Practical advaita

[Guest guest]

PRACTICAL ADVAITA

 

Practical advaita is what a convinced advaitin would practise or want

to practise.. He is convinced that there is nothing but the Absolute

Self. It is the immutable infinite beyond anything described by words

or delimited by attributes. It is also the immanent entity in anything

that is perceivable by the senses. But this theoretical conviction

seems to have only a nebulous contact with the diverse goings-on of

this outward self with which we exist, converse, act and experience.

One is not sure what it means for this conviction to percolate into

one’s activities. The seeker, who has just been exposed to the

fundamentals of advaita has a tendency to feel that it is only a

thought-concept and may not be applicable to this ‘world of

multiplicity’. His logic is that if one considers everybody else and

everything else to be nothing but his own self then the ordinary

relationships in the material world would all collapse. This article

is a set of random thoughts on these matters gathered by me from

famous exponents of advaita who were also, in some sense,

practitioners of what they preached. The most important of them, at

least for me, happened to be my father, from whom I learnt most of

what I think I know today. The example being my father, I could take

lessons from the way he himself reacted to multifarious daily

situations in public and private life.

There are two things: kriyAdvaita – Advaita in action – and

bhavAdvaita – Advaita in attitude. As in almost all spheres and

facets of the sanAtana dharma, it is the attitude that is more

important. Even in the secular world the criminal law dispenses a

softer punishment to someone who kills, only accidentally and not

with intent, than to the one who kills with intent. It is the

attitude that matters. A convinced advitin has to have his right

attitude reflect in all his day-to-day actions. It is the attitude of

sama-dRSTi, that is, equanimous vision. The gItA couplet: He who sees

Me everywhere, and who sees everything in Me, to him I am never lost

nor is he lost to me - is not just a good quote for platform

speeches. It is the ace-commandment from the Lord. It is practical

advaita. Let us spend a few moments digesting this.

This advaita attitude is just the awareness of the One Ultimate

Reality which is both transcendent and immanent. Every time we pray to

God or worship Him it should be with the conscious step of accepting a

duality for the sake of worldly worship while in reality there is no

duality. The sixteen formalities that are built into a pUjA are all

expressions of this coming down, namely, a confession: Oh God! I

cannot but worship You as someone separate from me but let this

worship strengthen the realisation in me of the identity between You

and my Inner Self. This is a characteristic of a true practitioner of

advaita. It is clear that this is walking on razor’s edge. When love

of a saguna-idol matures into Supreme Love of God, one sees the entire

world as Himself. Love towards one object, and for the same reason,

hate towards another object – this pattern will then give place to an

infinite Love which sees no high and low, no distinction of duality.

Love of God maturing into the insight of seeing the entire world as

Himself is advaita bhakti.

This is where the first lesson of practical advaita starts. Normally

when we think of another person, we tend to think of his negatives

also. Very often only his negatives come to our mind rather than the

good things about him. But the habit of seeing God in everybody

should be practised in such a way that the first thing that we

attempt to do is to forget the negatives of the other person. When we

think of ourselves we very often forget our own negatives. Even when

another person points it out to us we tend to either ignore it or

disbelieve it. The advaitic injunction of seeing ourselves in the

other person, when translated into action, gives us the lever to

ignore or forget his negatives just as we do with our own thus

setting up almost a supernatural empathy with the other person. If

this happens to the majority of us, half the world’s problems are

solved. This is the first great leap forward in spirituality .

The next step is to see the same God in all Gods and Divinities. The

dogmatism that is inherent in the fanatical love of one’s own religion

or in such love of one’s own school of philosophy should give way to

look at all paths to God as valid and of value.

The third and final step is what is described in the 6th and 7th

verses of the IzAvAsyopaniSad: ‘yastu sarvANi bhUtAni

Atmany-evAnupazyati; sarva-bhUteSu cAtmAnaM tato na vijugupsate //

yasmin sarvANi bhUtAni AtmaivAbhUd-vijAnataH; tatra ko mohaH kaH zokaH

ekatvaM anupazyataH //’ meaning: He who sees all beings in the Self

and the Self in all beings, hates none; to the illumined soul, who

sees everything as a manifestation of his own Self, how can there be

delusion or grief since he sees only oneness? Even here the seers have

advised us to proceed in two stages. The first stage for this

conceptual identification of vision is a sense of unity with other

existences. This unity makes us give respect to everything. The

next stage is to identify it with the Self. The respect shown to other

beings now widens into compassion and love to the things in which we

see our own Self. But this oneness is still only an artificial

oneness, a pluralistic unity. Real knowledge begins with a perception,

not just an understanding at the intellectual level, of this oneness.

