MONKEY MIND REVISITED

“Monkey mind,” a Buddhist expression, refers to how the typical human mind jumps from one thought to the next to the next like a monkey swinging from branch to branch in the jungle.  The goal of Buddhism is to get the monkey out of the trees, to quiet the mind.

In a blog posting here on 11/25/12, three techniques were described for achieving this.  The first is looking closely at what is causing the mind to be restless, and if it is something of no great significance, it can be set aside, or dismissed altogether.

Another way to get the monkey out of the trees is through meditation, by centering the mind.  Traditionally this is done by focusing on one’s breathing, or by chanting, or by striking a gong, or bell, or chime.

A third method is suggested by the contemporary spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle.  He said one should focus his attention on the present moment, by, for example, feeling the life force in the body.  Feel the tingling in the finger tips, for instance, or the beating of the heart, or the heat or coolness of the body.

There is, however, another way to quiet the mind.  Swami Sarvapriyananda, in a lecture on concentration, was less interested in getting the monkey out of the trees than limiting the monkey to only one tree.  To do this a person needs to fix his attention on just one thought, become utterly absorbed in that one thought, which will counter the mind’s temptation to find something else to think about.

An idle mind is what gets us in trouble most often, Swamiji emphasized.  Plus, many of us have never learned how to concentrate really, for, let’s say, more than fifteen minutes at a time.  But like anything else, the more we do something, the better we will get at it, the Swami said.  Learn to concentrate and there will be no more monkey mind.   

AWAKEN FROM WHAT?

The Buddha was asked if he was a God, to which he replied, no, he was not.  He was then asked if he was a man, to which he replied, no, he was not.  What then was he, he was asked.  His answer was that he was one who had awakened.

But now from what had the Buddha awakened?  He had awakened from the sleep of avidya, ignorance, and from the sleep of maya, illusion.  Avidya is individual ignorance, and maya is universal ignorance.

In Buddhism, avidya refers to a person believing that he is separate from everything else.  He thinks “I am one and unique.  Up to here is ‘me,’ the rest is ‘they.’”  This, before long, though, creates confusion, frustration, and suffering in him.

In Vedanta, avidya is a person believing he is separate from God, Brahman, when, in fact, he is one and the same.  A person’s true self, who he is in fact, is the Atman, and the Atman is Brahman.  When a person sees himself as separate from God, it also, before long, creates confusion, frustration, and suffering in him.

Maya, in Buddhism, is likened to the illusion produced by a magician.  A magician causes us to misperceive and draw false conclusion about what we are seeing.  The real problem with maya, in the view of Vedanta, is that it keeps us from God.

There is in Vedanta the awakening of the Atman, too.  This is the Atman coming to see that it is not the person it is residing in, the person it is identifying as, what is called the sheaths, but is instead Brahman. Atman is God immanent; Brahman is God transcendent. 

HOW IT IS

To experience the Atman is to know that it is eternal, constant, unchanging, permanent, abiding, and reliable.  When we turn to it, that is, when we read about it, study it, meditate upon it, contemplate it, pray to it, we can count on it being there always.

To experience what we call ourselves is to know that we are not eternal, are ever changing, in flux, impermanent, transitory, not abiding, and unreliable, and will die one day. 

The Atman has never died and never will, with the added advantage that when it awakens, is liberated, it will never again be reborn into this world of form, its chain of samsara, birth, death, and rebirth, broken at last. 

URGE TO SEARCH

Everybody’s looking for something, the song goes, but the trouble is we do not know what it is exactly we are looking for.  As a result, we look for everything but what we are meant to look for.

SARVAPRIYANANDA

Swami Sarvapriyananda is an acharya (spiritual teacher) at the Belur Math in India.  He joined the Ramakrishna Order at the Ramakrishna Mission Vidyapith, Deoghar, Jharkhand, in 1994.

Subsequently, he has served as Vice Principal of the Deoghar Vidyapith Higher Secondary School, Principal of the Sikshana Mandira Teachers’ Training College at Belur Math, and as the first Registrar of the Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda University.

Swamiji holds a degree in business management from Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneshwar.  His interests are in the fields of spirituality, philosophy, management science and education.  Periodically, he is a guest lecturer at Vedanta Centers, and universities, in the United States.

AS SWAMI SARVAPRIYANANDA PUT IT

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience, but spiritual beings having a human experience.

TO INTERPRET OR NOT TO INTERPRET REVISITED

When a person has a spiritual experience so-called, his dilemma is whether to interpret it or whether to leave it as is.  A traditional faith will be what he turns to first, usually, which can be helpful as a pointer; the experience was something like the awakening of the Atman, for instance.  But the seasoned aspirant will allow the experience simply to be.  Interpreting it, he knows, will only make it something else.

UNUSUAL VARIATION

Most schools of Vedanta do not require the existence of an external being such as God for karma to operate. The same with Buddhism and Jainism.  These schools hold that just as a calf in a herd of cows can find its mother at suckling time, so also does karma find the specific individual it needs to attach to.

The Shaiva Siddhanta school of Vedanta, however, believes that karma, unlike the calf, is not a discriminating entity, hence cannot locate the appropriate person on its own.  They argue that an intelligent Supreme Being, with perfect wisdom and power, is necessary to make karma attach to the correct person.

