable but in the world typically it is equated. There is some false equation. Really speaking look at spirituality in its essential nature.

     Whatever you are, whatever work you may be doing, to go about the day’s activities with Awareness is the hall mark of spirituality.  In that Awareness there is becoming a whole.

 Generally we are not aware when we identify with an image and protect it, guard it and seek to enhance it even better. Why do I guard? Day after day guard a certain picture. If I ask then I would say, in asking fundamental questions you will be required to change the very approach from thought being a problem solver to Attention being the problem solver. Because you find a thought, that is thinking, where there is a thinker who has questionable credentials. That’s how Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi with regard to ‘who am I?’ inquiry, very often gave the example of a certain thief who wore policeman’s dress and went about the whole town looking for thief.  The thief turned policeman.

 In the same way I am asking ‘where is the truth?’ or to be more precise, I am asking, ‘how do I end sorrow?’ ‘How do I put an end to my jealousy?’ but who is this ‘I’. This ‘I’ who is seeking to put an end is taken for granted. All of us take the sense of ‘I’ for granted and therefore we say, unless there is Awareness right when we are acting or doing some action on our part or stimulus from others and then respond to that stimulus from our part; there are several components and as all these are happening, if we are Aware, it would be a very different approach.

 To appreciate how this different approach could be potent, very significant, I need to show once more the limitation of thoughts as an approach. For example, I wear a special dress, with a special hat, special badge etc. go for a gathering with all this, thinking people will take notice of it. Some do not notice and some say, ‘what a wonderful hat’ I feel good about it. But surprisingly many others are not noticing it. Now there are two things here, one is there is self consciousness and I could think about it, ‘how come all are not taking note of my special attire?’ and analyze. But second thing I would like to touch on is, I would like to know in this whole process, I could pay attention to my seeking that attention and if I notice that I am seeking attention, up here the ‘I’ has risen, I notice this and in this noticing please ask yourself –  Is this noticing also is another thought?

     In fact pure noticing is not a thought. Thought has words, thought have images, thought has pictures, and thought has boundaries. Whereas pure noticing is free from thoughts.

 Now the wonder of wonder happens. When I intensely notice that I am seeking attention, in my noticing a whole lot of thoughts subside and in the process, self consciousness itself subsides. What is self consciousness? Whether it is good dress or suppose I have a scar on my face, I try to hide it with latest cosmetics but still it didn’t go. The whole, 100 people may not be concerned or if one or two watch, they do not make any issue. But I am very conscious, my mind as though says, ‘are they noticing this scar?’ this is self consciousness. Don’t we say about some people, ‘they have an air about themselves’ and for other we say, ‘O, what we like about her is, she is so unassuming, looking at all her achievement, anyone would have been full of pride, but she is unassuming, she is the same person whom we used to see in good old days.’  The person who has an air about him/her has this self consciousness. The second person who is unassuming I would say, he/she is living in Attention. The second person is able to see and as she sees it there are no thoughts in her about who she is. Please see the positions of Attention and thoughts about oneself towards each other.

     If I am seeing something with all Attention, there are no thoughts in me about who I am. And at other extreme, if I have lot of thoughts about who I am and I am thinking about, ‘do they know who I am?’  then I won’t see, even the simplest thing before me. It is like listening to a song, when there are no thoughts about yourself.

 In lot of traditional teaching this kind of being free from ego, being free from self consciousness, being free from the thoughts of who I am, in favorable or unfavorable sense, is connected to some kind of mystical experience and out of the way experience.

 Sri Ramakrishna was going in a horse driven cart on a busy street in Kolkata and suddenly he stood up and said, ‘maa, maa’ and his dhoti became loose and started coming down. The disciple around him told him, ‘thakorji, your dhoti is slipping.’ But he just went on calling ‘maa maa’ and they held the dhoti in place. After sometime when he came back to normal consciousness and he came to know of the situation, he replied, ‘you people were wondering, as my dhoti was falling and I was wondering that time my body was falling away somewhere’. He was having some kind of out of body experience. Leave alone the consciousness of dhoti, he was not conscious of his body and its certainly very inspiring and much to learn from it but I would say if we compartmentalize, spiritual maturity to losing body consciousness and to ecstasy to the name of Lord and say that alone is, there is terrible injustice to the essential teaching.

 What we need to learn from that example too is the common denominator to all excellent ways of living and that is the absence of concern about one’s image. But it need not be through forgetfulness but it could be through great Attention. Imagine one of you are going and the dhoti is slipping and you watch your mind. What embarrassment that is about to rise and in intense watching you say, ‘well, I have no secret to hide, what they will see will be in perfect accordance with the books of biology and anatomy. Ok, let me see’.  And in intense seeing you could be free from embarrassment. There is a certain spiritual maturity there, in being free from inhibition, not that one should do it, but I am throwing light on seeing the conditioning in our mind.

 All of us have self consciousness. This self consciousness is created by thinking. Thinking can sometimes be non-verbal, there may not be any language words, but there is subtle thought, ‘will someone judge me unfavourably, I hope they judge me as well done.’  So without words, there is machine of thought working at that time. Therefore there is nervousness. If one is totally Attentive, one sees, here is the flower vase which has roses. What is reality? Not Brahman, at that time the reality here is roses, thorn and beautiful vase with beautiful carving on it.

     A quiet mind, a still mind, no thought, especially no thought about one’s image. That would be an unassuming simple mind.

 It is said, when sage Vyaasa came to the palace of Hastinapura, he was not very good looking. He was tall, dark, with big beard, little terrifying. The two queens Ambikaa and Ambaalika were very nervous. Ambikaa closed her eyes as she embraced him and with his spiritual power he made her conceive and that is how Dhrtaraashtra was born blind. And Ambaalika was also nervous but she didn’t close her eyes and she as though got bleached and therefore son was born all white –Paandu and it was the servant maid who was very unassuming, simple who saw that this is a mahatma and she asked, ‘will you bless me also with a son?’ and he looked at her and sent a power beam. This woman had a simple and very factual mind, no fancy, no aham vrtti no ‘I’ thought in some bizarre way. She too conceived and her son was neither blind nor bleached but a very wise man—Vidura.  Today we have Viduraniti for management lessons.

 What is self consciousness? And what is the interference of image consciousness? What is the good that comes out from thinking and thinking about the image? If I say, ‘I shouldn’t be having this image consciousness, I shouldn’t be nervous.’ That is again another thought. In fact when you say, ‘I shouldn’t be nervous’, it means you are very concern about the whole thing.  To decide, ‘I will not think’ is also again in the field of thought.

 So what is Awareness? You and I become aware to some extend that, I am caught in some thoughts rolling out in a mechanical way and yes, the diagnosis is right, what am I to do?  This much we appreciate but then comes the query.  Should I ask what am I to do? Or why not see, that this ‘what am I to do’ is again a mechanical thought.

     If we notice that we are trying to overcome mechanicalness by tools which are also mechanical, we are trying to catch the thief with the help of thief only, it won’t work. So could we be aware, how our very tools are questionable credentials. And in that seeing its limitation, in seeing that thoughts cannot handle thoughts.

 One has to see it, just not read and verbalise.  Then there is no direct seeing. Then it is like you see someone in police dress and you believe that he is real policeman but a thought passes through the mind, somebody said he is not policeman but I think he is. If you are sure he is policeman then other’s statement will not change our view. So if we ‘see’ there can be a tremendous change. You will have a long term or holistic, a thorough understanding of life never through thought. No wonder even a statement of Thomas Edison in a sense, comes close to it. He said, ‘all discoveries are 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration.’ Thought is in the realm of perspiration but then inspiration is an intuition.

     And here through thought, through some honest thinking, we see the limitation of thinking and then we stay still, in that stillness, whatever has to happen will happen.

 Food-shelter-clothing are certain immediate need of ours but you know how thoughts have made it so complicated. Food, not for just today, for tomorrow, for days to come, for our children, for our grandchildren. I know many spiritual seekers who have said to me, ‘we are going to put large fixed deposits and then have a little cottage in Rishikesh that with the pillow of fixed deposits I will sit and listen.’

 Now all of us do it but can’t we see there is a contradiction there in the thinking, not in the actual doing, but in that psychological dependence. Can you notice the mind is attached and goes again and again into the material? Suppose there is a sadhu who does not have any possession but has put one loin cloth to dry outside and he goes on thinking of it during his japa, ‘I hope it does not fly away’ psychologically both are equal. Physically there are differences and we are concerned with this—why are we caught in thought? Why we don’t do what needs to be done? And then pay full attention to the next event, next interaction, and next transaction.

               Lastly, in this Awareness by seeing limitations of thoughts we arrive at a state of ‘not doing’. The state of ‘not doing’ appears scary but that is the secret, do it and see. I don’t mean you stop doing a particular activity, but about that activity you are not doing anything. But ordinarily in the spiritual context, in the saadhanaa context, in self development context, I think of doing something. Don’t go to extreme of stopping the activity. For example you are driving and the engine is on and the sparks are seen.

     So one is the transaction proper, one is in the activity proper, one is in the give and take proper; one is this field of action, stimulus, response and another is the issue of how to handle it?

 And in the matter of how to handle, having identified as not very proper, things are not going well, my legs are trembling.’ So there is judgment of thought. ‘I shouldn’t be trembling, why am I trembling? Now what should I do?’ this is expenditure of thought. Can I only see the trembling of my legs? Without judging ‘This is bad; that is good’. And if my mind judges by sheer habit, watch that judging that your mind does out of sheer habit. And in this you come out of limitation or the narrowness or the grove into which you are always stuck.

 In conclusion

•    In watching and not dissipating energy, dissipating thoughts, in ‘what to do?   Etc. there is a spontaneous expansion with no boundary and the   whole of life, the whole of mind, the whole of what you see and what you say, what you perceive and what you respond; this whole thing and with all its  layers, is one then. You have not divided it. And inone piece, in one whole,  in this Awareness, there is transformation, that you don’t bring about, but it happens.

•        Kali after killing asuraas demons is in such a fury. Now people including devatas are afraid that she will kill everybody. They request Shiva to handle the  situation. Shiva goes and lies down as a road block. Kali with blood stained sword in her hand is rushing and whoever comes in her way their heads are  gone. And she steps on Shiva’s chest. This is the sat tattva mind,  Sakti, a power comes in touch with sat. Sat steady substrate and the mind calms. Kali calms down there. Shiva doesn’t do anything. He illustrates the sat tattva by allowing Kali to step on his chest and then she calms down

•        Elsewhere there is another puraanical episode… Shiva just opens his third eye and sees Kamadeva, Kamadeva turns to ashes. That is Shiva’s seeing, Awareness, Light, Attention. In the flame of Attention Kamadeva– lust, greed, jealousy goes away. Here He illustrates cit tattva seeing, is burning Kamadeva with only seeing. No mantra, no tantra, no weapon.

•         And he illustrates aananda tattva by general position in meditation. He has this bliss which is uncaused— uncaused happiness—natural happiness.  sat-cit-aananda…

•                 To indulge in examples and enjoy them and to go into the language and the art, that is the exercise of thought. Take the example and just be aware with no intervention of thought about how to handle. Let there be thought for activity, that is called functional thinking. If you are greeting your daughter on her birthday, say it and if the emotion rises; don’t say, ‘why are emotion coming?’ No, emotions are natural. But these thoughts like, ‘after all this Vedanta, I am so emotional today’ that’s the terrible thing that’s the culprit. So thinking of second level thoughts and how to control it. That judging part is questionable  intervention. Find out for yourself, what it does, through Attention.

”Awareness is that observation, that Attentiveness in which the entirety of thought or thoughts, the entirety of whole network of thoughts becomes visible, becomes apparent. Unlike when we are an analyser or a thinker, how smart or how clever we may be.

” As we analyse or think, we are in a part and we see another part.  It is a part versus part.  In Awareness, in true Attention, it is the whole of the mind sitting lightly in something by far subtler than thought itself.”

]]> http://www.fowai.org/attention-and-awareness/feed 0 http://www.fowai.org/regaining-peace-and-happiness http://www.fowai.org/regaining-peace-and-happiness#comments Thu, 05 Jan 2012 05:11:54 +0000 Vibha http://www.fowai.org/?p=2233 REGAINING PEACE AND HAPPINESS

Guidance from Viveka Choodamani

Swami Chidananda

     Peace is something that everybody wants. Every one wants happiness in life. Vedanta is marked by the choice of the word regaining, rather than gaining, in the context of finding peace and happiness in life.  The preference is based on the understanding that peace and happiness are within us; they are our nature.  It is difficult for us to believe that we are by nature happy, for we find a lot of sorrow everywhere around us in the world.  Admittedly, there is celebration also everywhere and we find people smiling, if not laughing but, upon getting closer to anybody apparently happy, we discover there is sorrow. Even celebrities have problems and millionaires have suffering, which is not visible to the general public. Peace, in a sustained manner, is a rare commodity in the world.  Some friction seems to erupt when two people get together and start working together. In fact, many people who are known to have written volumes on happy living have confessed that they themselves have not found it yet. Once two scholars were asked to stay together and share an accommodation. They had advised their audiences on many occasions on living in harmony in the spirit of tolerance. “Find love, do not find fault with each other; see the divine in the other person,” they had written. They could not tolerate each other’s idiosyncrasies and, being unable to live under the same roof for more than 15 days, demanded separate, independent space. They were eager to have their own ‘empire’ of some sort, undisturbed by anybody.

     If I may borrow a way of expressing for which Krishna ji (Shri J Krishnamurti) was known, I would say each of those two scholars is us. Every one of us has this divide between the values that we preach and the way we live. Why this disconnect? Where have we failed? All of us are clever enough to accumulate knowledge. We are smart and sophisticated. We have filled our heads with so much information but we are unable to live in peace, when it comes to actual living. Our own thinking brings us somehow to discontent and dissatisfaction. Thought leads us sometimes to even possibilities of suicide.

 Reassuring Message

     Many saints and mystics have however given us a positive message amidst all this chaos.  They have declared that peace is very near us. It is within us. It is our very nature. “Freedom is as close to us as is the waker to the dreamer,” said Swami Chinmayananda, my Vedanta teacher. He once dramatically described the terrible predicament of somebody whom an elephant was chasing in the midst of a thick forest. Even as he tried his best, he could not really save himself from the animal that as after him. He tripped and fell down on his back. The elephant put one of its feet upon his chest and the man began to scream… it was then that he woke up from his dream to find he was on his own bed in his comfortable home. (There was no elephant’s foot on his chest, Swamiji would add humorously, but his wife’s loving hand was upon his chest, and he could hear her inquire, are you all right, honey?) How far was the safe and comfortable man from the fear-stricken one facing death? How far is the rope from the misapprehended snake, when a passerby mistakes a rope for a snake in the dim evening light?

