Tag Archives: samsara

Eight Upanishads (Topic-wise) Part 21

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Part 20

Chapter 6 JnAna and Moksha
6-5 Katha Upanishad
6-5-23 Katha 2.1.5 to 2.1.10 Some technical terms used by the Upanishad need explanation. Brahman is all-pervading Original Consciousness (OC). It is AtmA at the individual level. The OC manifests through matter, the Reflecting Medium (RM). It is Reflected Consciousness (RC). OC is only one, but RCs are as many as RMs. The quality of RC depends upon RM. The OC remains unaffected. The material universe is divided into three pairs: three belonging to the microcosm and three belonging to macrocosm. Consciousness reflects in any of the six mediums. There are 6 mediums RM1 to RM6 and six reflected consciousness RC1 to RC6. At the individual level, there are three mediums: RM1 (physical -gross), RM2 (mental-subtle) and RM3 -causal.

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Eight Upanishads (Topic-wise) Part 18

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Part17

Chapter 6 JnAna and Moksha
6-5 Katha Upanishad
6-5-1 Katha 1.2.12 and 1.2.13 The Self (AtmA) is not perceptible to sense organs. Neither is It available for inference. It is hidden in the intellect like a cave enveloped in darkness of ignorance causing miseries. It is a figurative expression as the elf is infinite, all-pervading and cannot be hidden. It is the witnessing consciousness of both the happy and sad states of the mind. An aspirant first hears about this Truth from an enlightened teacher. If he has any doubts, he gets it resolved by the teacher. He is now intellectually assured about the teachings. Stii, he may not be able to align the life with the teaching because of habitual tendencies. To overcome it, he reflects upon what he has learnt by constant meditation on the teachings. It is Vedantic meditation, nidhidhyAsana. He meditates on the Self withdrawing his mind from external objects. Eventually his life conforms to the teachings. He achieves the fulfilment of the highest human goal. He learns that all sense pleasures are but fragmentary reflections of that one supreme joy found in the true Self alone. Yama says that Nachiketa will realize the Truth as he has shown the highest discrimination and sincerity of purpose. The mansion of Brahman is wide open for him.

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Eight Upanishads (Topic-wise) Part 14

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Part 13

Chapter 6 JnAna and Moksha
6-1 Introduction In verse 20 of Brahm-JnAna-valli-mAlA, Shankaracharya says that Brahman is reality, jagat is mithyA and jiva is not different from Brahman. It means the identity of Brahman and jiva. Brahman is vast; jiva is finite and small. How can they be the same? To establish their identity, Advaita delves into the essential nature of the two. There is an inquiry about the real nature of a human being, a jiva. Body-Mind System (BMS) is made of matter, is inert, and is different from consciousness. However, BMS is found to be sentient. Therefore, it is inferred that the consciousness enters BMS, like a reflection of the sun entering the water, and makes the BMS sentient. The sentient BMS is a Jiva. Sun is like the Original Consciousness (OC) and there is a Reflected Consciousness (RC) in BMS making BMS sentient.

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Advaita Gurus and Critics – part 2

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by Prof. Phillip Charles Lucas

<Read Part 1>

Modern Advaitins are the successors of a long line of Vedanta-inspired teachers and movements in North America that reaches back to 1830s New England Transcendentalists, the Theosophical Society (founded 1875), New Thought (originating in the late nineteenth century), Vedanta Societies (founded in the 1890s), Paramahansa Yogananda’s Self-Realization Fellowship (founded 1920), Transcendental Meditation (founded 1959 in Los Angeles as the Spiritual Regeneration Movement), the Integral Yoga Institute (founded 1966), Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centers (founded 1959), and many other teachers and movements. [For a recent and comprehensive view of these teachers and movements see Philip Goldberg, American Veda: From Emerson and the Beatles to Yoga and Meditation (New York: Random House, 2010).]

