THE TEACHING OF ADVAITA: September 2019

Friday, September 27, 2019

Ganesha Pancharatnam sung by Swami Satchidananda Saraswati

Friday, September 20, 2019

Vasana Kshaya Confusion - Swami Dayananda Saraswati

There is a concept that Atma has become the Jiva due to vasanas, past impressions. The vasanas, often equated to karma phala results of actions, like punya and papa, are assumed to have been gathered by the Jiva who has no beginning. The exhaustion of vasanas through any of the four yoga amounts to self realisation. The self realised person who has no more vasanas to perpetuate his life may continue to exist as a free person, jivanmukta, due to others vasanas. The problems caused by this modern prakriya are numerous.

If vasanas cause the Atma to become a Jiva, vasanas become a parallel reality to Atma. Then Atma ceases to be non-dual and anyone who takes it as non-dual will suffer from an error. If vasanas are not an independent reality, then they are mithya, depending as they do for their existence upon Atma. What is mithya has to be understood as mithya.

Mithya does not cause any problem if it is understood as such and therefore exhaustion of vasanas is not necessary. Nor is it possible for anyone in a given birth to exhaust all the vasanas collected in an infinite number of births. In fact, they can be exhausted only in an infinite number of incarnations. So vasana-exhaustion itself is a dream. Even if the impossible vasana-exhaustion were achieved, the possibility of a jivanmukta is nil. When all the vasanas are exhausted the Jiva ceases to be. What is left out is Atma who is asanga, who is unaffected by and unconnected to anything. There is no way the will asanga Atma will attract anything from samasti prarabdha. If a nucleus Jiva exists then there are vasanas to exhaust.

The Shastra mentions vasana exhaustion, but it is purely with reference to the preparedness of the mind, antahkarana shuddhi. The vasanas that the later acharyas talk about are vishaya-vasana, deha-vasana, and Shastra-vasana. The fascination for an object, vishaya, thinking that it can give you security and happiness, is a superimposition called shobhana adhyasa. By vichara, analysis, you need to remove the superimposition to become the adhikari for self-knowledge. So too, 'I am this body', vasana has to be removed by inquiry and contemplation. The craving for the study of Shastras other than Vedanta, shastra-vasana, can divert you in the pursuit of self knowledge. You have to tackle this craving by commitment to vedanta-vichara.

This three fold vasana is not presented by acharya as a cause for the Atma to become a Jiva. The truth to be emphasized here is that Atma has never become a Jiva. Jivatva, the notion of individuality, is a superimposition upon Atma due to ignorance. The pursuit is, therefore, to understand that the swaroop of Atma is free from jivatva.

Excerpt From The Teaching Tradition of Advaita

You are self-evident pure consciousness...you don't become consciousness

You are consciousness ...you don't become consciousness.

Some Yogi's, great tapasvis, believe that you become pure Consciousness through a process of long hours of meditation as the unrelenting, persistent uninvolved witness, wherein all stored impressions of this birth and previous births are destroyed.

Traditional Vedanta points out that you are pure, independent, indestructible, timeless, formless, attribute-free, consciousness at all times - even in the presence of conscious or unconscious or subconscious thoughts/ impressions of this life or previous lives. You don't know it, therefore you suffer. You identify with what is in the mind, being produced by the mind, and therefore you suffer. Know the mind-stuff to be mithya, imagination, or projection of your ignorance,which is illumined in your ever- presence, and empowered by your identification with it. You give absolute reality to the mind, which it does not have. Know the mind stuff to be mithya and so let go of your identification with your mind, knowing your self, the self-evident Consciousness to be the reality, which is never negated in any experience of waking, dream and deep sleep. Live from this knowledge of your wholeness.

Meditation as the witness, is useful for letting go of identification with the mind and recognizing oneself to be independent of the mind, even when the mind is present. Meditation in Vedanta is not for becoming consciousness. It is for owning up your nature of being pure attribute-free, non-conceptual consciousness at all times.

Om That Sat