THE SACRED ART OF SILENCE/STILLNESS

August 11, 2005

Sri Dakshinamurti and Sri Ramana

by Sadhu Arunachala

Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi has often been compared to Sri Dakshinamurti, who sits silently under the banyan tree on the north slope of Arunachala, and there is much ground for this comparison. Moreover, it is more than just a comparison. Actually the two are identical, though their bodies may seem, to us who are bound by the limitations of time and space, different.

Sri Dakshinamurti has retreated to an inaccessible vastness, no longer to be reached by humans, and we can only surmise that this was done because he found the world unworthy and unable to understand his silent instruction, whereas in the form of Sri Ramana he was always most accessible and explained to one and all the meaning of this silence; if they did not listen now, well, the seed would bear fruit on some future occasion. Nothing was ever wasted, for him there was no time and so there could be no disappointment.

Strangely, Bhagavan (as we all used to call Sri Ramana) once found himself in the proximity of the Silent Guru. He had gone off on a ramble about the slopes of the hill when he saw a very large banyan-tree leaf lying in his path. So struck was he by this that he set off in search of its source. At length he came within sight of an abnormally large tree, which he thought must be the one he was looking for. But he could not reach it, his way was blocked by a wall of sheer rock,and at the same time he was attacked by a swarm of wasps whose nest he had unwittingly disturbed. So, realizing he was not destined to proceed, he returned. After this event, he discouraged his disciples who proposed to explore the Hill in quest of the same spot. "You will not succeed in any way" he would tell them. And though occasionally someone would ignore his advice, nobody ever did succeed in getting a glimpse of the enormous

tree.

Both Sri Dakshinamurti and Sri Ramana taught exactly the same, a teaching that can be fully expounded in silence. As soon as words are used we are in the realm of the relative, and for Bhagavan there was no relative. It was only a fictitious appearance of Reality which is One (Advaita). "Make an effort to be without effort," he would say. In fact don't do anything, because actually there is nothing to do. The whole trouble with us all is this constant doing, associating ourselves with all sorts of actions and circumstances and so putting apparent limitations on the Illimitable. How can speech do more than point out to us our mistakes? It can tell us only to 'be', not to be this or to be that, because being this or that is back again in the realm of limitation, and it is just exactly this that he is trying to make us understand.

And is there really any method of reaching that which is eternally and forever here and now? Yes, I know Sri Ramana taught Self-enquiry. Find out who is this eternal and ever conscious being you really are through the method of 'Who am I?' in fact. But that was all.

'Just be yourself,' in other words, and to be yourself you must get behind phenomena to the Eternal Witness and this can only be done by Self-enquiry.

However, sometimes he would expound philosophy by the hour to clear the doubts of his many visitors, but in the end he would always explain that this was actually quite unnecessary. There was only one thing to know and one thing to do. Silence was best.

Once when he saw me puzzling over the intricate division and recombination of the elements in an Advaitic treatise he had told me to read, he turned to someone sitting before him and said, "Tell him not to worry over all that, that is for those people who demand that sort of thing, who want analytical explanation of everything. Let him read the rest which he can understand."

He has stated explicitly that he himself never at anytime did any sadhana. "Sometimes I would sit with my eyes closed and sometimes with them open. I still do. But I know no mantra or yogic exercises and would not have any use for them if I did." And it is certain that he never taught any of these things. He told us how to set about Self-enquiry and advised certain rules of life that would facilitate this, but that was all. He says in the little book Who am I?: "Regulation of diet, restricting it to sattvic food taken in moderate quantities, is of all rules of conduct the best, and is most conducive to the development of sattvic qualities of the mind. These, in their turn, assist us in the practice of Atma Vichara or enquiry in quest of the Self." For the mind is the product of the food we eat, he explained. Purify the food and the mind automatically becomes pure. Again:

"Likes and dislikes, love and hatred are equally to be eschewed. Nor is it proper to let the mind rest often on the affairs of worldly life. As far as possible one should not interfere in the affairs of others. Everything offered to others is really an offering to oneself; and if only this is realized, who is there that could refuse anything to others?" Let me quote once again: "If the ego rises all else will rise, if it subsides all else will also subside. The deeper the humility with which we conduct ourselves the better it is for us. If only the mind is kept under control, what matters it where one may happen to be?"

It all sounds so simple put like this, and yet how many of us succeed? No question hereof going off and taking sannyasa, for as he says: "renunciation is not discarding external things, but the cancellation of the uprising ego." And this can quite possibly be done more effectively in the world and amidst family life. For, to the determined seeker some opposition is really good, it gives him something to work on and keeps him alert, just as the airplane needs the opposition of the air to hold it aloft.

