Advaita from scratch - Kanchi Mahaswamigal's Discourses - 6

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Kanchi

Mahaswamigal's Discourses on Advaitam

 

KMDA – 6

(For KMDA –

5, see #43995)

 

Tamil

original starts from http://www.kamakoti.org/tamil/part4kural294.htm

 

Note: In these discourses, `the Acharya'

refers to Adi Shankaracharya. The speaker is the Kanchi Mahaswamigal.

 

Mind is other than the Atman

 

Atman is not the mind means Atman

is one thing and Mind another. Mind is different from the Atman. In other words

it is something other than the Atman, something different, a second one.

 

`Wait, wait! You have yourself said that there is nothing

other than the Atman! Then how is it possible Mind is a second?'

 

I have already dealt with this

question, my dear! But I shall again tell you. Listen, carefully. There is a

person; he dons a role and plays that role. Now tell me: Are the person and the

role the same or different? The answer

has to be, both. They are one; they are also different! It is certainly

puzzling! There is a person called Ramaswamy.

He dons the role of a King. Without him there is no role. The role-King

cannot subsist without him. This is

advaitam. But does that mean Ramaswamy is the King? No, it is not so. Does the

Kingdom of the King belong to Ramaswamy? No.

Do the wife, and family of the King belong to Ramaswamy? No. The King

went through several experiences, pleasant and unpleasant; he went hunting, he

gambled and lost, then fought a battle and won, at one time he was in total

depression, at another time he was in high spirits – out of all these different

experiences can anything pertain to the real Ramaswamy? Could any of the plusses and minuses of the King's

experiences have touched Ramaswamy? When he cast off the role of the King,

Ramaswamy was exactly the same old Ramaswamy. In sum, for the real person, a

role or an act is something totally different from him. It is dvitIyam, a second object. It is exactly in the same manner, for the

Atman, Mind is dvitIyam, a second, a different, object.

 

I shall give you another analogy. This one occurs very often in advaita

literature. In the dim twilight of the evening a rope appears as a snake. In the haze of mAyA Atman appears as

an individual JIva – in other words, it shows up as one's mind, with

which the JIva has itself identified as itself. Without the presence of

the rope there could not have been the appearance of the snake. The snake has

been imagined as a superimposition on the rope. Without the rope there is no

snake; this is advaitam. But is the rope

the snake? No. From the point of view of the rope is there even a little relationship

between the snake-appearance and the rope? We thought there was a snake and we

even went overboard in behaving awkwardly out of fear. Does the rope have any

responsibility for this fear in us? Because of the fact that a snake was seen

in its place, did the rope show any increase in weight? Then when we saw it in

better lighting, we knew it was no snake, it was only the rope. (This is the

state when, in the effulgence of the light of Wisdom that drives away the

delusion caused by mAyA, mind disappears and the Atman alone

shines.). Because the snake-appearance

emanated from it, does the rope experience any decrease in weight? If we think along these lines, it is clear

that in the snake there was no question of any relationship with the rope. The

two – rope and snake – are certainly two different things.

 

It is in the same way Mind is different and distinct from the Atman.

 

Therefore the matter does not stop with what I said a little while ago –

that Mind always can know and show only something other than itself. `When a

second thing is there, then there could be cause for fear; mind is what creates

the duality (*dvaitam*) that constitutes the cause for the fear.' This

is what I said even earlier. That was

right. But further I am telling you now: Not only does the mind show something

other than itself; the very fact that not being the true `I' (or the Atman) it

shows itself in apposition, as a second (*dvitIyaM*) object other than

the Atman. One may describe this in different ways: imagination, disguise, `adhyAsaM',

`adhyAropaM', etc. Whatever it may be one cannot deny that so long as we

do actions in a mind-centric manner as if mind is the ultimate truth, that mind

will always be something different from the Atman.

 

The existence of a second thing causes fear. Mind knows only such second

things. So it is the mind that projects

this `dvaita-prapancham' (the world of duality) and such a world surely

causes fear permanently. Right now we may be casually talking Vedanta in a

light-hearted way, but if the next moment there is a tremor of the earth

underneath us, why, the very moment when I say this, fear overtakes us. This is

the nature of the world of duality caused by our mind.

 

Thus, it is a fact that the mind which always projects another thing, is

itself distinct as another thing from the Atman and this fact is the root cause

for all our fears. In other words, the

separation of the mind from the Atman is the first duality, first fear. Then

arise all other fears, all other dualities, the world of duality with all its

inherent danger of samsAra (transmigration), of hell and so on.

 

Experience of Self is the Fearless Release

 

Therefore the vanishing of the mind is the true Release. The Self remaining

by itself without the association of the mind is the state of Fearless Blissful

advaitic mokshhaM. We might have considered that the being of the JIva

as an individual is a mental construct, but it is only a role, a superimposed

imagination on the substratum of the Absolute Atman which is the only complete

Truth. The Realisation of it, that is to know that Atman and be anchored in it,

this is not an inert state, but a supreme state of Consciousness, Knowledge, Awareness and

Bliss. It will not be like the mind knowing and feeling something else other

than itself and experiencing happiness and sorrow. It will be one of permanent

Bliss, where the Atman knows itself by itself.

When we get happiness from a second thing, it is always followed very

soon by a stronger unhappiness. It will not be so in the case of the Atman.

There is no second thing to give fear or unhappiness; and so, the boundless and

natural bliss that is the nature of the Atman would be uninterrupted and

unintercepted by anything other than happiness.

 

If one wants to be without any fear at all the only way is to become the

Self, which is the one thing which has no second and therefore no source for

fear. That is the mokshha state,

the state of Absolute Release. Keeping the mind and living as an individual

JIva is a bonded state. Bond does not only mean the bondage that arises from

mental constructs, but it also means all actions by the senses that arise for

the purpose of fulfilling those constructs and desires. This bondage of Karma can be loosened only by

actions that coordinate with Dharma.

 

Dharma that loosens the bondage of Karma

 

Suppose there is a bundle of firewood, tightly roped so that one is not

able to unwind the knot. Do you know what they do to unwind it? In order to loosen the bundle they will rope

it once more, more tightly than the

first time but this time they will not complete the roping by knotting it but

only hold it tight so that the earlier rope-binding loosens. Now the first binding is undone, and

then the second binding also since it is only a make-believe of a binding! The

same strategy has to be adopted by us for releasing ourselves from the bondage

of samsAra in which we have knotted ourselves because of multifarious

actions engineered by our mind. The strategy is to bind ourselves with `shAstra-karma'

(Action enjoined by the scriptures). They are not ordinary haphazard bindings.

Through the ShAstras many Rishis have chalked out these actions based on

svadharma. The Lord Himself has ordained these rules through the Rishis.

These regulatory bindings in the form of svadharma duties are the ones

which can release us from the bindings which we have ourselves made for us in

haphazard fashion following our senses. It is this svadharma bondage that will

help us loosen the karma bondage. This

is not actually a bondage; it is like one, that is all. What is crushed by this

is our bundle of desires, and therefore for our own good. Once we understand

this we can keep going along with all the ShAstraic karmas enjoined on

us.

 

(To be continued in KMDA-7)

 

PraNAms to all advaitins.

PraNAms to the Mahaswamigal.

profvk