The Duryodhana Factor, What is the Intellect, The Blessing (Or Curse) of A Human Birth
Though the nondual teachings of Vedanta make it clear that being human is not our primary identity, I have been directing the nondual teachings towards how they relate to being human, as you all know. This is where they count most. Tonight I want to continue that discussion, and look again into what it means to have a human birth. Before I do, I want to bring up a satsang I had with an advanced inquirer. It goes into what the intellect is, how it functions, what it means to be sentient and how Vedanta refines and improves the intellect.
Frank, as I call him, said: I’ve never really understood the difference between mind and intellect: is the mind the object which knowledge slowly works on while the intellect is the discriminating function “in” the mind?
Sundari: Yes to both. The mind or Subtle body has several functions, and the intellect (buddhi) is one of them, along with emoting, doubting, memory and gathering and directing the information coming in from the five senses. Without a functioning intellect, knowledge does not have anywhere to assimilate, and you are called a ‘vegetable’. The mind and intellect cannot be separated, though the intellect depends on the mind working, but the mind does not depend on the intellect, nor any of its other functions.
What is Sentiency?
The mind can still ‘work’ (as in keep the body alive) without a functioning intellect, memory etc. This is an interesting discussion because it takes us into investigating what sentiency really is. From the nondual perspective, we can define sentience as a mind upon and in which Consciousness is still shining. Though everything relies on Consciousness, a person with Alzheimer’s or dementia has a functioning mind/brain in that it’s still alive, but none of its functions work properly. So, a lot like deep sleep, you are in a state of bliss but don’t know it. A person in a coma is sentient, but without a working intellect, doesn’t know it. So are they really sentient? Well, yes and no.
An animal is sentient and has a rudimentary intellect, it can determine and ‘feel’ certain things it needs to know to survive, but has no reasoning powers or self-reflectivity. They have a mind, but they are just part of a greater field of intelligence, i.e., Isvara, who does the thinking and feeling for them. They cannot deviate from their program. More so for a microbe, which has no brain at all, yet they are the most successful organisms on the planet. They have no mind but we must say they are sentient because they gave rise to, and keep other sentient life, alive. Consciousness shining in whatever way is still Consciousness.
Without a functioning intellect, we are sentient, but just basically animals; we would have thoughts and feelings but would not know we do, so they would neither serve nor hinder us. Any powers of determination we possessed would be instinctive, not based on actual discrimination. We would not be able to break dharma, because like animals, we could not deviate from our program.
Safer, but much less interesting. That’s the upside and downside of being human. It’s a great gift and also, a great responsibility having an intellect. Thanks to these powers Isvara bestows upon us, we have an instrument , the Subtle body, capable of assimilating nonduality, and getting out of mithya – jumping from the burning building. The mind/intellect gives us access to much joy, but it also creates much mischief because we are the only sentient beings upon which Isvara thrusts the full spectrum of dharma and adharma.
Frank: If so, without knowledge, the intellect is only likely employed in adharmic judgement or aversion or desire “discrimination”: employed by the ego, not on the reflection of awareness as a reference.
Sundari: Not necessarily. It depends what you mean by knowledge. If mithya knowledge is dependable (and not just my interpretation, opinion or ludicrous notions), it is always good in any situation. But it can be used for both dharma and adharma, as you say. Lots of people don’t have Self-knowledge but they have very good intellects, and good values. But however good, their thinking and discrimination is only between objects. They are more likely to make better choices, but it’s still in mithya.
Anything going on in the intellect, whether it is in a purified dharmic mind and intellect with its likes and dislikes under the management of Self-knowledge, or an adharmic egoic mind/intellect of the worst kind, is a reflection of Consciousness in that nothing would be going on it at all without Consciousness. Without the light of Consciousness shining on the mind/intellect, it’s just a piece of meat, either in deep sleep, in a coma, or 6 ” under.