TMA proponents have witnessed the profusion of NTMA (sometimes pejoratively called “Neo-Advaita”) satsangs and teachers in the past twenty-five years with a growing concern that the forms Advaita spirituality is taking in Western cultures may no longer be providing spiritual seekers with an effective methodology to achieve moksha, the ultimate liberation from the ocean of human suffering and rebirth (samsara). This article takes no position on the efficacy issue but seeks to examine various dimensions of tension between these two factions that might shed light on the larger phenomenon of orthodoxy versus innovation in transnational spiritual movements.

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Q.535 Transmigrating Soul

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Q: On your website it seems that, in the ‘Question and Answer’ section, it implies that there is an individual soul going from body to body. But in this interview from your same site Ramesh Baleskar explains how that is not the case:

http://www.advaita.org.uk/discourses/teachers/interview_balsekar3.htm

Could you please help clarify the truth?

A: Glad you find the site useful. I presume you know that I hardly ever change the advaita.org.uk site these days. All of the new material goes to https://www.advaita-vision.org/ and has done for the past 10+ (?) years.

The ‘truth’ of Advaita is that there is only Brahman. ‘Everything’ is Brahman. ‘You’ are Brahman. And, pedantically, that is all you can really say. But of course simply telling someone that is unlikely to enlighten them! Accordingly, there are lots of ‘prakriyā-s’ (ways of explaining things, stories, techniques etc.) to help seekers move their understanding in the right direction. Traditional Advaita has many of these, proven over several thousand years to be helpful in explaining things. For example, karma and reincarnation are fundamental to these. The jīva is ‘trapped’ in saṃsāra – the eternal round of birth and death – until Self-knowledge dawns and saṃsāra is ended. But this is only a prakriyā. In reality, there is only Brahman. There has never been any creation and no one has ever been born, let alone re-born.

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Q.518 Reincarnation and Enlightenment

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Q: I have been trying to wrap my mind around the question posed here: https://www.advaita-vision.org/q-489-creation-and-reincarnation.

Specifically: if reincarnation is not actually true and is just a part of adhyaropa-apavada — then why study Advaita at all when the probability of enlightenment is so low! Seems like life efforts would be better spent then trying to maximize ephemeral happiness.

The only way I can rationalize the practical utility of advaita is to accept that reincarnation is true in vyavaharika — that its a natural law, like gravity. Is that a fair understanding or is reincarnation truly just a teaching tool?

A: Where did you get the view that the probability of enlightenment is low? I know that this is implied in a few places in the scriptures but I rather think the point there is to ensure that only those who genuinely have mumukShutva pursue these ideas. If you are merely ‘interested’, you are going to lose that interest sooner or later and return to seeking the usual gratifications of empirical life. One of the seekers in the Upanishads is ecstatic when he is told that he ‘only’ has to live another few thousand lives before gaining enlightenment!

I believe that one of the main reasons that people today think that it is extremely ‘rare’ is their notion that there is ‘intellectual’ understanding that comes relatively easily and then there is experiential understanding that is extremely difficult to acquire. This is wrong! It is the erroneous understanding in the mind that keeps us in saMsAra and the correct understanding in the mind that frees us. It is perfectly possible to gain Self-knowledge in a single lifetime if you have the determination to do so. Obviously the best way is to find a qualified teacher. Then maybe years would be enough. If you have to read books and discuss with other seekers, it could take decades – especially if you read the wrong books!

As regards reincarnation, I wouldn’t worry about that too much. Whilst you really believe that the empirical world is real, then karma and reincarnation make sense. Without them, the ‘lawful’ nature of the universe appears to break down. The ‘good’ apparently suffer while the ‘evil’ triumph. Just look upon it as a mechanism that science is unable to explain or even believe. As I said in that other question, read the book by Muni Narayana Prasad if you want to understand more.

Neo – Advaita & Traditional Advaita

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Martin. In this seeming world of so-called saṃsāra (or vyavahāra) language and understanding, is there an entity or entities that understand, judge, etc.?

Neo-Advaitin. This is simply ‘life’. ‘Being’ appears to talk to ‘Being’ about things that ‘Being’ already knows (and need no reminding). It is just ‘playing’.

Since there is never an actual central ‘self,’ there could be no separate entity that asks a question or makes a reply. There is no separate entity that asks or answers. It is simply Life answering Itself.