   This assurance that right seeing helps us regain peace is the undercurrent of the Vedanta teachings. Zen Buddhism, Sufi mysticism, certain interpretations of sayings of the Christ and the message of J Krishnamurti are also seen as centred in ending of wrong seeing and coming upon right perception. Thought affects our perception and negative emotions like fear, loneliness and anger arise. Ignorance and various ideas made possible by ignorance are behind this state of affairs. Right knowledge (jnana, gyan) is required to end this ignorance. The word knowledge has a different connotation in the teachings of masters like Krishnamurti and they prefer words like insight, right seeing or correct perception.

 Sandalwood is Fragrant

     Viveak Choodamani, a great work running into 580 verses and attributed to Adi Shankaracharya, compares every one of us with a piece of sandalwood¹, which has wonderful fragrance. This piece, however, may come in contact with moisture and a layer of moss or fungus may grow upon it. People would then get a bad smell instead of the good, natural one.

     Winds bring clouds² (and block the sun) and they take away the clouds too, says the Choodamani at another place. In like manner, our mind (with its misconceived thoughts) deludes us but this same mind, upon being illumined by the light of Vedanta, helps us see our well-being and fullness.

     If a real tiger comes in front of us, we are in danger. Our mind is not imagining a tiger but a real one is staring at us. We suffer biological insecurity. Natural calamities like earthquake or man-made problems like terrorism do put us sometimes in situations of biological insecurity. Otherwise we suffer generally from psychological insecurity, which is much more common. The fear that our love may not be returned, than people may not receive us well or the thought that our children do not care for us anymore etc have much to do with how we see. Even if we say it is not imagination but as real as the physical dangers mentioned before, we must admit that our conditionings and beliefs play a major role in the formation of these fears that constitute psychological insecurity. Spiritual fitness keeps such fears away. Once fear is away, positive qualities like sensitivity, caring and love exude from us. Vedanta and similar streams of wisdom clear our thinking (and the way we see situations) and give to us spiritual well-being.

  Crest Jewel of Discrimination

     Vedanta³ is essentially the Upanishads, which are pieces of advanced, philosophical discussions found in the four Vedas. In the broader definition, a number of texts like Atma Bodha of Shankaracharya, Panchadashi of Vidyaranya and Advaita Makaranda of Lakshmidhara are also considered Vedanta texts. Shankara’s commentaries on the Upanishads, the Geeta and the Brahma-sootras (the three together called prasthaana-traya) get the pride of place among Vedanta works. Viveka-Choodamani is one of such Vedanta works which has been very popular over the centuries thanks to the wonderful coverage of topics and an excellent presentation of poetry with apt illustrations.

     Two areas are covered by spiritual texts and they are a) personality integration and b) transcendence of the self. While a scripture like the Bhagavad-Geeta covers both these areas, Viveka Choodamani is an intensive work on the latter domain. Geeta is called yoga-shaastra for it helps us imbibe noble values pertaining to daily life. It is also referred to as brahma-vidya for it has revelations pointing to erasure of the ego. The first domain is about purifying our inner equipment (antah-karana) and the second is about transcending the same. Also referred to as dharma and Brahma, these two disciplines are the summary of thousands of spiritual teachings. One moves from bad ego to healthy ego, and then goes for annihilation of ego.

Wisdom the Best Deodorant

The foul smell of the ego is to be eliminated for us to regain peace and happiness. In the selected verse of Viveka Choodamani, Shankara talks about a piece of sandalwood that is by nature very fragrant. Alas, bad odour has come about it as it came in touch with water. The moisture caused some moss or fungus to grow upon the surface of the sandalwood and there is only an unpleasant smell now. Even as you are set to throw away this piece of sandalwood, not knowing its value, a friend tells you to stop. She asks you to take a piece of sand paper and rub the surface of the object. The result of this exercise is amazing. You discover that every bit of this possession of yours is endowed with divine fragrance. The perfume is irresistible.

jalaadi-samparka-vashaad prabhoota-durgandha-dhoota-agaru-divya-vaasanaa
sangharshanenaiva vibhaati samyak vidhooyamaane sati baahya-gandhe

antah-shritaananta-duranta-vaasanaa-dhoolee-viliptaa paramaatma-vaasana

pragyaati-sangharshanato vishuddhaa prateeyate chandana-gandhavat sphutam 274

The divine fragrance of a piece of sandalwood gets hidden when moisture causes a foul-smelling layer to cover it. By friction (with sandpaper), this layer is removed and the outer smell goes away. The pleasant smell is now obtained without obstruction. Our intuitional grasp of our own divinity is also similarly covered by the dirt of countless worldly tendencies that have accumulated in our unconscious mind. Right knowledge (insight) causes a churning within, which purifies us and our true nature then shines forth like the fragrance of the sandalwood. Verse 274

Clean the Old Ink Bottle

     An old ink bottle needs to be cleaned. It has some ink sticking to its inner surface. We pour clean, fresh water into it and shake the bottle well. We repeat this many times and the bottle starts shining. In like manner, as the author of a book titled Mind and Its Control puts it, repeated satsanga (holy company), where we receive noble thoughts and gain good outlooks, leads to inner purification. Our natural goodness then shines forth. In a lighter vein, I may share something here. I once described this illustration of the old ink bottle and perhaps over-emphasized the need to shake the bottle after filling it with fresh, clean water. A student of mine applied this to his meditation. After a few days, he said to me, “Sir, I sit daily for meditation and fill my head with uplifting thoughts from holy books. And I shake my head too so as to speed up the purification process!”

     No physical rubbing is required in the theme proper. What is the friction here? It is no other than self-inquiry. The Vedanta says, “You are OK. tat tvam asi.” The student translates this revelation to her own context and says, “I am OK. aham brahmaasmi.” A proper study of the science helps her see the truth of this revelation. This new understanding – I AM OK – comes in friction with the old bundle of wrong notions – I am incomplete; I am a failure; I am not loved; I cannot love. These false ideas are the foul smell upon the sandalwood piece. Insights derived from satsanga are the sandpaper that rubs away the false thoughts. “If you find anything that weakens you physically, emotionally or spiritually, reject it as poise,” thundered Swami Vivekananda. Study, reflection and meditation are the effective way to (have the capacity to) reject all poison.

Core of the Issue

     Self-judgment is at the centre of our suffering. The thought, “I am no good,” makes us miserable. There was a great CEO of a company in New York, who had worked hard to take his organization to great heights. He had somehow not cared much for his own personal savings. Some politics led to the unexpected removal of this man one morning from his position. His family was shocked. He somehow managed to get into another, much smaller company, and slowly rose to the position of its CEO. He took this second company now to ever greater heights, making it ten times richer than the previous one. Two years ago, he was in Mumbai and Times of India interviewed him. Referring to the day he was fired from the first company, he made a comment, “When I lost my job, my net-worth fell to rock bottom; but my self-worth somehow was as good as ever.”

     The realization through the Vedanta wisdom – I am OK (aham brahma asmi) – is the statement of the highest self-worth. This is irrespective of the net-worth, which may be in terms of money, popularity and so on. All of us carry ideas, “I am good here, weak there, nice over here and terrible over there etc.” These thoughts, arising out of memories, make the self. “The ego is a bundle of memories,” remarked Swami Chinmayananda. We remain trapped in the net of memories. The truth is – I am Awareness. Dada Gavand, a saint living presently near Mumbai, wrote a book titled Intelligence Beyond Thought. Masters like Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta and J Krishnamurti point to something not touched by thought. The Upanishads spoke about that something and nothing else.

     Inquire Who am I? Erase all false ideas of being high or low. Stay with I am, let go of all notions of I am this or I am that. Watch the movement of the self, and let the centre of suffering vanish in the flame of awareness. Peace and happiness are ours in an effortless manner, when the liberating insight dawns on us.

 *

Notes:

1 Viveka-Choodamani verse 274

2 Viveka-Choodamani verse 174

3 Vedaanto naama upanishat-pramaanam – Sadananda in Vedanta-Saara

Believe in Yourself

You can discover unalloyed happiness within yourself, if you do not let ‘conditioned thinking’ judge you in umpteen ways. ‘Thought’ itself is like the cave in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, where the prisoners take to be real what in fact is an illusion. One prisoner escapes and comes out of the cave, to see the bright sunlight outside. The Upanishads speak of the domain of Awareness (chit), in contrast to the field of thought (chitta). Rare is the individual who leaves the cave (thought) and beholds the sunshine (Awareness).

 You can anytime step out. Be that rare individual who leaves the cave. Neither academic qualifications nor some special intellectual background is needed to do it. Though it is not common, everybody is always close to doing it. Easy to do (susukham, Geeta 9.2), it is described as something that everybody wants really. Yes, one in a million takes this step. All look out but a rare one turns inward, says the Kathopanishad (2.1.1). You can be that rare one. It does not matter how old you are or whether you are female or male. Freedom is as far as the waker is from the dreamer, said Swami Chinmayananda. In your dream, you were in Chicago and wanted to go home in Cupertino. When you wake up, you realize that you were all along in Cupertino itself. It was never far.

 Believe in yourself. You are the sun, reflected sometimes in the holy waters of the Ganges and at other times in the dirty pool in a slum area too. Let not the medium where you are reflected bother you. Thoughts are the medium. They make you feel great at times and miserably low at other. The insight of the Vedanta is that you are the same sun, no matter where you are reflected. This insight naturally makes you accept yourself as you are, gladly, without any complaint. You then say, “I am OK” (aham brahma asmi).

 You do not need any reason, to turn inward. An excuse is enough. Let the New Year 2012 be the excuse. Celebrate your true nature as Awareness beginning January 1. Day after day, come out of the cave (of thought) and bask in the sun (of Awareness). Do not get stuck in any judgment. As Krishnamurti would advise, do not be in a hurry to find answers but stay with the question. Do not sink in ideas of “I am good,” or “I am bad”. Hold instead the question, “Who am I?” Be aware of a hundred opinions but stay primarily in the vast sky (akasha) of nonjudgmental awareness.

When you stay in this self-acceptance, the peace you experience is itself love. Great action flows from this state of love. You will solve all problems that can be solved. You will smile at the rest.

 Swami Chidananda

Varanasi

Saturday, December 31, 2011

WORK  AND CO-OPERATION

                               Swami Chidananda

You and I have been working, we must work. Till our last breath we shall be doing some work or the other. If not in an official sense or if not in a formal sense, we shall be working, for even breathing is considered as an activity. Without some activity, without a bit of some work, we cannot imagine our day going. So work is an inseparable part of our living. We come to the second part of the title, Co-operation. The question of Co-operation comes up when more than one person is involved in the work and there too till our last breath we are with others. No one is alone at all; No one is in an island. Thus relatedness to people and work are part of our life. So we take these two – Work and Co-operation and as an advance summary of what I shall in detail present. I may say that riding ourselves of motives and divisive identification, alone brings true work. It makes possible true Work and true Co-operation.  Otherwise all work apparently done in not much sense of Co-operation brings us back to square one. At the end of it all we find our hands have mere ashes.

We shall see that working and working together becomes truly meaningful when we put Love and Goodness as the very starting point, when we have this loving heart and unconditional goodness as the very foundation. To put peace, love, freedom, goodness etc. at the end of the road and say that ‘we shall employ wrong means and arrive at right end’, is foolishness. A means is never separate from end.   Apparently it is a harsh truth; however when one embraces the truth, truth is never harsh. When one is caught in the false and has resistance to any movement out of that false, truth becomes very harsh. Good advice also becomes very unpalatable.  That’s because we are attached to a groove of thinking, we are so prompted, so driven by a certain pattern of thinking and acting. There is certain impatience about us and we say, ‘allow me to complete this, allow me to finish this whole thing and then talk to me about the right way’. This is karma aasakti an attachment to karma.

Bhagavad Gita describes this in the context of the quality called rajas. Everything in the world is driven by these three qualities – sattva, rajas and tamas.

1. Sattva—insight and equanimity
2. Rajas—restlessness and activity  
3. Tamas—insensitivity and inaction.

In the context of rajoguna (restlessness and activity), the Bhagavad Gita has to say aarambhah karmanaam àwithout much understanding we get going with activity.  It’s like you are on the road, sitting next to somebody in his car and you ask him, ‘where are we going?’ and he says, ‘don’t ask, you will find out after some distance, I too don’t know, but we got to keep on going’.  Somebody is climbing a ladder and you ask ‘where are you climbing?’ he says ‘don’t disturb me, we’ll figure it out when we reach there’. If you do it with true sportiveness, that’s wonderful. But if there is an attachment to a certain idea that I shall arrive at such and such place and actually you have no understanding of what you are doing, in all likelihood you are in for great disappointment.

So once more we are looking at our outlook to work and our understanding of co-operation keeping in mind possible obstructions right within us, which abort the true activity and bring about disorder. None of what we are talking here is anything new. In the language of Bhagavad Gita, Sri Krishna had again and again pointed out that a desire prompted activity, while it has certain glitters and charm, comes across as dynamism but many a times is actually the womb of pain, womb of sorrow.  So desire (selfish) prompted activity apparently wonderful, but is the cause of pain. Love prompted activity alone is truly harmonizing. In the good old language, Love prompted activity is called nishkaama karma. Literally translated as activity devoid of selfish desire, upon being put in so called positive language is activity prompted by love, activity prompted by true goodness.

Desire prompted activity is lower but you and I from our birth are caught in desire.  I would throw light on the universal human conditioning. Universal when I say means in Asia or Europe, in America or Africa, among the very rich who are born with the silver spoon and among the very poor this conditioning is same. The sense of incompleteness and having to prove oneself, having to achieve something and in the light of that achievement put up a façade, put up an image and that becomes a wild goose chase.

No wonder work takes place in this world of ours, in the world we have created through coercion, compulsion or a gentle word called persuasion. By coercing, compelling and persuading work is got done.  Sometimes the compulsion comes from outside, other time the compulsion is from within and we need to wonder, can we work in the absence of compulsion? That could be work out of love. Love is not a compulsion, love is our nature. We are at peace with love; we are at home with love.  Compulsion on the other hand makes us do a lot but we are never at home.  So we would be waiting, ‘once I make enough money and once I reach a certain position, I am done, I just want to give up all these’.