The Reflection of Consciousness is Not Different but Not the Same
The reflection of Consciousness is not true to Consciousness because it is not real – it’s mithya. Only Consciousness is real, yet the reflection would not be ‘there’ without Consciousness. In mithya, thanks to the deluding power of Maya, anything is possible. A mind in which Self-knowledge is firm would never break dharma because it knows there is nothing to gain by doing so, there is nothing other than it, and so non-injury is automatic. But a mind without it is under the whip of duality can and often does break dharma even without meaning to.
Frank: There can probably be dumb intellects and shiny intellects?
Sundari: Yes, no doubt about it. Though the true nature of the mind (all minds) is sattva, having access to it depends on how much rajas and tamas condition the mind. Some people are just born with more lights on, so to speak. Though the intellect can be purified, greatly refined, and cultivated in its thinking abilities and capacity, if we are born with a predominantly tamasic intellect, that is not likely to happen.
Highly rajasic minds can be very bright too, but the problem is that too much rajas extroverts the mind and tends to make it neurotic and too emotional. The quality of the intellect also depends on how balanced and well-regulated our emotions are. Too much emotion is not good, but too little emotional balance does not bode well for us, either. As much as over-emotionality leads to self-destructive and dangerous behaviour, so does lack of emotion. People who lack emotion don’t lead well-planned logical lives in the manner of the coolly rational.
They tend to lead foolish lives because emotion is a component of thinking. Emotions (mind) help us measure the value of something and unconsciously guide us as we navigate through life—away from things that are likely to lead to pain and toward things that are likely to lead to fulfillment. In extreme cases, people who dissociate from their feelings become sociopaths, untroubled by barbarism, and unable to feel other people’s pain.
As we go about our day, millions of stimuli bombard us every second—a confusion of sounds, sights, smells, and motions. And yet amidst all this pyrotechnic chaos, different parts of the brain and body interact to form what cognitive scientists call an ‘Emotional Positioning System’. Like the Global Positioning System that might be in your car, the EPS senses your current situation and compares it to the vast body of data it has stored in its memory and makes judgment calls about the best course it needs to take to help us navigate our days.
There are many seemingly dull or even rajasic intellects that with exposure to higher thinking and with the correct guidance, would shine far more brightly than they were aware they could. Kind of like having a Ferrari parked in your garage that you never knew was there, and had never driven. You need to learn how to drive it. Though Vedanta does not require that your intellect is of genius status, it does require good thinking. And as the intellect gets exposed to nondual thinking, it will be refined. With a little help from Isvara, you can transform an ordinary sedan into a Ferrari!
The problem with good thinkers is that they tend to be identified with their thinking abilities. It can lead to a blockage, or to enlightenment sickness, when the ego co-opts the teaching. Karma yoga means you understand that you are not the thinker, Isvara is. Humility is required for karma yoga to work, and intellectuals give lip service but cannot surrender to Isvara because they cannot give up being right, so karma yoga is not effective. So let’s take another look at what stands in the way – the hard core of the ego.
The Hard Core of the Ego
The coining of the Duryodhana Factor is a term Isvara gave me when I identified the remaining unconscious, hard core, resistant and defended part of the ego. It’s a play on the main antagonist in the Bhagavad Gita, Duryodhana. It’s also what I call the adaptive child persona, and others call the wounded child persona. We all have one that develops as we learn to cope with whatever karma life hands us when we come into this world, where injury is inevitable, and we don’t get what we want. Whether that is not enough love and attention or other factors, the DF develops because we did not feel safe as children, for whatever reason.
It was a key insight for me into the nature of a deep samskara, a blockage at the core of my jiva conditioning, that prevented love flowing from and to me. Even though I knew it was there, and had dealt with most of it, there was a remnant that blocked full access to the bliss of Self-knowledge. Some years ago, the time came for Isvara to clean it out, and it was not much fun. It is the control centre or headquarters if you like, of the fearful, negative ego. That’s why it’s so defended.
