SMITTEN

Smitten means overwhelmed or struck by something, usually love. It can also mean overwhelmed or struck by the love we have for God, as in being in love.  In this state, all of our other activities fall short, seem irrelevant, feel inconsequential and, well, boring. 

It is an obsessive kind of love, like teenagers have, to where we cannot get it out of our minds, are unable to escape it.  The object of the love, God, is practically lost in the surge of emotion.  We say to ourselves, "I know that God loves me, but how is it that I also love God?  Where did that come from?" 

It comes from the Atman that is Brahman.  The Atman beholds Brahman, its source, through a "portal."  By whatever means, meditation, contemplation, prayer, or all of the above, this opening is where the contact is made, and once it occurs the course of our lives changes forever.

LEVELS OF LONELINESS

Many people are lonely, some occasionally, some all the time. 

The holidays are especially difficult this way, for all kinds or reasons, not the least of which is the disruption from our normal routine.  We become confused, disoriented after a fashion, which leaves us feeling isolated, depressed. 

This is paradoxical because typically at this time of year we are surrounded by family and friends, every reason to not feel alone.  Of course, if we do not like these family and friends particularly but must pretend that we do, this can leave us feeling all alone, too.

This, though, is surface loneliness, the loneliness of the "I," "me," "mine," "my story" person, the egoic self.

For there are levels of loneliness, like levels of a parking garage, that we need an "elevator" to penetrate, to see what is really the matter.

Taking a hard look we get to what can be called our core loneliness, where the real trouble rests.  Our core loneliness is spiritual loneliness.  In Vedanta, it is the longing of the Atman for its source, the Brahman. 

We can always excuse ourselves, get up from the dinner table, and leave the party, if we are feeling out of sorts.  But with spiritual loneliness it is more difficult even as the solution is profound.

NONATTACHMENT

Patanjali defines nonattachment as self-mastery, meaning, as he put it, "freedom from desire for what is seen or heard."  

The nonattached person, attached only to God, has no interest in possessing objects of the senses or the fruits of his actions.

He performs his work as karma yoga, which is union with God through selfless activity, and sees the world and all living beings as manifestations of the Divine. 

Nonattachment does not mean indifference to one's work and fellows.  On the contrary, it denotes a profound regard for them, only without the sense of "me" and "mine."

--Without the sense of "me" and "mine" because the goal of nonattachment ultimately is freedom from the one attachment that is the most problematic for us, our egoic self.  Self-mastery is mastery over who we think we are but aren't.

FINDING THE MISSING

In our heart of hearts we know that what we are doing is not it.  Despite our successes and material gains, something, we feel, is missing.  Most of us will reach our death bed still feeling this way, never knowing what is the matter.

The destiny of the Atman is to awaken.  The awakening of the Atman is the purpose of life and until this occurs there will always be this feeling of incompleteness, deficiency.

Is there anything we can do to facilitate the awakening?  First we must turn our attention to this feeling of incompleteness, allowing it to be.  We will soon then know it for what it really is, which is the yearning, the drive of the Atman to realize its destiny.  This we must then yield to, surrender to, ally ourselves with, which sets the stage for awakening.

Some years ago there was a popular bumper sticker that read "I Found It," although it did not say what it was that was found, when it was found, where it was found, how it was found, why it was found, or even that it had come to be missing. 

Could it be that what the person found was the Atman, the only thing really worth finding.

KNOWING

There is understanding a thing, and there is knowing it, two different matters. 

In religion, knowing something is knowing it in the same way that you know that water is cold.  It is an experience.  This point is often made in Vedanta when speaking of awakening. 

Awakening is not intellectual but experiential.  In this way, it is difficult to describe and even more difficult, if not impossible, to teach how to attain. 

There are Vedantic scholars who have spent their entire careers studying the many texts of Vedanta, but who have never personally realized awakening. 

By contrast, there are simple monks residing in the forests who have little intellectual knowledge of the scriptures but whose Atman has completely awakened, guided usually, to the extent that it can be, by a guru. 

