Video Information: 19.08.22, Conversation Session, 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
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00Death does not bound me, fear does not affect me, caste and its distinctions are not for me.
00:10Na mritr na shanka na me jati bhedah, na me jati bhedah, na me jati bhedah.
00:18Caste is not for me and here we have an entire national debate around the caste of Shiv.
00:27Acharyaji, Juliana Hathaway has been listening to you since quite some years now.
00:33And she has been very regular with what all happens in the social-spiritual domain in India.
00:39And she went through the recent statements by the Vice-Chancellor of JNU on Shiva's caste.
00:46So she just sent me a query on the same, that what is really meant by Shiva's caste.
00:52Can you please throw some light on it?
00:55Juliana, of course, she has been a student of Vedanta since long.
01:04Till a few years back she used to attend the Upanishad sessions all the way from Europe.
01:13So I am glad she has made this enquiry into Shiva's caste.
01:24Shiva's caste.
01:28So how do we proceed? It's a pretty unusual topic for me to deal with.
01:37Would you Google for Nirvana Shatakam by Acharya Shankar and give it to me?
01:42Sure.
01:43Neither am I the mind nor intelligence or ego. Neither am I the organs of hearing, ears that is.
02:01Nor the tongue, the nose, the eyes. I am none of these. I am not the sky. I am not the earth.
02:08I am not the fire. I am not the air. I am Shiva. I am Shiva.
02:15I am Shiva. I am pure auspiciousness.
02:23Pure consciousness, pure anand, unadulterated bliss. That's who Shiva is.
02:32So I am not the nose. I am not the eyes. I am not the tongue. Not even the mind or the intellect.
02:41Then how can I be a body? And if I cannot be a body, then how can I have a caste?
02:51I do not know how people are talking of Shiva's caste.
02:59Shiva cannot have a caste. Shiva is not a body.
03:06But we are so deeply identified with the body that we want to look at even Shiva in bodily terms.
03:23And 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.
03:33You also want to think of that person's parents and birth and death and caste.
03:41So it is because of our own body identification that we start thinking of even the highest as bodily.
03:50Whereas the great teacher here is very clearly telling us that Shiva is the one who has nothing bodily about himself.
04:06The highest consciousness, that is what is referred to as Shiva.
04:12Nothing bodily, nothing material, nothing that you can think of, nothing that you can give a shape or form to.
04:22Where is the question of caste? When there is not even a body in the first place, how can there be caste?
04:30Let's see what more does Adi Shankaracharya say.
04:38I am not the vital breath. I am not the five vital air.
04:44I am not the ingredients, the seven ingredients of the body.
04:48I am not the five sheets of the body.
04:51I am not the organ of speech.
04:55Not the organ of hand.
04:59I am not the feet. I am not the organ of excretion.
05:06I am just Shiva.
05:14So everything bodily is being discounted.
05:20Actually there is a nice history to this little poem in six stanzas.
05:30So Acharya Shankar goes to his teacher and is asked to introduce himself.
05:43And he introduces himself in this way.
05:46He says my real identity is not at all related to the body.
05:51The body is just a product of Prakriti and I am consciousness.
05:55So how do I introduce myself in Prakritic terms?
06:00So Shiva is not an idea. Shiva is not a figment of your imagination.
06:07Shiva is not someone you can refer to in such loose terms.
06:14Shiva is not someone you can think of as belonging to the same kinds of origins as a normal usual human being does.
06:40But because we are bodily corporeal, our ego does not allow us to admit that there can be anything beyond who we are.
06:51And that's what Juliana is also the cause of all human suffering.
06:58Go back to your Vedant lessons. This is Vedant 101.
07:04Body identification is the root cause of all human suffering. Remember that?
07:09So that's the reason why the young Shankar introduces himself to his teacher in these terms.
07:22He says all that can be material or bodily or sensual or related to time, space, form, mentation, ideation, that I am not.
07:35It's a poem in negation in the great tradition of the Upanishads, the tradition of Neti Neti.
07:42Negate, negate, negate. Once you have negated everything, what is left is Shiva and that's who I am.