Isn’t it a sad truth that, what we see around in the world – Nobel Prize winners, Olympic gold medalist, Presidents, Prime ministers, eminent people from Hollywood or Bollywood and you name it, are all on one hand stealing so much of attention. They are in lime light but on the other, in their privacy looking for peace. Very often we hear about a Hollywood star looking for peace among the Himalayan mountains.  So what do people from at a distance look at them? We look at them with envy – ‘if I could be him/her’. Only those who wear the shoes know where the pinch is. I think Shakespeare had said, “Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.” But you and I tend to be foolish. We think ‘all that is fine but for a day I would like to wear the crown’. We are after this peculiar self contradicting pleasure, which once more shows that alas! Humanity lives in great confusion. This is the human conditioning to which all of us are subject.

It is up to everyone, it is up to the person to really live differently. A certain willingness to change has to arise in a natural way and willingness to change arises, scientifically speaking only when there is a very intense recognition that, ‘this way is not for me to live’. When I am fooling, more than fooling X or Y, more than fooling my religious organization, the way I am living is such, I am fooling myself. This self deception should become evident to us. And in that becoming of very evident of the self deception one says, ‘no matter what, I am going to live in the right way, without any presumption, without any motive which holds an achievement at the end of the road as a glittering promise but actually acts like a thorn in our flesh.’  From early childhood you and I are carrying certain patterns of thinking which like thorn in our flesh paining us and continues to pain us, is no other than the self centered motive.

If it is not hope of reward or fear of punishment, what would prompt working?  Generally we feel we are at a loss unless there is some reward. Why would you work?  Love is fine, but if there is no reward I would rather lay back. Is it really so? How about our seeing a problem intensely? We see there is starvation and we are truly perturbed.  Unfortunately very few are truly perturbed about any genuine problem of humanity. Because most of our energy is dissipated in our concerns about psychological and self created problems. We are in such hurry, we are so impatient and we reason it out ‘oh, I feel very concerned about it but you know may be I shall write a cheque and send’. Some such thing we do. Many a time we don’t do it also a thought passes by and we say, ‘that’s good I am a virtuous person and I thought of helping them’. May be like a counterpart to work and the thought of work—here could say some people feel clear conscience by rendering help, many other feel clear conscience by thinking of helping. Just thought of helping, gives them great satisfaction. Its right in us here and this is not intended to blame or condemn oneself, it is to become aware. We are in great hurry, we are not sure and life goes on.  And what are we achieving? What are we fulfilling?  Some goals that has been set against the backdrop of very poor understanding of life. Some goals that have been put before us through conditioning—he did it, I would like to do it; he got it, I would like to get it.  I guess this is how we have to move towards—I imitate you, you imitate someone else, a whole lot of blind following takes place. No wonder, Mundakopanishad calls this general human behaviour as blind leading blind.

As we observe life we find this is such a true commentary on our own living.  So if there is a problem, we directly see and with no dissipation of energy in all kinds of associated questions, we are able to protect and preserve that basic concern, it can prompt us to work. Let us say there is starvation and you and I are concerned. We now think of it— if you and I upon being concerned which follows from seeing the problem, start thinking—how shall we do this?  And suppose God forbid we start arguing or disagreeing each other about the way of doing it, on some symbols—whether we go and serve food there with this banner or that banner flying high and then I say, ‘if you are going to put your banner up than I am not coming and you say, so do I, I will not come if you are going to raise your banner.’ we fight between each other and we don’t go there at all.

Your way, my way, secularly or religiously too humanity has shed a lot of blood on all kinds of insistence on the way—on the banner and that is exactly kaama the personal desire.  I shall help you, if you put my name somewhere—so terrible!

So can we go about living life without mixing up issues? In Vedanta or spirituality, if it is truth that we see as the source of true peace, nowhere else but in Truth there is peace.  Can we seek that Truth, doing away with all the externalities?  But this clever mind of human beings which you and I are, always like a clever attorney makes a case for all externalities, to arrive at that truth certain steps are necessary—some symbol, some clothes, some name, some title, some superiority, some authority, bow down here and enjoy other bowing down at another place. A structure is made and the clever thought, the intellect, makes a case for whole lot of structures and in this complicated structure many a times unknowingly lot of new divisions come about.

Spirituality structured and certain powers & rights, liberties & privileges as well as certain commitments & pressures all packaged into various levels from the Pope down to the new initiates, from mathaadhipati to new brahmachaari who has joined the ashram—all is structured and the clever intellect makes a very detailed case for all this. And then you have the statements like—these are made by Swami Vivekananda—when he was asked about hypocrisy in religions. He said, there is hypocrisy in religion, but I would say even if one person in thousand becomes a genuine seeker, the world will be up lifted. His faith, his love, his belief is admirable but practically the ground reality is, we find, countless religions and sub divisions of religions are all come about and we don’t know whether the world is saved or the world is moving towards the greater order because of all these structures.

In work what corrupts and what dilutes our passion for work itself, as an example we took starvation and you and I would like to do something—what comes in the way of our just doing it? We find thoughts about, who would recognize? Who would care? Nobody cares for it. People criticize, people make fun of it and this is not the time to do these things and so on. So desiring recognition, desiring some acknowledgment, desiring an approval from A or B, fearing disapproval, fearing criticism with all this there is a dilution of the basic force of Love. The basic force of Love gets weakened; the light of Love as though gets dim. Now you can see, how thought, of which humanity is proud is at once its enemy also. Many a times in this world, it is some mad-cap who goes and does the service not the educated one, because educated ones have lot of thinking.

What is thought? In the movie ‘Titanic’ there is a scenario—towards the end of the movie.  The ship is broken to pieces and through some life-boats, everybody is helped to reach the shore but then there is a noble(rich) man there, he protests even at that moment, even when it is the question of life or death. When the captain says, ‘please get in this life-boat which is about to leave.’ He makes a face and says, ‘you mean I have to get in the same boat where those servants are?’ See what thought does. Even when his life is in question and he keeps in mind class distinction or some caste distinction. ‘Isn’t there another boat for Noble class?’ The man was used to all through years protesting and the air about him doesn’t leave even on such occasion.

Thought comes in the way of our working in a simple way, relating in a simple way.  So can we come upon a silent mind? Not silent out of tiredness. That is a sleepy silence. Isn’t there a silence that you and I can arrive at when we see the horror of our own selfishness and say, ‘I don’t care for this fame anymore, because this doesn’t make sense’.  Not because book says don’t seek fame, when you conform to a book. ‘A mere scholarship doesn’t help’ says, the old classic bhajagovindam –love God, love of God alone saves you and scholarship. And our mind immediately says, ‘yes, I should not go for scholarship’ then perhaps you have not seen how seeking to be a scholar actually is shallow and hollow, but the book is saying. We are talking of shedding, a letting go of the desire to be a scholar. A letting go of that desire upon seeing that it just is not necessary. It could happen through total surrender to God. ‘All knowledge that I need to get will come to me, I need not stuff myself with books’ and then say, when will I read this?’

If there is a profound insight, where one truly knows that God will give to me all knowledge, I don’t have to read a single book, I have love for God and then pillar and posts, trees and stones will speak to me, I will learn from everything. Then one sheds…what we are talking is very much like paraabhakti  effectiveness and etc in the name of all these the rotten things deep in me is staying intact and as long as that doesn’t go, all this dynamism is of no use. I become another destructive force. Of course with a façade of do-gooder. I am a do-gooder outwardly but deep inside I am seeking a gratification. Earlier I sought material image, now I could be seeking a moral image.

The true selflessness is when one doesn’t seek to become selfless. When you seek to become selfless, the thought comes in the way.  Instead, see the horror of selfishness and don’t think anymore—should I be selfish? Or should I be selfless? To sip a little bit of water, you need not remember your name, your credentials.  Do I have to say, ‘Who am I?’ Drinking a sip of water is very simple. There you need tongue and mouth and perception of water – cold or hot, sweet or salty and as it goes down your system is perception and there is no conception.  You don’t conceive especially about yourself, who you are?

But when it comes to work and co-operation and a whole lot of thoughts come up and they come in the way of actual action. Is it possible for us to be in direct contact with the problem with least dissipation of thoughts and comparison, motive etc?

We know phalaasakti attachment to reward, result. Very often we have a very limited view of that. We say, ‘we should be working without attachment to the result.’ That’s what Bhagavad Gita seems to tell us. And we will say, “As Sri Krishna has said so I shall push myself to work.” Very dim and it is more in language of ‘should’ and ‘should not’. Actually I want to win but this Gita says don’t worry about winning, what a terrible thing!  In west they say winning is not everything, it is the only thing.  And my heart likes that but I joined this Gita classes and I am in soup now like that there is so much of confusion.

These thoughts which I am sharing with you is not about future at all, it is about carrying the thought ‘now’ and it is about noticing the thought ‘now’. Whether there really is future? God knows, we never know how long our life is, young and old die. Or why to talk of death, many a times so many situations entirely change. So we know in small and big ways, a lot of things, the actual events don’t take place at all.  Life takes another turn. Someone gave the definition “Life is what happens when you are busy with other plans.”

So advanced understanding of letting go of our concern for success or failure is actually this awareness of, how selfish concern dilutes, weakens and comes in the way of our love and goodness. ‘I am not able to do my days work with love and goodness, because I am concerned about my image, will be better at the end of this work as my image in other’s eyes and my eyes etc. This concern for my image is taking away, what is most precious to me, LOVE. I wish to live in love, not any compartmentalized love. True love is that defies any compartmentalization.  True love is a sense of well being, where there is no fear, no insecurity, where you accept yourself as you are and you accept the other human being as he or she is, with no interruption or intervention of calculativeness that is love.

What is love? àWhen we are actually giving to each other much happiness. When we don’t see each other as we are but we see each other through memories and some account that is kept in these memories and images coming, these images assuming larger and larger size, they grow and they edge out, push out the way for objective thinking.

Can we be attentive to a problem, physical-emotional, to others or to us? In fact where there is denial of love whether it is others or oneself, let us be concerned about it.  Where there is hunger, whether it is others or ourselves, let us be concerned about it, because it is a problem. Let us stay alert against intervention of all kinds of man created thought processes, phalaasakti being one of them, seeking credit, seeking one-upmanship etc. are problems; awareness of these problems, the ways, the means, the system etc. seeing all these dilutes come in the way. A direct concern of the problem on the part of all of us, a tremendous direct concern for the problem proper, brings forth work and brings forth co-operation. Whereas fear of punishment and hope for personal reward causes diversion, they cause dilution and blurring of our vision. They cause so much of unhappiness.

In conclusion

• Ordinarily work is prompted by desire or fear and seeking of power, position and importance, fearing that such power, position may not come to us.

• Ordinarily team building is also facilitated by reward and punishment. Both team work and individual work is done with fear or desire.  One sees how this is an endless affair. The root cause, the basic problem is not at all solved by this.  One only ends up in an external improvement, which is not of much value.

• For a mutation, for a radical change, one eliminates this thought created desire and fear and just does what is to be done.  The silent mind acts upon the issue on hand with just the necessary memory, data, or information or skill and no other thing and upon finishing; the silent mind is back to literal silence.

• Thus rather than a calculative mind, the complaining, comparing, regretting and priding mind, there is a mind which comes in contact with a problem, facilitates activity and goes back to silence.

                                                      Harih Om !

Surge 84

Life is Short and Yet Beautiful

     Celebrate this Diwali with the reassuring message of the Upanishads – The Lord resides in your body. He is the Light of lights, and the perishable body borrows light from Him. On the surface, life is short indeed and there is the dance of death everywhere. Your dear and near ones are not with you forever and, remember, you too have to pack up and go, one of these days. But who goes? Every body dies, nobody dies.

      Know the body as the chariot.

     Atman (Self) is the Lord of the chariot.

     The intellect is the charioteer and,

     The mind makes the reins. – Kathopanishad 1.3.3

      That our life is short is in no way a negative message. This law of Nature has its own wisdom. We must go, in order to make room for others just as many left before us and we took their place. Demons like Ravana departed from this earth and divine incarnations like Rama also did not stay forever. Who are we to cling to this physical existence?

      Our journey in and through this body is short-lived.  To see this fact should not depress us. It should rather help us gather all our energy to have a vision of our own spiritual dimension. “We are not a body having a soul; we are rather the soul having a body,” remarked some wise man once. The earlier we see the soul, the better. The Vedanta of course clarifies that we cannot literally see the soul, for we are the soul. To see means here to understand. As we understand our own deeper nature, we are freed from all kinds of insecurity. Knowing our own imperishable nature, we become fountains of love and compassion.

      Two horses – prana and apana – drive this chariot, the body, says Swami Srikantananda in his little book¹ Meditation According to Vedanta. The Lord of the Universe (Jagannatha) is seated in the chariot (Ratha). Realizing Him is the only way to liberation². How blessed we are, to have this opportunity to see the Lord. This metaphoric language implies we have a higher potential in us which is way above our personality as we usually know. Tension, stress, fear, loneliness, disappointment or frustration often marks our day. [Sam asked Tom, “What were you before you became a manager at this company?” Tom’s answer was, “Happy.” Isn’t there a Tom in every one of us?] We have unhappiness in life. The Lord in the chariot is no other than yourself, as you will discover when all negative thoughts disappear and your last trace of low self-esteem vanishes.

      So question the self (ego) put together by thought. Let not your conditioned mind deceive you. Rise above the weakening influences of the world and celebrate Diwali by knowing yourself to be the Light of Awareness.

                                                               Wishing you Happy Diwali,

                                                                  Swami Chidananda

                                                                       Varanasi, October 26, 2011

 Notes:

1 Dhyana-Sadhana – Meditation According to Vedanta by Swami Srikantananda, published by Vivekananda Institute of Human Excellence, Hyderabad, page 5.

2 (Hindi)

                 praan apaan do ghodon se

                 chalta jeevan kaa rath

                 rath mein baithe Jagannath kaa

                 darshan hee mukti kaa path.

 NEGATION, A QUIET CELEBRATION

We are attracted to a hundred things outside of us, dreaming of possessing them and becoming special by virtue of them. We know at the same time that the richest man in the world has his own problems. Our standard of living may rise by leaps and bounds but the quality of life remains as great a challenge as ever before. By quality is meant, among many aspects, the sense of love that we may experience in our heart.

