The Buddha’s Inconvenient Truth
Shunyamurti speaks:
The main problem that all of the religious founders and teachers, at least in the East, have tried to solve, is: how do you avoid the triad of desire, satisfaction, and remorse?
And various ways were chosen, but eventually they all basically recognized there was only one way out of it, and you can’t avoid remorse once you fall into desire—and even in capitalism, “buyer’s remorse” is the main issue, isn’t it? You buy the red convertible and as you’re driving out of the showroom somebody hits you from behind, you know, and it’s not worth anything anymore, and here goes your mid-life crisis—you know?
So, it happens with the person you marry, it happens with pretty much everything in life—once you get what you thought you desired, it turns out it was a bait-and-switch, because you projected your fantasies on it and that wasn’t the reality of what you got.
So remorse is unavoidable in life, and it’s the main problem because people are burdened by huge amounts of remorse. And therefore if you can avoid desire in the first place you won’t have to deal with that. Now, you can avoid the satisfaction of desire—that’s another way—but then you’ll deal with frustration, and so you still won’t be happy, there won’t be any peace of mind.
So, desire is the problem. The issue, however, is: just by letting go of desire isn’t enough because then fear will come up under it, because you’ll realize that desire is actually a cover for more deep, underlying fears that you’re running away from, into desire. But in trying to solve that problem, you’re creating worse problems for yourself, and you just end up with a series of mortgages and, you know, other problems, that you have to worry about, and they cover your original dread, but you still can’t sleep at night because now you’ve got all of these other things to worry about.
So, if you can live a life in which you avoid desire, but in such a way, also, that you process your fear, then that’s the perfect solution, and that’s why they created ashrams, because nobody desires to go to an ashram. Right? An ashram is sort of the last resort: it’s either that or the mental institution, or the penitentiary—or the cemetery—you know? “OK, I’ll go to the ashram, we’ll try that first.” But you don’t desire to go there for a vacation. But it’s a good place to go to process your fear of the very problem that you have, which is being trapped in life, right?
People feel that they are in a situation where “I can’t get no satisfaction”, right? We have to create an album here—maybe on a yagya night we’ll go through all the pop songs of the issues along the way on the spiritual journey because that’s what they’re all about. And so, if Mick Jagger can’t get any satisfaction you haven’t got a chance! So give it up! He’s tried everything. Therefore, desire and satisfaction are not the way, because you’re going to end up with remorse, or with a heroin overdose, or with something else that comes along with trying too hard to get your fix.
So most of the scriptures that have been written have been about that. And most of the tales of the Buddha and the Mahavira were: how did this character escape desire, and escape this whole triad? One of my favorite books on this is the Ashtavakra Gita, one of those very interesting post-Upanishadic texts in India that tried to give you a taste for the flavor of Brahman-acarchya, and how you deal with this issue, and curve around it. It’s dealing with the curvature of emotional space through being more of a wave than a particle. Ashtavakra is one of the great sages—although he’s apocryphal, he’s not really a historical character as such, although he may be based on one of many wandering gurus at the time—but the word means “eight curves”, so it’s a wave of an octave. So, I would say he represents the spectrum of consciousness.
But the story of his life that is told, surrounding this Gita of his, is that while he was in his mother’s womb, his father, who was kind of a self-righteous pundit, was trying to recite to her scriptures about how to raise a child, and all of this, and yet he didn’t have accurate quotation of what he was saying, you know, and he was trying to be very know-it-all. And from inside the womb, Ashtavakra shouted out “You’re wrong! That’s not how it goes!” OK, so he’s already correcting his father before he’s born. This is the first, earliest, known case of an Oedipus complex—actually intrauterine—but the father curses him and says, “You should be born with eight deformations in your body for dishonoring your father even before you’re born anyway!”
So he is born as this strange cripple with eight deformations, and nonetheless he’s a genius born knowing all of the scriptures and the Upanishads and all of this. And his father gets in some trouble in a debate about the Vedanta in the court, and he is thrown into a dungeon; Ashtavakra saves his life, a whole bunch of things happen, the father finally forgives the son, and asks the goddess to remove the deformities, which happens. Anyway, things go better for everybody, but Ashtavakra didn’t care one way or the other, and so eventually he becomes the official guru of King Janaka. You probably have heard of Janaka, I’ve talked about him before, one of the great enlightened kings of India, and he got enlightened by listening to Ashtavakra.
So I’ll just read a few sections of it. This is a modern translation without the Sanskrit and all that, but it’s fairly accurate, and it starts out with Janaka asking:
“Oh master, tell me how to find detachment, wisdom, and freedom?”
