Weekly Quotes by Sri Raghavan Iyer - Weekly Quotes by Sri Raghavan Iyer Archives at Zinester. Inspirational

__Prince Siddhartha's Great Renunciation is poignantly depicted in his stealthily leaving his palace, exchanging his embroidered robes for the rags of a mendicant, turning his back with pained resolve on his regal destiny, family and wealth, friends and enjoyments. Yet his renunciation was deeper and more drastic than this, for he had dared to challenge the very basis of temporal existence, of all that the mortal mind craves in its desperate search for satisfaction, of all the heart's longings for lasting fulfilment. He was ready to face death in life, to confront the root cause of human misery and its permanent cure and emerge victorious in his uncharted quest, or lose everything in forsaking those closest to him. Tradition vindicates his sudden departure into a new life as motivated by a magnanimous resolve, an uncompromising sacrifice of everything for one single goal - the assured deliverance of humanity from the agonizing thraldom of a hypnotic spell which entices, enslaves, mocks and mutilates all human existence. Not once did he imagine he alone could save all others, but if he could chart the way, even as a trail-blazer marks a jungle track, some others might choose to pursue it courageously to its ultimate end. In pointing out the way by treading it, he would at least provide fresh choices for humanity, and thus testify to the possibility of redemption from bondage to worldly delusion.

__Having renounced his life of luxury and even his princely name, Gautama crossed the Anoma River and made his way as a wandering ascetic to Rajagriha (now Rajgir), the capital of Magadha. His poise and charm attracted the attention of King Bimbisara, who was so captivated by his nobility of demeanour that, when he discovered his regal descent, he offered to share his kingdom with him. Gautama declined to take up the very trappings he had renounced, saying that he had no use for them in his quest for truth. He readily assented, however, to Bimbisara's wish that, should he be successful, he would return to Rajagriha and freely share his findings. He then journeyed across Magadha in search of any teachers who might guide him in his self-study. Though the generous responses of each one he met fell short of the goal he sought, he never reviled or ridiculed them, but rather gratefully accepted what they could give and then moved on. After his hard-won Enlightenment, he spoke of two of these teachers in discourses to his disciples. Arada Kalama, an esteemed thinker, had accepted him and freely taught him all he could. Gautama had not only mastered Arada Kalama's recondite philosophy, but also attained the high states of meditation fathomed by his teacher. The highest of these states was akincannayatana, the sphere of nothingness, which is called the third arupa dhyana, the stage in which consciousness is lifted beyond the realm of physical and mental forms. Despite the deep mystic state such a meditation induces, Gautama had pressed on. While staying with Udraka Ramaputra, he had entered the fourth arupa dhyana, called nevasanna nasannayatana, the sphere of neither perception nor non-perception.

__Although Gautama had tasted the joys of exalted states of consciousness, he discerned a subtle temptation. To reach that level of meditative absorption, wherein even perception and its negation were swallowed up in pure consciousness, was still not to get to the root of noumenal reality. Whilst such sublime states can neither be articulated in ordinary language nor apprehended by ordinary consciousness, they are somewhat analogous to mistaking the manifest First Cause for the Ultimate Ground of All, or to mistaking the prime number I which initiates the number series for the primordial 0 presupposed by the entire system. Gautama, having gone as far in his fearless search for truth as he could with the willing assistance of others, now set out wholly on his own. Near the peaceful village of Senanigama, not far from Uruvela, Gautama joined five ascetics, including Kaundinya, one of those present at his birth who had seen in him a future Sage and Teacher. Together they attempted stringent forms of asceticism, as if one could so dominate and deny the body that it would be forced to yield up the hidden truth. One day, towards the end of the sixth year of these severe austerities, Gautama collapsed and came close to death. When he regained consciousness, he saw clearly that pitiless self-torment could no more release spiritual insight than thoughtless self-indulgence. A well-bred peasant girl, Sujata, noticed his emaciated condition and brought him a bowl of rice with milk. He ate with relish, restored his health and began to elucidate the Middle Way. Mistaking his fresh confidence for furtive abdication, the five ascetics who had hitherto followed his lead in asceticism were now shocked and hastily withdrew from his presence, leaving him alone to pursue his path.

