Disregard the Ego Narratives
Summary: No one is in bondage. Only the choice to believe the ego narratives diverts the attention from the Supreme Presence within—and equally without. This is a universal truth. The illumined sages of every spiritual lineage have passed this on as their legacy. That is why it is often called the Perennial Philosophy. But theoretical knowledge is not enough: The habit of forgetfulness of Self must be abandoned.
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. . . even when the ego does fall into that delusion that what you are is the awareness of that fall; you are not the one who has fallen. You remain always in that state that is always already liberated. And so it’s very important not to buy into a narrative of “Oh, I did it again” or “I failed!” or “Woe is me!”—because none of that is true of the Self.
I’m sure you all remember the grandfather of Advaita Vedanta, Gaudapada, the guru of the guru of Shankaracharya, whose most famous lines are: “No one is in bondage and therefore no one ever gets liberated.” This is to be taken very literally. No one is in bondage. The ego’s bondage is an illusion because you’re not the ego. No one is actually in the ego. It’s a character being played out before you, but you’re not in it, in the same way that when you wake up from a dream, you realize, “Oh, I wasn’t in a dream. That wasn’t reality. I was watching it, I was even creating it, but I was never actually in that situation. It never existed. It was fictional, it was an illusion, a self-created illusion.”
And because it’s self-created, it is also self-destroying. And the mind is inherently self-liberating from its own creations. It creates, it sustains, for a period, and then it destroys its belief, and it goes on to the next, but the Self never changes from that pure awareness that’s uninvolved, uncaptured, unaffected by whatever happens at the surface level of the mind. And no matter how bad one’s nightmare might be, or how bad one’s karma might be, the Self never loses that blissful nature of absolute freedom and absolute transcendence of the illusory unfoldment.
So this truth is not simply present in Advaita Vedanta—it’s present in Daoism, it’s present in Buddhism, it’s present in the apophatic mystical Christian systems of thought, and it’s present in Kabbalah. It’s present in every spiritual tradition—the same truth. It’s universal.
I picked a line out of a book which I’ve read from this before to you. It’s probably the main root tantra of the Dzogchen, one of the main lineages of Dzogchen, which has been translated as The Supreme Source. So I want to read just part of one page to you that sums up this understanding, I think, in a very beautiful and a very clear and emphatic way. In case anyone has the book. It’s on page 178.
“One’s fundamental nature is pure and total consciousness.”
OK? That is what you are. Pure, total consciousness. There’s no unconscious. There’s nothing out of range of consciousness. You never lose consciousness. Consciousness is eternal. Pure, total consciousness is your fundamental nature. And “I”, this is now the speaker of this book, which was downloaded by the great Buddha, the Supreme Source:
“I, the Supreme Source, the teacher of teachers, do not teach the teachers of the three dimensions to meditate in order to alter the mind.”
OK? So Dzogchen, which is probably the pearl of the Tantric Buddhist traditions, is teaching, “Do not meditate. It’s a very bad habit. Meditation is your enemy.” Why? OK:
“Do not meditate in order to alter the mind because the true nature of mind has always been Self-liberation.”
Just like Gaudapada said, your fundamental nature is already liberated.
“Striving to meditate amounts to forsaking the true nature of mind.”
By trying to improve on it, you move away from it and enter into delusion. You lose the very thing that you’re striving to gain.
“So, listen, great Being, Mahatma, if you want to realize the nature of your mind, which is possible only by not having desires, you must not intentionally seek to find the nondiscursive state of equanimity.”
OK? You can’t strive for it because striving is the absence of equanimity. Any form of striving will take you away from the peace of that pure presence.
“Remain naturally without accepting or rejecting.”
In other words, don’t accept or reject the state of consciousness that you are in.
“Remain spontaneously in the state, free of commotion. The mind is precisely the natural condition, and all phenomena exist only in this very condition. Do not seek to alter it. Do not strive to attain something other than this nature. And as this is the very essence, do not seek anything else. Even if the Buddhas were to try, they would not find anything, as all is already perfect, there is no need to do anything. As all is already realized, there is no need to act. Simply remain in equanimity without judging or thinking.
Listen, Mahatma, not even the Buddhas of the past found anything outside of their own minds. They never altered the natural condition. They never meditated, visualizing or coming up with concepts. They were simply abiding in the nondiscursive state in which they realized their own mind. The Buddhas of the present too, and those to come in the future, achieve Self-realization only through this, the always already present nondiscursive state of equanimity.”
OK, so I don’t think anything could be more clear than that, and your instruction is to do nothing, but of course, for the ego to do nothing is impossible. However, because you’re not the ego, it doesn’t matter as long as there is an awareness that is in the recognition that there is a silent presence underneath the commotion of the ego mental chatter and all of its emotional volatility, underneath that is the unmoving, unchanging equanimity, that is the Buddha Nature. Or that is, if you prefer, the Dao, or Shiva, or Shakti, whatever name you want to give it—it’s nameless, formless, and unknowable by the mind that wants to make it an object that it achieves. It cannot be achieved. It is what you are, and that you can only know when there is no effort to achieve anything.
So this is agreed upon by all of the sages. Ramana says the same thing. All of the sages of the various traditions of nonduality are agreed upon this. It’s not controversial. And this state is Sat, in fact, it’s Sat Chit Ananda.
Audio File Disregard the Ego Narratives.mp3