Is mental happiness and the happiness of ananda different? - Answered by Swami Tadatmananda in Week 3 Satsang

 

Q. Is mental happiness and the happiness of atma different?

A.  So this goes back to an important discussion we had in last week's satsang about Ananda. In that discussion we made it very clear that when we say your true nature is ananda we said you cannot translate ananda as bliss or blissful as a an experience, in that context. 

Ananda is who you are. Ananda is not a transient experience. And just to complete that review of what we saw last week, I said that ananda in Vedantic context is not really translatable into English. The word bliss is absolutely wrong in this context. Ananda can mean bliss in other contexts. But when we use the expression such an atma-ananda in that context atma most certainly does not mean bliss.

What does it mean? Words that can lean in the right direction are words like contentment, fullness, completeness, perfection. One of our uh students suggested inner beatitude, being blessed in nature.

So all of these are fine. But if you ask what particular English word is an exact translation of ananda in this context, we don't have one. So with that in mind, we can come back to  the question  of the difference between mental happiness and happiness of atma. Mental happiness as we know is an experience that comes and goes. 

Atma doesn't come and go. Ananda doesn't come and go. Atma is ananda. Atma doesn't come and go. Atma is pure consciousness. Consciousness doesn't come and go. You don't come and go. Experiences come and go.

So here again we have to re-translate ananda. So we don't say the happiness of atma. Atma doesn't possess happiness. Atma is happiness.  I wrote down a metaphor to use. 

Atma is happiness.

To understand what that means, imagine if sugar could think. This is a silly example. I think this example was given by Sri Ramakrishna and some others. It's  a kind of a folksy kind of metaphor. If sugar scould think and the sugar thinks I wish I were sweet, sugar wants to be sweet. Sugar is already sweet. Or if sugar says, "I want to experience sweetness." Sugar is sweetness. Sugar wants to experience sweetness. What for? Sugar is sweetness.

In the same way, the goal of Vedanta is not to experience some kind of ananda because any experience comes and goes. The goal here is not to experience ananda but to discover your true nature as Ananda.  As such ananda is pure consciousness.

Question regarding goal of meditation - Answered by Swami Tadatmanandaji in Week 3 Satsang

 

Q.  Is the goal of meditation to gain chitta shuddhi and chitta naichalyam?  Is purity of mind necessary for gaining enlightenment? Is meditation for the sake of  gaining adhikaritvam for studying Vedanta?

A. Chitta here means mind – it  has other meanings in different contexts. Chitta Shuddhi is purity of mind. Is purity of mind necessary for gaining enlightenment? Absolutely.

Why? First of all, we have to understand what do we mean by purity of mind? What is a mental impurity? That we can define very clearly. Mental impurities are emotions like hate, anger, frustration, sadness, depression, those are mental impurities. And if your mind is full of such mental impurities, you're not likely to make much progress in your spiritual practice in general. So chitta shuddhi then is the removal of those mental impurities like anger and hurt.

 So the goal of meditation here is chitta Shuddhi - purity of mind and secondly chitta naishchalyam – naishchalyam means steadiness, the ability to focus your mind, the ability to concentrate your mind with one-pointed attention. This is absolutely a requirement and again any dedicated practitioner of meditation can definitely gain chitta Shuddhi- purity of mind and chitta naishchalamyam - that ability to concentrate and have a one-pointed mind.

Does meditation help you gain preparedness for the study of Vedanta? Absolutely.

 

Why is savikalpa samadhi required for enlightenment - Swami Tadananandaji answers in Week 3 Satsang

 

Q. One of the videos was on adhikaritvam, preparedness - being a prepared student for Advaita Vedanta. Regarding samadhanam as a qualification for studying Vedanta, why is the highest state of mind, savikalpa samadi required?

A. One of the six qualifications for becoming a prepared student is to have samadhanam. Samadhanam means a meditative concentration. Samadhi is a state of meditative absorption Let me rephrase the question. Is samadhi, any kind of samadhi, Is the experience of samadhi necessary for enlightenment?

No. Enlightenment does not depend on any kind of experience including any kind of special spiritual experience. Then you might ask well if  gaining enlightenment doesn't depend on the experience of samadhi, then why is samadhanam included as a requirement for being an Adhikari, a prepared student?  It is required in the sense that meditation is required. Meditation is certainly not optional. You may or may not gain samadhi through your practice of meditation, but without that practice of meditation definitely you will never get enlightened. Meditation prepares the mind in a way that no other practice can.

So meditation is an irreplaceable step or practice to get prepared for enlightenment. Whether or not it brings samadhi or not is  another thing. You may achieve samadhi. Honestly for a long for a dedicated practitioner of meditation gaining samadhi is not such a big deal. Takes time, takes dedication. But even when you gain samadhi, then you discover that it's just a an experience. It's a wonderful experience. But like any experience, even the experience of samadhi comes and goes. It's not the goal of spiritual life.

What does the sun as the illuminator metaphor illustrate in Vedanta?

