Peace and Freedom

Swami Chidananda

“Awareness in first place is not a thought. Awareness is something where thought in its entirety is noticed, is exposed, the networ of thoughts stands revealed in the light of awareness.”

Strangely however, all of us are not aware of the entirety of our thinking. In our thinking a division takes place and one of the most important and really the most trouble-some division is the sense of ‘I’. Thoughts construct this sense of I, which you and I perceive, you and I experience in the form of various conclusions about our worth, our value. These self judgments are bundles of thoughts. When I say we operate in thoughts, the classical Vedanta has always said, we identify with these particular fragments of thought and say ‘this is me’ and then as that me or as that particular identity we have an outlook towards life.

Barriers to Awareness

Division –>sense of ‘I’.
Constructed by thoughts we perceive, conclude –> self judgment. Vedanta says, we identify with our judgmental thoughts and develop an outlook
Division –>sense of ‘I’.
Constructed by thoughts we perceive, conclude –>self judgment.
Vedanta says, we identify with our judgmental thoughts and develop an outlook towards life –>’This is Me’

Who is me really? Who am I actually?

Am I what the bundle of thoughts at that part of time is presenting me as? Or
Am I something different?

This has been a question in the Vedanta, in all these self inquiry literature, in order that we come out of this self imposed limitation, in order that we get out of this prison of thoughts which portrays us as so and so; such and such in the light of some memories, in the light of some piece of information or pieces of information. We need to exercise Attention. We need to be Aware of the entire mind. If I walk up, come to the middle of the hall, see the half of the hall and don’t see the half of the hall which is behind me, there is fragmentation. In contrast if I am aware of the whole hall, I understand the full expanse of the hall. It may be a different situation.

Analogy does not go very far but there is certainly being aware of whole of our mind and that is the meaning of Awareness and Attention. And in that Awareness a whole lot of supporting thoughts, justifying thoughts, a whole lot of background values, whole lot of factors that generally lie behind our joy and sorrow, our fear and insecurity get exposed. These hidden factors’ being exposed makes all the difference. That is when in that very getting exposed, a deep transformation takes place. For what we thought was necessary now becomes evidently unnecessary. What we are not sensitive to and therefore ignored becomes evident.

To explore Who am I?

Need to exercise attention, be aware of the entirety of the mind.
Then the hidden factors àsupporting/justifying thoughts, background values, thoughts of joy, happiness, fear, insecurity get exposed, –>awakening certain sensitivity.
Necessary becomes evidently Unnecessary, what we are not sensitive to, therefore ignored becomes evident –>awakens

forgiveness & compassion.

True forgiveness and compassion will be possible when certain sensitivity is awakened in us. Unless we awaken the hidden sensitivity and thereby see the pain of another person, understand the limitation of another person we cannot forgive, we cannot be compassionate.

So this very comprehensive, all inclusive Awareness in which on one hand – false stand points, false positions that we take fall away and right perception flowers, is of great value. Living in total awareness is not fragmented awareness. That is no awareness at all.

Can we be free: Peace and Freedom is what everyone wants. Alas! We conceive freedom in a limited fashion though. All the time we are aiming at economic freedom, political freedom, we have the expression ‘freedom fighters’ and so many words come up. Today everybody wants space. My space – ‘don’t encroach upon my space’ physical space, psychological space, emotional space, intellectual space, many kinds of space and then there is ‘my space, my emotional, my physical, my….etc. we have always conceived of freedom, peace. Every young boy or girl dreams of standing on his or her own legs.

Two people were going in a crowded city bus of Mumbai. A young man and an old man. They were standing in between. The old man says to the young man, ‘when will you stand on your own feet?’ and the young man says, ‘what do you mean? It’s already three years I got my job and I am earning.’ The old man said, ‘but right now you are standing on my feet, physically.’

So you and I have this idea of standing on one’s own feet. To have enough money, to get a good fat pay cheque, to have a big house, to have our own vehicle, many many things in many ways. The point is in countless ways all of conceive freedom, peace.

However, Masters like Ramana Maharshi have said,

‘There is only one freedom. If you are bound by anything, it is only by one factor. You are your bondage and you can be your liberation.’

In one of the verse of ‘Saddarshanam’ he says,

‘When we have the self operating in us, the self which itself is a construction of thoughts and then it sustains itself and survives in the medium of a number of thoughts which bring insecurity, jealousy, regrets—thoughts that bring sorrow. The self is the very base of whole lot of things which are all thoughts.’

