Vedanta learning once a week

Thanks to a friend, I discovered the Chinmaya Mission in New York and the work they do. With branches all over the world, they extend valuable teaching & understanding of Indian scriptures and texts, some of which are thousands of years old. For a while now I have been searching for some centers where Icould go to learn and further my spiritual growth. So I attended 2 of their classes so far and enjoyed them quite a bit. Since it seems for now that I will be attending them regularly, I thought to spend some space here and talk about what we are discussing and more importantly what I am learning. Hope you enjoy it.

Currently the class is reading Vivekachoodamani. You can read more about the book at the link but in a gist it talks about discriminating against your body, vitality, mind and intellect to arrive at the unrealized and ultimate concept of Aham Brahamasme or I am the universe. Each of us is the universe and as such we have unlimited potential but the mind and all the other faculties or koshas come in the way. We are too engrossed in the body and depend on it for all our identification. But we are not the body, we need to go deeper to understand what and who we really are. Once we go deeper, we meet several others who claim to be us but we have to discriminate against them too because when we apply reason and the universe’s logic we realize we are not these. The next, after the body, is our vitality or what we call prana. Our organs, our breathe remind us we are a living, breathing creature. So it would only be logical that we are our prana and it is our ultimate destination. But Sankaracharya says no, we are not these either and asks us to continue our journey further into the crevices where next we meet the mind – a very powerful tool that we mainly use destructively. The mind wanders, creates thoughts and builds fantasies that keep us tied to the world of Maya, this mirage, an illusion of life that we are living. So are we the mind? No, we already know we are not the mind. So we go further to find the intellect. Now, there is a lot of difference between the mind and the intellect. The mind is a combination of thoughts, perception, memory, emotion, will, imagination, etc. but the intellect is more concerned with reasoning, abstract thought, understanding, communication, reasoning and so forth. In Sanskrit intellect is called buddhi, a close resemblance to Buddha, which means the enlightened One. So are we the intellect? Nope, we are not.

We discriminate against all these until we finally arrive at the consciousness that we are, that each one of us is coming from and where ultimately we will all travel to. These other koshas – body, vitality, mind and intellect are merely tools given to us to realize the quintessential reality. Last class we finished discriminating against the body – anamaya kosha and the vitality – pranamaya kosha. Next up will be manamaya kosha (discrimination against the mind).

As is the case with everything, there are several schools of thought that promote the belief of realization. Vedanta (which means end of the Vedas) doesn’t negate any of these but instead classifies them into a hierarchy. In India, idol worship is rampant and most people visit the temple at least once a day to offer their prayers and perform sorts of rituals. This relationship, Vedanta calls, is that of the worshipper and the worshipped, i.e. bhakti (supreme deity) and the bhakt (worshipper). Problem, however, is most people take this relationship far too seriously and end their search here. They believe once they visit the temple or perform their daily dose of worship they will attain the truth. But it doesn’t work that way, does it now? This is the first step where 99% of the people are stuck. But we need to travel further up where we meet the Ramanuja school of thought, which promotes the belief that we are part of this universe. There is only one Brahman but it is characterized by its multiplicity. It also says that the 3 main scriptures – the Gita, Upanishads and the Brahma sutras should be interpreted in way that shows this unity in diversity, otherwise it would violate their consistency. The final theory is the Advaita or non-dualistic system of thought, which says Brahma satyaṃ jagat mithyā, jīvo brahmaiva nāparah — Brahman is the only truth, the world is an illusion, and there is ultimately no difference between Brahman and individual self.

Ultimately, I think, theories and schools of thoughts don’t really matter. They help you think, analyze and choose your way but if the first approach works for you opposed to the last one, I am no one to say it is wrong. As long as you are being transformed into something positive, the catalyst can only be good.