Dharmasār—Essentials of Essence of Dharma: Recent Episodes
Ādyaśakti Svāmī Bhagavān
Dharmasār, the Essence of Dharma is a conceptual breakthrough in spiritual thought and practice, comparable in importance, scope and impact to Einstein’s discovery of Relativity. The Essence of Dharma resolves all apparent contradictions between stages of the spiritual Path, and among religious sects and organizations, by correcting the erroneous assumptions behind spiritual and religious views. Perception is based on consciousness. There are four states of consciousness: waking, dreaming, deep sleep and the fourth, turīya also called God, Brahman, Nirvāṇa, Self-realization, Enlightenment etc.
Namaste, and thank you for being with us for another episode of Ulladu-Narpadu! Today we’re going to look into verse three – this is when it really starts to get good! [laughs]
“What use is it to debate
whether the world is real or unreal
sentient or insentient, pleasant or unpleasant?
That State where, having given up the objective outlook,
one knows one’s Self and loses all notions
either of unity or duality, of oneself and the ego,
is agreeable to all.”
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Everybody is looking for something. All our activities, all our desires, all our hopes and dreams, our thoughts, our plans, etc. are based on this universal impetus towards Self-realization. We may know it, or we may not know it, it doesn’t make any difference – we can’t stop, until we attain it. Suffering is the goad. In Vedic culture there’s one mudra, Aṅkūṣa-mudra, which is like this... No, I’m not giving you the finger! [laughs] It’s very indicative of an elephant driver’s goad, which is a pole with a sharp end, that he uses to get the elephant to move, sort of like spurs on a horse rider. So, because of this goad of suffering, or ambition, desire, we can’t stop, we can’t help ourselves. We have to act, we have to move, we have to do something to better our condition. As long as we have a condition [laughs], as long as we are conditioned. [laughs]
So, let’s look into this verse a little deeper. First he said, “What use is it to debate?” My level of realization, my level of insight, my level of consciousness is going to be different from yours and from everybody else. We’re all unique individuals, we see things in our own ways. What use is it to debate? Are we really going to change anybody else’s minds? The only way we can force someone to do things is by coercion, by some kind of force, and of course that immediately rules out any change in consciousness, or any change in outlook. So the master teachers of the world have never used force, the greatest teachers.
Now, at a lower level of religious teaching there are moral principles, and rewards and punishments, to get people to do, or believe, certain things. But these are inferior. Why? Because they use force and coercion. Rather than allowing a person to work on themselves, and giving them methods by which they can get deeper insights, the religions try to set a code of what’s right and what’s wrong, what’s good and what’s bad, and force people to fit it. This is the Procrustean bed of morality. [chuckles] Procrustes was an ancient king, and he had this bed, and you had to fit in the bed, and if you were too long, he would chop things off until you were short enough, and if you were too short, he would stretch you until you would fit! Either way, it wasn’t a very nice, pleasant stay... [chuckles] And the same is true of morality: morality, manmade laws... They say they come from God, but come on! It’s really from our tastes. And my taste is different from your taste, which is different from everybody else’s! Because we’re all unique, we’re all individual, we’re all at a particular stage of advancement in our march toward Self-realization.
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Namaste 🙏 and welcome again to our series on Ulladu-Narpadu – 40 Verses on Reality by Śrī Ramana Maharshi. Today we’re going to look at verse number two, which is very interesting. [chuckles]
“All religions postulate three fundamentals:
the world, the soul, and God.
But these three are only manifestations of the one Reality.
One can say “The three are really three”
only so long as the ego lasts.
Therefore to transcend the ego
and remain in one’s own Being is the perfect State.”
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This is another wonderful verse – well, they’re all wonderful [laughs], what can I say! But the last time we talked about the world, and the unreality of the world, because the world is impermanent, and it doesn’t have real existence; its existence is only derivative of some prior cause, and because of this it can’t be accepted as absolutely real. Nevertheless, most people see the world as the world, they see it as permanent and real. And why is that? Well, because the nature of the seer is similar to the nature of the seen. In other words, if the world is illusory, if it’s just temporary and relative and so on, then what kind of being does it require to see that unreality as real? See what I’m getting at?
The ego, or what most people accept as their self, is just an unreal as the world! [laughs] And it has to be that way, it has to be, because only an unreal seer would see an unreal world as being real. But these are the triad, the inescapable result of being in illusion, or being attached to illusory being, being in the world. One of our first video series way back, five years ago or so, was called Being in the World, and it goes into this from the standpoint of existentialism. Now, existentialism is very interesting, because it’s based on experience, phenomenology, or observation of one’s own experience. And this is very close to the principle of meditation advocated by Ramana, to look into one’s own self, one’s own consciousness, and say, “Where does this ‘I’ arise from? Where does this ‘mine’, where do these thoughts come from? Where do they originate?” and by looking into that one thought “I am”, one can transcend it.
But what you see when you first look at the self, you think “Oh, this is me! This is I, Mister So-and-so, and I have this designation on my job, or in my community. I am a this, I am a that. [laughs] I am somebody’s husband, or somebody’s wife, or somebody’s girlfriend or boyfriend, I am the owner of this property and that car and this thing and that thing,” isn’t it? That’s how we think when we’re naive, when we don’t know anything about spiritual life, or the philosophy of reality. But the more we look into this, the more we meditate on this “I am. I am this, I am that, I am so-and-so, I am such-and-such,” we start to see that this is actually just an illusion. It’s actually just words, and we’re attached to those words, and we think those words are real – in other words, that words are things, or that symbols are reality.
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Namaste 🙏 and welcome to the next episode of Ulladu-Narpadu, and here’s where we start the actual 40 verses that are the body of the work, so let’s just jump right into it!
“From our perception of the world
there follows acceptance of a unique First Principle
–a common cause or Supreme Lord–
possessing various powers.
Pictures of name and form, the person who sees,
the screen on which he sees,
and the light by which he sees:
He Himself is all of these.”
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So, basically, Awareness is everything. Now, what’s going on here in this verse is that Ramana is accepting the fact that most people perceive the world as real, and he’s starting from that point. So, let’s say we are in the world [laughs], and perceiving it as real as such, perceiving the world as real in itself. So, naturally this brings up the question: where did all this come from? I mean, look at all this stuff, this incredible variety of phenomena!
Well, first we have to understand that the world in and of itself is not real. Why do I say that? Because the highest standard of reality is that something exists eternally, both in the past and the future, and without change, isn’t it? If something comes into existence at a certain point in time, then for sure it’s going to go out of existence again, so it’s not fully real. And also, if something changes – I mean, beyond coming and going [chuckles] – if it changes in the middle, it’s also not fully real. Only that which is changeless and eternal is real enough to serve as the first cause, or the Lord, the Creator, the source of everything. In other words, as long as we accept the existence of the world, as long as we accept the existence of myself as an ego, being in the world, and an identity which is derived from the world, then we have to accept that there is something higher. Because the existence of this world, and all the phenomena in it, including ourselves, is only relative. In other words, it’s temporary and changeable, isn’t it?
