Sarvajnatman, a well-reputed advaita Acharya of the 9th-10th century, was the author of samkshepa shArIraka. As the title indicates, this book is a brief presentation of Sankara’s sUtra bhAshya in four chapters corresponding to the four adhyAya-s of the brahma sUtra-s.
Sarvajnatman sums up the essential nature of brahman in ten words. They are:
nitya, suddha, buddha, mukta, satya, sUkshma, sat, vibhu, advitIya and Ananda
(eternal, pure, knowing, free, true, subtle, existent, auspicious, without a second and infinite (or happy)).
advaita teaches that you and brahman are one and the same. You being already brahman, the above ten words, therefore, describe you also. That means you, yourself, are Happiness. So Happiness should be known to you like you know the back of your hand. You do not have to search for or attain Happiness.
But an enigmatic question arises: Okay, I know that I am already eternally existing, knowing and ever happy brahman. How come then I don’t know the Happiness which should be present right here? What ghost of an obstruction would block me from feeling it, from seeing it?
The shAstra replies: Oh, Yea, something like the Ghost of Bharcchu can cripple you from seeing the very things that are right in front of you!
“The Ghost of Bharcchu? What’s that?,” you ask in wonderment.
The Ghost is a reference to the pratibandhaka-s (obstacles) in attaining Self-Knowledge. The last but one sUtra in the third adhyAya of brahma sUtra-s talks about them. The sUtra (3.4.51) tells us that sometimes, strangely, even if Self-Knowledge arises we seem to be lacking the courage to accept It as the end-point!
The story of Bharcchu from samkshepa shArIraka shows how this happens. Swami Paramarthananda explains thus:
Bharcchu was the favorite minister of a king, and once he went to the forest and did
not return. The king was very disturbed, but a few other ministers, who were jealous .of Bharcchu, were very happy at his disappearance. As such they started a disinformation campaign saying that he died in the forest and was roaming the forest as a ghost. Everyone believed the story. After some years, the king happened to go on a hunting trip to the same forest. He saw Bharcchu seated under a tree and in deep meditation. He clearly saw Bharcchu with his own eyes. But the King did not feel happy at finding his favorite minister. On the top of it, he fled from there in fright.
Why? Because he thought it was the ghost of Bharcchu that he witnessed. Now, based on this, the shAstra analyses: Bharcchu, the prameyam is there. pramANam is giving pratyksha jnAnam. The king has no problem with his eyes. And the pramAta, the king, is there. So, the jnAna vRRitti is also produced –“There is Bharcchu.” And it is not paroksha jnAnam. It is aparoksha jnAnam (im-mediated). But the tragedy is that the king is not willing to accept it as jnAnam. He does not accept it as a valid fact. He rejects the jnAna vRRitti. And thus the jnAna vRRitti does not produce the phalam of Ananda at seeing his beloved Bharcchu. Not only does he not get Ananda, he is scared and runs away!
So, here the problem is not the lack of knowledge, but the hesitation to accept the knowing as Knowledge. The king says “I don’t have Bharcchu jnAnam.” At the most, what he will say is “I have Bharcchu ghost jnAnam.”
Similarly, brahman the prameyam is there, shAstra, the pramANam is there, and guru reveals the fact… But either the knowledge does not arise or it does arise and the seeker hesitates to accept the jnAna vRRitti as jnAnam. This is a pratibandhaka.
Sarvajnatman, calls it purusha aparAdha malina. The mind is with an impurity because of which jnAnam is not accepted as jnAnam.
How to remove these pratibandhaka-s? We have to continue with shravaNam, mananam and nididhyAsanam. Understanding will eventually take place, though one cannot say when.
[This analysis and explanation may not be acceptable to all because, so long as a ‘pramAta‘ (a finite seer) is present, Self-knowledge cannot arise.]
Very well told – and commented on – story. Thank you Ramesam. Isn’t the ghost fear itself? Virya (one of the six Buddhist paramitas) being its antidote. The definition of the latter is ‘energy’, ‘heroism’, but rarely one sees the word ‘courage’ (‘andreia’ in Greek) in metaphysical or spiritual language, although, of course, real knowledge incorporates or entails it. Courage may be a quality of the ego (jiva), but it comes from ‘above’. I suppose it is a samskara (almost same as a vasana – predisposition?).
