Video 1

1. Vedantasara | Text 1 | Swami Sarvapriyananda

from the unreal to the real lead us from darkness and to light lead us from death to immortality home peace peace peace so welcome back to this new session of the vedanta study group um this session we are going to start with this text vedanta sara of sadananda yogindra this is the translation by swami nikhilananda and i have given you a pdf of the text you should have received it with the email in which you got the link so you can have the pdf on on your computer um just for reference if you don't have the book it's much better to have the book so that you can follow along with it now what is this text and what are we doing the whole purpose of the vedanta study group was to have an advanced study group very good study the original texts the sources of vedanta in some depth so we have done various kinds of texts we have uh in hollywood i did the drikdrishya viveka and then we did the upper rook shana bhuti that was in general for everybody but in the vedanta study group we at one time we did a little bit of the panchadashi and recently we have been doing the mandu kyopanisha the fundamental texts of advaita vedanta the fundamental texts of advaita vedanta are the upanishads the in fact vedanta itself is is the upanishads are collectively known as vedanta it's one definition of vedanta and the wisdom of the upanishads was given out in a practical form by krishna to arjuna and the bhagavad gita so that has also become one of the fundamental texts of vedanta and the third pillar think of it as a tripod with three legs so um no that's not a good example because the openness are not just like one leg it is the base it's a fundamental the bhagavad-gita is actually derivative from the open nations and one more derivative text is the brahma-sutras which discuss philosophical and textual issues arising out of a study of the upanishads anyway the point being being that if you want to know what is the textual basis of the of vedanta as a whole it will be these three uh texts or groups of texts the upanishads are a group of texts that is vedanta fundamentally and the bhagavad bhagavad-gita and the brahma-sutra along with the commentaries written written by the great masters of vedanta like adishan karacharya depending on the commentaries different schools of iran have come out and we are studying one school our primary school is the advaita vegan the non-dual beta that's what we study that's what i teach now a lot of other text was written these later texts are often classified as prakarana there is no easy translation of that literally is usually translated as an introductory text although some of these texts are not at all introductory they are pretty advanced but they all teach the same thing as the upanishads do the text which we are going to take up is one such prakharanam it is actually an introductory test text why are we doing this see my idea was to study the upanishads together and i decided to start at the top begin with the end the most powerful the most direct the most powerful of the uh the most compact of the upanishads the mandu kyopanishad along with gauravadas karikas which we successfully by the grace of god we we studied it and it is complete and it is available as podcasts cast podcasts three are free to download from the internet so that's done but that is not the use the way it's usually studied um nobody starts out with the manduka generally it was more my ambition than anything else it's more mice for my own sake than for the sake of the students but having done that now we can take the scenic route we can take our time and do it slowly and the way it is supposed to be done so what would what one would do is go through the major upanishads the major upanishads being the upanishads selected by adi shankaracharya to write commentaries on pasha so he did it for 10 upanishads and arguably an 11th one the 10 upanishads being the isha kena katha mundaka mandukya [Music] is little sanskrit verse which gives you the whole syllabus so these are 10 uh upanishads which we now call major upanishads and the 11th which is which might be shankaracharya's commentary on which has comes with shankaracharya's commentary is the shweta but it is doubted by scholars both traditional and modern whether shakaracharya's actually wrote that coming through to some later shankaracharya not the original one anyway so that should be the syllabus but what i thought was before we plunge ahead and take the long scenic route through the upanishads themselves uh it would be helpful to do one more introductory text why do i say one more because we have done the rig rishabhika which is introductory text like this we have done the upper okay which is another introductory text like this but the merit of this text is this is this is where traditional vedanta students start for example when we were novices in our main monastery at balurmat which prakat has has his background so when we have novices there we were introduced to vedanta always through this text so in the first year of our studies we would study this text um and of course make an entry into everything else so why did i not start with this text and why did i start with drink very shavika and okara okay well frankly for advertisement purposes are uh interesting racy things are happening right richard vivek opens with a bang the first verse itself is tremendous and production booth is also very very interesting so is this going to be a dull journey not really the only problem with this text is it is actually it's very useful but it's you useful precisely because it's a book of definitions you'll be surprised at the elegance and precision definition of what is brahman what is god what is the absolute uh what are we sentient beings define it precisely so that we don't have to quarrel about what we are talking about later on it's all precisely defined even maya most difficult of all all of it precisely defined and laid out for us so and it's a wonderful sketch of the entire advaita vedanta philosophy so this is where we start now a monk who is a highly trained scholar uh does not told me once that you should never do these things like start with a book like this uh because he says one should always go to the originals he said that we were always taught in a university by our professors that we should always go straight to the originals that has merit the problem with starting with the text like this is remember this text comes around 15th century so about 500 600 years ago but three or four thousand years after the uh originals the upanishads which it purports to summarize and explain so what this text does is it's a highly systematized exposition very elegant very neat easy to understand easy to base yourself on but always good to remember that this is not the original a lot of philosophizing has gone on for thousands of years literally before this especially after shankaracharya for about 800 years before this text comes along so a lot of argumentation lot of back and forth until a system is established but a system like any system has the advantage