CONSTANT CONSCIOUSNESS

Atman/Brahman is consciousness.  At no time is there not consciousness.

However, the word consciousness does not tell us much about it, indeed makes it sound like it is merely a blank slate.  A better word is awareness.  Unlike the word consciousness which is passive, the word awareness is active.  It suggests a paying attention, a noticing.

Vedantists purport that Atman/Brahman witnesses, watches, observes only, that it could not care less about what it is seeing, anymore than it gets involved with it.

Yet an argument could be made that why did Atman/Brahman create existence if it is of no significance?  The myth is that it created existence as sport, play, just to have something to do.

The answer to this the Vedantists have provided.  They say that the purpose of life is for the Atman to awaken into its source the Brahman, that is for the personal aspect of the Brahman to realize where it came from, what it actually is.

This, then, is what consciousness, awareness, is for.  The Atman could not fulfill its destiny of awakening without it.

TAT TVAM ASI

Tat tvam asi in Sanskrit means "That art thou."  You are Brahman.  You are Brahman in that you carry with you the personal or subjective aspect of the Brahman called the Atman.

In the West, if a person declared himself to be Brahman, or God, he would be tossed in an asylum,or at the very least be shunned, avoided.  In the East, by contrast, and in India especially, an individual announcing that he is God would be met with, "Well, good for you.  At last you realized it."  He'd be celebrated.

But who is realizing at last that he is God?  It is the Atman who has discovered it and now declares it.  For the individual it is a "mystical experience," for lack of a better description, but when finally all has settled, he understands in his bones what has happened to him, that this is the so-called awakening.

It is interesting that the Atman for many years does not know it is the Brahman, encumbered as he is by the "maya" or illusion that comes with living in the physical world.  This maya has been likened to dust covering a compass. The compass cannot find what it is naturally drawn to, which in this case is the Brahman, hence the problem.

It is only when the dust is cleared away, when a person begins sadhana, or spiritual practice, that the Atman sees who he truly is and awakens into it.

THERE IS NEVER NOTHING

What comes first, the chicken or the egg? They both come first. They arise mutually. You can't have one without the other.  In the same way, you can't have day without night, hot without cold, or life without death.

This mutual arising, or as it is known more fully in Zen, the mutual arising of opposites, has an unexpected implication.  There is this manifested world, the world of form, so there must also be an unmanifested world, the world of no form.

This is, at first blush, an instance of presence versus absence.  But it's not presence versus absence.  It is the difference between something being present and its not being present, which is to say when I leave the room, it does not mean that I no longer exist.  It only means that I'm not in the room any longer.

When a person dies, it doesn't mean that he is gone without a trace, but just that he is not here anymore.  Even the Buddha who insisted that nothing survives after death, qualified this in his view of reincarnation.  Something does continue on, an impression, an inclination, a tendency to be a certain way, which then becomes the character of the reincarnated new person.  There is never nothing.

POPULARIZED BUDDHISM

Originally, Buddhism was just for monks.  This was the Hinayana school, later known as the Theravada school, which centered around the Three Refuges, as they were called, the Buddha, the Dharma (i.e. the Buddha's teachings), and the Sangha (i.e. the brotherhood of monks). 

Monks would be away from their monasteries most of the year, living in the forest, in caves, and just generally in the out of doors.  During the rainy season, however, they returned to the monasteries, which of course would subsequently be crowded, sure to make the monks wish they were back outside again.

The ideal of the Hinayana monk was arahatship, or sainthood.  Everything for the monk had to do with his own liberation.  "Be a lamp unto yourself," the Buddha taught.

With the advent of Mahayana Buddhism, though, suddenly salvation was available to everyone, the Buddha's teachings now having a far broader audience.  The Mahayana Buddhist was to be a lamp to light the way for others, for the entire world if possible, the Buddha instructed.

