Sri Humananda
Advaita Vedanta Tantra Yogi
One-Upmanship
"Sadhana means right living—living a God-oriented life, living a life, where you start manifesting and expressing—that, which you really are. You are ever pure and spotless. Express that ever-pure nature in your thoughts, words, in the pattern of your desires and inner motives in your day-to-day living. Practise that, live that, radiate that—that is real Sadhana."
(Swami Sri Chidananda)
I had this friend one time... Vic. An artist and alternative thinker who came up with one of those striking phrases that stick around inside of one for a long time on the path of development. It was one day after another intense session with a group of my friends breaking life into its molecules of thought for closer inspection, and the subsequent and yes, usual finalization of the "great idea" – you know, that place of 'understanding' where you now have the absolute and final solution to all of your past, present, and future life, your whole being and, oh yes, one may as well throw in the complete understanding of the entire universe as well. Ha, yeah... such is the daring folly of youth – my youth in any event, and that of my friends at the time.
Then Vic, with a mix of pensiveness and a half-smile of deadly sincere concern, verbalized one sentence very clearly to us from the awed silence following our great discovery:
"Now that you know what you know… what are you doing about it?"
The question numbed us and brought our minds to a standstill, then into a furor. We weren't really doing much, or anything at all at the time. I mean, we were the Great Thinkers, right?... but yes, what, indeed, were we going to "do" with all this great knowledge? Certainly something has to be done with such great knowledge, right? Or else it would just be dead knowledge, or become that. So what were we to do? What are we to do now?
It struck us that it might rarely be a matter of knowledge, but rather a matter of action, and deeper, our inability to act according to what we know.
On some levels the question still occupies me from time to time. On some levels I have solved it and on others I've abandoned it. For this writing I'd like to stick to the level where one has the knowledge and one recognizes that some specific action needs to be taken. In a simple way we can say that when you see (gain knowledge of) a red light, you stop your car. If you smoke, you quit. If you are involved in something that is contributing to the negative, you stop and you change direction. Some of these things are easy, some are not, but on the easy level the Vic question is answered fully. Well, almost. The action still has to be taken (and that includes a 'negative' action such as desisting, discontinuing, etc.).
The thing that makes life in its variety so deeply interesting is that even though one knows what to "do", one is so many times seemingly totally incapable of taking the applicable action that the knowledge provides. I see it every day – I struggle with it every day and I live it as well, and I think you do too. And so Vic's question perhaps should have been:
"Now that you know that you cannot do what you need to do, what now?"
Hmm… yes, indeed. Now what? It is a huge dilemma for those living it. A powerlessness. A dire stuck-ness. A helplessness… and a slow killer of your life, day after day.
And then, as if on cue, in comes the parade of teachers and parents and friends and shrinks and priests… even some Yogis - many with some sort of either blatant or veiled already gold-weighted-down hand stretched forth with a smile. Some help a little but others can injure dearly, and then, after, we are still stuck, only poorer and more bruised and in even deeper trouble. Not always, but many times.
I don't have any direct advice really, but from the Yoga harvest the following may be of some interest and possibly of some use to some: I call it "one-upmanship".
There is what I'd like to call an "upwards-and-downwards route" to dealing with difficulties of any kind, including the inaction conundrum . The route is explained by examination of your Being and its environmental setup, so to speak. The sutra (verse) from the Scriptures that I want to highlight now goes like this: "They say that the senses are superior (to the body); superior to the senses is the mind; superior to the mind is the intellect; and one who is superior even to the intellect is He - the Self." (Bhagavad-Gita; 3:42)
The "downwards" route is traveled when your body is influenced by your senses, your senses are influenced by your mind, your intellect influences your mind, and You, your Being, influences Your intellect. Power moves from the top down, or really, from Inside (You) to the outside (the world). You are "one-up" from your intellect, which is one-up from your mind, which is one-up from your senses, which are one-up from your body.
The "upwards" route is traveled when your body influences your senses, your senses influence your mind, your intellect is influenced by your mind, and your Being (You), feels like you are being influenced by your intellect in combination with all the others feeding it from below. The one-upmanship order has been reversed.
Ironically, the 'upwards' route really only takes you down, and then that is exactly how you feel. It is the wrong route and it has deeply traumatic consequences as anyone in dire inner straights can attest to quite readily. Here the power moves from the bottom up, or from your outside to your inside. You, the Ruler, then being influenced and managed by the lesser ones below.
The "downwards" route is the route of Yoga, but the irony of this route is that it really has its origin in You. You start with You, but most people have no real idea where or what this "You" is at all. So it becomes another dilemma and we ask "who am I?"
Yoga has some straightforward and simple advice to get you to You.
Take your body and pacify it. In other words, sit still for a long time. Close your eyes and slow the absorption of input coming through your senses. Doing that you will find your mind calming down. One by one ease aside any intrusive thoughts as though they were spider webs or a soft and dense fog. As the mind calms more, the intellect begins to shine forth clearly. Intuitive knowledge sprouts naturally and reveals to you the Knowledge of your Being – a blissful conscious existence. And you have come to You.
And in such being of this Being, You recognize that the intellect is Your friend and Your servant. That it belongs to You and that You tell it what to do. You order it to manage Your mind with the authority of an owner. And Your mind, Your assimilating tool, manages Your senses, its assimilators. And Your senses help Your body to do what it needs to in order to live properly and in good standing - in other words, you start living and acting in congrance with what you know. That is what needs to be "done". It is really all about the order of operations - the direction of the flow of consciousness (so to speak).
This intellect, this mind, these senses and this body… they all belong to You. They are Your servants, and You are their Ruler. Sure, so You delegate down the line in a way, lending a little power to the intellect who in turn passes some of that down to the mind in a package wrapped in Your directions. And the mind then passes it on to the senses in the same way and the senses compassionately support the lowly body. But the Power moves from You to your belongings - not the other way around. This is the "down" route and the answer to the question of "what to do now?" when you are incapable of any action.
Yoga's great escape seems like doing nothing, and in a way it is. Yes, sit still, be quiet, be calm and by that shine forth your Being. But then also, manage your workers. Start with the most menial of them – the body – and work your way via the body up to the senses, into the mind and up the intellect to reveal You to you once again. This is the way of the "down" route, and once at the end of it, start living from there. That is the "doing".
Namaste.
Sri Humananda ©
Dwapara 307 (2007)
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