I think it was the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, who said, “You cannot step in the same river twice.” What does he mean by that? That between one step and the next step the river has flowed so much downstream, and so that river is gone, and now there’s a different river there – the river has changed. This world changes constantly. I mean, just look at what science has revealed about matter: matter is nothing but a conglomeration of atoms and subatomic particles that are vibrating at some incredible frequency! Changing, constantly changing, vibrating, moving, going in and out of different quantum states; in some cases going in and out of existence, on subatomic, micro timescales. So, what’s with that? [laughs] Even this planet, even the Sun, or the galaxy in which we live came into existence at a certain point, went through lots and lots of changes, and at some point in time it’s going to disappear.
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Namaste 🙏 and welcome to another episode of Ulladu-Narpadu. Now, Ulladu-Narpadu, as I said last time, was not planned, it doesn’t have an intentional structure. The structure came afterwards, after all the verses were collated and collected together and put in order. Even though that’s a fact, still Ulladu-Narpadu is one of the definitive works on the philosophy and the outlook of Śrī Ramana, and the reason that’s so, or the reason that it’s possible is that a sage does not live in time; a sage lives in eternity, in consciousness, in silence. Not in an ego, but lives as the Supreme, as Brahman. In other words, he is not limited by ordinary linear time, it’s not something that conditions him the way it does an unrealized being. With that little introduction, let me read the second verse of the Preface:
“Those who have an infinite fear of death
take refuge in the Feet of the supreme Lord
Who is without birth and death.
Can the thought of death occur to those
who have destroyed their “I” and “mine”
and have become immortal?”
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This highlights a very important theme in Ramana’s teaching, which is that death is a thought. See, time is a construct of our minds, and whatever exists in time has a beginning and an end. This is unavoidable. Whatever is born must also die, that is the law. And it is so because of the three phases of time: past, present, and future. These are all just thoughts, they only exist in the mind; they don’t really exist. And to the Absolute, to the Supreme, to the Lord, certainly past, present, and future are illusory. There only is what is, and what is is Him. [laughs] And what he is is awareness, as we discussed last time.
So, to awareness there is no birth, there is no time, there is no death, there are no conditions. I like the way the Ribhu-gita explains it, that Brahman, or the Self, is a solid chunk of consciousness or awareness, a solid block of awareness. If you can imagine a solid block of awareness, there is no inside, no outside, no object, no subject: the only thing to be aware of is awareness. This is the Absolute, this is the ground of being, this is the Supreme, this is the Lord, Brahman.
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Namaste 🙏 Hello, and welcome to our new series on Ulladu-Narpadu. Ulladu-Narpadu means “40 Verses on Reality”, and these are verses that were written by Bhagavān Rāmana over a period of several years apparently, and later on collated into a book, and arranged in sections according to their topics. So in other words, it was never intended to be an anthology or a philosophical work in itself; it was simply verses that occurred spontaneously to Rāmana, and then he wrote them down, and they were collected later. So it does have that weakness that it’s not all one piece, it wasn’t conceived as a comprehensive work on philosophy or on Rāmana’s viewpoints, but it just kind of happened. We’re going to be going through this because it is considered one of the seminal works on Rāmana’s views, and it really does have a lot of good stuff in it. So, rather than try to introduce it any further, I’m going to jump right into the prefatory verses:
“Without awareness of Reality, can Reality exist?
Because this awareness-reality, itself free from thought,
exists as the source of all thoughts,
it is called Heart. How to know it?
To be as it is (thought-free) in the Heart, is to know it.”
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“Further, Ānanda, the monk—not attending to the perception of the dimension of nothingness, not attending to the perception of the dimension of neither-perception-nor-non-perception—attends to the singleness based on the themeless concentration of awareness. His mind takes pleasure, finds satisfaction, settles, & indulges in its themeless concentration of awareness.
“He discerns that ‘This themeless concentration of awareness is fabricated & mentally fashioned.’ And he discerns that ‘Whatever is fabricated & mentally fashioned is inconstant & subject to cessation.’ Thus knowing, thus seeing, his heart is released from the effluent of sensuality, the effluent of becoming, the effluent of ignorance. With release, there is the knowledge, ‘Released.’ He discerns that ‘Birth is ended, the holy life fulfilled, the task done. There is nothing further for this world’.”—Cūḷa Suññatā Sutta
Namaste. So, this is Enlightenment. Complete, pure, and final. This is the thing toward which we have been striving and progressing for many, many lifetimes, and this is how the Buddha attained it himself. So, immediately after this, then he spoke the verse:
*etaṃ santaṃ, etaṃ panītaṃ,
yadidaṃ sabba-saṅkhārā-samatho
sabbūpadhi-paṭinissaggo
taṇhak-khayo
virāgo nirodho nibbānaṃ*
“This is peaceful, this is excellent: the stilling of all fabrications; the
relinquishment of all assets; the destruction of craving; detachment,
cessation, Nibbāna.”—Mahā-Mālunkya Sutta (MN 64)
You see, but it’s not like he was sitting there trying to stop the sankhārā. Rather, he was concentrating on these progressively more and more subtle layers of emptiness.
Some people wrongly accuse the Buddha of being a śuññyāvādī as it’s called, śuññyāvādī means that ‘emptiness is the truth.’ But if emptiness was the truth, he wouldn’t say that “these states of concentration are fabricated and mentally fashioned.” Because the truth is not fabricated, the truth is not mentally fashioned; the truth is the truth, and it’s always the truth.
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Namaste. So now, if you’ve been following this series—which I hope you have, because you’ll need the background to understand these last couple of episodes—we’re going to talk about the stage beyond neither-perception-nor-non-perception, and the Buddha calls this themeless concentration:
“Further, Ānanda, the monk—not attending to the perception of the dimension of nothingness, not attending to the perception of the dimension of neither-perception-nor-non-perception—attends to the singleness based on the themeless concentration of awareness. His mind takes pleasure, finds satisfaction, settles, & indulges in its themeless concentration of awareness.”—Cūḷa Suññatā Sutta
This is beautiful, this is potent. This is the very, very next stage to full Enlightenment. Why? For the first time he says “concentration of awareness”. We’re not dealing anymore with concentration of consciousness, whether our consciousness is on earth or space or nothingness or emptiness or whatever. For the first time we’re dealing with pure awareness. This is a very significant thing. Why? Because consciousness always has an object. Consciousness is a stick with two ends.
Here’s the stick: on one end you have awareness; on the other end you have the object of awareness. So this is duality, because you have two ends: one is the cause, and one is the effect. But it doesn’t matter at this point, because the only thing that’s significant now is that the stick has two ends. And what do you find in the middle? ‘I’ [laughs], my self: “I am conscious of this.” And it doesn’t really matter whether it’s something with form, like a village or wilderness or earth, or something formless, like space, nothingness, emptiness, like that—it doesn’t matter. There is still the question of who is conscious of this? And that who, of course the answer is always ‘I’: “I am conscious.” [laughs] But we know that ‘I’ is something dependently arisen. In fact, consciousness is dependently arisen. It depends on what? Sankhārā, and sankhārā depend on ignorance—there’s a cute little bird outside my window, he’s only about this long. [laughs]
Anyway, consciousness depends on sankhārā, sankhārā depend on ignorance. But what does ignorance depend on? Awareness. Without awareness there is nothing else. The thing about awareness is, awareness is only aware of itself, it has no object. Or another way to say it is, that the object of awareness is awareness itself. So this is the perfect stage, this is Nibbāna itself. This is the aim, this is the goal, this is what we’ve been working toward step-by-step.
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Namaste. Welcome to the next-to-last episode of our series on Emptiness, where we’re going to talk about neither-perception-nor-non-perception.
