This document is a brief summary of the book titled "Introduction to Vedanta" with the sub-text "Understanding the Fundamental Problem" by Swami Dayananda. I have found the book very informative and deeply thought-provoking in certain sections, which I have captured in this document.
I have split this into two sections. The first section provides the main philosophical take-away from the whole book; while the second section summarizes the various other topics the book talks about.
Section-1: Main Message
Every human being experiences a sense of constant wanting. He tries to overcome it and achieve adequacy through various actions, which ultimately prove futile. There are two types of achievements: achieving those that are not yet achieved; and achieving those that are already achieved. The first category requires action and effort, which being limited, lead only to limited results. Therefore, limitlessness or moksha cannot belong to first category – it is in the second category – it is something that is already achieved, but we don't know. How can that be? Example is a pair of glasses perched on your head, but not knowing it, you look for them all over the house. It's the same thing with limitlessness – it's something we already have, but don't know because of our ignorance.
Ignorance can be shed by going to a guru who is not only fully aware of the nature of his true self, but is also knowledgeable about the right methodology to impart that awareness to you.
Section-2: Book Summary
The Four Categories of Human Effort
A human being sees himself as a deficient person. His constant, compulsive pursuits make his sense of inadequacy evident. To escape from this deficiency, he struggles for a large number of things in life which fall under four main headings:
- dharma – ethics;
- Artha – securities;
- Kama – pleasures;
- Moksha – liberation
All four are collectively called purushartha – that which is longed for by human beings. These are the goals purusha, the human being, struggles for.
The four basic human pursuits can be subdivided into two sets. One set, the pursuit of artha and kama is shared in common with other living beings; the other set, effort in accordance with dharma and the pursuit of moksha is peculiar to human beings. The second set of human pursuits arises because a human being is a self-conscious person. A self-conscious being is a thinker, with the capacity to reach conclusions about himself. This capacity has made possible the universal human conclusion: I am a limited deficient being who must struggle for certain things through which I hope to become complete.
The Endless Search for Security: Artha
Artha stands for all forms of security in life: wealth, influence, and fame. All creatures have a sense of insecurity. They, too, want to be secure. However, their attitude and behavior are governed by a built-in program. Their sense of insecurity goes so far and no further; the animal's struggle for security is contained, it has an end. For them no endless brooding over security.
For the human being, there is no end to longing and struggle. Because I am a self-conscious being, I have the capacity to feel insecure; I accumulate assets but the accumulation fails to make me feel secure.
The Mercurial Nature of Pleasure: kama
Kama stands for the many forms of sensual pleasure. All creatures seek what is pleasurable – through whatever sense organs available to them. For non-human creatures, the pursuit of pleasure is defined and controlled by instinct. They pursue what they are programmed to enjoy, directly and simply. Their enjoyment is not complicated by philosophy and self-judgment. Enjoyment beings, ends, and is contained in the moment, in accordance with an instinctual program.
Human pursuit of pleasures is more complex. Our desires are driven both by instinct and personal value systems. One's instinctual desires, as a living being, are complicated by the human ability to entertain wide-ranging, changeable personal desires. Every human being lives in a private, subjective world where one sees objects ads desirable, undesirable, or neutral – neither desired nor undesired. When I examine my attitudes towards these objects, I find that what is desired by me is not desired by me at all times, or at all places; nor is what I desire necessarily desired by others. What is desired, changes. Time conditions desire; place conditions desire; individual values also conditions desire.
Both animals and human beings struggle to obtain the pleasant and avoid the unpleasant. The difference is that the human struggle is not determined and limited by any set pattern, but is determined and limited by fluctuating values. These ever-changing values keep one ever-struggling.
Special Standards: Ethics
Because the struggle for artha and kama is not instinctually controlled but guided by changing personal values, it becomes necessary for the human society to have a set of standards, which is indepdent of any individual's subjective values that determine his likes and dislikes.
