The great Hindu sage outlines the path to realization.
Adi Shankara was an 8th-century Indian Sage who is mainly responsible for the revival of Advaita Vedanta, the philosophy that states there’s only one thing - Brahman (Totality/Consciousness). And we are all manifestations of that one thing; hence, we are all connected.
In his Vedantic classic, The Crest Jewel of Discrimination, he outlined the four qualities a spiritual seeker must attain to realize enlightenment.
Discrimination
Renunciation
Virtue
Longing for liberation
Many resources and scholarly interpretations of these qualities exist and are taken from the original text and Sanskrit terms.
However, my aim here is to offer a modern interpretation that is understandable, relatable, and relevant to the contemporary meditator, seeking self-realization while balancing the duties of a householder lifestyle.
1. Discrimination/Discernment
According to Adi Shankara, the first quality a seeker must attain is discrimination, or Viveka in Sanskrit. In this context, Viveka can be explained more fully as discernment, right understanding, or discrimination learning, which is the ability to respond differently to different stimuli (think Pavlov’s dogs).
The most common understanding of Viveka is that it’s the differentiation between what is real and unreal, between the transient and the permanent.
From this viewpoint, Brahman is real, and everything else (these bodies/this world) is unreal. Only Brahman is eternal and cannot be destroyed. Everything else is subject to creation and dissolution and, therefore, could not be the ultimate reality.
From the Vedic Perspective, this understanding of Viveka is perfectly correct and complete. But what does it mean to us now in 2023?
Sri M, a modern Indian Sage (who happens to be Jeff Kober’s teacher), recently gave a talk about Viveka and offered a modern interpretation as follows - he calls Viveka a “fixing of priorities” which can be characterized by not dissipating “energy on unnecessary things.”
The common thread in both these interpretations is this: remaining aware of where you place your attention and rerouting accordingly.
Will you put your attention on the worries of your mind? Or will you place your attention in the present moment on the one question that is so central to Vedanta - Who are you?
Are you a worried and stressed over-thinker who lacks love/money/peace/fill-in-the-blank?
Or are you the one indivisible consciousness having a human experience, witnessing the musings of the mind?
It is for you to decide and then to reroute accordingly.
2. Renunciation
Part 1 - Thoughts
Renunciation can have several interpretations, and most view it as a giving up of all possessions. But in today's world, most spiritual aspirants are householders, meaning they have jobs, families, and responsibilities. A life of renunciation is not possible or even beneficial.
Yet, with expanding awareness, there's still a renunciation, but it's not external in the material world. It's internal, specifically regarding the mental realm of thought and desire.
What are you renouncing?
You renounce the ownership of your thoughts. It's a renunciation of the belief that your thoughts are your own and that they define who you are.
If you're not your thoughts, then who are you?
You are the witness conscious who notices the mental activity taking place. You don't renounce the thoughts themselves but your ownership of them. You reject the belief that the opinions formed by them are a reflection of who you are.
All thought originates from the place where the Unmanifest breaks its symmetry into the world of form. As it rises to the manifest layer of mental activity, a structure is formed around it based on your personal history, trauma, and conceptualized framework of life.
Your thoughts are not reality but reflect how your personal history formulates your perception of a situation.
Take great care not to dismiss your feelings or opinions in this process: anything you resist will grow stronger. Allow it all to be there.
Be more curious about watching your mental activity unfold than following the content of the thoughts. You can't stop the thoughts, but you can stop believing that they define who you are. The clouds don't define the presence of the sky; they just pass through.
Part 2 - Desires
Renouncing ownership of habitual thought patterns is particularly relevant regarding the voice in the head that, for most people, sings a continual litany of self-abuse and judgment.
But what about desires? Especially noble ones such as caring for a family member, writing a book, or serving humanity?
From the Vedic perspective, after practicing a daily meditation technique, you begin to notice that you are fulfilled for no apparent reason.
There's nothing the world can add to make you more fulfilled and nothing the world can take away to make you less fulfilled.
Yet, you still have desires.
From the Vedic perspective, your desires are guided by nature's intelligence. They are not telling you where to go to get fulfilled; instead, they show you where your fulfillment is needed.
The Vedic tradition teaches us to follow this subtle tug of charm. Let's say, for example, you're at home doing some work, and all of a sudden, you get a craving for coffee. But not just any coffee - you desire a latte from that new shop down the street.
You get in your car and drive to the cafe, and upon walking in, you're greeted by an old friend who happened to be there. You stop and talk for a moment, and your friend confides that they have just received some challenging health news and are a bit shaken up.
