Video Information: 19.08.22, Goa
Context:
~ What is Shiva?
~ What is spirituality?
~ What is dissolution?
~ How can a thinking mind know about Shiva?
~ How will the mind become still?
~ Can we still the mind? Who has to be still, we or the mind and how?
~ What is the screen, Sat-Chit-Ananda-Self Siva?
~ How to abide in the Shiva Truth?
~ Is the absolute a state?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~
#acharyaprashant
Context:
~ What is Shiva?
~ What is spirituality?
~ What is dissolution?
~ How can a thinking mind know about Shiva?
~ How will the mind become still?
~ Can we still the mind? Who has to be still, we or the mind and how?
~ What is the screen, Sat-Chit-Ananda-Self Siva?
~ How to abide in the Shiva Truth?
~ Is the absolute a state?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~
#acharyaprashant
Category
๐
LearningTranscript
00:00 Death does not bound me, fear does not affect me, caste and its distinctions are not for me.
00:10 Na mritr na shanka na me jati bhedah, na me jati bhedah, na me jati bhedah.
00:18 Caste is not for me and here we have an entire national debate around the caste of Shiv.
00:27 Mr. Ajay, Juliana Hathaway has been listening to you since quite some years now.
00:33 And she has been very regular with what all happens in the social-spiritual domain in India.
00:39 And she went through the recent statements by the Vice-Chancellor of JNU on Shiva's caste.
00:46 So she just sent me a query on the same, that what is really meant by Shiva's caste.
00:52 Can you please throw some light on it?
00:55 Juliana, of course, she has been a student of Vedanta since long.
01:05 Till a few years back she used to attend the Upanishad sessions all the way from Europe.
01:14 So I'm glad she has made this inquiry into Shiva's caste.
01:24 Shiva's caste.
01:27 So how do we proceed? It's a pretty unusual topic for me to deal with.
01:35 Would you Google for Nirvana Shatkan by Acharya Shankar and give it to me?
01:42 Sure.
01:51 Neither am I the mind, nor intelligence or ego.
01:56 Neither am I the organs of hearing, ears that is.
02:01 Nor the tongue, the nose, the eyes. I am none of these.
02:06 I am not the sky, I am not the earth, I am not the fire, I am not the air.
02:11 I am Shiva. I am Shiva. I am Shiva. I am pure auspiciousness.
02:18 Chidananda roopah shivoham shivoham.
02:22 Pure consciousness, pure anand, unadulterated bliss.
02:29 That's who Shiva is.
02:32 So I am not the nose, I am not the eyes, I am not the tongue, not even the mind or the intellect.
02:41 Then how can I be a body? And if I cannot be a body, then how can I have a caste?
02:51 I do not know how people are talking of Shiva's caste.
02:59 Shiva cannot have a caste.
03:03 Shiva is not a body.
03:06 But we are so deeply identified with the body that we want to look at even Shiva in bodily terms.
03:22 And when you look at somebody in bodily terms, then obviously you want to give that body, that person, a gender, an identity, a past, a history.
03:32 You also want to think of that person's parents and birth and death and caste.
03:41 So it is because of our own body identification that we start thinking of even the highest as bodily.
03:49 Whereas the great teacher here is very clearly telling us that Shiva is the one who has nothing bodily about himself.
04:06 The highest consciousness, that is what is referred to as Shiva.
04:12 Nothing bodily, nothing material, nothing that you can think of, nothing that you can give a shape or form to.
04:22 Where is the question of caste? When there is not even a body in the first place, how can there be caste?
04:30 Let's see what more does Adi Shankaracharya say.
04:38 I am not the vital breath. I am not the five vital air.
04:44 I am not the ingredients, the seven ingredients of the body.
04:48 I am not the five sheets of the body.
04:51 I am not the organ of speech.
04:55 Not the organ of hand.
04:59 I am not the feet. I am not the organ of excretion.
05:05 I am just Shiva.
05:09 Chidanand rupah, shivoham, shivoham.
05:14 So everything bodily is being discounted.
05:20 Actually there is a nice history to this little poem in six stanzas.
05:29 So Acharya Shankar goes to his teacher and is asked to introduce himself.
05:43 And he introduces himself in this way.
05:46 He says my real identity is not at all related to the body.
05:51 The body is just a product of prakriti.
05:54 And I am consciousness. So how do I introduce myself in prakritic terms?
06:00 So, you know, Shiva is not an idea. Shiva is not a figment of your imagination.
