Jack: I have taken your advice and curtailed communications with Clarissa and have not decided yet whether to attend Trout Lake.
Some story….
Sundari: I think you are wise to do so, at least for now.
Jack: The Vedanta is a wonderful teaching and has given me labels (objects, if you will) and clear definitions of forces in my life that I’ve recognized but had no way to contextualize.
Sundari: Vedanta will definitely clarify the forces that are at work in your life churning out your karma. But it is not meant to supply you with a new labelling system for objects; it is meant to destroy the identification with them from the perspective of the jiva, or ego identity. It is not just ‘ awonderful teaching”. If you understand what Vedanta is, you will know that it is the only teaching. It is the end of the road, the last court of appeal when you have exhausted all other possibilities to make life in the world not only understandable but work for you. It ends the quest for knowledge and will remove your ignorance, assuming qualifications and proper teaching. It is like finding the Holy Grail.
Jack: Until Clarissa came back into my life, I had no issues/problems with my existence as Karma Yoga is in the forefront of my relationship to the world. When she appeared, I learned things about myself that I wanted to change, specifically what love is. She has acknowledged that some part of her still seeks something from me after 50 years. We discussed it and thought of it as “imprinting” like a duck gets attached, as its mother, to the first thing it sees move. Then in my studies I learned of samanya dharma, swardharma and visesa dharma which gave an explanation for it as Isvara’s will realizing, of course, that my rudimentary knowledge of these ancient principles is hardly sufficient enough to call “knowledge”. This obviously ignited my desires, justified by our “imprinting” being caused by Isavara’s will.
Sundari: Karma yoga really works if applied properly, and for many people, it is enough. It will keep the sting in our main life issues at bay, and so ‘Alka seltzer’ is a good term for it. For this reason, we also call it ‘burn out’ insurance because it removes the pressure and anxiety of doership. But it is a tool to deal with the transactional reality. Ultimately, it alone will not resolve our deeper psychological issues, of which loving and being loved by an object is one of the biggest. The duck imprinting is a good analogy for how our binding vasanas or tendencies are formed from birth onwards. They are ‘caused’ by Isvara, in that our jiva program is something we are born with and develop as a result of our life karma.
The subject of karma and dharma is complex, and of course, karma yoga helps there too because it requires surrender to Isvara, or your life karma really. But understanding how karma plays out is not easy. As it says in the Bhagavad Gita, ‘on the subject of karma, even the Sages are perplexed!” It certainly helps to understand the three levels of dharma though, as you mention here. Particularly useful is visesa dharma, which is how Universal or Samanya dharma works on a personal level, according to our svadharma. Though Universal Dharma is unchanging and constant, because karma is different for everyone, how UD is applied to our lives is not black and white. What is appropriate for one is not necessarily so for another.
Jack: Through Vedanta I learned of the gunas, vasanas, the three bodies, the five sheaths, etc. But, more importantly, I learned of my desires for another – my intimacy vasana or desire to be known. This only shows up when in relation to another.
Sundari: Relationships are what life is about, we cannot escape them, and it is the greatest duality of all, especially love/sexual/initimate relationships. For this reason, to make progress beyond just learning life coping skills with karma yoga and dharma yoga, to deal with our psychological issues, we need jnana knowledge, the guna teaching and knowledge of Isvara. This is where the rubber really hits the road, as Ramji likes to say. It is where all the teaching of Vedanta takes place. And, eventually, it is what we must move beyond too. Vedanta is a valid means of knowledge to remove ignorance of our true nature as the Self, but it is just a tool. The point is to assimilate the teachings and to live them spontaneously, not parrot them.
Jack: It’s ironic that the goal of Vedanta is complete non-dual awareness when, in fact, the very duality of our existence (me/you, up/down, in/out, past/future) is the very bedrock on which we are to measure our progress in the teachings of Vedanta.
Sundari: Most inquirers start off from the point of duality because that is our experience as a body/mind. Nondual thinking is very subtle, and highly counterintuitive to a mind under the spell of Maya. Vedanta provisionally accepts duality and then takes you step by step through a rigorous methodology, which if qualifications are present, you are dedicated and properly taught, it will destroy the notion, or the hypnosis, of duality.
Jack: I know, I’m a “doer” and that may never change. But until the Vedanta is firmly embedded in our active minds, I think we are all doers. Is that not Alka-seltzer yoga? We practice it as needed when we see our thoughts/actions out of alignment with the teachings.
Sundari: We will all be ‘doers’ as long as breath still moves through these bodies. Doing is not the problem. The duality comes in with the identification with the doer, the one with needs and expectations who wants what it wants when it wants it. Even karma yoga can be a problem when the doer is doing karma yoga. That said, karma yoga is a skill to be learned until it becomes second nature, because it is the only intelligent way to live. It should be obvious to everyone but isn’t that nobody is in charge of results.
Jack: There’s the duality again – how can we know who we are without the world of mirrors reflecting back who we are (God’s play toy)?