Since I have the faculty of choice, I must have certain norms controlling my various actions, karma. Not being preprogrammed, for me, the end cannot justify the means. I have a choice over both ends and means. Not only must the end chosen be permissible, but the means to gain that end must also conform to certain values. This special set of values controlling the individual choice of action is called ethics. The human struggle for security and pleasure must be in accordance with an ethical choice.
For animals, the question of ethics does not arise. They have little unprogrammed choice over action. Actions controlled by instincts, not subject to choice, create no ethical problems. Merit does not accrue to the vegetarian cow nor demerit to the tiger that eats the cow.
Source of Ethics: Commonsense
One discovers the source of ethical values by observing how one wants others to behave with reference to oneself. Ethical values are based on commonsense appreciation of how one wants to oneself to be treated. The ends and means I want (or do not want) others to choose because of the way such choices affect me establish a standard in me by which I judge the propriety of the goals and the means I choose myself – a standard which takes into consideration the impact of my choices upon others. Such values comprise commonsense ethics, which are recognized and confirmed scripturally in a more comprehensive ethical doctrine – religious in nature – called dharma.
A human being with his highly developed, self-conscious mind has the capacity to make unprogrammed choices and to reflect upon the consequences of hic choices. This capacity has given rise to ethical guidelines. To be fully human is to utilize these guidelines in the exercise of choice.
What Religious Ethics Add
Sometimes one can be clever enough to abuse freedom without transgressing man-made laws. At this point, religious ethics enter the picture. One must distinguish between commonsense ethics and religious ethics. The latter confirm the former and add a few more. Religious ethics also usually enjoin special duties and impose additional prohibitions, based not just on common sense, but on some religious tradition or scriptural revelation. It is not necessary to follow these special ethics to be a good citizen; commonsense ethics are good enough for that.
Falling into Place: moksha
Moksha is a conscious concern of only a few. These few recognize that what they want is not more security or more pleasure but freedom itself – freedom from all desires. Everyone has some moments of freedom, moments when one seems to "fall into place." When I "fall into place," I am free. These fleeting moments of falling into place are experienced by all human beings. Sometimes music causes one to fall into place; at other times it may be the fulfillment of an intense desire, or the keen appreciation of something beautiful. That everything is in place is evidenced by not wanting anything to be different in the circumstances of the moment.
When I do not want anything to be different, I know that I have fallen into place with what is. I know fulfillment. I need make no change to become contended. I am, for that moment, free – from the need to struggle for some change in me or the circumstances. If I should fall into place permanently, requiring no more change in anything, my life would be, fulfilled, the struggle over.
The pursuit of moksha is the direct pursuit of that freedom everyone has experienced for brief moments when everything has "fallen into place." How can that freedom be gained? What kinds of bonds deny such freedom?
The Fundamental Problem
The Locus of Error
Failure to see an object for what it is leads to a mistake as to the nature of the object. If the object is totally unperceived, there is only ignorance, but no mistake. A totally unperceived, unknown object never becomes the locus of error concerning its nature.
Highly conscious of himself, a human being has a locus in which to make a mistake about himself. If, in looking at himself, he does not recognize himself for what he is, he will make a judgment about himself that will be something other than what his self is.
The Self-Judgment of Inadequacy
One judgment that the human being makes about himself is: "As I am now, I am an incomplete being; I am deficient, inadequate." The evidence of this judgment is seen in the compulsiveness and constancy of the human pursuit of security and pleasure. The gain of security and pleasures assumes such importance because it is through their gain that one hopes to escape from want, inadequacy, and incompleteness and become a free, adequate person.
All struggles in life are expressions of the urge to be complete. The conclusion that I am an incomplete person either accurately reflects my nature, or is a mistake. This will have to be decided. If it reflects my true nature, there is no need to seek further knowledge about myself for the sake of changing my conclusion that I am incomplete. On the other hand, if it is an erroneous conclusion, then I need to know more about myself in order to discover the completeness that seems to be hidden from me. My attempt to change the situation is really an attempt to change myself.