And he says, “Child,” (to the King) “if you wish to be free, shun the poison of the senses. Seek the nectar of truth, of love and forgiveness, simplicity and happiness. Earth, fire, water, the wind, the sky, you are none of these.
If you wish to be free, know you are the Self, the witness of all of this, the heart of awareness. Set your body aside, sit in your own awareness, you will at once be happy, forever still, forever free. You have no caste, no duties bind you, formless, free, beyond the reach of the senses, the witness of all things, you are already liberated, so be happy.”
In other words, what do you need to desire? You’re already Brahman.
“Right and wrong, joy and sorrow, these are of the mind only, they are not yours. It is not really you who acts or enjoys, you are everywhere, forever free, forever truly free, the single witness of all things.”
“But if you see yourself as separate, then you are bound. If you think ‘I am doing this, I am doing that, I want this’, then the big black snake of selfishness has bitten you. Think ‘I do nothing’. That is the nectar of faith, drink it and be happy.”
“Know that you are one, that you are pure awareness, with the fire of this conviction, burn down the forests of ignorance, free yourself from sorrow and be happy.”
“Be happy because you are joy, unbounded joy, that is your nature. You are awareness itself. Just as a coil of rope is mistaken for a snake so you have been mistaken for the world. If you think you are free, you are free. If you think you are bound, you are bound.”
“You are what you think. The Self looks like the world, but this is just an illusion. The Self is everywhere, but it is one, still, free, perfect. The witness of all things, without action, without clinging, without desire.”
“Meditate on the Self, on the one without two, on the exalted awareness. Give up the illusion that you are a separate self. Give up the illusion that you are within or without, that you are this or that.”
“Because you think you are the body, that is why you are bound. Know that you are pure awareness, with this knowledge as your sword, cut through your chains of attachments and be happy.”
“For you are already free, without action, without flaw, luminous, and bright, you are bound only by your habits. Your nature is pure awareness. You are flowing through all things, and all things are flowing in you.”
“But beware the narrowness of mind. You are always the same, unfathomable, limitless, free, serene, unperturbed. But desire only your own awareness. Whatever takes form is false, only the formless endures.”
“When you understand the truth of this teaching you will not be born again. For God is infinite, within the body and without. Like a mirror and the image in the mirror. As the air is everywhere, flowing around a pot and going in it, so God is everywhere, filling all things and going through them forever.”
“The wise man knows the Self, and yet he plays the game of life. But the fool lives in the world like a beast of burden. The true seeker feels no elation, even in the exalted state of Brahman, which Indra and all the Gods long for, because he understands the nature of things. His heart is not stained by right or wrong, as the sky is not smudged by smoke. He is pure of heart, he knows the world is only the Self. So who can stop him from doing as he wishes?”
“Of the four kinds of being, from Brahma to a blade of grass, only the wise man is strong enough to give up desire and aversion. How rare he is, knowing he is the Self, he acts accordingly and is never fearful. For he knows he is the Self that is one without two, and thus the Lord of all creation.”
“The mind desires this and grieves for that. It embraces one thing and spurns another. Now it feels anger, and now happiness. And in this way you are bound.”
“But when the mind desires nothing, and grieves for nothing, when it is without either joy or anger, and grasping nothing, turns nothing away, then you are free. But when the mind is attracted to anything it senses, you are bound.”
“When there is no attraction, you are free. Where there is no I you are free. When there is I, you are bound. Consider this, it is easy. Embrace nothing, turn nothing away.”
Well, that’s basically the council of all of the sages and saints, really of all traditions. And if you can remain in that state that is neutral, between desire and fear, there will be no suffering. So this is the well-known secret of life that no one decides to keep, but it is the easy way to live and enjoy the world totally, but without wanting to possess it, and without therefore having to repel it. Simply by accepting it as it is, in pure awareness that does not want to grasp or hold onto it, or possess it or use it for any purpose—but allow what comes to come, and allow what goes to go. Be free. Let all others be free.
Very simple wisdom, and it leads to Brahman-acharya. What more do you need? So it’s a good book of beautiful poetry. I recommend it. You read it in one of the great scriptures of India, and of the world, and puts it all in very simple terms. There are others of its kind, the Avadhuta Gita and a number of Gitas were written during this post-Upanishadic period, but I think this is one of the most beautiful and concise of them all.
Namaste,
Shunyamurti
Audio File: The Buddha’s Inconvenient Truth – Audio File.MP3
This Post Has One Comment
Sarvani Pochiraju
16 Mar 2021Beautiful as usual🙂🌹🌹
I want to come to the ashram🙂🙂