Japa of ‘I am’ as an aid to self-attentiveness

After I wrote my previous article, ‘Holy indifference’ and the love to be self-attentive, a series of interesting comments have been posted on it discussing the use of japa (repetition) as an aid to the practice of self-attentiveness. In the most recent comment in this series Hans wrote:

... To me it is important to understand the connection between japa which is an object and “I am”. As I do experience, the “me” practicing japa vanishes and some silent apperception of being appears which I am unable to describe. I suppose this is still another subtle object, however I can’t proceed any further. May be Michael will clear up this state of affairs. ...

Other than our pure and absolutely non-dual self-consciousness ‘I am’, everything that we experience is ‘still another subtle object’, as Hans rightly calls it.

That is, so long as we experience ourself as an individual (a mind or separate consciousness) who is practising self-attentiveness (trying to know ‘who am I?’), we have not yet experienced ‘I am’ in its absolutely pristine form (because when we do experience it thus our mind will be destroyed forever), so whatever we experience while practising is ‘still another subtle object’ — a subtle thought experienced by a separate thinking consciousness.

However, as our self-attentiveness becomes increasingly refined and subtle, the subtle thoughts that seemingly obscure our pristine self-consciousness become increasingly tenuous and transparent, enabling us to experience ‘I am’ ever more clearly.

Therefore our sole aim during practice should be to centre our entire attention more vigilantly, keenly, accurately, exclusively, solely and clearly on, in and as ‘I am’. This is the only means by which we can ‘proceed any further’ and eventually reach our goal, the experience of true self-knowledge.

In other words, whatever subtle experiences — thoughts or objects — may arise as we proceed, our sole aim should be to try to know ‘who is experiencing all this?’

Hans wrote, ‘To me it is important to understand the connection between japa which is an object and “I am”’. It is true that japa is objective, because it is a vocal or mental repetition of a word or words, and all words are objects. However, the real aim and purpose of japa is to direct our attention not just towards the word that we are repeating but towards whatever is denoted by that word (for example, if we repeat a name of God, our aim should be to fix our attention firmly upon the thought of God), so if we repeat ‘I’ or ‘I am’, our aim should be to use these words as an aid to help us to fix our attention firmly on our essential consciousness of being, which is what they really denote.

Hans then wrote, ‘As I do experience, the “me” practicing japa vanishes and some silent apperception of being appears which I am unable to describe’. This is precisely what we should experience when we repeat ‘I’ or ‘I am’ correctly, trying to fix our entire attention on the consciousness that they denote.

That is, in order to repeat ‘I’ or ‘I am’, the thinking and object-knowing consciousness that we call ‘me’ (our mind or ego) must be present, but when our entire attention is fixed solely on our essential consciousness of being, ‘I am’, this false ‘me’ will vanish (or will at least subside to a considerable extent), since it can appear to exist as a separate entity only when it seems to be knowing anything other than itself.

When this false thinking ‘me’ thus vanishes or subsides as a result of our keen self-attentiveness, what remains in its absence is our natural clarity of pure non-dual self-consciousness, which Hans describes accurately as ‘some silent apperception of being ... which I am unable to describe’.

As Hans wrote in his earlier comment, japa ‘will drop off as awareness [self-attentiveness] increases’, because japa cannot continue in the absence of the ‘me’ who was practising it. Therefore, though japa of ‘I’ or ‘I am’ can be an effective tool that we can use to help us fix our attention firmly in and as our simple being, ‘I am’, we must allow it to subside or ‘drop off’ as soon as it has served this purpose.

So long as we are firmly established in our natural state of silent self-consciousness, no japa is necessary or even possible, but whenever we slip down from this state (and particularly when our mind is excessively agitated by thoughts or anxieties), silently repeating ‘I’ or ‘I am’ can be a powerful aid in our effort to restore our calm self-attentiveness.

‘Holy indifference’ and the love to be self-attentive

In reply to a friend who wrote to me asking for some advice concerning the psychological effects of some health problems that he was experiencing, I wrote as follows:

Whatever we experience in our outward life as a body-bound mind or ego, we are destined to experience for a purpose, and the ultimate purpose behind all that we experience is for us to learn the essential lesson of detachment.

