Attention and Awareness
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 13th 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.”