Nobody gets spared on this issue, it comes with being human. Even people who have had seemingly perfect childhoods develop the DF because of the nature of duality, Maya. Nothing in life is certain, which from the ego’s point of view, makes life inherently dangerous. Which it is if we are identified with the body mind. Loss and suffering are part and parcel of the deal if you think you are a ‘someone’.
Though cracking “my” DF came about through what seemed like very personal and hurtful circumstances, thanks to the blessing of Self-knowledge, what was soon obvious was how impersonal it was. We all have more or less the same cognitive biases and psychological protective mechanisms because injury is inevitable for all humans. Nobody gets everything they want until the one who wants is negated. Only then are we satisfied because we are what we want.
Right from our earliest caveman days, life was full of threats to our survival. These days most of us don’t need to worry about survival, and most threats are purely psychological. But the atavistic fears are still there, seen in the biases that run the human mind, such as the predatory instinct. This is the reflexive assumption that someone or something intends injury, whether the issue is minor, (someone cutting you off in traffic), or major, (a big argument with someone), and the deep, instinctive and aggressively protective response to it.
Whenever we get caught up in antagonistic defensiveness it’s pure rajas and tamas at work, projection and denial. It’s a fight or flight stress response that makes us highly emotional and reactive, raising the blood pressure and heartbeat. Almost like our very lives are in danger. When activated, discrimination goes out the window because the mind is extroverted by rajas and in denial thanks to tamas.
The Three Main Ingredients of the Hard Core of the Ego
The predatory instinct (rajas) always works in tandem with the negativity bias (tamas), which tends to blow things out of proportion and expect the worst. It is also a protection against injury based on the fear of not getting what we want or avoiding what we don’t want. To add to the misery, what is usually in the mix of that unhappy psychological cocktail is the fear of not being a good person, worthy of love. Of not being good enough. Low self-esteem, shame and blame, and those dreadful voices of diminishment, our internal judge and critic.
Isvara really does not make unique humans. Therapies like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy work well to help us identify our emotions. But basically, these three biases are almost without fail the major ingredients of everyone’s seemingly personal DF. On that score, we are all very similar. Knowing how impersonal our personal ignorance really is, we can track how it plays out because it is so predictable. Knowledge is power, especially Self-knowledge. With it we have the tools to un-defend and demote that fearful controlling ego: guna knowledge and karma yoga.
The Fine Print to Karma Yoga – Give Up Being Right
Guna knowledge makes us clairvoyant, which means we can see clearly. It quite literally gives us 20/20 vision into how our ego functions. Seeing is one thing but the hard part of un-defending the ego, karma yoga, is surrender to Isvara. Which means giving up being right. Without that, humility is absent and karma yoga is no more than lip service. There are no shortcuts or excuses if what you want most is to be free of the conditioned egoic program, and to live free, confident and whole as the Self, porous to and free of what comes in from the field.
When that ego is no longer defended, you still have positive and negative feelings, of course. They come from Isvara. You are free to get angry, to stand up for yourself, or to confront when necessary or appropriate. But the mind being porous means the feelings don’t stick. They come and they go, passing through, without leaving any damage (karma) in their wake. Just part of life. Quickly de-fused, curious objects known to you.
Living nondual knowledge is without doubt, where the rubber meets the road. As I said in a recent talk, we must both dispassionately and ruthlessly objectify the jiva, and at the same time, embrace our humanity with compassion. We are all made a certain way, no one is perfect as a jiva. But we most certainly are perfect as the Self. We can trust nonduality to take care of the “wanter” if we have the courage to be honest and apply the teachings. This will determine if your human life is a blessing or a curse.
Blessing or Curse of A Human Life?