06:07 Shiva is not someone you can refer to in such loose terms.
06:13 Shiva is not someone you can think of as belonging to the same kinds of origins as a normal usual human being does.
06:39 But because we are bodily, corporal, our ego does not allow us to admit that there can be anything beyond who we are.
06:50 And that's what Juliana is also the cause of all human suffering. Right?
06:58 Go back to your Vedant lessons. This is Vedant 101.
07:04 Body identification is the root cause of all human suffering. Remember that?
07:09 So that's the reason why the young Shankar introduces himself to his teacher in these terms.
07:22 He says all that can be material or bodily or sensual or related to time, space, form, mentation, ideation, that I am not.
07:36 It's a poem in negation in the great tradition of the Upanishads, the tradition of Neti Neti.
07:42 Negate, negate, negate. Once you have negated everything, what is left is Shiva and that's who I am. Shivoham, Shivoham.
07:52 Then I don't have hatred. I have no attachment. I have no greed, infatuation. I have no passion or feelings of envy and jealousy.
08:01 Why? Because they are all related to the body. When I am not even the body, how can I have these feelings and such things?
08:10 So all these products of the glands, all these things of the hormones, I don't identify with. I am clearly negating them.
08:20 I'm not even bounded by morality or righteousness, earth or Kama, which is possessions and desires.
08:34 And I'm not someone who is in any kind of bondage because all that belongs to the domain of physical nature.
08:45 That's where all the bondages are. My true identity is beyond all limitations and bondages.
08:51 That's who I am and that's how I am Shiva. Shivoham, Shivoham, Shivoham, Shivoham.
09:02 Shiv is another name for the highest truth that Vedanta has to teach us, Atma.
09:11 And Atma is another name for Brahm and both of these are synonyms of truth or Satya.
09:16 Shiv is Satya. Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram. So Shiv is Atma. That's why Acharya Shankar here is saying,
09:24 "I am, I am, I am Shiv." So Atma is who you are. Atma means the Self.
09:33 So the Self is Shiv. So Shiv is Self, Shiv is Atma and Atma is Brahm.
09:41 Brahm is Satya, Shiv is Satya, therefore Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram.
09:46 And there is such great beauty when you realize and articulate it thus.
09:54 Then, I'm not bound by Punya or Paap, virtue and vice, merits and sins.
10:06 Worldly pleasures and sorrows do not confine me or attract me or are too important to me.
10:13 Mantras, Tirtha, Shastra, Yajna, the sacred verses, the sacred places, the sacred scriptures, the sacred sacrifices.
10:31 All these are for the ones who are products of Prakriti and are therefore in great slavery, in deep bondage.
10:43 So therefore they need all these means of liberation. None of these are for me.
10:49 I am already liberated. I am Shiv. That's who Shiv is.
10:53 And here we are trying to assign a caste to Shiv. Can we be more ignorant than that?
11:01 And it interests me. It's highly intriguing.
11:08 Such a thing is coming from a person at a very high place in an established university setup.
11:24 So, yeah.
11:29 Death does not bound me. Fear does not affect me. Caste and its distinctions are not for me.
11:39 Na mritr na shanka na me jati bhedah.
11:47 Caste is not for me. And here we have an entire national debate around the caste of Shiv.
11:57 And the debate has spilled over to Europe, to our Juliana and she's feeling interested.
12:07 Acharyaji, tell me about Shiva's caste.
12:11 And here, one of the greatest teachers India has had, the world has had, is teaching us na me jati bhedah.
12:21 Na me mritr na shanka.
12:25 I'm not a body. How can I be affected by the fear of obliteration or death, reduction, annihilation?
12:32 None of these thoughts are for me.
12:36 Any kind of distinction, not necessarily related only to caste, any kind of distinction, gender, economic class, young, old, thought, ideology, shape, size, whatsoever, you can think of as a criteria for distinction is simply inapplicable to me.
13:00 That's who I am. Shivoham. Shivoham.
13:03 No caste for Shiva because no body for Shiva.
13:07 Bodies are for us ignorant people who do not know who they are.
13:13 Vedanta is all about knowing who you are in the first place. Right?
13:19 So I am without any variation. I'm without any distinctions.
13:24 All this diversity does not hold any meaning to me.
13:30 And I am without any form.
13:35 I am present everywhere as the underlying substratum of everything.
