Vivekachudamani - Post 17

 Verse 11  

 

चित्तस्य शुद्धये कर्म न तु वस्तूपलब्धये ।
वस्तुसिद्धिर्विचारेण न किंचित्कर्मकोटिभिः ॥ ११ ॥

 

cittasya śuddhaye karma na tu vastūpalabdhaye |
vastusiddhirvicāreṇa na kiṃcitkarmakoṭibhiḥ || 11 ||

 

(Selfless work and charitable acts help to purify the mind, but they do not, by themselves, contribute to the perception of Reality. The discovery of the Reality is brought about only by discriminative analysis and never by any number of actions.)

 

An often quoted analogy by the author - In our school times, we loved our school, we loved our seating, our class mates who uses to sit along with us in a row. But can we, after growing up and getting married, still go and sit on the same seat in that same row in the same class room saying that we love that seat, that class and we won’t leave that?

Another example.

A child is told by his parents to revise his arithmetic tables  everyday. The obedient child soon gets into the habit of starting his day with a reading of the tables. But if the child continues his habit as a dull and unintelligent routine even in his postgraduate classes, it is but natural for his professor to laugh at his stupidity.

 

A sage writes,

 

“In the halls of Vedanta, the seeker is laughed at because of the time-worn techniques of self-development to which he has become habituated, but that does not mean that  Sankara or the Vedantins are against them. 

 

The paths of karma, bhakti and so on, have certainly a place in the scheme of self-development and they are unavoidable in hauling up a man through the various stages of self-development to the pinnacle of perfection. 

 

Here Sankara points out that karma when undertaken with a pure nishkama bhava purifies the inner instruments of feeling and understanding. The word 'shuddhi' used in connection with the mind is to be understood as a greater degree of integration. The purer mind has a greater capacity to concentrate.”

 

Three things constitute dharma; one is rituals or religious exercises; like puja, japa etc. that is one part of dharma; all religious exercises whether it is temple visit, puja, pilgrimage japa, etc. all of them will come under rituals or religious exercises.

 

Second part of dharma is values. There are many people who give importance to religious exercises but they never give importance to their character, the quality or morality. And therefore morality or value is the second part of dharma.

 

And third part of dharma is attitude; the way we look at the creation; the way we look at ourselves and the way we look at the people around. First learn to respect yourself.  A Bhakta is great not because of anything; because Lord is inside him. 

 

Thus religious exercises, values and attitude. This is called karma here. Chittasya Shuddaye karma; Karma is equal to dharma.

 

When an action is undertaken with a motive, the individual must necessarily be shattered and fatigued under its persecution. On the other hand, when an act of charity or kindness is done in a spirit of dedication  and love, with no ulterior motive, the mind cosily settles down and  peace that rises within the sadhaka increases automatically and  his personality becomes more and more integrated. 

 

Selfless actions do not help a seeker directly in his flights of self-discovery. But they certainly have a place in one's sadhana in as much as they prepare the individual to transcend the ego and give him the wings for the last flight to the beyond. 

 

Sankara is uncompromisingly severe when he declares in his irrevocable statements that the Self is neither produced nor knowledge created as a result of finite actions, however noble, divine and great they may be.

 

How about someone who is unable to take up the path of vichara? He would like to do more of puja; Can he cry in front of the Lord as a replacement of vichara? 

 

Sankara says Na kinchit karma kotibhihi; one can do crores of yajnas; crores of yagas; crores of pujas; intense bhajans; one  may do all these things; cry in front of the Lord; crying would not replace enquiry; but crying in front of the Lord would not go waste; the Lord will make him fit for enquiry make you love enquiry. 

 

Such a bhakthi will gradually change and one will begin to like enquiry and Lord would change the mind; change the attitude. 

 

A bhakta may not know when he has moved / evolved to the path of discrimination. In His Love for God, when the urge within him is on fire to merge with the lord instead of crying out for the lord, in that quest for merger with lord, the path of Jnana/discrimination has started.

Karmaṇa siddhihi, vicharane jnana. This is sara of this sloka. Religion gives purity; philosophy gives knowledge. Veda purva is purity; veda anta is knowledge. 

 

 

Love.