“Further, Ānanda, the monk—not attending to the perception of the dimension of the infinity of consciousness, not attending to the perception of the dimension of nothingness—attends to the singleness based on the dimension of neither-perception-nor-non-perception. His mind takes pleasure, finds satisfaction, settles, & indulges in the dimension of neither-perception-nor-non-perception.”—Cūḷa Suññatā Sutta
What does this mean? Well, you should try it and find out! See, nothingness is different from space. I think I have to point this out, because we got a couple of comments from people who are a little mixed up about this, that space still offers a context for becoming. Because space is actually space-time, as we know from Einstein, and space-time allows for movement, change, and therefore becoming, being and so on, which leads to suffering. But nothingness has no dimensions, it has no measurement, therefore it has no time, therefore no change, and therefore no becoming. So there is no becoming, no being in nothingness.
So then the question arises “Well, how do I know whether I’m conscious or not?” [laughs] “If I’m concentrating on nothingness, if I have removed all other perceptions, and I’m just concentrating on the singleness of nothingness, how do I know that I’m perceiving anything?” and of course the answer is, you don’t. [laughs] It’s neither-non-perception-nor-perception, because there’s nothing to perceive. This nothingness, this is really the emptiness that we’ve been talking about, the emptiness where there is no opportunity for anything to exist. You see, existence has a beginning, a middle and an end, therefore it’s suffering. All perceptions are suffering, because they have a beginning, a middle and an end.
So, if we want to be completely free from suffering, we have to go into nothingness so that there’s nothing to perceive. But then how do we know whether we’re perceptive or not? How do we know if we’re conscious or not? Well, we don’t. And the thing is that this gives us, or simulates, the conditions involved in complete merging with Brahman.
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Namaste. So, we’re going to continue with the sutta on emptiness, and this time we’re going to talk about nothingness.
“Further, Ānanda, the monk – not attending to the perception of the dimension of the infinity of space, not attending to the perception of the dimension of the infinity of consciousness – attends to the singleness based on the perception of the dimension of nothingness. His mind takes pleasure, finds satisfaction, settles, & indulges in its perception of the dimension of nothingness.”—Cūḷa Suññatā Sutta
So, we see that this sutta describes a series of contemplations, and each step is more subtle than the last, each step is more peaceful than the last. This is called tranquility meditation, ~samaṇa, samaṇa jhana~. What this means is that the mind is becoming progressively quieter, more settled, and deeper in a trance of quietude, silence, non-action, and certainly non-identification, non-projection – so many things. See, the Buddha’s process is a negative process, it consists in leaving off so many things that we normally keep active. Like a juggler, with so many balls in the air, our minds are always throwing thoughts around, and projecting different... Well, the word the Buddha uses is conceits. A conceit is a conception, but it’s a particular kind of conception designed to reinforce the ego. Now, the ego is an expression of individuality, but individuality doesn’t really exist. [chuckles]
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Namaste. In our last episode we talked about infinite space. And what is space, really? Space is the complement of matter, it’s the reciprocal of objects. We talked about a bowl, and how the space inside the bowl and outside the bowl are identical, and also how the space inside and outside the bowl traces exactly the opposite of the shape of the bowl.
So space is the reciprocal of matter. And what is it about matter? [chuckles] Matter is always limited. Matter always has a beginning and an end, in space as well as time. And when we talk about space, it includes time. Because space has dimension, it has extent, measurement. So as soon as you have dimension, you have a possibility of motion, and motion of course makes it possible to change. Change is how we measure time. So there is no such thing as ‘just space’. There is space-time, and this is because of the possibility of space giving rise to measurement.
But there’s another thing about space that’s very important here. Matter is limited; it always has a beginning and an end, but space has no beginning or end. Unlimited space, infinite space means just that, no limits, no end to it. But since matter is always limited, that means there is much, much more space than there is matter. Even the whole cosmic manifestation, with all of its galaxies and whatever, is just a tiny, tiny little thing in the expanse of infinite space. So matter disappears in space, matter becomes inconsequential in space, matter compared to infinite space is infinitely small.
You see, the conception of infinite space is the first step in what Buddha calls the divine meditations, divya jhānas. Up until that point, our meditation is within the realm of form, and so it’s also limited. But meditation on space is not limited; it’s infinite. And it’s also a negation, a negation of matter. So this jhana or meditation on infinite space is our first contact with the infinite, the endless, the unlimited, the timeless, and now the Buddha is going to expand that. So let’s continue to read from the Sutta.
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Dharmasār Video Series Index:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EZFqp9G893-LMYSm-ucUt3CylMTbfLV2/view?usp=drivesdk
Four States of Consciousness Diagram:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/13OWr_2V857yq7AjS59yhF4ub2q9k8Kl9/view?usp=sharing
Dharmasār Complete Archive Library: https://archive.org/details/dharmasar-essence-of-dharma
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Namaste. So far, we have seen how the monk approaches emptiness by a process of abstraction. First he looked at the wilderness, and of course the wilderness has a lot of detail in it. But then he abstracted the wilderness into the earth element, which of course comprises most of the details, the information in the perception of the wilderness: you have the earth, the rocks, the trees, and so many other things. So he took all those earthy things and abstracted them into one perception, the perception of earth. That got rid of the idea of a village, the idea of the palace, the idea of an assembly of monks, and even the idea of the wilderness surrounding them. So now what happens? What’s the next step?
“Further, Ānanda, the monk—not attending to the perception of wilderness, not attending to the perception of earth—attends to the singleness based on the perception of the dimension of the infinity of space. His mind takes pleasure, finds satisfaction, settles, & indulges in its perception of the dimension of the infinity of space.”—Cūḷa Suññatā Sutta
What does this mean? See, you have to think about these things. The Buddha is not going to give you your realizations and insights on a silver platter; you have to do some work, you have to analyze it, you have to cross-question it. We quoted that Sutta before, that the monks who are intelligent cross-question the Suttas, they discuss among themselves. This is why I’m trying to get you all to make intelligent comments, and cross-question the idea in the Suttas—don’t be lazy, look up the terms! Try to figure out what it means.
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Namaste. So, we’ve been dipping in the ocean of emptiness [laughs], just a little bit. Although it’s only a dip, it seems like the deep end of the pool, right? Well, now we’re going to stop messing around in the pool, and we’re actually going to go out in the ocean. So, this is taking a deep dive into the source material, the Buddha-suttas on emptiness.
I remember one time I went out in a boat with some friends beyond the island of Guam, beyond the coral reef, out into the ocean. And there’s a shelf, the Marianas Shelf, then that drops off into the Marianas Trench, which is the deepest part of the ocean in the whole world—36,000 feet or something like that, and basically it’s just like a cliff, it goes straight down. I remember diving off the boat and going down the cliff wall, and we were looking for shellfish and whateve—and feeling the immensity of the Marianas deep... I mean, it was just such an awesome feeling. I think it had a lot to do with the sound. Just like you can hear if somebody puts a lot of reverb or something, it sounds like a big space. Well, this was the biggest space I ever heard—just awesome. And I looked up, and there was a whole school of barracudas swimming over my head! [laughs] “I think I want to see some daylight here!” [laughs]
Anyway, for those of you who are allergic to emptiness, you should tune out right now! [laughs] Because this is going to get really deep, and there are lots of barracuda... [laughs] But for those who have an appetite, who have a taste, then this is going to be wonderful, because we’re going to go through the whole sutta. And even though it’s called The Shorter Sutta on Emptiness, it’s actually quite long, and it goes step-by-step, by degree, to introduce you to the concept of emptiness; the apophatic teaching. Instead of the positivist teaching of being in the Vedas, it’s going to be the apophatic teaching of emptiness. So, here we go: check your tanks, check your regulator [chuckles], blow all the water out of the breathing tube, and let’s jump in!