     Are we able to love the people whom we meet on a daily basis? Do we feel loved by people around us? If the fragrance of love does not permeate our day, is it of much use to have fancy possessions, positions, name and fame?

      What do we do? Work harder? Run faster? Think more?

      Why not an ‘out of the box’ approach? Shift your attention from doing something new to just examining whatever you have been doing, with no specific plan to change it in some way. There is a lot beneath the surface, when you examine your actions, words and thoughts. Much is exposed. Hidden desires, vague fears, irrelevant beliefs, outdated conclusions and subtle schemes are operating all the time within you. They shape what you do, what you say and what you think.

      There is urgency in this matter. Life is not long. Do this job, before you follow those who have gone, like Steve Jobs. (Steve, by the way, could not work much on exploring the holistic beauty of life. They say he went to India to meet a guru he fancied, Neem Karoli Baba, but upon finding the latter had passed already, shifted his focus. He made remarkable contributions and became famous, no doubt. How nice it would have been if his intelligence had helped him enrich himself with human values like sensitivity towards the deeper needs of humanity and compassion towards the suffering of the poor and of the rich.)

     Examining our entire way of life has urgency about it. Our house is on fire. It is not the time to sing or play the piano. We have been racing, perhaps quite efficiently, in the wrong direction. We have been chasing illusions. Leave alone the false glitter and glamour of our goals, our sense of ‘Who I am’ is itself a deceptive foundation on which stands the edifice of our life’s major activities. Imagine, for example, that somebody mistakes his identity for being a homeless person and goes around the town asking for help. In reality he is a prince and could be a generous giver, rather than a beggar.

      Examining the way our thought works can lead to radical change in us. Here it is neither substitution of thoughts nor improvement in the way we think. No specific plan is suggested as to what to think or how to think. Being aware of the movement of thought is the suggestion being made here. In this awareness, junk gets exposed and eliminated. You will lose all that does not really belong to you. A lot of stuff had made your mind their home. In the process, you lost your true identity. The ego therefore is called an imposter in related literature. This imposter takes to his heels. The self gets negated. The Self emerges (to use the language of the Vedanta. The Buddha talked of just negation of the self and kept silent on the Self, the Atma.) The negation of the false – false identity, false values, and false pursuits etc – is a silent affair. There is no ‘doing’ here. The wisdom here expresses itself as ‘ceasing to do’ rather than doing. The relief therefore is quiet celebration.

 Swami Chidananda, Varanasi

Thursday, October 13, 2011

]]> http://www.fowai.org/negation-a-quiet-celebration/feed 0 http://www.fowai.org/goodness-love http://www.fowai.org/goodness-love#comments Fri, 02 Sep 2011 06:03:00 +0000 Vibha http://www.fowai.org/?p=2111

Goodness & Love

Swami Chidananda

Goodness & Love, no one has to be free of them. However, these two faculties of thinking & feeling are very often at loggerheads with each other.

                        Insightful living is something deeper than both thinking & feeling, yet it makes thinking & feeling come in harmony with each other. And when there is this inner harmony, inner integration, there is automatically the harmonious relation with the so called outer world and others.

We shall go into some reflection on Goodness & Love.  Both these are very popular words, ideas so dear to   every one’s heart; our life revolves around Goodness &  Love.

We expect Goodness & Love from others and we ourselves believe in enriching ourselves in Goodness & Love. Without Goodness & Love none of us would look at life as worthwhile.  But how sad! These things like Goodness & Love sought by every one of us every moment from our very birth tend to be illusive. No one is able to truly grasp and live in Goodness & Love. So we need to examine this.

Summarily in advance, we shall touch upon –

• Goodness & Love as the natural perfume that will emanate when we do away with false fear, false insecurity and false selfishness. 

Both Goodness & Love we shall try to show are intimately related to absence of the two drives within us –

• The selfishness, which appears as selfish desire.
• Second drive, is personal fear or insecurity. 

 Unless we understand how these two – desire and fear are governing our thoughts we would not be arriving at true Love. We seek Love, we have concept of Love and once more we make the mistake of ‘putting the cart before the horse’ as the idiom goes. We say we love someone; someone loves us; there is love; we are bound by love don’t we? We even make mission statement or pledges or some slogans. That is how whole humanity of which we are part, works. That is how the popular propaganda of even morality operates for one doesn’t know better. It quickly appeals and then we busy ourselves with realizing it. This has of course given to people some sense of Love. Not only words or well worded passages, paragraphs, some poetic compositions but also gestures, holding each other’s hands, may be standing in a circle, putting some flag up- ‘we love each other’ and so on. Maybe putting some word, evocative planks or boards at places – ‘At this place, at this office our watch word is LOVE,’ ‘This family is together in Love.’ We can do a home propaganda, office propaganda. We have been doing it. But we find that this is not adequate. Many a times with all this, something is boiling within and then it comes to a point where people just take sticks in each other’s hands. The very people who put those posters or flags and slogans tear them apart and say, ‘this has lost its meaning now, because of you’ and that person says, ‘this is because of you’. In cooperative effort they tear apart that slogan.

 ‘Love’ has been a magic word. ‘Goodness’ also has been a word of instant appeal.  Therefore, in as much as these popular approaches of using the word and evoking a certain concept, evoking in each other’s mind a certain picture and then seeking co-operation towards it has been popular.  But it has not been very effective.  Therefore, we wonder what it would be ‘to put the horse before the cart’, what it would be to halt and to bring about the inner explosion.  When we examine deeply how we have failed in being truly good, being truly loving we find that on a deeper level in our bosom we tend to carry, we tend to sustain certain fears & desires and without undoing them we have a dressing, we have an outer touching up with lot of noble sentiments. Inward transformation is neither attempted nor identified as necessary by most people. By and large therefore as all these spiritual classics say, ‘we have been less observant of deeper layers of our mind’s working’.  All spiritual classics talk about turning inward, being introvert, antarmukha—antas cakshuh.

As an example the great Kathopnishad’s verse is well known

We generally don’t have much understanding of this looking inward. This looking inward, to do justice to it really has to be of that enhanced or heightened awareness of factors within us which come in the way of true Goodness and true Love.

In the name of Love we very often become use to the other person saying, ‘I love you’ and more often unknowingly we expect that person to fulfill some ambition or desire or aspiration of ours.  All of us realize this sometimes in retrospect – ‘I was quite possessive and yes, it was more an attachment than true Love, but I didn’t realize at that time’.

In some movie a father says to his daughter ‘you will not marry the man whom you love. My dear one, you will marry the man whom I love’. With great love he says this to his daughter. Very comic and make us laugh. There is the truth hidden that relates to this theme.  This happens between two individuals, even between countries. One country wants another country to tow its line, if the second country does it, the first country showers its ‘Love’. And if does not then it penalizes and imposes tension etc.

 Desire & fear:    This whole world has power seeking attitude and thus we upon introspection and examination notice that there is a powerful drive in us seeking domination, seeking position, seeking respectability and so on. And without understanding it and without doing much about it we want to sprinkle love upon our relationships. We want loving relationships with neighbors, with family members but safeguarding so called personal interest. There are lots of conditions – natural. Overnight we cannot lift our conditions it is not a matter of removing conditions by will, for will cannot go very far, will goes a bit of distance. What goes very far is clear understanding.  If we look at something as a burden, as a cause of unhappiness then without will power we would drop it. If we see it as necessary (evil), if we see it for our comfort, our security, we would not let go of a particular movement of the mind.

So the self in us, not the pure Self- the ego, the little sense of ‘I am this, I am that’ is constantly driven by these two forces—Desire and Fear.  And where there is desire or fear there is no true Love, no true Goodness.

Ordinarily we think of even in spiritual parlance – quietening the mind, calming the mind.  No wonder, even one of the yoga sutras of Patanjali praises samaadhi which is considered as cessation of all thoughts and Swami Vidyaranya calls it as dharmamegha – a cloud that showers virtue. In samaadhi – in experience of utter quietude of the mind one is so reassured, one feels so secure. One is no more in need of this prop or that support, this gratification or that praise. When one is thus utterly sufficient in ones self, true Goodness flowers within.  So samaadhi gives dharma if you take dharma as one of the words for Goodness.

Samaadhi – quietude of mind; however if you inquire into it – can mere quietude of mind give you true love, true goodness?  Making the mind quiet of course makes one feel wonderful, just like deep sleep refreshes one. Ten minutes of very deep sleep refreshes us so well, many times hours of lying on the bed without getting sleep does not refresh us like that.  When no thoughts are in the mind and not even dream, utter quietude, we get revived. In the same way, if one were to consciously arrive at the so called samaadhi where there are no thoughts –nirvikalpa samaadhi certainly there is a great amount of freshness. But especially in Vedanta this question (can mere quietude of mind give you true love, goodness?) is raised with great force- quietude cannot transform one within. One’s judgment, one’s outlook, one’s perception of the world and the perception of oneself cannot change by a mere quietude. What is more – one may seek such experience again and again, one may seek the quietude more and more but once when one is out of that quietude one may miss that-‘oh!, how nice it was to be in the state of absorption now again I see all these differences, rich & poor, mighty & weak and where do I fit in’. This whole business of self judging, placing oneself as ahead or behind etc. and as we place ourselves somewhere, as thoughts become active there is some satisfaction but there is some sense of inadequacy.

Therefore in relationship as we relate to friends, neighbors, people at work and society in general can we look for those patterns of thinking where either there is seeking or there is running away. Where there is seeking and running away there is the obstacle to true Love. 

Granting fearlessness: A line from an Upanishad says, ‘one goes for the higher disciplines of spirituality (using the word sanyaasa) when one grants fearlessness to everybody around’

-abhayam sarva bhutebhyo datvaa sanyaasam aacaret

It is a very thought provoking mantra from the Veda. The literal meaning is- one says to all, ‘you don’t have to be afraid of me’ and then take sanyaasa.

In renunciation as Buddha did- walking away, as Shankara did – walking away with hardly any belongings or any personal possessions.  What is involved in giving fearlessness, who is afraid of this sanyaasi? What is the connection between granting to all fearlessness and renunciation?  It seemed a contradiction until I saw the psychological significance and deep import of it.  In fact to carry guns, to have wealth, to have some great power is not as much a threat to fellow beings as really speaking selfishness is, when anyone has it. If you are selfish even with very little power or very little arms also matters because it is the mind of a terrorist which is apparently frightening others, really it is itself in great negativity, great disharmony. The mind of the terrorist is so divorced from love, is so away from any sense of harmony. The mind of this violent person has a problem so even a nail-cutter can cause havoc.

So it’s not what you have outwardly. The Upanishad, Vedanta these exalted and profound works do not concern themselves with external descriptions. One who has to practice the higher discipline of spirituality denoted by sanyaasa, that total love of God has to offer abhayam that means I will not encroach upon anybody’s mind, psychological freedom and psychological space.  When we are possessive we take away the psychological space of other person. We do not let the other person be what he is, we want the other person to be as per a picture that we have. And there is fear. Then the other person feels suffocated. In lack of love there is suffocation.  You and I, though we are working or living together etc. psychologically are not at home and when the so called other person is away you breathe free….so is that love if it takes away our space?  This doesn’t mean that wherever there is fear the other person does not truly love.

The terrorist is also afraid of the police so we don’t say police are unloving people. When expectations are rooted in dharma, rooted in universal values it is fine. But we are talking about such expectation and such conditions which emanate from personal bias, which come out from lack of understanding. You will see, as you reflect on this theme Goodness & Love that this is a matter that has bearing on our life from childhood till our death.

Detachment & eliminating selfishness:    We have this system of education all over the world there are so many halls of education, as we call temples of learning. And what is true education?  We would say in the light of this reflection that true education is where one is helped to let go off the selfishness and fear.  Suppose we have many skills and many enviable amount of information. We are taught how to operate some machines and there are only handful of people in the whole world who know to operate such machines generally we tend to value such education a lot. In education we are generally after ‘I must master that machine’ and  in that there is fear, in that there is envy, in that there is a sense of being behind, being ahead, a whole amount of energy goes into acquiring skills and somehow feeling up to the challenge at the end of the day – ‘I am okay’. Alas! Are you really okay with acquisition of skills?  The cold truth of life is we are never okay unless the self centeredness is dropped.  Otherwise with all skills and with enviable acquisition of other kinds, if there is self centeredness we could be most destructive.  As time and again many cases have proved.  It is the very smart ones, the very resourceful ones, who work havoc something to the whole world at large.

So what is true education?  Not necessarily limited to schools and colleges but as it applies to whole life and not limited to what we receive from teachers and elders bring into it the self education. For all other teachers come and go, the one teacher that is in us is, oneself.  We are our teachers, we are our own student. No teachers from outside is with us for 24 hours.  Though in devotional sentiments we constantly remember if we are devoted to a Guru that shows that everybody has a certain need of constant guidance. We have relied on certain emotional, devotional, sentimental processes for reassuring ourselves. And I guess they give some benefit, I personally believe in psychological benefit from them and from outside too, I believe in God, I believe in God answering our prayers.

But here we are looking into the whole issue from a different angle and greater depth than this sentimentalism. While we do that, how do we look at our own fears and desires?  Do we just shut our eyes to these? All our divisions?  So we find central to unfolding of Goodness or Love in our heart, is the issue of detaching and eliminating self centeredness. 

 Why are we insecure?  It has become psychological habit in us. Incompleteness, it is so much of habit in us that most of us, if not all believe that discontent is the very prerequisite for living a dynamic life.  If we feel complete, if inner insecurity goes away life may grind to a halt. We have made a case for fear. We have all become in this social conditioning, devils advocates without realizing it. We must have a fear, we must have ego… so on.

While I agree to say, ‘there is fear in us’ is a different thing than saying ‘we have to have fear’.    So let us look at it as a ground reality. It is there in every one of us. But do we have to think that it has to be there. If you think it has to be there you know what it amounts to?  Suppose there is terrorism in a country and government sponsors it, what a terrible situation! State sponsored terrorism. So if I have jealousy and if I believe that some jealousy is good then only I will be active, I will be on the run, I will take care of my family then it is like state sponsored terrorism.  There is jealousy, there is fear and there is selfishness. Let’s not endorse it nor should we deny it. Don’t sweep the dust under the carpet, don’t close your eyes to the ground reality- the fact.  Rather, face the fact. Let us face the fact. Suppose scientists, engineers, doctors & attorneys, teachers & students all look at this deeper layer in themselves – Oh! Oh! In and through of whole lot of our daily working the underlying current, a certain stream flowing deep within me is a certain insecurity.  I am living in fear, outwardly I give plastic smiles and I do whole lot of things people regard me as so efficient, so able and well mannered. Outwardly I have come long way in life one may feel so. But here the question is- internally have you come a long way?  In your childhood did you truly love your classmates? Your teachers? Or did you envy? I envied, I cried. Now how is it after four decades and so many facets have dramatically improved?  Do you have this envy, lost feeling if someone else gets attention?  You say, YES, I do feel envious and a wave of anger rises in me, I suffer. Then we would say true Goodness & Love in you, in me, in everyone will flower only when we tackle this envy.

