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Nonduality Highlights: Issue #3785, Saturday, January 23, 2010, Editor: Mark
Both bondage and the resulting suffering are based not merely on
identification with the body but on identification with a wholly
imaginary subjective entity inferred from bodily identity.
- Ramesh S. Balsekar, posted to ANetofJewels
Our 'real-self,' whatever it is, becomes associated with
something very limited in various ways. This process is one of
attachment or identification. In Sanskrit, it is called ahankara
(ahaMkAra). This means the making - kara (kAra) - of the
utterance 'I'- aham (aham) but, in practical terms, it describes
the process by which the real Self is identified with something
in creation. In order to communicate meaningfully with others, we
have to use the word 'I,' but most of us do not think that
we use it merely as a convenience. We believe that it refers to
something unique about us as an individual: something concrete
that could be pointed to or picked up, except that, if asked
exactly where or what this 'thing' is, we begin to find it
difficult to define. Moreover, we believe that we are separate,
autonomous entities that do and think things in our own right.
Effectively, we mistake ourselves for something limited.
It is this single act that is the root of all our problems. As
soon as we attach the basic feeling of 'I am' to anything at all,
we create duality because if 'I am something' (e.g. a woman), I
have simultaneously defined something I am not - a man.
There is a metaphor for this. Imagine a piece of iron, for
example the hinge of a door. If you bring a magnet close to the
iron, the iron will be attracted and stick to the magnet. Now
detach the iron, take a thin piece of wood and bring it close to
the magnet. There is no attraction. But, if you now take some
string or an elastic band and attach the hinge to the wood and
bring the magnet close to the wood, assuming it is a sufficiently
powerful magnet, the wood will be attracted to it and stick. Note
that it is only by virtue of its attachment to the iron that the
wood appears to be attracted to the magnet. In reality, the wood
'has nothing to do with' the magnet.
In an analogous manner, Advaita claims that the Self has 'nothing
to do with' the world - is totally unaffected by it. What happens
is that the process of ahankara identifies the Self with
something in creation and that 'something' is bound by the laws
of creation. Thus, whilst it seems as if our real Self is bound,
subject to misery and death, it is not really so. Just let these
ideas rest for the time being, rather than throwing the book out
of the window. We'll return to them in more convincing detail
later... and the window will still be there.
- Dennnis Waite, from The Book of One: the Spiritual Path of
Advaitai
THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE
(or The Seeker's Dilemma)
(with apologies to Ogden Nash)
Yesterday on the stair,
I met a man who wasn't there,
He wasn't there again today,
I wish to God he'd go away.
I had come across this piece of nonsense verse earlier too, and
saw it again a few days ago. It had never struck me before that
this verse could have any spiritual significance, but this time
it seemed to have a special meaning - it seemed to illustrate the
typical dilemma of the spiritual seeker.
Let me explain. (To make it more explicit, I will modify the
original, with profound apologies to the poet).
The spiritual search is all about getting rid of the false ego,
the false sense of separate, individual selfhood and thus
realizing the true (Universal) Self within. But the problem is
that the ego or separate self doesn't really exist - it is
without substance, just an appearance, a mirage. Moreover, to
compound the problem, it is the ego itself which desires and
seeks its own dissolution, "like a thief turning policeman
to catch himself" (Ramana Maharshi), thus creating an
impossible situation - a `double-bind,' as Alan Watts calls it.
This, then, is precisely the spiritual dilemma - wishing that the
man who wasn't there would go away. In other words, the dilemma
of the spiritual seeker is:
There is this fellow in my hair,
Who actually, really isn't there,
He isn't there every single day,
I wish to God he'd go away.
Confounded by this dilemma which apparently defies solution, the
seeker finally finds a Master, who makes him understand the
situation. The position of the seeker then is:
I am the man who's in my hair,
I am the man who isn't there,
I still wish to God he'd go away,
I wish to God I'd go away.
But how can this be achieved? How can this wish be realised? It
is truly an impossible wish. For the insubstantial, illusory ego
which doesn't even exist to achieve its own annihilation is, as
Sant Jnaneshwar said, "like saying one's shadow will fight
with one!" It is a battle which cannot be won, not because
it is too difficult, but simply because the object to be
destroyed never even existed.
A fable of Nasruddin shows him similarly deluded: Seeing a
ghostly white form in the garden at night and mistaking it for a
robber, he emptied his shotgun at it, only to realise that it was
his own white shirt hung out to dry by his wife. Nasruddin tried
to assuage his consort's wifely wrath by pointing out the bright
side to her. He said, "Consider yourself lucky that only the
shirt is gone and thank God I wasn't in it when I shot at
it!"
Equally absurd and ridiculous are the efforts of the 'me' to get
rid of the `me.' For, any me-based effort is bound to reinforce
and strengthen the illusion of the `me,' the exact opposite of
the result desired. That is why such efforts inevitably fail. And
similarly self-defeating is even the very desire to get rid of
the self. For, as the great Taoist Chuang Tzu remarked,
"Isn't the desire to get rid of the self, itself a positive
manifestation of the self?"
The mightiest efforts, everything I could spare,
To get myself out of my very own hair,
All to no avail, there wasn't a single day,
That I had this dirty fellow out of my way.
But then is there no hope at all? Is there no way out?
There is indeed!
When the teaching of the Master really sinks in, it is realised
that if there is no ego or self in reality, where is the sense in
trying to destroy this non-existent entity? And, even more
important, who is to do this effort? Eventually, it is this
understanding which resolves the impossible tangle, which
unravels this Gordian knot, undoes this double-bind. As the
Bhagavad Gita says, only by the sword of Knowledge
(understanding) is this tree of samsaara, of me-based desires,
destroyed. It is by the knowledge, the perception, that the
separate `me' never really was - it was just an illusion, like
the circle of fire traced by a whirling torch, or the path of an
eagle through the sky . . .
But when this final realisation dawns, there is no more a 'me'
left to say so!
It's all a mighty joke, it's hugely unfair,
He never was, this man who wasn't there,
And so who was to think, who was to say,
That he had really gone away???
- Dr. Nitin Trasi, from Advaita.Org.UK
Whatever appears is mind.
Throughout day and night, look at your mind.
When you look at your mind, you don't see anything.
When you don't see anything, let go and relax.
When you join this, understanding with your experience,
Then ethics, then offerings, and so forth -
all your positive deeds are, without exception,
perfectly complete.
- Milarepa, from The Song of Milarepa, posted to
DailyDharma
Only
That Illumined
One
Who keeps
Seducing the formless into form
Had the charm to win my
Heart.
Only a Perfect One
Who is always
Laughing at the Word
Two
Can make you know
Of
Love.
- Hafiz, from The Gift - Translations by Daniel Ladinsky,
posted to AlongTheWay