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Namaste. So, you might think that “Well, what is there to know about emptiness?” [laughs] I mean, how much can I say about emptiness, right? Well, it’s like name-&-form. I looked up on the suttas all the suttas having to do with emptiness, and there’s maybe a thousand of them... So emptiness is actually a very important topic—and we haven’t even started to cover it from the Vedic side.
So, emptiness is a big deal. Why is it such a big deal? There’s nothing to it! [laughs] But the point is when we attain the realization of emptiness, that stops the creation of sankhārā. The Buddha created a gradual series of meditations called the jhānas, more and more subtle, and finally leading to complete emptiness. So, is that Nibbāna? No. Listen to this:
“Since Nibbāna is called the stilling of all preparations, sankhārā, sabbasankhārasamatha, one might sometimes conclude that the attainment of the cession of perceptions and feeling, saññāvedayitanirodha, is in itself Nibbāna. But it is upon rising from that attainment, which is like a deep freeze, that one makes contact with the three deliverances: the signless (animitta), the desireless (appanihita), and the void (suññatā).”
—Bhikkhu K. Ñāṇananda, Nibbāna the Mind Stilled
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Namaste. The series before last was about Dependent Arising, the process of becoming. And the process of becoming is the trap that causes us to be stuck in duality. But it’s also the process of enlightenment; because we have to turn that process on its head and use it to become free. We showed how the descent into duality, when it’s uprooted, and when the process of becoming ceases, then automatically the Eightfold Path and the four Path Fruits manifest automatically.
Then in the last series we showed how there is a very deep, high-level ontological alignment between the four paths and the Śaṅkarāchārya’s four darśanam, catur-darśanam, the four views. Starting from duality, that’s dvaita-vāda; then conditioned duality, viśiṣṭādvaita-vāda; then there’s the appearance of the world, vivartha-vāda; and finally the unborn, ajata-vāda. So these four stages exactly mirror the process of enlightenment given by the Buddha. And what is the goal, or what is the object of that process? Emptiness.
Now, I know, Westerners are terrified of emptiness, and not only Westerners! [laughs] One of the reasons why emptiness is not better known is within the Buddha’s followers themselves. Let me read this prediction by the Buddha:
“In times to come, monks will lose interest
in the deep Suttas that deal with transcendence;
They will not listen to those suttas that have to do with emptiness, suññatā.
They will not think it even worthwhile learning
or pondering over the meanings of those suttas.”
—Samyutta Nikāya, Nidānavagga, Āni Sutta [SN 20.7]
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Ontology is the most powerful western science. It gives us the power to analyze anything, even esoteric subjects. Indeed, it is the science of sciences, for it allows one to create sciences.
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So if you’ve come with us this far, you know that the most effective method of learning is learning by being. And being requires change; that’s called becoming. And the first step to becoming a genius in whatever field you choose is duplication.
Now if this doesn’t make any sense to you, you didn’t watch the first two videos. Go back and do that now—here’s the link—and then watch this video. Otherwise without the preliminaries, you’ll be grasping for the meaning.
So what we’re doing here, is we’re learning by becoming. Being is the best way because it comes from inside of you spontaneously. There’s no script. It’s not necessary because you are the thing that you’re trying to be. You are the genius, the master of the subject that you’re trying to learn. So, if you’re not already that genius, how do you become that genius? The first step is duplication. You must be working from an exact copy of the source materials. The second step, however, is understanding.
Now what is understanding? When we’re with someone that we know, and that knows us really well, we can say, “We understand each other.” It means we really know each other; it means we have internalized each other’s being to such a degree that we can predict the effect of any word or incident on your consciousness. Isn’t it? And that’s a very pleasant feeling of intimacy. We have a saying: “I get it.” I get you, I know what you’re getting at. What is it that you’re getting? You’re getting the duplication of the other person’s mind.
So this concept of duplication is very powerful, and it’s fundamental. If you’re not working with an exact copy of the original thing that you’re trying to learn, how can you learn it? And we’ll get into the exact standard of duplication later; but it’s much higher than you have been trained or led to believe. Real duplication means an exact copy. And how that’s possible? By knowing the definitions of all the terms and symbols used in the original material. You should be able to recite the definitions by heart. That’s how well, that’s how down cold you have to have your original material.
This is not an exaggeration. That’s why real students of a subject can quote verbatim from the source materials. Then by modeling the meaning of those source materials in a cause-and-effect relationship, you come to understand it: “I do this over here, and it causes this over here. I tweaked this, and it does that. And there’s a cause-and-effect relationship in time.”
So what we’re doing here by developing understanding is actually telling a story about the subject that we’re learning. It’s like constructing a narrative based on the material that you’ve duplicated that describes how the thing works, the theory of operations, if you will. But the actual process that goes on inside your mind is one of modeling, and modeling in terms of cause-and-effect. Building a narrative, building a story. And we go through all the stages on how to do that.
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So today, without any further ado, we’re going to go right into the thousand names, and look at the first two names. The first line of the Lalitā-sahasranāmam goes:
श्रीमाता श्रीमहाराज्ञी श्रीमत्-श्रीमत्सिंहासनेश्वरी ।
śrī mātā śrī mahārājñī śrimat siṁhāsaneśvarī
So we’re only going to do the first two. Śrī Mātā is the first name, and of course mātā means Mother; so the Goddess, Tripura, is the Mother of the whole universe. She’s not just ordinary mother, Mātā; She’s Śrī Mātā, meaning that She is the Mother of all: the universal Mother. And not only that—She’s an extraordinary Mother. An ordinary mother has no power to reduce or eliminate the suffering, and trials and tribulations of life. I mean, maybe she can give a little bit of relief; but Śrī Mātā can completely remove those sufferings.
The end of all suffering is liberation, mokṣa: the relief of material existence, the end of saṁsāra, repeated birth and death. So She can grant this; it’s within Her power. In fact, it’s only Hers to grant. But why is that? Because as the Mother of the universe, She is the universe. She is the trap; She is Māyā. So Māyā can also remove māyā, you see? Just like a thorn can take out another thorn. But in Her case, we don’t want to throw the thorns away because She is our Mother, and full of love and affection for all Her children.
(So let me check my notes here.) So She is in one way the creator of the universe. She creates the material elements, space, time, dimension and the mahāt-tattva, the source of all the five elements. And then at the end, She also dissolves Her creation, see? Who makes it can also dissolve it; and this is why She can give liberation too.
So this cycle of saṁsāra that we’re all stuck in, is like an ocean. In the ocean there are very strong currents and tides. It’s very difficult, actually impossible, for an ordinary human being to swim against them. So in other words, one has to be rescued by the ocean itself. Maybe the tide will wash you up on the beach somewhere. But in the case of saṁsāra, it’s the Mother Herself; so She is also the one to grant liberation.
