Can we be free this moment? Swami Sarvapriyananda | Digesting Advaita #immortalbliss

the answer is yes and no yes it's instantaneous yes it's effortless and no it's neither instantaneous nor effortless it takes a lifetime or lifetimes of spiritual seeking the reason is only reason is the complication lies not in the in the in advaita the complication does not lie the ultimate reality in our real self the complication lies in the apparent self the complication lies in us what we have generated over lifetimes a cocoon of complexities that we have woven around ourselves and which takes a lot of undoing that's all that's all there's this story of the teacher and student goes to him please teach me about enlightenment please set me free the teacher says okay stay here used to stay in a cave you have to clean the cave and you have to bring go to the village and bring arms and so the student starts working very hard but days go by and end of two or three months he says this teacher has not taught me anything why why am i hanging around wasting my time i should go to some other teacher and it goes to teacher teacher you must set me free otherwise i'm going to go to some other teacher the teacher says all right come tomorrow i'll set you free so the next in the morning this student goes he's eager i'm going to be set free today and he sees the teacher standing outside the cave there's a big old tree and the teacher is grasping it like that and saying set me free set me free free me the student says but sir just let go the teacher said precisely now if i do not let go if i'm holding on tight with all my might and say free me then you have to work really hard to to pull out finger by finger and make me let go that's a lot of work the problem is the energy that we are putting into it in the in the opposite direction so where is the catch this first session is not about advaitha not about the teachings themselves it's about the foundations of advaitha with these foundations the teachings that come will lead to enlightenment effortlessly and instantaneously i kid you not without these foundations or without sufficient amount of this foundational work the teachings of advaita will even if we get it we just feel we have learned something very nice a nice philosophy of something really cool makes you feel nice and very very fascinating but the complaint will be always be you'll see this with this question i understand what you're saying but what do i do now you know traditional advaita teacher would say you haven't understood if you have understood you wouldn't say what do i do now and that seems like a way to make me shut up but no that's what happens with these foundational practices advaita leads to that advaithic teachings lead to to straight to enlightenment without sufficient foundational work they seem intellectual they seem like a fascinating intellectual game so what are these foundations i'll run through them they are the well-known and dreaded four-fold qualifications here is the difference between the bhakti path and the path of knowledge the path of devotion and love and the path of knowledge if you go to the path of devotion they'll never start with a four-fold qualification even one poll qualification so at least you need to love god no no no that will also come later you just need to make a beginning in a path of devotion but the path of knowledge is a sort of ivy league you need to have very high sat scores to get in so what are these uh these entry qualifications i remember a very ancient university in nalanda which is in india in the state of bihar it's the university um was around started around 580 and lasted to around 1280 and until it was destroyed by invaders so around it lasted for eight or nine nine hundred years seven eight to eight hundred years and i i was just thinking the oldest college in bellion is valuable in oxford the oldest college in oxford university is valued which started around that time 12th 13th century that's when nalanda ended this was a huge university 11 000 students at its peak and each student had his and usually it was his because it was a very patriarchal society their own room so it's huge the reason i'm saying this is they had an interesting system all those students who wanted to study in this great university of the east in the ancient india they would have to go through what what can be literally called an entrance examination at the entrance the gatekeeper would be a pundit the scholar and he will quiz you on grammar and and some literature and some of the basics of scripture some sort of set of things and if you pass it then you literally get to enter it i think that's how the name came entrance examination so that's the legend so what is the entrance examination here the fourfold qualifications um i'll write it down for you the sixth world treasure and the and mukshittwa so let me write down the words for you the fourth or qualification i'll give you the english meanings too viveka means analysis of discrimination discrimination are in a bad sense not discriminating against somebody or the other i'll say what it means but analysis of discrimination then why literally this passion and then shut somebody the six fold treasure six-fold treasure chest and finally [Music] which means an intense desire to be free so viveka which from which the name vivekananda comes means the discrimination between the eternal and the non-eternal eternal and non-eternal the sanskrit roots vivid which means to separate two things in our understanding if this clarity comes that there is some some spiritual reality some solution to the problem of life and that is worth