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’.

Svarupa-dhyana and svarupa-darsana

A friend recently wrote to me asking:

Does svarupa-dhyana, atma-chintana and atma-smarana mean focusing attention on the first thought ‘I am’, consciousness of being? I mean, is it concentration on being, staying without thoughts but still aware of external world? If so, svarupa-darshana is different experience and is the same as kevala nirvikalpa samadhi. Isn’t it?

Here the mention of ‘svarupa-darshana’ and ‘external world’ appears to be a reference to the third paragraph of Nan Yar? (Who am I?), in which Sri Ramana says:

If [our] mind, which is the cause of all [objective] knowledge and of all activity, subsides [completely], [our] perception of the world (jaga-dṛṣṭi) will cease. Just as knowledge of the rope, which is the base [that underlies and supports the appearance of the snake], will not arise unless knowledge of the imaginary snake ceases, svarūpa-darśana [true knowledge of our essential self], which is the base [that underlies and supports the appearance of the world], will not arise unless [our] perception of the world, which is an imagination, ceases.

In reply to this friend I wrote as follows:

Yes, terms such as ātma-vichāra, svarūpa-dhyāna, svarūpa-smaraṇa and ātma-chintana (which are various terms that Sri Ramana uses in Nan Yar?) all mean self-attentiveness — the focusing of our entire attention upon ourself, our essential consciousness of being, ‘I am’.

Sri Ramana also sometimes described ātma-vichāra as focusing our attention upon our mind or ego — our primal thought ‘I’ — because just as the imaginary snake that we see lying on the ground in the dim light of dusk is actually nothing but a rope, so the ‘I’ that we now imagine to be this mind or ego is actually nothing but our real self.

When we look carefully at the imaginary snake, we will see that it is only a rope. Likewise, when we look carefully at our ego or mind, the thinking thought ‘I’, we will see that it is only our essential self, the one real consciousness, ‘I am’.

When our attention is not focused wholly and exclusively upon ‘I’, we will continue to be aware of thoughts and the external world (which is actually nothing but a collection of thoughts), but when it is focused solely upon ‘I’, nothing else will exist or be known.

When we are still trying to practise being conscious of nothing other than ‘I’, our as yet imperfect self-consciousness (or self-attentiveness) is called ātma-vichāra, svarūpa-dhyāna, svarūpa-smaraṇa or ātma-chintana, but when our self-consciousness becomes perfectly clear and thereby destroys the illusion of our mind entirely, it is called svarūpa-darśana or true self-knowledge.

Terms such as kēvala nirvikalpa samādhi mean different things to different people and in different contexts, so they really do not help to clarify the nature of the state of absolutely pure thought-free non-dual self-consciousness that we are seeking to experience.

Literally kēvala means alone, solitary, isolated, pure or absolute, nirvikalpa means devoid of differences, diversity, variation, imagination or thinking, and samādhi means fixed attention, intense contemplation or complete absorption of mind, so kēvala nirvikalpa samādhi actually means the state in which the mind is completely absorbed in absolutely undifferentiated or thought-free self-contemplation. As such it is a term that can be used to describe either the practice of pure ātma-vichāra or the experience of true self-knowledge.

However, since this term kēvala nirvikalpa samādhi is also used by some people to describe the state of manōlaya or temporary subsidence of mind that is achieved by artificial yogic techniques such as prāṇāyāma (breath-restraint), it can cause confusion, and can therefore potentially distract us from our real aim, which is just to know clearly ‘who am I?’

Therefore, without using any such obscure technical vocabulary, we can summarise the essence of Sri Ramana’s teachings simply as follows:

The one indubitable truth is that we all know ‘I am’, so our aim is only to know this ‘I am’ perfectly clearly, to the exclusion of all else. There is really nothing other than this that we need to understand.

Atma-vichara and metta bhavana (‘loving-kindness’ meditation)

A friend recently wrote to me asking:

I’ve got a question concerning atma-vichara in relation to some meditation techniques.

Before I came across Sri Bhagavan's teachings I practised some form of Buddhist meditation which is called ‘metta’ or loving-kindness meditation. In this meditation one develops the feelings of love and care, starting with oneself and expanding the range step by step to include teachers, friends and finally all living beings.

I never regarded myself as a Buddhist but nevertheless I still find this form of meditation very helpful and beneficial. That's why I do a daily loving-kindness meditation for about 45-60 minutes.