Personal Values Determine Types of Changes
The types of changes one attempts to bring about in a given situation are dependent upon one's personal value system. Personal values are made up of subjective values and ethical values. Subjective values come from one's temperament, conditioned by one's own array of experiences of pleasure and pain. My ethical values are those guiding standards which take into consideration the likes and dislikes of others. I accept ethical guidelines either because I have not resisted their imposition upon me by society, culture, or some other authority, or because I see their value for myself. In either case, I follow them because I feel that I shall be more fulfilled by doing so rather than being guided solely by my personal likes and dislikes. Thus, ethical standards are also connected with the desire to court what is pleasant and avoid the unpleasant.
Attitude towards Change
There is no problem with change itself. Change cannot be avoided. Life is a process of constant change. What is being discussed is a certain kind of expectation centered on change. The changes being talked about are the changes one is driven to make for the sake of altering one's situation, expecting such change will make one more comfortable, more adequate, more complete.
Our topics is not simple, matter-of-fact changes, made simply because the given circumstances call for a change; nor is it the casual, incidental changes one makes for the sake of variety to which one attaches no particular importance. We are talking about changes towards which one has certain expectations liked with one's conclusions about oneself.
Most changes one seeks are not for the sake of the change, but for one's own sake. When I am comfortable I stop all compulsive change-seeking. The change I really want is the one that will make me comfortable in any situation – so adequate, so complete that no situation will bother me.
Gain through Change Always Involves Loss
Any gain that comes as a result of effort is not absolute. Every gain of security through effort involves a concomitant loss.
Fickle Pleasure
The gain of pleasure rests upon the convergence of three constantly changing factors, never fully predictable, nor ever under one's control: availability of the object; availability of the appropriate, effective instrument for enjoying the object; and presence of the proper frame of mind for enjoyment of the object.
The mind, being what it is – whimsical, capricious – gets tired of what it once eagerly desired and sought. The mind can discover monotony in objects.
Recognition of the Fundamental Problem
The fundamental human problem is to become adequate. The solution chosen is the gain of security and pleasures. The result is temporary release, if any, but not an end to the sense of inadequacy. The uncreated (limitlessness) cannot be produced by action.
Inadequacy is Centered on Oneself
One cannot solve the human problem by the pursuit and attainment of things in the world; nor does one solve it by renouncing worldly things. Gain or loss is all that can happen through action.
Through either gain or loss, the discovery is the same: I am still inadequate. With something gained, I do not become adequate; free from something abandoned, I do not become adequate. The discovery is made: inadequacy is something centered on me, not on the possession or dispossession of something. I am inadequate because I am inadequate. The inadequacy does not depend upon any factor other than myself. Neither pravriti, the positive pursuit of something, nor nivriti, the turning away from things, cures my inadequacy.
Insight into Inadequacy
One does not find it possible to accept inadequacy. The seeking of adequacy is not a cultivated desire. It is not a desire one acquires along the way, born of circumstances and conditioning. A cultivated desire can be abandoned, but a natural urge cannot be given up.
There seems to be an insight of adequacy, which comes whenever I have an experience wherein there is freedom from being an inadequate, deficient being. And such experiences occur in the lives of everyone. That experience of not wanting in anything becomes the norm by which the experience of being wanting in something is judged. One cannot consider something as bad unless one knows what is good. There is no dissatisfaction if there is no norm for satisfaction.
Direct Search for Freedom from Inadequacy
A mumukshu is one who desires freedom from all limitations. A mumukshu knows that his ethically guided, dharmic pursuit of artha and kama does not resolve his inadequacy. He is then ready to directly seek adequacy. Moksha means freedom from inadequacy.
Distinguishing Knowledge and Experience
Knowledge is the grasp of what is. Experience is the direct perceptual participation in an event.
Experience can lead to knowledge, but the impression of experience need not be knowledge. Experience has to be assimilated in terms of knowledge. This is so because one might experience something and still be ignorant of it. Experience is one thing; knowledge of what I have experienced is quite another. When I have knowledge it includes perception – it includes experience. For knowledge, what is experienced must be known for what it is. Knowledge is something that can both contradict experience and resolve the seeming contradictions in experience.