Nothing that we experience — other than ‘I am’ — is real or lasting. It is all just a fleeting appearance, as are the body and mind that we mistake to be ourself. But so long as we attend to these fleeting appearances — that is, so long as we allow them to encroach in our consciousness — their seeming reality will be sustained and nourished.

Therefore, if we wish to rest peacefully in and as our essential being, ‘I am’, we must learn to ignore all appearances, and we can ignore them only by being completely indifferent to them (‘holy indifference’, as the Christian mystics call it). That is, only when we are truly indifferent to everything else, knowing it all to be just a fleeting dream, will we have the strength to cling firmly to ‘I am’ alone.

Clinging to ‘I am’ alone means having our entire consciousness centred on, in and as ‘I am’ to the complete exclusion of everything else. Only in this state of absolute self-attentiveness or self-abidance can we experience the profound peace and infinite joy of just being, knowing nothing other than ‘I am’.

Because of the strong desire for and attachment to the fleeting experiences of our ephemeral mind that we have accumulated during the course of innumerable dreams (so-called bodily ‘lifetimes’), our attention is constantly being drawn back to such things, but the more we cultivate the habit of being self-attentive — even if at first it is just for brief moments now and then — the more our desires and attachments will be weakened, and the more our love just to be will be nourished and grow.

Therefore persistent practice of self-attentiveness is necessary — in fact, it is the only solution to all our problems. No matter how difficult the struggle to overcome all our desires by means of simple self-attentiveness — trying to know ‘who is desiring all these things?’ — may appear to be, we can be sure that we will certainly succeed by steadfast perseverance.

That is, though our love to be self-attentive (which is true bhakti or devotion to God, since the true form of God is none other than ‘I am’, our own essential self) may appear at first to be very weak and tenuous, when we steadily cultivate it by practice, it will gradually begin to snowball, increasing in intensity exponentially, until eventually it will entirely consume us and all our petty desires, thereby establishing us firmly and eternally in the infinitely peaceful and joyful state of pristine self-conscious being.

Therefore we should never despair, but should patiently and persistently continue to practise simple self-attentiveness or self-remembrance. As Sri Ramana says in the eleventh paragraph of Nan Yar? (Who am I?):

... If one clings fast to uninterrupted svarūpa-smaraṇa [self-remembrance] until one attains svarūpa [one’s own essential self], that alone [will be] sufficient. ...

The love to be self-attentive that we now have at least in small measure and that we must continue to cultivate is the truest and most pure form of God’s grace, because he is the clear light of consciousness that shines in our heart as ‘I am’, and because of his infinite love for us, he enkindles in our heart the clarity to discriminate the real from the ephemeral, and this clarity manifests itself as the love to attend only to that which alone is real, ‘I am’.

Thinking, free will and self-attentiveness

The following is a reply that I recently wrote to a friend:

Regarding your final sentence, ‘We are only given the thoughts that we are allowed to have, and we can only act from the thoughts we are given’, who gives us the thoughts that we are allowed to have? Nothing really comes from outside ourself, so whatever we are ‘given’ to think must come from within.

The truth is that all thinking is done only by our mind, the spurious form of consciousness that experiences itself as ‘I am this body, a person called so-and-so’, but there are two forces that impel our mind to think whatever it thinks.

One of these two forces is our destiny or prarabdha, which is the ‘fruit’ or consequences of our past actions that God has selected and ordained for us to experience in this lifetime, because in order to experience our prarabdha it is necessary for us to think certain thoughts and do certain actions. For example, if we are destined to do a certain job, our prarabdha will impel us to think all the thoughts and do all the actions that are necessary to get that job, such as studying for the required qualifications, applying for the job and answering the questions that we are asked at the interview.

However, only a small proportion of all the thoughts that we think are necessary for us to experience our allotted prarabdha, so the vast majority of our thoughts are not impelled by our prarabdha but only by our vasanas, which are the seed-forms of our desires that we have cultivated by our thoughts and actions in the past. In other words, the force that impels our mind to think most of its thoughts is not our destiny but our own free will.

However, since our destiny is the fruit of actions that we have done in the past according to our own free will, the ultimate driving force behind all our thoughts is our free will, whether exercised in the past or at present. Therefore that which ‘gives’ us whatever thoughts we think is ultimately only our own free will, so we alone are responsible for all our thoughts and actions.