The problem is, you see, saṁsāra the current of material existence, is produced by the senses. When the senses interact with their objects we become overwhelmed by all these impressions, and we’re swept away, we’re swept along by it. We don’t have the strength to resist it. Especially early in life, when our habits and thought patterns are being formed, we have nothing solid. We are always at the effect or under the influence of externals. So therefore, we become patterned, we become conditioned by them; and we start to think of ourselves as a material thing, and of course this is called identification.
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We have to be able to think with this chart. What does it mean? OK, there are four levels, OK? Four levels. The person on the first level can maybe see a little bit of the second level, but they can’t really understand it. The person on the second level can understand the first level just fine, because they’ve been there. And they’re learning the second level, and they’re maybe just barely able to understand the third level. The people on the third level understand the first two levels, but they can’t really understand the fourth level: it’s beyond their experience. And of course, the people on the 4th level understand everything. But Rāmana Mahārṣi, people like that, are so rare. There are only a tiny, tiny handful on earth at any particular time.
So what does that mean in practice? If you have some friends who are sectarian religionists—Christian, Muslim, born-again Baptists, or Jews, or whatever—people who are committed to their religious faith, they’re a solid dvaita-vādīs. They’re into duality all the way, right? They have an eternal soul, and they’re gonna go be with God forever and ever, amen.
So, these people cannot understand bhakti. When I became a devotee, a bhakta and went to join my spiritual master in India, my family completely rejected me. And that was never healed; they could never grasp why I would want to go off and serve some brown guy in a dhoti on the other side of the planet; it was completely beyond them. Well, to be fair, they weren’t even really 100% dvaita-vādīs, they were more like half-and-half, you know, half animals really. Still eating meat and all of that, ah, horrible. So their minds could not grasp the ontology that God can appear in a form.
This is so strange because at the beginning people give no form to God. Maybe they do give a form, you know, like the Sistene Chapel frescoes, that show God, you know, reaching out and touching Adam and giving him life, right? So God can have a form, He can do stuff, He can be—like a person, and you can worship Him in that form you can have pastimes with him in that form, and so on.
So that’s the viśiṣṭādvaita-vāda platform, bhakti-yoga, OK? Before you realize that, you can only do karma-yoga, right? And there are many, many sects that pretend to be higher levels, but are actually just dvaita-vādīs, stuck in duality. The neo-buddhists and the neo-advaitins are perfect examples of that. They claim to be ‘buddhists’, or they claim to be ‘advaitins’, but they’re actually just another sectarian duality. Y ou see? Why? Because they believe this, and they don’t believe that; they accept this, and they deny that. That’s duality, that’s sectarianism.
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Welcome to Episode 3 of Being Integrity, and today we’re going to discern or recognize integrity as compared to other types of knowledge that discuss right and wrong, such as morality, legality, ethics and so on.
Well, what does the Buddha say about integrity? He says:
“And how is a person of integrity endowed with qualities of integrity? There is the case where a person of integrity is endowed with conviction, conscience, concern; he is learned, with aroused persistence, unmuddled mindfulness and good discernment. This is how a person of integrity is endowed with qualities of integrity.” — Cūḷa-puṇṇama Sutta (MN 110)
I love how the Buddha always tells us how; not just what, but how. So we’ll go into some of these other qualities later on in this series. But right now we want to talk about unmuddled mindfulness and good discernment.
So, to discern something means to be able to pick it out, to recognize it, to identify it even among a bunch of other similar things. So for example, if I had a pet dog, and there were a whole bunch of dogs running around, I’d be able to pick out my dog from among the pack. Similarly, there are many different ideas dealing with right and wrong, good and bad, what to do, what not to do. And we’re going to go over the difference between integrity and these other ideas.
We use a positive model of integrity; and the reason we do that is because it gives us access to enhanced performance. And we’ll get into that later on in the series. But basically, if you have integrity, you will be able to perform far greater than a typical person without integrity. And of course the same goes for groups, organizations and societies that have integrity built-in. They will have a much higher output, much greater creativity and so on than others who don’t have integrity.
In our model, we discern or recognize four phenomena dealing with right and wrong: morality, ethics, legality and integrity. So let’s go over those briefly. Philosophical discourse and common usage misdefine and confuse morality, ethics, legality and integrity. This causes people to misunderstand these four phenomena, so it is very difficult to apply them properly. Their integrity declines as a result.
So what is the difference between morality, ethics, legality and integrity? Can you tell me right off the top of your head? Probably not; and that’s a problem. It’s a problem because these words actually refer to different things; and unfortunately in the ordinary dictionary definitions, they are defined in terms of one another. So there’s a lot of circular definitions going on: morality is defined as ethics, ethics is defined as morality, and so on.
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Āya Bhuwan: may you live long!
Welcome to episode two of Being Integrity, where we establish a firm foundation for your progress in this series. Why is integrity so difficult? Sometimes when we try to explain it to people, it’s as if we’re speaking a foreign language. But actually, integrity has been trained out of us; it has been socialized out of us; it has been basically beaten out of us by a society surrounding us that’s completely out-of-integrity itself.
The government is spying on everybody, they’re lying to the press, to the Congress; businesses are stabbing each other in the back; there’s all kinds of covert wars and stuff going on all over the planet—and these are the leaders! So if the leaders are like that, then imagine what the rest of the population must be. In school, it’s supposed to be about education; but it’s actually just about social conditioning, about training easy-to-manage workers for the industrial corporations.
So we’re not really getting what we’re promised in any area of life: government is corrupt, business is corrupt, school is corrupt, families are corrupt; people are cheating on each other, nobody’s following any kind of moral standards. It’s very rare, and when they do, it’s only because of external coercion like a church, or because they’re afraid of getting caught.
So we live in a world where being out-of-integrity is pervasive, and to get along in that world we often find ourselves compromising what we know is right and wrong, in order to get by. It’s a pretty sad state of affairs. But this is the typical consciousness that we find in the world today. We want to do something about this; we want to encourage and help people to regain their integrity, and to become a fully integrated, whole, fully functional human being.
Why? Because without integrity, without the intention to reduce suffering or eliminate suffering for ourselves and others, we are less than fully human. A full human being—human being in the full sense of the term—is one who is committed to reducing or eliminating suffering for everyone. Of course, this is a Buddha, or at least an arahant: a fully Self-realized person.
So a full human being is something very far above the average human being of today. Yet without integrity, we cannot even take a small step toward that platform. We’re stuck in the subhuman consciousness of thinking we are the body; we’re thinking we are some abstract designation related to our social or economic or political status. That is a conditioned state of consciousness. It’s not real consciousness; it’s consciousness in terms of some symbolic representation or some abstract relationship that we take on and say, “This is my self.”
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Āya Bhuwan: Welcome to the next installment of Being Integrity, where we’re going to talk about the definition of integrity used in this series, and also discuss the cultural limitations or assumptions that cause most people to misunderstand, not only integrity, but the entire teaching of the Buddha.
Buddha spoke on integrity often. It was a favorite theme of his. He used the word sappurisā, which means sat or a truthful purisā, man or person. So a sappurisā is one who speaks the truth.
In our modern society there are so many excuses for lying, or fudging the truth, or telling little white lies. But they’re not really white because we deceive ourselves, as well as others. And once we get in that habit it’s very difficult to break. So part of integrity is being truthful; but there’s a lot more to it than that.