of being neat and geometric but also a few steps removed from the truth it's good for our intellect it's easily digestible but it somehow does not um totally accurately faithfully represent the the vibrancy the aliveness of the originals it's more like a map and not the actual place you want to visit so this is the the demerit but then what is the merit of studying this see if you are a university scholar you would do what that scholarly monk told me that you go rigid to the original text straight away but they would do that because the whole purpose is to study the original text that's the whole purpose our whole purpose as a spiritual seekers is does not end with studying the original text it's actually to understand this system to practice it and to realize it in our lives so if there are books which help us out most welcome most welcome we just should have that buyer beware that we are looking at advaita vedanta through the lens of a very um of of a late philosopher in that greater tradition it's through a particular lens it's a particular systematization it's for it's like a textbook for for students so that's what's going on here so having said that a little bit about um just a minute yeah so a little bit about the author sadananda yogindra was a monk about um maybe you know uh 600 years ago and this book since he wrote it he wrote it for for students who want an introduction into the philosophical system of advaita vedanta since that time traditional vedantic scholars have been introduced to advaita vedante through this book um as i said in our monastery when we studied vedanta systematically we were introduced to it through this book so we're going to do this um it's a short text in fact recently i taught it at the vivekananda vidya pete in wayne new jersey so and i have been teaching it i i was the teacher the acharya who taught this text at the training center for the brahmacaris for the new novices for several years i think five or six years i thought this one after another i started one cycle i taught at at hollywood also so i've been doing this for a long time um yes what else did i want to say sometimes i you usually require a blackboard or something to write on so since we don't have that here i'll make this little quite unimpressive um points to share with you so here goes little bit of information how do we do this share screen okay can you see the uh powerpoint yes yes let me just maximize it now okay as i said it's a 15th century text saddam and the yogindra wrote it um there have been multiple commentaries on this because it's so much so popular over the centuries and and has been in use so three commentaries so this is an introductory text but uh there are commentaries on this text nothing that we need to be concerned with but i'll be explaining the text and you might at some point wonder where where am i getting all this so some of it is drawn from these traditional commentaries the first commentary is called the viduan manuranjini written by another monk ramatita sometime after sadhana and the yogindra literally the word vidhwan manuranjuni means the delight of scholars so the commentary itself is called the delight of scholars and you can imagine it the commentary is more difficult than the original the next one is by another monk called rasingha saraswati and that commentary is called the subodhini literally which means easily understood and which is more difficult than the earlier commentary uh and the last one which i'll be relying on a little bit more for this this time around teaching whereas was by another uh sanskrit another philosopher up apo deva which is the most difficult of them all and it means wait for it easily understood by children for the easy instruction of little children so why would just as a matter of curiosity why would one write complicated um commentaries for what is meant to be a textbook what these commentaries actually do is they fill in the this book is a bare bones outline of advaita vedanta but if you want the details you go to the commentaries they provide you explanations arguments and so on so forth anyway we won't be seeing any of this too much it'll be in the background when i'm explaining stuff okay that's it now um let's start the text use the pdf i've shared with you this text and the pdf are not the same the pdf pdf is the original sanskrit with the english transliteration the advantage of having the english transliteration so you can follow the chant if you like with an english translation made by one of our swamis it was never published as a book this is the book available on the market vedanta sarah sadananda translated by swami nikhilananda of our east sides as center it's very easily available on youtube or i'm sorry not youtube on amazon on um the vedanta press i think just four or five dollars it's inexpensive i recommend that you order it i had sent out the links if you got that email you will find the links where you can order this book some of you already have it so today i will uh i'll make a beginning we shall start the text today and just as always prakat this time is our our coordinator just as always he'll keep a lookout for people coming in for people raising their hands and questions as we go along raise your hands or write a question in the chat i will stop once in a while to deal with the questions and have a little discussion so let's make a beginning this is vedanta in the beginning in the uh the first verse the first two verses are invocations let me share just for today i'll share the pdf but otherwise you can look at it on your on your own screens this is a little cumbersome can you see the pdf can you see the pdf yes yes right so we're going to do the first verse now the first two verses are invocations first verse [Music] what does it mean i take refuge in the self the indivisible existence consciousness bliss absolute beyond the reach of words and thought the substratum of all for the attainment of my cherished desire okay so what's happening here invocation it was the styling of in sanskrit text to start with an invocation usually it was in a prayer to god or in praise of one's guru that it was just the way the text started now why would one do that um among the traditional hindu philosophies is the niya system they are the logicians and if you think vedanta is complicated or too theoretical we should try some nya text for example an ayah text would start they have an introductory text just like this to start their naia system which is called turka which means literally it means a collection of arguments so that also starts with an invocation but here we proceed along merrily but in the nia text you cannot everything is to be questioned so the moment there's an invocation the question is raised why is there an invocation what are you doing why are you why are you praying to god or guru or whatever it is and the answer given there is for the overcoming of obstacles and the successful completion of the text so the answer is praying for um overcoming all obstacles to the project of writing the book maybe and so that the text is completed maybe