Guilty Programming

Art by Sanjay Patel

Through The Wormhole with Morgan Freeman often is on my television often eveningly. Most of the time I don’t get to enjoy any of what’s on my television, let alone something as useful as this show – I’m (almost) eternally buried in school work. However, in an effort to spend more time near my beloved, I’ve been spending less time in my temple room and instead have been doing assignments on the first floor, in the dining room which connects to the family room where the only TV we own is situation centrally.

I’ve found, far more often than not, that Through The Wormhole is essentially Hindu in nature. In many episodes, no joke, the same laws of physics or… well, anything, the things that are discussed are eerily similar to the notions and concepts put forth by Sanatana Dharma. A recent episode was no exception. Icing on the cake however, was that a segment of the episode reminded me closely of a conversation I had with someone some time ago.

During our talk, he mentioned something about impure thoughts and working through them. Now, I’ll leave you to whatever conclusion you’re most inclined to regarding the definition of what an impure thought might be. Our talk included whether impure thinkery would affect one’s karmas.

I do think our thoughts ultimately affect our karmas. However, my take from the beginning was that impure thoughts don’t really exist. Lemme share…

1) Thoughts are just thoughts. Like literally anything else, the perceived goodness or evilness of a thought or anything else depends entirely on the one doing the perceiving. This is supported by quantam physics believe it or not. A recent article I came across on Facebook can be accessed here, and in plain English details that even “solid” matter only behaves they way it does when it’s being observed. To be sure, your table is only a table so long as consciousness is “watching” it be a table. Otherwise it not only becomes part of “everything everywhere,” but also literally flickers in and out of existence.

Thoughts are no different. Their flavor and indeed their very existence depends on them being observed. And when a human mind is being used as the tool to do that observing, you end up with “good” and “bad” because the human mind is a programmable thing that comes with all kinds of preconceptions.

This is why so many people ruin their own meditations. They struggle to sit back and watch the inside of their mind. For one, they think they are the mind. This is the first and biggest problem. If original sin exists, and is truly passed from parent to child going back to Adam and Eve, THIS is it. For another, they instantly become frustrated when a thought arises, because the preconceived notion of what meditation is starts a fire that every following thought ends up fueling. This is what happens when someone tries to make meditation happen. Interestingly, those thoughts are neither natural fuel for that fire, nor automatic. We label them as “bad” instead of letting them arise and fall away, and in doing so add them to the fire. Thoughts are just thoughts. None are inherently good or bad, and even after you label them thusly, they still aren’t truly either. Jnana Yoga is this realization in one’s life – it opens the way for a foundation to be set, it allows for progression from that starting point to occur, and Jnana is verily the culmination of full realization.

2) When we misidentify, we add those thoughts to the fire by labeling them good or bad… or impure. Whenever we do this, THAT’S the first chance they have to manifest within our karmas. Prior to that there’s no impression of those thoughts upon us. These impressions are known as Samsaras. Samsaras are like groves on the wheel of death and rebirth. Truly, regardless of how minimal or severe those groves are, a grove is a grove and it still needs buffed out. These groves are the karmas we experience. Being able to identify those groves specific of your karmas/karmic wheel is a part of Jnana yoga. Part of Jnana yoga means looking upon them with Truth as your light and as your sight, and this results in no longer making a mountain out of a molehill … or no longer calling impure something that has no actuality. When you manage to stop this you are resolving your karmas and may finally exit the wheel of death and rebirth.

This is actually something I could go on and on about. The Jnana texts are full of this kind of wisdom, shedding light on the nature of Reality. It’s never wrong to call a spade a spade, but deciding whether a spade is malevolent or beneficent… or impure – that’s where we often get ourselves into trouble.

ॐ असतो मा सद्गमय ।
तमसो मा ज्योतिर्गमय ।
मृत्योर्मा अमृतं गमय ।
ॐ शान्तिः शान्तिः शान्तिः ॥

My sincerest hope is that we can all learn to be free from the baggage we’ve inherited and so far have mostly either refused to question or been to lazy to question.

Aum Shri Mahaganeshaya Namaha
Aum Shanti

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Sweetest Satan

Image taken from Ananta Vrindavan Images

Hinduism Today magazine has long been one of my favorite publications. It’s a wonderful and credible source of Hindu vidya, and although the publication was founded by monks from a Shaivite lineage, the magazine itself often contains considerable information pertaining to many of Hinduism’s other sects. The magazine is officially Shaivite, but I think most readers would find it actually quite Smarta. The lineage leading up to the modern day Saiva Siddhanta Church is old and very much intact, and the fact that it manages to have such an immense and open presence here in the West, while remaining so very orthodox is great. For a while I saved every issue, and then as an act of nonattachment I stopped, and now I am again. Some issues carry more weight than others, but every single issue is my favorite issue.