My ‘Concise Dic. of In. Ph.’ renders pratibandhaka as ‘counter-agent’, which is not very helpful.
Thank you Martin for the very apt comments.
As you are well aware, Advaita holds that duality itself is a cause for fear.
Bhagavad-Gita IV-10 describes freedom from attachment, fear and anger, along with other qualities, are cardinal for Liberation.
Br up IV-iv-25 says:
स वा एष महानज आत्मजरोSमरोSमॄतोSभयो ब्रह्माभयं हि वै ब्रह्म भवति य एवं वेद
( That great, unborn Self is undecaying, immortal, undying, fearless; It is Brahman (infinite). Brahman is indeed fearless. He who knows It as such becomes the fearless Brahman).
Thus fearlessness itself is Liberation.
As you indicated, courage is perhaps related to the mind (the individual). The Online Dictionary cum Thesaurus gives the meaning for courage as:
“The state or quality of mind or spirit that enables one to face danger, fear, or vicissitudes with self-possession, confidence, and resolution; bravery.”
Hence “Fearlessness” may be a better word.
While the shastraic discussion of the “Ghost” that veils the true Knowledge in terms of pramata, prameya, pramANa are all very well, the whole thing is much simpler, IMHO.
The seeker is after all approaching with a pre-conceived idea of what Happiness should look and feel like to him/her. Whatever is there right “Now” (let it be even a broken leg or a depressed mind), let’s tell him, advaita calls it Happiness. So the seeker has to be told to shed his/her pre-conceived fixated opinions and definitions.
If all pre-conceived definitions and notions (based on past knowledge/experience) are dropped, what would be the residuum? It cannot be from samskAras or vAsana-s which are all traces of the past, from the past. Therefore, the Fearlessness cannot be a samskAra or vAsana. Fearlessness is not, in fact, any “thing” – it is simply the absence of ‘something’ (‘fear’ in the present case). So we cannot say it is the presence of courage that is required.
Just my 2c worth.
regards,
Ramesamji, you say: While the shastraic discussion of the “Ghost” that veils the true Knowledge in terms of pramata, prameya, pramANa are all very well, the whole thing is much simpler, IMHO.
(…)
Whatever is there right “Now” (let it be even a broken leg or a depressed mind), let’s tell him, advaita calls it Happiness. So the seeker has to be told to shed his/her pre-conceived fixated opinions and definitions.
You are right but I doubt that this teaching method will be very successful. Tell someone with a depressed mind that Advaita calls this state happiness and guess what he will do. Most likely he will dismiss Advaita. Even advanced seekers want to be happy and rightly so because our nature is happiness.
If someone continues to seek happiness although he already has a deep understanding, it clearly points to something incomplete. Something being incomplete means that it needs to be completed. And fortunately it can be completed by the above-mentioned procedures. Once it is complete there is no way for him to still look around for happiness because he knows what happiness really is and that he is that.
Thanks again, Sitara Ji for your thoughts.
But what you said conceals much that is not explicitly said.
It involves many issues touching on several aspects of principles, philosophy, models and metaphors, seekers and teachers etc.
We are here talking about “blocks” in unceasing abidance as brahman even after the dawn of understanding (call it Awakening/Enlightenment, if you like). BSB itself is a text to be used at manana level. And in BSB we are talking at almost the end of third adhyAya. So a seeker at this stage feels like running away, well better it is for all.
I am also intrigued by the way you seem to build a time gap between the dawning of jnAna and end of seeking. This takes me to another controversial issue of jnAna and jIvanmukti as jnAna phala – a concept Dennis too talks about. At least he did in 2008 and I do not know if he still says so.
As these are all pretty involved and complicated stuff, may I seek your permission to let me deal with them,as I understand, in a separate Blog Post?
regards,
I am looking forward to reading it.
Thank you Ramesam, good story. In which context did Swami Paramarthananda tell it? Taken the continuation of shravaNa, manana and nididhyAsana for granted in my experience there is an important fourth factor to the removal of such pratibandhaka-s. This factor is life and experience. Just as someone dying sometimes cannot let go because there is some unfinished business that he might not even be aware of, similarly when jnAna is there but jivanmukti does not occur there may be things that necessarily need to be experienced. The missing experience will neither lead to jnAna nor to jivanmukti but sometimes experience can act like a catalyst for the understanding to fully flower. Another way of saying this is: grace is needed. So, I would like to add prayer to shravaNa, manana and nididhyAsana.
