Author: Tom Das

Ramana Maharshi: a blemish to complete surrender

~ Tom Das ~ Leave a comment

Ramana smiling

Ramana Maharshi:

Know well that even performing tapas (spiritual practice) and yoga with the intention ‘I should become an instrument in the hands of the Lord Siva’ is a blemish to complete self-surrender, which is the highest form of being in His service.
(Guru Vachaka Kovai, verse 471)

Sri Sadhu Om’s Comments:

Since even the thought ‘I am an instrument in the Lord’s hand’ is a means by which the ego retains its individuality, it is directly opposed to the spirit of complete self-surrender, the ‘I’-lessness. Are there not many good-natured people who engage themselves in prayers, worship, yoga and such virtuous acts with the aim of achieving power from God and doing good to the world as one divinely commissioned? It is exposed here that even such endeavours are egotistical and hence contrary to self-surrender.

Q. Does the ego really disappear with Self-Realisation?

~ Tom Das ~ 3 Comments

Usually in eastern traditions the word ego is a translation of the Sanskrit word Ahamkara*, which refers solely to the (false) belief in doership and not the personality or decision-making apparatus in the mind.

It is the belief in doership that goes with enlightenment or self-realisation, not the personality or decision-making apparatus.

Hence it is perfectly right to say the ego is no longer present in one who has realised.

(*Aham = I, kara = do)

Is enlightenment an experiential or energetic shift?

~ Tom Das ~ 9 Comments

hills and pool

Often enlightenment is taught as being some kind of experiential shift. But is this true? This post will attempt to explain and illustrate how it all works. So is enlightenment an experiential shift? Yes and no. The essential factor that changes occurs in the mind. Fundamentally the experience doesn’t change. What changes is the way experience is understood. Understanding is the key.

Let me illustrate this with an example:

eg. If you realise that Father Christmas doesn’t exist, and that he never existed, it will dramatically change the way you experience Christmas: the days before Christmas will feel different, it will feel different going to bed on Christmas eve, and it will be a different experience seeing your presents in the morning under the Christmas tree.

Now, is this an experiential shift?

Well it may seem that way, but actually what has happened is that a belief/thought that was once taken to be true is now seen to be false, and that understanding in turn has changed the way we experience the same set of events.

I italicise ‘same set of events’, as the raw sensory experience of life remains unchanged both before and after enlightenment. All that changes is understanding, and that change is at the level of the mind/thought. Understanding is the key.

To put it more simply perhaps, the experiential shift, if it occurs at all (it may not), is a symptom of right understanding, which is the essential underlying cause.

How this affects teaching enlightenment

Now, if a teacher who is genuinely enlightened does not understand what has happened to them, then they may teach that enlightenment is some kind of experiential shift. Because that’s how it can feel. This may happen if if they have not come to this realisation through a teaching such as Buddhism or Vedanta, both of which explicitly emphasise understanding on the level of the mind as being central, or if the teacher has not sufficiently analysed their experience well enough in order to teach it effectively. When the latter happens, the results is often a very vague teaching which is imprecise and difficult to understand. This reduces the effectiveness of the teaching.

This brings me to another point: just because someone is enlightened, doesn’t mean they can teach effectively. A comparable example is just because you can speak English, doesn’t mean you understand the grammar, syntax and other rules and techniques that are often very useful in teaching someone else English. This understanding of grammar, for example, greatly increases the efficiency of the teaching.

The same goes for enlightenment, the end of suffering: there are many beautiful techniques and lovely teachings that mean that the teaching works much more effectively at sharing this wonderful Understanding.

Dare to question, and more…

~ Tom Das ~ Leave a comment

Here are some recent quotes from my Facebook page:

 

It should be obvious that something is not necessarily true just because it is written in a sacred text or spoken by some great authority/teacher.

History and experience shows us that even highly intelligent people capable of great logical thinking can often have bizarre irrational beliefs

There is never a feeling of doership. What is called the feeling/sense of doership is just a cluster of sensations that is interpreted by the mind/thought as indicative of doership.

The concept of non-doership roots out the concept of doership. Then both concepts are let go of and neither concept exclusively operates in the mind.

Most seekers I work with are consciously or unconsciously seeking a subtle object and think lasting fulfillment will come through that. ie. They are seeking enlightenment as an experience. Much of my teaching is simply dispelling that notion in such a way that the seeker clearly sees.

Another way of putting it is that the feeling of doership can continue but that doesn’t mean you are a doer.

