The Unconditional Promise of Vedanta!

As may be clear from the foregoing, Vedanta fosters a unique understanding about our real nature. This understanding is called self-knowledge or the knowledge of our real self. Why is it necessary to have this understanding? We have seen that behind our myriad pursuits, we all seek puranattvam or fullness of being. However, through the evaluation of our experience, we realize that this fullness is not to be found in the mundane pursuits of wealth, security, pleasure or even values. We discover that the rewards that material pursuits offer are at best short-lived, finite, and subject to change. They all grant some satisfaction to a certain degree, but ultimately leave us with a gnawing sense of incompleteness. In sum, they do not lead to complete freedom or fullness of total being. And amidst all the material proliferation, life continues to seem like a meaningless, boring, and burdensome struggle.

This is precisely where Vedanta steps in.

Vedanta says that the spiritual freedom we have been seeking all along is not a matter of acquisition or a result of our doing. It is rather a matter of understanding and being. It is actually our natural state. Our primal error is that we identify ourselves with our body-mind complex and superimpose the limitations of body-mind complex on our real nature. In other words, we take the unreal as the real. Vedanta explains that you are not just the limited body-mind complex you take yourself to be. Your real essence is of the nature of pure awareness. As such, your real nature is not subject to the limitations of illness, old age, and death which are only the attributes of your body-mind complex. Of course, Vedanta does not free us from these limitations per se. It only frees us from the fear and anxiety that we experience as a result of taking ourselves to be a limited, body-mind complex. To be firmly established in this understanding is called spiritual freedom or mukti. Says an important Vedantic verse: If you

detach yourself from the body and rest in Pure Awareness, you will at once be happy, peaceful, and free from bondage.i What is the liberating knowledge, then, which leads to spiritual freedom? And what is the method or discipline that leads to this understanding?

Five Axioms of Vedanta

Vedanta encapsulates its conviction and vision into the following five axioms:

1. I am of the nature of eternal and all-pervading Consciousness. 2. I am the only source of permanent security, peace, and happiness. 3. By my mere presence, I give life to material body and, through body, I experience the material universe. 4. I am essentially not affected by any events that take place in my material body and the material universe. 5. By forgetting my real nature, I convert the drama of life into a struggle; by remembering my real nature, I convert life into a play, lila.ii For the harmonious integration of human personality, Vedanta recommends the following three-fold spiritual program of sravanam, mananam, and nidhidyasanam: 1. Sravanam (listening): It means systematic study of Vedantic teachings for a length of period with a competent teacher. 2. Mananam (Reflection): It refers to arriving at a doubt-free knowledge through constant reflection on the teachings. 3. Nidhidyasanam (Assimilation): It means the process of internalizing, imbibing or absorbing the teachings by practicing focused concentration on the teachings.

Listening to the teachings is analogous to eating the food, reflecting on the teachings is like chewing the food, and internalizing the teaching is like digesting

the food. While eating and chewing the food may happen rather quickly, digesting the food may take a very long time. Similarly, internalizing the teachings is a gradual process and not a momentary event. Every challenging experience of our life can serve as an ideal opportunity for remembering that our body-mind complex is just a costume; that our real nature is that of pure awareness; that the world is a stage where the drama of our life is taking place; and that our real naturethe screen on which the drama is taking placeis not affected by the show of light and sound. The real test of this understanding is to see the drama as drama, Divine play or Lila, especially when the drama is not going well.

Swami Nityaswarupananda, trans., Astavakra Samhita: Text with word-for-word Translation, English Rendering, Comments, and Index (Kolkata, India: Advaita Ashrama), 5. [slightly modified]
ii

Based on Swami Paramarthananda s five discourses on Tattva Bodha Summary.