As most of you here know, Vedanta is not in time as it is the unchanging logic of Existence, and those of us who have found Vedanta, a qualified teacher and are qualified to hear the non-dual teachings, are the luckiest of all humans. You have been given the keys to the kingdom. In this case, you are told upfront that your only problem is the incorrect idea of what your true identity is. You are the ever-present Consciousness, or nondual Self, the observing witness. You are not the ever changing troubled experiencing entity, the person you thought you were. But when the powerful instrument we all have, the mind, is stuck in the box of duality, it cannot discriminate between the two orders of reality, duality (mithya) – that which is not always present and always changing (the person and their world), and non-duality (satya)- that which is always present and unchanging (Consciousness, the witness or knower of the person and their world). I am the bliss of the Self, always present.
Why Don’t I Feel Blissful All the Time if I am the Self?
Last Sunday, Carolyn brought up the very good point about feeling the bliss of Self-knowledge. This often confuses inquirers who have realized their identity must be the Self. But why don’t I FEEL IT?!! This is often a sign that you still think that Self-knowledge is a special experience, when it is ordinary, just knowledge. But even though Self-knowledge is not a feeling, and the Self does not feel anything, it is what makes feeling possible. So it is reasonable to think that the bliss of Self-knowledge feels good. And it does. But it is not the kind of feel good we associate with transitory feelings, which come and go, because it does not come and go, and it does not depend on whether or not you are feeling good.
The Two Blisses Teaching
This is where the two blisses teaching comes in – anantam, transitory feeling or experiential bliss, and anantum, unchanging bliss – Sat Chit Ananda. Existence, Consciousness, Bliss. The Self just witnesses whatever passes through the mind, unaffected. If we examine our unexamined experience, we can determine that being the unchanging ever-preset Self is what we are always experiencing, it is our true nature. When this knowledge firms up, the mind gains supreme confidence as the normal chatter of the voices of diminishment is silenced. You know that everything is good, perfect the way it is, and nothing Isvara sends you way could affect you. But this can be temporarily ‘lost’ if there is still residual ignorance lurking in the mind. Happiness and bliss will be elusive, and negativity will stalk you. Let’s take a look at why.
What Makes Us Unhappy?
Vedanta contends that it is our natural state to be happy. Being miserable, sad, confused, anxious, depressed etc., is not natural. That is hard to believe when we look at our lives. Though everyone wants to be happy however we define it, many of us do not find happiness no matter how hard we try to find it. We know very well what life entails, how much suffering it brings because nothing in life can be counted on with absolute certainty, everything is always changing. There is always something I do not know and cannot control. I am always worried I will not get what I want or avoid what I do not want. The people and things my happiness depends upon are not in my control either and there is the ever-present fear of losing them.
Worst of all, I believe I am born and will die. Everyone is desperately seeking a way to hold onto what matters to them. Nobody wants to face the fact that life is a zero sum, we will always lose as much as we gain. These are just the facts of life as most know it. Even if our lives are relatively stress-free and harmonious, we still feel an underlying nagging sense of existential dissatisfaction. Seeking happiness outside of ourselves, in others, things, or experiences does not solve my problems. Very often, even getting what I want or avoiding what I don’t want does not remove or prevent the deep-seated dissatisfaction from returning.
The Hedonic Treadmill
Psychologists call it the “hedonic treadmill”, a term that describes a happiness set point, or adaptation. It’s a theory proposing that people return to their level of happiness (or lack of it), regardless of what happens to them, whether it is winning the lottery, finding, or losing a loved one, or anything else. I realized early in life that I would never be any happier than I am right now, and that nothing good or bad in my life essentially changes this. This fact may seem hopelessly negative and doom us to a life of existential meaninglessness. If getting what you want does not make us happy, why get out of bed in the morning? Why bother doing anything?
Is Doing Happiness the Answer?
The copious amount of advice on the topic of reaching our full potential to be happy, with its obsession with longevity and productivity often focuses on “happy life” happiness. What we need to do or gain to be happy, like working hard to get a degree, promotion, the best job/partner/place to live, entertainment, or that much-desired vacation. But working hard to arrange for a happy life requires continued effort which is hard to sustain. Especially when the realization dawns that subjective happiness responds to circumstances and seems caused by them, but, basically, it is internal. We can be unhappy in very positive circumstances and happy in very negative ones. We may be able to sublimate existential dissatisfaction to an extent, and there are ways that help, such as having good values and living a good life, good relationships, making a contribution to life in some way, spiritual practices, religion, work, a healthy lifestyle.