Since thinking and doing actions are not our natural state, which is just being, they are a misuse of our free will, and all that we experience (other than ‘I am’) is a result of such misused free will. Since we are free to will whatever we want, the solution to all our problems is to use our free will correctly by cultivating the love just to be.

This love just to be (without thinking anything) is called sat-vasana (the inclination to experience nothing other than being) or svatma-bhakti (self-love), and we can cultivate it only by persistently practising self-attentiveness, because so long as we are attending to anything other than ‘I’ our mind is engaged in the activity of thinking. That is, whereas our mind rises only by attending to things other than itself (namely thoughts and seemingly ‘external’ objects) and remains active so long as it continues to attend to such other things, it subsides by attending to itself and remains inactive so long as it continues to be self-attentive.

The more we persevere in our practice of self-attentiveness, the more our mind will be purified of all its desires or visaya vasanas (inclinations to experience things other than itself), and the more clearly its natural inner light of self-consciousness will shine. Thus when we persistently practise self-attentiveness, our love for the natural peace and joy of just being as we really are (that is, clearly self-conscious but free of the self-obscuring cloud of thoughts) will steadily increase, until finally it will become so intense that it will consume all our other desires in the clear light of absolutely pristine self-consciousness.

Since the ‘will of God’ is that we should be happy, and since we can truly be happy only by knowing ourself as we really are, when we persistently use our free will to be self-attentive and thereby to experience ourself as we really are, we are truly surrendering our own will to the will of God.

And since we now appear to be separate from him only because we are constantly misusing our will by liking to experience anything other than ourself, when we use it correctly by surrendering it to him, we are truly surrendering ourself entirely to him. Therefore, as Sri Ramana says in the thirteenth paragraph of Nan Yar? (Who am I?):

Being completely absorbed in atma-nistha [self-abidance], not giving even the slightest room to the rising of any other cintana [thought] except atma-cintana [self-contemplation or self-attentiveness], alone is giving ourself to God. ...

Self-attentiveness is nirvikalpa – devoid of all differences or variation

A friend recently wrote to me suggesting:

... Indeed Nan Yar? contains everything we need to know and I would be very grateful if you would do translation for mumukshu, giving roman transliteration of every word according to the dictionary (minimum two words which fit in this context) and indicate why you use such and such a word when we could use other (I mean non-trivial words). I don’t know Tamil, that’s why I say such translation is very good for mumukshu. I like your translation but it’s still arbitrary. Giving transliteration you enable all people with different vasanas to create their own translation.

In the same e-mail he wrote about a ‘really great and powerful master who doesn’t speak much but is teaching through experience’, saying that this master ‘advises atma-cintana and if someone can’t he tells to do svarupa-dhyana or mantra japa etc.’ He also wrote that ‘There’s no difference of experience if we use atma-vicara, pranayama or other techniques’, and that ‘I found that Bhagavan used the name atma-vicara and svarupa dhyana, atma cintana to indicate different stages of practice’.

In reply to this e-mail I wrote as follows:

All differences exist only in our mind, and not in reality. Ātma-vicāra (self-investigation), svarūpa-dhyāna (self-attentiveness), svarūpa-smaraṇa (self-remembrance), ātma-cintanā (self-meditation), ātma-niṣṭhā (self-abidance) and summā iruppadu (just being) are various terms that Sri Bhagavan uses in Nan Yar? (Who am I?) to denote the non-dual practice (or state) of being self-attentive. There are truly no differences in the one non-dual state that all these terms describe.

When our attention is entirely centred in ourself, where is the room for any duality or differences? That is, when the attending consciousness is that which is attended to, all duality ceases.

In this state of pure self-attentiveness (or self-consciousness), even the ‘act’ of attending is not other than the one consciousness that is both attending and attended to, because the very nature of that consciousness is to be clearly self-conscious (or self-attentive). In other words, self-attentiveness is not really an ‘action’ but our very being, because our being is always clearly self-conscious — that is, conscious of itself as ‘I am’.

Thus self-attentiveness is not any form of objective attention, because it is the state in which attention (or consciousness) just remains centred in itself, as itself.

Therefore self-attentiveness is the only truly non-dual practice (or state), because in any other practice (such as prāṇāyāma) our attention is directed out towards something other than ourself, the one attending consciousness. Hence if we see any differences in this state, we have not understood it correctly. Pure self-attentiveness is the one truly nirvikalpa state (the only state that is devoid of all vikalpas or differences).