07:48Shivoham, Shivoham.
07:52Then I don't have hatred. I have no attachment. I have no greed infatuation. I have no passion or feelings of envy and jealousy.
08:01Why? Because they are all related to the body.
08:04When I am not even the body, how can I have these feelings and such things?
08:10So all these products of the glands, all these things of the hormones, I don't identify with.
08:17I am clearly negating them.
08:21I am not even bounded by morality or righteousness, earth or Kama, which is possessions and desires.
08:34And I am not someone who is in any kind of bondage because all that belongs to the domain of physical nature.
08:45That's where all the bondages are. My true identity is beyond all limitations and bondages.
08:52That's who I am and that's how I am Shiva.
08:58Shivoham, Shivoham, Shivoham, Shivoham.
09:02Shiv is another name for the highest truth that Vedanta has to teach us, Atma.
09:11And Atma is another name for Brahm.
09:13And both of these are synonyms of truth or Satya.
09:17Shiv is Satya. Satyam Shivam Sundaram.
09:20So Shiv is Atma.
09:22That's why Acharya Shankar here is saying, I am, I am, I am Shiv.
09:29So Atma is who you are. Atma means the self.
09:33So the self is Shiv.
09:36So Shiv is Self. Shiv is Atma.
09:39And Atma is Brahm. Brahm is Satya.
09:43Shiv is Satya. Therefore Satyam Shivam Sundaram.
09:47And there is such great beauty when you realize and articulate it thus.
09:55Then.
10:00I'm not bound by Punya or Paap.
10:04Virtue and vice, merits and sins.
10:07Worldly pleasures and sorrows do not confine me or attract me or are too important to me.
10:15Mantras, Tirthas, Shastra, Yajna.
10:24The sacred verses, the sacred places, the sacred scriptures, the sacred sacrifices.
10:32All these are for the ones who are products of Prakriti.
10:38And are therefore in great slavery, in deep bondage.
10:44So therefore they need all these means of liberation.
10:48None of these are for me. I am already liberated. I am Shiv.
10:52That's who Shiv is.
10:53And here we are trying to assign a caste to Shiv.
10:58Can we be more ignorant than that?
11:01And it interests me.
11:07It's highly intriguing. Such a thing is coming from a person at a very high place in an established university setup.
11:24So, yeah.
11:30Depth does not bound me. Fear does not affect me.
11:35Caste and its distinctions are not for me.
11:47Caste is not for me.
11:49And here we have an entire national debate around the caste of Shiv.
11:56And the debate has spilled over to Europe, to our Juliana.
12:05And she is feeling interested.
12:07Acharyaji, tell me about Shiva's caste.
12:11And here, one of the greatest teachers India has had, the world has had, is teaching us
12:25I am not a body. How can I be affected by the fear of obliteration or death, reduction, annihilation?
12:32None of these thoughts are for me.
12:36Any kind of distinction, not necessarily related only to caste.
12:41Any kind of distinction, gender, economic class, young, old, thought, ideology, shape, size.
12:53Whatsoever you can think of as a criteria for distinction is simply inapplicable to me.
13:00That's who I am. Shivoham. Shivoham.
13:03No caste for Shiva because no body for Shiva.
13:07Bodies are for us ignorant people who do not know who they are.
13:13Vedanta is all about knowing who you are in the first place.
13:20I am without any variation. I am without any distinctions.
13:24All this diversity does not hold any meaning to me.
13:31And I am without any form.
13:35I am present everywhere as the underlying substratum of everything.
13:41I am not perceptible through any sense organ because I am beyond all sense organs.
13:50I am beyond all sense organs. That's who I am. Shivoham. Shivoham.
13:55I do not get attached to anything nor do I ever get freed from anything.
14:02I am Shiva.
14:05The supreme auspiciousness.
14:09Pure consciousness.
14:12Absolutely auspicious.
14:15Anandith ever.
14:18Chidananda rupa.
14:26We have brought down the highest to the level where we stand.
14:34That's how the good old primitive ego functions.