I also find that this is a help when I try to practice atma-vichara because self-attention seems to be easier with a mind which is not so noisy and turbulent.

Through reading and reflecting on Sri Bhagavan’s teachings I know that the only practice which leads to final liberation and experience of true self-knowledge is atma-vichara or self-abidance.

I also think that my other practice will naturally drop away when I get more experienced in atma-vichara. But as a beginner I find it difficult to practice self-attention, especially when there are difficult emotions, plenty of thoughts and the stress of day-to-day life.

My question is if this kind of sitting meditation is contradictory to practising self-attention or can even be a hindrance.

In reply to this I wrote as follows:

The only practice that will enable us directly to experience ourself as we really are and thereby destroy our mind is the action-free non-dual practice of ātma-vichāra or self-attentiveness. All other practices or forms of meditation are only mental activities, because they each involve our paying attention to something other than ‘I’ (which means that our attention is moving away from ourself towards whatever other thing we are thinking of), and hence they cannot enable us to experience our real action-free (thought-free) self.

However, as Sri Ramana teaches us in verse 3 of Upadesa Undiyar, if we do any other practice without desire for any finite gain but only out of love for God (who is actually nothing other than our real self, our essential being, ‘I am’), our mind will thereby be purified and thus it will gain the clarity to understand that the true ‘path to liberation’ is only ātma-vichāra.

The mettā bhāvanā or ‘loving-kindness meditation’ that you practise is a form of such niṣkāmya karma or ‘desireless action’ done for the love of God, so it will certainly help to purify your mind — that is, to cleanse it of its impurities, which are its desires or vāsanās — and thereby enable it to go deeper into the practice of ātma-vichāra. Therefore, so long as you find your practice of this ‘loving-kindness meditation’ to be helpful to your practice of ātma-vichāra, there is no harm in continuing it, but as you say, it ‘will naturally drop away when [you] get more experienced in atma-vichara’.

While practising mettā bhāvanā, you may find it helpful to remember the source from which the mettā (the maitrī, benevolence, love or kindness) originates, which is yourself. In fact in its pristine form, mettā is nothing other than pure love, which is the true nature of our essential self.

Because happiness or ānanda is our real nature, we naturally love ourself above all other things, and we love other things or living beings only because they are nothing but a reflection of our real self. Therefore love (that is, absolutely non-dual self-love) is what we really are, and hence the mettā or ‘loving-kindness’ that we feel for other living beings arises only from our essential self, ‘I am’.

Therefore, when you practise mettā bhāvanā or ‘loving-kindness meditation’, if you attend to the source from which the feeling of mettā or ‘loving-kindness’ arises, you will actually be practising ātma-vichāra or self-attentiveness. However, if you allow your attention to be diverted away from the source of your mettā (which is yourself) towards the objects of it (which are the other living beings for whom you feel it), you will thereby be distracted from your self-attentiveness.

Though mettā bhāvanā and other such forms of niṣkāmya karma will gradually purify our mind, they are all slow and roundabout routes, and they will never purify it completely. The most direct and effective means by which we can purify our mind — and the only means by which we can purify it completely — is ātma-vichāra.

That is, since the impurities in our mind are our viṣaya-vāsanās or desires to experience things that are other than ourself, they can be curbed most effectively and eventually destroyed only by our making effort to be constantly self-attentive, thereby withdrawing our attention from every other thing.

As Sri Bhagavan teaches us in the tenth and eleventh paragraphs of Nan Yar? (Who am I?) :

Even though viṣaya-vāsanās, which come from time immemorial, rise [as thoughts] in countless numbers like ocean-waves, they will all be destroyed when svarūpa-dhyāna [self-meditation or self-attentiveness] increases and increases. Without giving room even to the doubting thought, ‘Is it possible to dissolve so many vāsanās and be only as self?’, [we] should cling tenaciously to svarūpa-dhyāna. ...

As long as viṣaya-vāsanās exist in [our] mind, so long the investigation (vichāra) ‘who am I?’ is also necessary. As and when thoughts arise, then and there it is necessary to annihilate them all by vichāra [keen and vigilant self-attentiveness] in the very place from which they arise. Being without attending to [anything] other [than ourself] is vairāgya or nirāsa [desirelessness] ... Just as a pearl-diver, tying a stone to his waist and submerging, picks up a pearl which lies at the bottom of the ocean, so each one [of us], submerging and sinking within ourself with vairāgya [desirelessness], can attain the pearl of self. If one clings fast to uninterrupted svarūpa-smaraṇa [self-remembrance] until one attains svarūpa [one’s own essential self], that alone [will be] sufficient. As long as enemies are within the fort, they will continue coming out from it. If [we] continue destroying [or cutting down] all of them as and when they come, the fort will [eventually] come into [our] possession.