Many thanks Sitara Ji for your time and the kind observations.
The part that refers to Swami Paramarthananda was adopted by me from his Talks on Brahmasutra bhAshya – I should, of course, say that it is an unverified / unauthenticated version, the date/place of which is not known to me.
I am not sure that purists will agree to your suggestion to consider prayer at par with shravaNa etc. and take it as a fourth factor. Prayer is undoubtedly ‘gauNa” on the Knowledge path. Its more respectable cousin, meditation, has a role but that is usually subsumed under nididhYasana which is a sort of omnibus term to include all techniques that help a seeker in the achievement of “unbroken” brahman thought (as taila dhArAvat, as they say). dhyAna, upAsana etc. are just crutches to be quickly discarded once the short tentative backlash ‘vibration’ (vRtti) of the mind as per its old habits subsides and the seeker is able to abide in the new understanding.
“Grace” is a term like ‘God of gaps.’ It is like the X-factor of Beauty-pageants. Undoubtedly everything and anything goes according to “Grace” — including your comment and my typing now here. Can anything be outside Grace? In one way reference to it is a sign of ultimate ‘surrender’, in another way, it is an expression of ‘unknowingness.’
I am not sure if what I am saying here looks relevant to you.
regards,
“I am not sure that purists will agree to your suggestion to consider prayer at par with shravaNa etc. and take it as a fourth factor.”
It is not a fourth factor. It rather is something pervading shravana and manana. And there is no harm if it plays a part in nidhidyasana because you do not need to believe in separation in order to pray.
“Prayer is undoubtedly ‘gauNa” on the Knowledge path.”
“dhyAna, upAsana etc. are just crutches to be quickly discarded once the short tentative backlash ‘vibration’ (vRtti) of the mind as per its old habits subsides and the seeker is able to abide in the new understanding.”
I do not agree and it does not accord with my experience with traditional teachers. Every class starts and ends with prayer. Every Upanishad start and ends and is suffused with prayer.
There may be two reasons if a teacher does not mention prayer. In case he is a traditional teacher he takes prayer for granted (but as I say, I never heard of anyone who does not explicitly include and cherish prayer i the teaching, even for the most advanced). Only in case a teacher is non-traditional (for example influenced by Buddhism or Western Advaita teaching) he really does not place any importance to it.
“Its more respectable cousin, meditation”
It depends whether you talk of upasana or nidhidyasana. In this case I did mean upasana. Swami Dayananda says that upasana and prayer cannot be separated, none is complete without the other.
Regarding grace – My definition is that prayer means the ability to accept grace and if you can accept grace fully it comes down to ultimate surrender. Prayer will make you more humble, and letting go of your identity as a separate being requires ultimate humbleness. So from my point of view, prayer is of immense value on the path of knowledge.
Thanks Sitara Ji for the detailed comments.
I think I understand now the underlying source for the differences in our viewpoints and expressions. Please correct me if it doesn’t look to be so for you.
It appears to me that you are speaking from the perspective of mainly imparting the Non-dual teaching to a beginner aspirant.
I have been speaking more from the angle of what a seeker who already received the message (i.e. say, (s)he is in post-shravaNa or even post-manana phase) will be concerned with in order to achieve an unbroken abidance as brahman.
In the light of this understanding, I shall quickly clarify some of the points:
1. What you say is indisputable from the position of and as a teacher.
2. Prayer does help in bringing about focus and attention in the initial phases.
I am happy that you now agree “It is not a fourth factor.” Sankara talked of shravana, manana and nididhyAsana in his commentary on brihadAranyaka up. Prayer is not mentioned by him. That’s what I had in mind when I referred to purists.
3. There is a danger that a seeker can get attached to the ritualistic routines and shAstra-s and such an attachment itself could act as an impediment is well recognized. In fact the “block” of shAstra vAsana is the first layer that Swami Hariharananda mentions as a pratibhandhaka (Please see my Post on “Knots and Kinks….” at : https://www.advaita-vision.org/knots-and-kinks-in-the-way-of-knowing-the-truth/#more-2769).