In the most recent issue of the magazine published, there’s an article titled, “From Bondage to Liberation: Explaining the ego’s initial subjugation of the soul as a form of Shiva’s grace.” It couldn’t have come at a better time, considering the formation of these posts, and I feel it offers a warm-n-fuzzy feeling or silver lining to the information presented leading up to this post. I hope you agree.

Grace is a funny religious term. I don’t like it usually. Same goes with the notion of mercy. For one, the difference between the two is often poorly understood (as with myself) or misunderstood entirely (as with many people, in general). The simplest definition of grace that I’ve been able to find is “unmerited favor,” which pretty closely matches my current understanding. The connotation is one of doing something nice for someone even though they don’t necessarily deserve it. There’s nothing inherently wrong in that notion, as far as I’m concerned, but I don’t really understand God to operate in that kind of mode. To me, to suppose God shows grace to humans is rather negating to the concept of karma, which itself is fairly supreme. I can see gurus showing grace and mercy, and in some cases I think this is exhibited in the form of the guru mitigating a devotee’s karmas for the advancement of that devotee. But I digress.

So… back to ego and grace and Hinduism Today’s Satguru Bodhinath Veylanswami. According to the article in this issue of the magazine, egoity is named “anava mala.” According to the Mrigendra Agama, anava mala is the “individualizing veil; egoity.” Also according to this Agama, the grace of Shivashakti is bestowed upon not only sentient beings, but also upon “inert things,” and this acts as an intensifier to that anava mala.

Superficially, this sounds counterintuitive. Why would God’s grace intensify our egoity? To be clear, the Mrigendra Agam clarifies, “…but not with the intention of making the soul suffer. Whatever action is done by Lord Shiva, it is indeed and effective and unfailing help to the soul. It cannot be considered otherwise.” The text continues, detailing that liberation cannot happen until the anava mala is removed entirely.

“But even when the power of anava mala becomes ripe for such maturation, its intensification does not, and cannot, take place of its own accord. It is seen that always and by all means, the non-intelligent object, in this case the ego, is kept in action only by an intelligent being,” states the Mrigendra Agama. The Agama then likens all of this to a physician who’s applying a stinging medicine to a wound. The sting is technically painful to the patient, but certainly for his own good. Later, the Agama continues, “Even so, for the sake of the removal of anava mala, the experiences should not be considered as afflicting or aggravating activity, but rather as healing, for they drive the soul’s evolution through the understanding born of its experiences.”

“Since Shiva is all-pervasive, His immediate and active presence in all objects and beings cannot be set aside. But where there is no need for His action, He remains neutral and free from any action… For those souls in whom anava mala is reaching its phase of maturation and removal, Shivashakti descends immediately and unfolds in the form of grace. Grace is indeed the compassionate function which makes the intensities of anava mala’s bonds ripe enough for removal.”

Later on we’re explained that a specific form of Shakti manifests to help the loosening of the ego through intensification. “Tirodhana shakti is a pure and asupicious power, which takes command of and works in concord with the ego’s obscuring potencies in order to sytematically work through them.”

This deep and metaphysical explaination closes with, “Grace is, in actuality, the cognitive power of the bound soul brought about by its evolution through the ego’s dominion and the maturing process of the inert bond. The simultaneous occurance of cognition and the ego’s intensification is considered to be the bestowal of grace” and that this explanation applies identically with the preponderant states of karma and maya, the soul’s other two bonds (anava mala being the third bond of the soul preventing liberation).

Certainly by now, your head may be swimming. Fair enough. But where do we stand? I’m feeling like it might be appropriate to bring this post to a close and attempt a summary in another. Of course, why not have skipped all these many words and just cut right to the summary? It’s not my style. The friend who’s been mentioned before in these posts encouraged me to write a paragraph of 20 words. It made me chuckle. 20 words isn’t a paragraph (for me). It’s a sentence.

One more post. Then I’m done. I promise.

Om Shri Mahaganeshaya Namaha
Om Shanti

Sweeter Satan

Taken from Google Images, “Ego”

As I mentioned in the last post, I believe that other people are indeed often extentions of one’s ego. I intend to explain in this post and perhaps another post or two why I believe that. As I mentioned in the last post, a certain friend has often been the impetus for posts here on Sthapati. It was similarly his idea that I break this information into multiple posts instead of slamming you all with the book this is turning out to be.