it gets good reviews and the white circulation down the ages which i think the invocation did succeed we just we're still studying it now in in manhattan in the 21st century so in sanskrit uh vigna nivarnatham to overcome obstacles and grand theft for successful completion of the text for the students who are studying it it just might mean overcoming the obstacles for our study and completing the text so that's why we do it so the questionnaire will not let go immediately will be further questions but wait we know of so many examples where books are written without any invocation and they are happily completed i'm sure today especially if you go to barnes and noble and pick out books at random you'll hardly find a book with an invocation to god or her guru and they are all completed they are on the shelves of barnes and noble so how can you say an invocation helps in completing the text one two we also know of many texts this is the question the doubt we also know of many texts which have beautiful invocations in the finest sanskrit and we're never completed maybe the author abandoned it halfway or maybe it's lost or something like that so what do you say to that you know the argument is invocation helps you to complete the text and the counter argument is there are many texts without any invocations nicely completed and there are many texts with invocations we've never completed and the reply to this is i'm giving you a taste of how the niyah people do things not as vedantes thankfully we are we are spared all that the answer from the uh philosopher is that well in the case of the books which are completed without invocation the author had lots of good karma in the past life he must have done lots of invocations in the past life so his good karma carries over and his new book is completed without any invocation and in the case of books which were which had invocations but were not completed well obviously karma was really bad and so it needed more invocations and that's why due to lack of sufficient invocation the book was not completed and they go on like this but you might think this is uh what's the point of this kind of argumentation but the ultimate result which they came to the near philosophers and which is why i raised this topic at all it's pretty reasonable they come to the conclusion that the invocation is just a matter of culture if you are a cultured person in this kind of an environment this kind of a setup you start any important task with a prayer to god with an acknowledgement of your guru's contributions and that's just being cultured um shishta they call it shishta in sanskrit a cultured person it's a mark of a cultured person another question comes up so it's good why are you doing it aloud you could do it in your mind and the answer would be for teaching students so if the teacher does an invocation in his or her mind and goes ahead how will the students learn unless you do it and you write it down and you chant it together so this is the way these arguments go but anyway we have an invocation here now let me get into the invocation with two invocations first and second the second one will be about the guru the first one is about brahman or the ultimate reality in this one verse the first verse itself the author sadananda basically covers the entire teaching of the advaita vedanta system in substance in in essence what is he saying i um salute or i take refuge in ashrae i take refuge in in that ultimate reality which is a condom the word a condom means non-divided condom means divided different a condom undivided non-different existence consciousness place so let us stop here and see what it means the ultimate reality according to vedanta is devoid of any difference there is no difference there is no division now division or difference is the basis of our day-to-day life and right here i and you we are different it seems it seems quite obvious i'm in a different place you are in a different place i am i'm different from the instrument the computer i am using um your computer is different from my computer and this whole if you look around the room you'll find so many differences doors and windows and lights and fans and dogs and cats and men and women space and solid and liquid so much difference all wrong seems to be full of difference to get a handle on differences what kinds of difference are there so in vedanta they talk about three kinds of differences all differences may be classified under three kinds the three kinds of differences are difference in sanskrit is veda veda means different um you know swami veda means non-different veda different abhidhar non-different so one who whose bliss is in the non-different abhidhannanda whose bliss is in brahman which is non-different anyway so veda difference is of three kinds according to advaita vedanta what are the three kinds vijayati abhidhar let me put it on the screen and then you can you can take a look where did it go yes um one second what happened um are you able to see the uh presentation no no one second yes now i can share technology is great but it sometimes can be an impediment to learning okay now you can see it yes three kinds of veda difference so what are these three kinds of difference vijayatha difference of kind so for example trees and rocks and animals and birds are there they're all different kinds of you know things of species of classes so these are bijatiya different kinds of things brahman the ultimate reality does not have this kind of difference but it's a tremendous claim what does it mean there is nothing apart from brahman so vijaya difference means there are other kinds of things so i'm a human being you're all human beings but there are other kinds of things there's the chairs we are sitting on there are the computers we are using they are different kinds of things from us so brahman does not there's not nothing that exists which is different from brahman vijayatha means there is no non-brahman in this world which is a huge huge claim which we shall explore through the text slowly but it just means all that we see is in some sense it must be brahman and in the sense we take it to be we take it to be here is a computer here is a person here is the light here is a table and that's that the moment we say that's that vedanta saying it's wrong the if you think it is just people and tables and chairs then what you think are just people and tables and chairs their appearances they cannot be real they are actually they have to be nothing other than brahman this is the claim we'll see how it makes perfection now it seems crazy we don't see brahman anywhere and here the claim is that there is nothing apart from brahman we see everything except your precious brahmana and vedanta is claiming brahman is the only thing that there is and there is there is nothing different from brahman so vijayatha is difference of kind just as trees and rocks are different animals are different kinds of things the second kind of difference is they are different but of the same kind so the question might be like a polytheist might ask yes um god exists but there