TIME IS TEMPORARY

Time is passing, but it is also temporary.

Time began when the universe was born, with the "Big Bang."  Time began for each of us personally when our parents conceived us.

Time will end in the universe at a point in the future, exactly how we do not know.  It may end in the same way it will end for each of us personally, old age.  The universe will simply wear out.

Atman/Brahman is timeless, which is to say it exists whether there is time or not.  Its only experience of time is us, and we are temporary just like time.

BECOMING A MONK

To express something is to degrade it, Vivekananda said.

Becoming a monk is expressing something, expressing one's spirituality, so does that mean one's spirituality is degraded when he becomes a monk?

Vivekananda, who was famous for how well he expressed himself, in his capacity as a monk, would say yes.  But that does not mean one should not do it.

Expression is a pointer.  Becoming a monk points to something.

ELEMENTS

Everything in the universe, from the smallest grain of sand to the farthest-away planet, is made up of 90 naturally-occurring chemical elements, the universe in a nutshell.

However, we somehow feel shortchanged when we learn this, as we look up at the night sky and see that carpet of celestial bodies as far as the eye can see.  "You mean all that is composed of just 90 elements?"

We then consider the universe that is our own bodies, including that mysterious throbbing energy, the spark that is our lives, and again we are struck that such an extraordinary phenomenon could be made up of no more than that handful of elements.

We then realize that our astonishment over this is also no more than those 90 elements.

FIRST LEARNING OF AHIMSA

Ahimsa is a term meaning to not injure, to do no harm.  It is also referred to as nonviolence, nonviolence toward all living beings, including animals.  It is based on the premise that all living beings have the spark of divine energy, so that to hurt another being is to hurt oneself.  Indeed, any violence has karmic consequences, ahimsa states.

I first learned of ahimsa during a World Religions class in college, which confirmed what I felt already, that the wanton killing of living things, especially of innocent things, was immoral.  It was at this time that I met two individuals who unexpectedly violated this principle.

One was a Christian theologian from whom I had just taken a course on the Old Testament.  It turned out that he liked to hunt bears in Montana while on vacation.  At the end of the semester, he invited us all to his home for a party, which proved an opportunity for him to show off the bearskin rugs on his living room floor, skins from bears that he himself killed, of course.

The other instance occurred about the same time.  The pastor of the local Methodist church I learned was a marksman of repute with a bow and arrow.  He was known for being able to split an aspirin in midair with an arrow.  It so happened he liked to go coon hunting with the weapon, I heard him say.  I pictured an unlucky coon squirming on the ground with an arrow stuck through him.

In both these instances it was religious people killing innocent creatures for sport, which, frankly, I didn't get, didn't understand.  But then I did get it, because it moved me away from the religion I grew up with and over to Vedanta and Buddhism, which endorsed ahimsa.

My favorite example of ahimsa comes from Jainism, another eastern religion.  Jain monks carry staffs when they walk through forests, tapping the staffs our in front of them to ward off any insects or little animals lest they accidentally get trampled or injured.  A sterling example of ahimsa.

SUCCESSIVE STEPS

We are accustomed to thinking in terms of subject-object.  Our language is structured that way, but then so is our personal experience; there is the individual and then there is what the individual encounters in the world.

In the three major schools of Vedanta, subject-object is progressively reduced.  In Dvaita Vedanta, dualism, the individual is completely different from Brahman, so it is subject-object.  In Vishishtadvaita Vedanta, qualified nondualism, the individual is part of Brahman, similar but not identical to Brahman, meaning that it is moderately subject-object.  Then in Advaita Vedanta, nondualism, there is no difference between the individual and Brahman, hence no subject-object.

According to Sri Ramakrishna, these three concepts are not mutually contradictory but are successive steps in spiritual realization.

THINKING

Thinking is entertaining, as when we write a poem, play a game, or watch a sporting event.  Thinking is helpful in solving problems, constructing something, or learning a new language.

Thinking moves through time, enabling us to look at the past, the present, or the future.

Thinking, at the same time, has a dark side, as when we are depressed, the result usually of something we are frustrated about. Thinking can be delusional.  Bad dreams come from thinking.

The problem is, we never stop thinking.  As a result, we have, as philosopher Alan Watts put it, nothing to think but thoughts.

We think we are our thoughts.  How we see ourselves, our self image, depends upon what we think about ourselves, our perception of ourselves.  We identify ourselves with our thinking mind.

Spiritual teachers, be they from the ancient past like Shankara, or from the present day like Eckhart Tolle, emphasize that we are not the thinker.  We are not who we think we are, or that our thinking thinks we are. We are the consciousness behind the thinker.

This consciousness does not think but rather watches, witnesses. When our lives have ended, our thinking mind, the computer, stays behind, leaving only the timeless, witnessing consciousness.

The witnessing consciousness is described in Vedanta as sat-chit-ananda, meaning pure being, pure consciousness, and pure bliss or love, considered the three fundamental attributes of Brahman, God. The witnessing consciousness behind our thinking mind is, accordingly, Brahman, God.

LONG IN ADVANCE

A Catholic priest in Eureka, California was found murdered in the rectory of his church on New Year’s Day of this year, 2014.  The news of this affected me considerably, as does, for that matter, the news, good or bad, of any priest or monk of any faith, for they are my own kind.