The concept of pluralistic unity must give place, or lead to, a total

comprehension or perception in the experiential level. To do this one

has to first retreat from the outside world – nivRtti. Then see

everything in Oneself. The opposite of this is a narrow I-feeling;

that is what causes attachment and hate. The spiritual disciplines

purify one’s mind and this coupled with the association of the sAtvic

type of people lead to an illumination which unfolds the harmony of

one-ness. This is the vision. After this vision, the world from which

one has retreated is drawn into the Self. Ethically the formula is:

Detach yourself attitudinally, and then Love. Live in that dynamic

unity. No more separate self, no more likes and dislikes, no more

hopes and fears. This is the only way of serving society, says Swami

Vivekananda. This equanimity of vision is the rationale for the

commandment of Jesus: Love thy neighbour. When such an illumination

of Oneness and Equanimity arrives where is the possibility of grief or

delusion? Grief is always about an event in the past. Delusion is in

the present. Fear is about the future. It is the Lord who is the

Master of the past, present and future. –

bhUta-bhavya-bhavat-prabhuH. For one who has given himself up to the

Lord of the past, present and future, there is no grief, no delusion,

no fear. Such a one is a vijAnat, the one who knows, who sees with a

distinguished vision, whose conviction is not just at an academic

level, but is of personal experience born out of inner conviction. For

such a one there is only the Self – no non-Self.

[Guest guest]

The knowledge of the self is not a theoretical conviction.

 

If you hear about something distant from you such as a country you have not

yet visited or perhaps an age in which you did not live, you can develop

certain theoretical convictions about them. In the case of the country, you

may be able to change those ideas into knowledge by visiting the country and

seeing the truth of them for yourself.

 

The self, however is not at all distant from you. It is you and you are

right there immediately available to yourself.. After some exposure to the

teaching, the old biography ceases to be your idea of who you are and "Aham

Brahm'Asmi" takes its place.

 

Somewhere between the first Vedanta talk one hears and this point, there are

some major learnings. They have to do with the mind and ahankara and the

removal of the knower/known duality. In brief, they involve seeing clearly

the only apparently real nature of the mind by seeing the different kind of

reality thoughts have compared to the Self. Thoughts arise from the the

Self as awareness, are sustained by awareness and resolve back to awareness.

Thus they are dependent on the self as awareness, not independent. Thus they

are less real than the self. Knowing that, one also can view the thoughts

which comprise one's biography. These can be seen as apparent and dependent

on awareness which is myself. The more one examines the thoughts which make

up one's biography, the more reasons one can find for their unreality. Most

of them originate from elsewhere such as from one's culture. That I am

Indian, that I am a brahmin or a kshattriya, these thoughts about myself

change in importance and may even lose the power of their meaning when I

move to the United States. Memories from childhood re-examined as an adult

are shown to have been misunderstandings of a child. We say that the Real is

that which does not change no matter what the period of time, past, present

or future. We might also add, it doesn't chnage from place to place or

context to context.

 

Ramana Maharshi says that mind, on examination, is just a bunch of thoughts,

as follows:

 

mAnasantu kiM mArgaNe kR^ite|

naiva mAnasaM mArga ArjavAt...17..

By proper enquiry, enquiring "what is the mind?" (one finds) there is no

(separate entity as) mind. (17)

 

vR^ittayastvahaM vR^ittimAshritAH.|

vR^itayo mano viddhyaham manaH..18..

The mind is only a bundle of thoughts. They are dependent on the I-thought

(ahaN^kara). Know the I-thought to be the mind.. (18)

 

In examining mind, one finds only a bunch of thoughts. Via various

practices, one may quiet almost all of those thoughts but the King of All

Thoughts, the pile of thoughts that consititutes one's biography, the good

old I-notion, ahaN^kara,sits there happily enjoying the quiet, unassailed.

 

To understand the truth of that pile of thoughts one must investigate

thought, just one thought, any old thought, even that of the computer on the

desk. So now, if you have gone to a few Vedanta talks, you know that you/I

are/am consciousness or awareness (chit). Now what about this computer

thought? How far is it from I-awareness? Hopefully the monitor is arm's

length from your body but there is no distance between I-awareness and

computer. The computer thought is in awareness.

 

Flower pots are made of clay. Some chains are made of gold. The computer

thought is made of....awareness with name and form. Is the computer thought

outside I-awareness? It can't be outside or no one could know it. Is the

computer or computer thought made only of awareness. No. But like the

mountain has space in it but is not exactly space, the computer thought is

made of awareness, but is not awareness. If it were awareness, then the

computer thought could never go away when you turned your attention to lunch

or your child or buying fuel for the car.

