On Summer 2025

For some the summer solstice is midsummer. The summer solstice is beginning of the summer for some others. Maybe our highest daily average temperature floats your boat. I know it’s summer when this tidal Merrimack turns on its air conditioning originating from that Gulf of Maine.

Self-awareness in the Livelong June

Self-awareness is the nature of awareness. The bliss of self-awareness is the nature of brahman. Awareness to self-awareness is this dreamlike appearance of space-time in changeless satcitananda. Because reality is indescribable, paradox is one way to describe it.

As pure consciousness is the ground of reality, god is the floor of the people. All players in this world need a stage to act their part upon. Everyone has a god whether they believe in it or not. The hardest part of deconstructing the personal is unraveling its gods.

Your god may be political, scientific, materialistic, all three or more. Your god may be the one true god and no other god is true for you. Self-awareness has always been my greatest god. I might not have known it but self-awareness has been telling me I am the livelong June.

Shankara on Bliss

Śańkara was a good deal less exuberant than his later followers came to be in his references to the Absolute or the Self as bliss.

This may be illustrated from the case of the famous work called 'The Crest-Jewel of Wisdom', attributed to him but now known to have been composed centuries after his death by some member of his school.

Of the 580 verses of the 'Crest-Jewel' almost a tenth refer in one way or another to the topic of bliss, whereas in Śańkara's one independent work of guaranteed authenticity, the Upadeśa Sahasrī, there is only one appearance of the term bliss (ānanda), and the Absolute is regularly described as 'Being-and-Consciousness-only (sac-cin-mātra)' and not according to the later formula 'Being-Consciousness-Bliss (sac-cid-ānanda)'.

Nevertheless, the Upanishads do speak of the Absolute as bliss, and this note is not absent from Śańkara's genuine texts:

-the bliss of the Absolute available in dreamless sleep when nescience is absent

-under the influence of nescience, the bliss of the Absolute manifests in fragmentary and temporary form as worldly joy

-the bliss in the 'ether of the heart' enjoyed by those who realize the true nature of the Self

-the bliss of the Self is permanent, and, unlike that derived from objects, not dependent on activity

-the bliss of the Self is not anything experienced like an object

~Alston, Absolute, p.260

Gaudapada Says

Gaudapada says both the dreamless state and both dream states are appearing in the fourth.

Even the midnight of a moonless night is appearing in that alpine crystal lake.

It goes without saying if the mind is appearing in consciousness only, I cannot be the mind.

God and Godhead

Every person has a god and every god has a godhead.

I Am is god singing to its godhead. Sing along with me.

In a self-reflexive universe, I Know I Am is the holy trinity.

Countdown to Reality

Belief is knowing a lot of things and loving only some of them. Viveka is seeing through everything while loving all of it.

Two is old-time religion. One is into the mystic. Zero is postmodern deconstruction.

Nonduality is the reality of satcitananda.

Shankara on Satyam Jñānam Anantam Brahma

What Śaṅkara means here is that of the string of four words in the nominative case in the Upanishad text ‘satyam jñānam anantam brahma’, Brahman (brahma) is the subject and the other three words constitute three separate predicates applied to it.

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In other words the phrase represents in contracted form three separate statements of the nature of the Absolute, ‘The Absolute is Reality’, ‘The Absolute is Knowledge’ and ‘The Absolute is Infinity’. We are not being confronted with the statement that the Absolute has three separate characteristics, but with three separate statements of the nature of the Absolute.

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Śaṅkara regarded the definition of the Absolute at present under consideration as concerned with the nature (svarūpa) of the Absolute, no words have power to characterize it positively. To do this is beyond the power of words.

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Śaṅkara was only concerned with words in so far as they can be used to promote immediate experience (anubhava) of the Absolute.

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All the various modifications of Being have a beginning and an end, but Being itself undergoes neither birth nor destruction. Hence the purpose of the present Taittirīya Upanishad text in ‘characterizing’ the Absolute as ‘Reality’ is the negative one of excluding all its apparent modifications.

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However, if the matter were suffered to remain there, we would be left with the Absolute constituting the material cause of the world of effects or modifications.

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If the Absolute is ‘Knowledge’, then it cannot be a material cause in the same sense as the material causes we observe in the world, which are invariably objects of our knowledge and therefore not themselves knowledge.

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Similarly, if the Absolute is ‘Reality’ and ‘Infinity’ it cannot be ‘knowledge’ in the sense of a particular act of cognition or any factor of such an act, such as the knowing subject conceived as agent in the act of knowing.

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Each of them, however, when taken as modified by contiguity with the others, still refers to the Absolute and indicates its nature negatively by marking it off from what it is not. It is that which is not unreal, not non-conscious and not finite, and that is the most we can say about it.

~Alston, Absolute, p.213

Shankara on Defining the Absolute

In the case of a unique entity like the Absolute, definition is achieved not by marking it off from others of its class but by marking it off from everything else whatever. And from this other points arise.

When we mark a particular individual off from others of its class by mentioning the particular characteristics which it has but they do not have, we 'characterize' it. We treat it as a substance having such and such attributes which we can enumerate.

But the phrase 'Reality, Knowledge, Infinity' is not a 'characterization' (viśeṣana) of the Absolute but merely a 'definition' (lakşaņa) of it. 

Where there is characterization, the empirical characteristics attributed to the individual characterized must belong to it as attributes. But where there is only definition, it is enough if the characteristics merely serve to debar the mind from thinking of anything other than the unique entity being defined.

They may indicate the whole nature (svarūpa) of the unique entity negatively, by debarring the mind from all else, without characterizing it positively as a substance possessed of such and such attributes. They may thus 'define' it, in the Indian sense of the term, while leaving it transcendent.

Śańkara admits that the words 'Reality, Knowledge Infinity' do, formally speaking, attribute characteristics to the Absolute. But he claims that the purpose of the phrase is not to attribute empirically knowable attributes to the Absolute, but only to mark if off from anything that has empirically knowable characteristics.

~Alston, Absolute, p208

spacetime self-awareness

as the principle of existence meeting

the ground of pure awareness is

the spacetime of self-awareness

occupying spacetime is the

definition of a person

That Tattvamasi

Words are for the world. Dancing is for me.

The principle of existence and the ground of consciousness are silent and still.

Self-awareness is the bell of tattvamasi.