Shankara of the Advaita Vedanta school echoed this when he said that the law of karma is an unintelligent and unconscious law.  Consequently, he said, there must be a conscious God who knows the merits and demerits which persons have earned by their actions, and who helps individuals reap their appropriate fruits.
  
God will then affect the person’s environment, even to its atoms, and for those souls who reincarnate, will produce the right rebirth body in order that the person will have experiences that are, for him, karmically suitable.

SINGLE LIFE VS. MANY LIVES

Many people believe in only a single life, which might qualify them for an eternal afterlife.  Others think that they must live through many lives until they are in conscious oneness with the divine.   But divine union must be sought in this life, even for those believers in many lives.  A person cannot simply wait for death to bring them to the divine.

WHO OR WHAT REINCARNATES?

According to Vedanta, the jiva reincarnates.  The jiva is the Atman identified with its coverings--the body, mind, senses, etc.  Ignorant of its divinity, the jiva experiences birth, death, pleasure and pain.
 
Meanwhile, Vedanta adopted the concept of a “subtle body” which is attached to the jiva for as long as the jiva’s bondage to samsara lasts.  Samsara is the perpetual cycle of birth, death, and rebirth.  The subtle body is what carries karmic debts.  It cannot, however, preserve one’s personal attributes.

The facts recorded by the subtle body are a sum of hidden tendencies or impressions imprinted by karma as seeds that will generate future behavior and personal character.  These tendencies will materialize unconsciously in the reborn individual, denying the person, at the same time, any hint of what his or her karmic condition actually is.
 
No form of transmitting conscious memory from one life to another is possible, as memory belongs to the world of illusion and dissolves at death.

As long as he remains unaware of his identity with Brahman, the jiva is reborn as a new individual with a new subtle body.  When at last the jiva realizes his true identity he awakens, freeing himself from the trap of samsara. 

BHASKARA

Bhaskara was an Indian philosopher believed to have lived in the early part of the 9^th century A.D.  He taught the philosophy of Bhedabheda, the doctrine of identity in difference.  Bhedabheda can be traced to some of the oldest texts in Vedanta.  The devotional (bhakti) schools of India’s medieval period were considerably influenced by it.

The doctrine holds that individual souls are neither absolutely identical with Brahman, nor absolutely different from Brahman.  It reconciles the difference between Advaita (Monist) Vedanta that claims the individual soul is entirely identical with Brahman, and Dvaita (Dualist) Vedanta that teaches complete difference between the individual soul and Brahman.
 
In the 12^th or 13^th century A.D. another noted Indian philosopher, Nimbarka, taught Bhedabheda, calling it Dvaitadvaita.  He described it as duality in nonduality.  According to him the individual soul is part of Brahman, as well as one with it. 

Bhaskara, incidentally, taught that complete union with Brahman is possible only after the death of the body.

DISADVANTAGE OF DIRECT EXPERIENCE

Knowledge of objects is public in a manner that direct experience is not.  Known objects are open to anyone to examine, but one’s immediate experience is available only to oneself.

Consequently, for the person having the experience, in this case contact with the Atman, there is nothing surer than the experience itself, whereas for one not having the experience there is no evidence for it.

It is not unlike love.  Only those experiencing it know what it is.  The person having the experience could not be more certain of it, but the one not having it is skeptical.

UNIQUE RELATIONSHIP

The way you know Him is unique to you, how you approached Him in the beginning, then how you made contact with Him, and now how you maintain your relationship with Him.  Nobody else does it the same way you do. 

The way He knows you is unique to Him, how He approached you in the beginning, then how He made contact with you, and now how He maintains his relationship with you.  Nobody else does it the same way He does.

SPIRITUAL FAMILY

Suddenly there is movement where there was no movement before, in the world of form, and over in the afterlife, in other dimensions, on other planes, a gathering, stepping stones.

SAME MIND

Backstage, behind the scenes, just out of sight, there is much going on constantly.  It is the mutual interpenetration of all things and events.  Nothing is, or happens, but that something else is, or happens.

Meaningful coincidences arise here, what Carl Jung termed synchronicity, the spotting of a familiar face in a crowd when the odds of it are astronomical.  It is as though everything and everyone had the same mind.

It is, in the end, the one mind that is in all of existence, the one mind that is all of existence.  All of existence emanates from this one mind.  The Atman is this one mind.

ATMAN EXISTS

Existence exists in the present moment only.  The Atman is existence.  No such thing as the past exists.  No such thing as the future exists.  The present exists.  The Atman exists.

HOW IT OCCURS

It happens like this:  You reach a point where nothing you do rings true.  Your life feels false.  “Nothing I do is it,” you lament.  “Nothing I am is it.”  

Your frustration builds until at last you are at your wit's end.  It is here against this wall that, typically, it occurs, that, characteristically, it happens.  You see yourself for the first time.

You see that your true self, who you are in fact, is not who you believed yourself to be all these years, but is, instead, your soul, the Atman.  This revelation is not intellectual, something that your thinking mind has produced, but, rather, is spiritual, something that the Atman in you has done.

The Atman is reborn thousand, even millions of times in its quest to fulfill its destiny.  Its destiny is to awaken.  However, despite being present in all manifested forms, insentient and sentient, it needs a life-form with a mind in order to realize that destiny.

That odd “pull” you feel throughout your life is the Atman in you waking up.  When at last it fully awakens, you know instantly what has happened, even though you have never experienced it before.  Simply, it is it.

MOST OF IT

Most of what happens in this existence we are unaware of.