Sure, meditation plays a role, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that so many meditators over such a wide space and time have gravitated back to the same formulations.
In modern Theravada, these ideas come from Thailand ultimately, which had contact with India directly in the south, and via the Sanskritic Hindu Khmer empire. And there has also been traffic in the north with the Yogacara meditation monks of China.
Then in modern times it’s influenced by mid-century syncretic mysticism via Californianism. Ajahn Sumedho, for example, read DT Suzuki in his young days as a monk, as they didn’t really have the Pali canon. So this links from (Advaita-influenced) Yogacara → Chan → Zen, then infused with 20th century modernism and mysticism through Suzuki’s association with Paul Carus and his marriage to a Theosophist and later becoming one.
Maharshi (not Maharishi) did not teach traditional or classical Advaita. His perspective was more subtle and yet radical. Neither did he teach nor advocate meditation unless one meant self attentiveness. Except to those who couldn’t see it otherwise, Ramana downplayed any type of meditative state, describing it as manolaya: transient, changing and therefore temporary. Even if one can reliably get into a meditative state on a regular basis, one inevitably comes out of said state. Ramana pointed to the state which never changes, is not new. The term ‘state’ therefore does not do it justice. That’s one reason that words like “real nature” are used. They are just limited terms that point to the unlimited.
So yes, his teaching was different from the Buddha’s but not in the sense that most outsiders see it by qualifying it with blanket statements. Just think how often the Buddha’s words are mischaracterized with misinterpretations. Unfortunately, the same goes for much of what is communicated about Maharshi and what he originally said.
No worries, however. I knew I was probably barking up the wrong tree by bringing up his teachings in this forum. My bad. I thought that what Ramana really had to say might somehow contribute to the theme of your post. But for that, one would have to read the posts I referenced by Michael James. Admittedly, they are long but offer much of the nuance that explain the many differences that people have concerning the interpretation of what Ramana originally intended and Advaita.
I can only suggest that those who are interested in knowing a bit more than the habitual and popular tropes concerning Ramana and Advaita might dig a little deeper. Understandably, it will only be the rare reader of this forum as the vast majority are mostly interested in the Buddha and Buddhism.
Sorry! In a manner of speaking, I have no doubt that Maharshi was in possession of a seemingly unshakable degree of discipline that comes from citta bhavana. But whether true or no , it is my view that, irrevocable discipline that comes from Panna bhavana, only the four Noble ones in this Dhammavinaya are in possession. That is not to say Maharshi was not wise.
I believe that the state of infinite consciousness is what Yājñavalkya would equate to the merging of the jiva with atman and is where the experience of subject-object dualism ceases. This state is entered with the cessation of sanna and from a Buddhist perspective would be evidence of the fiction of a personal self. In some parts of the canon this is called reaching the end of the world. The Atthakavagga seems to be interested in this.
The cessation of the experience of infinite consciousness or what Yājñavalkya would think of as atman would either be the state of nothingness or neither perception of non perception. I think the former is consistent with the Parayanavagga since it does not seem to refer to the state of neither perception nor non perception, but does refer to the state of nothingness and the cessation of vinnana. From the Buddhist perspective, I believe this would be evidence of the fiction of atman.
In any case, the Buddha rejects metaphysics most strongly in the nucleus of the Atthakavagga (Snp 4.2 - 4.5). There are many parts of the canon indulges in metaphysics quite a bit. That said, I think there is quite a lot of insight to be found in these deep states of concentration.
Sorry to barge in on the parade again, but what Buddhists don’t seem to grasp is that some rare teachers associated with Advaita experience phenomona in a somewhat similar fashion to the no self experience of Buddhists. This was particulary expounded by Maharshi in his distinction between manolaya and manonasa.
Manolaya is temporary, no matter what the experience (including all meditative states, regardless of the tradition). In fact experience is by definition manolaya, as whatever we experience is ever changing and transient. Manonasa, on the other hand, is permanent. It is the final dissolution and destruction of the mind (ego). It never rises again, as in the case of Ramana Maharshi.
So what you call “the fiction of atman” (in the quoted paragraph) is actually a complete annihilation that goes beyond states, be it the state of neither perception nor non perception or of any other state. When you boil things down, any state is by definition transitory. But what knows that? I’m not refering to the mind/ego (in the sense intended by Maharshi) as most people would tend to think. So when I use the term knows, I’m not refering to intellectual knowledge. It is what is aware, beyond the sense that is meant by Buddhists like vinnana.
I guess this is where disagreements and different points of view converge to a game of intellectual diatribe and philosophical debate over which position is correct. We can play this game for another few thousand years (assuming humans will still be around, which these days seems rather uncertain) but that is not my point in posting here.