You say that ‘Atma-vicara state is the same as external nirvikalpa samadhi’, but in a state that is truly devoid of vikalpa (variation, diversity, distinction or difference), where is any room for any distinction such as ‘internal’ and ‘external’? Any terms that imply such differences are liable to distract our attention away from the essentially non-dual and therefore nirvikalpa nature of the simple state of self-attentiveness. That is why Sri Ramana avoided using terms such as bahya-nirvikalpa-samādhi (external nirvikalpa samādhi) and āntara-nirvikalpa-samādhi (internal nirvikalpa samādhi) except when he was specifically asked about them.

Incidentally, there appears to be an inconsistency in what you write, because in one sentence you say (referring to the ‘great master’ whom you write about), ‘He advises atma-cintana and if someone can’t he tells to do svarupa dhyana’, but further on you say, ‘He said that atma-cintana, svarupa dhyana are the same’. It is true that ātma-cintanā and svarūpa-dhyāna are the same, because both terms mean self-meditation or self-attentiveness, but why then to advise someone who cannot do ātma-cintanā to do svarūpa-dhyāna?

Moreover, who cannot ‘do ātma-cintanā’? We all know ‘I am’ more clearly than we know any other thing, so who cannot meditate upon ‘I am’? What can be easier than simply centring our attention in its own natural centre and source, ‘I am’?

It is true that our outward-going desires do make it appear difficult for us to remain firmly centred in ‘I am’, but anyone who truly wants to remain thus can overcome this seeming difficulty by persistently returning to the centre from which everything is known whenever his or her attention is distracted away from it by the desire to think of anything else.

I agree that Nan Yar? contains everything that we need to know, and one of the projects that I would like to do in future is to write a detailed explanatory word-for-word translation of it, as you suggest. I know that this will be a very big task, but it is one that I look forward to doing if Sri Ramana gives me the time to do so.

‘Tracing the ego back to its source’

A friend recently wrote to me asking:

I am stuck at a point where I feel I need help ... While reading Sri Ramana Maharshi’s work and Talks, there is this constant mention of tracing the ego back to the source. When I try to do it there is an arresting of thoughts and a feeling near my chest and I am not able to proceed further. I will be very grateful if you could suggest something in this regard.

In reply to this I wrote as follows:

What exactly does ‘tracing the ego back to the source’ mean? To answer this question we must first understand how the ego left its source, because as Sri Ramana sometimes used to say, we must ‘go back the way we came’, and before we can do that, we must understand what ‘the way we came’ actually is.

In verse 25 of Ulladu Narpadu Sri Ramana explains how the ego rises from its source (our real self), how it remains away from its source, and how it will eventually subside back into its source:

Grasping form [that is, attaching itself to a body] it comes into existence; grasping form [that is, attending to thoughts or perceptions of a seemingly external world] it stands [or endures]; grasping form it feeds and grows [flourishes or expands]; leaving [one] form it grasps [another] form. If [we] seek [search, investigate, examine or scrutinise it], it will take flight. Know [that this is the nature of this] formless ghost-ego.

That is, since this ego has no form (no finite or separate existence) of its own, it can seemingly come into existence and endure only when we imagine ourself to be a form (a physical body), and it flourishes when we attend to any form (anything that appears to be separate from ourself). In other words, since this ego is thus just a ‘formless ghost’, it can rise, endure and flourish only by ‘grasping form’, and hence when it tries to ‘grasp’ (or attend to) itself, which is not a form, it will subside and disappear.

The truth that Sri Ramana teaches us here can therefore be rephrased thus: our mind or ego is nourished and sustained by attending to anything other than itself, and hence it will be dissolved and destroyed only by attending to itself. This is a fundamental and extremely important truth, which I have described elsewhere as the ‘first law of consciousness’ or ‘first law of the science of self-knowledge’.

In order to trace our ego back to its source, therefore, all that we need do is to scrutinise it keenly and closely, because as soon as we begin to attend to it, it will begin to subside and sink back into the source from which it originated. Thus we can ‘go back the way we came’ only by being vigilantly self-attentive.