Unexamined Logic of The Wheel of Desire
I am sure that this does not apply to most of you here tonight – though it still may to some degree. The unexamined logic that the joy is never in the object/experience I desire but in me, creates what Vedanta calls ‘the wheel of desire and action’. Most people are like little hamsters running endlessly in one spot on this wheel, thinking they are getting somewhere or gaining something. Helplessly pushed and pulled by desires, compelled to act out the same tendencies. Puppets on a string dancing to the tune of forces beyond our control. A recipe for madness and a futile endeavor because no object has the power to make us happy. It’s no wonder the world is full of depressed, anxious people.
Cynicism the Last Out-Post Before Depression
I brought this up in my last talk, and I want to expand it because without realizing it, even with some Self-knowledge, we can slip into cynicism, which utilizes hopelessness and a skewed sense of certainty as a coping or defense mechanism. It is little more than a balm for existential fear and anxiety, which is really depression. Depression plays out on a sliding scale, from clinical to just feeling a bit off emotionally. It is the face of tamas, the veiling energy, and it can be a shield against deep sadness, anger, confusion, fear, shame. It stalks most people to some degree, always ready to pounce. We need to root it out as soon as possible, not even allowing it a toe-hold in the mind. Once it gets traction, it can take over the mind, and then you have a big problem because entrenched tamas is a dark place for the mind to be stuck in. Even with Self-knowledge, the mind can fall into the pit of tamas when difficult karma comes to visit, such as ill health, or losing a loved one.
Why Investigate Depression?
Our true nature, the Self, is whole and complete, it does not fear or need anything. But seeing as all of the nondual teachings require examining what makes us human and the solutions to suffering with reference to Self-knowledge, we need to examine this most human of conditions because in big or small ways, it affects everyone. Being the Self does not make you immune or magically transform the mind/body. Self-knowledge will greatly improve your life if the teachings are assimilated and applied across the board, so to speak, with discipline. But as I point out so often, Self-realization does not mean that your humanity disappears. You don’t turn into a block of wood. You will still need to manage the gunas and the thoughts and emotions they generate, for peace of mind.
Depression Is The Opposite of Wholeness
The wholeness of the Self is not a feeling, as we covered above. It’s what makes feeling anything possible, but the bliss of the Self is not dependent on feelings. But though it means you are not conditioned by good or bad feelings, being whole and complete means you will feel good all the time because you are good. This kind of ‘feel good’ is based on knowledge, and it doesn’t come and go like feelings do. Your identity is not in bondage to the person.
Whereas depression is not just feeling sad, it’s actually not being able to feel anything. Whether good or bad things happen, you can’t feel them. When this cognitive distortion is at play, nothing rocks your boat anymore, you just don’t care. As we know, our brains are always trying to make sense of the world around us, and because of the inherent uncertainty of life, one can never be sure what’s happening in duality. So our brains resort to shortcuts – heuristics. This is a way of simplifying overwhelming stimuli from the field into what we can cope with, and muting our cognitive dissonance.
When the negativity bias or predatory response is activated (they usually go together) we will jump to the wrong conclusions. We ignore or explain away positive things, blow-up and distort the negative things, as well as normalise the abnormal. Good things happen but your brain discounts, downplays or dismisses them, a kind of reverse psychological alchemy with rajas and tamas’ fingerprints all over it.