 Silent mind:  How interesting! compared with the usual approach which I call ‘the cart before the horse’.  Here Goodness & Love come from a silence. The silent mind can Love, the silent mind is good. We think silence means void, silence means emptiness and we wonder what can come from emptiness?  For this we begin with a thought, begin with something structured for we always believe that from a structured rises Goodness.  Our faith in structures has been very firm.  Once more, this is not to say dismantle the structure now.  It is not at all in the plane of ‘doing’ or ‘not doing’. The ground reality is all of us have certain structures it is a fact. If you cannot dismantle even if you want and if you try, will only go from Tweedledum to Tweedledee. One structure you dismantle and in no time another structure comes. Many a time it will be from frying pan into the fire. Or from structure you will go to chaos. So it is not a matter of turning cynical, turning bitter and negative. That would be so immature.

I would say every relationship is very delicate. Including the relationship between you and me now. We have a very delicate affair between us. There is great responsibility in both of us because we are reflecting on life together. And even one person going berserk in negative way can cause lot of damage in society.

So no wonder in true Love, we compare it with caring for a tender plant growing in your backyard. If you love that plant morning and evening you will have a look at it- So can we attend to our relationships?  

 The tragedy of todays living is decreasing happiness  among increasing comforts 

Swami Chinmayananda

 So there is mind in the prison of self seeking, endlessly. Even after winning a Nobel Prize

or Oscar alas! The human mind tends to remain in the prison of ‘what will complete me’ looking out, will that complete me? Will this make me full? And the approach that is desirable is to examine the incompleteness. If many degrees, wealth, name-fame, awards and a lot of lime light did not make me complete in all these years. Why should I imagine that one more acquisition of something will make me complete. The belied that, ‘that’ will make me complete is questionable. Acquire we may, let it happen. You live a loving, alert life, various opportunities come your way and in the name of spirituality you are not going to turn away opportunities. But the point is, you do not anymore believe that this acquiring will make me secure. Security is not in any acquisition. Security is when you see that nothing can give you security. Seeing nothing can give you security you do not cling, you do not depend, you do not lean on pleasure or wealth, power or position it becomes a side issue. And for this let us not make compartments that, this is very inspiring but it is for renunciates we are householders, we are beginners, this compartmentalizing is a dangerous thing.

 If you look around you find people who truly have fragrance of Love in their life. You have many examples of illiterate people living in Love or very qualified people living in Love.  So to associate the finding of Love with certain background or scholarship or some external initiation or spending some years in Himalayas is another erroneous zone in your thinking. So drop it. You examine your life without the interference of ‘I may not be ready for it; I may need to be very simple now etc’. If you believe that you need, I am afraid but you stay with them. But without interference if you examine a trait, a certain tendency that was with you as a young child, then college, now also it is continuing, that is the thorn in the flesh which is paining you and no wonder with all that you acquired- the academic qualification and this and that. And the apparent amount of service that you do it is all superficial. The security you feel is rather shallow. True security is when you shed your dependence on these things and you go about this in a sportive way. If award comes your way go to the platform and get it, but come down and forget it. If you can do it, then you can find love in your heart. Then something opposite happens, there also you will laugh it out, for you did not have this dependence. It is a matter of steadiness.

 So how can we come upon Goodness?  By discovering this silence, by arriving at this silence which is waiting to be discovered.  But we promote noise, we promote calculativeness. Our mind in the name of being clever, we make our mind a noisy mind. When we arrive at true simplicity by gently seeing, ‘I am caught in a trap this insecurity is a snake upon the rope, it’s an illusion, I am fine.’ Should be a discovery. Not an auto suggestion.

 We could pick the best statement from Upanishad or Emerson or Shelly or from Swami Chinmayanandaji and say to myself ‘I am Brahman, I am ever secure, I am the fountain of Love, I do not depend on anything, I rejoice in giving’ we do it; our meditation very often takes this form. But the plane truth is, this is also a wonderful window dressing. The plane truth is for those who bravely see it, more than saying I am this and I am that, which are all true, you need to see at different times in the day, somebody not smiling at us makes us a bit jittery. I am aware of it and in that awareness, in that questioning, do I need to have this jitter? Is it not on my part violent that she should smile? So I see that I have to give her, her psychological space. To smile or not to smile is her privilege; let me not jump to any conclusion. And if she has any negative image about me, let me examine.

 Undoing the Self:   So I undo that self in me which shook. Which vibrated. Which trembled. In the undoing of the self there is the coming upon that ‘I am the fountain of Love’ and that is meditation. You could have an intense moment of meditation at that moment when somebody did not smile and jitter took place and you handled it, dissolved it, you came to termsà you discovered peace. Without verbalizing, the signal that came from you was- ‘you can be yourself. I have no objection to your not smiling’. You accept her as she is. That is meditation. And can we do this every moment? Beginning with this moment? If we do this, there is the gush of Goodness; there is the flowering of Love.

MASTER SPEAK:

 Love and Goodness are not superficial state of mind, they are not a make believe.

They are letting go of deep hidden fears, of the incessant seeking of self-image, self-security, and self-gratification.

When this seeking and this avoiding cease thanks to seeing, there is harmony.

That harmony reflects as spreading of happiness.

Can we conquer time?

 Swami Chidananda

        Very rarely one can give the

         gift of time itself to another.

Now let us we consider the issue of Time. Time presents itself before us as external time as well as internal time. There is the clock time- everybody carries the wrist watch, everyone has time pieces. An attractive time piece is often a gift on a birthday or an anniversary and what not.

Time is measured outside and there is a subjective measurement of time. We shall dwell briefly on the external time and then go into internal time more. The brevity dwelling on external time is for two reasons; firstly, is in a matter of spiritual evolution, in the matter of inner transformation so that we be free from all negative energy and we may live harmoniously. Secondly, External time is not a player therefore; we shall not go in the external time for much time. Though I am always fascinated by the discoveries in science about the secrets of time, I somehow could not manage time so far, to get a handle on this relativity of time.

Briefly we know that time outside is now questioned in science, they say time is relative. Time outside is measured as ‘the distant between two events’ and what do we use to measure that distance between two events? For ordinary purposes we have a whole range of clocks and time pieces, wrist watches and what not but for very accurate measurement we use the speed of light itself as the yard stick. So sensor or instruments that can catch the photon (light particle) that are used to identify two events, give to us a measurement of Time. Speed of light has been accepted as a constant, though there is lot of question for the properties of light, these days. The idea that nothing can travel faster than light is questioned as most of us know, people have proposed some particles which travel faster than light. However in Einsteinian model using the speed of light a whole lot of measurement, understanding and determination of the universe was made. And we know how the literature on the relativity of Time touches on issues like measuring Time when the observer herself is moving at a speed closer to that of light.  Speed of light we understand is 186,000 miles/sec and if the observer, the experimenter is herself traveling at a speed close to that of light then we have all this talk— Time slowing down or Time speeding up—clock slowing down or rotating faster, depending upon the direction of the travel of the observer. We know very well that our picture of a star which is let’s say 3 light years away is not at all the picture of the star as it is now. Light year is not the unit of Time though it is called light year, it being a unit of distance. The picture we take of a star, 3 light years away is how it was 3 years ago.  By the time the light rays have come to our camera, the star out there might have changed; it might have become extinct also. So in very long distances and in situations where very high speeds are involved our idea of Time changes drastically. Today with respect to outer Time, with respect to outer space we have mind blowing observations or remarks in the scientific community.

Long back I heard the joke  that an old lady sat next to Albert Einstein on a bench in a park. Soon after his name came in all news papers. By sheer chance he thought that nobody will disturb him and she said to him, ‘looks like you are Albert Einstein whose picture has come in the news paper.’ And he says, ‘yes, ma’am.’ and the lady said, ‘now come tell me, I believe you have talked on relativity of Time, what is it all about? I could not make head or tail of it.’  Albert Einstein says, ‘look ma’am when you are sitting next to me five minutes go like an hour, if a college girl would sit next to me one hour will go like five minutes, that’s all I said using complex mathematical equations.’

You and I can appreciate jokes at least. To do justice to the relativity to this external Time a certain amount of exercise needs to be taken up. Not that it cannot be done; you just have to have Time & sit down with people of common interest and sort it out. So is with the space- is it regular or curved? Is Time an absolute or relative to parameters of the observer? Etc. are questions in science, which in a sense do have a bearing on the spiritual science but, in spiritual science we can go about understanding Time in a different way, we take a different approach.

Understanding time

• Interestingly the word in Sanskrit for Time has been kaala and kaala has also been the word for death. And Time often stands for death.  In many Indian languages it has been a practice to say when someone dies- ‘he became kaalavsha’ Time took him away.
• Lord Siva is call kaalakaalah he puts an end to Time itself. He is called antakaantakah. He is one who kills Yama, who is the killer of all. A whole lot of puranic symbolism has all along questioned Time. Things like when Lord Siva plays his Damaru that caused Time. Some old classic says such things, they have great poetic beauty and they make us wonder, they stun us, in a sense Time stops for us when we come across sublime literature. We are stunned; we are awe struck watching Grand Canyon or watching the large masses of water falling in Niagara. You and I literally stop and we say Time stopped for us.
• Vimala Thakar a great thinker on spiritual themes says, ‘meditation is meeting eternity in the present moment.’ In the present moment if all Time shrinks so to say. In the sense ordinarily we perceive past and future, we not only perceive but past and future seem to hold us in their grip. Our anxiety about what might happen tomorrow and our regrets about what happened yesterday are so palpable, so tangible and we are thus caught in the net of Time.  But in meditation, Vimalaji says, we meet eternity in the present moment. There is no pressure; there is no disturbance by past or future.  Without interpretation this as erasure of thoughts, absence of thoughts. We would say, ‘thoughts or no thoughts, figures or no figures, images or no images’. The sense of ‘I’ is free from pressure. All of us carry a sense of ‘I’. We carry a sense of ‘I’ and thoughts build this sense of ‘I’. If this sense of ‘I’ disappears into thin air then no matter what images, pictures, memories or thoughts about future might be suspended in the space of our awareness, there is an eternity caught in the present moment. As you and I are here dwelling on “Can we conquer Time” all the clocks, all the wrist watches, the wrist watch on the wrist of speaker included are ticking away ruthlessly, shamelessly with great glee.  They tick away, that is external Time.

But internally we experience Time, for some people Time drags so slowly, again and again they see the watch and some people check whether the watch is running or not. Whereas some others at the end of 90 minutes are shocked, it’s over so soon. Externally it is the same 90 minutes but internally for someone it was like ages. They may compliment the speaker also, it felt as if you spoke for ages today or they say to speaker, Oh! We don’t know how it all went; 90 minutes are over. They express in very different ways.

In the VIII chapter of Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna says some queer things, but it always touches us, it fills us with wonder. He says-

-raatri yugasahasraantaam te’horaatravido janaah ||……8.17

Meaning: The knower of the secret of Time, those who knows the inner truth of day and night, know that one day of the creator Brahma equals 1000-s or millions of years of human nights.

So the two axis of Time you and I can go to an extent to appreciate, how; when we dream and in dream we perceive six hours we played golf and then we wake up and we find it was an afternoon nap for 10 minutes. So the waking life’s 10 minutes and the dream’s 6 hours are as though two axis of Time. And therefore in this spiritual classic with mythology and symbolism and whole lot of other things packed into one, possibly in the whole creation in which you and I are players, characters, is looked as the dream of the creator. When you dream, you create a golf ground and you play golf for six hours, 18 holes completed, good score. In your dream you created the space of golf ground and the six hours of Time and when you wake up and in your waking would all that passed was 10 minutes, could it be that there is mind of God which dreams and in the dream you and I are living and 1000-s & 1000-s of years passed in this dream of God’s mind. If God has his own waking axis of Time these 1000-s and millions of years are only one day in this waking state. That is how the movie like ‘Matrix’ etc. have played with these concepts of one domain of XYZ & T and then a virtual world, where another set of XYZ & T are created and in some mysterious way this hero and villain are able to go into that virtual world and all they need is the public booth to get back quickly.

Internal time

 So coming back to internal time, as I said spiritually it is very important. We have thoughts rather than distant between two events. Here we consider the distant between two concepts.  Psychological i.e. Inner Time is the distance between one concept of Who am I? And a second (neither of them is reality) concept of who I want to be? So I have a picture of who am I? Questionable indeed but I judge myself on a given day at a given point of Time. I judge myself a very well to do, I have made good money, in three generation in my family no one has done what I have done! There is one self judgment in a favorable light, as favorable as I want to have.  There is in my mind another picture of what I want to be. I am a millionaire but stop not till the goal is reached and goal is to be a billionaire. M needs to be replaced by B. So one self judgment then there is other self judgment and there is the becoming, will I become? Will I succeed? And in this mental movement wanting to become, there is hope, there is desire, there is fear and we experience an inner Time. Materially and in so called religious context, we want to become something. Psychological Time rises, the moment you have picture of having to become. I want to become like Vivekananda, I want to become a realized soul. God knows what it means. I was in bondage yesterday, I am the seeker today and I want to be liberated tomorrow. Some ideas. Will I? Suppose I am married. See I am describing hope, desire, fear, apprehension and the whole lot comes- husband, wife, neighbors, who joined a particular ashram, when, how many books I studied, he studies, who is senior? Etc. this is called becoming.

Now in this mental movement what happens is, we create another set of coordinates of becoming, reaching somewhere, arriving etc. and in the process we create Time. We have built the psychological Time, in the process we do not see the whole of the mind as it is; we have as though entered the virtual world of the mind and have become a player there. When you buy in to a self judgment, you become a character in the play for which you wrote the script. You are the director, you are the producer but alas! You forgot that it’s a play. You become the hero-suffering or enjoying, getting promoted or getting demoted and what a great unfolding of scenes after scenes. You and I are doing this every moment.

