WHAT'S THE MATTER?
The matter is that everything in this physical world, in this world of form, is suffering. And the reason everything is suffering is because everything is in a state of flux, is transient, changing, ever changing. Another word for it is "becoming," meaning that everything is forever becoming something else. Buddhists use the term "empty," everything is empty, meaning that things come and go all the time; they are like water that you try to grab in your hand only to have it run through your fingers.
The Vedantists point of view is that, yes, everything in the world of form suffers due to impermanence, but for us humans it is particularly miserable. For us, perpetual frustration is the problem. We are constantly frustrated. What is it that frustrates us? There are minor matters, of course, the hair on our heads that must be trimmed all the time, the return of hunger throughout the day that must be satisfied, and so on.
Shankara in his Crest Jewel of Discrimination, however, presents the bigger picture. He says that our greatest source of frustration is the Atman/Brahman. As the needle of a compass is drawn to a magnet, the Atman (soul, roughly) in each of us is drawn to it's source, or counterpart, the Brahman (God, approximately). We each feel this pull to degrees depending on how much "dust" is covering the compass, the "dust" representing what Vedantists call ignorance, that is, the distractions of every kind that we have as humans, our feelings, our intellect, our thinking, our sense of ego, etc., all of which we identify ourselves with as if they were real. In fact, they are an illusion, and are as transient as it gets.
We go through life, therefore, in this sort of dream of the unreal, all the while feeling the pull toward the eternal, the permanent, which is the Brahman. The idea behind the Crest Jewel of Discrimination is that we must learn to differentiate between the eternal and the non-eternal, understanding that the eternal does not change and therefore is where peace, happiness, and bliss reside, and accordingly is where we should be focused. The Brahman is where we truly want to be, where we are naturally drawn. When we awaken to the Brahman, as will come the more we turn our attention to it, seek it, in the same way that it is seeking us, our frustration, suffering, will end.
The Vedantists point of view is that, yes, everything in the world of form suffers due to impermanence, but for us humans it is particularly miserable. For us, perpetual frustration is the problem. We are constantly frustrated. What is it that frustrates us? There are minor matters, of course, the hair on our heads that must be trimmed all the time, the return of hunger throughout the day that must be satisfied, and so on.
Shankara in his Crest Jewel of Discrimination, however, presents the bigger picture. He says that our greatest source of frustration is the Atman/Brahman. As the needle of a compass is drawn to a magnet, the Atman (soul, roughly) in each of us is drawn to it's source, or counterpart, the Brahman (God, approximately). We each feel this pull to degrees depending on how much "dust" is covering the compass, the "dust" representing what Vedantists call ignorance, that is, the distractions of every kind that we have as humans, our feelings, our intellect, our thinking, our sense of ego, etc., all of which we identify ourselves with as if they were real. In fact, they are an illusion, and are as transient as it gets.
We go through life, therefore, in this sort of dream of the unreal, all the while feeling the pull toward the eternal, the permanent, which is the Brahman. The idea behind the Crest Jewel of Discrimination is that we must learn to differentiate between the eternal and the non-eternal, understanding that the eternal does not change and therefore is where peace, happiness, and bliss reside, and accordingly is where we should be focused. The Brahman is where we truly want to be, where we are naturally drawn. When we awaken to the Brahman, as will come the more we turn our attention to it, seek it, in the same way that it is seeking us, our frustration, suffering, will end.
posted by Donald L. Simons at
12:18 PM
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