__Even though Buddha gave scattered hints about his solitary vigil in his subsequent discourses, it would be difficult to discern what actually transpired, for he had begun the steep ascent to summits of contemplation wherein the familiar contours and contents of consciousness are so radically altered that our conventional categories of thought and speech cannot possibly convey the ineffable experiences of inward Enlightenment. He had sat below an Ashwattha tree, now called a bodhi tree or ficus religiosa, and was totally resolved not to move until he had found the object of his single-minded quest. Apart from his unwavering resolve, his whole-hearted determination sprang from an inmost conviction that he had, at last, found the Way. As he persisted in his deepest meditation, Mara, the personification of severe impediments on the narrow pathway to truth, sought to distract him with his vast hordes of demonic tempters, ranging from hideous emblems of terror and torment to ethereal purveyors of ecstasy and enchanting reminiscence. Buddha calmly confronted and renounced all alike, calling upon bhumi, the earth, as his sole witness. According to the Padhana Sutta, Buddha once depicted Mara's array of distractions thus:

__Lust is your first army, and dislike for the higher life the second; the third is hunger and thirst, and the fourth craving; the fifth army consists of torpor and sloth, and the sixth is fear; the seventh is doubt, the eighth hypocrisy and obduracy; the ninth includes gain, praise, honour and glory; and the tenth is looking down on others whilst exalting self. Such are your armies, Mara, and none who are weak can resist them. Yet only by conquering them is bliss attained.

__Buddha held that human suffering is so deeply rooted in spiritual ignorance that the two concepts are essentially psychological correlates. His graphic account of Mara's hosts suggests that duhkha and avidya may be seen as delusions on the mental plane, false expectations at the psychic level, physically painful and ethically pernicious. Summoning the six and ten paramitas or virtues as invaluable aids on the Path, Buddha's approach to Enlightenment instantiated the immense truth of the ancient axioms that clarity is therapeutic, cupidity is ignorance and virtue is knowledge.

__In his climactic meditation Buddha cut through the myriad veils of mental rationalization to release the pristine light of universal, unconditional awareness beyond form, colour and limitation. This supreme transformation of consciousness, which shatters worlds, is sometimes conveyed through the recurrent temptations of Mara, vividly portrayed as magnetic personifications of the ten chief fetters which bind the unwary victim to the inexorable wheel of involuntary cyclic existence, the spell of Samsara. The first is attavada, which The Voice of the Silence calls "the great dire heresy of separateness" and which Sir Edwin Arnold depicted in The Light of Asia as

The Sin of Self, who in the Universe
As in a mirror sees her fond face shown,
And, crying 'I', would have the world say 'I',
And all things perish so if she endure.

__The familiar egocentricity which deludes the personal self into seeing itself as the fixed centre around which the whole world revolves, and dramatizes reality in inverse proportion to the seeming distance from that imagined centre, can become on the spiritual Path the subterfuge that one is so much more perceptive than all others that one is no longer compatible with any of them. Even the goal of spiritual emancipation can be invoked on behalf of an expanded egoity which absorbs all around itself and thereby distorts everything in its sphere of awareness.

__The second fetter is doubt, vichikichcha, which can become so deeply embedded in the psyche that one not merely mocks the very possibility of attaining Enlightenment but even the point of doing so, for if all is delusion, might not even the quest for freedom be delusive? In such a state of chronic doubt, the conception of partial knowledge can itself be subsumed under the category of abject ignorance by a sleight of hand which conceals the fact that ignorance and knowledge are relative terms, and even absolute knowledge is construed by the unenlightened chiefly through analogy. Silabbataparamasa, the third fetter, commonly assumes the cloak of faith in conventional religion, which restricts the sacred to a specific set of rituals based upon dogmatic beliefs. Even one's loftiest conceptions can hinder growth by excluding the hazards of progressive self-exploration. Furthermore, even when renouncing the lesser anchor for a plunge into the greater abyss, one may encounter new forms of kamaraga, sensory attraction which, together with buried memories, may suddenly pull against the upward path by stirring up forgotten fears and unsuspected longings. Even if one could set these aside, the force of craving can invert itself and focus upon the highest goal, becoming obsessional, ruthless, vampirical and strangely amoral.

__If one managed to elude the deadly coils of kamaraga, the fetter of hostility and hate, patigha, may be harder to remove. Though one may seem to have moved beyond the polarity of attraction and repulsion which ensnares the unenlightened, one may experience intense disgust at the depravities of others and thus succumb to the familiar opposition that one had seemingly transcended. Then there is ruparaga, the craving for form, the longing for embodied life, sometimes assuming the unrealizable wish for physical immortality, and more often seeking its analogue in an imaginary paradise of endless enjoyment. A subtler temptation is aruparaga, the desire for formless goods, such as fame and glory or other alluring states of mind focussed upon immaterial ends. When the aspirant has freed himself from all these, then conceit (mana) and restlessness (uddhachcha) will manifest their most insidious aspects - the one turning inward to extol secondary accomplishments which hinder Enlightenment, and the other turning outward in shallow judgementalism towards other seekers. Thus the ten fetters comprise a tenacious chain which reinforces the common source, avidya, root ignorance. Only when all its aspects are dispelled is ignorance itself confronted in its naked hollowness, "the voidness of the seeming full", and when the entire chain is calmly analysed and stripped of its deceptive allure, it collapses utterly and pure awareness alone remains.