Ramana Maharshi ruthlessly or compassionately says,

‘When the self is in operation you are bound, when self is absent you are free.’

Therefore to inquire into the nature of the self, the ‘I’, the sad I, the jealous I, we generally inquire into the sadness, into the jealousy, into the so called factors out there. ‘I am jealous of him, I shouldn’t be.’ Attention is on him what he did, what he did not do. There is someone of whom I am jealous than there is jealousy and then there is ‘I am jealous’. This ‘I’ is taken for granted, ‘I’ is considered more a convenience in language and it’s considered as non-issue but in this spiritual discussion it is the main issue and Ramana Maharshiji says,

‘Don’t worry about him, of whom you are jealous, don’t worry about all these details – what are the reasons? how it began?, how it got further enhanced by some other factors? Don’t go into those peripheral issues, go to this very self, it is the jealous self in this example. Some other time it is a sad self, that is ME. This ME inquire and in that inquiry it goes away. When the self goes away, it is total freedom, total victory.’

He calls it sarvajaya complete victory.

All our problems from a spiritual perspective are of the form of ‘I’. Just as- if my foot is injured and I step on the carpet, it pains. I step on marble it pains and you say let me try to help you, you hold my hand. As soon as you hold it, it pains. In my ignorance and immaturity, I would say, ‘this carpet, this marble and your hand all are terrible, they all are sources of pain’ but where is the pain actually? My foot has an injury.

Very much so when you and I are with wounded ego, everything seems to hurt us. Someone smiles at us, we are suspicious. Another person does not smile at us, we are hurt. To smile is a problem, not to smile is another problem. So here is the wounded self, the hurt self, the disturbed self and self in all of us is like that only. Ramana Maharshiji would say, ‘this self has to be having wound and hurt and pride etc. if these are not there then there is no self.’ But can we truly be free of the self? This looks rather impossible in first analysis. We think, ‘Without ego, that is impossible’. But that is where these Masters really surprise us saying, ‘it is possible, in pure Attention, in pure Awareness, there is no room for self to rise.’

”Peace and Freedom is truly accomplished when this inner enemy of ours – the thought created fear, the thought created insecurity,inferiority etc. is undone. That is Peace and that is Freedom.”

In Bhagavad Gita you have words like paraashaanti or even when Sri Krishna uses the word shaanti which means peace, He is talking of true peace. Not the peace of sleep where the mind is stilled, quietened for a while. It will rise again and it has all its likes and dislikes. Not the peace that we derive out of an escape into some pleasure or music. Not the peace that is caused by someone praising us and temporarily there is good picture of who I am. But true peace is when self-centre, the self which is the center in us is erased. For example in Bhagavad Gita chapter II stithaprajna portion—the person of equanimity. Sri Krishna says,

vihaayakaamaan yah sarvaan pumaamshcarati nisprhah nirmamo nirahamkaarah sashaantimadhi gacchati||

Let us just take a part of the above verse: nirahamkaarh shaantim adhigacchati three words which say ‘One who has no self, ego, attains peace.’ This is what all have said that is peace, that is freedom.

You sometimes have a very interesting situation, a tyrant imprisons some intellectual or a thinker saying, ‘he is dangerous to the state’ and the tyrant gets into more and more complications politically. He is the head of the whole country or state. Even we could be like that in a given situation. Outwardly we hold power, we have imprisoned someone and we have power to deny even food and air to that person. He is imprisoned, I am free but psychologically we find I am imprisoned. I cannot sleep, I am riding on a tiger I am always afraid what next. And this man in the prison is composing poems. We hear numerous examples – Acharya Vinoba Bhave wrote and gave wonderful talks on Bhagavad Gita. It is a all time classic and he delivered the talk in his imprisonment.

So we are thus examining psychological realm which is what actually matters. The physical realm has a certain place but what truly matters is the psychological realm. Within us, do we feel free or within us do we feel always afraid. ‘I cannot be myself with him/her/them, always hiding something, guarding something, keeping several layers, files, accounts, lacking transparency’

In this psychological realm let us examine how Peace and Freedom can be discovered in Awareness. What happens moment to moment in our mind as we meet with situations.