having compared to everything else in life so the way it is put in vedanta is viveka is between nithya and anityavastu nithya means eternal and anitya means non-eternal between the eternal and non-eternal you'd say that how do i know there is something eternal we don't we have heard about it teachers have spoken about it the scriptural texts of different traditions speak about it there is a solution to human life there is and we have some kind of working faith in it all right maybe it's possible it attracts me something within me feels that there is something to it and as against this everything else in life so spiritual life really starts when it is not one among many things vivek v i v e k it's not one among many things yeah there is spirituality and my shopping to do and uh looking for a raise and a nice vacation in the bahamas next next year and one of the things i need to do is spirituality no no not in that way spiritual quest is first and foremost this is my life that might be possible for you swam you're a monk no it's for everybody the gita was taught to arjuna who was a householder and a warrior in the nastiest business that human beings have ever engaged in warfare and their vedantist start so if vedante is taught in the battlefield it's possible for us any any sphere of life but it requires that commitment that i want enlightenment the buddha wanted enlightenment that's why the prince siddhartha became the buddha in the quest for enlightenment so we are setting out on that same heroic quest that i want enlightenment i want this wisdom this darshan this theory that is ve vega the distinction between the eternal and the non-eternal second vairagya once the distinction becomes clear then where do you go from there i have a dispassion for the non-eternal and a passion for the eternal i have a dispassion for the non-spiritual and a passion for the spiritual i want to realize this you see it works for everything whether it whether the path of devotion or or mystical experience or the path of knowledge anywhere you must be that this is the thing for me i want to realize this and all other pursuits in life if you're a monk you give it up all the pursuits in life if you are in the world you cannot give it up you must you have to pay taxes and you have to take care of the family you have to play at least you take care of yourself so there those are secondary they become secondary even a monk in the himalayas the monk also has to go out to beg for his daily round of daily round of begging for for food there's a saying in the himalayas one of the names they use for monks is maharaja maharaja means king the great king now these people are beggars we are we don't have we don't uh own anything let alone a kingdom so why are you called a king so there's a saying in the himalayas that these monks they are they're beggars one hour a day and they are they are emperors 23 hours a day their beggars one hour a day when they go out begging for their daily food but other 23 hours their maharaja because they are completely set free from everything in the world um swami thuriyan and the used to love repeating this so vairagya what does it how do you become a maharaja whether you are a monk in the himalayas or in san diego which as we heard it's it's no less than varanasi so but the foundation must be vairakia vairagya is what protects us from the to-do lists of the world those are there they have to be accomplished but they are not primary to my life primary they have only one to-do thing to become enlightened so that is very rocky then here's a little trick an accounting trick um six-fold treasure it's supposed to be one but they have pushed in six here so the total becomes nine actually so you have uh six plus three so nine not four but anyhow they pushed it in you know that that's that story about they're hiring somebody in a company and the first person who comes in um is an engineer um and they ask a simple question what is two plus two an engineer quickly whips out his uh sliding rule and he does complex calculations and measurements he says it's approximately between um um 3.9 and four point one two plus two is somewhere in between that approximation and then a person comes with an accounting degree and they ask him what is two plus two he gets up and quickly shuts the door and comes in a hershey asks what do you want it to be what do you want it to be so that's you see it's supposed to be fourfold qualification and then they hit us with the nine fold qualification there's a fine print hidden casts in there you've started already okay i'll tell you the joke let me tell you the joke anyway because i started it in the vidanta society of new york the system is that the q and a we have we give a talk and then there's a q a and the q a goes on until the lunch is ready so somebody has to give me a signal that you know from the back there the lunch is ready so no more questions so sometimes i have to ask is the food ready and and people have given comments in the youtube section that why does he keep talking about food now we had once a visitor from from vienna austria this lady she's a professor of music she came visiting and she said i listen to those talks which are recorded here and i like it very much but one my one unhappiness is i never get the food so she finally came to new york and then she said this is i'm so happy at least i'm getting the food now she went and actually physically had the food there so the sampati this is what is called spiritual discipline americans would say getting your act together so what does it comprise of six things six six practices sampati means treasure shirt means