Beauty and Power of Watching
Watching the whole of our psychological life, every moment, has great charm. While we talk, walk, eat or react, the inner eye can expose dimensions of our being, which may be hitherto unknown. This exposing leads to ending of the self.
“Alert and vigilant living itself is sadhana1 in its truest sense,” observed Swami Chinmayanandaji. When taken seriously, this can mean watching is the best of all sadhanas. Alertness is ‘watching’ and a hundred other sadhanas are ‘doing’. Watching (seeing, observing, inquiring) does not involve any doing. Doing may be on the planes of thought, word and deed. Attentive living involves awareness of thought, word and deed; it is itself not any of these three. Putting this teaching in rigorous terms, Krishnamurti once2 said, “Just be alert, and do nothing.”
What is the wisdom of observation? How does it have such high merit?
The Vedanta literature at many places praises ‘right seeing (samyag–darsana)’. Such seeing is different from bookish, verbal knowledge. It is wisdom (jnana) or inquiry (vicara), and it is the key to liberation. “Inquiry reveals the Reality and millions of actions (karma) are incapable of doing so,” declares Viveka-cudamani. Atma-bodha, another classic piece of Vedanta wisdom, argues logically, “Being not opposed to it, karma cannot eliminate ignorance (avidya). Right seeing (vidya) alone eliminates ignorance just as light alone can dispel darkness.”
Call it liberation, name it ‘radical transformation of the human psyche’ or just describe it as ‘ending of selfishness’, the quantum leap in human consciousness is through an insight. It is not through some activity, however well-conceived. The person himself (or herself) gains a totally new understanding of life, about his (her) relationship with the world and with regard to his (her) very identity (or absence thereof).
Watching is our true nature, and is free of the sense of doership. In contrast, doing something necessarily involves a sense of doership (kartr–tva). The state of freedom is marked by absence of doership. So while our body or mind may be active or inactive, observation can go on.
Someone like Krishnamurti was not a Vedanta scholar. What made him denounce all action as a means to (true) change? He perhaps saw that the countless forms of sadhana that the various religions of the world propagated had certain sad limitations. Masses especially were divided by these religions and these divisions led even to a lot of bloodshed. Even learned individuals, practicing the sadhanas, were found to be unable to come out of their limited identities. He therefore talked of such themes like the limits of thought. Calling thought a response of memory, he pointed out how the past clouded every one of our perceptions. Can the mischief of thought come to an end by more of thinking?
Why do we not change despite much scholarship? We may know a description of sthita–prajna (a man of steady wisdom), as given in the second chapter of the Gita. We may have deeply appreciated the life and teachings of The Buddha. Following such inspiration, we may be practicing certain disciplines also on a regular basis. Yet various conflicts do not leave our bosom. Some of us get upset over the imperfections in others or in ourselves. “They should be like this, but they are not; I should have done that but I did not,” are the typical, generic descriptions of our daily life’s conflicts. Some others among us stay calm apparently, but have actually become insensitive or indifferent to things going wrong.
A cleansing of the subconscious mind is required in order that we may truly change. This is not brought about by practices, which are basically a repetition of a chosen action. We need to catch the thief red-handed and that is possible only through awareness at the moment.
The thought, “I am meditating regularly” can itself hold a person in its grip. The sense of individuality is then strengthened in yet another way. Watching eliminates such subtle thoughts and leaves us in the state of “I am”, uncontaminated by thoughts.
Thinking, doing, feeling and chanting put us in the balcony of the divided self. Watching alone sets us free in the open sky of undivided existence.
Notes:
1 sadhana is generally translated as spiritual practice.
2 To Asit Chandmal
Swami Chidananda
Varanasi
Monday, December 1, 2008