The dictionary definition of integrity is not very useful for our purposes. Let’s go over it though, just so we have a baseline for comparison. Integrity is defined as a noun, “the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness,” and the example is: ‘He is known as a man of integrity’. The second definition given is “the state of being whole and undivided,” and the example is: ‘upholding territorial integrity and national sovereignty.’ Third is, “the condition of being unified, unimpaired or sound in construction,” for example: ‘the structural integrity of the novel.’ And finally, “internal consistency or a lack of corruption, [as in electronic data]: ‘integrity checking’.”
Now what is the problem with this? Whose moral standard, which moral standard? and when? Morality is a relative thing; it’s external to the personality. So if we’re following some moral code it means it’s imposed on us from outside, number one; and number two, morality changes over time—it’s relative. So the morality of New York in the 1920s, is completely different from the morality in a Buddhist monastery in Sri Lanka in the 17th century. Which morality are we talking about?
And it’s unfair to make an assumption and say that we accept this morality or that morality as the morality, when actually there are so many contradictions in different moral teachings that it’s basically a useless standard. A much better standard is completeness, consistency, wholeness, fully functional.
This leads to a very interesting definition of integrity. Thus in this series we define integrity as:
“The objective, measurable state or condition of being whole, complete, unbroken, unimpaired, sound, in perfect condition—born of compassion: the intention to eliminate suffering for self and others without creating dependence.”
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So this begins the auspicious introduction to Śrī Lalitā-sahasranāmam, the thousand names of Goddess Lalitā; the most beautiful and powerful prayer. In the opening you heard:
अरुणां करुणा-तरंगिताक्षीं धृत-पाशांकुश-पुष्प-बाण-चापाम्।
अणिमादिबिरावृताम् मयूखै-रहमित्येव विभावये भवानीम्॥
aruṇāṁkaruṇā-taraṁgitākṣīṁ dhṛta-pāśāṅkuśa-puṣpa-bāṇa-cāpām |
aṇimādibirāvṛtām mayūkhai-rahamityeva vibhāvaye bhavānīm ||
“I meditate on Bhāvanī: Āmbā, the supreme happiness, whose color is like the Sun at dawn—in other words red—and from whom rays of light are emanating. Her compassion for Her devotees comes out of Her eyes like waves of the ocean. She has four hands. In the rear hands She holds two weapons: pāśām (lassoo) and ankuṣam (elephant goad). In the front hands, She holds a bow made of sugarcane and arrows made of flowers. I meditate on Her form called Bhavānī, the state of supreme happiness, with beams of light.”
So this is called the dhyānam. Before every stotram or prayer, there is a verse that defines the object of meditation, and this is called the dhyānam-śloka. You’ll find it in every Sahasranāmam, or in every major prayer. So this practice is to focus our minds on Devī—Śakti, the goddess in Her most auspicious form. What does auspicious mean? It means, it gives good results in the future.
There are two kinds of happiness: immediate happiness and extended happiness; happiness that we get right now, and happiness that we pile up for the future. So this kind of prayer, either hearing or reciting, give us happiness in the future. It’s called śreyas; whereas immediate happiness is called preyas, and from which comes our English word pray. ‘God, I want this right now!’ But God is not our order-supplier. He’s not our servant. God is more like the controller; that which manifests.
So, any manifestation takes some time. Try to understand: it’s not that you can pray for something and get it right away. That’s not how it works—unless, of course, you’re praying for a particular state of mind. But even in that case, it takes some time to adjust everything. So really we should be interested in śreyas: eventual happiness, future happiness, happiness in the next birth even. So these prayers don’t give immediate results, but they very quickly give results.
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Integrity is based on the principle of truthfulness: keeping one’s word. Integrity has to be based on something real; thus integrity cannot refer to a corporation, religion, nation-state or other abstraction. Integrity is meaningful only in the context of an individual: ‘a man or woman of integrity.’ Integrity is how to live with a clean conscience.
Watch the video: Being Integrity 0—Introduction
Āya Bhuwan: may you live long! Welcome to Being Integrity. This is going to be a series—quite an extensive series, I think—about integrity and the Buddha’s teaching.
Now integrity is based on truthfulness. We hear these days a lot of talk about ‘integrity in business’. But this is actually an oxymoron. For those of you who aren’t on good terms with your dictionary, an oxymoron means a self-contradictory statement, like military intelligence or integrity in business.
Because what’s the first thing you do when you start a business? You file a fictitious name statement and then you incorporate, and your incorporation is simply some words on paper and signed by a few people. And then suddenly you have this entity that has all the rights of a person! Of course a corporation isn’t a person; it’s a lie, and so is the name. The whole thing is a fabrication.
So in that context how can you have any integrity? It’s just self-contradictory, oxymoronic to have integrity in the context of a corporation. It’s just impossible.
Of course one can have personal integrity himself. But then to work for a corporation is definitely a breach of personal integrity, because that means you’re recognizing an entity that’s fictitious! Anyway, so we’re not going to talk about integrity in the context of business and we’re not going to talk about it in the context of religion either.
Because religion is also a fabrication. You might say well you’re a monkey or in the ‘buddhist’ religion, but actually there is no such thing as ‘buddhism’. As another ‘buddhist’ monk, Buddhadāsa Bhikkhu has kindly pointed out, that religions are also fabrications. They are also abstractions; they also have no real physical existence. They’re just information, they’re just software. So what to speak of talking about corporate context, it’s meaningless to talk about integrity in a religious context as well.
What is meaningful, however, is to talk about a man of integrity, a person of integrity; and Buddha used the word sappurisā. Sappurisā is a combination of sat and purisā. Sat means truthful or actually, eternally existing, and eternal is real being. A temporary being is only fabricated, phony being; but eternal being is real being. So that kind of man, purisā, who is eternal who has eternal values, eternal verities and truths, is known as a sappurisā.
Sappurisā is a man of integrity. So we’re talking here about how to transform your being into that of a sappurisā, a man of integrity. Because integrity is not something you have—that would make it a virtue. And that would make it disposable, dispensable or changeable. But we’re talking about a type of integrity that is so deep that it’s integrated with your very being: integral integrity, wholeness; sappurisā, eternal truths.
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This video lesson is about how to learn skillfully: the science of study.
If you duplicate and apply these methods in your study of Skillful Living, you will get much more out of the materials.
Most schooling deliberately teaches you the wrong way to learn. First, you should not approach a subject because someone else is making you study it you should approach it because you want to learn it and put it into practical use in your life in other words you should learn to acquire skills.
The first necessary skill in the art of Skillful Living is how to learn skillfully.
Presentation Design
The presentation design in an informational course is intended to leave you informed. The presentation design in this course is intended to open up a new world of experience for you: the experience of Skillful Living and specifically, the skill of being able to teach yourself any skill you desire. We use a simple form of presentation to accomplish this.
We have developed precise language for the materials that experience and testing show we must make available to deliver our promise to you. Quite a bit of thought and testing has gone into the language: the semantics or the way things are stated.
On most of the slides, we will read the slide aloud while you read those same words silently to yourself. Please read the slides to yourself at the same time you are listening to them being read. From time to time, we will pause to comment on what has been read, demonstrate a technique, or have a discussion with you.
At any time, if you do not understand a word that is used or the meaning of what is read is not clear for you, please stop the video and look up the term in a good dictionary. If you have a comment or question about what has been read, please post it in the comments.
