Discarding knowledge as ignorance

February 27, 2017March 22, 2018 ~ Tom Das ~ 5 Comments

This post is continued from my previous post: Practicing knowledge

Discarding knowledge as ignorance

Once the purpose of the tool has been fulfilled, then the tool can be dispensed with. There are two main problems with this. Firstly, you can dispense with the tool too quickly, before it has done its work of rooting out ignorance. Secondly, you can cling onto the tool for too long, which essentially means that you have started to believe in it.

I see both of these errors happening all the time. People often dismiss the need for practice completely. While there are different paths to follow (including no-path ‘paths’), that does not mean that for some a path or teaching cannot be of benefit. All teachings are provisional which means that they produce limited results. This is true of all teachings and all actions/practices – they are all limited and produce limited results. But these limited results can still be of use to us in recognising what is already (and always was) present , ie. Freedom.

Other people believe the conceptual tool. They have merely substituted one concept for another, one ignorance for another.

Hence the traditional advice is to liken these conceptual tools as being thorns, to remind you not to hold onto the second thorn, useful as it was:

Then, like the thorn used to remove a thorn, throw them both away.

See Ranjit Maharaj discuss this here.

This post is continued in the next article: Integrating knowledge/spontaneous action

Practicing knowledge

February 26, 2017March 12, 2017 ~ Tom Das ~ 4 Comments

This is continued from a previous post Problems with utilising conceptual tools:

Practicing knowledge

This brings us to the idea of practicing knowledge. Just to be clear, the knowledge we are talking of here is in the form of concepts, as described previously above. In this case whenever we notice ourselves suffering, we notice it is because we have identified as being the doer/body-mind. We then take up the sword of knowledge ‘I am not the body’ and use it to slay the ignorance ‘I am the body’.

Other similar ideas are concepts of identifying as being the witness or identifying as consciousness or considering the world and body-mind to be an illusion. These concepts all which work in a similar way to negate the identification as the doer/body-mind. Here’s an example from Yoga Vasisthta:

You are bound firmly on all sides by the idea, I am the body’. Cut that bond by the sword of knowledge ‘I am Consciousness’ and be happy.
Yoga Vasisthta

Whenever ignorance rises, we cut it down. When it doesn’t rise, we can leave it alone. Initially we may have to repeat the phrase ‘I am not the body’ or ‘I am Consciousness’ or ‘I am Brahman’ in our heads repeatedly, like a mantra, until it sinks in, but after sometime it is ingrained into us and we only unsheathe the sword when it is required.

To be continued in a future post: Discarding knowledge as ignorance

Problems with utilising conceptual tools

February 25, 2017March 12, 2017 ~ Tom Das ~ 3 Comments

Continued from 2 previous posts:

Problems with utilising conceptual tools

Generally speaking, the more you believe in the concept, the better it works, but conversely the harder it is to throw it away once the task at hand (rooting out the ego/’I am the body’ notion) has been completed.

Other problems with believing in the concepts is that it sets you against other traditions and teachings that either utilise other concepts, thus breeding division and sectarianism, and also it can lead to some unintended consequences, some of which can be quite unpleasant.

These include spiritual bypassing, which is where emotional and psychological issues are not dealt with properly as ‘I am not the body-mind so I have no issues’ or where the body is neglected and not properly respected as it is deemed to be ‘insentient, inert and not me’.

Another problem with utilising concepts is that the ego is perpetuated and can even be strengthened during this part of the teaching. Eventually it can be seen that all teachings are also subtle ways of continuing/perpetuating the egoic process which is itself based on the illusion of being a separate doer-entity. Until then, these conceptual teachings and practices based upon these concepts may be useful, but eventually we see that all teachings are potential obstacles. Why? Because Freedom is already fully present, and on a subtle level all teachings assume that Freedom is not already here and reinforce the notion that this moment is deficient in some way.

You can probably think of other negatives of this approach yourself, and perhaps have seen spiritual seekers on this journey fall into one of these traps.

