Building Extension: Our Earnest Appeal

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Following The Enlightened One

May 30, 2010

- Swami Yogatmananda


 

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Summary of this Lecture:


Buddha was an extremely rational and yet compassionate teacher. He attainted enlightenment by analyzing the experiences- rejecting the objects (however pleasant they may be) that bring suffering and bondage and accepting that which bring freedom and ultimate bliss. He taught that 'Buddha' (enlightenment) is a state and each and everyone has the potential to attain to it. Once his disciple Ananda with other assembled disciples, asked him - why, even after intellectually understanding the things, do we fall in the ignorance that binds us to the cycles of birth and death and how to get emancipation from it? Buddha replied that this world is as unreal as the 'blossoms seen in the sky' and is conjured by the sense organs and mind. The existence of 'I' and existence of 'world' depend upon each other. Thus the way is to remove the attachment to sense organs and the world conjured up by them and merge in the essence of both. To further elaborate the concept in a concrete way, Buddha took out a handkerchief and tied six knots to it - each one corresponding to the five sense organs and mind. Then he asked 'what is the knot? - nothing but handkerchief.' Then he said that if you untie these knots what remains is the handkerchief, which was there all the time. So also the reality is One; we tie the knots of separate existence onto it and further number those knots in a consecutive order to create an illusion of connectedness. However, in truth, these knots come and go; they do not have any existence at all. Vedanta calls this the knot of existence and nonexistence (chit-jada granthi). When delusion of sense conceptions is destroyed, what remains is the true essence of mind (i.e. the handkerchief in the above example). As the untying of the knots has to be done in a reverse order one after another, similarly first untangle the misconception of ego-personality and next - the attachment to personal attainments. When these two entanglements are utterly destroyed and never again permitted to rise to defile the true essential mind, then one attains enlightenment. The false 'I' tied with body and mind and hence tied to the world through ego is not real. Sri Ramkrishna says that 'I' and 'mine' is the bondage that makes us suffer. By following the teachings of the enlightened one, we ourselves become enlightened.