may be many gods so you're right it may be that there is only brahman there's nothing other than brahman but there could be more than one brahman so it's still brahman nothing other than brahman but several brahman sword so an example of this kind of system might be the sankhya system where we are all pure consciousness we are purusa pure consciousness but each of us is a separate pure consciousness the multiple pure consciousnesses and vedanta says nope not even that different of the same kind example is two mango trees so in the first example it could be a mango tree and a rock and maybe an elephant they're different but sajati abhidhar is two mango trees both are mango trees but they're not the same they're two different examples of the same kind of thing in philosophy this is called a type token difference same type but two tokens of the same type mango tree but two mango trees they're different vedanta says no there are no two brahmans or three brahmans or four brahmanas nothing there is only one reality not even up different brahmanas but two different things of same kind no the absolute is one all right there might be another kind of difference there are no different kinds of things not even many things of the same kind only one thing i get it but that one thing could have internal differences so like a mango tree it has leaves and roots and a branch and mangoes and so the mangoes and the root is not the same thing the trunk and the branches are not the same thing the leaves and the twigs are not the same thing although they are all part of the same mango mango tree so is it possible that brahman has internal differences so for example an example would be the system of vishishta dwight aveda which says there is only one ultimate divine reality but all of us we are parts of it and as parts we are different there are sentient beings there are incentive beings there is a material universe and we are conscious beings all conscious beings and the entire material universe they are all part of one organic whole but within that organic whole there are differences brahman is is the ultimate reality but within brahman there are differences internal differences that's vishishta greater vedanta advaita vedante is saying no not even that there is no internal differentiation all of it is just pure being which is not different from pure consciousness which is not different from pure place satchit ananda is there anything apart from sachidan and vijayatha the first kind vedanta says maybe there are three parts you know a sad part you know an existence part a consciousness part a bliss part or like vishnu has multiple hands and a head and a tummy and legs no none of that no internal difference it is one absolute without any internal differences and without any kind of anything other than that also so this is the meaning of the word a condom non-divided so you can see a huge amount is packed into it what is this non-divided reality so i have this funny little story i usually do not fail to share about 20 years ago i was in a an ashram in the swami it's a very big ashram with many units so one of those units um where a lot of work was done for poor kids of the neighborhood um they got a donation from a rich person and the rich person wanted a plaque to be put put up you know then the plaque would say that by the grace of sri ramakrishna who who is a part of the partly infinite who came with with uh with the gracious uh by the grace of sri ramakrishna we are able to do this and he is the that rich person promised a certain amount of money now in the head of that unit the monk went to our head monk of the ashram the head monk was was furious he said what suramar krishna is a part of the partless brahman i will not allow the partless brahman to be parted and you know he said in bengali the same word the brahman is akanda without power don't you know your basic vedanta haven't you studied and he called us a few of us we are novices we're just youngsters you guys read a lot tell me am i right or or is this person right can akanda branham they are partly parted can suramar krishna be a part of the heartless and we of course have to say no no swami the funniest was the swami was receiving the donation he was standing outside with an ashen face you know he said i don't care if brahman has parts or does not have parts i just don't want my donation to be parted i don't want to part with my donation means partless what is a condom means existence chit means consciousness ananda means bliss i will not go into that because that will just take up every all the time we have we have come we have become used to this terminology pure being pure consciousness pure place what does it mean in vivekananda's words it is not that brahman exists but it is existence itself it is not that brahman knows but that it is knowledge itself it is not that brahman is happy but it is happiness itself okay that sounds interesting um let me stop the share can you all see me now you can see me yes what does that mean brahman is not not that brahman exists but it is existence itself the moment we say existence you know what comes to our minds things which exist i exist you exist people exist the chair i'm sitting on exists the building and even the air even the space seems to be pretty empty but in some sense it exists or more um abstract things like numbers or ideas in some sense they exist so the moment we say existence we think of things existing but vedanta is not talking about that vedanta is saying that at least conceive of existence itself instead of thinking of say waves think of water there are two ways of thinking of the relation between waves and water you can think of a wave and it has water in it but that would be a weird way of saying it wouldn't you rather say water is appearing as a wave yeah that sounds more logical water is appearing as a wave similarly vedanta what vedanta wants to say is can you think of existence appearing as chairs and tables existence is the reality being is the reality and it appears as existing things we tend to think things exist it's like things have existence in them that that's that's a weird way of putting it but that's that's what it means it's like saying uh a wave has water in it you might ask what's wrong with that what's wrong is we it's like saying like a bucket has water in it a wave has water in it but wave is nothing apart from water a bucket can exist without water can be an empty bucket but there's no such thing as an empty wave the wave must be water similarly when you come to existence note nothing can exist without existing it sounds like a silly tautological statement but nothing can exist without existence is exactly like saying there can be no wave without water all things exist which means the vedantic way of putting it would be existence appears as all things we say our language doesn't is not suited to this kind of thinking our language is very dualistic so we say um table exists chair exists vedanta would like us to say existence tables or existence chairs murdering the language but uh that's how what that's what