Spirituality Studies 10-1 Spring 2024 5 Michael James other likes, dislikes, wants, wishes, desires, aversions, attachments, hopes, fears and so on, and hence all the actions that we do by mind, speech and body under the sway of these various elements of our will. What I refer to here as “happiness or satisfaction” is what is called in Sanskrit sukha, which means “happiness”, “satisfaction”, “joy”, “delight”, “comfort”, “ease”, “well-being”, “pleasantness”, “relief” or “alleviation”, and what I refer to here as “unhappiness or dissatisfaction” is what is called in Sanskrit duḥkha, which means “unhappiness”, “dissatisfaction”, “suffering”, “misery”, “sorrow”, “grief”, “sadness”, “pain”, “anguish”, “distress”, “discomfort”, “uneasiness”, “unpleasantness”, “difficulty” or “trouble”. The relief or alleviation of duḥkha is therefore sukha, and this is what we all ultimately want and are striving for, as Bhagavan Ramana points out in the first paragraph of his prose treatise Nāṉ Ār? (Who am I?): Since all sentient beings [Sa. jīvas] like to be always happy [Sa. sukha] without what is called misery [Sa. duḥkha], since for everyone the greatest love is only for oneself, and since happiness [Sa. sukha] alone is the cause for love, to obtain that happiness [Sa. sukha], which is one’s own nature [Sa. svabhāva], which one experiences daily in sleep [Sa. nidrā], which is devoid of mind, oneself knowing oneself is necessary. For that, awareness-investigation [Sa. jñāna-vicāra] called ‘who am I’ alone is the principal means. [1] Nāṉ Ār? was originally a series of questions asked by a devotee called Sivaprakasam Pillai and answers given by Bhagavan in 1901 or 1902, when he was in his early twenties, but was not published until 1923. Since it formed such a concise and accurate presentation of his core teachings, a few years later Bhagavan rearranged and rewrote it in the form of a twenty-paragraph essay, omitting most of the questions and refining the wording of some of his answers recorded by Sivaprakasam Pillai, and when doing so he added this introductory paragraph, which was not part of the answers he had originally given. This is therefore a very important paragraph and an apt introduction to his teachings. The arguments he gives in this paragraph therefore deserve careful consideration. In the first three clauses of the first sentence he states three premises, from which he expects us to conclude that happiness is our real nature. The first premise is that we all like to be happy and free of duḥkham (Sa. “misery”, “unhappiness” or “dissatisfaction”), which by itself is an indication that happiness is natural to us and unhappiness is unnatural to us, because as he points out in the same context in the introduction (Ta. avatārikai) he wrote for his Tamil adaptation of Vivēkacūḍāmaṇi, our liking to be free of unhappiness is similar to our liking to be free of disease and other conditions that are not natural to us. The second premise is that we all love ourself more than we love any other thing (because love for ourself is our very nature, and is therefore unlimited), and herein lies the significance of the third premise, namely that happiness alone is the cause for love. That is, since we love to be happy, we naturally love whatever seems to us to be a source of happiness. Therefore, the fact that we each love ourself above all other things is a powerful indication that we ourself are the ultimate source of happiness, because happiness is our real nature. Then he begins the main clause of this sentence, “to obtain that happiness, which is one’s own nature, which one experiences daily in sleep, which is devoid of mind, oneself knowing oneself is necessary” (Ta. “maṉam aṯṟa niddiraiyil diṉam aṉubhavikkum taṉ subhāvam āṉa a-c-sukhattai y-aḍaiya-t taṉṉai-t tāṉ aṟidal vēṇḍum”), by giving another compelling reason why we should conclude that happiness is our real nature, namely that we experience happiness (without even the slightest trace of unhappiness) daily in dreamless sleep, which is a state devoid of mind and hence devoid of everything else except our own being, “I am”. Since nothing other than ourself exists and shines in sleep, and since we are perfectly happy in that state in which we are aware of nothing other than our own being, it should be clear to any of us who consider our experience in sleep deeply and carefully enough that unlimited happiness is indeed our own real nature, meaning that it is what we actually are: our very being or existence. 3 To Experience Infinite Happiness, We Must Investigate and Know What We Actually Are When such is the case, “to obtain that happiness, oneself knowing oneself is necessary” (Ta. “a-c-sukhattai y-aḍaiya-t taṉṉai-t tāṉ aṟidal vēṇḍum”). In other words, it is necessary for us to be aware of ourself as we actually are, and for that, concludes Bhagavan, “awareness-investigation called who am I alone is the principal means” (Ta. “nāṉ-ār eṉṉum ñāṉavicāram-ē mukkhiya sādhaṉam”; in his original manuscript he underlined this clause in red ink, and hence it is generally printed in bold type). That is, in order for us to be aware of ourself as we actually are and thereby to experience the infinite happiness
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