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Nonduality Highlights: Issue #3032, Sunday, December 30, 2007, Editor: Mark
This is a radical invitation: Do not try to reach any state of
awareness, whether focused or diffused, and do not try to keep
any state away. Rather, recognize what is always present. The
wonderful result of this recognition is that objective states
become clearer, subjective states become softer, and peace is
found in all states.
While it is useful to develop your mind, your body, and your
work, developing consciousness is a huge mistake. Development
happens only because consciousness is already here. If your
attention is on "developing" rather than on recognizing
this, you go in a circle, chasing your tail and searching for
what is still here.
In a moment of truth-telling you can recognize for yourself,
"Oh, I picked up the search again". You can deny that
you have picked up the search, you can justify picking up the
search, or you can stop.
In that moment, you can turn your attention to the silence at the
core of whatever is occurring.
- Gangaji, from The Diamond In Your Pocket, posted to
The_Now2
Silence is pervasive. It can't be broken. Noise is just its
cutting edge; surrender to noise, and all is silence. Deep in
space, stars burn in an unbroken stilness. The silent void cannot
be shattered; even a supernova's blast causes no ripple. The void
can't be broken, it can't be eaten, it can't be sucked, black
holes inhale in vain- the void cannot be gotten. Don't be fooled
by activity, whatever happens in the void is a non- happening,
and these very words were never spoken.
- Pete, posted to SufiMystic
Prayer by Shankaracharya
Translation & Commentary by Vimala Thakar
(1)
Pratah smarami hridi samsphura ta twam
Satchitsukham paramahansa gatim turiyam
Yat swapna jagara sushupta mavaiti nityam
Tad brahma nishkalamaham na cha bhuta sanghaha.
In the morning as I meet the dawn, I remember that my heart
contains the God, the Beloved, who has not yet been defined and
described. I remember that it is He who vibrates within my heart,
enables me to breathe, to talk, to listen, to move. When I am
thus aware, that it is He who lives and moves within me, then the
three phases of consciousness, jagrat, swapna, sushupti :
wakefulness, dreaming, and profound sleep, they are transcended
into turiya, the fourth dimension, which is behind the
wakefulness, the dream-consciousness, and the
sleep-consciousness.
When I thus remember, that the underlying current behind the
wakefulness, the dream, and the sleep-consciousness is He, who
lives and moves within me, then that awareness gives me sat chit
sukham, the flavor of the truth, the reality, and the bliss that
is the nature, the basic primary nature of life.
Sat chit sukham. When I am always thus aware of the real nature
of life, then I arrive at paramahansagatim turiyam. I arrive at a
state of being that has been called by the ancient wise Indians
"Paramahansa", a swan that swims through the waters of
duality. That is how a sanyasi is called a paramahansa, one who
lives in the renunciation of that austere awareness that it is
not he who lives, as separate from the universe, but that he is
only an expression of the universal...
The state of paramahansa is the state where a person is aware
that he is not a conglomeration of sense organs and only the five
elements, but he is the nishkala Brahman, the supreme Brahman,
the divinity, who has taken the dense form of a mind and a
physical body.
(2)
Pratara bhajami manaso vachasam agamyam
Vacho vibhanti nikhila yadanugrahena
Ya neti neti vachanaih nirgama avochu
Tamdeva devam ajam achyutam ahuragryam
But my mind, when I am awake, needs some work to do. It cannot
remain without movement. So I give it a job. "Pratara
bhajami manaso" - by the mind - "vachasam agamyam"
- by the mind I move. On the frontiers of the mind I give the
mind a job to explore that which lies beyond its own frontiers,
that which is not accessible to the word, to the speech, as well
as to the mind.
My mind asks me, "How shall I do it?" And I ask the
mind to travel back, through the word, to the source of the word,
the sound, and find out how the sound is born. I ask my mind to
travel with the breath, to go inside: with the breath to travel.
That is the only way you can find out how the sound is born,
because breath and sound are woven together.
All speech and all sound is a blessing of that unspoken, unstruck
sound. And unless one discovers the source from which all sound
is born, one shall never set oneself free from the power of the
word, that intoxicates and distorts the mind; that intoxicates
the mind and sweeps it off its balance.
All the Upanishads and the Vedas have been searching for that
source of sound. That source of breath. They arrived only at two
words: na iti, na iti: it is "not this", it is
"not this." So even the Vedas arrive at the point where
nothing can describe and define. The source can only be
experienced, the source can only be perceived and understood, but
never defined and described. That is how the mind becomes silent.
Not because I ask it, but while it is searching for the source of
its own activity it takes a dive deep into silence, where the
mind becomes the no-mind, where the knowing becomes the
not-knowing.
Then I understand that silence is the only speech through which
life speaks, and I feel blessed when I am in that silence.
(3)
Pratarnamami tamasah param arkavarnam
Purnam sanatana padam purushottamakhyam
Yasminnidam jagadashesham ashesamurtau
Rajjuam bhujangama iva pratibhatitam vai.
But then comes the body. It wants to do something. To worship, to
admire, to adore. So I give it a job. I ask my body to bow down
before the light of the earth, the sun, who dispels darkness from
all the corners of the earth. And I ask my body to expose itself
to that darkness dispelling sun - ask it to find out how that sun
enters into the body through the doors of the eyes, and through
the pores of all the veins and nerves, every pore of my being. I
want my body to find out which are the avenues through which the
light is received.
And when the body says, "It is the eyes through which the
light enters," I say, "Find out how the eyes can see
the light. Is the light outside the eyes, or is it inside?"
With the help of the mind, the body travels inward, to find out
the source of the light.
And it discovers that it is not a blind person who can receive
the light from outside. He who has an eye can receive the light.
So that which receives the light is greater than the light seen
from outside.
So I arrive at the source of light within me. And the awareness
of that light dispels the illusion - the illusion and the fear
that a man experiences when he see "rajo bhujangama" :
when he see a rope in the darkness and he mistakes that for a
snake, a cobra. I had mistaken the rope of duality for the snake
and cobra of misery and sorrow. But the light dispels the
darkness and I see that the duality is only a rope that cannot
bind me in any way unless I bind myself with it.
That light is the purushottam, that is sanatana - eternal. Purnam
- that is perfect. The perfect eternity. The God divine. That is
really my nature. I had mistaken the tensions of duality to be
me, but then the light dispels all the darkness, and I get rooted
back into the ajam, the aychutam - that which can never be swept
off its feet. Ajam - that which was never born, and can never
die. I am that.
This is the prayer composed by Shankaracharya, the majestic
exponent of the philosophy of non-dualism, vedanta or advait.
This was sung by Vivekananda very often, and it is really on this
prayer that Vivekananda's "Song of Sanyasin" is based,
where he sings, in great ecstasy:
They know not truth who dream such vacant dreams
As father, mother, children wife and friend -
The sexless Self, whose father, whose mother is he?
The self is All in All,
None else exists, and thou art that,
Sanyasin bold, say 'Om Tat Sat Om'.
Where seekest thou that freedom?
This world nor that can give you.
Thine only is the hand,
that holds the rope that drags thee on.
Then cease lament, let go thy hold!
Sanyasin bold! Say 'Om Tat Sat Om!'
Vimala Thakar
Hunger Mountain, MA
October, 1972