The Oil pot

Hrit sthale manaah svasthathaa kriya
Bhakthi yoga bhodaascha nishchitam
                                                                    Upadesha Saram verse 10  by Ramana

Fixing the mind at the source is the true Karma , Bhakti and Jyana.



There is no greater verse to summarize Ramana's teaching.It says a profound thing. All we need to understand is to find the source of our mind an fix our attention there. This would enable the correct karma marga, the true bhakti and also entails all knowledge. All things follow from this relentless practice.

All through our life, we have been guided by our mind in our actions. We have been ruled over its persistent thoughts, its worries, its lamentations and so on. We never feel that there is anything beyond the mind. However mediation reveals that the mind is only a misleading part of our life. The seer of the mind itself is awareness and it represents the source of the mind. If we have unwavering attention on awareness and not on the mind or other sense objects that is our yoga.

In mediation we have often experienced the stillness or silence between thoughts . Sometimes the mind goes calm for a while. At this time you are seeing awareness through awareness. You can see that in order to know awareness you need awareness. The mind cannot grasp awareness because it is below it and is in fact a manifestation of awareness. This also tells you why we don't see awareness in our everyday life. We can only know awareness through awareness.

Ramana used to say that the usual concept of God is a gross misunderstanding and falsehood. What we know is only an image of God, not the real one. God is pure awareness itself. And any image and concept is not that . It is only a thought in the mind. The mind cannot grasp it. It is the source of the mind itself. So you can see the profound nature of the teaching. If you want to experience God , use awareness to see awareness. He is always available in you. This is the truest sense of bhakti. Here we are experiencing the reality as reality not as an image of it in our mind.
One teacher described it as don't read the menu, have the food itself.

When we lead our life, we tend to get lost when we loose our sense of awareness. This makes the mind the ruler of our life. This is what hell means. If we let our mind rule our life there is no better way to ruin all. The only way is the path of renunciation. The path of renunciation is focusing awareness on awareness all the time, thereby becoming unaware of the sense objects .

Here is a story to make us understand our attention.  King Janaka was greatly respected as a saint living in midst of samsara. One brahmin got confused as to how a king who is living under such luxuries can be a saint . He came to visit the King. The king welcomed the brahmin and asked him whether he wanted to see the city around first. Brahmin complied. So the king ordered the soldiers to take the brahmin around the city , but with a oil pot on his head. He also said even if a drop falls on the ground just cut the head of the brahmin. The brahmin was taken around the city . After he returned he was asked by the king " Oh Sadhu, how did you enjoy the city .?".
The brahmin said " How could I?. I would be beheaded if even a drop of oil fell. So I was concentrating on the pot on my head".
King replied " Just as you were attentive to the oil pot, i am also established always on the self and never see the samsara around me. A true saint is not attentive on where he lives or what he sees, for him the pure seeing is always firmly established."

Here the oil pot is the real self, the attention is the firm abidance in it. The city is the samsara. The death by the sword represents our spiritual death.It happens when we see the city of samsara without paying attention to the oil pot.


“The Self is the Heart. The Heart is self-luminous. Light arises from the Heart and reaches the brain, which is the seat of the mind. The world is seen with the mind, that is, by the reflected light of the Self. It is perceived with the aid of the mind. When the mind is illumined it is aware of the world. When it is not itself so illumined, it is not aware of the world. If the mind is turned in towards the source of light, objective knowledge ceases and Self alone shines forth as the Heart.”
                                                                                                                         Ramana's talk