Not books but daily spiritual practice, sadhana, is required for awakening, although books, up to a point, do not hurt anything.  They are part of the Way of Knowledge so-called in Vedanta, as opposed to the Way of Works and the Way of Devotion.

In the end, though, it is in the lonely search for God that awakening occurs, and when it happens it is a knowing not an understanding.

TWO ARE ONE

The innermost reality of any particular creature or object is called the Atman.  When this reality is spoken of in its universal aspect, it is called Brahman. 

To Western minds this may sound confusing, but the concept should not be at all odd to them.  Christian terminology employs two phrases, God immanent and God transcendent, which make a similar distinction. 

In both Christian and Vedantic literature this paradox is often restated, that God is both within and without, instantly present and infinitely elsewhere, the dweller in the atom and the residence of all things. 

That in Vedanta there are two different words for this, Atman and Brahman, is simply to help us think about them.   They mean no sort of duality.  Atman and Brahman are one.

A NOTE ON SIDDHIS

All nations have mythical tales full of warnings against trifling with the supernatural.  They tell of how a few wishes are granted, whereupon the demon, genie, or wizard turns upon his master and takes possession of him, body and soul, with ruinous results. 

But the genuine spiritual aspirant cannot be harmed by any acquired occult powers, called siddhis in Vedanta and Buddhism, because he regards them merely as byproducts of the enlightenment he is seeking.

In modern terms, siddhis are telepathy, precognition, clairvoyance, psychokinesis, near-death experiences, reincarnation, and apparitional experiences.

MIND ONLY

The Yogacara or Idealist School of Buddhism moved beyond sunyata, or emptiness.  They held that only mind exists, and that the objects of its thought are ideas only. 

If this is so, though, how does one mind with its own ideas share the everyday world with other minds, they were asked.  Their answer was that there is a reservoir or store of perceptions on which all minds draw. 

This reservoir they said is called "the consciousness that holds all" or "the receptacle consciousness," the technical term for which is Alaya-vijnana.  This "consciousness" is the storehouse of all ideas, a kind of cosmic all-mind. 

An earlier description of this consciousness was Absolute Suchness, or Bhutatathata, meaning "that which is such as it is."  Absolute Suchness is pure and at rest, the "oneness of the totality of things."  To identify oneself with it is to be in Nirvana.

Yogacara's "mind only" was to have great influence on later Buddhism.

SUNYATA

Sunyata in Buddhism means voidness or emptiness.  With sunyata the substantiality of the world is denied.  Everything is void.  Things are not what they seem to be, which is to say, in reality they are empty of the characteristics they are thought to have. 

For instance, in any act of everday experience where description is involved, the object described, the description, and the person doing the describing are all, in light of absolute truth, devoid of reality. 

They are not really existent in the way they are conceived to exist.  They are more phantasms than anything else.  The phantasms are real as phantasms, only their existence is relative.

In later years, after the Buddha, Nagarjuna further developed the idea of sunyata.  His view was that anything that is dependently originated, i.e. this is because that is first, is, again, void, empty. 

Put another way, anything that is transient, time bound, is sunyata.  This does not mean that such things are not experienced and, therefore, are non-existent, only that they are devoid of a permanent and eternal substance.

This supports both the Buddhist and the Vedantist notion of maya, where the world is seen as not really real, or real in only a limited sense.

IT IS WHAT IT IS

Tathata or dharmata is a Buddhist term meaning suchness, thatness, thusness, and is the equivalent of our contemporary expression, "it is what it is."

Zen likes to use tathata to refer to the wonders of nature, the deep blue sky, the white fluffy clouds, the dense green forests, the beauty of which is beyond description, hence simply tathata.

Tathata may also be used to deal with complex philosophical questions, such as, in Vedanta, why we humans are the ones through whom the Atman is to awaken?  Why does spiritual liberation come through us and not through, say, a lion or a bumble bee or a pine tree?  We say tathata but is this enough?  Don't we want at least some speculation on it?  