14:39It does not want to rise. It does not want to leave its own place.
14:45Instead it brings down the highest possible.
14:48It drags it down to its own level and then claims that there exists nothing called the highest.
14:55What kind of self-destructive thought and behavior is this?
15:03But then that's what the ego is.
15:08Acharya ji, just as we are the ego, it wants to get identified with something or the other.
15:16And caste is one way of doing that.
15:19And here in Nirvana Shatkam, he is again and again negating all the identities that one can have.
15:26But maybe even the master or the teacher knows in some way that the ego wants to stick to something or the other.
15:33So the other identity in some way that he has given is Shivoham. Shivoham.
15:40Because you want to have a word to hold.
15:45If the ego does not get something to hold on to, it starts feeling lonely.
15:50It starts feeling suffocated and empty.
15:53Therefore, a particular auspicious word was coined, Shiva.
15:58You could as well say that my statement stops at negation.
16:06I am negating and that's it.
16:09I am not the body. I am not the sense organs.
16:12I am not wise. I am not virtue. I am not happiness. I am not sorrow.
16:17I am not bondage. I am not liberation.
16:19And I will stop at that. I don't need to say anything beyond that.
16:23But then that won't suffice for most people because we look for positive affirmations.
16:29We say, if I am not all this, then do I not exist at all?
16:35Give me some name at least.
16:38Something that I can live with.
16:41Else I will feel that I do not exist at all.
16:44So, Shivoham. I am Shiva.
16:50But remember, the negation comes first.
16:59And once all the nonsense has been negated,
17:02then you can say that the pure emptiness,
17:05the clean nothingness that remains is Shiva.
17:10Do not try to color the name Shiva with your imaginations.
17:20But even in that statement, or even the way Shiva has been quoted,
17:27or even in the popular culture, the way he is termed as a yogi or a person.
17:33So, he is always personified.
17:35But what you are saying is something not really confined to a body.
17:39No, no. Any personification of Shiva is not good, not proper.
17:49But then personifications are needed because the common man cannot live without that personification.
17:55The common man is so strongly tied to his sense of body and his usual sense of identity
18:03that he needs a picture, an image in front of him.
18:10So, that is the reason why you have that popular image of Shiva.
18:16But that image must be remembered as an approximation.
18:27It is an image and it must be known as an image. It is not the real thing.
18:33The real thing is so vast that it cannot be captured in an image.
18:38Right?
18:41So, all the story and the myth that you have around the name of Shiva,
18:51I am saying it has to be understood as exactly that.
18:55It is a story. It is a good story, probably even a great story.
18:59It is a useful story, if understood rightly.
19:03But it is a story.
19:06The Shiva truth is formless, beyond imagination, beyond picturization, beyond fictionalization.
19:25You cannot weave a lot of stories that there is Shiva, there is the family of Shiva.
19:30No, no, no, please.
19:32If you go to the highest scriptures that the Sanatan tradition has had,
19:38Shiva is simply the name for formless, imageless, birthless, deathless, companyless, non-dual truth.
20:01That's who Shiva is.
20:04All else is just story making.
20:08Those stories can be useful if seen in perspective, if understood in the light of Vedanta.
20:17Otherwise, those stories can be very, very harmful.
20:20And I will say that India has been deeply harmed by those stories because we have ignored Vedanta.
20:31And indulged ourselves more with stories and that does not help anybody.
20:40It has not helped us at all.
20:42So, be very cautious when you find storytelling going on in the name of Shiva.
20:54Somebody talking of Shiva's parents, somebody talking of this and that.
21:02Human emotions, human thoughts, human actions, human intentions, they are for humans.
21:10They are not for Atma.
21:14They are not for pure self.
21:16They are not for pure consciousness.
21:19So, let's not desecrate the highest with our lowly or at best mediocre selves.
21:31Let's be very careful.
21:34When we utter the word Shiva, it must be with the highest degree of understanding and responsibility.
21:41And only then can there be the kind of surrender that uplifts the self, the ego self that is.
21:52One has to be very careful.