Sundari: It depends who is asking this question. If you are identified with your conceptual identity then you will look to the world for validation and confirmation, which is where most of our suffering comes from. If nonduality starts to assimilate, you see that the knower and the known are non-separate but not the same. In a mirror objects are reflected because a mirror reflects light, so it is the source of the light in the metaphor. The question to ask is this: how far are objects from the mirror? Do they pop out, stand apart? No. The reflection in the mirror and the mirror are non-different.
Everything reflects light, but a mirror reflects light clearly, as it is. Thus, the clearer, more sattvic the mind (reflective surface) the more distinct are the objects in it. Even though all objects arise in Awareness, it is not as easy to see some objects as Awareness because they are obscured by tamas (ignorance). The point is, if the mirror (mind or reflective surface) is clear, the Self as the object reflected in the mirror can be clearly known as an object of knowledge/experience. In nondual reality, experience and knowledge are the same. There is no obscuration in a clear mirror.
Jack: My sattvic mind is powered by my rajas and I like that. Clarissa’s sattva is couched in tamas as one of her pat responses to a pointed inquiry is “I don’t know”. That’s fine. But it’s obvious to me now that her Vedanta practice is one of safety from the world and my rigorous inquiries take her out of her comfort. I use the metaphor that she stands on the doorstep of her ashram looking out into the world and when the world becomes something that challenges her, she retreats into her ashram. It’s good that she has become so adept at applying the Vedanta to her life. It’s just not something she wishes to engage me with as she is in a relationship with a man that is not a seeker and doesn’t present her with any sort of sattvic engagement.
Sundari: Sattva is not personal, it is the nature or the mind when rajas and tamas are not obscuring it. All minds are run by all three gunas all the time, and they are always changing. But it is true that we also all have a dominant guna profile that will influence the way we interact with the world. A predominantly rajasic mind tends to be more beset by strong desires, as yours is. Rajas is epitomized by desire/fear, and it tends to be a more questing mind. Though excess rajas projects, fragments, and burns out the extroverted mind, a predominantly tamasic, dull, mind is not more inward looking. It tends to avoid confrontation, to take the easy route, to obfuscate. It’s a lazy mind. Many dedicated inquirers think they are applying Vedanta to their lives but actually they are using it to avoid dealing with their issues, which could be the case with Clarissa.
Jack: I’m on my second reading of “How To Attain Enlightenment”, reading “The Essence of Enlightenment” and have read The Upanishads and your “Yoga of Relationships” as well as watching James talks on non-dual relationships. I’m puzzled however by what desires of another are still present in a non-dual relationship. When I see James reach out to take your hand, what is the desire there? How can these little expressions of intimacy exist in non-dual relationships? What is the language and/or expressions of love of another in a ND relationship? Do they come without expectation? Perhaps not in the form of any words/actions from the other but, at least, some expectation of the feeling of love that generated the expression.
Sundari: As the Self, Love is my nature, and any object of love is known to be me. There is no problem with desire if it is not contrary to dharma, meaning, I know it is me. There is no contradiction in this when I am free of identification with a personal identity. As the Self I am free to desire and demonstrate my love in any way that is appropriate. I can even be attached to my love object because I know I am only ever attached to me, the Self. This is how it works when duality is known to be only apparently real; all apparently real objects ‘become’ real because there is only me. But I do not depend on the objects for anything because I lack nothing. They can be truly enjoyed for the first time because I cannot be augmented or diminished by their presence or absence. Fear plays no part in my life and my loving.
But for this to be genuine nondual love and not a dualistic Advaita shuffle version of it, assimilation of Self-knowledge must take place. It is easier said than done. Many inquirers your age and older have never figured out the love issue because it is one of the most subtle.
Jack: Clarissa introduced me to the Gayatri Mantra and it has become a regular practice as it works to center me in my heart. From there I’m not so victimized by my “monkey-mind” as it gives me a space between the thoughts that I can use to examine them for trouble. Sometimes the space is more apparent than at other times. But I persist.
Sundari: Chanting, especially identity mantras, is like accessing a shortcut to mind management and calming the monkey mind. Vedanta encourages identity mantras because though there is a feel good aspect as they instantly calm the mind, there is also knowledge there. Just chanting any mantra on its own feels good and is useful but the effects only last as long as the chanting does. It’s like any other yoga, meditation for instance. There is a chanter and meditator that needs to be dropped. But if the mantra imparts knowledge that stays if it is Self-referenced.
Jack: I’m disappointed that there is not another Vedanta seeker in the Portland area that I can commune with. I’m not looking for a teacher though, I suppose, we are all that in some form to each other. Rather, I would like to have a friend engaged (preferably male) in Vedanta to measure my development of the practice.
Sundari: Sundari: I am making some enquiries for you about a Vedanta buddy in Portland and will keep you posted.
Jack: And so, without a foil against which to apply the teachings, I will probably retreat into my peaceful existence until such time as another teacher shows up.
Allowing for the inevitability of change in me, by what date would like me to let you know if I will attend Trout Lake?
Sundari: Teachers have already showed up, but I know what you mean. Isvara will send a Vedanta buddy, no worries. There is no need to let me know if you do or do not decide to attend TL. It is entirely up to you and there are no restrictions to the numbers.
Much love
Sundari