Also mentioned in the last post, in addition to that friend, were other sources of knowledge and guidance I draw from on this subject – and many others. I’ll start now with sharing some material directly from Tolle’s, A New Earth:

“In normal everyday usage, ‘I’ embodies the primordial error, a misperception of who you are, an illusory sense of identity. This illusory sense of self is what Albert Einstein, who had deep insights not only into the reality of space and time, but also into human nature, referred to as ‘an optical illusion of consciousness.’ That illusory self then becomes the basis for all further interpretations, or rather misinterpretations, of reality… If you recognize an illusion as illusion, it dissolves. The recognition of illusion is also its ending. Its survival depends on your mistaking it for reality… What you usually refer to when you say ‘I’ is not who you are. By a monstrous act of reductionism, the infinite depth of who you are is confused with a sound produced by the vocal cords or the thought of ‘I’ in your mind and whatever the ‘I’ has identified with…”

He goes on to explain a person growing up and becoming identified with the I-thought, “When a young child learns that a sequence of sounds produced by the parents’ vocal cords is his or her name, the child begins to equate a word, which in the mind becomes a thought, with who he or she is. At that stage, some children refer to themselves in the third person…Soon after, they learn the magic word ‘I’ and equate it with their name, which they have already equated with who they are. Then other thoughts come and merge with the original I-thought. The next steps are thoughts of me and mine to designate things that are somehow part of ‘I.’ … When ‘my’ toy breaks or is taken away, intense suffering arises. Not because of any intrinsic value that the toy has, but because of the thought of “mine.” As the child grows up, the original I-thought attracts other thoughts to itself: It becomes identified with a gender, possessions, the sense-perceived body, a nationality, race, religion, profession. Other things the ‘I’ identifies with are roles – mother, father, husband, wife, and so on… Most of the time it is not you who speaks when you say or think ‘I’ but some aspect of that mental construct, the egoic self. Once you awaken you still use the word ‘I,’ but it will come from a much deeper place within yourself.”

Tolle continues a little later to detail how identification is one of the most basic structures through which the ego comes into existence. Apparently, the word identification derives from two Latin words, idem meaning “same,” and facere which means “to make.” So when I identify with something, I “make it the same.” All of this can be somewhat tough to follow if you’re not used to diving deep, but if you’re a nut like me who does nothing without diving deep, this stuff is like gold. For me it’s never enough to know the what or even the how, but the why is also mandatory.

When I came to this world, like anyone else I was in bit of a fog. Through repetition and some basic infantile cognition, “I” came to know that Josh = my body, and later began expanding that association – no, that identification – outside of my personal borders. Suddenly, instead of just me being “I,” there’s now my things, my accomplishments, and …my beloved. From a purely linguistic standpoint, there’s nothing wrong with using words like I, me, my, or mine. Much like having the right tools to get a job done, personal and possessive pronouns are required to communicate relative ideas. From that strictly utilitarian perspective, there’s nothing egoic about those identifiers.

Problems arise when, as the Latins implied, I begin to equate (“make the same”) stuff that’s not really me with my actual Self. The person identified (see how this words arises, time after time?) as my beloved is essentially nondifferent from my Self. We’re from the same Source, we have the same Self, and we’re headed toward the same Destination. Just about anything else is ego, is Maya. In truth, if something were to happen to him/his body, I would be no less. It’s because of my identification with him that the idea of or experience of his leaving causes misery – my ego percieves the notion of “my” beloved leaving as some kind of attack on me. If Truth or Reality is eternal, there’s no logical way we can say that the body or personality of our loved ones or of other people are “real.” The stuff our bodies and thoughts are made of existed as other substances before their current form, and after this all-too-brief human existence, those same stuffs will decompose. The actual Truth of that situation – which every single soul will encounter at least once in life – is that regardless of physical manifestation, there’s never any difference in actual distance between us and Love. We see our beloved’s form, we identify with it – literally that form becomes “my” beloved, the identification means my ego/mind perceive “my beloved” as an extension of who I am, and so when my beloved leaves – in whatever form that might take – I am miserable, because I’ve already ignorantly tricked myself into fully believing that a part of me is lost. Much like an arm being cut off.

Taken from Google Images

It’s because of this, that Hinduism has done so much exploration on the nature of the human’s internal landscape as well as other components like attachment. What are we really attached to? The ego is the object and the subject of all attachment. The ego is like a habit of smoking cigarettes – it’s both the problem and the apparent solution. Smoking causes issues which stress people out, and then it manages to fool people into feeling relieved when they smoke because of stress – which only causes additional problems for the smoker. The ego does the very same. We’re fooled into thinking something based in the original problem is ever part of the solution. We develop attachments to distract the mind from the ego, because as Tolle states, exposing an illusion disolves it. Our Self has no attachments, because all that truly is, is the Self – without going into it too much, this knowledge is precisely the foundation of Jnana Yoga, leads directly to experiential awareness of the One, and is why I can’t adhere primarily to bhakti margs, which for their own existence (at least at the level practiced and experienced by most humans) necessarily mandate, perpetuate, and promote the notion of “other” – which is a tool the ego uses to continue its own existence.

***If you haven’t gathered by now, the common application of the word “ego” isn’t nearly the complete definition of the word. Most equate ego with arrogance, but many humble people are still filled to the brim with egoism.***

But there may be some silver lining to this cloud, after all. According to the current issue of Hinduism Today magazine, Satguru Bodhinath Veylanswami explains through a Shaiva Agama how the ego is a tool of the One, meant to help us.

All that and a bucket of chicken coming up!

Om Shri Mahaganeshaya Namaha
Om Shanti