Depression is often caused by traumatic events. But once that event has passed, if we can’t let go, we keep fuelling the depression with the predatory instinct (the belief that life or someone means us harm) and negativity bias (ingrained habit of seeing only the bad stuff or imagining the worst), which becomes an ingrained habit, a samskara. Discounting the positive makes us miserable, but it seems easier to stop hoping for good things to happen than being disappointed. While this can be a good thing from the nondual perspective, that is a totally different viewpoint. Dropping expectations as the Self means we know we are the fullness. We can act for results, but don’t have expectations because we surrender to Isvara and practice karma yoga. However, if we don’t have Self-knowledge, habitually discounting the positive can fuel all kinds of other negative habits, phobias and perfectionism, becoming a major obstacle in relationships. Unchecked it morphs into cynicism and then depression, in a feedback loop.
You Can’t Out Run Rajas and Tamas
“The grey drizzle of horror,” author William Styron called acute depression. The Roman poet Horace called it ‘the black dog’, and Winston Churchill who suffered badly from depression and bipolar disorder, liked that term so much he adopted it. The mind’s true nature is sattva, peace and clarity. But rajas and tamas are always present too. When rajas is in control, the mind is so strung out and neurotic that inevitably, this turns into deep tamas, which can lead to depression. What goes up must come down. To avoid depression, highly rajasic people just never stop, maniacally trying to outrun what comes next. But you cannot outrun it. Rajas and tamas will get you in the end.
This ‘mood disorder’ may descend seemingly out of the blue, like a gloomy dark fog that creeps in and swallows the light. Or it may come when the rajasic mind burns out, which it always does, or on the heels of a defeat or personal loss, producing persistent feelings of sadness, worthlessness, hopelessness, helplessness, pessimism, shame, guilt. It interferes with every aspect of everyday functioning, including our health. At its worst, the depressed mind turns on itself in unbearable suffering to end the pain of the thoughts that have taken up residence in it.
According to the World Health Organization, depression is the leading cause of disability and suicide worldwide, and on the increase everywhere. As the world in general gets more affluent, people are more concerned with happiness than ever before. Yet they are increasingly depressed. James calls this ‘the affluenza virus’. The realization that more just does not add up to more but less. The zero sum nature of life is not understood, and many give up all hope and succumb to cynicism, which morphs into depression.
From the nondual perspective (satya), the cause of all our suffering originates in ignorance of our true nature. From the human or worldly perspective (mithya), depression is a complex condition, and the exact cause of it is unknown medically, and because of its complexity, a full understanding of depression has been elusive. We know it has a biological origin, a deficiency or changes in brain chemistry, especially disruptions in neurotransmitters like serotonin, play an important role in regulating many bodily and psychological functions. Behind this may be a combination of genetic, biological, environmental, social and psychological factors, involving many systems of the body, including the immune system, either as cause or effect. There is mounting evidence that diet plays a big part in depression and addiction with the discovery of the gut – brain axis, and the importance of a healthy gut microbiome.
Clinical and Every Day Depression
Clinical depression is classified as a disease, and though curable, can be very tenacious. Once that state of mind gets the mind in its claws, it is hard to pry it free. But though for most of us it never gets that bad. Everyone experiences what I call ‘every day’ depression, or ‘the blues’. It’s normal to feel sad or down when a disappointment, or tough karma comes our way, having a low energy day, not sleeping well, or not feeling well physically. This is not a character flaw or spiritual and moral failure. How we relate to this state of mind determines whether it fuels very unhealthy addictions like ruminating negative thoughts/feelings, and other bad habits. The steep rise in sleeping problems can also be an effect of depression, usually too little sleep, but sometimes, too much.
These are manageable for most of us, most of the time. Even without Self-knowledge, if we have some maturity we know how to get out of negative states of mind with thought and emotion regulation, appropriate action where needed, as well as lifestyle modifications like exercise and healthier diets. Those of us who have exposure to the nondual teachings of Vedanta are especially fortunate because we can objectify our feelings, apply karma yoga, and identify the guna behind them. We know that depression and addiction are both brought about by excess tamas, which is the veiling energy, and we know what to do about it.
