ATMAN IS NOT THE PERSON

The Gita teaches that the Illumined soul, one who has become the Atman, knows always, “I am doing nothing.”

No matter what he sees, hears, touches, smells, eats . . . he always knows that “I am not seeing, I am not hearing.  It is the senses that see and hear and touch the things of the senses.”

The Atman is not doing the sensing, in other words.  The person the Atman inhabits is.

IMPORTANCE OF DIRECT EXPERIENCE

Swami Vivekananda held that direct experience was preferable to shruti, the sacred texts, when it came to spiritual advancement.  He explained that all the religions of the world were built upon “that one universal foundation of all human knowledge--direct experience.”
 
He said that all the religious teachers saw God; they all saw their own souls, and saw the eternal nature of those souls.  What these teachers saw, then, they preached.

He pointed out, however, that most of these religions, in modern times especially, claim that these experiences are impossible to others.  They were possible only to a few men, the founders of the religions.  This meant that the religions now had to be taken on faith alone. 

This development is completely false, in Vivekananda’s view.  He maintained that religion is based on experiences of ancient times true enough, but also that no person can be religious until he has had the same experiences himself.  It is no use talking about religion, he said, until one has felt it personally. 

CONSEQUENTLY

My mind was so quiet you could hear a pin drop.

EYES IN THE DOOR

The door has watched you approach it your whole life.

VEDIC MEDITATION

Swami Vivekananda explains that there are three stages in Vedic meditation.  Dharana, or concentration, is the first stage, which entails concentrating the mind upon an object.  It is, for example, concentrating the mind upon a glass, excluding every other object from the mind except the glass.

The mind may waver.  When the mind, with practice, becomes strong enough and does not waver, then this is called dhyana, or meditation.  

A still higher state called samadhi, or absorption, occurs when there is no longer a differentiation between the glass and the mind.  The mind and the glass become one.

Vivekananda adds, “You are the Spirit.  That is the first fundamental belief you must never give up.  You are the Spirit within you.  All of this skill of yoga and this system of meditation is just to find Him there.”

NEXT STEP: A SHORT STORY

The purpose of his life had been the awakening of the Atman in him.  Now that this awakening had occurred, did it mean that his life no longer had a purpose?  (Notice that I did not say his purpose in life.  Rather, I said his life’s purpose.  His life had a life of its own, purposes of its own.)

The other day he wrote a blog posting where he said that he did not want to be his thinking mind, egoic self, that person, any longer.  He wanted, instead, to be “this,” by which he meant the Atman.  What he was talking about was uniting with the Atman, becoming “at one” with it.

If union with the Atman was what he was after, though, wasn’t there something he was to do to facilitate it?  There was only one thing that he did in the time that it took for the Atman to awaken to begin with.

Like that sixty-four-year awakening period, then, he would encourage what was coming next, in this instance mystical union with the Atman, which was to say he would not resist it, would not get in its way.  

VIPASSANA

One of the world’s oldest techniques of meditation is vipassana, often referred to simply as “insight meditation.”  Gautama Buddha is credited with rediscovering it.  The purpose of vipassana is seeing reality as it really is.

The meditator focuses on body, feelings, mind, and objects of mind, paying particular attention to how they change from moment to moment, in fact how all of existence seems forever coming and going.  He sees that what he considers to be himself, and the world, is an illusion, smoke and mirrors.  The realization of this results in the so-called not-self, a state of consciousness only.

Vipassana is one of two forms of Buddhist meditation, the other being samatha.  In samatha, the meditator focuses on the body and mind, pacifying and calming them.  It is a practice found in many traditions in the world, most notably yoga. 

Samatha is used as a preparation for vipassana.  With the mind steadied and the body stilled the real work of insight meditation proceeds.  It is said that samatha can calm the mind, but only vipassana can reveal how the mind became disturbed to begin with. 

MAY IT BE SO

May it grow ever more present in us, continue to unfold, to blossom, to deepen, to widen, to awaken. 

PREDICAMENT

Restless today.  Don’t know what to do with myself.  I know what I want to do, but I don’t know how to do it, that is to say.  I no longer want to be my thinking mind, egoic self, this person.  I want to be what cannot be named or described.  It is not as though I cannot access it.  I can access it at any moment in the day.  It’s just that I cannot be it, cannot become it.

TRUTH ABOUT CONSEQUENCES

In the Buddhist Majjhima-Nikaya  I.416 it says “The skillful man always asks, ‘What are the consequences of my actions?  Will it lead to hurt of self, of others, or of both?’”  We must always remember, if we do something, there are consequences, and if we do not do something, there, equally, are consequences.  The Majjhima-Nikaya II.32 states, If this is, that comes to be; from the arising of this, that arises; if this is not, that does not come to be; from the stopping of this, that stops.  This applies to individuals, up to nations.

DISCRIMINATION IN VEDANTA

In Vedanta the term discrimination refers to knowledge of what is eternal and what is noneternal.  Discrimination is the first qualification of the spiritual aspirant, according to Shankara, defining it as “the firm conviction that Brahman alone is real and the universe unreal.”

Brahman is eternal, unchanging, constant, permanent, abiding, and reliable, whereas the universe is noneternal, ever changing, impermanent, transient, not abiding, and unreliable.
 
Since the universe is forever changing, there is no one thing that is the universe; there is not one instant where it can be said that there it is, that is the universe, as an instant later it is something else.

Brahman is absolute consciousness, experienced by us as that consciousness behind our conditioned, day-to-day consciousness.  This background consciousness that is Brahman does not change and therefore is real.