You say that when you try to trace your ego back to its source, ‘there is an arresting of thoughts and a feeling near my chest and I am not able to proceed further’. When we attend to our ego, all other thoughts will naturally be arrested, because thoughts can rise and persist only when we think them, so when our mind is fully engaged in attending to itself (its essential thought ‘I’), no other thought can arise.

However, if we experience a feeling near our chest, our attention has obviously been distracted away from ourself towards our body. Since our body, our chest and any physical sensation are all only thoughts, we will not be aware of them when all thoughts have really been arrested.

That is, any feeling near our chest is only an objective experience — something that the knowing subject, ‘I’, experiences as other than itself — and all objective experiences are only thoughts that we form in our mind by our kalpanā-śakti or ‘power of imagination’ (which is otherwise called māyā), so as long as we experience any such objective phenomenon, we are not actually experiencing a state devoid of all thoughts. In the truly thought-free state, we will be conscious of nothing other than our mere being, ‘I am’.

Therefore, in order to ‘proceed further’, whenever we become aware of our body or of any feeling in it — or of anything else other than ‘I’ — we should regain our self-attentiveness by investigating ‘who am I, who am aware of these things?’

The fact that we can free ourself from all thoughts and return to the source (or ‘birthplace’) from which we arose as this ego only by attending vigilantly to ‘I’ is clearly explained by Sri Ramana in the sixth, eleventh, tenth and thirteenth paragraphs of Nan Yar? (Who am I?):

... If other thoughts rise, without trying to complete them [we] should investigate to whom they have occurred. However many thoughts rise, what [does it matter]? As soon as each thought appears, if [we] vigilantly investigate to whom it has occurred, ‘to me’ will be clear [that is, we will be clearly reminded of ourself, to whom each thought occurs]. If [we thus] investigate ‘who am I?’ [that is, if we turn our attention back towards ourself in order to discover who or what we really are], [our] mind will return to its birthplace [our real self, which is the source from which it arose]; [and since we thereby refrain from attending to it] the thought which had risen will also subside. ...

... As and when thoughts arise, then and there [we] should annihilate them all by vichāraṇā [vigilant self-investigation] in the very place [or source] from which they arise. ...

... Without giving room even to the doubting thought, ‘Is it possible to dissolve so many vāsanās [desires to think and experience objective phenomena] and be only as self?’, [we] should cling tenaciously to svarūpa-dhyāna [self-attentiveness]. ...

Being completely absorbed in ātma-niṣṭha [self-abidance], not giving even the slightest room to the rising of any other chintanā [thought] except ātma-chintanā [self-contemplation or self-attentiveness], alone is giving ourself to God. ...

Therefore in practice ‘tracing the ego back to its source’ means only attending vigilantly to our ego or finite sense of ‘I’ in order to make it subside back into our pristine non-dual self-conscious being, ‘I am’, which is the source or ‘birthplace’ from which it originated.

‘Just sitting’ (shikantaza) and ‘choiceless awareness’

A friend recently wrote to me as follows:

I have been reading chapter 9 (Self-Investigation) of your book Happiness and the Art of Being.

What you describe regarding the practice of atma-vichara as advocated by Ramana Maharishi, I interpret as being very similar to the practice of choice-less awareness, or shikantaza, as it is commonly referred to by Zen practitioners.

The significant difference between the two techniques is that I, as a Zen practitioner, am trained to use the power of attention in order to step back from ‘I’ thoughts and ‘I’ feelings. And thereby effectively return to the abiding silence.

The self-investigation technique in contrast uses the question, who?, whose?, where? etc in order to disentangle from ‘I’ thoughts and ‘I’ feelings, effectively returning to the abiding silence (and yes, I understand that you prefer to define self-investigation as the practice of being nothing other than oneself and not a process of mental questioning).

Some ‘I’ thoughts and feelings are so very powerful that challenging the validity of the ‘I’ by directly asking who? whose? where?, may very well be a more potent technique for disentangling from the ‘I’ chain, thereby returning to the abiding silence.

In reply to this I wrote as follows:

I understand what you are saying, but I think a few points in what you write require some clarification.

Firstly you refer to ‘I’ thoughts and ‘I’ feelings, but actually there is only one thought (or feeling) ‘I’, which is our ego, the subject who thinks all other thoughts. This single thought ‘I’ may appear in any number of different forms, because it identifies itself with many different adjuncts, but though its forms may thus be many, it itself is just one, because we never feel that we are more than one ‘I’.