Somebody insults me that is the stimulus. If I am fully aware, then I listen to those words, I see what they mean and I then have to decide what to say, what to do. I have to; there is no question of just being aware. Don’t stand like a furniture or vegetable. God forbid there is an earthquake at this moment. Do you think all of us have to watch. That is not watching. Suddenly if things start shaking and we have almost sixth sense of earthquakes. So what do we do? Every one of us, go out and stand below the doorframes and all of us know what has to be done. But you see, as we do what needs to be done and as we say. what needs to be said, there could be a second dimension in the mind of any of us -‘my God, where I go why such things happen’ and many such thoughts. These are called associated thoughts, applied or secondary thoughts. Where the ‘I’ came, where I am depicting myself as an unfortunate person. I am judging myself, labeling myself and sometimes I could be so attached to it that if one of you say, ‘don’t think like that’ I may get angry with you.

So I have sadness that I am unfortunate, which is my judgment. Then I have anger with you. A whole lot of thoughts drawing from memory. And thus along with, here is the earthquake and I need to run out. These are all functional thoughts and fear of something falling on my head and crushing me. Fear is an emotion, this is also an emotion rooted in present and it is not memory related fear. I am mortally afraid. But suppose I have a thought, ‘in all earlier situations many terrible things had happened, even when I went to buy a cinema ticket when my turn came they said ‘houseful!’ it looks that others will go out safely but when I’ll go, it will hit’ this is rooted in memory. ‘I’ ‘they’, ‘they are fortunate, I am unfortunate, they are likely to get free, I am not likely’……See this division of ‘they’ and ‘I’ is utterly unwarranted.

In bright Awareness, in bright Alertness, there will be no room for the construction of this… ‘unfortunate I’ or ‘fortunate I’ ‘the good I’ ‘the bad I’ —there is no ‘I’ in fact though I am running, my thoughts do not build an I. As I drink water I am drinking water, there is functionality, there is action, there is tasting, if the water is sweet or sour, I know also but there is no thought of who I am in qualification, age or name etc. because it is not warranted. The glass of water does not ask me, ‘tell thou, who art thou?’ In the same way I could rush out of this hall.

How do we manage insult?

· Be aware of the insulting words.

· Habitual thoughts which arise, do not feed them.

· Alert! Energy is saved, lot of space created, flexibility is available to us.

· You feel light mentally with more options à Handle the situation in some ingenious way.

Meet an event, in full awareness of the present

In that way can you manage insult? When someone insults you, be aware of insulting words and if by sheer momentum or habit, some thoughts come—‘this is the seventh time he is doing this to me’ be aware of it but don’t feed it. If you are Aware, if you are Alert, you will not feed. And that thought which rose, drawing from memory, will subside. Because I am not here to build a file, here she is insulting me and I notice it. In the very first analysis of whole thing, moment, there are no unnecessary thoughts. The whole lot of mechanical eruption or rising of thoughts does not take place, there is lot of energy saved, lot of space created and lot of flexibility becomes available to me. In that space, in that flexibility, in that room I can handle this insult in some ingenious way. I can say thank you, not conforming to some example of somebody thanking someone who insulted that is different. Out of the space you discover, you feel light. When you feel light, you lave lot of options. When you feel heavy and pulled down, you cannot have many options. Physically also, if I am stuck to this chair than I cannot move. Whereas otherwise I can move and can do many things.

So mentally also I have lot of options, as I live in this Awareness. See the beauty of meeting with an event, in full Awareness of present. Not to be carried away by memory, not to project that very memory into future. As I live in Attention, in Awareness, in the present moment, which is not a decision, which is not my resolve but which is the way of natural being, I stay in certain simplicity. It’s very different from resolving- ‘I shall stay in present’. Then the thought has come, can you be Aware without deciding to be Aware? Can you drink a glass of water without having to say three times, ‘I shall drink, I shall drink, I shall definitely drink’ and you drink. Are those three sentences necessary? But in meeting with praise and in meeting with insult, I would maintain that in meeting with situation in Awareness you don’t have to decide to be Aware. You can be Aware, you are Aware and that is your nature.

In the awareness memories are not encouraged. Space is generated and the immediate benefit is that we are interested in it. ‘Oh, I can handle the insult better.’ But more than just the immediate benefit there comes about the inner change. The self, the ego, the bundle of thoughts, depicting oneself as good or bad, the picture, I am unfortunate, I am bad and I hate to be in his company etc. when they go away. This ‘I’ itself goes away. There is no ‘I’. It is not just in mathematics but in this philosophy, in this self inquiry too this ‘I’ is only imaginary.

