The Cause of Human Suffering
and the Immediate Solution
and the Immediate Solution
The following is a translation and elucidation of the formal introduction to a traditional Vedanta text in Sanskrit called Naiskarmyasiddhih, meaning, “The Accomplishment of Actionlessness,” written by Sureswaracharya, the foremost disciple of Adi Shankara. The translation from original Sanskrit and commentary are by Swami Vagishananda Saraswati.
“Some people think the problem is inside, some people think the problem is outside. But the problem is not inside or outside, the problem is you! If you are the problem, then you alone are the solution. This is Vedanta.” —Sri Swami Dayananda Saraswati Because all living conscious beings (1) innately desire to avoid any sort of pain or suffering, they ceaselessly and without choice struggle to remove it. But sorrow and suffering are never permanently removed by any means of thinking or doing. What is the reason for this? Sorrow and suffering are directly caused by embodiment—incarnation. Human embodiment is immediately caused by a certain mixture of punyam and paapam—subtle merit and demerit (2). These results were accumulated by the individual self-conscious doer in countless past human lives (3).
The merit and demerit (resulting in experiences of different degrees of pleasure and pain in a body) will never come to an end. They will never get exhausted through experiencing them, because they are due to an agent’s performance of actions. While you are experiencing these results of punyam and paapam right now, you are also doing and saying things that are either dharma or adharma—acts that will result in more punyam and paapam. Therefore, how can they ever be exhausted? These actions may be scripturally proscribed and prohibited actions or not. All of these scriptural dos and don’ts are based on common-sense ethics. This common sense (what I want or do not want others to say or do to me) is immediately known in the heart of a doer, the self-conscious human being (4), experiencing the sense of doer-ship—expressed as, “I do this action,” or “ I experience this result of pain or pleasure.” These actions (viz., struggling to acquire, protect or get rid of things or beings that are objects of awareness) are due to or prompted by desire and aversion. Desire and aversion are not simple non-binding preferences but binding likes and dislikes (5). Desire and aversion arise because of the qualities’ superimposition of happiness and sadness on the objects of the five senses—including one’s own body (i.e., one sees the sense objects as actually being capable of causing happiness or sorrow, containing in themselves these qualities of happiness, sorrow, security or insecurity, etc.).
What is the immediate cause of this superimposition of qualities of goodness and badness, happiness or sadness, etc.? This superimposition of quality arises from the perception of duality and the misconception that it is independently real (both happen simultaneously). This duality is nothing but seer-seen division, which is mistaken to be independently existent or real. What is the cause of this fundamental error? This fundamental mistake is due to the absence of proper inquiry (with the appropriate, adequate means of knowledge) into this seer-seen duality’s (6) degree of reality or ontological status. This duality (the mistake that the seer-seen is independently real) is like seeing (superimposing unconsciously) a silver coin upon a shell, or a snake upon a rope, and doesn't ever cease. My mistaking it to be real doesn’t go away or get resolved by any means of perception or inference or action.
This fundamental superimposition is caused only by ignorance of the nature of the self-evident, self-established non-dual self. Therefore ignorance of the self is alone the root cause, the fundamental cause of all human suffering. (Self denotes the nature and essence of first person singular "I"—not some separate entity inside or outside of you but you alone!)
This ignorance conceals, or covers, one’s true nature, which is full and complete here and now. This non-experiential cognitive fullness is aananda: happiness as infinite substance with no reason. If there is a reason for happiness, it is not happiness. This happiness is beginning-less and endless—timeless, beyond the concept of time—and doesn’t depend on any state of experience (i.e., waking, dream, deep sleep or any other possible) or condition of the body-mind complex. Therefore only when this self-ignorance is totally destroyed (it can be destroyed only by its opposite which is the cognition of the true nature of the self) will there be the immediate result (7) of complete fulfillment in all human pursuits.
The result is the doubt-free-knowledge that here and now I am unqualified limitless-existence-awareness-fullness. Since the destruction of ignorance takes place only through the attainment of right knowledge of the self as it is, the appropriate means for this knowledge must be chosen and pursued until the right cognition of one’s nature is attained. This knowledge is not complete until it is freed from all possible vagueness, doubt and error. The self cannot be known through any scriptural texts that do not produce immediate knowledge or through empirical means, such as perception and inference or logic. The right knowledge can only be obtained through the Vedanta texts. These texts are the independent means of knowledge and are appropriate and adequate to produce the immediate cognition of the limitless self.