Vivekachudamani - Post 16

 Verse 10 

 

संन्यस्य सर्वकर्माणि भवबन्धविमुक्तये ।
यत्यतां पण्डितैर्धीरैरात्माभ्यास उपस्थितैः ॥ १0 ॥

 

saṃnyasya sarvakarmāṇi bhavabandhavimuktaye |
yatyatāṃ paṇḍitairdhīrairātmābhyāsa upasthitaiḥ || 10 ||

 

(May the wise and learned man give up all actions which are motivated by desires and start the practice of rediscovering the Self and thereby attain freedom from the bondage of birth and death.) 

 

A sage says,

 

“Here is a piece of advice given to a man who has all the necessary theoretical knowledge of the science of self- perfection. He is told to renounce all activities motivated by self-aggrandizing hopes or disintegrating desires. 

 

This renunciation of the activities of the world is not to be over-emphasized and misunderstood, as is generally done, to mean that Vedanta is calling man to a life of eating only fruits and leaves. It is only asking us to reduce overexcitement in life and to curb the wasteful expenditure of our mental and intellectual energies born out of our unintelligent desires and lofty expectations.”

 

Sarvakarmaṇi samnyasya. After renouncing all the karmas; if the karmas are formally renounced, it is called sanyasa asrama. So literally saṁnyasya sarvakarmaṇi means caturta asram swekritya; but if a person does not take to sanyasa asrama, we can do the enquiry in Grahastha asrama also; but reducing the karmas to some extent, and developing detachment. In fact finding time is easier. But getting a withdrawn mind is more difficult. 

 

For a grahastha's attempt is more than finding time, finding a quality mind, because the mind can, when time is available, efficiently do the worrying. Therefore time is not a problem but the mind, committed mind, a withdrawn mind is difficult to attain. Therefore detachment becomes more important for a grahastha than even reducing the activity. If detachment is there, minutes available would be quality time. 

 

That good and sincere work will yield noble fruits should be a sufficient direction to guarantee us a peaceful passage for our pilgrimage here. But we  expect the impossible, a noble return from a vicious or ill-planned  action instead of the painful returns of sorrow, that will yield to us  many a terrible hour of unproductive anxiety and suicidal worry. 

 

In the Bhagwad Gita, Lord says,

 

kamyanaṁ karmanaṁ nyasam sannyasam kavayo viduh, 

sarvakarmaphalatyagaṁ prahus tyagaṁ vicaksanaḥ (18.2). 

 

Sannyasa is that kind of behaviour by which the actions that are connected with desire of some kind or the other are abandoned. A person may be said to be in a state of sannyasa the moment that actions which are motivated by desire are abandoned. 

 

That is to say, sannyasa does not mean abandonment of action as such. It means abandonment of actions which are connected with a desire of some kind. If we can think of an action without any desire attached to it, that is a different matter. It is up to us to imagine if such an action is possible at all: an action with which no desire is associated, and from which we expect nothing.

 

Here, the reference is to another kind of action. Action which is charged with a motive, any kind of motivated action, is kamya karma; and the abandoning of kamya karma, or motivated action, is sanyasa. This is the definition of sannyasa given by great ancient learned ones. 

 

We also learnt in the Manas Buddhi Chitta Ahankara blog posts that actions pushed by Ahankara or chitta are bound to add to our Karma further whereas, Actions performed purely due to the instructions received by our pure intellect do not fetch us further karmas.

 

The second part of the verses insists on a seeker who is striving to integrate himself is advised to walk  the path of intelligent living. 

 

Our aim is to clearly understand this consciousness is not part of matter; it is an independent entity which is my nature. And when I have to assimilate this, the intellect raises lot of questions and therefore to answer the question and to make the intellect clearly understand, lot of thinking is involved. Therefore Sankara  says Panditah; Panditah means a logical thinker is required.

 

Pandithyam is important; dhiratvam is important. Then what is the next? Atmabhyasa upasthithai. And one should become dedicated; committed to atma bhyasaha; Self-enquiry. Atmabhyasaḥ is another beautiful word for Self-enquiry. Here abhyasaḥ means shravaṇa manana nidhidhyaśana. Thus being committed to this one should work for mokṣa. 

 

The renunciation of false values is only a negative aspect of self-making. Man-making fulfils itself in God discovery and this spiritual art of perfection is not to be gained by a negative endeavour. Sankara specifies the positive aspect by saying, 'Let him practise the various means of self-discovery.”

 

If carefully examined, this one verse is all about  Sadhana chatushtaya.

