ANNAPURNA SARADA, Friday, August 21, 2015 11:07 am

Part 2: Renunciation is not condemnation; it is deification

“Renunciation is not condemnation; it is deification.” – Swami Aseshananda

Continuing on from my November 30 post:

To summarize the main points from the last post unwrapping this significant statement from my teacher, one of the first stages of coming to terms with renunciation is recognizing how attachment is present in our reactions to what is painful or pleasing, and gaining equanimity in the face of both.  This actually neutralizes karma and creates a more sattvic state of mind from which to understand higher teachings found in cosmology and philosophy. The Sankhya system of the 24 Cosmic Principles hones one’s recognition of all that consists of the not-Self, and sincere love for God or the truth of one’s existence, fuels detachment from all that is not the Self.  We ended with a quote from my living guru, Babaji, which affirms that there is more to realization than experiencing formless Reality, albeit an absolutely essential realization:

“If one renounces Nature and that is as far as one goes, then one gets abhava, formlessness.  But man and Nature remain separate.  What kind of oneness is that?  But if one renounces Nature by knowing that it has come out of oneself as mental projection, then one gets both formlessness and the  realization of ‘iti iti’ – ‘all this.’  This is called Mahayoga.”

Unwrap #3

Renunciation in Sanskrit is vairagya.  English does not have a single word that encompasses the full range of meaning for this word.  Dispassion, detachment, renunciation – these all popularly confer a sense of remoteness, rejection, uncaring, aloofness.  In the Vivekachudamani, Shankara states in verse 21, “Renunciation is the giving up of all the pleasures of the eyes, the ears, and the other senses, the giving up of all objects of transitory enjoyment, the giving up of the desire for a physical body as well as for the highest kind of spirit-body of a god.”  This “giving up” has mature and immature expressions.  The immature giving up often falls into Kapila’s list of complacencies that mitigate against spiritual depth, in particular the notion that renunciation will bring realization. Merely giving up objects externally while holding them as objects in the mind – consciously or unconsciously treating both as “real” – maintains the sense of duality, which is forged in the veil of ignorance, or maya.  Another form of immature renunciation is better referred to as “unripe” and is simply a stage along the way.  World-weariness, recognition that the world and its objects, the mind and its thoughts, cannot confer lasting happiness gives way to disengagement with the world, leaving the mind free to focus on spiritual verities and cultivate mumukshutwam, sincere longing for liberation.

Vairagya requires disidentifying, disentangling our Self, our root “I-awareness,” with changing matter, gross and subtle.  Even to try this in our imagination moves us to the position of a witness, from which we can best continue the process of recognizing that the true “I” is unique and singular, superior to the telescoping mind, and the only Witness of all phenomena.  Yet, just where does phenomena originate from?  This question begs to be answered when reasoning, intuition, and the illumined seers tell us that there can only be one Reality.  All this is Brahman; Everything is; I am all.  Such great statements are a huge grain of sand in the bed of one’s emerging sense of true Witness-hood. But how to realize this?

Both Vedanta and Yoga offer a method that traces effects back to their causes or origins.  But, we mentally argue, the seers say that Reality/the Self/Paramatman/Brahman is without origin, causes or effects. Yes, but we have to work that out and realize it for ourselves, so a method is necessary.  It will not “result” in Truth (“Realization is not the effect of a cause,” as Swami would often say), it will effectively point the way by providing a step ladder to gain more and more subtle states of awareness – and not by accident when sattva happens to visit our mind, but by practice, repeatedly retracing one’s steps to the Source, becoming familiar with the way, a process called involution.

Vedanta states it very simply, withdraw the objects into the senses, senses into the mind, mind into the intellect, intellect into the self, and the self into the Great Self.  Without a working knowledge of Sankhya and Yoga, this sounds like quite a riddle.  Sankhya, as mentioned in the last post, provides us with a delineation of the 24 Cosmic Principles, and Patanjali, the father of Yoga, next instructs us to meditate on each of them.  Further, we are instructed to recognize the connections between the 5 elements, the 5 senses, and the 5 subtle sense objects: earth goes with smelling and odor, water goes with tasting and flavor, fire goes with seeing and form/color, air goes with touching and tangibility, ether goes with hearing and sound.  The senses, here, are not actually the fleshy portions of our body, but the more subtle power of each of them residing in the brain and also in the mind.  According to Vedic Cosmology and Philosophy, the grosser manifestations come from subtler ones.

Thus, when Vedanta says to withdraw the objects into the senses, Yoga explains that we mentally deconstruct the physical universe into the five elements and “involve” them into their subtle causes, the senses (indriyas) and the subtle sense-objects (tanmatras).  As soon as one attempts this, the mind begins to get quiet, for the senses are no longer reaching outwardly for their respective objects and creating karmas with them.  But the objects are all in the mind now as thoughts and ideas, so there is still restlessness/vibration, and one needs to stand watch over the habit of externalizing, and continue involving to the next subtle perch, as it were.  The next step is to withdraw/involve the mind into the intellect (buddhi), which is the seat of agency and action.  With objects, senses, and the thought of them involved into the intellect, the view of subtler states of awareness is less obscured like the bottom of a lake on a windless day.  This very stillness will lead one to the small self, which can be taken to mean the ahamkara or individualized “I-sense,” the first witness.  With the elements, senses, subtle sense objects and the thinking mind and intellect all withdrawn into the self, all forms are held in abeyance; desire and karmas are latent.  This is the individual state of pralaya, where the gunas are in equilibrium, known as deep sleep.  Desire is almost completely put to sleep here, for objects and senses are united within oneself.  There is no need to go outward for anything, for it is there inside oneself.  Next, the ahamkara is to be dissolved into its “Source”, the great Self, Atman/Brahman, which is the Witness of the ahamkara as well as the witness of all changing states of consciousness, such as waking, dreaming, and deep sleep.  We are doing this mentally, exploring each step and learning the pathway.  Yoga breaks it down into more steps.  But the effect of this practice is to convince oneself that everything exists within the Self and is brought out via the instrument of the mind, cosmic and individual.  The Self is all there is whether manifestation is occurring or nonmanifestation is occurring.  The “I” of nirguna awareness and the “I am” of saguna perception is the same “I.”

When Swami Aseshanandaji made that grand statement, “Renunciation is not condemnation, it is deification,” all the above and more was contained in it.  Years later I sat with 5,000 others as the Dalai Lama spoke on the Four Noble Truths.  At one point he said, “When you understand the true nature of suffering, you acquire renunciation.  When that renunciation is turned toward the world, that is compassion.”

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