by Subbu Venkatkrishnan
Last year I was vacationing in India when by chance I happened to open my e-mail and see an invitation to speak on the occasion of Bhagavan Ramana Maharishi's Jayanthi (birthday) celebrations. I had promised myself that I would not access e-mails during my vacation. I was successful as far as work related e-mails were concerned, however due to some stroke of prarabdha, I happened to see this e-mail. At first I was stumped and did not know how to respond. Then I remembered how our acharya, Br. Prabodh Chaitanya, had spoken on this occasion a couple of years back.
Prabodhji started by relating a story of a frog in the well, which considered the water in the well to be all that was there to be known. There comes a fish from the ocean into the well and starts describing the ocean to the frog, but is not able to communicate this wholly due to the frog's limitations. Finally, the fish leads the frog to the ocean and all explanations fall away. Through this story, Prabodhji was drawing a parallel between himself and the frog in the well, trying to understand what the fish, Bhagavan Ramana, was trying to communicate. As I was contemplating on this story, I realized I was just a bystander listening to the conversation between the frog and the fish. So, any information from me is not first hand, nor second hand, but third hand at best.
On Bhagavan Ramana Maharishi's birthday, we celebrate the physical advent of an avatara of Lord Subramanya, in the form of Bhagavan Ramana Maharishi. It was Ardra Darshanam in India, the day when Bhagavan entered this world in a human body. There are many people who do not feel the need or understand the power of an avatara. I heard a wonderful description comparing an avatara and a guru. If the guru is a boat that ferries seekers or sadhakas across the ocean of samsara, then an avatara is a cruise ship that carries millions of seekers across this ocean.
The role of an avatara is well acknowledged in the Hindu tradition. In fact, if you ask who is a Hindu, there are 4 aspects that are considered as true by a Hindu----first, Atindriya Vishaye Vedah Pramanam, i.e. a total acceptance of the Vedas as the valid means of knowledge when it comes to areas that are not available for sense objectification (atindriya vishayas), second, total acceptance of the theory of karma, third, the idea that karma transcends several lifetimes and is consistent with the theory of reincarnation, and fourth, the understanding that an avatara manifests to help seekers along the path by removing all obstacles, both external and internal. One such avatara, was Bhagavan Ramana Maharishi.
Masters, like Bhagavan, present to seekers short precise instructions that help significantly accelerate their spiritual progress. Otherwise, it is very easy to get lost in the volume of spiritual literature. In this day and age when so much information is available literally at one’s fingertips through the use of computers and the internet but there’s simply not enough time to grasp all of it, the experience can be quite overwhelming. So, it is natural for us to seek and obtain some fundamentals or essence from all the information that’s available.
Once, someone asked Sri Adi Shankaracharyaji, “Sir, there are innumerable shastras, upanishads, puranas, smritis etc, and you have commented in great detail on most of them. But it is very hard for us to go through all of it. Could you please give us a brief summary of the teachings, perhaps in one shloka”? Sri Shankaracharyaji replied, “Of course, I will do it in ½ shloka”,
Shlokardhena Pravakshyami Kimuktam Grantha Kotibhih
Brahma Satyam Jaganmithya Jivo Brahmaiva Naaparah
He says, there is a Supreme Reality called Brahman. The world, or Jagat, that we see does not have an independent existence and is, therefore, mithya. Also, there is no difference between I, the jiva, and Brahman. This is the uniqueness of masters. Bhagavan's Brahma Astra is well known as the “Who Am I” enquiry. Seek the source of the “I” thought, and it falls away revealing the true Self, this is true Self enquiry-----Aham Ayam Kuto Bhavati Chinvatah, Ayi Patatyaham Nija Vicharanam.
We all perceive the world and take our perceptions to be real. But are they so? Is what we understand of life and the world, the complete Truth? Such fundamental questions may seem redundant or even scary to the unthinking mind. Even modern science proves conclusively that our experience of the world is relative, incomplete or at times totally unreal.
My perceived world is the sum total of experiences gathered through my senses. Does the world appear the same to all? Surely, the world to an ant and an elephant, a unicellular amoeba and a man, a child and an adult, a frog and a fish, appears different. A blind man is dead to one-fifth of my experiences. He lives in a world without forms and colors and a deaf man without sounds. Moreover, if I add an external instrument to my sense organs, the world would be different even to me. My hand which seems otherwise clean has innumerable bacteria, viruses, and dust particles when seen under a microscope.
Furthermore, the likes and dislikes of my mind color my vision of the world. I become blind to the faults of the one I love and see only bad in the one I dislike. My intellect too adds to my unique experience of the world by its own way of judging and analyzing. Add to that cultural differences, peer and group pressure, newspaper and TV influences and we realize that each of us perceives and understands this world in our own subjective way. From a particular standpoint the world appears one way, but as the standpoint changes, so do appearances. So, what we perceive is not absolutely 'real' or 'as it is' but appears in a particular way due to the limitations, defects, qualities and nature of the instruments through which we experience it. What we see is not the Truth but a version of it. It is a relative reality and not the Absolute Reality.
But that does not stop us from continuously wanting to gain knowledge about this world. Those of you with small children know this very well-----children keep asking the question Why? Sometimes they ask questions that parents find difficult to answer. Once a child asked its mother, “Mom, where did I come from?” To this, after a lot of thought, the mother replied, “Son, all beings in this universe are God's creation and we all are created by God, and you also come from God.” After a while the child comes running back and tells the mother, “Mom, I am very confused now. I asked Dad the same question and he gave me a totally different answer. I don't know what to believe.” Now, the mother was a little worried and wondered what the old man had said. Cautiously she asked the child what his Dad told him. The child said, “The very first living beings were unicellular organisms that evolved into multicellular organisms, which became aquatic animals, from which came the amphibians, reptiles, mammals and so on until the man came from the monkeys.” After hearing this, the mother heaved a sigh of relief and said, “Son, there is no confusion here. I was simply telling you about my side of the family and your Dad told you about his side of the family.”