This single thought ‘I’ is a compound form of consciousness, because it is a mixture of our pure non-dual consciousness of being, ‘I am’, and various adjuncts such as our body and mind. That is, when we feel ‘I am this body’, ‘I am a person called so-and-so’, ‘I am sitting’, ‘I am reading’, ‘I am thinking’, ‘I am seeing’, ‘I am hearing’, ‘I perceive this world’, ‘I know this or that’, ‘I remember’, ‘I hope’, ‘I believe’, ‘I want this or that’, ‘I am happy’, ‘I am unhappy’ and so on, the ‘I’ that feels all these is our primal thought ‘I’, our mind or ego.

In verse 18 of Upadesa Undiyar Sri Ramana explains that this thought ‘I’ is the root and essence of the false thinking consciousness that we call ‘mind’:

Mind is only [a collection of] thoughts. Of all [these thoughts], the thought called ‘I’ alone is the root. [Therefore] what is called ‘mind’ is [in essence just this root thought] ‘I’.

So long as this spurious thought ‘I’ appears to exist, we cannot really ‘step back’ or ‘disentangle’ ourself from it, because it appears to exist only when we experience ourself to be it. How can ‘I’ step back or disentangle itself from ‘I’? In order to disentangle ourself from it, we must erase it entirely, and since it is a mere illusion or figment of our imagination, we can erase it only by seeing through it — that is, by experiencing the reality that underlies it.

So long as we are attending to anything other than ‘I’, we are experiencing ourself as this spurious object-knowing ‘I’ (the ego or thought ‘I’), and thus we are sustaining it, nourishing the illusion that it is really ourself. But when we withdraw our attention from all other things by focusing it wholly and exclusive upon ourself, we are literally seeing through this false ‘I’, because by attending only to ‘I’ we begin to experience ourself as the one real ‘I’ — our pure adjunct-free non-dual self-conscious being, ‘I am’ — which underlies and supports the illusion of our false adjunct-bound thought ‘I’.

This false thought ‘I’ is a mere imagination, like the imaginary snake that we think we see lying on the ground in the dim light of dusk. If we look carefully at the imaginary snake, we will see through its false appearance and recognise that it is actually only a rope. Likewise, if we keenly scrutinise this primal imagination, our thought ‘I’, we will see through its false appearance and recognise that it is actually only the one real non-dual self-consciousness, ‘I am’.

Thus vigilant self-attentiveness is the only means by which we can effectively step back or disentangle itself from our false thought ‘I’, because it is an illusion that we can destroy only by carefully examining it and thereby seeing the reality that underlies it.

As you say, when we thus examine this false thought ‘I’ in order to know who or what it really is, we will ‘thereby effectively return to the abiding silence’, which is our essential self-conscious being, ‘I am’.

You say that in Zen Buddhism this practice is called shikantaza (which you describe as ‘choice-less awareness’), so I did a Google search to find out what exactly shikantaza means. According to the Wikipedia page about shikantaza, it literally means, ‘nothing but (shikan) precisely (da) sitting (za)’, or in other words ‘just sitting’. I assume that whoever coined this word in this context did not intend ‘just sitting’ to mean merely a state in which the body is just sitting, but intended it to mean the state in which our mind is ‘just sitting’ — that is, abiding free of all activity or thinking.

If this is really the intended meaning of shikantaza, it means the same as the Tamil term summā iruppadu, which means ‘just being’ and which Sri Ramana defines in the sixth paragraph of Nan Yar? (Who am I?) as ‘making the mind to subside in ātma-svarūpa [our essential self]’. That is, the adverb summā literally means without work or activity, leisurely, silently, peacefully, restfully, merely, only or just, and iruppadu is a verbal noun that literally means being, so summā iruppadu means just being without any activity whatsoever.

In verse 4 of Anma-Viddai Sri Ramana describes the state of summā iruppadu or ‘just being’ very clearly as follows:

... When [one] just is, having settled down without the least action (karma) of speech, mind or body, ah, in [one’s] heart only the light of self (ātma-jyōti) will be [one’s] eternal experience, fear will not exist, [and] only the ocean of happiness [will remain].

