Attention and Awarness

Swami Chidananda

 …..Continued

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 includingdevatas are afraid that she will kill everybody. They request Shiva to handle 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.

Concluded