For example, the answer may be that ours is the only brain to have evolved self-awareness.  We are aware of ourselves, and we are aware that we are aware, and this invites the true self, the Atman, to come forth.

This is not an ability we brought about ourselves, of course, but rather is something that evolution provided, and quite randomly.  A lion, a bee, or a tree could just as easily be the liberating route, had things gone a little differently.

Returning to Buddhism, the Buddha wanted nothing to do with philosophical speculation such as this, and certainly not regarding the Atman, of which he was not a supporter.  Attempting to answer unanswerable questions is like trying to stand up in a pool of quick sand, he would say. 

Therefore, tathata.  Just tathata.

THOUGHTS ON CONNECTICUT

We Vedantists ask how Brahman could allow 27 people, including 20 children, to be murdered by Adam Lanza.

First off, Brahman is not a person, someone of whom this can be asked.  Brahman is everything, all possibilities, including, sadly enough in the case of Mr. Lanza, mental illness. 

To say, meantime, that mental illness, or any condition in existence, is the will of Brahman is, again, to misunderstand what Brahman is.  Will has nothing to do with it.

To say that Brahman is heartless, however, is not fair either.  If anything in this world has a heart, then so does Brahman.

SOUL VS. ATMAN

There is an important distinction to be made between the Atman and a soul. 

The term "soul" implies an object possessed.  "I have a soul."  Moreover, it is something unique to the individual.  My soul cannot be your soul, and vice versa.

The Atman, by contrast, is not an object owned or something exclusive to the individual.  Your Atman not only can be but is my Atman. 

There is only one Atman, and only one Brahman, of which the Atman is the subjective aspect.

The implications of this are profound in regard to Vedantic liberation.  Liberation in Vedanta is not the "saving" of a personal soul, as in Christianity, but the awakening of the one Atman we all share.

However, just because we all have the one Atman does not mean that its awakening in you will awaken it in me at same time.  We are different journeys.

ALREADY LIBERATED

You are already liberated because the Atman in you is already liberated.  It is simply a matter of allowing the Atman to come forth, to awaken.--Prabhavananda.

ABIDING IN OUR TRUE NATURE

When the lake of the mind becomes clear and still, a person knows himself as he truly is, always was and always will be.  He knows that he is the Atman.  His "personality," his mistaken belief in himself as a separate, unique individual, disappears.  He sees this person as only an outer covering, like a coat or a mask, which he can assume or lay aside as he chooses.  Such a one is known as a free, illumined soul.--Patanjali.

HEARTBEAT

It is the beginning and the end of time, personally.  The first sound we hear is our mother's heartbeat, and the last sound we hear is our own heartbeat.

MEMENTO MORI

Walking in the mall this holiday season we see the wall-to-wall people and think nothing of them.  But then it occurs to us that every single one of them is dead, or soon will be, as will we.  This is what the Latin phrase memento mori means, remember death.

Christian art is replete with images representing memento mori, among them sullen skulls, emptying hour glasses, and the skeletal grim reaper with his scythe ready to cut us down when our time is up. 

It is found in Buddhist art as well, especially in Tibet.  A Tibetan skull cup is a cup made of the oval upper section of a human cranium.  They are used in rituals and otherwise as symbolic art. 

Meantime, Tibetan flutes, drums, and rosaries made of human bones are not regarded as gruesome but rather, again, as symbols of the shortness of life.  Each time the beads of a bone rosary are touched, for instance, a prayer is said and merit is earned.

But what does it really mean to remember death.  What difference does it make whether we recall it or not?

Memento mori is to remind us that life has a purpose.  Ramakrishna stated this as discovering God.  The purpose of life is to find God.  If we do not seek God, our lives have been for nought, he said. 

And where are we to find God?  Jesus said that the kingdom of God is within.  But we must make an effort, have the will to find God.

Below the layers of self, we all feel this purpose.  It is simply a matter of yielding to it, surrendering to it, allowing it to be, permitting God to be, which is the real meaning of memento mori.