vedanta is trying to say the reality is existence and it manifests itself or we experience it as existing things when things come into existence it's not that existence has come into existence the thing has come into existence and the thing goes out of existence existence continues wave arises in water does not mean water has come into existence the wave has arisen in water remains in water dissolves back into water all things in this universe they arise in existence they shine in existence and they fade back into existence okay that is to put it in one word south in sanskrit sat pure being i will not go into details in the same pattern chit is consciousness when we the moment we say consciousness we think of conscious thoughts feelings emotions ideas perceptions understanding memory all of that these are instances of consciousness they are not consciousness itself consciousness is experienced in these moments these are actually movements of the mind which shine in consciousness consciousness itself is not a thought feeling perception memory idea none of it but they all shine in consciousness and bliss in the same pattern i just leave you with this suggestion bliss is not a pleasant feeling or an exciting thrilling experience bliss is that which is experienced as all kinds of joys of our world shankaracharya says that ocean the spray of which people in this world are madly running after so imagine an ocean of bliss little droplets of which are coming out as prey and people are madly running after that as the most attainable pleasures and joys of this world so that bliss which is not a particular kind of pleasure but rather the substratum of all things experienced as pleasant happy fulfilling that is called ananda and that is they are not three different things they are not three different qualities it's the same thing this satchida under he says not attainable by not objectifiable by speech or by by mind why not attainable by speech i will not go into details here i have given talks about this again and again what can speech do speech can talk about things which are you know they say jaati guna kriya sambandha does if you if it rings some bells you must have heard it at some time um if something belongs to a class of objects like a cow this is a species of cow so you see one instance and you say that is a cow how did you know because it belongs to a species which you are invoking this is an instance of a species so cow you are using jati but there is no species of brahman there is no species of sachitan under there there is not a class a set of satchida so you can see aha here's one of them here's a brahmana no so brahman you cannot use class or species to refer to brahman quality so red flower the moment i say red flower you can pick out the red flower distinguish it from the blue and the violet and the orange and the yellow and bring me the red flower because red is a quality which helps you to distinguish that flower you can use a quality to point out an object but you can't use it for brahman because brahman is famously without any quality without any attribute absolutely beyond attributes quality won't work action so you know like the cook compliment the cook the dish was delicious how do you know what is what to do by the activity so you designate a person by the activity of cooking or driving or you know speaking or something some activity you can't do that for brahman brahman has no activity beyond all activity so you can't use kriya or action relation um teacher makes sense only when they are students father makes sense only when there is a son or a daughter but brahman how will you use relation to designate brahman there's nothing we just learned there's nothing other than brahman so with what will brahman have a relation so you can't use relation to point to brahman and finally conventional can't you just do it you know just say when you say this person is a gym so what do you say jim this person is gym not because of some class or quality or action or relationship just be named this person jim so can't we name it you know you are using the word brahman atman something just name it just use a word you can't do that because to just use a word it's called conventional designation to just use conventional designation you have to point out the person you have to say this person is jim unless you do that you you tell tell me go call jim i'll say who is jim i don't know whose team you have to point me out point it out when you say this baby from now on will be called jane if to point out this baby which baby if there are many babies then we don't it still won't work similarly to use a name like brahman or athman you have to point it out what is brahman or atman you can't point it out therefore conventional designation won't work the point being none of the ways in which language functions works for the absolute unless the absolute is clothed in some name and form and function you can't use language for it so it says beyond the real reach of speech beyond the reach of mind because mind itself shines in the light of consciousness and with that consciousness mind objectifies the world mind comprehends the world but mind is itself illumined by consciousness by brahman and so mind cannot illumine or objective eyebrow leave it at that um i'm now racing along a little further at madame all of this is what it's you we're talking about something extraordinarily abstract atmana means the self it is you the self when you say it cannot be objectified by mind it's beyond the reach of speech then we get the question that is it um is it unknowable so we can't know it you can't speak about it you can't even think of if you can't think about it you cannot speak about it you can't know it so what's the point of this entire exercise he says no atmana it's your very self it is more than known in fact to know anything first you have to be for you to be a knower you have to first exist that existence your pre-knowership existence that's already there that is what we are talking about and then it says akhila the substratum of the entire universe this is a word for god because in religion god is defined theistic religions god is defined as the creator of the entire universe the existence that which projects the entire universe so the substratum of the entire universe and when you put these together the self which is the substratum of the entire universe you get the central vedantic teaching i am brahman that thou art you are saying the self is that which is the substratum of the entire universe in the words of maester eckhart the ground of my soul and the ground of god are one and the same that which is the the reality of my soul and that which is the reality of god are one and the same is exactly what is meant here the self which is the foundation of the entire universe literally it's saying you are brahmana this is this is the meaning i take refuge in now this is a traditional way of approaching god but what what does this mean in this context ashrae literally means i take refuge in vishnu or in durga the worship of durga is coming up i take refuge in durga