But it seems that you don’t get this, or are not able to discuss it without going back into concepts and the need to find the correct label to assign, whether that is ‘nihilism’, ‘Advaita Vedanta’, ‘spontaneously self-realized’, ‘abhāsa’, etc. I suggest you drop all that, all those presumed ‘things you know.’ Freedom lies in the unknowing, the moment-by-moment un-nameable, not in the knowledge, information, and labels that the ‘mind’ thinks it has gathered. Who is the ‘you’ called ‘Martin’ writing this question?

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The Mind and its Death

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(K3.31 – K.32) Everything that we perceive, we perceive through the senses; everything that we ‘know’, we know through the mind. Consciousness functions through the mind – the concept known as chidAbhAsa, explained in Appendix 3. When the mind is inactive – for example, in deep sleep or under anesthetic – we are conscious of nothing. It is the mind that effectively imposes duality on the non-dual. We see the forms and, by naming them, it is as if we create separate things where there is really only brahman. Once this apparent duality is imposed, all of the negative emotions of desire, fear, attachment, anger and the rest follow. It is the mistaking of the really non-dual as dual that brings into existence all of our problems, which Advaita summarizes as saMsAra.

Having recognized that it is the mind that is the effective source of our problems, it is only natural to conclude that, by somehow ‘getting rid of’ the mind, we will solve those problems. This is the concept called manonAsha, which found favor with Ramana Maharshi in particular, who is claimed to have stated that this should be the aim of the seeker. (manas refers to mind in general; nAsha means loss, destruction, annihilation, death.) Once we have ‘destroyed the mind’, it is said, there will be no more duality.

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AbhAsa vAda

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This is effectively Part 6 1/2 of 10 in the pratibandha series. It follows on from the heading of “The ‘mixture of Atman and mind’”. Apologies for the misleading and changing part numbers. This is the result of writing ‘as I go’ rather than completing the entire topic first.

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xi) AbhAsa vAda

This theory was mentioned briefly above in 2b, when bhAmatI and vivaraNa were discussed in the context of sources for mistaken views of Advaita. AbhAsa translates as ‘fallacious appearance’ and it is effectively the term that is used to describe this ‘mixture’ of Consciousness and intellect. Shankara addresses this in his upadesha sAhasrI, principally in chapter 18 ‘tat tvam asi’. The following analysis is with the help of Ref. 211.

As the chapter heading indicates, the topic is the mahAvAkya and how the knowledge of its truth is all that we need in order to gain enlightenment. We are already free and always have been, so once we realize this, there is nothing more that needs to be done. The idea that, after gaining ‘merely intellectual knowledge’ from shravaNa, we have somehow to gain ‘direct experience’ of Brahman before we are liberated, is called prasa~NkhyAna vAda. This is discussed and rejected in detail below, under the topic of ‘meditation’ but in this chapter Shankara introduces an objector who has these notions and the subsequent arguments are relevant to this topic of pratibandha-s. Continue reading →

pratibandha-s – part 8 of 10

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Yogic Advaita

This is a term, which I had not encountered before, coined by Fort in Ref. 200. He uses it to refer to those teachers and texts that incorporate elements of sAMkhya and yoga philosophy into their supposedly Advaitic teaching. This applies to texts such as yogavAsiShTha and jIvanmukti viveka, as was already indicated in the discussion on vidyAraNya above. There are also 20 of the later, minor Upanishads that relate to Yoga (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoga_Upanishads) and there is a danger of referring to these to support ideas that are actually alien to traditional Advaita. These ideas are characterized by the notion that Self-knowledge gained through the usual route has to be supplemented by something else before liberation is achieved. Typically, this might be samAdhi or destruction of ego/mind, as discussed above (and below) but even ideas from other traditions might be incorporated. The yogavAsiShTha also has much emphasis on the ‘illusory’ nature of the world. The j~nAnI acts or does not act without any attachment, according to circumstances.

Rather than prArabdha, yogic Advaita tends to refer to vAsanA-s as being the key ‘obstruction’ to mokSha. While we have them, we are bound to the body; once they are purified, we are freed from saMsAra. When destroyed, we gain videha mukti. Continue reading →