Any given set of perceptual impressions gained from experience may or may not conform to knowledge. To qualify as knowledge they must pass the test of inquiry.
Inquiry into the Nature of Oneself: Atma-Vichara
The inquiry necessary to resolve the particular question of self-adequacy is called atma-vichara, through which I find that adequacy is not an object in relation to me; inadequacy is centered on me.
The Nature of Achievement
Achievement falls under two categories: achievement of the not-yet-achieved – apraptasya prapti; and achievement of that which is already achieved, praptasya-prapti.
What is not yet achieved is achieved in time and space by effort. Being dependent upon efforts, these achievements are limited by those very efforts. A given effort, being what it is, is limited in nature. It begins and ends. It is so much and no more. Efforts being limited, the results of efforts are also limited. The bringing about of a new condition through effort at the same time causes a change in the old condition.
Therefore the achievement of adequacy cannot fall under apraptasya-prapti. The adequacy one seeks is nothing less than limitlessness. One seeks to discover oneself as a full, complete, adequate being without even any hint of limitation. This discovery does not – cannot – take place through a process of becoming. A limited being through limited action gains a limited result. A series of limited results do not add up to limitlessness. Anything that is separated from one in time or space is limited – wanting. That which is limited and wanting, will remain limited and wanting. Change of situation, change of place, and passage of time are all relevant only to something which is limited.
The Gain of the Already-Achieved
Achievement of the already-achieved becomes possible when ignorance prevents one from knowing the fact that the thing is already there. E.g.: a guy with glasses on top of his head looking all over for those very glasses. The distance between me, the seeker of the glasses, and me, the sought, the possessor of the glasses, is ignorance alone. One's ignorance creates an apparent distance.
The Informed Seeker
When I, a seeker directly pursuing freedom from all inadequacy, discover that what I seek is not something apart from me, something yet-to-be-achieved, but is something separated from me only by ignorance, my goal becomes the destruction of that ignorance: then I seek knowledge. An informed mumukshu is called a jignyasu.
A jignyasu seeks not to do something, but to know something. The problem is to dispel self-ignorance. The solution is to gain self-knowledge. Self-knowledge is what is called liberation. For self-knowledge, self-inquiry is necessary. This atma-vichara leading to the discovery of the nature of oneself, is called Vedanta.
Ignorance and Knowledge
The apparent difference between the seeker and the sought is brought by ignorance. Ignorance is shed as one gains valid knowledge. Perception, the use of senses supported by the mind, gives rise to a valid working knowledge. Perceptual knowledge is the "working knowledge" of the world, valid in its own sphere. Through more perceptual knowledge, one is able to perceive certain connections between different things. From these relationships, we are able to make certain inferences. Such inferences are called vyapti-gyaana. Vyapti means invariable concomitance. I see smoke and I infer fire. This is vyapti-gyaana, or inferential knowledge of fire. Inferential knowledge is perception-based. The validity of perceptual-knowledge is established by its practicability in the world.
All increase of knowledge as a result of enhanced perception, bringing increased opportunity for inference, still remains no more than knowledge about things which can be objectified. Perception is always of an object. Inference is based upon perception. Therefore, all inferences (and presumptions), being what they are, are about objects alone.
Even the so-called "intellectual knowledge" is nothing but inferential knowledge. It too has its basis on the perception of objects. There is no intellectual knowledge which is not, finally, based on objects.
Knowledge is not created
The gaining of knowledge is nothing but the shedding of ignorance, agyaana-nivriti. The gain of knowledge is not a creation, srishti. The gain of knowledge is only a negation – negation of ignorance. Knowledge is covered with ignorance; all one does is remove ignorance, then knowledge, so to speak, is gained. Knowledge is not something produced or created. Knowledge always is. Knowledge is what is.