Even Gita mentions at II-46:
yāvānartha udapāne
sarvataḥ saṃplutodake
tāvānsarveṣu vedeṣu
brāhmaṇasya vijānataḥ.
(A Knower of brahman (i.e. one who has realized brahman)has that much utility in all the Vedas, as a man has in a well when there is a deluge of water all around).
As the seeker ripens, he does have to drop the shAstra-s too. They are pretty useless to carry them on with him — it will be like carrying the boat on the shoulders after crossing the river and reaching the other bank. This is too well-known to need citation.
4. I do not normally associate myself with most of the traditional teachers, particularity those who head some organizations. They have their worries, concerns and interests, worse than that of a householder many a time. Once the secretary of a famous Matha in the southern part of India told me how worried the Head Swami was about the sources to meet the expenses of the Matha – feeding the people who depended on the Matha, the expenses for rituals and the functions etc. etc. Some of these ‘interests’ undeniably do keep acting below the radar of their consciousness – one of the reasons why teachers like JK and (more forcefully) UG took the position they did with respect to gurus.
5. Yes, everything is Grace. As Sankara said in vivEkacuDamaNi, the liberation too is “tat prasAdAt.” “Grace”, as you are well aware, is very important in theistic systems.
Prayer, if my understanding is correct, is always addressed to an embodied entity or power. It has a role at a very preliminary level of the seeker. I assumed it may not be of the same significance at the level we are discussing in these columns. I would like to mention here what Shri V. Subrahmanian, whom you may be knowing, said, because I do not think I can express any better:
“In the method of Advaita Vedanta, theism is only a means and not an end. Theism is a starting point for spirituality and the transcending of theism is the end of spiritual process. Thus, the Vedanta introduces (adhyAropa is the technical term) God concept and portrays God as the cause of the observed world. Its intention is to turn the aspirant’s mind away from the world where she is engrossed and fix it in the Creator-God by enabling the aspirant to appreciate the glories of this Creator-God. Here comes the role of worshiping the God who is attributed with omniscience, omnipotence, etc. Once this is accomplished, the work of Vedanta is to take the aspirant further to the point where the creator-concept is dropped, the created-universe idea is dropped (apavAda) and the aspirant-consciousness alone is the all-important one, being unnegatable, undeniable. This consciousness is shown to be the infinite, free of body-mind apparatus. Thus theism is not the end of Vedanta.”
[Emphasis added by me.]
regards,
I found your (Sitara and Ramesam) exchange to be quite helpful on many points of doctrine and method. I just took hold of the brief booklet by Sri Sri Satchidanandendra Saraswati, ‘The Vision of Atman’, and read the following:
(Sorry)
“S’ravana alone is quite sufficient for the achievement of the intuition of Atman in the case of competent enquirers who are able to grasp the exact signification of the terms involved in the proposition ‘That thou art’. But in the case of those that are not able to intuit the identity of Brahman and the Self on the very first listening [!], repetition of S’ravana and Manana may be necessary to remove the different misconceptions concerning Atman (SB 4-1-2)
Dear Ramesam,
You say ”It appears to me that you are speaking from the perspective of mainly imparting the Non-dual teaching to a beginner aspirant.
I have been speaking more from the angle of what a seeker who already received the message (i.e. say, (s)he is in post-shravaNa or even post-manana phase) will be concerned with in order to achieve an unbroken abidance as brahman.”
The Western students I talk to cannot be categorized in terms of traditional Vedanta. That’s why a wise traditional teacher, such as Swami Paramarthananda, does not take Westerners as his students. Of course they are free to attend his classes. But he does not give personal advice to them because he admits that he does not know their minds and background enough to do so (personal information of two Westerners who wanted to become his disciples).
Students who turn to me, have no shravana background at all, still most have a deep insight into their non-dual nature. As such a phenomenon is inconceivable in traditional terms, I guess my remarks must be somewhat confusing to you.
The whole teaching needs to go a different way with such aspirants, i.e. that even someone who without sharavana or manana “received the message” may very well need prayer, as well as shravana and manana. I could write a blog about it but I suppose it is not of general interest.
As the European seekers I come across are usually atheists and anti-ritualists there is no danger of them becoming attached to prayer and ritual. Rather devotion serves to humble their often go-getter/anything-goes-minds. Needless to say, for someone who needs to be convinced that study of scriptures is a valuable thing to do, attachment to scriptures is unlikely.