I’m just pointing to what I consider to be a misinterpreation of Advaita in general over the much shunned view of ‘The Self.’ Thinking it is a reification is a mistake. Awareness of awareness is what remains after manonasa. But it is not the consciousness or awareness of a personal self. The latter is done with, there is no self left.
One can continue beleiving one can get something from nothing…but that will reopen the can of worms with all its nasty debates. Maybe the two perspectives are irreconcilable. Yet there are similarities. A pity when the other side is not well understood.
As Bhagavan (Maharshi) says in [verse 13] of Upadēśa Undiyār :
Anvayam (words rearranged in natural prose order): oḍukkam ilayam-um nāśam iraṇḍu ām. ilayittu uḷadu eṙum. uru māyndadēl eṙādu.
English translation: Dissolution [cessation or complete subsidence of mind] is [of] two [kinds]: laya [temporary dissolution] and nāśa [annihilation or permanent dissolution]. What is lying down [or dissolved in laya] will rise. If [its] form dies [in nāśa], it will not rise.
Since mind (and hence ego, which is the root and essence of mind, being its perceiving aspect) is absent in both manōlaya and manōnāśa , there is no difference between these two states except for the fact that mind will rise again from laya but will never rise again from nāśa . So why does mind rise again from laya but not from nāśa ? In nāśa ego is annihilated, which means permanently dissolved, whereas in laya it is just temporarily dissolved, and the reason for this difference lies in the cause for its dissolution in each of these states.
In nāśa we as ego are dissolved by attending to ourself so keenly that we are aware of nothing other than ourself, and hence aware of ourself as we actually are (that is, as pure awareness), because (just as an illusory snake will forever cease to appear as soon as we see that it is just a rope) as soon as we are aware of ourself as we actually are, we will forever cease to appear as ego (the erroneous self-awareness ‘I am this body’) and will therefore remain forever as we always actually are. In laya , however, we as ego are dissolved by some means other than such pure self-awareness, so our dissolution is only temporary. For example, in sleep we are dissolved due to tiredness, because we no longer have the energy to continue projecting and perceiving phenomena, as we do in waking and dream, so though our attention is withdrawn from everything else when we fall asleep, it is not focussed keenly on ourself, and hence we as ego are dissolved without being annihilated.
Sleep is not the only state of manōlaya , but in each other state of manōlaya the ego is likewise dissolved by some means other than keenly focussed self-attentiveness. In coma it may be dissolved because of a head injury or drug overdose, in general anaesthesia it is dissolved because of some anaesthetic drugs, and in kēvala nirvikalpa samādhi it is dissolved by breath restraint (prāṇāyāma ) or some other kind of yōga practice.
Whatever be the cause of manōlaya , what shines alone after ego is dissolved is only pure awareness, but because it shines alone after ego is dissolved, it does not annihilate it. In the case of manōnāśa , on the other hand, ego is dissolved because pure awareness shines forth alone as a result of keenly focussed self-attentiveness, so its dissolution is then permanent. In other words, in manōlaya pure awareness shines alone as a result of the dissolution of ego, whereas in manōnāśa ego is dissolved as a result of pure awareness shining alone.
Therefore it is a matter of which goes first, the horse or the cart, in which the horse is pure awareness shining alone and the cart is dissolution of ego. If the horse goes first followed by the cart, the resulting state is annihilation of mind (manōnāśa ), whereas if the cart goes first followed by the horse, the resulting state is only a temporary dissolution of mind (manōlaya ).
Personally, I half jokingly refer to myself as an Atthakavaggan Buddhist. I subscribe to what in the canon that is consistent with what I called the nucleus of the Atthakavagga which includes some suttas not in it. I believe there is a reason why the Buddha took a no views stance in the Atthakavagga and it is the same reason why he only advocated the complete knowledge of sanna and not vinnana. I believe that the Parayanavagga came afterwards and reflects competition between Buddhists and Brahmans.
That said, I will never forget the time I first woke up after general anesthesia. I asked the nurse how much longer until I go into surgery. She laughed and said they finished hours ago. Unlike with sleep. I had absolutely no sense of the passage of time. I didn’t even remember going out or reviving from it. I actually thought I was still waiting to go in.
I don’t know if there was some vague formless awareness during those missing hours that I can’t recall because memories were not laid down of them. I don’t think I will ever know. We don’t know the how or why of consciousness. I am agnostic with regard to this. I suspect the Buddha of the Atthakavagga was too. There were reasons why he would not answer certain questions like is the jiva the body or not and what happens to the Buddha after death. For all modern Buddhists talk about not having metaphysics, they sure make a lot of metaphysical claims.
Added latter: this is a song that says it all as far as I am concerned.
