MenoSundays; Life Lived Lovingly

There are five Sundays this month. Perfect for covering another grouping topic from Advaita Vendanta that I hope will interest, challenge, inspire... you, dear readers! Many of the concepts of this philosophy are closely linked and thus packaged under an 'umbrella title' for ease of reference in discourses. At some point, though, the curious, the serious or even the casually interested will want to understand the separate components. Thus they get broken down and explored in the manner already done here with the shatripuu.

What many of you grasped from that last series, is that there is practicality in what seems like highly technical language. That is the important thing to remember. Advaita Vedanta does fly to the very heights of understanding, but it can be taken in very small bites, to enable integration and practice of the exercises given (of which more in the new year). Let us move on to:

AntaHkarana - "inner cause". This is the umbrella title for that which most of us in the West think of only as 'mind'. Mind, however, is but one-quarter of the whole.

The antaHkarana (note the capital H representing visarga [:], which is an aspiration, something like in the Scottish end of loch, but even softer) consists of -

• ahangkaara - the ego-self
• manas - the 'imagination' - i.e. flow of thoughts
• buddhi - the intellect, the analyst
• chitta - 'soul memory'

Over the next four Sundays, we shall delve into these to better understand which part of ourselves we are relying on most.

Every individual is different from another according to the proportioning of each of these in their personality. It informs how we operate in life. Science has discovered and continues to research, the activity of the brain, with the assumption that everything that we identify as is carried in the matter. Theories on this are starting to change, however, and lean more toward the esoteric. The ancient originators of Vedantic philosophy called as the Rsis (rishis - the 'r' comes from the back of the palate a little like the French but not so guttural), spent generations in this same research, but entirely through the use of the very subject of investigation. They concluded that there were these four components to our operational software and that as a whole it is the 'cause' of our actions and reactions. The brain is the substratum but the construct which we call mind is separate from it. This will be discussed further when we get to 'manas'.

Let these words roll about your own minds, for now, my dears! See if you can observe your own mind. Have fun!