six six treasures the first one is shamaha shamah it means quietude and inner calmness if the mind is running after 101 things then nothing is possible no great thing whether it's science or art or anything is possible if the mind is scattered and running after many different things so a little inner quietude of the mind is required that so that i can i can attend to i have decided i am going to under on the greatest adventure that a human being can set out on the spiritual adventure the quest for enlightenment so i must concentrate on that and that requires calmness a certain settledness and it takes a little bit of maturity to get that settledness i remember reading it's very interesting um monasteries we're always we want young people to come and join young people to come and join young people are not coming whether to the classes or the retreats or they are trying to pick out to become monks or nuns but i was reading swami ashoka nandiji in san francisco somebody was telling swami ashokan that young people are not coming where we need more young people to come and join the order as as monks and nuns and then he said no we don't need that young people are too volatile we need middle-aged people with a few decades of life and effort left in them so they are people but he has a point there means a certain a certain quiet sheet of mind which comes after maturity having taken a look at the world and sort of seen that all right this is what is there in the world now what's worth worth searching for what's what's worth putting my time and effort into my limited time and effort into i have very limited time and energy then next damaha damaha means control of sensory system damaha means control of sensory system i haven't written that down yet that comes in the six-fold practices if you want to write it in english you can write d-a-m-a dhamma and shama you can write s-a-m-a dhamma dhamma means control of the sensory system a tremendous amount of energy and activity is due to the activity of our senses our brains are continuously engaged i was just reading it seems one third of the neocortex is engaged with the eyes alone you open the eyes one third of the neocortex becomes busy with absorbing input information filtering it interpreting one third of our cognitive capacities i'm amazed i didn't know that but it is true the ancient yogis they knew this so control of the sensory system is necessary for any serious inner work eyes i want to see i want to see i want to see no want to see you can see the vedanta society and the vedanta text that's all you're going to see buddy so that's that's control of the eyes control of the taste the monks and this is very very non-glamorous but the monks they have a their conception of food is there is a disease called hunger and food is the medicine there's a disease called thirst and and you drink water or from the river ganga that's the medicine food and drink are treated as medicine somebody said swami you're going to wipe out half the businesses on broadway if you if you take a monastic approach to this if you walk down broadway amsterdam and all of that you'll see the two kinds of things going on there there's food new york is like one of the food capitals of the world people foodies love it and there's there are clothes there are clothes huge clothes jewels now if you make up your mind clothing is only one thing this that's it range of colors dresses no none of this that's all you have wiped out 99 of the garments in the universe industry and food is exactly what you get nothing else you're not going to seek out this this kind of food or that kind of food just enough to sustain yourself in so that is dharma control of the taste remember on all of these things you can immediately see there is a spectrum you can be an ascetic living on the bank of the river at 10 000 feet in the himalayas with where you take these to the maximum possible extent but there's a spectrum and we are already on the spectrum don't think that oh i don't have any of this what's the point why did i register for the retreat i could have relaxed at home no we already have it the very fact that we are willing to take the trouble of coming to this retreat and spending uh days and days listening practicing thinking we already have it without that one would not be interested so we have these fourfold qualifications just you have to top them up you have to keep an eye on them a modern example will be when you drive certain things you have to keep your eye on you to keep your eye on the road you have to keep your eye on the speed you have to keep your eye on the gas and things like that and your mirrors so these are the four things you have to keep your eye on when you're driving down the road of spiritual spiritual life uh how is my viveka doing how is my vairagya doing how are the six-fold practices and my desire to get enlightenment a dhamma control of the senses mostly it is eyes ears and tongue desire to see hear taste touch also touch is extremely powerful thing smell not so much so the fivefold the five sensory organs but the five motor organs too the desire to go from place to place i have legs just because i have legs do you have to continuously walk around just because i have hands you have to keep grabbing things no i don't obviously i use them when i need them i remember seeing this old charlie chaplin movie i think it was modern times with this they show the factory system and charlie chaplin is his job is to tighten the screws on the assembly which is coming each item comes he has to tighten the screw like this and that's he has got a wrench and all throughout day uh hour after