Ramana Maharshi
About Ramana Maharshi
The name ’Ramana Maharshi’ was given to the boy Ventekaraman some years after his awakening.
Ventekaraman was born to a Brahman family in southern India. He was good in school, but otherwise unexceptional - a normal child in every way. He liked sports, and played rugby.
In his sixteenth year, he was walking home one day, and was suddenly overcome by a question: What was death? What dies? Was it the body? Was it the ’soul’? The mind? What exactly dies when death comes? Is anything at all left, does anything remain other than rotting meat? Is there nothing permanent, or are we just here for a moment, then gone? He lay down on the ground, crossed his arms over his chest, closed his eyes, and tried to penetrate the mystery of death. What dies, what is life if it can all go in an instant. What is the soul? What am I? Like Buddha’s vow under the bodi tree (to never leave that spot until he penetrated the mystery of life), Ventekaraman did not arise until he had an answer.
His answer was that Awareness never dies. In his own words:
"Self-awareness is unrelated to anything. It is also self-luminous. Even if this body is burned, it [self-awareness] will not be affected. Hence I realized, that very day, that I was that Awareness."
Or put another way, when you watch a movie in a theatre, and the protagonist points a gun at the audience and shoots... then even if you are fully engrossed in the movie you do not jump up and run out of theatre. Why? Because there is a constant self-awareness which knows reality, even if the mind is fully occupied with what appears.
A few weeks later, he walked away from his home, leaving everything behind. He ended up in deep below ground in a temple where he sat unmoving for many days. He was discovered by some boys who threw stones at his unmoving body. The blood attracted insects and vermin, who ate his flesh. Still he did not move. Finally he was discovered by someone who later became his first devotee, and dragged from the temple. Otherwise, he would have simply remained in samadi, and perished unknown.
Years passed. He felt drawn to the caves at Aranachula mountain, where he lived alone. Sometimes people would bring him food, sometimes he went hungry for days. Word spread of a holy man living on the mountain, and curious people came to see him. Usually he did not speak. But sometimes he answered questions. Devotees set up camp to be near him, though he never asked them to do so. More years went by. The devotees built him a small ashram. Some of them began to write down what he said. In time his words reached overseas, and people began to come from all over the world to talk with him. Sometimes he responded, but usually he sat in silence or went for walks on paths near Aranachula.
Almost 40 years later, he had his second deep realization. The first realization was so powerful that he lost all sense of an individual self. But the second realization allowed him to still have no sense of individuality, yet simultaneously live normally in the world. Or said another way, a bird free of his cage can fly above the world or settle in a tree for a while - it makes no difference.
What more can be said?
Ramana Maharshi was a shining example of the quiet beauty of being that is possible for us all. Like
Nisagardatta Maharaj, he was an ordinary man in every way. But fully awake. So very rare.
There is little more to be added, except perhaps these three small things:
-
Firstly and perhaps most importantly, he made no distinction.
-
Secondly, he pointed out very clearly that anything less than permanent absence of the need for the concept of a ’me’ was mere delusion.
-
Thirdly, Ramana Maharshi was very ordinary. He spoke simply. He helped out in the kitchen. He never took money or gifts. He lived what he was - an ordinary being.
The claims of the
guru crowd that there is lineage from him to them, that he did this or did that, that he said this or that... all rather silly and pointless.
It is not what he said, but what he was. An example of the potential in all of us.
The core of his teaching
A visitor once said to Ramana Maharshi that she understood things only intellectually. This was his reply:
You are already That. Time and space cannot affect the Self. They are in you; so also all that you see around you are in you. There is a story to illustrate this point:
A lady had a precious necklace around her neck. Once in her excitement she forgot it and thought that the necklace was lost. She became anxious and looked for it in her home but could not find it. She asked her friends and neighbors if they knew anything about the necklace. They did not. At last a kind friend of hers told her to take her hand to her neck and feel the necklace for herself. She found that it had all along been around her neck and she was happy! When others asked her later if she found the necklace which was lost, she aid, “Yes, I have found it.”. She still felt that she had recovered a lost jewel.
Now, did she lose it at all? It was all along round her neck. But judge her feelings. She is happy as if she had recovered a lost jewel. Similarly with us, we imagine that we would realize the Self some time, whereas we are never anything but the Self.
Ramana Maharshi’s "Who Am I?" question:
The "Who am I?" inquiry is an old one. It was posed by Zoraster. It is a central question in the Vedas. Jesus discussed it with Thomas. It is a question asked by Carl Jaspers. Postmodern thinkers have written lengthy diatribes upon it. And of course the "Who Am I" question is used by those who believe themselves heirs to Ramana Maharshi as they proselytize their rather odd (narcissistic?) view of Advaita. Yet it seems to me that the method or asking oneself who one is, is in most (but not all) cases an intensification rather than diminution of ego. It is a means of grasping, rather than of letting go. Seeking the "I" or the source of the "I" usually intensifies the idea of personhood.
This is because self-investigation always finds more "self" to uncover and to expose. There is no end to it. Dressing the exercise up in poetic hyperbole such as "following the question to its source" or "identifying habits” or "plunging ever more deeply into the Self" is just a way of re-framing what is sadly little more than another form of malignant narcissism as if it were something “spiritual”.
Further, what most are seeking to accomplish by the exercise of asking "who am I" is an idea. The idea that there is something called enlightenment and that should be prevail and find it, they will at last be happy and at peace. In essence the idea proposes that in exchange for the hard work of chanting or meditating or asking "who am I" one can purchase a little more heaven. This is a type of spiritual capitalism, something which naturally appeals to those immersed in most exchange based societies.
Hence it seems to me (just my opinion) that Ramana Maharshi gave this exercise to some people only by way of introduction. Not meant as something to continue without his direct guidance.
Consider:
One day a young monk on his journey home came to the banks of a wide river.
Staring hopelessly at the rapidly moving water, he hesitated to cross.
Suddenly he spied a stranger on the other side of the river.
The monk shouted across to the stranger: "Can you tell me how to get to the other side of this river"?
The stranger shouted back: "You are already on the other side".
In other words, we seek what we only imagine we have lost. And in our imagining believe we must ask "who am I’ of ourselves in order to find the other side of the river. And so neglect to notice what is already here. But - and it is a big but (haha) - it requires attention to notice what is already here. And that in turn requires effort. Real, sustained effort for as long as it takes, years or decades, to even begin to notice what is already here. We do not notice that we are on the other side of the river, even when it is pointed out to us, without considerable preparation.
Or as Ramana once quoted, the unripened fruit does not fall from the tree.