 

Subject/object duality drops away. The subject/object duality is a trick

of the mind which is very useful in day to day life but it is not true.

 

The computer thought could not exist without I-awareness. Without I-awarene

ss, computer never could have been developed, manufactured, sold and sitting

in your home or office for you to see to check your e-mail. Computer

thought needs awareness in which to exist. It is dependent.

 

Flower pot is made of clay (or some other substance). Gold chain is made of

gold or arises from gold. Anly while the clay or gold continue can the pot

or chain continue. We say pot is sustained by clay and chain by gold. When

the forms are destroyed (pot breaks, cain is melted down, the forms resolve

back into clay and gold. Similarly computer thouth arises in I-awareness,

is sustained by I-awareness and resolves back to I-awareness. If you close

your eyes and think of your computer, concentrate on that thought, after a

while the thought disappears and only I-awareness is there. That way you

experience how computer thought resolves back into I-awareness. If

something arises from is sustained by and resolves back into something else,

it is said that it is dependent on that other thing. That which is

dependent is not as real as that which is its source, sustenance and

resolution.

 

Seeing the relative reality of the computer thought first, one can then see

the same about the thoughts which comprise one's biography. The pile of

thoughts which make us the biography, is condiered by Ramana to be the hub

of all thoughts which make up the mind. And also the King of all of them.

Once one sees how the thoughts in one's biography are dependent on the self,

and also sees what is the Self, the biography loses its power to be one's

identity.

 

Once the biography assumes its correct status as a useful appearance, it

loses its capacity to control one's thinking, feeling and acting. Nobody

gets this far into the process without having become a contemplative person,

a person who pays attention in life, acts consciously and is able to learn

from one's experience. No one gets this far in the process whithout a

highly developed habit of dispassionate thinking and discrimination between

the eternal and the ever-changing. When the ahaN^kara, the biography, is

found out to be an imposter, .a transformation is set in motion. One's old

idiotic habit patterns of thinking and feeling glare out at one in the light

of the truth about the Self. It will not be possible to leave them in

place.

 

Recently I have thought that the reason why the ancients said that, after

knowledge, one did not need to do anything else was because one's own

discrimination and dispassion would reveal one's own foolishness and one

would be compelled to remove it, drop it, stop it. Just continuing to live

attentively is sufficient fertile ground for the transformation to take

place. Nothing extra is to discover the substance behind the old saying

"Happiness is within you."

 

Practical Vedanta is like Prince Arjuna's question: "How can I recognize a

person of wisdom? How does he/she dress? How walk? How talk?" So we can

look at how Lord Krshna answered the question.

 

It seems that the great thing that Advaita Vedanta does for the individual

and his/her world is to return to the world a simple person with no basis

for selfish motivation or harming others.

 

Aikya Param

P.O. Box 4193

Berkeley, CA 94704-0193

Advaita Vedanta for Today (graphics)

http://members.tripod.com/aikya/

Advaita Vedanta for Today (text version)

http://members.xoom.com/aikya/aikya

 

 

 

 

 

V. Krishnamurthy <profvk

advaitin <advaitin >

Sunday, November 29, 1998 5:03 AM

Practical advaita

 

>"V. Krishnamurthy" <profvk

>

>PRACTICAL ADVAITA

>

>Practical advaita is what a convinced advaitin would practise or want

>to practise.. He is convinced that there is nothing but the Absolute

>Self. It is the immutable infinite beyond anything described by words

>or delimited by attributes. It is also the immanent entity in anything

>that is perceivable by the senses. But this theoretical conviction

>seems to have only a nebulous contact with the diverse goings-on of

>this outward self with which we exist, converse, act and experience.

>One is not sure what it means for this conviction to percolate into

>one’s activities. The seeker, who has just been exposed to the

>fundamentals of advaita has a tendency to feel that it is only a

>thought-concept and may not be applicable to this ‘world of

>multiplicity’. His logic is that if one considers everybody else and

>everything else to be nothing but his own self then the ordinary

>relationships in the material world would all collapse. This article

>is a set of random thoughts on these matters gathered by me from

>famous exponents of advaita who were also, in some sense,

>practitioners of what they preached. The most important of them, at

>least for me, happened to be my father, from whom I learnt most of

>what I think I know today. The example being my father, I could take

>lessons from the way he himself reacted to multifarious daily

>situations in public and private life.