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There are four stages of becoming genius any field: duplication, understanding, ontological analysis and metacognition.
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Authentic learning, not imitative but real genius, requires changing your being. This tells you how. Based one the Buddha's teaching of paṭicca-samuppāda, dependent origination.
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How the different states of consciousness are localized in the chakras.
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Namaste
So we’re going to talk about consciousness again. And remember the last time we talked about consciousness, we talked about it in terms of the light—the quality and kind of light that we see in the different states of consciousness.
So just to review very quickly, let’s go over that again. There are four states of consciousness: jagrat, where we see the world; svapna, in dreams; suśupti, deep sleep or the void; and turīya or the Self. In jagrat consciousness, the light is reflective, and it reflects off of external objects. In svapna, the light is internal, and the objects are self-luminous. In suśupti the light is covered. It looks like the Void: there’s no light, no objects, no nothing. And in turīya, there is only light—the light of the Self or Brahman.
Now let’s take another look at these same four states of consciousness that everyone experiences all the time. I want to emphasize that the four states of consciousness go on concurrently; but our focus changes. So just like, for example when we’re asleep, we’re in svapna or even suśupti. Still, a loud noise can wake us up, which means there’s still some awareness of jagrat.
And of course behind all of them there’s always turīya. Let’s take a look. Turīya is the Self. That’s the positive state of consciousness, where Self is the only object, meaning there’s nonduality. So this is the Truth; this is Self-realization, this is enlightenment. And turīya is always there; we’re always in turīya! But most of us don’t realize it because we’re focused on the other states of consciousness. So what are they again?
Suśupti, the Void: in this state the object is darkness, emptiness or nothingness. And this is actually a state of ignorance. It covers over the pure consciousness in turīya, and also embodies the three types of ignorance: positive desire, negative desire and delusion. And the delusion is, of course, that we are a separate individual being. And that we can desire things, both positively and negatively. Negative desire means, “I don’t want that”; positive desire means, “I want that.”
So because of this ignorance, the pure light of turīya becomes covered. And then once that’s covered, dreams can arise in svapna. In this, the object is internal, self-luminous thoughts. Dreams, in other words. So in this state of consciousness we perceive dreams and thoughts also. So thoughts are actually dreams, but when we’re focused on svapna they appear real, they appear solid.
Finally there’s the state of jagrat where we perceive the world through the senses. And in this state the objects are external, individual objects and ego, the illusion of “I”. The ego is not present in the other states; we simply experience, in dreams for example, bits of karma that are too small really to be experienced in jagrat. But they seem real, even though we have no ego in that state. But we sure do in jagrat; in fact the ego is the dominant perception in that state. How many sentences do we begin with “I”? “I want this,” “I don’t want that,” “I do this,” “This is mine.” It’s all illusion, because it’s temporary.
Anyway let’s take a different look at these four states of consciousness. Let’s take a look at how it appears to our experience. Up till now we’ve been looking at them analytically; but let’s look at them experientially, how they actually appear to us.
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Namaste
So this is a little video about something I noticed the other day in meditation. And that is, the different qualities of light in the four states of consciousness. So check this out.
OK, you know there are four states of consciousness: jagrat, where we’re conscious of the world; svapna, dream consciousness; suśupti, deep sleep or the void; and turīya, which is the Self, the transcendental consciousness.
Now as far as jagrat, the light in jagrat is external, and it illuminates reflective objects; and then we perceive those objects by the reflected light. At least the light is apparently external from the point of view of the body. But in svapna, dream consciousness, the light is internal, and the objects in that consciousness are self-luminous. We perceive those objects without any external light source. And if you think back on your dreams or your daydreams, you’ll see that all those objects are self-luminous.
Now suśupti is the void—in other words there’s no light, and no objects, even if there was light. So you just see nothing: zero, blank. But in turīya—turīya being the Self, is only light. Light is the subject and light is the object. And this means one sees the Self as a nondual object of consciousness.
Now this is extremely amazing. This allows you to distinguish which level of consciousness you’re in during meditation. So just like in jagrat, worldly consciousness, the light appears to be coming from outside, externally. But that whole state of consciousness is enfolded within dream consciousness, svapna. And then we see that the objects that we experience in so-called waking consciousness, are really just projected objects of our dreams. And we have really no separate reality in the so-called world.
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Namaste
So the last few days I haven’t posted anything because I’ve really been trying to wrap my head around the enormity of the insight that I’ve been presenting in the last few videos, like this one and this one. [pointing to onscreen links]
And basically what it is, is first of all, the understanding that if the conditioned states of consciousness—that is jagrat, svapna and suśupti—are filters, that means they are the mechanism of the upādhis. Remember, we talked about upādhis some time ago. So upādhis are the things that limit Brahman so that it appears as an individual: a person covered by ignorance, subject to karma, and as an individual separate from the whole of creation. And isn’t this actually the root of all suffering? The fact that we’re an individual; we’re answerable for our actions but our actions are largely determined by factors external to ourselves. This is the human condition, the existential condition, and we discussed this a long time ago, at the very beginning of the channel, in this series on the existential dilemma.
So this is everyone’s experience: how does it come to be that the unlimited, infinite, totally blissful Brahman becomes covered over and is subject to suffering and karma, and it happens to be responsible for its actions no matter what the actual cause is? How is this possible? Well, it’s upādhis. And as we discussed last time, the three conditioned states of consciousness act as filters to reduce the original consciousness of turīya into the conditioned consciousness of waking, dreaming and deep sleep.
This is a huge insight, and when you start working out the consequences of it— you know, what it actually means to be an individual in that condition… Well, it just about explains everything, you know everything about our experience as human beings in this world; and why at the same time we can go inside through meditation and realize Brahman.
So this is a wonderful insight, a wonderful breakthrough. Oh but there’s more! See, Goddess has been showing me these things, slowly slowly opening up my consciousness to these insights. And they’re radical, they’re completely amazing. But once you hear them, it’s like, [snaps fingers] “Oh yeah, of course, obviously.”
So the insight that’s blowing my mind today, is the correlation between the four states of consciousness and Buddha’s teaching of paṭicca-samuppāda. Dependent Arising is the core structure of the Buddha’s teaching.
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Learning, training and education are probably the most important factors that determine success and happiness in life. Whether it’s ordinary education—reading, writing, arithmetic and all of that—or highly advanced training in some science or engineering discipline, or training in enlightenment and Self-realization, the ordinary educational system has let us down.
It doesn’t teach skills, it only teaches how to give right answers on tests. So you wind up graduating from school, only knowing how to get through school. And then you hit the real world, it’s another story. What is needed to rise above the current crisis in education, in leadership, in trust, and in self-realization, is a new kind of education—not ordinary schooling, but experiential learning that teaches real skills.
We cannot master a subject without doing it; and we cannot do the subject without being it. That’s where our Western philosophy has let us down. Descartes’ idea of ‘I think, therefore I am’ is completely backwards. The Cartesian split between the mind and the body, between knowledge and action, is completely wrong. Why? Because real learning starts from being. We went over this in the previous videos in the Foundation Series, and we’re going to go into it much deeper in this series of Becoming Genius.
Because no one is born a genius—or you might say, everyone is born a potential genius—why do some people realize it and others don’t? It’s simply because they are not becoming a genius. Of becoming a genius, I’m not going to say it’s easy. You have to know how. But once you know how, it’s simply a matter of the methodical application of certain principles, and we’re going to go into those principles deeply in this series.