Can we suspect the whole of our mind? Can we look at the whole mind? As this entire thing needs to be seen again—revival. Generally we say one of these days I will do it. We are in the grip of time and no wonder time is death. Leave alone the clinical death at the age of 70 or 100, there is the psychological death about which Upanishads are very concerned. From which Upanishads wish to free us, when the Upanishads say, amratattva immortality—obviously they are not talking of freeing us from the psychological death. The body dies. Then what is immortality?  It is freeing from this field of becoming. ‘I am at peace with what I am.’ That does not mean I become irresponsible, that’s a hasty conclusion, don’t jump to that. I am in terms with the present moment, whatever I am, advanced or lagging behind, rich or poor, I don’t create judgment, then create a judgment of what I want to be and draw the lines. Something like drawing railway lines with track and run the train of the self, which is one more imagined thing on those tracks. Rather I stay silent, deep within me. The core of me is silent and may be seeing, may be eating, may be drinking and there are thoughts, there is planning, there is remembering something. But as the mind is into all these, think of it if there is silence and grasping of the whole then I am not touched by Time. Time is a parameter in this whole, but I am touching the whole, if I become a player in this scenario, I am caught by time. Like in a video game, there is character on screen and that fellow is in trouble because another character is chasing him and unless something is done, the second one will smash the first one. So you may try to save this first character and if you identify with the first character, you also get very panicky- what will happen now. Otherwise you are very safe. So in the mind Nintendo goes on—if we identify with this ‘I’ what is the true ‘I’ so not the clinical death but this creation of our thoughts, time created by thoughts by putting pressure and once in a while raising hope, but most of the time giving us undenied gift of anxiety is killing us slowly. They say Diabetes is a slow killer. Today the psychological Time is slow and more deadly killer.

In of the one act play in English there is a saying, ‘the brave die but once, the cowardly die again and again’ Everyday they die twenty times in every compromise, in every pretending, in every anxious moment, every time they tell a lie, they put up a façade. There is a slow dying. When are they alive? The cowardly are not alive. They are dying. The brave die but once.  Against this talking about ‘inner dying’, shrinking, this undesirable way of living that you and I have, no wonder Lord Sri Krishna declares in Bhagavad Geeta that

 Meaning:I am the time and I am all set to destroy this whole universe. Arjuna, if you think that it depends on you whether this war will take place or not, whether all these folks will die or not. You are mistaken. Even without you all those who have to die will die, for I have set it in motion, the great destroyer I am Time.

In the tenth chapter He describes himself as Time in a bit of a different context.  X:30 -kaalah kalayataamaham   

In all matters of counting now we have calculator. Long back we had Abacus, Slide rule, Vedic mathematics etc. Sri Krishna says, among all systems of counting or why among all who counts, I am the greatest counter!! And what aspect of you that counts? TIME I am Time, among those who count and I would attach a special greater inner importance to it. Because this mental movement where we perceive ourselves based on only limited information. Based on value system we perceive ourselves as so & so and in these two so & so there is a counting; will I become that in three days?  Will I become that in three years?  And religious inquiry also most people are unable to put aside the thought- ‘will I be free in this life?’ they pester their gurus.  The thought- will I be enlightened before I am 60-80 or at least in this life?  Without waiting for next life we say counting and the Lord is present He is the creator of whole universe.  Whole world is his dream as we said it before.

In the light of all this and going a bit deeper into how we are caught in psychological Time we may see that- The medium of thoughts brings the illusion of Time – That is clear. which sits heavily upon us when there is the ego, the self. If our involvement as a part of the whole scenario is put aside, we are the witness.

I am not a part of the scene but I am the quiet, uninvolved witness of whole of the mind then even though there may be thoughts, there may be movement, there may be an emerging of various scenarios one who pays attention to the whole of the mind will not feel the pressure of the Time,

will not feel driven by Time, dragged by Time, pulled & pushed by Time. When you have that inner stillness, when you have that absence of disease of wanting to become something, when you are handling this moment as though it is the only moment, you are giving your best to this moment. You are eating breakfast and you are savoring the breakfast fully.  All your taste buds are fully savoring spirituality is about it. When you are eating your breakfast with full attention there is great spirituality there. Eat when you eat, work when you work, sleep when you sleep, take bath when you are taking bath etc. are well known description of spiritual maturity. When I am taking bath, I think of office and in office I think, did I take my breakfast? This is considered as a really very disorderly living. When life has order, not according to some formula of this system or that system or rules like orderly life is to get up at 4 o’clock—is that getting up at 4 am has its value fine, but certainly it is not equated to orderly life. That is a system it is particular packaging. Orderly life is not at all in these external issues, it is absence of self created conflict. It is coming to terms with what life has brought you to. If I have some sickness I perceive all that that sickness brings to me. I am aware, awake and sensitive to every ounce of pain that sickness brings to me. Whether it is blockage of nose or cough or cold or some serious other disease. One is totally aware & sensitive and in that meeting with ‘what is’ through a generation of lot of associated thoughts, ‘why did I get this disease at this age of 42, it could have come at 46, why didn’t my neighbor get this, he deserves more than I’  these are called various unnecessary thoughts. ‘ I told my neighbor so many time, even now he doesn’t care to get up 4 am but I am getting up at 4 am’ this comparison is disorder. This comparison makes me live in a split personality. The neighbor snoring away at that hour is at least in a sense, in a great order. He is asleep and he is not comparing his sleep with my meditation. He has to come to terms with his sleep. When we are snoring away, then we don’t have conflict. Some of us here later on say, ‘Oh, how much I slept and being a Swami can I sleep at all?’

Awareness & Internal Time

The self, the ego, ahamvrtti the thought I am this, I am that, is so integral so vital to the creation of this psychological Time. When you create the concept of ‘you are this and you are that’ and give reality to it, breathe life into it, which you do it, in such an artistic ways, you cannot escape the illusion of becoming. Whereas in total attention what Vedanta calls saakshibhaava witness hood; which books talk about but lot of common people live it and it’s not really necessary to read big books to live this. To live this life, life of real integration, it’s not the books, we say divine grace it is an insight and God knows how that insight comes to X or Y.  How someone like Ramana at the young age of 17 when all believed he was just ordinary like anyone else gets a fear of death and decides to watch that entire business called dying instead of crying for help, instead of escaping from it, instead of some 3^rd or 4^th factor to it. He rather takes the fear of death and says, ‘I have this fear and today I tend to think from two factors: the fear of death and me’. He arrives at one factor alone, which is ‘fear’. What is this ‘me’.  Psychologically when I have the fear of death; the ‘me’ is in terms of – ‘I was healthy up to yesterday, today what is happening to me’ a description of oneself; ‘I am only seventeen, why this chest pain and why this fear of death, why my whole body is trembling.’ Again you describe yourself in some way. So suppose you watch fear, you go through fear with no thought of your identity, not even thinking, ‘I am a man and I have this fear’ or ‘ I am a woman  and I have this fear’ this is description. ‘this morning I told someone that with God’s grace I have a wonderful health and now this is happening to me’ this is description. In pure attention, there is no room for all this description. No one has asked you and there is no business to give some story.  In pure attention, it is a simple affair and yet slips through our fingers—here is fear and I don’t describe myself in anyway and in moment of not describing myself in anyway, there is no ‘me’ there is only ‘fear’ and in there being only ‘fear’ a transformation takes place.

That is how Ramana later said, ‘I watched my dying, the body became cold, blood circulation stopped, breathing stopped, I watched all this, non-verbally, I watched all these without a single word in Tamil or English passing through me. No word arose, non-verbally I watched’. And this is a great mystery. I would imagine that there was being with fear with no thinking and no dullness phase. If you see a serpent, you see the serpent with no thought but you are not dull. If you are dull you would not see the snake properly. Can you see the snake, the snake expands & raises its hood and you have fear in you—you watch whatever ‘is’ at that time. Not adding spice to it, not giving a commentary. Then something can happen. That moment of fear can be a moment of radical transformation in you. Then Time which kills you is killed. You kill the Time, there is no you really, the awareness kills Time.

In USA they have an expression: ‘doing time’ which means serving a prison term. Yes, when we do Time we create Time in thoughts. We create the psychological Time in the medium of desire & hope, fear & anxiety, and then we are in fact like prisoners.

Enlightened being undo Time, they set themselves free. It is said two great souls, both of them whom we believe were enlightened- Anandamayi Ma and Papa Ramadas going once in a car to attend a certain function. Half way through the journey Papa Ramadas looked at his wrist watch and Anandamayi Ma nudged him and teased him, ‘Oh I didn’t know Papa is in time.’ (I thought you have transcendent the Time- that is what she meant.) And Papa jovially replies, ‘Oh no, Papa is both in Time and beyond Time.’ And journey continues no issue, no conflict.

In Time as well as beyond Time

So what is it to be in Time as well as beyond Time?  Functional clock time is always in our life, it is part of life, but the psychological Time is our own creation.

Ramana talks about Time in his Saddarshanam first of all he says, ‘our problem is, we have taken the present moment for granted’ in one of the two shlokas which dwell on the mystery of Time in Saddarshanam which was originally ULLUDUNNAPATTA He says,

 -bhutam bhavishyacca  bhavat  svakaale

-tadvartamaanasya  vihaaya tattvam             |

-haasyaa na kim syaat gata-bhaavi-carcaa 

-vinaika-sankhyaam  gananeva  loke           ||

He asks is it not ridiculous to try to understand future and past without having total attention in the present, without understanding the present? It would be ridiculous indeed to go into future and past without understanding the present. Very much like without knowing number one, one is counting. One does not count one. You give somebody a box of marbles and he starts counting 7,8,9…….etc. you wonder. One man asked the other man to check the bundle of currency note of 100 notes. The man started counting loudly up to 91 and then said, ‘its ok’ the other man said you didn’t count upto 100 you stopped in between. The man said, ‘up to 91 it was alright, so it should be alright afterwards too.’ This is very silly haasyaspada. These are all quite profound things. I may ask some right questions here. Can you and I understand the present moment in it whole? Like the issue of desire—which at first sight is a simple affair which has to be controlled or which has to be okayed depending on whether it meets the requirement. Go by some value systems, go by some charts and classify—these are good desires in me, these are bad. What is the big deal, just indulge in good desire and control your self in bad desire and go ahead.

But those who exercise with more attention, see the truth about desire. Desire is not simple that you classify and take a decision. With all respect for those sources of guidance which are true also some desire literally destroy you, some others are really good & good for others too. But to presume that you can stop the wrong desire and go ahead with right desire, in very simple way is rather childish. So just like that there too you and I ‘wonder’ this present moment —what is there to know about the present moment.

 -vartamaanasya tattvam vihaaya haasyan kim says Ramana.

This moment –it’s ok. No! That’s not the question. Right now in this moment, right in my mind I have a summary of entire suffering of my life, suffering of my life is in a nut-shell contained in the present moment. To breathe this present moment is to put my whole life in order—this is the mystery there.

In the above first verse (Ramana – Saddarshanam) there is an intense appeal for understanding the present moment in its entirety. Outside – inside. So many factors make me desire something. If I am desiring at this moment, if I am fearing, whatever may be the fear, if I am fearing at this moment, this moment of fear in me has lot of factors in it. And generally we see the tip of the ice berg and we are in panic. In fact it is rightly said that fear is not so much a problem, but the fear about the fear. So undoing it if we meet with fear, there is a different dimension. That is meeting the present moment and when we meet the present moment being fully present, available to the present moment, then we have chance to meet entirety in present moment.

In the second verse of Saddarshanam  Ramana asks:

-dikkaala-lileha  vapurvayam  cet    |

-na kvaapi  bhaamo na kadaapi  bhaamo

-vayam  tu  sarvatra  sadaa  ca  maamah    ||  18  ||

 This verse means –our entire grasp of the psychological Time, incidentally the verse touches on space also, but we shall highlight Time only. Our entire perception of psychological Time. At this rate where I am heading? Where is my family heading? This entire scenario of psychological Time rests on he says our belief that we are the body. Literally it means body consciousness. But I would slightly elaborate it. The entire scenario, our being subject to psychological Time rests on our notion—that we are successful or we are a failure, we are handsome or not good looking—a judgment. If there is no self judgment, not by deciding not to have one but by being gently aware. Just as to have a sip of water, do I have to know I am Swami Chidananda? To have a sip of water do I have to know I am 46 years old. The illustration is for 1000-s of things, for lots of things in daily life—there is no need really to put myself in pigeon hole—I am so and so and I am from India—-who is asking?  But we tend to carry these thoughts in some strange way. And everyone has to seek out for oneself—I am sure but everyone says is it not necessary to plan, to go?  And I agree it is necessary to plan, but for one ounce of planning we do infinite ounces of going into the future. So for things to fall in place there needs to be a discernment viveka and there need to be a child like simplicity to us which doesn’t collide with our skills and talents, profession, abilities, knowledge of language, place & people. You and I as we grope has a whole lot of knowledge and in the light of that knowledge we have a certain identity. So this identity & the knowledge and the use of the knowledge do not have to collide with a child like simplicity. In the child like simplicity one lives in gentle awareness and at the right time one uses an identity, plans and goes ahead.  At the right time one uses the right identity. Somebody at some airport, at some public place, at some counter, where lots of people are waiting for their name to be called. Let us say, I am there and they call, ‘Chidananda’ then it warrants my responding in ‘Swami Chidananda’ they called my name and I go present myself at the counter. In contrast to sip a bit of water there is no recall needed. So in gentle awareness things fall into places. The identity of our being this or that, our being householder or sanyasin, once being father of three or mother of two etc. rises at the right time, does not raise its head at other times. Then Ramana would say this dehbuddhi I am this, I am that sits outside and then there is no psychological Time. One lives with a touch of eternity. One lives with a great depth, with a great profoundness. Not the depth or breadth of the scholar, not of information but the depth, the profoundness of that being, simple being. So Ramana seems to point to that as he says, when this ‘I’ thought, when this ego, when this self pointed favorable one morning and pointed unfavorable on rather other occasion is out of the scenario. Thought do not make a picture for me. When we drink water without a single thought of who we are then do we have any special limitation at all in inner experience wise.  The sense of ‘I’ has no boundary then and do we have psychologically any boundary in time, for the sense of ‘I’. Thoughts create the boundary and meeting eternity in the present moment is being free from the mischief of thoughts.