He was always very definite in pointing out that Liberation is not some far-off, after-death experience. It is here and now for all of us always. Just drop the false association with limitation. Nothing new will happen, we shall then see that we have been all the time what we thought was something alien, something we were searching for. But he was no missionary trying to drive people along a definite track. Did he not know far better than we that everything had its proper time, there was no forcing it. A certain number of people were bound to come to him, and a few were able to remain permanently. It was just their karma. Once when a visitor was taking leave and, with tears, complained that he could not remain any longer, Bhagavan remarked in a very matter of fact way that if everybody who came remained, there would not be any room for anybody.

For people who believed in reforms and all sorts of charitable activity, his advice was: "First help yourself and then you may be able to help others. How can you possibly do any good to others when you yourself are still only seeking for the Good?" It is starting about it at the wrong end.

People who never came to him have often said that his was a negative philosophy. But this is only ignorance of the truth. He was a dynamic force himself and never

Sadhu Arunachala (Major A. W.Chadwick) meditating in the Old Hall

*

advised the inaction of inertia. "Do, but do not associate yourself with the doer. Be the witness always," was his message. Things will undoubtedly go on, and as long as we imagine ourselves to be the body we will naturally believe that we perform the various activities ourselves. It is absolutely useless to sit back and say: "I am not the body, so there is no need to do anything," when this is only a catch phrase of intellectualism. We do not really believe it is true, so it is only hypocrisy. When we do actually know it, we shall never talk like that. For the real sannyasin, he has said, there is no difference between solitude and active life, as he does not regard himself as the doer in either case.

His message was for one and all, and nobody, whatever his occupation, need say that he has no time, for it is to be practiced now and always, whatever we may be doing, be it working, resting, eating or sleeping. At the end of Catechism of Enquiry, [now titled Spiritual Instruction] it is said: "It is within our power to adopt a simple and nutritious diet, and with earnest and incessant endeavor, eradicate the ego, the cause of all misery, by canceling all mental activities born of the ego (i.e., the idea "I am the doer".) Can obsessing thought arise without the ego, and can there be illusion apart from such thought?"

And in these few words are summed up the whole of the teaching of the great Sage of Arunachala who was in fact none other than Sri Dakshinamurti in mortal form. And even now though Sri Ramana has left his body, where is the difference? Does he not exactly come up to the definition of Sri Dakshinamurti as given by Sri Sundararaja Sarma in his commentary on the slokas of Sri Sankaracharya? Sri - Sakti, Dakshin - Perfect, Amurti - formless, or "The Ever-Perfect, Invisible Power," as one might term it.

The first verse of the Sri Dakshinamurti Stotra by Sri Sankaracharya declares the same: "I bow to Sri Dakshinamurti in the form of my Guru; I bow to him by whose Grace the whole world is found to exist entirely in the mind, like a city's image mirrored in a glass, though like a dream, through Maya's power it appears outside; and by whose Grace, again, on the dawn of Knowledge it is perceived as the everlasting and non-dual Self."

But of a truth the Self is one. When we have reached that state of knowledge, when we live in the Self alone and see the world for what it is, we too shall find that both Sri Dakshinamurti and Sri Ramana are and ever have been enthroned in our hearts. Let us pray earnestly that the dawn of that day may be near at hand.

-- The Call Divine, January 1953

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[Circa 1940] "I had then, and still have, considerable difficulty in sitting on the floor for any length of time in spite of years of practice. Afterwards I devised a meditation belt of cotton cloth which I brought round from the back across my raised knees and with this support could sit comfortably for long periods. Such belts are regularly used by yogis, though strange as it may seem, I had no idea of this when I devised my own. Bhagavan told me that his father had had one but had not used it in public. Once some boys came into the Hall and saw me meditating in the belt, they asked Bhagavan, "Why has he been tied up?" Bhagavan, who had a great sense of humour, was much amused. However, in spite of the fact that the belt made me conspicuous, I was so keen on meditating

in Bhagavan's presence that I continued to use it for many years."

--A Sadhu's Reminiscences

THE MAHARSHI

March / April 2005Vol. 15 - No. 2

Produced & Edited byDennis HartelDr. Anil K. Sharma

Dear members

as an ignorant concerning working with computer i did not succed to copy the picture in - but it did work on word.....so i enclosed the word document and hope you can see the above mentioned picture

;---)))

yours

michael

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