Vedanta, a means of knowledge in words, has to be handled and unfolded by a traditional teacher using handed-down scriptural methodologies called sampradaayah. Causeless-effectless limitless being cannot be proved or disproved and need not be proved or disproved, for all pervasive I, atma, is self-evident, giving light-awareness even to the intellect. I know what I know and I know what I don’t know. That which is an object of awareness can never be the subject. The subject is self-evident and the object thought or concept is not self-evident but inert and only becomes evident to I. The intellect by itself is subtle-inert-material; it has no light or consciousness of its own.
Words have immediate and implied meanings. The immediate meaning of any word is limited. That limited meaning has to be understood first, and then the implied meanings are indicated. Through direct live listening to the traditional teacher immediately revealing the implied meanings of Vedantic words, statements such as the simple and profound equation, tattvamasi—that (the infinite cause of universe) you are—the knowledge, “I am full and complete here and now,” can be, will be and does get produced in the open, trusting, Adhikaari - qualified student’s Heart-intellect.
The causal chain, in brief, to be understood and completely assimilated is the following: Ignorance of the nature of the self-evident limitless self covers one’s true nature, projects the perception of seer-seen division and causes one to mistake this perception to be independently real. The basic mistake, the adhyaasa, "I am a limited entity doer/agent and enjoyer/experiencer," subsequently causes secondary superimposition of goodness and badness and happiness and sadness on the sense objects (i.e., objects of the five senses are mistaken as having the quality of causing or giving one happiness or sadness, or as containing pleasure/happiness or pain/sorrow).
Inert, insentient objects by themselves cannot and do not contain these or any qualities. This superimposition of pleasure and pain upon objects subsequently causes desire and aversion towards those objects and the subsequent running after or away. Note that one does this either in an appropriate or inappropriate manner (8) through appropriate action for dharma/punyam, acquiring subtle merit-pleasant results, and through inappropriate action for adharma/papam, for subtle demerit-painful results. This accumulated punya-papa mixture has to be enjoyed (i.e., experienced) by the agent who becomes an enjoyer/experiencer of these results. Note that the individual is totally responsible for all results that accrue to him/her. These accumulated results are countless. Why? Because the individual—the jiva—is born due to ignorance, and ignorance cannot begin. These accumulated results must accrue to their author; therefore they are the immediate cause of rebirth, i.e., embodiment. Therefore one can see clearly that embodiment implies self-ignorance. Ignorance (left unremoved by an appropriate adequate means of knowledge) inevitably gives rise to superimposition of agency and enjoyer-ship. Then the superimposition on objects of the senses as being the cause of ultimate freedom or cause of suffering and bondage takes place. Therefore one finds oneself pursuing and running away from them, with the motive to be free from suffering, and this suffering continues unabated.
Thus you can see the endless vicious circle called Samsaara Chakrah. Ignorance, and lack of the proper inquiry to remove it, is the root cause of this causal chain. A human being is caught in this endless vicious cycle until he/she gains knowledge, and he/she cannot gain knowledge without an appropriate, adequate means of knowledge! The object of knowledge always determines the means one must employ. Here the “object” of knowledge is not an object but the self-evident unknown subject! What means does the knower have to know its own nature that is limitless existence-awareness-happiness? Your thought, even your “I” thought, cannot turn upon itself to know its content. All I can know is through my limited means of perception and inference or logic. As Yaajnavaalkya says to his wife Maitreyi, Oh My dear! “Through what can one know the knower?!” I simply have no means to know the content of the knower and therefore I am totally helpless! This realization that I am a helpless samsaari is a very important first step!
Helpless I may be, but I cannot stop seeking a solution to this problem for it is the fundamental problem! Knowing clearly that any experience, any form of action or becoming within time, will not solve this problem. And the clear acknowledgment of this helplessness and subsequent intelligent seeking of help with deep humility and reverence from the appropriate, adequate means which is outside of one’s self—outside of Perception and inference, is the beginning of enlightenment—if not enlightenment itself. For as soon as one has the appropriate means and is properly enquiring with the help of the Vedanta pramaanam words, the problem is being solved immediately.
In fact I see Guru Sharanam as Moksah itself!
Yasya Deve Paraabhaktih Yathaa Deve Tathaa gurau, Tasyaite Kathithaahyarthaah Prakaashante Mahaatmanah, Prakaashante Mahaatmana Iti. Sveta. Up.
