Gaudapada's K2 Siddhanta

Michael Comans (Vasudevacharya) calls K2.31-34 Gaudapada's siddhanta, or conclusive teaching (the translations are his):

Like a dream and a magic are seen, and just as a mirage city is seen in the sky, so is this universe seen by those who are well-versed in the Vedanta [i.e. Upanisads]. [2.31]

There is no cessation, there is no origination, no one is bound and no one strives [to be free], no one desires liberation, nor is anyone liberated. This is the ultimate truth. [2.32]

This [Self] is falsely imagined to be the unreal things, and the Self is falsely imagined to be non-dual. Those things, moreover, exist just through the non-dual. Therefore non-duality is auspicious. [2.33]

This plurality does not exist as identical to the Self, nor even does it somehow exist of its own accord. Those who know reality, know that nothing exists different [from the Self] or as identical [to the Self]. [2.34]

Let's list the main points of Gaudapada's siddhanta (conclusive teaching) in K2:

1. The universe is like a dream.

2. There is no origination nor dissolution.

3. No one is bound.

4. No one needs liberation

5. The Self is falsely imagined to be duality.

6. The Self is falsely imagined to be non-dual.

7. But in duality, non-duality is auspicious.

8. Duality does not exist on its own accord.

9. Duality does not exist as identical to the Self nor is duality different from the Self.

Snake Charming

From Venus, earth looks like Venus.

There’s mind and there’s identifying with the mind,

like there’s a car and there’s some phallic symbol.

This is why consciousness is soliloquizing consciousness.

At the risk of repeating myself, consciousness

as intentional self-awareness is calling

consciousness as willful mind to attention.

Lucid dreaming is seeing through the snake.

footnotes

if point of view is everything, then who am i?

in the world, love is the hand of being that swings the mind.

consciousness is not asking consciousness to be or not to be.

consciousness is telling consciousness to be.

only the mind can entertain the thought of not to be.

forget it snake, it's maya town.

never forget that lectio divina is not about the mathematics of intellectual understanding but intuitive experiential being.

even advaita is a myth.

in duality, only nonduality is truth. without duality, there is no nonduality.

absolute awareness has self-awareness. self-awareness has being.

being has a mind. the mind has a dream. 

the dream has sudden enlightenment.

The All-important Karika 2-12

If the Mandukya 7 is the most important verse in Karika 1, then K2-12 may be the most important in K2:

12. The self-effulgent Self imagines Itself through Itself by the power of Its own Māyā. The Self Itself cognises the objects. Such is the definite conclusion of Vedānta.

Svamayaya, through Its own Maya; devaḥ ātmā, the self-effulgent Self, Itself; kalpayati, imagines; Its own ātmānam, self; in the Self; as possessed of different forms to be spoken of later, just as snakes etc. are imagined on rope etc. And in the very same way It Itself budhyate, cognises; those bhedan, objects; iti, such; is vedantaniścayaḥ, the definite conclusion of Vedānta. There is nothing else (but the Self) as the support of cognition and memory; nor are cognition and memory without support as is held by the Nihilists. This is the idea.

~Gaudapada with Shankara's commentary (tr-Gambhirananda)

At Atman and Brahman

I can't say this mantra enough. People do not have consciousness; consciousness has people.

That the absolute has consciousness is left unsaid.

And the fact that consciousness has people and the absolute has consciousness is the real crossroads, my friend.

The Walrus was Brahman

Dreams are real within the dream but reality is permanent

whatever state of consciousness is now appearing in oneself.

Consciousness does not experience space and time

as much as space-time appears in consciousness.

I’m not going from Tokyo to Boston in August 2007,

as much as Tokyo, Boston and Tanabata is appearing in myself.

It reminds me of that old one-liner;

wherever I go, there I am, goo goo g’joob.

footnotes

Change is unreal, am I right?

There are three states of consciousness but seven gods.

And one consciousness to witness all.

It’s a small holographic world after all.

If you can’t escape yourself, be yourself,

Basho yawps while riding on the back of a turtle.

Past, present, and future are just other names for three states of consciousness.

If the personal is conditioned consciousness, and unconditional consciousness is absolute awareness, then this is that—

Maya is the name of self-awareness.

Wu Wei the Math

Karma is a thing. I’m not.

Karma equals darkness times delusion squared.

Forgiveness is the antidote to karma.

Fault or fate? Uninterrupted thought is fate.

Self-inquiry without forgiveness is fatal.

Reality Umbrella

Through this picture window, my legs are like trees and my head is headless.

A sea of consciousness is rising through the heartwood like a sweet delicious life force!

Self-awareness is like a fountain if that fountain falls beyond the limits of the universe like some reality umbrella.