As I mentioned above, in verse 3 of Upadesa Undiyar Sri Ramana teaches us that if we practise any form of niṣkāmya karma or ‘desireless action’ for the love of God, it will purify our mind and thereby ‘show [us] the path to liberation’ — in other words, it will enable us to understand that the true ‘path to liberation’ is only ātma-vichāra. Therefore, when you already know that (in your own words) ‘the only practice which leads to final liberation and experience of true self-knowledge is atma-vichara or self-abidance’, you have already gained the only real benefit that can be gained from dualistic practices such as mettā bhāvanā.

Therefore, rather than continuing to spend your time and effort in trying to practise mettā bhāvanā, you could spend the same time and effort more fruitfully in trying to practice ātma-vichāra. Even a few moments of ātma-vichāra will purify our mind more effectively than many hours spent practising any other form of meditation.

As Sri Ramana says in verses 8 and 9 of Upadesa Undiyar, rather than any form of anya bhāva (meditation upon what is anya or other than ourself), ananya bhāva (meditation upon what is ananya or not other than ourself) is ‘certainly the best among all [forms of meditation]’, and by the strength of such ananya-bhāva (or self-attentiveness), remaining in sat-bhāva (our ‘real being’ or ‘state of being’), which transcends all bhāvanā (imagination, thinking or meditation), is alone para-bhakti tattva (the true state of supreme devotion).

Having taught us in verse 3 of Upadesa Undiyar that desireless action done for the love of God will purify our mind, in verses 4 to 8 he discusses the various forms of action that we can thus do without desire for anything other than God, grading them in ascending order of their efficacy in purifying our mind. Therefore when he says in verse 8, ‘ananiya bhāvamē aṉaittiṉum uttamam’, which means, ‘meditation upon what is not other [than ourself] is certainly the best among all [forms of meditation]’, the truth that he is teaching us is that meditation upon ourself is more purifying than meditation upon any other thing.

This truth is stated by him even more explicitly in the Sanskrit and Malayalam versions of verses 8 and 9 respectively. That is, in verse 8 of Upadesa Saram (the Sanskrit version of Upadesa Undiyar) he says that rather than bheda-bhāvanā (meditation upon what is different or separate from ourself), bhāvanā-abhidā (meditation upon what is not separate from ourself) is to be considered pāvanī (purifying), and in verse 9 of the Malayalam version he says that by the strength of abhēda-bhāva (meditation upon what is not separate from ourself), abiding firmly in sat-bhāva (our ‘real being’), which transcends bhāva (imagination or thought), is certainly more purifying than bhāvanā-bhakti (dualistic devotion, which is associated with bhāvanā, imagination or thought), and that it alone is supreme devotion and will alone bestow liberation.

In these three versions of verse 8 the terms ananya bhāva, bhāvanā-abhidā and abhēda-bhāva all mean only ātma-vichāra or self-attentiveness, because that which is not anya (other), bhidā or bhēda (different or separate) is only ourself. Therefore in verse 9 the words bhāva-bala (or bhāvanā-bala) mean the strength of self-attentiveness, by means of which alone we can abide firmly in our sat-bhāva or ‘real being’, which transcends all bhāvana or ‘meditation’.

Thus Sri Ramana teaches us clearly that self-attentiveness — and the firm self-abidance in which the power of our self-attentiveness will establish us — is more purifying than any other form of meditation. Knowing this, we should make every effort to be self-attentive as much as possible.

When we compare the benefits that we can gain from ātma-vichāra with the benefits that we can gain from any other form of meditation (such as mettā bhāvanā), the former far outweigh the latter, because though other forms of meditation can gradually purify our mind, none of them can directly (or by itself) give us true self-knowledge (the state of ‘liberation’ from self-ignorance and from all its effects), whereas ātma-vichāra will not only purify our mind far more effectively, efficiently and quickly, but will also enable us to experience true self-knowledge directly. Therefore whatever time or effort we invest in practising ātma-vichāra will certainly prove to be a far more profitable investment than the same amount of time or effort spent practising any other form of meditation.