13:41 I am not perceptible to any sense organ because I am beyond all sense organs. I am beyond all sense organs. That's who I am. Shivoham. Shivoham.
13:55 I do not get attached to anything. Nor do I ever get freed from anything.
14:03 I am Shiva.
14:05 The supreme auspiciousness. Pure consciousness.
14:11 Absolutely auspicious.
14:15 Anandith ever.
14:19 Chidananda Rupa.
14:26 We have brought down the highest to the level where we stand.
14:34 That's how the good old primitive ego functions. No?
14:40 It does not want to rise. It does not want to leave its own place.
14:45 Instead it brings down the highest possible. It drags it down to its own level and then claims that there exists nothing called the highest.
14:56 What kind of self destructive thought and behavior is this?
15:04 But then that's what the ego is.
15:08 Acharya ji, just as we are, the ego, it wants to get identified with something or the other and caste is one way of doing that.
15:19 And here in Nirvana Shatakam, he is again and again negating all the identities that one can have.
15:26 But maybe even the master or the teacher knows in some way that the ego wants to stick to something or the other.
15:33 So the other identity in some way that he has given is Shivoham Shivoham.
15:38 Is it?
15:40 Because you want to have a word to hold.
15:45 If the ego does not get something to hold on to, it starts feeling lonely.
15:49 It starts feeling suffocated and empty.
15:53 Therefore, a particular auspicious word was coined. Shiva.
15:58 You could as well say that my statement stops at negation.
16:05 I'm negating and that's it.
16:09 I'm not the body. I'm not the sense organs. I'm not wise. I'm not virtue. I'm not happiness. I'm not sorrow.
16:17 I'm not bondage. I'm not liberation. And I'll stop at that.
16:21 I don't need to say anything beyond that. Right.
16:24 But then that won't suffice for most people because we look for positive affirmations.
16:30 We say if I'm not all this, then do I not exist at all?
16:35 Give me give me some name at least. Right.
16:39 Something that I can live with. Else I'll feel that I do not exist at all.
16:44 So Shivoham. I am Shiva.
16:50 But remember, the negation comes first. The negation comes first.
16:59 And once all the nonsense has been negated, then you can say that the pure emptiness, the clean nothingness that remains is Shiva.
17:10 Right. Do not try to color the name Shiv with your imaginations.
17:21 But even in that statement or even like the way Shiv has been quoted or even in the popular culture, the way he is termed as a Yogi or a person.
17:33 So he's always personified. But what you are saying is something not really confined to a body.
17:40 Any personification of Shiv is not good, not proper. Right.
17:49 But then personifications are needed because the common man cannot live without that personification.
17:56 The common man is so strongly tied to his sense of body and his usual sense of identity that he needs a picture, an image in front of him.
18:11 So that's the reason why you have that popular image of Shiv. But that image must be remembered as an approximation. Right.
18:27 It is an image and it must be known as an image. It is not the real thing.
18:33 The real thing is so vast that it cannot be captured in an image. Right.
18:41 So all the story and the myth that you have around the name of Shiv, I'm saying it has to be understood as exactly that.
18:55 It is a story. It is a good story, probably even a great story. It's a useful story if understood rightly.
19:04 But it's a story. The Shiv truth is formless, beyond imagination, beyond picturization, beyond fictionalization.
19:25 You cannot weave a lot of stories that there is Shiv, there is the family of Shiv. No, no, no, no, please.
19:32 If you go to the highest scriptures that the Sanatan tradition has had, Shiv is simply the name for formless, imageless, birthless, deathless, companyless, non-dual truth.
20:01 That's who Shiv is. All else is just story making. Those stories can be useful if seen in perspective, if understood in the light of Vedanta.
20:16 Otherwise, those stories can be very, very harmful. And I will say that India has been deeply harmed by those stories because we have ignored Vedanta.
20:30 And indulged ourselves more with stories and that does not help anybody. It has not helped us at all.
20:42 So, be very cautious when you find storytelling going on in the name of Shiv. Somebody talking of Shiva's parents, somebody talking of this and that.
21:01 Human emotions, human thoughts, human actions, human intentions, they are for humans. They are not for Atma. They are not for pure Self. They are not for pure consciousness.
21:18 So, let's not desecrate the highest with our lowly or at best mediocre selves. Let's be very careful.
21:33 When we utter the word Shiv, it must be with the highest degree of understanding and responsibility. And only then can there be the kind of surrender that uplifts the Self, the ego Self that is.
21:52 One has to be very careful.
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