In order for us just to be, our mind must completely subside along with all its activity. In other words, the thinker — the primal thought ‘I’, which thinks all other thoughts — must cease to exist along with all its thoughts.

As Sri Ramana says in verse 2 of Anma-Viddai:

Only the thought ‘this body composed of flesh alone is I’ is the one thread on which [all the other] various thoughts are strung. Therefore if [one] goes within [by scrutinising] ‘Who am I? What is the place [the ground or source from which this false ‘I’ originates]?’ [all] thoughts will disperse [because their root will be dissolved], and self-knowledge (ātma-jñāna) will shine forth spontaneously as ‘I [am] I’ within the cave [of our heart]; this alone is silence, the one [non-dual] space [of pure being-consciousness], the abode of [true] happiness.

Since this primal thought ‘I’ (which always experiences itself as ‘I am this body’) will continue to exist as long as it is thinking of things other than itself, and since those other thoughts will continue to exist as such as long as it is thinking them, neither will subside unless the other also subsides. That is, so long as other thoughts exist, the first thought ‘I’ must be existing to think them, and since this thinking thought ‘I’ can exist as such only when it is thinking other thoughts, so long as it exists, other thought will certainly exist along with it.

Therefore this thought ‘I’ will cease to exist only when it ceases thinking of any other thing, and it will permanently cease thinking of any other thing only when its entire attention is fixed firmly upon itself. Though it does cease thinking when it falls asleep, it does so only due to sheer exhaustion, and hence it rises from sleep as soon as it has recuperated sufficient energy by resting in its essential being.

Therefore, in order to subside permanently, the thinking mind (the first thought ‘I’) must not only cease thinking of any other thing, but must also vigilantly focus its attention upon its own essential consciousness of being, ‘I am’. As Sri Ramana says in verse 16 of Upadesa Undiyar:

The mind knowing its own form of light [its essential light of self-consciousness, ‘I am’], having given up [knowing] external viṣayas [objects or experiences], alone is true knowledge.

That is, since this mind, our primal thought ‘I’, is an illusion, a false form of consciousness, it can be destroyed only by true knowledge of our real ‘I’, so to destroy it permanently we must focus our entire attention upon ourself — our true ‘form of light’ or self-luminous consciousness, ‘I am’ — thereby withdrawing it completely from all other things (which are only thoughts or figments of its imagination).

Therefore keen and vigilant self-attentiveness is the only effective means by which we can truly abide in silence, our natural state of ‘just being’, shikantaza or summā iruppadu.

You describe this true state of shikantaza as ‘choice-less awareness’, but this term ‘choiceless awareness’ (which was popularised by J. Krishnamurti) is potentially misleading and on analysis is actually devoid of any truly substantial meaning. Awareness or consciousness (chit) is our real nature, our essential being (sat), so there is truly never a time when we are not aware (or conscious). Therefore we really have no choice (or option) whether to be aware or not.

However, we can choose what we are aware of. We are now aware of our mind, our present body and this world because we choose to attend to them, and we can become aware of our real self only when we choose to cease attending to anything else and to attend instead only to our own essential being, ‘I am’.

Our choice to be aware of our thinking mind and whatever is known by it is called desire or attachment, whereas our choice to be aware only of our essential self, ‘I am’, is called true love or non-attachment — that is, true self-love or svātma-bhakti. Without this choice or love to know nothing other than ourself, we cannot know ourself as we really are, because our awareness of other things is the cloud that obscures and conceals our natural state of pure non-dual self-consciousness (or self-awareness).

As Sri Ramana often used to say, bhakti is jñāna-mata — that is, love is the mother of true knowledge — because we cannot experience ourself as we really are unless our love to experience ourself thus is all-consuming. That is, our love to know and to be nothing other than our real self must be so intense that it completely consumes all our other desires (which drive our mind outwards, away from ourself to experience other things).

When our love to be aware of nothing other than our essential self, ‘I am’, is so intense that it dissolves the illusion of our thinking and object-knowing mind in the absolute clarity of pristine non-dual self-consciousness, we will discover that such self-consciousness (or ‘self-awareness’) is our real nature and therefore absolutely ‘choiceless’ and ‘effortless’.

However, until we experience it thus, it is necessary for us to make a positive ‘choice’ and ‘effort’ to be vigilantly and persistently self-attentive or ‘self-aware’.