Oneness is also a story…a nice story, but a story nonetheless

What is, is. Accept it and move on. This doesn’t mean that you just passively accept things such as injustice…

Do you get what I’m saying?

There is no doer here, there never was one 😮

I don’t buy the whole ‘there is no time’ thing. When you look at it, time is just a way of describing movement.

The key is to see through the separate doer.

(Can you find a separate doer-entity? Where is this autonomous entity that supposedly authors thoughts and actions?)

When that is seen, what more can be done?

This is the whole purpose of atma vichara (self-inquiry)

The whole world is your guru, each and every experience, constantly emanating pure-teaching-essence beyond words.

Just be open and listen

Yes, that’s one of the reasons a genuine living teacher can be so useful – to indicate the total normality of this. Ramana himself said this many times…
Q: How can I attain Self-realisation?
Ramana Maharshi: Realisation is nothing to be gained afresh; it is already there. All that is necessary is to get rid of the thought ‘I have not realised’.

Silence of the mind (relative silence) allows us to notice the Silence that is ever-present, the Silence that is beyond both noise and (relative) silence.

It is the Silence of our very being, the Silence of where we are looking from.

There seem to be a lot of people on Facebook saying silence is the best way and that silence is the highest form of teaching

Ramana’s lineage? Ramana had no lineage. Ramana never gave authority for other’s to teach in his name, not even his closest disciples. Many teachers have been deeply affected by his teachings, myself included, but this is quite different to saying you are in Ramana’s lineage.

Debate, critical thinking and constructive criticism are important parts of spirituality and are to be encouraged. Who’s with me on this?

To say there is no one here is like saying there are no waves on the ocean. There is no separate self, just as there are no separate waves, but I am here, just as (I assume) you are.

The concept of a wave is a fiction, but also points to something true: the phenomenon of a wave.

Q: It’s all about ONENESS
Tom: For me that’s another belief. It can be a useful teaching, until it’s not.

Freedom, beyond all concepts and all stories, embracing all concepts and all stories.

How can we know something has no limitations?

Being ‘okay with that’ is freedom

If you think you are definitely not the body or that the world is definitely an illusion, you have probably stumbled into the world of beliefs.

This much I know: it happened the way it happened. All else is speculation (not that there is anything wrong with speculation).

The desire to improve can be very healthy

We think we chose to read or hear the teachings and apply them. When we understand the teachings more fully, we realised that the teachings came to us, they were a gift to us, that they chose us, and they work their magic on us.

Most do not go far enough and remain caught up in words, beliefs, teachings and spiritual-sounding slogans

Inquiry is only needed to remove ignorance (belief in the doer). When ignorance is seen to be non-existent, where is the need of inquiry?

Know your limits. Be honest. Be humble. Do not cling to beliefs. Admit and know what you don’t know.

Perhaps freedom itself is not conditional, but the realisation of the unconditional freedom is conditional.

What in ignorance is taken to be the subject,
in Understanding is seen to be an object.

 

No need to surrender.
Just ‘what is’.

The mind, no doer and action

~ Tom Das ~ Leave a comment

no-thinker

The key way the teaching works is upon the mind by removing the belief in the notion of doership. This belief is the key source of suffering, and when this belief is seen through then the suffering which is dependent on it dissolves away.

Often there is a process by which the habitual tendencies that cause suffering gradually fall away over time as the understanding of ‘no-doer’ infiltrates and has its effect on the mind’s conditioning.

Note that the notion of a doer is a false belief – there is no evidence for a doer being present, just as there is no evidence for a volcano god that erupts volcanos or a sea god that ravages the seas. The lack of belief in a doer does not mean there is no action, just as lack of belief in the above mentioned gods does not render the volcano or seas impotent.

Action and movement continues as they have always done. They happen seemingly by themselves, spontaneously you could say. Live goes on, and it feels much the same, the whole range of feelings and emotions continue, just without the suffering.

 

Pointing out mistakes

~ Tom Das ~ Leave a comment

The following is an excerpt from: Who cares about Freedom?

We can go a little further too: we can also point out mistakes in our thinking. If we think Father Christmas is real, we can notice and point out there is no conclusive evidence to support that, despite appearances to the contrary (eg. presents appearing beneath the tree on Christmas Day). Any happiness or pleasure we derive from believing in Father Christmas is similarly based on our wrong notions/illusion.

Similarly, if someone takes themselves to be a doer, an entity that is free to choose and take credit and blame for its actions, then we can point out that there is no evidence to support this position, despite appearance to the contrary. All suffering that results from belief in doership is similarly based on illusion.