 

The first part of the verse is giving up actions motivated by desires. This is is covered in Viveka, Vairagya and the intial part of Shad Sampat - Sama, Dama, Uparati, Titiksha

 

The second part of the verse is rediscovering the Self and thereby attain freedom from the bondage of birth and death. 

 

This is all about Shraddha, Samadana and Mumukshatva.

 

 

Love.

 

 

Vivekachudamani - Post 15

 Verse 9 

उद्धरेदात्मनात्मानं मग्नं संसारवारिधौ ।
योगारूढत्वमासाद्य सम्यग्दर्शननिष्ठया ॥ ९ ॥

 

uddharedātmanātmānaṃ magnaṃ saṃsāravāridhau |
yogārūḍhatvamāsādya samyagdarśananiṣṭhayā || 9 ||

 

(Having attained the state of yogarudha through continuous and well established discrimination, one should lift oneself from the ocean of change and finitude wherein one has come to be drowned.) 

 

When an individual has realised his limitations and feels that he must by some means redeem himself from his weaknesses and gain mastery over himself, it is not sufficient that he surrenders to his Master no matter how great, or runs away from the world into a quiet jungle or even makes a thorough and complete study of all the scriptures. Practices such as these, may somewhat help the individual but he can lift himself from the mire of his inner weakness only by dint of sustained self-effort. 

 

All these slokas are talking about jnana sadhanam. Previous sloka, this sloka; jnana sadhanam is vedanta sravaṇam; otherwise called vedanta vicaraḥ. So the same idea is repeated in all these verses in different ways.

 

Before entering scriptural enquiry; scripture based enquiry, one should develop fitness for that enquiry; which Sankara calls yogaruḍhatvam. In a way, sadhana catushtaya sampatti is called yogarudhatvam.

 

In Bhagavad-Gita - 6.4, we have a description of the yogarudha state. When a man is not attached to sense objects or to actions and has renounced all thoughts, then he is said to have attained to Yoga. 

 

Yoga in its right sense is only that state of mind, in which the mind having recognised its weaknesses attunes itself to a greater and more perfect ideal, which the intellect has shown it. Any attempt of the mind to rise from the low values of its present existence to a healthier and diviner scheme of living is Yoga. 

 

To get established in Yoga is to make it a habit to strive sincerely to rise above one's known weaknesses in order to attain the ideal.

 

After attaining yogarudastvam; what is the next thing; samyak darsana nishta. Nishṭa means commitment. In what? Samyak darsanam; self-knowledge or self-enquiry. Samyak darshana niṣṭaya one should be committed to self-enquiry; otherwise called vedanta vichara.

 

Through study, following of the sastra instructions, practices  of self-control and various other spiritual sadhanas,  one can expect to develop the  subtlety of one's inner instruments for experiencing the world as it  is, uncoloured by any personal prejudices, attachments or hatreds. 

 

This perception of the world as it is, in perfect detachment and discrimination is called 'samyag darsana'. 'Darsana' in Sanskrit also means 'philosophy' and, therefore, the term can also be interpreted as the vision of the world through the eye of philosophy. 

 

There are two stages; the first stage vedanta vichara yogyata prapthi; next stage is vedanta vichara. The whole life is only for these two. 

 

First three asramas, brahmacārya, grahastha, vanaprastha, all these asramas are vichara yogyata prapthihi; 

 

Sanyasa asrama is vichara. And having done this; through this; what should one do; uddhared atmana  atmanam; by following this one should uplift oneself by oneself.  

 

That is the importance of self-effort is highlighted. The importance of proper use of free will is highlighted.

 

Esvara's grace is important; guru's grace is important; sastra's grace is important; vedanta accepts grace very much; what we emphasise is grace can never replace self-effort. Grace can never replace self-effort; however, big and powerful the grace may be. And therefore Sankara says: uddhared; better you work.

 

“One should lift oneself from the ocean of change and finitude wherein one has come to be drowned.”, says Sankara in this verse.

 

For lifting oneself from the ocean of Samsara, self-effort is required through Yoga, vichara and  Samyug Darsana, as explained in this verse. The final and climax or the fructification of such intense effort is the grace of Eswara when He lifts such a deserving Sadhaka from ocean of samsara, saves him from being drowned and takes the sadhaka to His abode wherein the sadhaka merges with the supreme.

 

Love.