Guilt or shame are creation of thought when thought is limited. In full awareness of our life, of our thoughts, we realize I should pass but there will be no negative energy. Every one of us really speaking is Okay. Everyone is fine Now. All of us think, I will become fine one day. You are fine Now. You are fine as you are. Rest of it is certain particularities, just as in the plant world, different plant have different nature, some are tall, some are short, etc. we don’t judge this is bad tree, that is good tree. We enjoy variety.

But here we tend to say, ‘everybody should be like this’. When British conquered various countries, they tried to make everyone live like Englishman.

So this self acceptance, seeing ourselves fully, leads to self acceptance. Seeing ourselves only partly, only academics, only sports, is fragment. To see whole of life, sends away all your shame, guilt etc. of course, it doesn’t make you licentious, shameless or irresponsible. Rather it gives you a mature outlook and you put things in their proper places and without negative energy you get going. This ‘I am bad’ ‘I’ ‘I’ ‘I’; because of this ‘I’ is self, ego. This self is imaginary only.

”I is only imaginary. In pure Attention, pure Awareness, the ‘I’ goes

away and that is total freedom”

We can see a situation and there is full awareness and only functional thought which includes emotions rooted in present. Not only the skills and not only the left brain oriented stuff and relevant memories, absolutely fact based projections. But for one pound of things rooted in present, in fact there are hundreds of pounds of that this mind creates, which is rooted in figments of memory. Memory is always figments, no one can remember everything at once, a piece comes here, a piece comes there. So if there is Awareness, there is no ‘I’ there is only right emotion, right action and right going ahead.

One says there may be no ‘I’, granted but will not the ‘I’ rise afterwards? Will there be no self rejection or sense of failure later on? See we are already concerned about the future, we are so concerned, so panicky almost about future. This is where we say, the self or the ego is such a movement of the mind which has its own lobby, its own supports. And to notice that, this is one more good old habit of thinking.

Suppose there is an insight. This ‘I’ is to think I am low or I am high, this is only a mechanical activity of the mind. And then comes the thought, ‘how will I keep this insight?’ Look at that thought, stare at that thought sternly. Don’t answer that thought because that thought ‘how will I sustain?’ If you honour that thought, if you give validity to that thought then you are trapped. You stare at it and look at it as another mechanical event. That thought, how will I sustain this freedom tomorrow? Is rooted in a same ailment, as would arouse the ego itself. It is another thief.

All we need to do is, handle the present moment as though that is the only moment. There may be tomorrow or there may not be tomorrow. There is no tomorrow. There never was yesterday, there never will be tomorrow, this is the only moment. This is not poetry. This tomorrow, this yesterday etc. in the light of true knowledge is all part of a fiction. It’s like a back ground and fore ground of a video game. When we are playing a video game it is all real. Whole thing is a game, there is no foreground, there is no background, it is a screen, flat screen. On the flat screen there is the appearance of past and future. In pretty much the same way, tomorrow and yesterday are given certain validity and it is possible for you to be above this. 1.3.2012

”An enlightened soul plays the same rules of the game as you and I dobut yet knows clearly – On one hand there is no future, there is nopast, present alone is true and like the other side of the same coinwithout having to derive something more or prove something more.”

Like in mathematics, if you know the theorem, the corollaries arealready proved, you may have to discover it.

In the same way Awareness is the only true theorem in life.

o Corollary 1. Past and future are false.

o Corollary 2. The self is false.

Hurt is false, pride is false are all corollaries.

To see that the self is false is living in total Peace, total Freedom.You don’t bind yourself, situation may happen, may be according to thepredetermined pattern or by praarabdha as the word goes.

Even Christ was crucified, Ramakrishna and Ramana had cancer. Krishnamurti too had pancreatic cancer and suffered quite a bit before breathing his last breath. There is pain, there is the experience of the pain but for one pound of pain you and I generate hundreds of pounds of psychological suffering. ‘I wish I would have got it 10 years later’ – thinking, comparing with someone. Number of forms of thought created suffering. Pain comes and pain goes whereas we sustain suffering through thought.

Central to this whole movement of varieties of thoughts, is the self. Just as if I have a marker pen, I can write all sorts of things on the white board—good things, bad things, poems, prose etc. and you come and take away my marker pen itself, then nothing can be written. When there is no self, no marker pen the white board, if it is fresh clean, remains clean. In Awareness the board gets cleaned and also remains clean.

Only when there is the self, there is winning and there is losing, there is moral eminence and there is moral degradation, there is success and there is failure, varieties of things happen.

