INSCRIPTION

A prince asked his jeweler to craft him a piece that would carry him in both good times and bad.  The jeweler, after some thought, made the prince a ring containing the inscription “It will pass.” 
 
The inscription, the jeweler felt, was self-explanatory, but he said to the prince for good measure, “The good news is that bad things go away.  The bad news is that good things also go away.” 
 
The jeweler might also have noted that there was nothing in this world that, after a while, did not go away.  Indeed, the prince himself was going away, as it were; the person he was when he went to bed the previous night was not the same person that awoke the next morning.  He was eight hours older.

Time itself was ceaselessly going away, he could have added, too, to the extent that the very idea of time was useless.  When exactly was time?  When was “now?”  There was more past and future than there was “now,” even though the past no longer existed and the future had yet to exist.

“It will pass,” sufficed, he decided.

IN THE WORDS OF MEISTER ECKHART

“Theologians may quarrel, but the mystics of the world speak the same language.”

“Spirituality is not to be learned by flight from the world, or by running away from things, or by turning solitary and going apart from the world.  Rather, we must learn an inner solitude wherever or with whomsoever we may be.  We must learn to penetrate things and find God there.”

“I am as sure as I live that nothing is so near to me as God.  God is nearer to me than I am to myself; my existence depends on the nearness and the presence of God.”

“Some people prefer solitude.  They say their peace of mind depends on this.  Others say that they would be better off in church.  If you do well, you do well wherever you are.  If you fail, you fail wherever you are.  Your surroundings don't matter.  God is with you everywhere--in the market place as well as in seclusion or in the church.”

“If you look for nothing but God, nothing or no one can disturb you.  God is not distracted by a multitude of things.  Nor can we be.”

“Nobody at any time is cut off from God.”

NOTES FROM PRABHAVANANDA

In his discussion of Shankara’s Crest Jewel of Discrimination, Swami Prabhavananda noted the following:

In this life we can only think in terms of time, space, and relativity, so it’s difficult for us to grasp what God is, hence what the Atman is.

As long as we seek God outside ourselves, we will never find Him.   God is within.

When finally we realize God, we understand immediately that it is an experience unlike anything else we have known.  It is a transcendental episode. 
 
With realization, we become purified in body, mind, and heart.  Our inner life is transformed. 
 
Once we have realized God, it is permanent.  We do not unrealized Him.

DOING IS WHAT WE DO

In the previous posting, the point was made that the “covering of intellect” is the doer, the initiator of all actions and undertakings.  

But now the question arises, what if a person decides that as an act of purification, he will just stop “doing”?  This way he can avoid attachment to doing, prevent the grasping, clinging, craving, clutching that comes with doing.

The trouble with this is that there is no such thing as stopping doing.  There is no such thing as doing nothing.  This is because doing nothing is still doing something.  The act of doing nothing is a something.
 
Time is to blame for this, naturally.  We are time bound, which forces us to do something even if it is doing nothing, or attempting to do nothing.  By the way, doing nothing, or trying to do nothing, is hard work.  Try it sometime. 
 
When finally we die we think that this will free us of all our doing, but being dead, it turns out, is hard work, too.  We are busy being dead.

So it seems that as the doer we are doomed.  We never stop doing doing.  If purification and avoiding attachment is our aim, a better idea is simply to contemplate doing rather than attempt to stop it.  Better we contemplate our lives than end them.

COVERING OF INTELLECT

The discriminating faculty, together with the organs of perception, is known as the “covering of intellect,” Shankara teaches in his Crest-Jewel of Discrimination.   To be the doer is the covering’s distinguishing characteristic, even as its doing is the cause of a person’s birth, death and rebirth. 
 
The covering is a "reflection" of the pure consciousness of the Atman, Sharkara goes on to say.  The covering is an effect of Maya, the world illusion.  It possesses the faculty of knowing and acting, and always identifies itself with the body, sense organs, etc.

It has, moreover, a beginning and an end, and is subject to change.  It is an object of experience and is characterized by its sense of ego.  It is the initiator of all actions and undertakings.  Impelled by the tendencies and impressions formed in previous births, it performs virtuous or sinful actions, and experiences their results.

The covering cannot be the Atman, for the Atman, the seer, cannot be the thing that is seen.

CONSCIOUS OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Consciousness in us is Brahman.  Not the content of consciousness but consciousness itself, pure consciousness.
   
Consciousness, like Brahman, cannot be divided into parts.  The consciousness that everyone has is the same consciousness.

Consciousness is not aware of itself because Brahman is not aware of itself.

Everyday consciousness, the medium in which thoughts occur, is a "reflection" of the pure consciousness of Brahman.

Shankara teaches that only that which is unchanging is real.  And what is it that is unchanging?  The consciousness that is Brahman, which never leaves us.

LOWER VS. HIGHER KNOWLEDGE

A distinction is made in Vedanta between lower knowledge and higher knowledge.  The knowledge of the scriptures is considered lower knowledge; intellectual knowledge is lower knowledge. 
 
Higher knowledge is the direct experience and knowledge of Brahman.  To know Brahman is to know yourself, which is the Atman.

Reflected here is Vivekananda’s modernized interpretation of Advaita Vedanta which emphasizes anubhava ("personal experience") over knowledge of the scriptures.

UNFINISHED BUSINESS

"Unfinished business" is when we cling to something. Grasping, clinging, clutching to possessions, people, ideas, lust, ego, etc., guarantees that we will be reborn, reincarnated, into this world again and again.  To abandon all such clinging assures our liberation from this world.

Two ways exist for us to no longer cling.  The first is to satiate all that attracts us, to have our fill of them all, to the point that they no longer appeal to us.  Most of us do not do this, or are not in a position to do it, so that we return here again and again until this unfinished business is done.

The second alternative is renunciation, a method employed by monks, although one does not have to be a monk to practice it.   Jesus said “He who loseth his life for my sake shall find it.”  Renunciation is losing one’s life for something better.

Renunciation, however, does not mean depriving oneself of life experiences so much as inquiring into the real nature of those experiences, what is called in Vedanta discrimination.  Discrimination means determining what is abiding as opposed to what is transient in this life.

What do we put our stock in becomes the question.  Do we put it in that which is fleeting and unreliable or in that which is unchanging and reliable.  Naturally, we go with the latter.  And what is unchanging and reliable, eternal and abiding, but God.  By making this choice we cease to have unfinished business and are assured of freedom from this world. 

THOUGHTS ON THE ATMAN

The Atman is self-revealing when we transcend the objects in our consciousness that block out the Atman.

Because we objectify the world, we think of the Atman as an “other.”  This is a misreading, for from the very beginning the whole of the world has been only one thing, Atman/Brahman. 

The Atman can never become an object, as it is the ultimate subject.  The Atman can never be known in the way that objects can be known.  Rather must it be realized directly in illuminating experiences.

Those without faith or spiritual experience may be skeptical of the existence of the Atman and the possibility of Atman-realization.  However, those who have experienced the Atman have known no greater joy and are completely fulfilled.