Month: June 2023

Question

I have a question about responding to back pain during seated meditation. I currently bear with it and try to give attention to it and relax it into a good position, but I eventually shuffle around or use a pillow until I need to shuffle again. How should I deal with back pain?

Answer

Consider the metaphysical stakes of your question. The point is to see, little by little, what pain is as well as where, so to speak, it’s situated.

What is pain? Look experientially into this matter. What is it? Discover, on your own, that it’s only a physical sensation. Everything else is a mental overlay, i.e., one thought or another. See both the physical sensation (a flickering, a pulsing, a cool or warm something) and the label (“I can’t bear this,” “I’m doing irreparable harm to my body,” etc.). 

Next, where are these physical sensations situated? They appear to be situated in or on the physical body–but are they? See that you are like the vast, open, empty sky while this sensation is like one star in the firmament of stars. That is, you, like space, like the night sky, open to any experience without giving any special weight to this one or that one. A thought is one twinkling star and in its substance it’s no different from a sensation, a feeling like sadness, and so on. Since this is true, let all experiences be “on equal footing” with one another such that none is given priority or preference or pride of place.

Finally, investigate what the real nature of “this sky” or “this space” is. What is it? That is to say, who are you, really?

An Argument in 4 Parts from I Am That

Part 1: The Acuteness of Suffering

Nisargadatta replies: “Suffering has made you dull, unable to see its enormity. Your first task is to see the sorrow in you and around you; your next to long intensely for liberation.”

1. You must begin with herculean earnestness: if you’re not really being honest with yourself, then you’re not really coming to grips with the acuteness of your suffering as well as the acuteness of the sorrows of those around you. 

Are you leveling up? Are you checking yourself before you wreck yourself?  

Once you really face up to the fact that there is heartbreaking sorrow inside as well as around you, you can’t but long for liberation. 

Part 2: Longing for Liberation

2. Did you catch that second point? “[Y]our next [task] is to long intensely for liberation.” You can’t long intensely for liberation unless you’ve come to grips with sorrows–yours and those of others. And when you really do, then liberation, lest you indulge in nihilistic despair, is the only option.

Part 3: Hindrances

A questioner states, “I find myself suffering, but not enough. Life is unpleasant, but bearable. My little pleasures compensate me for my small pains and on the whole I am better off than most of the people I know. I know that my condition is precarious, that a calamity can overtake me any moment. Must I wait for a crisis to put me on my way to truth?”

3. How are you playing small? Where are you trying to find escapes? What compensations and negotiations are you making? “Oh, I’m not a Ukrainian.” See this as ego evasion.

4. If you try to play down your disappointments, melancholy, moments of hopelessness, then you’re only kidding yourself. Remember the first point.

5. Indeed, look very closely at what’s served up for you, at what’s right here. Doing so is like putting on a jet pack: it hurls or thrusts you into the longing for liberation. 

Part 4: The Means (or One Means Anyway)

Nisargadatta advises: “Now, go within, into a state which you may compare to a state of waking sleep, in which you are aware of yourself, but not of the world.” 

6. Be so interested in the I alone that you allow all objects to subside. This I alone is (for now) “I Am.” And “I Am” is like a state of waking sleep.

7. With such intensity and earnestness let go of the world (turning outward) and embrace the I alone (the deep dive within). Let the rest take care of itself.

I’ve sometimes heard spiritual practitioners say that they must “fake it till you make it.” By which they mean that they don’t really believe in Waking Up or that they don’t believe that they can really Wake Up, but they need to act as if they did.

It could be shown, however, that such an adage has no part to play in the nondual teaching. My suspicion is that its attractiveness stems from our post-European Enlightenment heritage according to which faith is total (and superstitious) while reason is the guiding light. To try to overcome the skepticism arising out of the hegemony of reason, we use instrumental reason in order to “place a pragmatic bet”: if I make-believe that X–that is, Buddha-nature or Parabrahman–is true, what benefit shall I receive? 

Needless to say, the teaching does not say this. In fact, it couldn’t because jnana yoga is the path of knowledge, not that of make-believe or ego-negotiating trickery.

Let me, therefore, try to mount a defense of what the teaching is actually saying. I’ll do so by way of an analogy.