If you ever have 25 minutes on your hand, you might take a look at this intro to analytic idealism. Though Bernardo Kastrup is well versed in both science and philosophy (phds in both), the point is that his perspective is partly what led me to the Advaitic view (and later to Ramana Maharshi).
It is very easy to scoff off the views of modern day Zen, conflate them with 20th century myticism – add a little New Age to the mix – and find oneself in an easy position to criticize such views. Not so fast. Don’t put the horse before the cart.
If you like you can go back to Hume (who you like) and contrast him with Schopenhauer (among others). Or you can fast forward to Kastrup. The matter (so to speak) in question here is about perception. What if matter had nothing or very little to do with it?
Seeing things the way they are is a favorite theme of Buddhism. But in the view of analytic idealism, perspectives like the six sense base of the Buddha is radically put into question.
What if we are not at all seeing things the way they are? If you give yourself a half hour (or go into this more extensively with the other parts of the course) you might see how the perspective presented by Advaita is not so jeuvenile. Analytic idealism is an initial avenue that can lead one to at least an intellectual understanding of what sages like Ramana where communicating.
You’re arguing against a straw man. No one is saying Advaita is “juvenile”. What I am saying is that it is not the same as what the Buddha taught.
We grasp that perfectly well, thanks. That has been the case ever since Yajnavalkya said neti neti. We also grasp that “somewhat similar” does not mean “the same”. The Buddha critiqued the non-dualist view, and everything you have said simply restates what non-dualists have said for the past millenia.
This is virtually a quote from Yajnavalkya, and it is specifically this view that the Buddha opposed when speaking of not-self.
There are a couple of places in the canon where the Buddha seems to be interested in the dissolution of the ego rather than consciousness.
The ‘you’ here does appear to be the ego and its dissolution is the end of suffering. This sounds a lot like the salt analogy.
Likewise, In the Atthakavagga, Snp 4.2 one must completely understand sanna. The requires the cessation of sanna. Vinanna remains. This too is like the salt analogy.
It is not until the Parayanavagga that the cessation of vinanna is required and the Buddha appears to be more interested in dispelling the Atman.
Did we not do this already? It is the end of rebirth that is “the end of suffering” here. But also, I thought you were an Atthakavaggist? So quick to cite a late sutta!
There are hundreds of places in the canon where he is quite clearly interested in the cessation of consciousness, so. It is the separating out the cessation of consciousness from the cessation of the ego that is the quintessential Upanishadic move. The Buddha never fell for that.
Not sure what the Buddha actually fell for or not.
What I see are the same platitudes repeated over and over. I’ll grant you that the two perspectives are different. However, the point is Ramana’s take is different from that of classic Advaita.
It is the separating out the cessation of consciousness from the cessation of the ego that is the quintessential Upanishadic move.
Please explain what this move is, exactly.
I’ve mentionned a few times in this post that Ramana’s perspective on the ego is rather different from the classical texts (in several regards). But I’ll let you respond before going further.
Moreover, I would appreciate it if someone would have enough interest in this discussion to listen to Bernardo Kastrup’s 25 minute video (referenced above). It seems this discussion concerns perception. So what if what we think we are perceiving is totally mischaracterized/misunderstood from the get go?
First off, the fact that there are more of one than the other does not take away from the fact that there is a contradiction here. The fact that the Atthakavagga never mentions the cessation of vinnana, or vinnana in any other context, but does mention the need to fully understand sanna is important. This is especially so when it is the Atthakavagga that is said to have been recited when the Buddha asked to have the Dharma recited while he was alive and he found that praise worthy. He didn’t say “you left out the cessation of consciousness thing.”
Samjna is awareness with ego. Vijnana is pure awareness without ego. We are not talking about the vinnana of the five aggregates here. The salt analogy is not Buddhist. Experientially, Vijnana is sense data without augmentation by samjna. It is direct knowledge of sense data.
Vijnana in this sense appears to be neither sanna/perception or non-perception(unconsciousness or perception of void) from Snp 4.11. It also does seem to be in the seen is just the seen(vijnana, not samjna) and there is no you/ego in that. Ud 1.10 may be later than the Atthakavagga, but appears to be from the same strain of Buddhism.
I think the Atthakavagga and the Parayanavagga make more sense when you interpret sanna/samjna and vinnana/vijnanna as they are used in the salt analogy. Neither collection seems aware of the five aggregates.
Maybe this short video (4 minutes) sums up best for Buddhists where a similarity lies with Ramana Maharshi. Bhikkhu Bodhi’s stance on the second interpretation presented in this video demonstrates how the conclusive position taken by someone like Bhikkhu Sujato is far from being ‘conclusive.’