If one wants to become a doctor, you have to enroll in medical school; you have to go through a lot of book-learning; and then you have to go through a lot of practical learning. Finally, you have to be approved, evaluated and stamped a doctor by a panel of judges. All of whom are practicing physicians themselves.
The same is true of enlightenment. You can study about enlightenment from books or websites, but unless you actually practice and become an enlightened person, you will not attain what you’re looking for.
This series of videos is how to become a genius in any field that you choose. Of course, we would rather that you become a genius in Skillful Living and realize the teaching of the Buddha, because that will give you the greatest benefit. So, what is Skillful Living and what is becoming a genius? Well, let’s talk about it some more...
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So, we have been posting on this channel for now eight or nine years, and still our basic assumption, or basic fact, or basic principle has not been well understood by the audience. I don’t know if it’s my fault, because i’m not presenting it properly; or I don’t know, maybe the fault lies on the other side, that people aren’t investigating it, and researching it and practicing it. Because if they did, they would immediately find out the Truth.
What is that Truth? Consciousness is the Absolute. I should make a slight change to that: unconditioned awareness is the Absolute. This is the Absolute Truth, the summum bonum, the ultimate conclusion of all philosophical, religious and meditative disciplines.
Why do we assert this? Well, because it’s observationally verifiable in real time; and it’s true.
Consciousness is the absolute. Everything is experienced and measured relative to consciousness. There’s no getting around this; this is the way it is, for everybody. Now you know dharma; Dharmasār means the Essence of Dharma; and dharma means what is, the way it is, and why it is the way it is, So what is, is that consciousness is the Absolute. The way it is, is that it appears in four flavors—jagrat or consciousness of the world, svapna or consciousness of dreams, suśupti or consciousness of the void, and turīya or unconditioned consciousness.
Now in Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, he states that “Every motion is relative.” In other words, it’s only measurable in comparison with an observer, who is assumed to be at rest. Einstein’s very tricky; he snuck the idea of consciousness into his theory—which of course was subsequently proven to be absolutely correct—and he snuck the idea of consciousness into the observer.
Now if you ask a scientist what is the observer, he usually talks about some kind of measuring instrument. But the measuring instrument in a lab is only a proxy for consciousness, because unless a being, a conscious being, reads the output of the measurement, it’s meaningless. It has no context. Just to say that ’This machine put out a reading of such-and-such during an experiment’ is meaningless—unless you already have a theory, an ontology, a terministic screen describing the context of the experiment.
So Einstein is very tricky; he was a student of the wisdom of the East, Bhagavad-gītā, and many other esoteric books. And he knew very very well that consciousness is the Absolute. So he snuck it into his theory in calling it the “observer”.
But actually without consciousness, the idea of the observer is meaningless. And note that the observer is assumed to be at rest, and the motion of the observed is relative to the observer.
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Now we’re back with Part Three of what we’re going to call the Foundation Series, because this explains being and becoming, which is at the root of all of our work with Skillful Living. Being and becoming is the key, the mechanism, the works under the hood, that makes everything work. So if you haven’t watched the first two videos—what is Skillful Living, and Being & Becoming—then stop this video right now, click on the links and go back to those first two videos, then watch this one. OK?
So now we’re going to continue with the process of becoming. Let’s just review: Becoming is the process of changing your being. Everybody is being something or other. We’re being at a certain quality of being. Changing our being means, in our case of Skillful Living, we want to improve the quality of our being.
Well, how do we measure that? It’s improved in terms of your quality of life, and your abilities. So if you have increased abilities, if you have increased quality of life, that means you’ve improved your being.
To change your being you have to stop being what you are now, and start to be something better than that. And how do we do that? Well, the dictionary defines becoming as “begin to be, grow to be, turn into.” That’s applicable to both personal and impersonal things, but of a person specifically, “to qualify, or be accepted as, or acquire the status of.”
The example they give is “She wanted to become a doctor.” Well, I wouldn’t recommend to anybody that they become a doctor. If you want to use this technology to become a doctor, you could do it; or a musician or a pilot or any of the other examples that we use—you could certainly take this technology and turn it into that.
But specifically we want to become leaders: spiritual leaders, thought leaders. Not the kind of a leader that depends on a title or a position in some organization. No, because all the organizations we have right now are based on a false principle called hierarchy.
Hierarchy means that one person is viewed as better than, or intrinsically more valuable than, another type of person. And that’s just not true! We all
have the capability or the promise of being something great and wonderful. And the Buddha didn’t recognize any of these organizational titles or statuses; he accepted a person as they are, and he gave them the ability to become something more.
Let’s see how the Buddha defines becoming: “Kamma is the field, consciousness the seed, craving the moisture. The consciousness of living beings is tuned to a refined property, thus there is the production of renewed becoming in the future. This is how there is becoming.” — Bhava Sutta, AN 3.76
In other words, the dictionary tells us what becoming is, but the Buddha gives us how to become, and what he says is, that we tune our consciousness to a refined property which is in the future.
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Being and becoming. Being and becoming are such fundamental concepts that we often take them for granted. But actually, they’re deep subjects to which we can devote an enormous amount of study and development work.
After all, without being we wouldn’t exist. How could we do anything or have anything? First, we have to be. Descartes had it backwards: “Because I am, I think.” Because I exist, I can do. And because I do, then I can have things.
So being is fundamental. And when we want to change our being, then we’re talking about becoming. So, becoming is how we change our being.
For example, if we want to learn. Let’s say we want to learn to be a musician, or we want to become a pilot. There’s two ways to approach this: through peripheral methods and through essential methods.
Peripheral methods study the externals of a subject or state of being. For example, if we want to study leadership, we’ll read books by great leaders and about great leaders, and we’ll discuss examples of what they did in this situation, in that situation; and then we’ll try to emulate or imitate them.
But wait a minute. That’s imitation. That’s not authentic.
Authentic leadership comes from the essence of being a leader. And if we’re not being a leader now, how do we become a leader? If we’re not being a great musician now, how do we become a great musician or whatever it is we want to be?
Fortunately, the Buddha’s teaching has a great deal of information on being and becoming. And that’s what this video is all about.
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The teaching of the Buddha is the basis of one of the world’s great enduring civilizations. It’s also the basis of many different religions. But that’s not all it is. Westerners are finding now the value of mindfulness taught by the Buddha in all kinds of situations in life.
But the Buddha’s teaching is very deep. The Buddha himself admitted: “My teaching is profound, hard to see, hard to understand.” Only someone
who experiences it for himself can really understand. And why is this? Because the Buddha’s teaching is the equivalent of modern science; but instead of exploring the external world, his teaching explores within.
Along with mindfulness, the Buddha emphasized skillfulness: that a skillful person can learn or teach himself anything, any skill. Western science has
developed the technology of dealing with the outside world to a high degree; but Buddha’s teaching develops the technology of the inner world to a degree beyond any other field of knowledge. This can only be experienced for oneself.
Skillful Living Network (an early name for Dharmasār, the Essence of Dharma) explores the Buddha’s teachings on skillfulness and how we can become expert at living.
Skillful Living Network is designed to help you acquire the greatest skill in life: the skill of skillfulness itself. All of our programs are either foundational knowledge or examples of that knowledge in practice.
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