We know that in Vedanta theism is not the end, that ishvara is as much mithya as are jiva and jagat. And so do those students know otherwise they would not even try to open up for prayer/devotion.
“Prayer, if my understanding is correct, is always addressed to an embodied entity or power.”
This is not necessarily the case. It all depends on the one praying. If you believe in duality, the above is correct. If you don’t, prayer is as real as riding a car, talking to a neighbor or singing a song. Anyone can playfully adopt the role of the praying one, as much as any other role that is possible in this beautiful play of leela.
I have written a blog about prayer where I explain this in more detail: https://www.advaita-vision.org/prayer-for-advaitins/
Dear Sitara:
In the article you refer to above (https://www.advaita-vision.org/prayer-for-advaitins/) you write that vyavahara is our normal worldview, which is correct, while you had just stated that “there are two ways to look at reality”. If by the first statement you mean that it is normative for everyone, that is also correct… that is, for everyone who thinks her/himself to be a separate, independent being, thus taking vyavaharika as the final truth. As you know, it cannot apply to the “one” who knows that it is not so, which is also the teaching of advaita Vedanta.
The same comment can be made about free will (and prayer); you write: “The exercise of free will is prevalent throughout the life; it is applied when we take off the wrapper of a sweet before we put it into our mouth, etc.” So it all boils down to a distinction between belief (taking vyavaharika at face value, as ineluctable, and knowledge or understanding.
[Even ignoring the Advaita, it is possible to see that within the appearance you do not actually exercise free will. The experiments of Libet and theory of Daniel Wegner suggest that the feeling of having chosen to do something only occurs after the action has been set in motion anyway. Thoughts arise and actions happen and that is the most that can be said. Unless you can choose to originate a thought, you are logically forced to acknowledge all of this. (Dennis – Q&A, at the beginning of the chain)]
Dear Sitara Ji,
You say: “Students who turn to me, have no shravana background at all, still most have a deep insight into their non-dual nature. As such a phenomenon is inconceivable in traditional terms, I guess my remarks must be somewhat confusing to you.”
There are many examples from ancient Indian scriptural literature and folklore of people who were Self-realized by birth, without having to go through the shravaNa etc. phases — Shuka, ashTAvakra, jnAneshwar, bAlayogi are some names from different periods. Even as per tradition, it is not necessary that one has to go through the three phases sequentially. Moreover, the three phases may occur in tandem or simultaneously or some steps may be missing before Self-realization takes place. It is not necessary that everyone has to go through all the steps gradationally.
My Blog (Beyond Advaita) also contains several examples of Westerners who report Self-realization without having had an exposure to any type of Non-dual teaching. Such phenomena are not unknown and are not “inconceivable.”
So I am not confused at all by this. But what is confusing to me is that you gave the impression that you valued the strict discipline of the traditional teaching system much more than I did and now you seem to take a slightly different stand.
If somebody has already “received the message,” clearly it means he understood (completed shravaNa) the Oneness of all. Maybe, your blog post will explain in detail what you have in mind and I do request you to please pen your ideas. And you write so well too. It will be a pleasure to read, I am sure.
Regarding Free will, I tend to agree with what Martin has said in his latest comment. Free will exists for one who thinks s/he is separate. For one who has grokked the Non-dual message and is trying to live by it, there is no ‘exercise of choice’ – all things just happen to him without let or hinder. If as you say, prayer is done like singing a song or like going for a drive by such a man, that sort of activity will be merely an expression of the celebration of “what IS” and it cannot be a “sAdhana.” If a seeker feels like ‘exercising free will’ in this stage, he has to understand that it is merely the habit of the ‘ego’ cropping up. ShAstra-s advise that he has to practice ‘egolessness’ whenever the ego pops up.
regards,
Dear Martin, dear Ramesam
regarding free will I agree with both of you.
Dear Ramesam,
I understand that it must be a bit difficult to pinpoint my position between traditional and Western Advaita. This is because I value both and deviate from both in certain respects. Compared to traditional teachers I am clearly non-traditional, compared to Western teachers I am rather on the traditional side.
Over the years I have developed quite an individual approach, which is even more individualized by mostly teaching on an individual basis, especially in the beginning.
Anyway, I will look into writing about it although I still think that it is not of general interest.
Regards