by Amit Misra
25 July 2023
Advaita Vedanta believes in non-duality. It teaches the idea that Brahman alone is real while the world as we see it, is a mere illusion or Maya of Brahman. Mind is full of duality, through its conditioning from childhood, it subsists between all the antonyms of every thought it travels through; like goodness and malice, selflessness and selfishness, empathy and cruelty, learning and oblivion and so on. Mind recognizes goodness only when it simultaneously also knows inequity, if this was not the case then the mind would never know the meaning of all the rights that are opposite of all the wrongs.
Mind absorbs everything, with conditioning and experiences it discriminates and discerns itself and randomly or methodically picks up adjectives of thoughts. It’s uncertain to make out why it does that, it’s almost unpredictable. Experiences are copied and judging happens all the way. It is the mind that stops us from doing wrong only because it knows what wrong is and at the same time it is the mind only that sometimes makes us choose and do wrong despite knowing it is wrong. This can be an ever going and never ending struggle that mind goes through and practically it is not always possible to silence it permanently. This is the very reason it is imperative for the mind to stay in company of such other minds that bring it back to the validated and reasonable credos of the social realm and this is the reason Buddha teaches us to refrain from taking life, lie and steal. He asks us to live a rightful life, a life of Dharma, he asks us to be mindful and have a compassionate attitude towards others.
Knowing the very nature of the mind and accepting its quality of not being permanent is the very Sutra of Meditation. While meditating allowing the mind freely to go places and let it come back does the trick. On the journey towards a no thought mind, thoughts are the milestones and silence is the destination. In initial practices of meditation it happens gradually and intermittently, and then it starts happening often and then ultimately almost always. Later one feels that it is rewarding to stay in a no mind state rather than staying in a socially and ideologically correct mind state. While meditating these back and forth exposures becomes the new way of the mind as it then also starts recognizing the in between emptiness and the bliss that come along by understating and accepting the very nature of itself that only an observer can experience and not the one who is a party to it. This is consciousness. The non-dual Brahman is felt.
When the mediator becomes a mere observer it’s easy to let lose any control over mind, there is no scope of resistance or guidance. Mind is free to travel wherever it wants to go, thoughts come and go, there are no boundaries set, there are no fixed walls, and the mind is totally and absolutely free. The mediator can choose to observe the breaths in its natural way and for that; there is no fixed method to it. Everything is happening on its own, there are no contenders, and one does nothing but observes. It’s so simple and yet transcendental and phenomenal. It’s pure. This is meditation.