that's understandable i take refuge in god but oral refuge in the buddha but what does this mean i take refuge in myself so it basically means here ashrae means the only way you take refuge in yourself is to recognize yourself as a substratum of the entire universe that this one reality in which the universe appears and you the knower of the universe appears they are one reality atman is brahman recognizing this is taking refuge the meaning of taking refuge is this why are we doing all this abhishe for the fulfillment of my cherished goal abhishta cherished goal siddhi for success for success what is the cherished goal two meanings here one meaning is um for enlightenment the whole purpose is for realizing that i am brahmana the whole of advaita veganta that's my cherished goal why is that a goal we'll see because if you attain that you attain the ultimate purpose of human life which can be stated in two ways one is freedom from the cycle of birth and death which is a common trope in all indian philosophy except the materialists and the second way of putting it is attainment of fulfillment and transcendence of sorrow um transcendence complete transcendence of sorrow a complete cessation of sorrow and paramaananda prakti attainment of the ultimate fulfillment of ultimate bliss that is the result promised how do you do that through this enlightenment and so this enlightenment becomes my cherished goal that's one cherished goal the second cherished goal is where i began why do you have an invocation for the successful completion of the book for the successful completion of our study so that's our more practical and immediate concern for that purpose i take refuge india in the absolute that is the meaning of the first verse that's really a lot but basically it's all of advaita vedanta and don't worry i won't be spending so much time on each verse as we go along uh others will sort of cruise through all right let me stop here and deal with uh questions comments swamiji there's a akanda is indivisible aveda means no difference depending on these differences you have multiple systems of philosophy of religion if you admit uh vijayatha then you have dualistic vedanta vijayatha means other than god there are things and the dualistic system say yes the world is there human beings sentient beings are there and they are all different from each other and they're different from god so this is a thoroughly dualistic system so all of islam and and christianity and say the theistic judaism and the theistic hindu systems like dwight avedanta they are all firmly dualistic except of course in each of these traditions there will be a mystic those who have attained a realization of oneness so that's one system the other kind of system would be if you admit sajatha bheda brahman and other brahmanas then that will lead to polytheism if you admit swagatabheda and not other kinds of behavior that means internal difference but no external difference at all then you get vishishta where brahman is one reality but there are internal differences sentient beings are there and in sentient universe is there and they are all part of an organic divine whole okay um there are some raised hands gracie girish yes you have to unmute yourself can you hear me now yes i can hear you uh i'm afraid i have to go back to basics i keep going back and tying myself into knots about these things so the concept of brahman of a condom as we are saying is is actually born in the empirical domain of our human minds it would seem thus that the concept of non-dual brahman is is is a mental creation yes an abstraction perhaps even a convenient fiction to explain our experiences but on the other hand our minds which are conceiving this are also illusory because they are part of the maya projection yes so so it becomes sort of a circular thing in in in my mind and and and i keep asking myself so what is real i mean we are we inventing brahman and or is brahman inventing us or or and for that matter i do extend that further is is i i understand and people have said and i think you have said too that advaitha is a concept and or a model and is it is it a model that is closer to to say sankhya or yoga and so please explain expound on that yes one thing about this invocation is it's actually not a teaching it just seems to encompass the entire advaitha system what we just heard here is is what we are going to study throughout this book and in all the upanishads and so on and so forth it's they're not taking it as anything accomplished or something that you have to believe in it's just a sketch of what's to come but straight answer to your question would be what is the truth here even this brahmana and all of this these seem to be concepts true the truth is you what they are pointing out is one inescapable fact whether you are a materialist atheist a theist vedantin whatever you believe in it is you who are believing in it it is you who disbelieve in it it is you who understand it you who fail to understand it you who remember or fail to remember all of that is you what is this you this is the inquiry uh in in vedanta we'll see so the straight answer of the vedante would be you you are the truth you are the truth um all truth appears to you you validate or and uh dis uh and dis validate um invalidate any kind of statement or proposition and that way vedanta is very tight is it close to sank here in some ways but it is much more revolutionary than sankhya sankhya for example is is actually very elegant and not very difficult to uh swallow you know because all that strong thank you says is that your pure consciousness and apart from you there is this material nature you have appropriated a part of material nature into your identity that's why you're in trouble you think you are this body mind but actually body mind is objective they are parts of nature and you are a consciousness apart from body mind and that's it why is this easier to understand because our general structure of experience is subject object we are subjects we experience objects and sankey just takes that one step further it puts what we thought were subject this body and my mind and my thoughts and puts them in the category of objects and see the resultant freedom and that's it stop them but advaitha says goes much further it goes on to say that you this pure consciousness it follows the sunken track of thinking and then where sankhya stops it goes further it says you the pure consciousness are you different from all these other people there are 63 people people here today are there 63 pure consciousnesses or one advaita makes the radical claim that we are one pure consciousness and there are arguments to prove this and ways to understand this it goes further that which is seems to be an other to consciousness here we have other than consciousness is non-conscious insentient material is that really separate from you or is it in some sense you and advertise the even further radical claim this entire universe which we are conscious of it is nothing other than we the consciousness that's the meaning of the the falsity of the universe