Nondual Tool Kit for The Blues
1. Identify the gunas at play: rajas and tamas.
2. Use rajas wisely to get off your butt. DO something positive no matter how painful.
3. Identify, objectify and say a very firm NO! to those infernal internal tamasic voices of negativity.
4. Discriminate. Think the opposite thought, take a stand in Awareness as Awareness.
5. Dispassion. Apply karma yoga.
6. Wake up and start PAYING ATTENTION!
7. APPRECIATE
The Failure to Pay Attention is An Invitation for Depression
Very importantly, we need to look at depression and addiction as a failure of attention and consequently, a failure in appreciation. It is a desperate attempt to escape the pain of existence by numbing it. A well-known writer, David Foster Wallace, who wrote a book on this topic, called ‘Infinite Jest’ among many others, said: “no single, individual moment is in and of itself unendurable.” That is very true, if we look at each moment thought by thought. Especially armed with nondual knowledge. If life overwhelms us it’s because rajas, the energy of passion, desire and extroversion, makes us stop paying attention or appreciating anything. As stated, it dismisses, blows things up, catastrophizes, procrastinates, and projects. We don’t take one step at a time. We charge towards, try to run away from, or leap over tall buildings, and come crashing down. Clarity, dispassion and discrimination elude us. And then tamas takes over and buries it all as deep as possible in the unconscious. Problem solved? I think not.
Wallace’s emphasis on the importance of attention and clarity (sattva) is spot on. To just stop, and pause for a moment, to take stock. To see how little appreciation and gratitude are present when you are depressed, how selfish and self-absorbed the mind is. Depression makes the mind incapable of thinking of others, no matter how much misery you are inflicting on them. Even the cliché ‘smell the roses’ works here. This simple but often painful insight suggests that addiction and depression often arise not from one catastrophic event but from an accumulation of unexamined, numbed and suppressed moments that compounded become what Vedanta calls a ‘samskara’. Which is a deeply buried conglomeration of usually negative thoughts/emotions/tendencies in the unconscious.
An unconscious complex like that will not be benign. It’s a cancer, or like radio-active waste in the system, infecting and silently poisoning our lives. The real suffering lies not in a specific instance of pain but in the inability to be present with reality. And of course, not only in denying, but in identification with our thoughts and feelings. In Wallace’s The Pale King he writes: “Almost anything you pay close, direct attention to becomes interesting…”. How true this is. It even applies to the most menial of tasks. At least if not interesting, paying attention to what is, even if it is painful, will restore our ability to discriminate and lead us out of denial (tamas) towards healing. The least interested and interesting of people are those who never pay attention.
A Life With No Meaning is Life Devoid of Attention
Could it be that a life not worth living is simply an inattentive life? What if I told you that boredom, which is caused by rajas, morphs into addiction and depression, tamas, is rooted in a failure to pay attention and appreciate? Paying attention is the essence of love, your true nature. We do not love or appreciate what we do not pay attention to. Failure to pay attention is a failure in love. We fear and then dread what we refuse to pay attention to. Therefore, failure to pay attention results in failure to access Self-knowledge. In that case, learning to pay attention to—entirely and without distraction—might be one of the most vital of human skills. It could save your life. It will most certainly improve it. And moksa, nondual vision, will not obtain without it.
This kind of paying “attention” is not just about single mindedly focusing on a task, but about being fully present in the moment, engaging with and appreciating the world and others, openness and surrender to what is coming in from the field of life, and understanding the interconnectedness of all things. It is about living with an open, humble, fearless heart, and a deeply grateful, porous mind. We have all experienced this at times, even if only briefly and sporadically. This is the bliss of the Self – and it is always available to us. The way to snap out of depression is to kick ourselves in the butt and start paying attention.
The Disease of Modern Life Or, Diseased Modern Life?
There are many explorations and much research into depression and addiction that depict them not as isolated afflictions but as interwoven aspects of contemporary life. No-one is an island because no island is an island. All life is one. If society is diseased, are you to blame if your mind is, too? No, of course not, Blame never comes into the equation with nondual thinking. Only knowledge, understanding, dispassion and discrimination, do.