>There are two things: kriyAdvaita – Advaita in action – and

>bhavAdvaita – Advaita in attitude. As in almost all spheres and

>facets of the sanAtana dharma, it is the attitude that is more

>important. Even in the secular world the criminal law dispenses a

>softer punishment to someone who kills, only accidentally and not

>with intent, than to the one who kills with intent. It is the

>attitude that matters. A convinced advitin has to have his right

>attitude reflect in all his day-to-day actions. It is the attitude of

>sama-dRSTi, that is, equanimous vision. The gItA couplet: He who sees

>Me everywhere, and who sees everything in Me, to him I am never lost

>nor is he lost to me - is not just a good quote for platform

>speeches. It is the ace-commandment from the Lord. It is practical

>advaita. Let us spend a few moments digesting this.

>This advaita attitude is just the awareness of the One Ultimate

>Reality which is both transcendent and immanent. Every time we pray to

>God or worship Him it should be with the conscious step of accepting a

>duality for the sake of worldly worship while in reality there is no

>duality. The sixteen formalities that are built into a pUjA are all

>expressions of this coming down, namely, a confession: Oh God! I

>cannot but worship You as someone separate from me but let this

>worship strengthen the realisation in me of the identity between You

>and my Inner Self. This is a characteristic of a true practitioner of

>advaita. It is clear that this is walking on razor’s edge. When love

>of a saguna-idol matures into Supreme Love of God, one sees the entire

>world as Himself. Love towards one object, and for the same reason,

>hate towards another object – this pattern will then give place to an

>infinite Love which sees no high and low, no distinction of duality.

>Love of God maturing into the insight of seeing the entire world as

>Himself is advaita bhakti.

>This is where the first lesson of practical advaita starts. Normally

>when we think of another person, we tend to think of his negatives

>also. Very often only his negatives come to our mind rather than the

>good things about him. But the habit of seeing God in everybody

>should be practised in such a way that the first thing that we

>attempt to do is to forget the negatives of the other person. When we

>think of ourselves we very often forget our own negatives. Even when

>another person points it out to us we tend to either ignore it or

>disbelieve it. The advaitic injunction of seeing ourselves in the

>other person, when translated into action, gives us the lever to

>ignore or forget his negatives just as we do with our own thus

>setting up almost a supernatural empathy with the other person. If

>this happens to the majority of us, half the world’s problems are

>solved. This is the first great leap forward in spirituality .

>The next step is to see the same God in all Gods and Divinities. The

>dogmatism that is inherent in the fanatical love of one’s own religion

>or in such love of one’s own school of philosophy should give way to

>look at all paths to God as valid and of value.

>The third and final step is what is described in the 6th and 7th

>verses of the IzAvAsyopaniSad: ‘yastu sarvANi bhUtAni

>Atmany-evAnupazyati; sarva-bhUteSu cAtmAnaM tato na vijugupsate //

>yasmin sarvANi bhUtAni AtmaivAbhUd-vijAnataH; tatra ko mohaH kaH zokaH

>ekatvaM anupazyataH //’ meaning: He who sees all beings in the Self

>and the Self in all beings, hates none; to the illumined soul, who

>sees everything as a manifestation of his own Self, how can there be

>delusion or grief since he sees only oneness? Even here the seers have

>advised us to proceed in two stages. The first stage for this

>conceptual identification of vision is a sense of unity with other

>existences. This unity makes us give respect to everything. The

>next stage is to identify it with the Self. The respect shown to other

>beings now widens into compassion and love to the things in which we

>see our own Self. But this oneness is still only an artificial

>oneness, a pluralistic unity. Real knowledge begins with a perception,

>not just an understanding at the intellectual level, of this oneness.

>The concept of pluralistic unity must give place, or lead to, a total

>comprehension or perception in the experiential level. To do this one

>has to first retreat from the outside world – nivRtti. Then see

>everything in Oneself. The opposite of this is a narrow I-feeling;

>that is what causes attachment and hate. The spiritual disciplines

>purify one’s mind and this coupled with the association of the sAtvic

>type of people lead to an illumination which unfolds the harmony of

>one-ness. This is the vision. After this vision, the world from which

>one has retreated is drawn into the Self. Ethically the formula is:

>Detach yourself attitudinally, and then Love. Live in that dynamic

>unity. No more separate self, no more likes and dislikes, no more

>hopes and fears. This is the only way of serving society, says Swami

>Vivekananda. This equanimity of vision is the rationale for the

>commandment of Jesus: Love thy neighbour. When such an illumination

>of Oneness and Equanimity arrives where is the possibility of grief or

>delusion? Grief is always about an event in the past. Delusion is in

>the present. Fear is about the future. It is the Lord who is the

>Master of the past, present and future. –

>bhUta-bhavya-bhavat-prabhuH. For one who has given himself up to the

>Lord of the past, present and future, there is no grief, no delusion,

>no fear. Such a one is a vijAnat, the one who knows, who sees with a

>distinguished vision, whose conviction is not just at an academic

>level, but is of personal experience born out of inner conviction. For

>such a one there is only the Self – no non-Self.