hour day after day all he does is this this this and there is a lunch break so there's a siren goes up and there's a lunch break but he can't stop doing this it goes around doing this and the foreman comes and yells at him stop it and there's no sound there it's just you can see he's shouting at him and charlie chaplin takes his nose and does this [Laughter] but this is the point there our sensory systems are actually autonomous they have a certain inner intelligence to them our sensory systems and our motor organs have a certain limited we can understand it these days in the days of artificial intelligence and machines which have a little bit of intelligence in them um i heard the japanese are big on this all sorts of devices they talk and they everything including i heard horror of horrors the commode in the bathroom this it can talk and it can uh and our sensory organs have some autonomy just as an aside here jonathan height heidt he is a psychologist in the united states he's written this book the happiness hypothesis in that book he raises an important question so much is available today in positive psychology and if you go to the bonds and nobles every huge one of the huge biggest sections is the self books promising good relationships success in 30 days losing weight and gaining focus anything all that we want from this body-mind system all sorts of excellence is promised he says it should have revolutionized human happiness yet it does not we are not really very different and the publishing industry has benefited but we how i don't know how much we have benefited he asks why not it's not that these books are false they all have a nugget of truth to them so why why isn't it working and he says why isn't it isn't working is he gives the example of a elephant and it's writer it's an ancient indian example he says the elephant and the rider it's called the mahout mouth is the rider the one who sits on top of the elephant and wherever the mouth wants it to go the elephant goes but it works only the elephant and the mouth agree the elephant is much stronger than the mouth so the elephant wants to go and eat the bananas there and the mouth says no you have to go there and pick the logs in the forest no mouth cannot do anything the elephant is much much stronger it's only if the elephant agrees to the mouths commands then only it will go so what's the point the intellect our understanding is like the mouth is a rider and the body my rest of the body mind system is the elephant the physical body is the elephant our emotions perceptions prejudices the rest of it other than the intellect now here is the problem it's the intellect who goes to retreats and and reads books and papers and gets excited about ideas and makes decisions about this is the way i'm going this is great i have to get up early in the morning and do yoga here are the benefits i'm convinced i'm sold from tomorrow onwards i'm going to get up in the morning and do yoga when the time comes the intellect is convinced it's delighted it's wonderful when it comes early in the morning it's cold and you're comfortable under the under the comforter time to get up and do the yoga which the intellectual decided the body says i didn't sign up for that it's your idea you go and do yoga i'm not going the body is elephant and it never signs up for the for the fancy projects which they intellect the mouth signs up for it doesn't read papers or it it's not interested in the seminars it doesn't read books it doesn't get excited about ideas it's the intellect which gets excited and he says this is what happens to most of us our he says clearly the sensory system and the motor system they are not tuned with our with the latest ideas in our intellect and it would be odd to think that so what do they respond to he has a very interesting insight which is which agrees very well with these ancient teachers he says the intellect responds to reasoning it responds to ideas its response to teaching the body mind what does the elephant respond to not arguments not arguments not power point the elephant is not interested in that the elephant responds to training the only way you're going to get an elephant to listen to you is by training the elephant and the body responds to training the body is a creature of habit it's easy for somebody to get up at uh in the early in the morning and do yoga it's terribly difficult for the other person to do the same thing it's only a difference in habit what you have trained the body to do so the sensory system dhamma training of the sensory system is necessary control means training replacing dysfunctional habits with functional habits you may think it's very difficult what is difficult is making the transition afterwards it's not difficult as easy as it is for me to lie under an under the bed so is equally easy will it be for me to get up and do yoga once i made the transition equally uncomfortable for me to lie under bed after the sun is up because the habits have changed then um you have what is called titiksha titikshal it really means remember we are in the six fold uh practices dedication means spiritual toughness spiritual toughness a spiritual fortitude a toughness a fortitude whatever you try to accomplish in life life will make it difficult for you imagine the amount of trouble we put up for holding a job for raising a family years and years when you're today i'm sick i i don't feel like going to pick up the kids you never say that they can walk home i don't care no you don't say that even if you're sick and unwilling you turn up at your job you turn up at the school to pick up the children and so and so