Our Revered Aachaarya Sri Parama Pujya Swami Dayananda Saraswati Says
We Quote:
“Since the tradition knows the limitation of words, it has employed with great care paradoxes to reveal the truth. The sampradaya has always looked upon the words revealing the truth as laksana, which reveals by implication. In fact, the Upanisad does not leave us in any ambiguity about this twofold fact that words have to be employed to reveal the truth. That it is not the immediate meaning of the words is also the reason why we say that it is beyond words. In fact, where the immediate meaning of the word ends, the implied meaning begins. So the implied meaning is conveyed in silence. That does not mean the word has no role to play. Even to imply, the word is a must. Neither silence is the svarupa of the Lord nor is any given sound. But both silence and sound are nonseparate from God, he being both the efficient and the material cause.”—Swami Dayananda Saraswati
Copyright, Swami Vagishananda Saraswati
1. Living beings, all living beings, are covered by using this statement. Brahmaji, the limitless intelligent being, the non-separate material and knowledge cause “creator” of this time-space womb we call the cosmos, his body being all this known and unknown, manifest and unmanifest, is the limitless intelligible ova-sphere with its center everywhere and its circumference nowhere, down to an amoebae or the smallest living bacteria. (This covers all life forms terrestrial or extraterrestrial.)
2. Punya, merit, is the result of an appropriate past action that manifests as a pleasurable situation. Papa, demerit, is the result of an inappropriate past action that manifests in the form of an emotionally or physically painful situation in one’s body, mind or environment. These terms have no English equivalent. Note: the actions or words have to have been done or spoken by a self-conscious being that has doer-ship, the sense that I am a doer. This being has to enjoy enough awareness to make judgments about one’s self; then alone the being is considered human—in Sanskrit, a manushyah.
3. What is one’s own nature one would never struggle to remove; therefore sorrow is not one’s nature.
4. A human being or equivalent who enjoys self-awareness enough to make judgments on oneself or who enjoys choice, free will, doer-ship and experiencer-ship.
5. When I cannot fulfill a binding like, I am uncomfortable with myself: I’m in a reaction, and I do and say things mechanically, unconsciously. Because I could be conscious, I’m still responsible for these actions. I am the doer and I clearly know that I would not have wanted anyone to do or say these things to me. Thus these actions result in guilt/mental agitation and a subtle result that is painful and will accrue to me at a later time. A binding dislike would be the same: a disliked object or person (who is also an object of awareness) that I mistakenly determine is causing me sorrow. I am not comfortable in its presence and desire to get rid of it—thinking that when I’m free from it, then alone will I be happy and content with myself. A non-binding like or dislike is just a preference. In its presence or absence one’s heart/mind is not disturbed. One remains non-resistant to the pleasurable or painful fact, un-involved and unaffected, and would act upon it out of freedom rather than with an idea that I will be more full and complete with or without the thing or being (which is an object of awareness, inert and bound by time). All that is in “ this awareness” is a totally insecure seen-goner. The Sanskrit past passive participle of seen is drstam, and the past passive participle for destroy is nastham. There is a special word in Sanskrit for the nature of all objects that come within witness perception—viz., drsta-nasta-svabhaavam, having the nature of being seen-gone—thus the term in English, seen-goner. 6. Duality is simply the perception of seer-seen division. When this perception is mistaken to be independently real, one is “as though” bound and thus suffers with the disease of “ becoming.” On the other hand, when this perception is timelessly and immediately known as mythyaa—having no independent existence apart from I—known clearly as satyam—independent, self-existent limitless self—then one cannot suffer, cannot experience sorrow any more. One is free from the disease of “becoming.”
7. Immediate result: Knowledge is not knowledge until it is free from vagueness and doubt. Thus there is time involved only in removal of these two obstructions. Knowledge always takes place immediately; doubts and vagueness go away in time with consistent listening to the live traditional Vedanta teacher . The Study of the entire Brahma Sutras with Shankara Bhaashyam is traditionally done to remove all possible doubts.
8 Appropriateness and inappropriateness are based on the human conscience—the innate moral sense of universal values commonly and intimately known by every human being. The time, place and circumstance—or context—in which one is placed is ever a dynamic gray area, not a black and white situation, thus must be interpreted and acted upon by the one who cognizes it in each contextual moment. Appropriateness or inappropriateness is not based on any written statements, scriptural or otherwise. Note that there is always a difference between universal ethics and cultural ethics. One can always do as the Romans do, honoring the cultural context. Here is the least resistance and deepest honor. But this doesn’t mean that one can do something against universal ethics without gaining conflict in ones heart.
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