it's false as a separate entity apart from brahman it is brahman all these differences are appearances which is the great doctrine of the theory of appearance okay let's see there are other questions a person like you and your reflection are identical so is it correct to say brahman alone exists and the world is a reflection of brahman let me stop you right there you and your reflection are identical so when you look at your reflection in the mirror what do you mean by identical the reflection in the mirror is similar to your face but it's not you identical beings one and the same only one reality but the reflection in the mirror is is not uh the same as your face if you have ten mirrors you'll see 10 reflections so clearly the reflection is different the reflection is not identical to your face it's actually identical to the mirror it looks like your face so 10 minutes 10 reflections if the mirror is concave it will not even look like your face the mirror is convex it will not even look like your face so reflection is never identical to the original reflection is rather an appearance of the original given a reflective medium medium that's when they're putting it so is the world a reflection of brahman um reflection of brahman yes and no we will see later on all this will come up idea of maya what is brahman what is the atman how did we become these sentient beings we seem to be different from brahman how does this world appear all of that will be discussed and the whole methodology of vedanta will be discussed i won't go into it now yes next g nam swamiji so one of the things that this akhila dharam brings to me is in his own humorous ways that alan watts would point to um our own experience of going into deep sleep and he would say jokingly just reflect on the thing that if you go into deep sleep and never wake up and he says if you reflect on it more seriously this whole thing kind of brings more reality to the fact that we are the substrate because the world as we know it won't exist anymore so only when we wake up the world comes into being as we know it in terms of all the differences and me and you and everybody else but if he never woke up that's it and he actually funnily enough he supposedly died that way i mean he went into deep sleep and never broke up so i don't know i mean if you could i know you are the one who introduced me to ellen port so you probably know what he was pointing to uh or was it something just for fun yes this is the influence of mandukya um yeah so this is the advantage and the problem of having started at the top so we are right now starting from the base cam building up you know getting the building blocks of advaita vedanta and slowly building up we'll come to that eventually manduka takes a very high stand a non-dualistic stand everything you are the witness of the presence and absence of experiences presence of experience or presence of objects presence of objects waking state people and the world your own body dream state no external world but it seems to be like that in the mind still object of mental objects and the absence of objects which is deep sleep a blankness which is experienced but the the attention is always towards the object or the absence of the objects we are immersed we are enthralled in the waking state we are bewitched by our dreams and we are dulled and deadened by the uh blankness of deep sleep but who is the one what is the one uh to which these three are shining and disappearing that is what alan watts is pointing towards and vedantes pointing towards and it's a very stunning claim whatever you see in the world right now this entire vast universe so full of temptation so full of trouble so full of anxiety is exactly the same what you experience in deep sleep there is nothing more right now than what was there in deep sleep can you imagine is that scary or is that a big big relief least yes if it is true now you can experience this world both yourself and everything around you with great peace with the deep peace of sushupti in fact don't fall asleep but with the complete rest and unconcerned of sushrupti deep sleep you can actually experience this world with what's on the air called intense activity in the midst of eternal calm eternal calm is what you experience as in your real nature okay good question but several steps ahead of what we are doing right now yes i have a question why why did shankar need to have multiple crucials and not just one purusha to explain their philosophy i mean i use i'm just trying to think that they could have just one purusha and prophecy and several body minds and they could still have the same why what's the significance of having multiple crucial each one of us being a separate pollution is fundamentally pluralistic they give five major arguments to say why we require several purushas um they take pluralism as given so multiple external realities which are all products of prakriti and each of us are separate uh pure consciousness why separate the arguments which they give are like this that if we were one pure consciousness one purusha then the bondage of one would be the bondage of all the liberation of one if my guru became liberated then we would all become i would become liberated everybody would become liberated uh if the death of one would be the death of everybody the birth of one would be the birth of everybody because we are all one the waking of one would be the waking of everybody if one fell asleep and everybody would fall asleep but you know these arguments do not hold water we can easily see that here you are importing properties of body and mind into the purusa it's the body which is born if one body is born does not mean that all bodies will be born so why would you say that all purushas are bottomed with the body is born so on but that's the way they look at it if you take that step one more step there that it's all one consciousness advaita vedanta at that point asks if there are many consciousnesses how do you distinguish why would you say there are many pure consciousnesses there is no answer to that so advaita would say that we are one pure consciousness all distinctions are of body and mind and notice the first word of this book is a condom no distinction no difference so no distinction or no difference means all these distinctions and differences which sankhya talks about or all the other systems talk about they are experienced but they are not real this is one thing to understand which advaita vedanta catches hold of one thing notice one thing that the differences in the world cannot be denied we are experiencing it don't you experience it there are so many people we see so many people we hear so many things we note the presence of so many millions and billions of entities so that cannot be our experience cannot be denied if you deny you say no you are not seeing many people you're just seeing one reality that is madness then you cannot proceed you cannot proceed with any kind of philosophy but what advaita cleverly does is advaita says we are not denying that you experience division we are not denying that you experience