Yes, awareness is self-aware in a nondual platonic way. Après self-awareness, la maya.

Sleep of trees and dream of birds, breath of hawks and sea of skies, double double, snake and bubbles.

annotations

1. there is no footnote on the play. the pass is experiential resulting in first down.

2. transformer is transistorness.

3. there's this slightly annoying delay in the android twitter app which suddenly occured after the pay option was installed. what does the internet call this?

3b. let me make this perfectly clear. i am not on the pay option; the pay option is devil twitter.

4a. gaudapada's paradox:

if the world is real, reality is dead.

4b. gaudapada's law:

reality is not dead. i am unborn.

5. neither eye of newt nor triangulation be.

to live lucidly outside the dream, one must be honest.

Crow Caws Maya

If absolute awareness is self-aware,

and there is no self-awareness

without the mind,

and consciousness is

the stuff of self-awareness,

and the mind is a tool

appearing in consciousness,

but the mind is lost in the cause

and effects of sleep and dreams,

then consciousness

as intentional self-awareness

is calling consciousness

as willful mind

to attention.

footnotes

1. if absolute awareness isn't self-aware then it's not absolute awareness.

2. the mind does not deconstruct the mind. the mind deconstructs identifying with the mind.

3. picture self-awareness as a word balloon in the sky.

4. non-apprehension and misapprehension oh my!

5. if free will means misidentifying with the mind and suffering within its dark gears of long division, and predetermination means following one's bliss in the conscious light of intentional self-awareness, what real choice do i have my love?

end notes

first, reality is not religious, obviously.

second, the godhead is one without a second, obviously.

third, there is no second person but only i, obviously.

"the eye through which i see god is the same eye through which god sees me; my eye and god's eye are one eye."

if nobody heals the body-mind like consciousness, who heals consciousness?

Just Like a 1949 Hudson Commodore

On earth there is no space; there’s only atoms. In space there are no atoms; there’s only awareness.

Self-awareness takes an atomic mind in consciousness. Awareness is self-aware!

Self-awareness is like a universe of consciousness in which this dream called Maya is appearing.

Thought is a shiny aerodynamic tool. Drive it intently; one can lose identity in this beauty.

footnotes

there's only one space. the pot space of cheech is the pot space of chong.

brahman is atman. atman is adam. eve is parabrahman.

if self-awareness is the sausage, maya is the factory

"whither goest thou, america, in thy shiny car in the night?"

in duality, there's always two sides. but that's nothing. identifying with just one of them is something else though.

On Eka Jiva Vada & K3-5

Practically out of nowhere, in his commentary on Gaudapada K3-5, Chinmayananda defends his eka atma vada (one consciousness) vs eka jiva vada (one dreamer). Unaware of this division in advaita previously, I love his audacity, even though i'm an ejv man myself. No other translation I am reading touches on this here. This is why always triangulate translations.

The difference between religion and truth is people.

A religion needs people to support its power structure.

There are no people in truth.

Just as everything appears in one consciousness, everyone appears in one dreamer

Ramana says, “The dreamer alone exists and he sees all.”

Jesus says, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Subhuti, do not kill the buddha. Kill the bodhisattva.

footnotes

religion runs on soylent green. america runs on dunkin.

that there are no people in truth is an under-appreciated radical aspect of both ramana and nisargadatta when seen against the power structures of advaita vedanta.

the dada in me loves that there's a name for this experiential revelation: eka jiva vada.

one dream is all there is. let's call it mesa verde.

in the mesa, there's a canyon. and in the canyon, there's a kiva.

in the kiva, there is sacred space. and in that sacred space, there's a mesa.

in absolute awareness, there is self-awareness. in self-awareness, there is being.

in being, there is memory. in memory, there is forgetting.

in self-remembering, there is sudden self-awareness. call this maya verde.

Of Consciousness and Things

Consciousness is I, and you are I, and we are I, the Walrus says to Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

Everything appears in consciousness including neuroscientists out looking for the source of consciousness in its particular appearances.

Consciousness is the expression of reality as self-awareness is in being the unknown. Be before you die or not. I am either way.

afterword

Identifying with the mind is not a problem if one understands the mind is just the tool of consciousness. This is the definition of devotion.

On the other hand, thinking consciousness is the child of the mind is madness. In other words materialism is 21st century madness. And politics is the method of madness.

Devotion to consciousness is the great turning. Devotion to consciousness is like karma yoga. Devotion to consciousness is like the power of now.

Absolute awareness is nothing if not self-aware. Don’t ask how the sausage of self-awareness is made. I was made for self-awareness. Even evolution says it’s so.