 “Time stands still” poet says. What is it after all?  It is absolutely not stopping of all the clocks. When the Lord decides, rising waves stop for a moment. The waving trees stop for a moment. Everything halts for a moment, in movies they show. And we say could it happen?  It is said that the great lady Anusuya said to the sun, ‘don’t set this evening’ and the sun stopped.  Today’s physics student can have logic for it. The earth stopped rotating, so we are curious to give an explanation. You and I are very thrilled in the beginning with this kind of physical stoppage. But the poets and mystics are not at all talking about physical stoppage of clocks or waves or sun or moon or any object. You are driving at 70 miles/hr. on the free way and without making that 70 to 69 without slowing down in terms of car speed, your anxieties can come down, your fears can come down, in an appreciation of truth your thoughts can slow down without making you dull and going by some 70 miles, fully aware of the traffic scenario you could meet eternity in the present moment. Your heart could be immersed in an indescribable love. No regret, no fear you are ready to live, you are ready to die, you are ready to meet life as life comes to you without any thought about it and you drive on, live on….

                                                           HARIH  OM !

 WHO AM I?

    Swami Chidananda

                                                                                          Varanasi

All of us, the humanity is conditioned to think in certain ways. In the east or in the west everywhere you & I have certain desire and in this medium of desires of the mind, the personal self, the personal worth, self worth, self esteem, self judgment, self perception, ideas of what I was, what I am and what I want to be; mark my word ‘ideas’. What I really am, God knows—in a manner of saying, but I carry ideas. I shall not answer this question ‘Who am I?’ rather I shall try to show that this question ‘Who am I?’ puts the axe at the very base of all human suffering—I shall attempt to show that the sense of ‘I’ is the very foundation of numerous forms of human predicaments.

To begin with in a simple domestic scenario, I married a few months ago, come into this joint family, I am the new daughter-in-law, I come from my particular background and here I am as daughter-in-law, my husband, my mother-in-law, my father-in-law, my sister-in-law all are under one roof in a joint family setting and alas! As it happens sometimes after a few days or few weeks, there are various differences in values, perceptions, expectations etc. and after six months I ask myself in this – Who am I? Where am I? What is my position? Am I really well received here? Do all want me? Am I truly a loved one? Even by the man called my husband? Does he really love me? Who am I? In the medium of a lot of relationships, you & I are asking this question actually. We had good understanding before, as partners of a company. But as it happens sometimes, after a while there is some confusion, then I ask who am I in his eyes now?

So we do ask this question, but we do not go to the depth of this issue.  Generally, we stay on the surface. The mind drawing from memories, yesterday’s hurt or last week’s gratifications, constructs a sense of ‘I’ and labels it, judges it as pretty good. ‘I am very fine today or I am not very good today’. If I am pretty good, mind is capable of saying ‘I need to remain like this for the whole year to come, to long time to come.  How to sustain this good sense of the self? If I feel bad how can I move from this feeling bad about myself to feeling good about myself.  So from I-1 we want to move to I-2.

The spiritual wisdom has a bearing on all these issues.  It is rightly said by many thinkers that in science typically one wonders about the things, phenomena outside and the question is – What is that? What is this? In spirituality question is ‘Who am I?’ This question assumes a special importance in the so called – way of wisdom.  I must admit in spirituality of another kind – the way of devotion, one is dwelling on God, thinking of God in some way or the other. Various religions, various mystics, great seer here talked about God, the supreme, the creator. Various names – Ek Omkar, Father in Heaven, Rama, Krishna, Shiva and all that.  So in the path of devotion one thinks about God.  Incidentally in that exercise one’s self dissolves away.  That too aims at undoing of false construction of the self.  But in what we call the way of wisdom, we are taking cognizance directly of this Self, rising in ourselves.

In fear, there is someone who is afraid. In desire, there is some entity that is desiring. In hurt, there is something in one that is hurt. So we call it a center. There is in me a centre that is pleased at times, displeased at other time and annoyed at yet another time. So what is this centre? Is this centre something Absolute? Is this centre a product of conditioning? Is this that is hurt or that rejoices a programmable and programmed entity, is the significance of this question ‘Who am I?’

A spiritual classic like Bhagavad Gita addresses the issue of one’s identity and does a bit of ground work, does a bit of preparatory teaching. In fact the whole lot of verses from Bhagavad Gita just ask us to know our personality constitution, for which the word is svadharma .  In a well known and much quoted verse of Bhagavad Gita  III:35 Sri Krishna says:

 Which means everyone should act as per one’s true nature. One should not pretend and imitate someone else. When one imitates someone else falling for some temptation, may be pursuing false prestige or may be just under fear or pressure or whatever, one is not oneself.  That somebody else’s nature is paradharma. My true nature is svadharma and what a wonderful advice Sri Krishna gives – he says first thing to live a life of an order, is to recognize that pretending is harmful. Putting up a façade, putting up some false image for whatever reason is not going to give us true peace. Shed, avoid all pretending and be yourself. Being yourself, working in the reality of how God made you, reach the highest.

A Christian minister wrote a book “God made you an original, do not die a duplicate”.  So if we imitate, if we pretend like somebody else, we become a duplicate.  Everyone can see that a lot of complications, stress and avoidable sufferings all come about because you & I on a day to day basis put up a façade. Many time we say, ‘what to do, unless I show up myself in that way, I’ll be in trouble’. But showing myself in some false way I invite a lot of other trouble what to do? Now you and I have the same dilemma with respect to pretending, we feel helpless. One of you may say to me that it is not just one self-image, we keep some ten self-images and depending on situation we put the mask. Kannada author D V Gundappa wrote: Ravana had ten faces and typically we human beings have hundred faces, at different time different face comes forth.

Interestingly our first reading of the Bhagavad Gita would make us think that this svadharma, one’s own nature and paradharma, somebody else’s nature are a matter of choosing duties. Do your duty, don’t get into somebody else’s duty. Find out your duty and be dedicated to it, be devoted to it is the simple reading and yes, lot of us easily understand ‘right, I must do my duty, why worry about anything else’.  But please see behind the duty there is the doer. Svadharma right way touches on the two sides of the same issue. This is my duty because I am of a certain type, the way God (nature) made me. Obviously nature has made us all very differently, diversely. Some are by nature temperamental, some are slow, some are very fast; physically, intellectually, not only by body but by mind and intellect too we all are very different. Of course broad category have been made, broad classes – those who drive and those who are driven, there are various types- type A, type B in western psychology and eastern models certain personality types have been identified. So a false projection of one’s self is paradharma. A projection or presenting of oneself true to one’s constitution is svadharma and Bhagavad Gita  calls it a very healthy state of affairs. If you & I, day in and day out present ourselves as we truly are without a single lie then it is a very healthy state of affairs, not only for achievement in the world which also is assured but for spiritual growth or a greater integration.  You know integer is a whole number, integration is unifying ourselves.  In contrast when we are something inside and show outside in some other way there is a division, a split, there is fragmentation which we make a beginning with personality types and have some contentment, some satisfaction at the answer to who am I? We say ‘truly speaking I am slow going person but pretend to be very fast etc. inwardly I am a slow person’. So who am I?  I am a slow person in some context. This is a beginning indeed we need to inquire more and more deeply.

The same Bhagavad Gita at another place goes to dizzy height indeed and that is where the question –‘Who am I?’ is touched with the utmost sensitivity and greatest sublimity or subtlety.  In XIII:2 shloka Sri Krishna says, well this entire life of our is viewed as consisting of two aspects—known and knower.

 There is the field of the known and then there is the knower. Every one of us can relate to it—I am the knower, I am the knower of object outside, I am the knower of hurt and pleasure etc. our life is broadly the field of the known and the knower.  Everyone is the knower and then Lord drops the bomb shell-

 -kshetrajnam caapi  maam  viddhi  sarvaksetreshu  bhaarata  |

Arjuna, the knower in all field of knowing is no other than me myself.

Lord says he is the knower. So as though pushes us out like pushing out some unauthorized occupants from some hutment accommodation. Just a while ago we appreciated in all knowing, in all feeling, in all experiencing there is us the experiencer. We earlier talked about centre that gets hurt, the centre in us that gets gratified. We say to each other, ‘I am so hurt, I am so bruised’ etc. who is that I? That question we raised. So if I am the knower and here comes Sri Krishna’s statement that He is the knower in all and he seems to say in all fields of knowledge. Adi Shankaracharya takes as a very significant statement from the Bhagavad Gita, which is also taken by the non-dual teachers as a pointer to, everyone essentially being pure Awareness and the ego constructed by thought being a mere myth.  The classic Bhagavad Gita  has said so much in different chapters that no wonder on the soil of India itself numerous great minds; great intellectuals interpreted this classic in different ways.

In chapter XIII we have so much that we can see, here is an experience; we first said the experienced and the experiencer. I am the experiencer but who am I?  And is this ‘I’ the variable?  And especially can this ‘I’ undergo a transformation? Situation being same, could I be hurt on one occasion and could I be simply unperturbed on another occasion while other parameters being same? The centre could react differently.  So please see, there is this centre which being a programmable entity reacts differently to same external situations. In fact leave reacting, it sees the situation differently.  It sees the situation as ‘Oh, not at all an insulting situation, this is very pleasant’ he said, ‘I have no hurt and very humorous indeed’ another day if somebody says ‘you have nothing above your shoulders’ I would interpret as ‘what a tremendous insult, how did he know it in first place.’ A set of reactions coming from me on a certain day and a set of reactions coming from the same ‘me’ on another day are so different—why?  The ‘Me’ is different. Is it possible to be without a ‘me’? Is it possible to stay in a certain emptiness? Where praise and insult simply pass through like light passing through a transparent surface.  Is it possible to have a pure attention and you are not reacting, you see what is said, you don’t interpret it, you don’t categorize it as either praise or insult and you don’t personalize it, ‘this is said for me’ – you don’t say.  Though you know in a way that he is telling me. It is as though you look left & right who is he talking about? Sometime all of us do it in a good humor. This same could be done in a spiritual wisdom. That would be a quantum leap, a tremendous change.

Sometimes it is a strategy for us. We roll up our sleeves, prepare ourselves, put our chest up, take a deep breath & say ‘today no matter what they are going to say, I am not going to be hurt’. So then if they actually say bad things because of that will, because of that resolve we say- ‘Okay is there anything more you want to say today’ and so on, that is a different thing. That will, that resolve, that preparation, may break down after some time. We may not be able to keep that resistance because one by one the words said by the other person, the ashtotarashata  naamaavali  as they call it sometimes -108 names ‘you are this, you are that’ etc. is thrown at us. We have limits; finally we say ‘enough is enough’.  So it is one to resolve; to face praise and insult with will power & certain conditioning of the mind, certain prior planning & strategy, psychological preparedness. It’s quite another to really have inner emptiness.  In which there is great alertness, great attention. Surely we are not talking about thick skinned-ness or dullness etc. there is great sensitivity but there is no attachment to an image.

Simplicity, the essence of ‘I’: You think you are a very learned man, you are attached to that idea that I am very learned and in an important gathering suddenly most unexpectedly everybody says ‘well, all of us believed that you are a learned person and what fools we were, now we know you are nothing and you always bluffed, somehow you put up an image’. It could be very hurting to you. ‘what? Are you’ll kidding?’ all say ‘No, we are telling you the truth’. It could be devastating. You could have a sleepless night afterwards. Why? – I would say ‘not because they said whatever they said, but because you are attached to an image, you are a learned man. There is nothing wrong in being learned. In fact spiritually speaking there is nothing wrong in not being learned. It’s utterly unnecessary for everybody to be learned. If all were scholarly world would have been a chaos! Thank God ! There are only limited number of scholars, who themselves are a problem sometimes.

I think learning is not a necessity to a happy life. But in this world some are learned, some are good singers, some are good dancers, some are good cooks, some are gardeners, some have multiple talents. What I would envy if at all it had a room is not any of these talents, some people in this world are simple and I envy them.  My God! If I had her simplicity how stress free my life would have been. In olden days I too sought talent; if I looked as smart as he does, if I had her height and his talents, this is the way of the world. But thinking about life, understanding life more and more we find that what is most desirable is simplicity and that is the essence of the ‘I’.

A certain king had called a meeting and he himself was yet to arrive. All others had come. A person looking very ordinary just walked in. How he made it in through security no one knows.  He came and he occupied the chair of the king. The minister questioned him ‘who are you?’ and that man questioned himself, ‘Who am I?’; ‘I am asking you, who are you? The world just says who am I? The minister apparently said to this person, ‘are you some great scholar that you dare to take this chair?’  He said à‘I am above the scholar’

‘are you a great wrestler?’  He said à‘I am above any wrestler’

‘are you a millionaire?’ He said à‘I am above any millionaire’.. like that it goes.

At the end minister yells at this intruder ‘are you God?’ and he says -> ‘I am above God’

the minister says ‘there is nothing above God’ then this man says ->‘I am that nothing’ and he walks away.

For this being nothing is really wonderful. Almost above God or that is Godly. When we are nothing in our heart nothing can hurt us, nothing can blow into our ego. But all these stories, all these illustrations are very tricky. I say such a story and if all of you appreciate I lose my nothingness. I feel so good about myself. I believe somebody went up the stage and said, ‘nobody said about the nature of ego as I did’ so there is the emergence of the ego.

The ego is built by the movement of mind where memory is supplied to us as material to pigeon hole ourselves. Memories of how someone talked ill of me last week supply the building blocks for me to come to a conclusion today that ‘I have not been doing well, look at what they said last week, so many of them saying bad things about me’ memories of one event make me think of myself as bad. In the same way memories of some other events make me build the idea—I am good. Now if we don’t fall a prey to memories we are in the present with full attention. Are we good? Or are we bad? There is no good, no bad. ‘I am’ is the truth. You and I are very conditioned, very programmed, habituated to have a point of view in everything.

J Krishnamurti once asked some gentleman, ‘my friend, can you love your wife, without any point of view?’; see the flavor of that question so different indeed. Many of us spring forth saying ‘in my point of view that is not possible’ about that too we have a point of view right away.

