Monday, October 7, 2013

6.39 Types Of Bindings

Try to classify your bindings:
 
(1) You are bound due to your sorrow. You do not wish for sorrow to come, but it comes, and you have to bear it out of compulsion. Now if you enjoy bearing it, then sorrow will no longer be sorrow. Then how could it bind? If you consider the subservience to the teacher as sorrow, and subservience to your "Juliet" as fun, then you will remain bound. Stay bound. For millions of lives, curse liberation that you will never get it, you want to live in the bondage of your Juliet! Such a person is not a seeker. He is a worldly person. Let him wander and hang in this world.
 
(2) You second binding is due to inertness. You are bound to inert objects of this world. The funny thing is that you are in fact the unattached aware being, but accept that you can get bound by the inert world. How can the inert bind that which is aware? And how can the aware be tied down by the inert? The knot between the inert and the aware is nothing but a delusion. If we have to classify such a binding, then we have to say that only the aware has bound itself to the inert, and only the aware can itself remove itself from the inert.
 
(3) Not knowing sorrow to be sorrow - this is a major binding. It closes the door to liberation.
 
(4) You have the binding of "absence". You wish that sorrow should never come to you, you should never experience it. This is ostrich-like thinking. Non-appearance (abhaana), unconsciousness, the cessation of sorrow that comes from these is not liberation, it is also a major binding.
 
(5) You are bound to your possessions-collections-family. Brother (bandhu) + wealth (dhana) = bondage (bandhana). This is the fakir's interpretation of bondage.
 
(6) Unwavering (nirvikalpa) samaadhi which means non-delusional non-duality. The unwavering samaadhi of the Yoga philosophy is different and the Vedantic interpretation of this is different. Wavering (vikalpa) means dilemma, duality. Therefore unwavering means without doubt, without delusion. In the Yoga philosophy, unwavering samaadhi means silence (mauna). The cessation of all mental thought flow, without any wavering (without seed). But this is not the same meaning in Vedanta.
 
In Vedanta, unwavering samaadhi means : the certain notion of destruction of duality through the realization of the non-dual. Just like the curvature of a rope is visible even after it has burnt, the knower of the essence sees the body and the entire world as a mound of ashes, after gaining the knowledge of the essence. But, due to some inexplicable force (call it fate, Ishvara's will or something else) the appearance of this body etc remains as it always was. It is just like Arjuna's chariot that was burnt after Karna's arrows hit it, but it appeared as it always was due to the will of Shri Krishna, until the end of the Mahaabhaarata war.
 
(7) The unique happiness of living liberation. After we experience the unwavering supreme essence, the remaining lifetime of the knower which remains as a mound of ashes, in that, the happiness of liberation is experienced. This is supreme bliss.
 
The world is of the nature of sorrow, this is known in the state of ignorance. The appearance of the world is not occurring, this also happens in the state of ignorance. This is because appearance is our nature, its loss is our ignorance. Accepting the flow-like nature of the world is also ignorance. "I exist and in me the world appears, even then, the imagined notions of doership, enjoyership, disconnectedness, birth-death do not appear. There is no divider or destroyer of the joy of my identity, my state of identity" - this is the unique happiness of living liberation. This is the happiness of liberation.
 
Vedanta is not for taking you to heaven, samaadhi or Vaikuntha. Let me become a saint in my next life, Vedanta is not even for that. In this world itself, in this lifetime, in this body, in this moment, in this place where you are sitting, you attain the happiness of liberation. This is what Vedanta is for.
 
The greatness of the knowledge of brahman is that it does not increase or decrease by action or inaction. (Brihadaaranyaka Upanishad 4.4.23 and Chaandogya Upanishad 8.12.3). It resides in the body of a king and eats. It resides in India and enjoys the pleasures of heaven. He is staying with a woman. The knowledge of all through one. There is nothing that he does not know. He is the ruler of all, the enjoyer of all. He does not a slave to anything - Vedas, action, place, worship. He has removed himself of all slavishness. This is moksha.
 
Com, now let us contemplate upon brahman.

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