Nisargdutta Maharaj was asked, ‘What is the difference between your world and our world?’ And his answer was, ‘Lot of things happen in your world, nothing happens in my world.’ In some other place he has replied ‘In your world nothing happens, in my world lot of things happen.’ Even in our Upanishad we find contradictory statements. There the meaning is, there is so much of freedom, there is so much of divine experience and in the egoistic world there is so much constrain, so much of lack of freedom. So in that sense nothing is possible, you cannot do anything. Every moment you say, ‘I want to do but what will my children think and what will society think’ and so you are constraint so you cannot do.

Whereas the enlightened one is totally free. Swami Chinmayananda made very strange statement about freedom, “Not to do what you feel like doing is freedom.” Generally we have simple definition of freedom—‘freedom is being able to do what you want to do’ and he said something opposite. What he meant was that we have these instincts, impulses, just mechanical urges and he said not to go by those urges. Rather give thought to it and see whether it is good or bad and then doing what is truly good, is the hall mark of freedom. If the people went about doing whatever they felt like doing, that is not freedom. That is licentiousness. That would be a chaotic situation, in that sense he said it.

In conclusion

· In self inquiry it is not a matter of doing or not doing at all. It is a matter of being fully aware of day to day activities.

· Do’s and don’ts are part of life. If do’s and don’ts are given total sanctity, total sacredness and do’s and don’ts are given such a position, that this is all there is to life, then there will be a problem. If dos and don’ts are appreciated in their proper context then in that appreciation deeper insights could be facilitated.

· In other words, how karma kaandi-s said, karma alone, action alone is everything in life and someone like Adi Shankara showed that there is something beyond karma but within the context of karma- activity necessarily there will be do’s and don’ts.

· Inner freedom is a matter of undoing the psychological conflict, psychological division, psychological comparison which generates disharmony in us. In coming to a psychological integration one experiences freedom. Think of the tyrant who imprisoned a pious man, the pious man in the prison is also at peace, though he knows and wishes to be free but it doesn’t rub on him all day and night. He very much wishes to be free, there is no denying of it but his mind has that purity, that simplicity that he goes on composing a poem or Acharya Vinoba Bhave while giving a Gita discourse on a Sunday morning to fellow prisoners is completely free from the thought that he is in prison.

· It is one thing to be in prison and another is the thought that I am in prison. Vinoba was free from the thought that I am in prison. Most of you here are householders. I would say, it is one thing to be family person but quite another to carry thoughts all the time, ‘I am a family person and it is difficult’ like a mantra. This is lack of Attention.

· In our mind there are lots of things mechanically happening and that is where freedom is denied. These mechanical patterns go away in the heat, in the light of Awareness and there is tremendous amount of freedom natural to us waiting to be discovered. So in the tyrant’s example, Saddam Hussain atrociously killed people and buried them. What is the spiritual solution for this act of Saddam or a tyrant and the dictator which is present in our heart too? Can a tyrant accept himself as he is?

· Is it possible for us to say to him, ‘you are fine now!’ Yes, I would say

That. I would stand by the spiritual insights of these great seers. How does it work? If even the worst criminal, observes and is aware of whole thing and if he comes to complete terms with it, in that coming to terms with situation completely, he frees himself from false prestige. He is ready to say, ‘I did all these things, this is me and I am sincerely sorry for all that.’ In that complete honesty, not a political stunt like advisor asking him to do so that he can be forgiven. Not that but totally he feels that he lived a wrong life and he completely confesses, admits, not to the whole world but concerned people that depends on situation. In that complete acceptance and complete opening up, Saddam can get enlightenment.

Masterspeak

“Enlightenment is coming to terms with yourself as you are, completely. Which is possible in thorough Attention, through Awareness and there is no ‘I’ at all there. That is complete surrender.

Absence of the false self. The lack of freedom is when, thanks to thoughts and not because of external factors, we live in a certain sense of being shrunk, a certain constraint inner atmosphere comes about in us, purely created by thoughts.

While we all are active and shall remain active in making the world a better place that of course goes on. The crux of the issue here in the matter of Peace and Freedom is the self created, thought created bondage.

That thought is a pattern, it is mechanical process and the ending of that mechanical process is in Awareness, which does not suppress thoughts but which sees the entire structure of thoughts. In seeing the entire structure of thoughts, thoughts as though become ashamed and subside away. Thoughts will have shame and subside away. That is what

Peace and Freedom

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