Hari OM
'Text-days' are for delving into the words and theory of Advaita Vedanta.
In having summarised the schools of philosophy, the question might be asked, "is there a simple way to understand the concepts of bondage and liberation?" such as is described by Vedanta.
Ah< mmeTyy< bNxae nah< mmeit mu´ta,
Banxmae]aE gu[EÉRit gu[a> àk&its<Éva>.29.
Aham mametyayam badho naaham mameti muktataa,
Bhandhamokshau gunairbhaati gunaaH prakRti-sambhavaaH ||29||
This bondage is of the nature of "I" and "my". The negation of "I/my" is liberation. Bondage and liberation appear because of the gunas and the gunas are born of our innate nature.
We use "I" all the time, we lay claim to stuff continually as "mine" or define it is another's. So in tune with "I"ness are we, that we may not even notice when it is absent… throughout all your reading here at AV-bloggy, the personal pronoun has only ever been used in examples such as are required for this shloka, and only then, in quotation marks. At no time (other than the bio pages) will you have seen the writer refer to themselves in the first person singular. It takes practice, but it can be done!
Possessiveness is the root of this "I" obsession because the ego all the time makes us define things in terms of me and mine. We see ourselves as being the title we have at work, or the role we play at home. When we are asked 'who are you', we tend to respond in terms of 'what'; "I'm an engineer/doctor/ husband/wife…" It is our 'prkRti', our intrinsic nature.
This is represented here as bondage. Attachment to the material form of our existence. It results in feelings of loss and grief or anger and spite when our attachments are broken forcibly or against our desire. This is the bondage - that we see ourselves tied to these things. Therefore, to free ourselves of such bondage would be liberation. How to do this? Negate the "I"… and how to do that?
- Consider everything as God's
- Share all that is 'mine' with others
- Realise that 'my'ness causes sorrow and develop compassion
- Understand that 'my'ness is an effect from our mind and is not itself an object; it is subjective, changeable and cannot, therefore, be real, in absolute terms
- Understand that things and beings arrive and leave according to praarabdha - a result of prior actions - and are temporary. To grasp onto them, therefore, is foolhardy, but neither should we reject them entirely. All beings are in this together so can work together to get out of it. Khalil Gibran said it well; "Love one another, but make not a bond of love."
PrkRti is Maya at work. The illusion is the causative factor and 'nature' is the result. It has three qualities, sattva, rajas and tamas. These are endlessly mixed and matched to give each of us various levels of them. The qualities themselves are not made up of matter, as prkRti is, but the results they create are. Everything we are, the way we think and act, arises from a base of one or more of the trigunas. Given that we must work with them, then it makes sense to work hard to engender the nobler of the three (sattva) and do our best to tame our excess nature (rajas) and to quell our base character (tamas). The closer to sattva we come, the weaker becomes the ego and therefore "I"ness.
