Dear Ram,
I am listening to the teaching of the clay and the pot and the steps to be clear about reality.
The clay is causeless causality because the pot is only a form and name. If you remove the pot, clay remains. But clay has no causality (so) it’s just clay …it seems so but clay ‘needs’ nothing to be clay
Ram: Yes. So far so good. I would write it like this, “The clay is causeless causality because the pot is only a form and name. If you remove the pot ..clay is unchanged by the subtraction.” If you just say, “clay remains” a person may think that only a part of the pot has been removed, not all of it. Or you could say, “No pot remains.” I know what you mean because you said, “it seems so.” The word seems is very important because it means that there is no actual pot.
..the pot is a form..it can be a sculpture… the world is a name and form ..awareness is the uncaused cause
Awareness is causeless causality, right ?
Ram: Yes, but I have a doubt because you left out some important information. So my final answer is yes, but no.
Here is how I would explain it, “For example, if there is a sculpture of a person made out of clay, there is actually no person who is separate from the clay even though it seems as if there is, because the clay is ignored when the viewer focuses on the person. He or she is actually seeing clay and a person but identifies only the person because he didn’t come to the gallery to look at clay.
Similarly, the world is only existence shining as unborn ever-complete consciousness but the consciousness is ignored by people because they focus only on the information coming through the senses: the color, shape, movement, etc. that are responsible for the appearance of the world. If there are no senses this is no world. In this case, the person will say, “the world is a wonderful, interesting place” without understanding that the world he or she is seeing is projected by the senses which interpret the properties of the five material elements.
Finally, saying that awareness is the uncaused cause is correct, but you need to explain what uncaused cause means. To explain you need to point out that awareness can’t cause anything because it can’t change. It cannot produce a product, which is to say the world.
At the same time, you need to explain how it comes from ignorance. Ignorance makes it seem as if awareness is causing the world. Ignorance hides awareness because awareness, the self, doesn’t realize that the senses are producing an image of the world which it is taking to be an actual, not a seeming world. When Vedanta explains to awareness how ignorance confuses it, awareness is freed of apparent ignorance.
Finally, you can point out that awareness does cause the world because without awareness it is impossible to ignore the world. So in that sense awareness “causes” the world without actually causing it!
Much love,
Ram