In this popularized form, a follower of Buddhism need not renounce the world, family, and human affection in order to gain salvation.  What's more, salvation could come not only by way of knowledge, that is by way of the Buddha's teachings, but by way of faith and love as well.  This was a significant breakthrough, and arguably the reason Buddhism flourishes to this day.

WHAT ATHEISM ACCOMPLISHES

Buddhists are atheists, although some of them allow themselves wiggle room by saying that they are agnostics.  Most of them will say little on the matter.  They'll just say, like the Buddha said, that the existence of God is speculative philosophy and therefore has nothing to do with their central concern which is ending suffering in the world. 

Buddhists believe that the key to eliminating suffering is avoiding attachment.  Attachment results in frustration, when, for example, what we are attached to is late to appear, if it appears at all, or only partly appears, and otherwise is unsatisfactory, and believing in God is the heaviest attachment of them all.  It is a source of frustration and suffering beyond compare.

What atheism accomplishes, therefore, not only for Buddhists but for all atheists, is that it uncomplicates their lives.  Atheists, including Buddhists, are not forever looking over their shoulder wondering whether they are on good terms with God, or even, for that matter, whether they are connected with Him at all.  

WHO OR WHAT IS DOING IT?

Who or what is living life?

Life is living life, and it has its own agenda.

Its agenda is the resolution of opposites.

The push of night leads to the pull of day.  The pull of day leads to the push of night.  The push of birth leads to the pull of death.  The pull of death leads to the push of birth.  War becomes peace.  Peace becomes war.  Every opposite is countered its counterpart in a never-ending cycle.

TWO EXCERPTS FROM “I AM THAT” BY NISARGATTA MAHARAJ

“Give up all questions except one: ‘Who am I?’  After all, the only fact that you are sure of is that you are.  The ‘I am’ is certain.  The ‘I am this’ is not.  Struggle to find out what you are in reality.  To know what you are, you must first investigate and know what you are not. 

Discover all that you are not--body, feelings, thoughts, time, space, this or that--nothing, concrete or abstract, which you perceive can be you.  The very act of perceiving shows that you are not what you perceive. The clearer you understand that you can be described in negative terms only, the quicker will you come to the end of your search and realize that you are the limitless being.”

“That which is alive in you is immortal.  In reality, there is only the source, dark in itself, making everything shine.  Unperceived, it causes perception.  Unfelt, it causes feeling.  Unthinkable, it causes thought.  Non-being, it gives birth to being.  It is the immovable background of motion.  Once you are there, you are at home everywhere.”

ECKHART TOLLE ON NISARGADATTA MAHARAJ

Spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle described on YouTube the guru Nisargadatta Maharaj:

. . . Many of you know the teachings of Nisargadatta who wrote one of the greatest spiritual books--well, he didn’t write it, he spoke it--I AM THAT.

He was--had a stall in Bombay selling handmade cigarettes.  One would have thought “this is not making very good karma; you are making other people ill,”--and he smoked quite heavily himself apparently--and he just visited a guru, a teacher who said to him, “Well, just remember that you are consciousness, just be aware of the ‘I am,’ in whatever you do, and feel yourself as consciousness.”  “Oh, okay.”

And then Nisargadatta went off, back to his daily business, and he applied--can we call that a technique?--it’s too simple to be called a technique.  All he was--all he remembered was that “I am consciousness,” and he felt--attempted to feel the “I,” the deeper “I” that underlies all experiences, awareness itself.

And a few years later, it had emerged fully.  It didn’t come all at once, but it didn’t take very long, and then suddenly he started speaking wisdom.  A cigarette seller, almost illiterate, suddenly people would come and ask him questions, and intensely alive and wise answers came out of his mouth.

Something had come through the form, and so the cigarette seller became Nisargadatta Maharaj--in India they like giving people names; maharaj means “the great king,” spiritually, of course.  So this is one teacher to whom it (awakening) came not suddenly, although it didn’t take very long.  After a few years it became a continuous living presence.  Presence was continuous in him.