Sometimes in order to get him or her off one’s back, a child is often presented with a book “Tell Me Why”. As the child grows older and becomes a teenager, you often hear “Why Tell Me?”, Once a father called his teenage son, and said, “Son, we have to discuss some things about life” to which the son replied, “Sure, Dad, tell me what is it that you want to know.” Nowadays, the teenagers know much more than their parents. It is said a teenager is one who stops asking you where he came from and refuses to tell you where he is going. And as one grows older, if one has not been fortunate to be exposed to spirituality, people start asking “Tell, Why Me?”
However, knowledge of objects and phenomena of the world (which is the domain of science) is not the total understanding of life. Without knowing the knower, the individual, such knowledge is incomplete. Moreover, we know that neither have we created the world, nor ourselves. Hence there must be a creator (Ishwara) of this world of things and beings. Only with the understanding of the individual, the world, and Ishwara, their inter-relation and true nature can we know the complete Truth. We realize that at present ours is a very limited view of life.
One may even think that there are two realities, the relative and the absolute-----the relative being what we experience, and the absolute as something out of this world or apart from our experience. This is not so. There is only one Truth, and it is our experience of that one Truth, that is relative and this relative knowledge differs from person to person. Our experience is conditioned by the instruments we use.
If we have to know the Truth 'as it is', we would have to, figuratively speaking, remove the instruments. Whatever would then remain would be the Truth in its pure form. This 'seeing' without 'eyes', and 'knowing' without 'thoughts' is vision of the Truth or Sat Darshanam. Hence, seeing the Truth is being the Truth----it is not seeing an object apart from the Seer.
One may well ask, what is the purpose of knowing the Truth? What do we stand to gain? We are quite comfortable living in this plane of relative reality with our own pet pleasures and pains. Let us examine this. All beings without exception, work to be happy and seek to get rid of sorrows through the possession and enjoyment of material things and pleasures. But by this way, sorrow is not seen to end.
Inquiring into the root of our sorrow, we realize that it is due to the false vision of life that we suffer. If a person mistakenly takes himself to be his reflection in a mirror, then would he not be pained to see his bloated form in a convex mirror? If he realizes that he is free from the limitations of both the mirror and the reflection therein, he begins to enjoy the spectacle in front of him. Thus knowing the Truth, he is totally freed from superimposed sorrows and limitations and enjoys unconditioned bliss, “total cessation of sorrow and attainment of supreme happiness”---- Atyantika Dukha Nivrittih Paramananda Praptih.
All of us have experienced this absence of suffering at odd moments, but the experience has not lasted beyond a certain time. So, it appears that there are some obstacles that prevent us from being anchored in this state where there is an absence of suffering. What are these obstacles and how to get rid of them---- this is what our seeking is all about.
Masters and sages tell us that the main obstacle in our path is a sense of personal doership that we have mistakenly assumed. So we ask, is it at all possible to give up the sense of personal doership? The answer, of course, is yes. It can be done because there have been sages who have indeed been actual examples of individuals for whom the 'end of suffering' has happened.
What we see is that these sages seem to live from moment to moment, enjoying the same pleasures and suffering the same kind of pains that the ordinary person is subjected to – however they are anchored in peace and harmony.
If one tries to probe as to what makes the sage so relaxed under all circumstances, one finds that he has a deep conviction in God's Will being present at all times, in all places. Whatever one may think one is doing, whatever is actually happening, could not be happening unless it was God's Will, according to a Cosmic Law. Naturally, there is no individual doer as far as the sage is concerned.
To people like us who have always been go-getters, this question might arise, “If I am not a doer, no one else is a doer either, does this then lead to a fatalistic society? How can we accept that there is no doer, but continue to act as if nothing has changed?”
If we examine our lives, we find that we have been selectively doing precisely this – i.e. knowing something to be true, yet behaving as if something else is true. Let me give an example. We all know that the planets revolve around the sun, but we continue to experience sunrise and sunset and take them to be valid in our day to day life. Or take the example of the sky----we continue to describe the blueness of the sky, as if it was real. Similarly, we continue to do what we have been doing, but with the clear understanding that I am not the doer. So, where is the big change?
There is indeed a very big change ----- and it is not what happens in life, which continues as before. The big change is in my own personal attitude to life, which truly decides whether I am comfortable with myself and with others, whatever happens in life.
Previously, also I had no real control over the happenings in my life - but since I assumed doership, success meant pride and arrogance, failure meant guilt, shame, and resentment.
But now, with this new understanding that I am not a doer, and that things were just happening as they were meant to, there is no longer a sense of pride nor a sense of resentment.
Instead of fighting with the flow of life, one goes with the flow, free from all assumed identities. Just an intellectual acceptance of this truth brings great relief----just imagine the freedom when one completely abides in this understanding.
Until such understanding takes place sadhana continues. This could either be through Self-enquiry or through total surrender to the Lord or the Guru, as Bhagavan would say. Then, all that remains of my ego is like the “remnants of a burnt rope”-----this was an example used by Bhagavan.
Let us pray to Bhagavan to shower His grace on us so that we remain inspired to continue our sadhana till its natural conclusion and fulfill the goal of this human birth.
Om Namah Shivaya.
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