You say that you find that practising mettā bhāvanā ‘is a help when [you] try to practice atma-vichara because self-attention seems to be easier with a mind which is not so noisy and turbulent’, and that ‘as a beginner [you] find it difficult to practice self-attention, especially when there are difficult emotions, plenty of thoughts and the stress of day-to-day life’. It is true that other forms of meditation such as mettā bhāvanā can help to calm our mind and thereby bring it to a state that is conducive to the practice of self-attentiveness, but there is actually no easier or more effective way to calm our mind than trying to be self-attentive.

Other forms of meditation may sometimes seem to be easier that self-attentiveness, but that is only because no other form of meditation directly threatens the very existence of our mind, and hence our mind will not rebel against it so strongly. On the other hand, since the clear light of self-attentiveness exposes the unreality of our mind, it is a direct threat to its existence, so our mind tends to rebel very strongly against it, making it appear to be difficult.

However, just because it may thus sometimes appear to be easier to calm the superficial activity of our mind by means of other forms of meditation than by means of ātma-vichāra or self-attentiveness, this does not mean that trying to calm our mind by other forms of meditation will really help us to practise self-attentiveness more effectively, because if our mind tends to rebel strongly against self-attentiveness in order to preserve the illusion of its existence, it will rebel even if its superficial activity has just been calmed by some other means.

The factor that actually determines the success of our effort to be self-attentive is not the relative calmness of our mind when we commence our practice, but is only the intensity of our love to know and to be nothing other than our essential self, ‘I am’. Sri Ramana’s mind was not calm but in a state of intense fear of death when he turned his attention inwards to discover ‘who am I?’, but he instantly succeeded in his effort because of his intense love to discover whether he himself would die along with the death of his physical body. He did not need to adopt some artificial means to calm his mind before becoming clearly and exclusively self-attentive, because his love to know his real self was so intense that his mind immediately subsided and merged in its source — its essential self-conscious being, ‘I am’.

What obstructs and impedes our efforts to be clearly and exclusively self-attentive is only our viṣaya-vāsanās or desires to experience things that are other than ourself, so these desires can be overcome only by their opposite, which is svātma-bhakti — the love to experience nothing other than our own essential self, ‘I am’. This is why Sri Ramana teaches us in the eleventh paragraph of Nan Yar? (which I quoted above) that in order to sink deep within ourself we should tie to our mind the stone of vairāgya or desirelessness.

Since the intensity of our vairāgya is directly proportional to the intensity of our svātma-bhakti, when Sri Ramana compares vairāgya to the stone that a pearl-diver ties to his waist in order to sink to the lowermost depth of the ocean, he is in effect teaching us that in order to know ourself as we really are we must have all-consuming svātma-bhakti or love to experience nothing other than ourself. To gain such svātma-bhakti, we must purify our mind, cleansing it of all its viṣaya-vāsanās or desires for any other thing, and (as he teaches us in the tenth and eleventh paragraphs of Nan Yar? and in verses 3 to 9 of Upadesa Undiyar) the most effective means by which we can purify it is by persistently trying to practise self-attentiveness.

As is the case with all other forms of meditation, the real purpose of (and benefit to be gained from) mettā bhāvanā is only the purification of our mind, but its more ostensible and superficial aim is to develop mettā (love, affection or goodwill) for all living beings. However, as Lord Buddha taught us by the example of his compassionate life, if we truly have love for all living beings we should seek to remove all their sufferings, and the most effective means to do that is to turn our mind inwards to destroy our illusion of being a separate self.

All other living beings appear to exist and to be bound by the limitations and inevitable suffering of embodied existence only because we wrongly imagine ourself to be this body-bound mind, which is our false self (the ‘self’ that is truly anattā, anātman or ‘non-self’). Just as the other people that we see in a dream appear to exist only so long as we imagine ourself to be a body living in that dream-world, so all the living beings in this so-called waking world (which is actually just another dream-world) appear to exist only so long as we imagine ourself to be this body.

If we see people or other living beings suffering in our dream, what can we do to relieve them of their suffering most effectively? Nothing that we do in the dream can relieve all the living beings in that dream-world of all their sufferings completely, but if we simply wake up, all their sufferings will immediately cease to exist. Likewise, if we wake up from the dream of our present body-bound life by knowing what we really are, this world and all the suffering that exists in it will instantaneously cease to exist, because they appear to exist only in our mind, and our mind appears to exist only because we do not know ourself as we really are.