Somebody asked J Krishnamurti ‘what do you think of Osho?’ his answer was ‘I don’t think of Osho.’ There the matter ends. That is psychological simplicity. I am not saying that anyone imitating has the psychological simplicity. But if we just memorize or take from some example and repeat it – in such and such situation, such and such saint said like that and I got to say the same. That will be burdensome affair. That would be an ‘outside in’ approach. You take something and try to push it in. Make yourself in conformity with that image, picture, personality, description; you want to become a Gandhi, you want to become Einstein, all of them impress us. Longfellow said “Life of great men do remind us that we can make our life sublime and departing, leave the foot prints on the sands of time” . You and I have that dimension in us where we are inspired by a lot of people and want to be like them. However, the other side of the story is for radical transformation within us, we cannot afford to have a circuitous path. In fact all paths are circuitous. For a radical change, a change in the depth of us, what we need is to meet with life outside & inside, what we perceive and how certain reaction rise in our mind etc. the whole thing. What we need is to meet with this whole thing without a reference, that and this.  Meet with this directly. Meet with ‘what is’ straight away.

There are lot of spiritual literature which prescribes – do this, do that and I am sure it has a place.  Then there are portions of literature which describes – Gandhi did this, Vinoba said that, Mother Teresa dealt with situation in this way, the Dalai Lama other day made such comment that is all description. So prescription and description are of course available but to handle our situation at a given moment what we need is meeting with that situation in its entirety. If we go for what is that prescription? What is that description? It is like in Engineering you say energy loss, efficiency loss. In finance you say over heads, comparison and conformity are overheads -meet with situation directly. Look, mind you the situation is not just outer stimuli, it is the inner reaction. If you are attentive to inner reaction as they are rising, there is a whole lot that you learn right away. Not from this book, not from that memory but you learn from this state of mind itself. Learning at this moment is of the greatest value than from any book, however great it may be.

The question ‘who am I?’ initially related to an awareness of the present moment in its entirety. If I am inspired by this question ‘who am I?’ which champions like Ramana popularized and I say I am going to go for this ‘Who am I?’ inquiry, it is a sadhana.

And I sit down – who am I? -> A thought rises -> well; I am a middle aged lady. Then I say as per the book it says avoid all answers, go deeper. Endlessly they have things to do, where as you apparently have seen the value of the need for inner change therefore asking who am I?  But as you ask who am I? Suppose a thought rises I shall ask who am I. And very soon remove the ego àyou brought in the psychological time – do you see it?  You introduced the destruction of the ego at the end of the certain period of time. You build it & you say I will eliminate it. Can you notice what is happening in you without introducing some artificiality? Can you stay with fact and not generate a world of fancies? And what is the fact please? The fact is the boredom probably. The fact that this moment could be ‘boredom’ in the minds of many. In the mind of many others the fact could be ‘a great curiosity’. The fact at this moment could be in somebody’s whole experience certain ‘happiness’. ‘I am so fortunate to be here’ and you could be so happy that you could not listen these statements. It becomes absorption. Can you be fully aware?  And what do I mean by full awareness. I need to throw light on it. You know when you are aware of only the tip of the iceberg; you don’t know why you are happy.

Now being aware of entirety, of certain stimulus, a sound, a picture, a face, a gesture, whatever and the inner reaction – very quietly without jumping to conclusion, being aware very quietly, very gently show that the sense of ‘I’ that we  are carrying- I am good, I made it, I made it before he dies or other ways. Nobody knows the dark side of my personality. You know there is a whisper going on within us, continuously this mind does it. If we could be silently aware of what is happening, in fact the essence of who am I? is not so much the question as much as the awareness, the observation. That direct awareness questions the construction. When we are not aware the construction of a certain judgment thrives. It snowballs into a gigantic figure.  Some time it is a bloated picture of oneself which is not immediately painful, eventually it causes problems. At the moment it is very good to feel we are the greatest, we are the best, and nobody is as good as I am. At the moment it is a good feeling but once you are attached to it, it is a womb of trouble later. But very many other times we know how a negative judgment of oneself snowballs into bigger & bigger. I am a great sinner, nobody is as ungrateful as I am, nobody is so insensitive as I am etc. and it can snowball. Who am I? Is the one question that melts the snow. The snowflakes here are memory. If one is not a victim of memories there is no ‘I’.  The ‘I’ vanishes into the thin air when one is not enslaved by memories. Memories come handy but if they do not rise unduly. Here when we go in the freeways sometime so many cars are there in  several lanes. It always fascinates me how you people change the lanes, take the exit & go and even while merging also sometimes talking, laughing, joking but keeping an eye behind. An expert driver can merge and get into fastest lane so easily, so smoothly and come out also so smoothly. It is just like second nature. Can you manage memories like that? Use the memories, drop the memories, get into memories and exit the memory lanes. Then there is no ‘I’ –no ego in you, no self. When needed you come out with your identity, when not needed you are out of the freeways you are not caught in those memory lanes.

No wonder they say down the memory lane. Some of us are unable to come out of the memory lane. As even we are getting close to 2015 we haven’t come out of 1999 yet; where is the question of moving from 2010 to 2011. I am still in 1999 year that is terrible! And how does it happen? That kind of getting stuck is lack of intelligence. Not the intelligence that goes into IQ and all those. We say Intelligent Quotient – that intelligence that goes in high IQ is very different. Logical abilities, mathematical abilities, abilities to guess and all that. This intelligence is not logical, it is above logic. It is not emotional – Emotional Quotient also. But it is something above both IQ and EQ. It is seeing, one is able to see. This seeing is a tremendous faculty. And it is your nature.  Alas! One is away from one’s nature; one is caught in what thoughts have built.

Swami Chinmayananda gave an example of a young boy in a traditional setting, who in a company of few friends took a little alcohol and more than a bit of an intoxication set in. As he came from a very orthodox family with strong value system, felt so miserable out there at some public place, he felt very guilty, ashamed, afraid and was shouting ‘take me home’ and his friends also realized we should not have given him.  They lifted him and took him home.  But he was so perturbed lying on the bed at his home with parents around was continuously yelling, ‘take me home’. What would you say about this? This is a situation where you see, in his mind, there was this construction I am away, I have taken some alcohol, I should not have, my parents would be very upset and they will ask me to go to Varanasi take a dip in Ganga and come. Till then he thought like that and lot of other things.

Now this is an exaggerated example of what mind can do to us.  You and I are in fact are caught, we are trapped in what thoughts make of us. Even Shakespeare said “nothing is right or wrong, thoughts make it so”. Nobody should misuse this, do whatever you like and quote it.  It is like someone heard lot of Vedanta and said ‘there is no doership & enjoyership, everything is illusion and he stole something, police were behind him, he ran and finally when police caught him—he quoted some Swami or some Lama. ‘Didn’t you know all is illusion, my stealing also is illusion’; the police said ‘my arresting you also is illusion’.

So you and I are not to take law in our hands but we need to have a certain insight into the way our mind works, the way the self is constructed, the way there is fear, there is desire and a whole lot of other emotions.

In every one of us, as Awareness is our very nature, there is a profound stillness and in that stillness there is no self, the separative self.  Not even a tiny wave of being superior to X or being inferior to Y has room in that profound stillness. Somehow that stillness is lost sight of.  If we say I have lost sight of that stillness then it becomes that tricky situation, who is this ‘I’ – so let us stay in lost sight of—in Awareness, in complete Awareness; not fragmented, partitioned, compartmentalized Awareness, not the Awareness where one, all the same chooses, where all the same one says, ‘this is a good thought, that is a bad thought’, not the Awareness where one says, ‘I have some ego, but I am feeling good about it, I’ll retain this and when it is unpleasant ego I will conduct the ‘who am I?’ inquiry and eliminate it. Then this choosing, this bias, this going for a lobby, inside the mind is terrible affair. Then there is no Awareness at all.  True Awareness is invariably choice less.

The Awareness where there is some choosing, delighting in some self-perception and fearing or feeling displeased with another self-perception is not Awareness at all. It is another game of the mind, another play of the mind, where you are caught in the mind. Where there is the self there is the division. This division of others and I; he, she and I, ‘I was good, now a days I am bad, is a division. I am meditating well these days and need to keep it up’ this is division. All these divisions are the departure from that stillness.

To sip a bit of water do I need to know I am 46 years old? In the same way for you to watch a sunset is it necessary to know that you got a promotion? Not necessary, unwarranted.  Normally what happens, we say normally but spiritually speaking it is not very normal. Spiritually speaking Ramana, Nisargdatta etc. were all normal and we are all in different lanes, levels and grades of abnormalities. Once an air hostess asked one passenger in one international airways on the plane ‘are you vegetarian or normal?’  So there are different notions of what is normal.  It varies from place to place so I too said normally we cannot watch a sunset without some thought of ‘I got a promotion yesterday.’ We are unable to watch a sunset without a thought of –‘again I have been made scapegoat in my office’ and so on. Sun might be saying, watch me once at least fully. It could be your son or daughter who may say to you, ‘Dad, look at me for once’ therefore no wonder great seer appeal to us.

 Spiritual maturity is not just a matter of knowing some shlokas or books or mantra or ritual which all has some place. Spiritual maturity is intimately related to seeing you daughter’s face with no thought about who you are. Often at that moment you a father might be relevant.  That also it might not be necessary many times. Like when daughter has a certain sorrow, pain, agony, fear, to understand that fear is it necessary to know I am the father? Can I not see her face and understand her fear as a fellow human being? Is it necessary for a thought to arise, she is my daughter I am her father and what I need to give her is fatherly love. Is it necessary? Go into it as home work. To categorize love as fatherly love, motherly love of which we are very fond of (classifying, categorizing) perhaps we should go into it very subtly. Not by scholarship. Don’t go and gather some books by philosophers like Kent etc.

In conclusion: So ‘Who am I? Who am I truly?’ ‘Who am I’ not as thought(s) through their propaganda tell me, ‘you are this, you are that’. Thoughts are great propagandist sitting inside us.  Our memories are a great lobby with their bias, with their vested interest and we have a certain idea of ‘who we are’. So not through another set of thoughts but really speaking by simple, gentle alertness. It would be gentle alert, because it is not alertness by which you are becoming Scotland Yard or CIA agent. ‘I am going to track down this ego’. Then you are assuming one more identity. Then there is no gentleness in that. It is good that this article has made an impression in you, without assuming any idea of, ‘I think now I am an advanced spiritual seeker’ in this very subtle affair of understanding one’s life, in this very subtle affair of watching the movement of the mind rather than ‘should’ and ‘should not’ when there is this thought.

‘Now we are in jet age, this self inquiry is high level sadhana and I am a high level sadhaka now’ such thoughts at the most take it sportily, have a hearty laugh about it and put it aside.

In intense Awareness something happens, that’s what they call awakening. In theawakening a whole lot of seeker, the sought, the path, the tools used, the domain of time,obstacles and the ways to overcome them and all these vanishes into thin air.

Awareness becomes the beginning and the end, when it is utterly pure.

HARIH OM !

Surge 82

INNER DETACHMENT

My friend Vijay Chhabra was in Italy last week, and he Emailed me, “Here at Meran, on the wall of a house where I stayed for a few days was imprinted a statement [in German] that read: This house is mine and yet not mine. My predecessor thought it was his, he left and I got in, and after me it will be the same story.”

Objects, places and people seem to belong to us, and we sometimes get very attached to them. How much blood has flown, for example, over land, sometimes in a fight between brothers! “This is mine,” says one and, “It is not yours but mine,” says the second. “I and mine, you and yours,” is the definition of maya (worldly delusion) that Shri Tulasidas gives¹ in his work Ram-Charit-Manas. Desire, attachment, pride and hurt are the different facets of the conditioned mind’s erroneous perception. They keep us trapped in this worldly existence. The folly leads to, immediately or later, terrible unrest and sorrow.

Can we decide to be detached? Will we succeed in being free from all attachment overnight? Is it possible for us to keep one day in a week for the practice of detachment? How about shedding our attachments one by one, and be free of everything through a five-year plan?

All this is ridiculous, though a lot of popular spiritual teachings have made millions believe that there is a graded process or a systematic journey towards freedom (mukti). Religious organizations have become (or remained) rich by propagating such beliefs².

Attachment is a thought process. Another thought process cannot end it. You do not come out of the dream world by a vehicle which also is part of the dream projection. Nor does any somersault that you turn in the dream become the cause of your waking up. It is not a conscious act, willed by you, that brings about the waking up. You wake up by a leap into a different state of consciousness; this leap is not the effect of any particular thought, word or deed of the dream state.

The Vedanta therefore says uncompromisingly that freedom is not an effect (kaarya). No cause (kaarana) can lead to it. No action, and therefore no effort, has a bearing on this mysterious enlightenment. Most students get very puzzled by this scenario. Majority of them pay no heed to these utterances of the Vedanta and simply proceed with their (so-called) saadhana, for they are attached to ‘doing something’; they are terribly attached to their being the doers.

On a parallel track, most people cannot sit quietly for they are slaves to their habits of ‘doing’. They do not realize how memories have hijacked them and held them captive. They cannot see that there is nothing intrinsic in ‘work’ that boosts their self-worth; it is their thought processes that make them feel good when they do some work. A child holds a doll and feels good. An adult does not attach value to that doll but the thought process in the child makes the doll very precious in his eyes. This doll is nice, feels the child, and what is more, the child considers his own self-worth as high when he possesses the doll. Many of us work because, like the doll, work gives us an enhanced self-worth. It is self-deception.

There is nothing right or wrong with work itself. The doll is innocent; let us not blame the doll. We need to examine if we are escaping some fundamental issue by immersing ourselves in work. Can we face ourselves, leaving aside either work or entertainment?

We need to stand apart from our own thought processes and see the habitual, repetitive conclusions that our mind arrives at. We then see clearly that we are not really attached to another person but our attachment is to the self-image built by thought. “I am complete, with her; I am incomplete without her,” says the thought process. The Vedanta reveals, “I am complete – with her and without her too.” The insights of the liberating wisdom of the Upanishads help us see that various conditional clauses (if I get that, because I got rid of this, and as a result of acquiring that etc) are the mischief of thought.

Becoming a Vedanta scholar is not the solution either. We must examine our life, maybe with the help of some Vedanta study, and let the erroneous perceptions get exposed. Let the mischief of thought be brought to light. Let the ego come under the scanner.

Swami Chidananda

Varanasi, Monday, June 20, 2011

1 mein aru mor tor tein maya – Sri Ram to Lakshman in Aranya Kanda.

2 It was in this sense that J Krishnamurti once remarked that gurus were spreading illusions. He stood for a sense of urgency with regard to waking up; anything that prolonged the dream was nothing short of illusion even if it gave much comfort to the student.

* * *