We need to see depression as a deep malaise in contemporary life, a “dis-ease,” an ailment that stems from the separation of mind and body, theory and practice, intellect and emotion. And most of all, it is the result of what I call ‘the wound of humanity’, ignorance of our true nature, total identification with the body/mind as our identity. We can say with confidence as Vedantins, what characterizes modern existence, the “diseased modern life and the diseases of modern life” the pervasive sense of disconnection and focus on individual success at the expense of collective well-being, can be placed firmly at the door of the hypnosis of duality. The only real and permanent cure is nonduality.
Wallace sought to blend philosophy and psychology to ‘diagnose’ our time’s psychological and social pathologies. He could not provide cures, of course, because there aren’t any, from the perspective of duality, mithya. There are improvements which can be made through medication and certain practices, like CBT and other therapies. They do help. But a mind under the influence of duality cannot step out of it on its own. It must be shown the way out through nondual thinking by being properly taught.
Addiction and depression, the struggle for freedom from compulsive thinking are symptoms of our unhealthy relationship with our own minds. Overcoming addiction and depression requires a kind of maturity—a willingness to confront life’s difficulties without succumbing to cynicism, despair or nihilism, day by day, thought by thought. As a healthy person, maturity involves “being an uncomplaining adult, who suffers the indignities of life without making too much of them.” Shut up and get on with it, stop whining. But though that will produce a calmer mind and better life, it does not remove the real cause.
At its core, the real problems are our fear of both life and death, about what it means to be human, how to live with it, and what lies ‘behind or beyond’ life. In today’s world, where mental health issues are on the rise and people are increasingly feeling afraid and disconnected, the ailments of our culture—stress, burnout, anxiety, negativity, cynicism, and depression are not individual failings but symptoms of a sick social structure, of diseased modern life. Perhaps things are moving in the right direction, who knows.
Maybe as a society we can learn to confront and overcome the ordinary unhappiness of life and learn how to live with it. To make peace with and accept it as a fact of life. By confronting the challenges of modern life with courage, clarity, and compassion, though we will never eliminate suffering this way, our best bet is that we can transform “hysterical misery into plain, ordinary unhappiness,” as Freud called it. As Vedantins, we know that there is much more to life than this – even though we know that life is but a dream. We understand zero sum because we are the sum of all things. We are the fullness in which all arises and dissolves.
Sadly, all of Wallace’s maturity and insights into what makes humans human were not enough to save him from killing himself. He could not escape the dark pit of tamas. If he had had nondual knowledge, he would have had something that healed the deeper wound of humanity, the disconnection from the Self. Wallace delved so deeply into both philosophy and psychology to find the answers. But when we look to philosophy combined with psychological therapies for dealing with depression and anxiety, we will not find an independent and valid means of knowledge.
There is no such thing as a ‘philosophical or psychological’ method that stands alone. What we will find are lots and lots of different methods, ideas and therapies. Many of them are conflicting and conflicted. Though the actual cause of depression and addiction is not known either medically or psychologically, we do know that the answers lie within ourselves—in our ways of thinking and being, in what we have hidden from consciousness and what is simply not available to us consciously. What is missing is Self-knowledge.
How complex we are as humans, how fascinating and powerful the mind is, what greatness, joy and what insanity and despair it is capable of. And indeed how blessed we are that Vedanta gives us the tools to understand, unravel it, and manage it with knowledge. Like Houdini, we can escape the jail of duality, the mania of rajas and the deep pit of tamas, because Self -knowledge gives us the keys to unlock our chains and objectify the mind and its contents. The place to start is examining our likes and dislikes, because unseen, they are controlling the
show. The reason why we get depressed and addicted is that we believe we do not have or did not get what we wanted.
OM TAT SAT
Sundari
ShiningWorld.com