THOUSAND TO ONE

The word avatar is used in Hinduism to denote the descent upon earth of a portion of the essence of a god, which then assumes some coarser material form, be it animal, monster, or man.  Such occurrences are ascribed to various gods in Hinduism, but those assigned to Vishnu are far and away the most important.

Such incarnations are believed to have happened at different ages of the world, and to have consisted of different amounts of the essence of Vishnu.  Their number is variously stated as from ten to twenty-eight, but the number has become much greater over time, perhaps a thousand or more.

Any remarkable man is liable to be regarded as a more or less perfect avatar of Vishnu, resulting, unfortunately, in the offering of divine homage to, for example, the founders of religious sects and their successors.

The only religions that admit true incarnation in human form are Hinduism, specifically Vaishnava Hinduism, and Christianity. Both Hinduism and Christianity assume that divinity descends into the world and dwells among humans in order to save them. There are, again, many such avatars in Hinduism, but only one in Christianity.

INTERCONNECTED

The extent to which we play a part in other people's lives and they play a part in ours, is the way in which life is interconnected.

In Zen this is called ji ji muge, the mutual interpenetration of all things and events.  It is likened to a spider's web in which every dew drop reflects all the other dew drops.  It is also called Indra's net, Indra's jewels, or Indra's pearls, where every gem reflects all the others.

There is a spectrum of this interconnectedness, ranging from obvious day-to-day dealings where we plainly affect others and they, us, to subtle interactions the consequences of which we may never know, especially if they are on the psychic and spiritual level.

Nothing happens but that something somewhere else in this awareness is affected.

LONG LONGING

We are dragged down by the deadweight of the world.  The whirlwind of people, places, events, objects, sounds, sights, tastes, smells, feels is overwhelming.  We long for the day when it is no more, when we can cast off the bondage of the world, like casting off the chains of a prisoner.

We are dragged down by the deadweight of self.  The empirical self is made of coverings, the body, the life force, the mind, the intellect, and the ego.  We long for the day when we can cast off the load of self, like casting off the tether holding a balloon to the ground.

We are dragged down by the deadweight of time.  The lively stride of youth slows to the somber gait of middle age, only to slow still further to the sad shuffle of old age.  We long for the day when at last we can cast off the load of time, like casting off the line holding a ship to the shore.

The long longing for liberation.

NOT LIFE DENYING

There are sects of Hinduism that emphasize the illusory nature of the world and the futility of taking part in it.  The view of Advaita Vedanta is that the world may be illusory, but it is still a manifestation of divinity and a temporary reality to be respected.  One should do his duties in the world, this is to say, but do them in a way that leads to liberation.  Doing them in a way that deepens attachment to the world must be avoided at all cost.

J. D. SALINGER AND VEDANTA

Novelist and short story writer J. D. Salinger did not follow either of his family religions, Judaism and Catholicism.  His interest was more in Scientology, Vedanta, and Buddhism.  He practiced Zen Buddhism for a number of years, attracted to its teachings of personal detachment, and the oneness of creation.

Then in 1952, while reading The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, translated by Swami Nikhilananda and Joseph Campbell, he experienced a transformation.  He was greatly impressed by Sri Ramakrishna's explanation of nondualistic Vedanta, Advaita Vedanta.  He also liked his view of karma, reincarnation, celibacy for seekers of truth, and detachment from worldliness, including family.

Salinger wrote friends of what he felt was a profound change in his life.

Vedanta found its way into some of his stories, as, for example, "Teddy," about a ten-year-old child who exhibits Vedantic insights.  In the story "Hapworth 16, 1924," the character Seymour Glass describes Ramakrishna's disciple Vivekananda as "one of the most exciting, original and best equipped giants of this century."

In 1955, Salinger and his wife Claire were initiated into kriya yoga in a Hindu temple in Washington, D.C. whereupon they recited a mantra and practiced pranayama (breathing exercises) twice a day.  He was regarded by many as a Hindu.