 

The sun metaphor (or light metaphor) is used to illustrate the relationship between Consciousness (the Seer, or Dṛk) and the mind (the Seen, which contains Vṛttis or mental objects) .

The metaphor teaches that Consciousness is the unaffected illuminator of the mind's contents:

• The Light/Sun is Consciousness (Dṛk): Consciousness is like the sun or light, which shines upon and reveals objects . It is the "revealer of Vṛttis" in your mind (perceptions, cognitions, and emotions) .
• The Objects are Mental States (Vṛttis): These are the thoughts and emotions that are being revealed .
• The Principle of Non-Affection: The core illustration is that the sun is utterly unaffected by what it shines upon .
• When the sun shines on a holy scripture, it does not become holy .
• When the sun shines on a filthy gutter, it does not become impure .

The conclusion for the self is that just as the sun remains untainted, the light of your consciousness remains unaffected by the mental states it reveals . Therefore, when consciousness reveals the presence of sadness in your mind, consciousness does not become sad, and when it reveals happiness, it does not become happy .

What does the orange crystal metaphor illustrate?

 

The orange crystal metaphor is used to illustrate the relationship between Consciousness (the Seer, or Dṛk) and mental states (the Seen, or Dṛśya), particularly emotions like sadness, to explain why we feel affected even when we are not.

The metaphor establishes the following points:

• The Crystal represents Consciousness (Dṛk): It is fundamentally clear, unchanging, and utterly unaffected .
• The Orange Cloth represents the Mental State (Sadness or Vṛtti): The color (oranges) belongs entirely to the cloth, just as sadness belongs entirely to your mind .
• The Appearance is the False Experience: When the clear crystal is placed next to the orange cloth, the crystal appears orange . Similarly, when sadness is in your mind, your consciousness seems sad or feels affected . This feeling is a false appearance (an appearance is something which is not real) that deceives us .
• The Key Distinction: The metaphor demonstrates that while the crystal appears orange, the oranges does not affect or taint the crystal one bit . In the same way, the sadness in the mind does not truly affect the conscious being, who remains untainted and clear .

The goal of the metaphor is to help the student distinguish the difference between appearance and reality in their own experience, so they can know that the sadness that feels like it has "rubbed off" on their conscious self is a false appearance .

Why it is arbitrary to think that I am inside the body looking out - Swami Tadatmanandaji

 

This is a summary of  a portion of Swami Tadamanandaji's lecture on Viveka in which he points out why it is arbitrary to imagine that you are located inside the body, looking out as it were.

The idea of being "inside the body looking out" is arbitrary because this sense of location is merely a side effect of your sense organs, particularly sight.

The argument is developed by suggesting that:

• It is a Side Effect of Sensation: Just as identifying the body as "me" is arbitrary because it is based on the presence of nerves (sensation), the sense of being located inside is an equally arbitrary side effect of your sensations.
• The Primacy of Sight: As human beings are highly visual, the sense of being a conscious being behind the eyeballs looking out into the world becomes primary.
• Loss of Sensation Eliminates Location: To illustrate the arbitrariness of this location, Swami Tadatmanandaji suggests a thought experiment: if you were blind, deaf, and your entire body was numb head to toe, you would have no physical sensations. If asked "Where am I?", you would have no sense of location whatsoever, demonstrating that your sense of location is entirely due to your senses.
• The Swapped Senses Example: In a hypothetical scenario where a scientist could swap the nervous impulses from your eyes with someone else's, the moment the switch was flipped, you would feel like you were instantaneously transported to their location, simply because you were seeing what their eyes picked up. This shows that the feeling of being located is entirely dependent on where the sense input (like sight) originates.

Taking the 'I' to be the body is absurd and arbitary

 

We feel that ‘I am the body’.  Swami Tadatmanandaji shows this sense of I, who is the conscious observer, being the body is absurd, as it based on presence of nerves in the body, which cause sensations that are known – and even though the sensations belong to the ‘known’ category they cause one to take the body to be I, who is ever the knower and never the known.  

Swamiji gives three hypothetical examples are to demonstrate the absurdity of taking the I to be the body, when in fact I is ever the conscious observer the knower:

1. Nerves Growing into Clothing: Swamiji imagines taking a medication that causes nerves to grow from the skin and into the clothing, such as an orange cloth. If the nerves pervaded the cloth, touching it would feel exactly like touching one's arm, making the cloth feel like "me". The absurdity is that if one identified as "white" based on skin color before the medication, one would then have to say, "I am orange," because the orange cloth now feels like part of the self.
2. Numbed Lip at the Dentist: When Novocaine makes the lip numb, it feels like a "foreign object attached to your face". This illustrates that the sense of "I-ness" in the lip is merely due to the presence of sensation, proving that without nerves, a body part ceases to feel like "me".
3. Arm Falling Asleep: If you fall asleep on your arm and it becomes completely numb, upon waking, you touch it and question, "Whose arm is that?". The body part is physically present but does not feel like "your arm" because it is totally numb, showing the absurdity of taking I to be the body merely based  on the presence of nerves.

Thus taking I to be the body is not based on logic, it is purely arbitrary.