My question then and now is, how is it possible for a priest to be murdered in his church or, for that matter, anywhere else?  He is one of God’s own.  Why didn’t God protect him?

What befalls us is God’s will, some religions have it, and “God works in mysterious ways.”  Vedanta approaches it from the standpoint of karma.

Swami Prabhavananda explained that the doctrine of karma is a doctrine of absolute, automatic justice. The circumstances of our lives, our pleasures and our pains, our fortunes and our misfortunes, are all the result of our past actions in this life and in the countless previous lives we’ve lived, from a beginningless time.

Viewed from a relative standpoint, karma is quite pitiless.  We get exactly what we earn, no more, no less.  To, for example, be born a beggar, a king, an athlete, or a helpless cripple is simply the composite consequence of the deeds of the many lives we've lived.  We have  no one to thank or to blame but ourselves.

I cannot know the karmic baggage that the priest in Eureka, California carried with him, or, as far as that goes, that I carry myself.  How Rev. Freed explained to himself, in the moment of his death, what had happened to him, only he knows.  I suspect he had it explained long in advance.

MORE INTO ACCOUNT

Buddhism is an offshoot of Vedanta, but for me Vedanta is an offshoot of Buddhism.

I was a Buddhist in my younger years, and the Buddhist view is that there are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven and hell.  Religion is nothing more than myth and superstition.

The problem with this is that it does not allow for mysticism. Mysticism, in the eyes of Buddhism, is just more hocus-pocus.  Tibetan Buddhism is the exception.  Anyone with spiritual experience, though, particularly if they have lived a lot of years, knows that mysticism is not hocus-pocus.

There is a spiritual pull that everyone experiences in time, a natural phenomenon that leads ultimately to spiritual awakening, mysticism. The soul, this is to say, is drawn to its source, God, to give it a name, like the needle of a compass to a magnet.

The purpose of life is to find God.  However, this implies that the individual is to do something to find God, when, more accurately, there is simply the finding of God, the inevitable union of the soul with God, spiritual awakening, mysticism.

As for how quickly the inevitable finding of God occurs, this depends on a person's mix of karma, to give it a name.  The more positive the karma the more rapidly the finding occurs.  If the karma is mostly negative, it takes more lifetimes, allowing for reincarnation, for the union to take place.

Good karma is the result of doing good things, such as being compassionate and helpful to others, which move one closer to God. Bad karma comes of doing bad things, such as being selfish and cruel to others, which move one further from God.  Karma happens regardless of what a person's beliefs are or are not.

Buddhism has its merits, don't get me wrong.  I like Buddhism.  It's just that Vedanta takes more into account.

LOGIC BEHIND "WHO AM I?"

Swami Sarvapriyananda of the Belur Math in India presents the logic of "Who am I?" this way:

To begin with, the knower and the known are different from each other.  For example, the eyes and what the eyes see are not the same thing.  The eyes look at a pencil.  The eyes and the pencil are two different things.  This is a fact of experience.  The pencil, meantime, is not all the eyes see.  The forms are many, the eyes one.  The forms, moreover, keep changing.  The unchanging eyes see the changing forms.

On the next level, the eyes themselves become the seen.  The mind becomes the seer.  For instance, when a person needs glasses, it is the mind that is aware of it.  The mind, therefore, must be different from the eyes.  The mind knows all the senses, and the senses are always changing.

Next, the mind becomes the object of knowledge.  Thoughts, emotions, perceptions of the mind are known by a witness that is different from the mind.  The witness is one, while the activities of the mind are many.  The witness is unchanging, the mind constantly changing.

The knower of the mind is not, nor can it ever be, known.  Then again, it is more than known, for it is a person's true self.  A person is not his mind but the witness of his mind.  In Advaita Vedanta, a person is pure consciousness.  How many witnesses are there in the world?  Only one.  And that one witness is, to give it a name, God.

This God, this witness, this pure consciousness, is, all the while, one reality.  When a person has a dream, everyone and everything in his dream is one reality, the reality of his dream.

Swami Sarvapriyananda provides another example. A person driving a car sees a city in his rearview mirror.  The mirror contains the city.  Everybody and everything in the mirror is one reality, the reality of the mirror.  In this way, each of us is everybody and everything else because we are all contained in the one reality of pure consciousness, God.

THINK, "WHO AM I?"

One day the 12-year-old Ramana Maharshi had an odd experience.  He felt like he was dying.  He lay down, picturing himself dying, only to have a question suddenly occur to him:  "If I am dying, then who is the one watching me die?  I am watching me die.  How can it be that the one who is dying and the one who is watching are one and the same?  No, they must be two different entities," he concluded.

At the age of 17, he left his home and traveled to a sacred place in south India known as Tiruvannamalai, where he lived all the rest of his life.  His notion of self-inquiry, "Who am I?" as a means of liberation, awakening, traveled with him.  He would not take disciples, but always saw whoever came to visit him.  He would ask only one thing of those who came to him:  "Think, 'Who am I'" because the answer to that question was the Atman, the eternal witness, the true self.