>

>

>

>

>

>------

>Help support ONElist, while generating interest in your product or

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>/advert.html for more information.

>------

>Discussion of Sankara's Advaita Vedanta Philosophy, its true meaning,

profundity, richness and beauty with the focus on the non-duality between

mind and matter

[Guest guest]

>"Aikya_Param" <aikya

>

>The knowledge of the self is not a theoretical conviction.

>

>>"V. Krishnamurthy" <profvk

>>

>>PRACTICAL ADVAITA

>>

>>Practical advaita is what a convinced advaitin would practise or want

>>to practise.. He is convinced that there is nothing but the Absolute

>>Self.

 

As I see it -

 

What Sri Krishnamurthy is discussing as the practical Advaita, is

essentially the required purification process needed to see clearly the

vision of oneself, that which Aikya is emphasizing about.

 

Tat twam asi - that thou art - 'that' is being used even though it is aham

we are taking about - since it is remote not specially or temporally but

from the point of understanding. - same as 'purnam adah' - 'that' is

complete.

 

Bhagavan Ramana emphasizes this in the Upadesha saarama too in the first

few slokas -

puujanam japaa chintanam kramaat -

 

kramaat - in the order - it is like the sapta idlee nyaaya - even though it

is the seventh idlee that fulfills the stomach, I can not have the seventh

idlee first.

 

bhedha bhaavana sohamityasou|

bhaavanaabhidaa paavanii mataa||

 

Lord is there and I am only a bhakta - He is separate from me is the bedha

baavana. soham - He is I is the abhidaa bhaavana. An extrovert mind is

not ready to contemplate on what is mind? or who I am? - etc. It needs to

eat the six idlees before it embarks on the seventh. Hence Ramana

emphasizes the bedha baavana first and then says as and when the student is

mature, he takes him to the next step - abhidhaa baavana is supreme and

most sacred. It is still a bhaavana - the bhavana to become knowledge -

requires the inquiry that is being emphasized as self knowledge.

 

As long as there is ignorance, one cannot but have a locus for the

dhyaanam. and This is what Shree Krishanamurthy is emphasizing in his

practical advaita.

Any practice as he states clearly is dwaita - This includes even

meditation. Hence Dattaatreya declares in Avadhuuta Geeta

'aham dhyaata param dhyeam akhanDam khandate katham'

'I am a meditater and this is to be meditated upon, how can one divide that

which is indivisible'. But that is a declaration of JNaani.

Shivam na jaanami katham bhajaami

Shivan na jaanaami katham vadaami|

aham shivaschet paramaatma tatvam

samaswaruupam gaganopamancha||

I donot know Lord Shiva, how can I pray to Him, I do not know Lord Shiva,

how can I talk about him - because I am the Lord Shiva, the auspiciousness,

the essence of the supreme, all pervading eternal and the substratum for

all .-

This is statement by a Dattatreya, one of the greatest Shiva bhakta!

 

Practical advaita is how one can operate in the world to neutralize ones

vaasanaas or purify oneself given the vedantic declarations that I am that

total. Until that is realized, I feel I am still an inadequate person. It

is like a beggar who has apparently has learned an inheritance of riches in

a far away lands. But he has no penny to go there and claim his

inheritance. He does not have to be a beggar, since he has riches to

claim. Yet he is still a beggar - in fact he is a miserable beggar now

knowing fully that he does not have to beg yet he is forced to beg!

 

One gentleman asked Sri Swami Chinmayanandaji - Sir I understand fully well

and I know vedanta very well "I am Brahman and I am that happiness I am

looking for", but how come I feel miserable still and unhappy. Swamiji

looked at him and said - "that is also my question - how come you are

unhappy and miserable when you know that you are Brahman and you are that

happiness"

 

This is where practical vedanta has a role to play.

 

Chittasya shuddaye karma na tu vastuupa labhyaye.

Actions are meant for purification of the mind and not for realization.

 

Blessed are those whose minds are pure - the kingdom of heaven is theirs!

 

Hari Om!

Sadananda

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

K. Sadananda

Code 6323

Naval Research Laboratory

Washington D.C. 20375

Voice (202)767-2117

Fax:(202)767-2623