Renunciation is not condemnation; it is deification.
Renunciation is not condemnation; it is deification. – Swami Aseshananda
I was sitting in the lecture hall of the Portland Vedanta Society listening to Swami Aseshanandaji give his Sunday talk some 30 years ago. Around me sat our sangha intermingled with visitors from one of the Christian Seminaries nearby. (Various religious and spiritual organizations, churches, temples, and schools congregate around Mt. Tabor, a neighborhood in Portland, OR built on the sides of an extinct volcano and topped by a beautiful park with reflective water reservoirs, whose name reminds one of the Biblical location of Jesus’ Transfiguration.) I am certain that many, if not all of Swami’s students have had the experience of unspoken questions being suddenly illuminated during those talks. I remember feeling (or projecting) that the visitors sitting behind me might feel uncomfortable with the emphasis on renunciation that sounds initially so world-negating (which is different from rejection, as I was to learn). My own “green” understanding was then a typical western knee-jerk reaction of guilt, shame, and romance about it: guilt and shame that I was a married householder, and so could not be so pure, as I understood that word to mean; and romantic notions about what it would be like to live the life of a nun.
Suddenly, in the midst of my discomfiture, Swami Aseshanandaji stated clearly, “Renunciation is not condemnation; it is deification.” A wave of relief passed over me as I felt the visitors behind me relax (at least in my imagination), and so did I – oh, renunciation doesn’t mean I have to renounce my husband and child? It doesn’t mean rejection? I went home and wrote this quote down and continued to unwrap its deep import for many years. There was another feeling too that his words engendered, akin to that experience of standing on a precipice, enshrouded by swirling mists that momentarily thin and open up to something completely unexpected and mind-freeing, then closes up again. But the memory persists and one continues to chew on it…
Unwrap #1
I remember at that time working with the teaching that attachment is the cause of suffering. One must strive for even-mindedness in pain and pleasure, happiness and sorrow. Every-thing is passing, as all the saints and seers tell us. My studies in Vedanta taught me to see that this universe and embodied existence is dual by nature and if one stays awake inside it, one will see that good follows bad and bad follows good, and the same with all of the pairs of opposites, dvandva mohena, as Sri Krishna in the Gita calls them. St. Terese of Avila’s prayer I found very beautiful, and it appealed to me as I cultivated Bhakti in the context of Jnana:
“Let nothing disturb you,
Let nothing frighten you,
All things are passing away:
God never changes.
Patience obtains all things
Whoever has God lacks nothing;
God alone suffices.”
Practicing this took the form of resisting elation when something good happened and remaining stoic in the face of negative things. The former was easier to practice, if a bit annoying to family, since I appeared to be increasingly unemotional over life’s occurrences. At that time I also came across Swami Ashokananda’s lecture called “Spiritualizing Everyday Life.” This was a “God-send,” because he stated up front that upon entering spiritual life in a serious way one simply ceases to be the life of the party. It was true, and even better, to be expected.
Unwrap #2
When I began philosophical studies with my living teacher, Babaji Bob Kindler, the cosmological foundation for renunciation began to be built. Enter the 24 Cosmic Principles of Sankhya (the constituents of manifest Nature, called Prakriti). He taught these to me initially via the enthralling poems of Ramprasad Sen translated by Lex Hixon:
This realm of reflection we call the universe
consists simply of earth, water, fire, air, and ether.
Arranging and rearranging with intricate beauty.
The principle of subtle energy naturally evolves into tangibility
blossoming as millions of worlds.
And also via Bengali Bhajans, such as this devotional song that Swami Vivekananda sang at his first meeting with Sri Ramakrishna:
O mind, return to your own abode – your eternal home.
You are a foreigner in this foreign land.
Why do you roam about aimlessly with no real purpose?
The five senses and the five elements –
All these are different from you; None of them belong to you.
Why have you become senseless in your attachment to others
and forgotten your own true nature?
One learns from this cosmology that the gross body with its external senses is nothing more than a combination of the five elements. The subtle body with its mind, thoughts, I-sense, and subtle senses are composed of subtle matter as delineated in those 24 cosmic principles of Prakriti/Nature. Everything but the ultimate Seer or Witness, called Purusha, Atman, or Brahman, is matter, gross or subtle. This is practiced via Neti-neti, “not this, not this,” a discipline that exercises one’s ability to remain as one truly is, the witness of phenomena, rather than as phenomena entangled in phenomena.
Now, one’s friends, colleagues, and family often do not like this practice because it leads to recognition that the most beautiful manifestations of Nature and the most horrendous events of Nature ultimately have nothing to do with the Atman, the source of one’s “I.” This recognition, at the level of direct realization, is called Kaivalya, isolation from Nature, and is the certain knowledge that the Self and Nature are utterly distinct, like oil and water. They may look like they mix when you shake them up (engage in ego-motivated actions), but if you watch – as the watcher – you will see that they are not the same at all. The seer can never be the seen. But one first understands this intellectually as the logical conclusion of this reasoning process. At this point, others, and maybe one’s own ego-personality that is lagging behind the intellect’s new understanding, will probably condemn you for callousness, heartlessness, alienation, and a host of other judgments.
It is really best to remain quiet among those outside one’s spiritual community while passing through this phase of understanding. Besides, there is much more to come that will deepen and mature this vital understanding. For, as Sri Ramakrishna has explained the neti-neti practice via analogy, by negating each step of the stairway in order to reach one’s goal, the roof top, one finally discovers upon gaining the rooftop that the stairs themselves are made of the same substance as the roof. But one could not know that as a matter of direct realization without leaving behind each step along the way, i.e., disidentifying the Self from the various principles of Nature. Babaji elucidated in class recently, addressing the stated or as yet unformed questions in the minds of newcomers to Vedanta and Indian Philosophy: “If one renounces Nature and that is as far as one goes, then one gets abhava, formlessness. But man and Nature remain separate. What kind of oneness is that? But if one renounces Nature by knowing that it has come out of oneself as mental projection, then one gets both formlessness and the realization of “iti iti” – “all this.” This is called Mahayoga.”
We will continue to “unwrap” this and Swami Aseshanandaji’s statement in the next blog. Om shanti!
More quotes for consideration:
From Swami Vivekananda:
Let your souls ascend day and night like an unbroken string unto the feet of the Beloved whose throne is in your own hearts and let the rest take care of themselves, i.e., the body and all else. // If there be glory in keeping the machine in good trim, it is more glorioius to withhold the soul from suffering with the body – that is the only demonstration of your being “not matter” by letting the matter alone.”
(Swami Vivekananda Vijnanagita [SVV] pp. 165-6)
“The real me is none but He, and never, never matter changing.”
From Sri Krishna:
The unreal has no existence; the Real never ceases to be.” (Gita 2:16)