Therefore if we practise ātma-vichāra or self-attentiveness, we will not only purify our mind — ridding it of all its narrow-minded selfishness, and thereby developing true mettā (love and compassion) for all living beings — but will also eventually destroy our mind, which is the root cause of all the suffering that appears to exist both in us and in the world around us.

Staying with ‘I am’

A friend recently wrote to me asking:

The path is so subtle ... how to understand this? Ramana Maharshi mentions concentrating on the right side of the chest. Is this for the merest novice? If one takes this path, will one have to unlearn that “anchor” to just stay with the sense ‘I am’.

Nisargadatta mentions staying with the ‘I am’ and looking at it with affection.

To witness the ‘I am’, does that mean just “to be” not “this or that” and watch thoughts go by without getting emotionally involved. Is that staying with the ‘I am’?

Some pointer or direction is needed.

To this I replied as follows:

As you say, the path is very subtle, but it is also very simple, because all it involves is the effort to be clearly self-conscious, which is our natural state.

Sri Ramana never actually asked anyone to concentrate their attention on the right side of the chest. This is a major misunderstanding. On many occasions he clarified that what he meant by the word ‘heart’ (ullam in Tamil or hridayam in Sanskrit) was only self (atman), which is consciousness (chit), and not any organ in the body, which is non-conscious (jada). Therefore when he said, for example, that we should make the mind subside and merge in the heart, he did not mean that we should merge in any part of this body, but only that we should merge and lose our separate identity in self.

However, it is true that when he was asked by some spiritually immature devotees what the location of the heart is in this body, as a concession to their limited understanding he said that it is ‘two digits to the right from the centre of the chest’, because this is the point in which our mind feels that ‘I’ is centred in this body. However, since this body is just a figment of the mind’s power of imagination (just as any body that we experience ourself to be in a dream is), this location of the heart in the body is obviously only a relative truth. Where is the body when we do not think of it, as in sleep?

Since this body is a mere thought that arises only when our mind is active, how can concentration upon any location in it enable us to experience ourself as we really are? In order to know our real self, we must ignore all thoughts, including this imaginary body.

The practice that Sri Ramana actually taught us is only atma-vichara or ‘self-investigation’, which is the simple practice of self-attentiveness — that is, being conscious of nothing other than our own essential being, ‘I am’. This is the thought-free state of ‘just being’, because when the mind attends to its essential being, it subside and merges in it (and thereby ceases to be the thinking mind that it appears to be so long as it is attending to anything else).

There is no use in trying to ‘watch thoughts go by without getting emotionally involved’, because ‘thoughts go by’ only when we think them, and we think them only because we are ‘emotionally involved’ with (or have some desire or aversion for) whatever we are thinking of. Thinking feeds and nourishes the mind, perpetuating the illusion that it is our real self, so we can never experience ourself as we really are so long as we are thinking (or ‘watching thoughts go by’, which is possible only so long as we are thinking those passing thoughts).

Therefore Sri Ramana said that whatever thought may arise, we should immediately destroy it at its very source by investigating ‘who thinks this?’. In other words, instead of attending to any thought, we should constantly try to attend only to the ‘I’ that thinks them. When we thus attend to this thinking ‘I’, it will subside in the source from which it arose, which is our own pure self-conscious being, ‘I am’.

What you call “staying with ‘I am’” means only such keen and vigilant self-attentiveness, because so long as our entire consciousness or attention is focused exclusively on itself, ‘I am’, there is no room for any thought to arise (since no thought can arise unless we attend to it). We are in truth always “with ‘I am’”, but we seem to be distracted from it only by our habit of thinking of other things.

Therefore we should deny all thoughts our attention, and we can do this effectively only by attending exclusively to ourself, ‘I am’.

In order to thus attend exclusively to (or “stay with”) ‘I am’, we must have all-consuming love (or ‘affection’) for just being thus. Without intense love for our real being, we cannot attend to it to the exclusion of every other thing, and hence we cannot experience ourself as we really are. This is why Sri Ramana often used to say that bhakti (love or devotion) is jnana-mata, the ‘mother of true knowledge’, and that true bhakti is only swatma-bhakti, love for our own essential self.

You may also find it useful to read some of the recent articles in my blog, such as How to start practising atma-vichara?, What is self-attentiveness? and Sadhanai Saram – The Essence of Spiritual Practice (sadhana), in which I discuss the practice of atma-vichara in more detail.