For folks reading the thread who don’t want to listen to the talk, nothing Ven Bodhi says here has anything to do with anything I talked about in this thread. What I am saying is that in the suttas, the idea that the final liberation has anything to do with “consciousness” is directly contradicted by the Buddha on countless occasions. This is historically a direct response to teachers such as Yajnavalkya, who founded the “Advaita” philosophy, which with variations persists today in various modern teachers.
Ven Bodhi is speaking about the question of whether Nibbana is sheer annihilation or whether it is an ontologically positive existent state albeit undefined and unconditioned. He says he leans to the latter view, a position that he has consistently, and with characteristic caution, stated for many decades. In the interview, he steadfastly avoids calling that state a “mind” or “consciousness” or anything similar, instead referring to terms used in the suttas such as dhamma, dhātu, āyatana, etc. He asserts a “realist” interpretation of these terms that is in line with the Pali Abhidhamma interpretation.
It is the interviewer who says, “So the lights are still on. What’s the content of the mind?” BB doesn’t directly answer that question, instead referring to the “state” of Nibbana after death as indefinable and immeasurable. Nothing in what he says supports any connection between the suttas and Yajnavalkya or other forms of non-dualism.
That this is your conclusion is to be expected. But the question remains open. What is it that “remains”?
In the end, there is always talk, inevitably, of a “state.” Why using the term “consciousness” is so verboten under certain interpretations (like yours) is hard to fathom. It is just a word; it points to the “undefined and unconditioned.” In fact these terms have often been used as descriptions of the final goal of Advaita.
I suspect that the contention raised by the Buddha was more to do about Brahmanism and their questionnable practices, rites and rituals than anything else. Of course, I can’t know that for sure because I wasn’t there. But neither was anyone else pondering over these things today. Sure the EBTs give us some guidelines along with text critical studies. But what, among other examples I could allude to, did the Buddha say that wasn’t recorded? What about many things I can say as an English speaking North American that mean something quite different in Europe or Australia… just because of say, my intention, intonation, body language, etc.? These details cannot be recorded accurately – either through oral transmission or written – to convey what a person originally meant. To compound these many problems, there are so many things that we think we know for sure on Monday…to be contradicted by more or unknown data coming in by Friday. So we are in a constant mode of defining and reconfiguring our so-called knowledge today. Does anyone really consider how complicated this gets when trying to repiece the past?
This is not a criticism of Buddhism per se. It equally applies to any religion, philosophy or perspective that has its origins in the millenia of time. (The same can be said of what Christ originally said and really meant, compared to the thousands of interpretations and their interpreters out there who continue debating the particulars to this very day. Those making present day interpretations weren’t there either).
So to the point of what the Buddha really meant about many things, I’ll pass my turn. In the end, belief seems to be the name of the game. We often have a tendency to think and believe either one way …or another. Some stick to their guns until the day they die. In many cases, these people are later found to have erred, either through miscalculation, misinterpretaion or misinformation. Finally it seems inevitable that, whether right or wrong, our belief in something or someone is what really calls the shots … and far less what our so-called unbiased analysis is really about.
Part of the problem is that the word “consciousness” has so many different usages. It is also a word that carries a lot of baggage for many people. I know people who cannot fathom consciousness without discursive thought or self consciousness or an intellect of some kind. I think this may be @sujato 's concern. It is a technical term in Buddhism and we may, myself certainly, are using the term in a different sense.
I can’t speak for @Jacques , but for myself I am using it to denote something experienced or awareness of something. That something would be a dhamma. Consciousness would not be annihilation.
I believe that the Buddha did not declare whether there is annihilation or not when he said he would not declare what happens to a Buddha after death. He made it clear in the Atthakavagga that he did not cling to formulated views or make statements about other realms. This is why the consolations given to the Kalamas are conditional and why he would not declare certain things.
Clearly, later Buddhists could not leave well enough alone. Views about what happens to the Buddha after death eventually crept in. The issue I have with the belief held by some here that you can resolve contradictions by simply counting the number of times each side of an argument appears in the canon and the one with the most mentions wins is that all that having the most mentions proves is that one side or faction was more prolific than another.
I think a better understanding is achieved by seeing the canon as being mostly a product of tradition after the Buddha died and by examining its evolution.
Added later: as for non-duality, I think that nibanna certainly is not the experience of subject-object dualism. Loka, being in the world, is suffering.
The issue I have with the belief held by some here that you can resolve contradictions by simply counting the number of times each side of an argument appears in the canon and the one with the most mentions wins is that all that having the most mentions proves is that one side or faction was more prolific than another.
In the same vein of thought that I was alluding to, it is one of the many sticky and probelmatic factors to take into account when dealing with any ancient text and its interpretation(s).
