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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

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