To be continued in a future post: Practicing knowledge

Integrating the understanding of no-doer

February 24, 2017February 25, 2017 ~ Tom Das ~ 5 Comments

This post follows on from my previous post: Why seeing/understanding alone may not be enough

This understanding of no doer may initially take time to become embedded, and you may have to ‘practice’ it to start with. It’s just like many other forms of knowledge:

Take the example of a child learning his (or her) name. At first he doesn’t know his name. Upon his parents repeating his name to him multiple times, he finally starts to realise that his name is ‘Tom’. Maybe at first he forgets his name a few times and doesn’t respond when someone calls him. After sometime it becomes ingrained and embedded into his mind and he no longer has to think about it.

Eventually he can’t help but know his name. When someone calls out ‘Tom’, he automatically knows someone is calling him, whether he like it or not.

It’s the same with the understanding ‘there is no doer’. Initially the understanding may be a bit shaky, but after sometime, after repeated practice, after going through the logic behind it a few times and seeing the truth of it, it becomes more ingrained. Eventually it becomes effortless as knowing your name.

To be continued in my next post: Problems with utilising conceptual tools

Why seeing/understanding alone may not be enough

February 23, 2017February 25, 2017 ~ Tom Das ~ 4 Comments

This post follows on from my previous 3 posts relating to the body:

Seeing this is not always enough

However, for many people simply seeing there is no doer is not enough. Why? Well we have lived our lives for many years with the deeply ingrained belief that we are doers, with the belief that we are the creator of our thoughts and instigators of our actions. This habitual belief is not so easily washed away, and even when seen, it can continue to operate and cause us to suffer.

In vedanta a common methodology used to counteract this is to utilise a concept that opposes and counteracts the ignorance:

‘I am not the body’ is a tool by which one can weed out the ‘I am the body’ notion.

Practice of the knowledge ‘I am not the body’ is a conceptual tool by which one can weed out the belief in ‘I am the body’ concept.

Note that ‘I am not the body’ is a concept. If believed in, ie. if considered to be genuinely true, it would be a belief. You do not have to believe a concept is true in order to benefit from it. You can use the concept either way, whether you believe in it or not.

To be continued in my next post: Integrating the understanding of no-doer

Why does understanding the body matter?

February 22, 2017February 25, 2017 ~ Tom Das ~ 3 Comments

This post follows on from my previous 2 posts relating to the body:

Why does this matter?

It is the belief that ‘I am the body’ (or ‘I am the body-mind’) that gives rise to all this suffering. More specifically it is the belief that I am a separate entity, the doer, that thinks thoughts and instigates actions, that is the root cause of suffering.

This belief in ‘I am the body’ or I am the separate doer-entity goes by many names. It can be called ignorance (avidya in Sanskrit), samsara, the ego (ahamkara), original sin, conceit, hell, etc…

It is the root cause of suffering.

Uprooting this belief is the primary purpose of all wisdom traditions and wisdom teachings, and each tradition and teaching provides us with a unique methodology for doing this.

One of the simplest ways of seeing this truth of no-doer is simply by calming the mind (samatha in Pali) and looking and seeing there is no evidence for a doer-entity (vipassana). The Buddha referred to this as no-self (anatta) or emptiness of self (sunyata)*.

To be continued in my next post: Why seeing/understanding alone may not be enough

*in the original Buddhist writings (the Pali suttas) the word sunyata (meaning emptiness), was used to refer solely to emptiness of self, which is another way of saying no-self or no separate-self. A few hundred years later the Mahayana sutras were written in Sanskrit and expanded the idea of emptiness to include emptiness of all things, or more specifically, all things being empty of intrinsic-self or instrinsic-existence.

Are you or are you not the body?

February 21, 2017February 25, 2017 ~ Tom Das ~ 7 Comments

This follows on from my previous post.