forth that kind that's all that is required in spiritual path that kind of toughness and willing to put up with some trouble otherwise what happens is spiritual life is often a thing of fancy things are going well and i've got some time to spare and here are some nice books and rice retreats let me do that when things are tough these are the first things to be thrown overboard no do it the other way round this is the first thing i will hold on to especially when things get tough this is what i'll hold on to even more i loved it this martin luther uh the the protestant the monk who started the protestant movement in germany martin luther he writes in a place that his daily routine he spends an hour kneeling down and praying in the morning and he says when he has too much to do too much work to do he spends one more hour kneeling down and praying [Music] so this is the insight my strength comes from spiritual life and things are easy when things are tough i need more of that not less of that okay spiritual toughness the willingness to put up with trouble with illness with unhappiness with um financial problems relationship problems weather problems discomfort i'm willing to to put up with that in order to get spiritual um to go ahead on spiritual journey then okay and then you have um uparati and samadhana they go together uparati means rati means a delight in the things of the world taste and sense and touch and seeing uparati literally the opposite step back from multifarious sensory delights so that the energy and time is saved and use it for this samadh you need not write that and just hear that samadhana means focus so uparati means literally reverse the tendency to flow outwards for enjoyment turn inwards and samadhana means stay there stay there stick to your meditation stick to your devotional practices and stick to the vedantic inquiry this samadhana and then we have um shraddha which is a working faith that these teachings there's something in them worth pursuing a working faith in the teachings of this of the texts and the teachers this is a working faith a faith that it is so i don't get it yet i will let me persist and then the last one did i get all the six yes yes so we have got so we have got shama dhamma then we have got titiksha uparati and samadhan two different ones are two different ones so that's four and five this is sixth one is of faith so this faith sustains you in spiritual life notice none of them are anything remarkable you it's common sense any great endeavor you need to have these things and you need to have these things for spiritual life too the last one is an intense desire to be free in fact srirama krishna in the gospel of sunam krishna he says this last one is all that you need for spiritual life he called it bayakulata a restlessness for god a restlessness for enlightened enlightenment i want it i want it i want it that's all that there is to it so why not just say that here's the problem if i say go and eat we say okay if i say go and be hungry they'll scratch your head either i feel hungry or i don't feel hungry how can i be hungry worship god okay love god love is not a feeling that uh you can create like that so intense desire to be free either you feel it or you don't feel it how can you generate you can sort of simulate it maybe but it has to come from within it's like hunger so here is the one thing i'll say before i end there's a secret about these fourfold qualifications the secret is this they are causally linked not casually causally linked the preceding one is the cause of the next one what it means is this viveka generates vairagya viveka generates this clarity that there is something to be attained in spiritual life then you would want to have that and you would dismiss you'll have the power to dismiss other pursuits in life so viveka generates vairakya and vivek and together they generate and strengthen the six-fold treasures the spiritual disciplines they become strong and then awaken if awakened you're not there there are people who practice lots of spiritual disciplines but vivek and vairagi are not there so they don't make much progress in spiritual life the people who practice ritual is some kind of ritual practice some kind of austerity is lifelong will still remain very worldly and not not particularly spiritually enlightened vivek and veda are causally linked these two generate this and all three together or all eight of them together they generate and strengthen mumuksu if i have these my desire for god becomes stronger and stronger my desire for enlightenment becomes stronger and stronger if these are weak this is equally weakened practical point here this one take away remember this castle link how to apply this whenever we have practical problems in spiritual life identify where is the problem and here is the secret whenever we have a problem i can't give up my desire for such and such thing you know i want it i'm struggling with it here is the problem you're struggling with it don't struggle with that i have a problem with very dispassion for the world and what normally the usual tendency is to struggle with that only yeah this is the secret don't struggle with that go back to the previous thing and then try to strengthen them strengthen will come strength desire for god will come automatically thank you very much thank you

Channel: Children Of Immortal Bliss

Views: 27,523

Rating: 4.9439254 out of 5

Keywords: swamisarvapriyananda, swami, sarvapriyananda, sarvapriyanandaji, advaitavedanta, vedanta, childrenofimmortalbliss

Id: BHG9_3d6cEE

Length: 34min 18sec (2058 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 25 2021