Perception is Useless for Knowing Oneself
I am the subject. I am the knower. Perception and inference do not reveal the subject. Perception and perception-based inference are useless for knowing the subject – they work only for things which the sense organs can objectify. When it becomes clear to me that the adequate being I want to be cannot be produced by a process of becoming, I realize that to gain the limitlessness I seek, I must already be that fully adequate being whose adequacy is hidden by ignorance. I need a means to shed that ignorance.
The Means to Gain Knowledge of Oneself
Per the Mundaka Upanishad, a jignyasa should go to a guru. A guru is one who dispels darkness. Gu stands for darkness; ru means the one who dispels darkness. A guru then, is a dispeller of darkness. He doesn't produce anything. He doesn't even produce knowledge. Nobody can produce knowledge. Knowledge is the accurate appreciate of what is. A guru simply throws light on something that is already there.
A teacher with appropriate knowledge is needed to throw light on my nature. If the teacher has knowledge about his own nature, is that appropriate knowledge to illumine my nature? A guru with self-knowledge can throw light upon his self; but does that light give him knowledge of my self too? If my self and his self are the same, he will know my self if he knows his own. However, if the guru's self is peculiar, differing from mine then, perhaps, his knowledge will be of no use to me.
The possible peculiarity of the guru's self is not a problem because the adequate self which one seeks, the adequate self which the guru knows, cannot have any peculiarity and yet be the adequate self. Adequacy has no peculiarity. Adequacy is totality, completeness; adequacy is without any limitation; adequacy is limitlessness which can suffer no duality. Adequacy can only be one; oneness without a second. There cannot be two limitlessnesses. Where are two, each limits the other.
And what does the teacher do? He teaches. Teaching is nothing but words. Words are a means of knowledge. They are dependent upon perception, but it is the informed mind that turns sound and form into words. Words also haven independence from their simple perception as sound which allows them to give rise to knowledge that the simple perception does not reveal.
Words can give indirect or direct knowledge. If the object is away from the knower's immediate experience, words can only give rise to indirect knowledge; if the object is within the range of the knower's immediate experience, words can bring about direct knowledge.
The Words of the Guru give Direct Knowledge of the Self
What kind of knowledge can the Guru's words give about oneself? Indirect or direct? I seek knowledge of myself, of "I". Where is this I? Is it near me or away from me? It is neither. It is I, immediate. Words throwing light on oneself will direct knowledge of "I". Either they must give direct knowledge or no knowledge at all.
The guru will throw light on the me which is here, now, the available, immediate me; the knowledge will be direct, immediate knowledge.
That is why the teacher of self-knowledge and the teaching are regard as sacred; they are a direct means of knowledge of oneself. The teaching is a body of knowledge in the form of words and sentences – known as Vedanta – which throws light upon oneself. Vedanta is called a sabda pramana, a verbal means of knowledge. Through words, it is a direct means of knowledge of oneself.
Gain of Adequacy Requires Knowledge, not Action
The subject cannot be known through the objectification of perception and inference. A "subject", when objectified becomes an object. It is not possible to objectify oneself and still look at oneself. If I become the object, I The subject-I cannot be the object-I.
The act of seeking denies that the sought is in the presence of the seeker. A search in which the seeker and the sought are identical is inherently likely to fail.
The guru, by promising to reveal the self's true nature, frees the shishya from the status of the seeker. That mind, even though it hasn't yet discovered the true nature, becomes imbued with a faith, shraddha, that the discovery would be made, allowing it to abide in a certain freshness and receptivity.
A teacher who does not know himself teaches from indirect knowledge. He will say things like "the scriptures tell us that there is a complete, adequate being hidden within whom must be uncovered by the practice of austerities – who will be discovered in the light of meditation". Such statements mislead the seeker. The complete being can never be covered, because it is the complete being. Just as space cannot be covered by the things in it, so completeness cannot be covered. The only thing that can cover the complete being is ignorance. Just a dash of ignorance can cover the complete being.