It is an observable fact that our direct experience alone does not provide us with sufficient evidence to say whether or not objects in the world arise solely from consciousness (ie. philosophical idealism), or whether consciousness is a product of the material word (eg. the human brain) which in turn perceives an image of that material world (ie. philosophical realism).

Not that these are the only two possibilities – there other theories that could also account for our present experience, and perhaps other explanations that our limited human minds are incapable of understanding – but for the purposes of this article we will not go into this.

The point is, from our direct experience alone, we do not know if what we call the body is solely an image that arises in our consciousness, or if that image is a representation of a real body somewhere outside our consciousness which in turn gives rise to consciousness.

To be continued here: Why does understanding the body matter?

Do you know for certain that you are the body?

February 20, 2017June 6, 2017 ~ Tom Das ~ 4 Comments

Do you know for certain that you are the body?
Do you know for certain that you are not the body?
The honest answer to both these questions is ‘no’.

‘I am not the body’ is a tool by which one can weed out the ‘I am the body’ notion.
Then once the work is done, like the thorn used to remove a thorn, throw them both away.

What is reality then?
Reality is simply whatever is left over when concepts of self and no-self are no longer believed in.
Reality is the ineffable indescribable indefinable ever-obvious ever-present ‘now’.

Tom Das

These verses will be elucidated further in upcoming posts:

The sense of being a doer vs. no doer

February 17, 2017June 4, 2017 ~ Tom Das ~ 4 Comments

When the doer* is seen to be an illusion, an imagined fiction, the sense/feeling of being a doer may still continue. The sense/feeling of being a doer can arise like any other phenomena arises.

And notice – it arises spontaneously, meaning there is no doer there doing it. You see! It can be seen that even the sense of being a doer is something that has no doer behind it – it just happens, by itself.

So, in my daily life I often feel like I’m doing things, but there is an understanding there that there is no doer-entity doing it. It is all just happening.

This is the difference between experience and knowledge/understanding: I may feel like a doer, but I know/understand I am not a doer.

It is similar to realising the sun does not orbit a stationary earth, even though the appearance of the sun rising and setting each day continues. Or if you realise that a mirage is an illusion, the illusion persists even when not believed in. The sense of doership can continue even when the understanding ‘there is no evidence for a doer’ is present.

*By doer I mean the notion of being a separate entity which creates or authors thoughts and actions

Creating then resolving the duality of awareness vs objects in awareness

February 16, 2017February 15, 2017 ~ Tom Das ~ Leave a comment

The following are adapted from recent Facebooks posts of mine
http://www.facebook.com/tomdas.nd

The body-mind entity can accept, reject or be indifferent to things. This is relative acceptance and is an action that can be performed. Awareness is all-accepting, always embracing ‘what is’. This is total/absolute acceptance and is not something that you can do, but something that can be recognised as already being here.

Awareness cannot accept or reject anything, as it does nothing. It just is: present and aware. All actions occur at the level of the body and mind (and world).

Awareness could be said to unconditonally/choicelessly ‘accept’ everything that occurs within it, in the same way a mirror ‘choicelessly accepts’ the reflection within it.

…but actually, as this example illustrates, the mirror-like awareness is not actually doing anything apart from ‘being itself’.

In the way I speak about this, awareness cannot identify with anything. It is only the mind that identifies with/as the mind.

Or to put it differently, thought imagines it’s a thinker and believes itself.

Awareness is ever-free, just like the mirror in the example above

Through identifying with choiceless awareness/consciousness for sometime, the ego/doer is seen through and no longer identified with. Then the identification as being choiceless awareness/consciousness also can be dropped.

What we are left with is ‘just this’: simple, direct, beyond words. This is the ‘realm beyond verbal teachings’.
Here the apparent duality conceptualised by differentiating (viveka) between that-which-changes (objects) and that which doesn’t change in our experience (the subject, I) is resolved into non-duality.

Tom Das

Liberation & Non-Duality

Author: Tom Das

Discarding knowledge as ignorance