Remember, consciousness has nothing to prove. The empire of the mind spends billions to prove consciousness is a product of the mind. Consciousness is not a product of the mind, period.

Mandukya 7 Translation Fantasia

Reality is not a dreamlike thought. Reality is not a waking form. Nor is reality a thought-form. Reality is not the sleep of no-thought. Moreover, reality is not sentient nor insentient.

~Mandukya 7 part-a (tx-aumdada)

It is unperceived, unrelated, incomprehensible, uninferable, unthinkable, and indescribable.

~Mandukya 7 part-b (tr-Nikhilananda)

“Always experienced as the unbroken I-sense”, “in which all phenomena cease; and which is unchanging, auspicious, and non-dual.” “This is what is known as the fourth (Turiya). This is the Ātman, and this is to be realized.”

~Mandukya 7 part-c (tr-Swartz, Gambhirananda, Chinmayananda)

Notes

If the Upanishads are the well of truth, and the Mandukya is the essence of that truth, then its seventh verse is its distillation. It could be said the Mandukya 7 is 100✓.

Chinmayananda divides this verse in three and I agree with such a division. I have been using several translations in reading the Mandukya, and I wanted to take the best and build a more perfect seventh verse, which is the most important verse, in that it presents for the first time in this Upanishad the Fourth, Reality.

First, I wanted to create my own interpretation of the first part which clearly presents the negation of the three states presented in the first six verses. According to Sankara, the Mandukya 1-6 defines the snake of illusion as the waking state, dreaming state, and deep sleep state. And by negating these three states in Mandukya 7, the rope of the fourth stateless state, Turiya, or Reality, is revealed.

My transcreation is admittedly self-esoteric but I wanted to make the allusion to the three states very clear as well as equate them with thought and form while still emphasizing the negation. A more conventional translation by Gambhirananda reads: "that which is not conscious of the internal world, nor conscious of the external world, nor conscious of both the worlds, nor a mass of consciousness, nor conscious, nor unconscious." Since 'prajnam' is repeated in this part, G is more correct. I went with a little spiritual (or grammatical) incorrectness here instead.

For the rest of the seventh, I chose the parts of the translations of Nikhilananda, Gambhirananda, Chinmayananda, and Swartz, the four best translations of the Mandukya and Karika in my experience, ringing most true. 

In the second part, I chose Nikhilananda, who translates this section (adṛṣṭam-avyavahāryam-agrāhyam-alakṣaṇam acintyam-avyapadeśyam) with a succinct poetic clarity that follows the crisp Sanskrit faithfully.

For the first section of the third part, I chose Swartz who translates the all-important ekātma-pratyaya-sāraṁ in a most unique way, emphasizing that all this negation does not result in either nihilism or nirvikalpa samadhi but experiential self-awareness (as he has written, "Self knowledge takes place in the mind, but if the mind is non-existent how can it take place?").

Chinmayananda translates the phrase as "traceable through unbroken Self-awareness" which is great but for some reason in the actual translation changes it to "essentially of the Self alone" which is not as great, but still better than "whose valid proof consists in the single belief in the Self" by Gambhirananda. I feel the use of belief to be so wrong!

I chose Ghambhirananda for the second section of the third part though. It is a nice presentation of the positive aspect of the verse without taking it too far like the "all peace, all bliss" of Nikhilananda.

For the third section I chose Chinmayananda over Nikhilananda. They are almost identical, and since N came before C in time, one could make the argument for N. But where C goes "this is to be realized," N goes "this has to be realized," so I went with C instead. I choose is over has. Also, it works out nicely including all four of these fine translations here. So serendipitous in fact, harih aum!

Plan 211102tu3x321 from Beyond

No-thought is the unmanifest but the unmanifest is not reality.

Thought is manifestation and no-thought is the unmanifest.

Absolute reality is beyond thought and no-thought.

The unmanifest is brahman but reality is parabrahman.

No-thought waits at the gateless gate for reality to open it.

In the cosmic causelessness of things, maya is the only cause and effect.

endnotes

1. as deep sleep is the absence of duality, beyond the unmanifest is the presence of nonduality.

2. if manifestation is thought form, and thought is dreaming, lucid dreaming is seeing through thought-form.

3. no snake is not no rope.

4. gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate.

5. “Relax and watch the ‘I am’. Reality is just behind it. Keep quiet, keep silent; it will emerge, or, rather, it will take you in.”

6. for non-apprehension is the cause and misapprehension is effect.

afterword

koan and maya are two sides of one coin.

power is not absolute. thus absolute power corrupts absolutely.

love is the knot.

neti neti and the gospel of doubting thomas.

the only way is the tao of wu wei.

awareness is nothing if not self-aware. self-awareness is nothing but maya.