difference but that difference of division which you experience is it real or is it apparent often where there is unity we experience difference dreams in our dream world we experience so many things so many people so many places so many events world of difference and yet when we wake up what we say what do we say it was all our mind only we experience a variety of golden ornaments and yet we know it is gold only we experience 10 000 waves in the atlantic ocean we know it is one mass of water only so multiplicity can be experienced with an underlying oneness that we know and that's what advaita vedanta takes advantage of advaita vedanta never denies that you experience multiplicity but questions what you experience is it real or is it an appearance and we have enough examples of appearances errors dreams you know brahma which means error so advaitha makes a big deal of that uses that difference so this is the crucial point but there can be a difference between experience and reality the famous british idealist philosopher bradley uh he said uh in his book appearance and reality what appears is not real and the reality never appears he's playing on the word appearance in english two meanings something that you experience is an appearance and something that is pretending is an appearance he appears to be a nice person what do you mean what do you mean he's not a nice person in reality that means there's a difference between appearance and reality that's what that difference advaita vedanta exploits if you say there's only one reality non-dual and that's it no no no then you have to explain why it is why this multiplicity is appearing so that is the code meaning of brahma satyam brahman alone is real jagat mithya the world is an appearance and the clinching thing is you are grounded so yeah suppose you have to unmute yourself i know i i'm i'm a beginner so i'm so happy that you started this book for me i'm very happy for that i have a question was maybe i don't know i was wondering you said so do you have to realize it or you have i have to tell my mind i have to keep telling no i am this you have to realize it yes as clearly as you know that you are sushma as clearly as that you have to realize it should become a natural fact so for that we have to understand what is haram what is meant by atman and then the the point of advaitha vidante is that this will become clear to us it will first become intellectually clear to us and then it will deepen into enlightenment thank you thank you velante makes the claim that it's already a fact and it's very unfortunate that we don't see it and vedanta just wants to point out to us what is the fact and help us to see it and makes the promise if you see it that is enlightenment already an accomplished fact siddha siddha means it's an accomplished fact you don't have to actually do anything you have to realize what already exists if you realize that you will be free of it so all our suffering is born of a mass of ignorance ignorance about ourselves it is like a person who is delusions maybe psychotic or schizophrenic and the person you know there is nothing wrong with the world there is nothing wrong with the world but that person feels terrible people are persecuting you know beautiful mind the movie was there so much problem is there and you know there's nothing wrong at all and the person could just snap out of that and experience the real world as it is would see that all the problems are solved similarly in advaita vedanta you already are brahmana there is absolutely no problem here you are fine as it is but you have to investigate your own nature to to discover that uh so whenever i go somewhere i try to see the oneness in in everything and in everyone and today i saw a number of homeless and i usually always give a little but now i see them with different eyes and i suffer more and i i can no longer just pass without helping but i don't have the financial means to help everyone in new york but i find a true struggle with it now well by before i said okay i cannot help everyone but today i i suffered because i literally saw the underlying oneness i saw the divine consciousness i saw god and everyone suffering going through the garbage how do i deal with that if i if i would have means of course i would go around distributing money but i don't yet and do it in two ways one is at the practical level do something take some action which you can which is possible for you maybe you donate it even if to one individual or to an organization or something like that you take action within your within gabriel's uh limits what is possible for gabriel and you know that's very little there's very little that we can do to alleviate the sufferings of the world so you pray to the lord to pray to god for to bless them and to help people these are the two things that you can do remember philosophically speaking you are making a jump the oneness within which which is within everybody that's one thing and gabriel gabriel is a particular instance of that oneness gabriel is not the oneness the reality is on an intellectual level but i'm trying to apply the knowledge and i feel the more you apply the knowledge when you apply the knowledge when you apply the knowledge these do these two things one is take some practical step to help people i do and you do and pray to the lord to help them pray to them ultimately it's the lord who helps we do very little so pour out your suffering in in sincere prayer to god to help those who are in sacramento but can we not be the instrument to serve him you are i mean i worked 32 years for the united nations countries i mean i feel and if you instrument if you feel that way then then only one can become a true instrument uh in the hands of god then only karma yoga becomes real that you are worshiping god in all beings yes that that's true service then all right gabriel thank you we are okay thank you full note yes if i am brahman because i am god then how can god create me okay i am brahman is equal to i am god then how can god create me okay these are the things which the vidantasara will deal with in great detail notice there are three things here i brahman god and uh initially they all three will be different god is different i am different and brahman is the absolute so we begin with this uh with actually with god individual and world a triangle of god individual and world i am the individual here is the world that is clear to me and there is something called god which religion tells me holy people tell me that there is something called god we begin with this triangle this is the triangle of religion advaita vedanta wants to say that there is an ultimate reality brahman which appears as this triangle as this triangle of god world and individual is one brahman which appears as all three not only that you are you are brahmana god is also brahmana and the world is an appearance of brahman it's a superimposition on brahman so we'll leave it at that there'll be a in a very detailed discussion towards the end of the book uh in what sense am i brahman omg [Music] thank you very much you