Suppose you found slowly or quickly that you were coming to a deep–a surprising deep–interest in music. Before, you couldn’t care less but now–again, out of the blue–it seems as if you’re quite intrigued by music of this or that kind. Suppose, furthermore, that your dear friend hears of your budding, increasingly intense interest and one day decides to give you a gift. He offers you a saxophone and says, “Here, take it and play. See what you can make of it. I want you to have it.”

What are you going to say? That you don’t know how to play the saxophone? That, demurring and out of fear, you might pretend that you’d rather try your hand at the viola? 

No, none of these. You’re going to accept the gift with all your heart. This is analogous to the “minimal viable trust” that I think is necessary for a sadhaka to have. And the surprising interest in music is analogous to the longing for Liberation, or moksha.

And then what? Well, because you’ve accepted this beautiful gift, you’re now in a position to see what can happen as you learn how to play it. What’s possible? Where might you go with it? What kind of music might spring forth? You want to see, as it were, what’s at the end of the musical road. 

By analogy, we can say that we accept into our hearts the gift of the practice (and more generally the myriad gifts offered on the path) and then we treat that gift, that practice with reverence and keen interest. What will happen if we inquire into who we are? If we hold onto what Nisargadatta terms “I Am”? Let your curiosity take over. Be keen–Nisargadatta, of course, would say earnest–to find out. That is all.

In short, you let your genuine interest in the teaching ripen until it leads you to the very end of the inquiry. In this way, there is no room–indeed, no need–for faking anything. And, of course, there’s nobody to make it anyway.

Question

Andrew: In Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi, Ramana Maharishi, replying to a disciple, states the following:

D[isciple]: Will the knowledge gained by direct experience be lost afterwards?

[Ramana] M[aharshi]: Kaivalya Navanita says it may be lost. Experience gained without rooting out all the vasanas cannot remain steady. Efforts must be made to eradicate the vasanas. Otherwise rebirth after death takes place. Some say direct experience results from hearing from one’s master; others say it is from reflection; yet others say from one-pointedness and also from samadhi. Though they look different on the surface, ultimately they mean the same. Knowledge can remain unshaken only after all the vasanas are rooted out.

“Talk 172,” Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi

I would love to hear your thoughts about this passage.

Mikka Nandri

Answer

Dear A.,

1. Typically, Ramana distinguishes between nirvikalpa samadhi and sahaja samadhi. The former, when gained, can be lost. I equate nirvikalpa samadhi with satori/kensho in Zen. Meaning: “sudden awakening” but not “final or Great Awakening.” For its part, the latter is the natural, established state, or what Buddhists term “Great Awakening.”

2. Vasanas = samskaras. Essentially, when all sense of egoity has been seen through, then this is sahaja samadhi. If not, then it’s just, e.g., nirvikalpa samadhi: awakening without the end of egoity, for ego will rise again thanks to extant vasanas/samskaras. “Knowledge can remain unshaken only after all the vasanas are rooted out.” In a characteristic Ramana (or Vedantic) vein, he goes on to say that all methods point to the same result.

3. Which method is best with respect to being permanently established in and as the Self? Ramana, here, refers to the “triple method” of Advaita Vedanta: listening, reflecting, and meditating. His point is very simple: when one is a very ripe soul, simply listening to the teaching can establish you in the Self; when less ripe, you’ll need to listen and ponder; when even less ripe (and this applies to most of us), you’ll need to hear the teaching over and over again, ponder or “churn it” until it’s ghee, and dive deep through meditation.

With palms joined together,

Andrew

Contemplate

Meditation begins when the fight ends. It seems as if what we call “meditation” is a fight, at least for some years. A fight with thoughts, feelings, and pain.

But is that what meditation is? Look closely.

One Series: Going Back The Way I Came

1. I seem to be involved in the fight. This is dukkha. Even trying to let go of thoughts appears to ensnare me more in thoughts, feelings, desires, and so forth.

2. Next, I realize that I am the witness. Therefore, I am no longer involved in experiences and also no longer suffering.

3. Next, I take an interest in the very essence or nature of the witness. That is, I take an interest in myself (the Self) alone.

4. Last, I am established in the Self alone.

Remark #1: The fight ends at 2 and 3. There is wide openness, relaxed concentration.

Remark #2: For our purposes, only 1-3 matter. 4 is divine grace.