Having meditated that morning, your calm presence is an invaluable balm to your friend in need.
The desire you had for coffee was not your own. It was nature's intelligence (your highest self) placing that coffee craving within you to get you to move toward the cafe where your peaceful presence was needed.
Maybe you didn't even desire the coffee anymore once you got to the counter, and instead, you ordered a chai.
This is a straightforward example, but the possibilities are endless. Your desire could be to get you somewhere where you will find needed inspiration. It could be to get you to move from where you are because you don't see an upcoming danger.
More often than not, you may never know the reason. Maybe your desire got you to move from A to B because two people were in a disagreement at place B, and your calmness as you walked by diffused an upcoming fight.
No matter the situation, the desire is nature's GPS. Some call it intuition; some call it a gut feeling.
However you refer to it, the more you consistently engage in a meditative technique like Vedic Meditation or others like it, the more refined your sense perceptions become.
And the more refined your sense perceptions become, the more able you recognize subtle queues you wouldn't have noticed before. It's not magic; it's becoming awake to the laws of nature and the part you play in them.
Part 3 - Seeking Enlightenment
What about the quest for spiritual enlightenment? Must you renounce that, too?
Yes.
In the quest for enlightenment, you must also surrender the desire to become enlightened.
You seek *Self-realization to discover the ultimate nature of reality, whatever that is and whatever it may look like, without any expectation of what you get in return.
You seek to surrender to the present moment without anticipation and to be fully present, even with pain, without wishing it was different.
Your journey toward *Self-realization may not be painless, and it certainly won't be comfortable.
Realizing liberation does not mean you will live a life of no struggles. It means you desire to leave the cycle of samsara (death and rebirth) and merge into cosmic oneness.
That may mean cycling through karma, which can be intense.
The desire must be to know the *Self, not to be free from pain.
It won't be easy, but it will be frictionless.
When you align with nature's flow, you seek evolution, not peace.
*Self is written with a capital S here to distinguish between "self" vs. "Self," with "self" being the ego-bound identity and "Self" being the cosmic oneness (Universe/Totality/Nature/God/Soul, etc).
3. Behavior Traits
The third quality is outlined in the Samadhi Shakta Sampati - the six behavior traits he believed were essential for a spiritual aspirant.
1. The first behavior trait he outlined is tranquility.
The aspirant with this trait knows that everything in this world is transient and, therefore, will never bring true happiness.
To embody this trait, you must decide to rest the attention on the one thing that is ultimately real - the present moment.
When the mind wanders, re-route the attention back to the present moment, where you experience the awakening of consciousness.
Embodying this trait includes the understanding that the only absolute joy you will ever experience is cultivated from within.
Any pleasures you get from this world and everything in it are temporary and subject to the law of disintegration. Therefore, they will never bring true fulfillment.
I recently heard one of my mentors, Light Watkins, say the only joy on the mountaintop is the joy you bring with you.
I've also heard that you can live in the Garden of Eden, but you must plant it yourself. Vedic Meditation is the ideal practice for this. The type of mantras we use are called bija, which means seed. When you get your mantra, you plant the seed and water it with your daily practice. You then grow your awareness of your true nature.
To contemplate this trait of tranquility, ask yourself - to what extent does your fulfillment come from within?
To what extent do you rely on outside sources like money, food, or accomplishments for your sense of joy?
Our culture teaches us to seek fulfillment by achieving and acquiring. But true fulfillment, or tranquility, can only be realized when it is cultivated from within. It then overflows into your surroundings.
2. The second behavior trait he outlined is self-control.
The Sanskrit word for self-control is dama, which means controlling the senses by withdrawing them from objective things and allowing them to rest in their respective centers.1
What does self-control mean in a modern context?
Self-control means holding the attention inside the senses - touch, taste, smell, sight, and sound.
When embodying self-control, you experience the sense for the sense's sake, without attachment or aversion, rather than getting lost in your thoughts about the sensation and whether or not it should be different than what it is.
What does self-control look like?
Self-control suggests having the power of awareness inside the body.
It is being fully present with a meal or a smell.
It is practicing bringing your attention to the breath.
It is knowing where your awareness is placed at all times, specifically regarding your senses.
Self-control of the senses is having the ability to continually direct your attention to the inside of the body, as opposed to the thinking mind and egoic cravings of desire and aversion. That doesn't mean that you cannot experience and enjoy the delights of your senses, but can you keep awareness inside the body while doing so?
Example of self-control of the senses
Where is your attention when you eat your favorite food? Are you thinking about the delicious next bite before you even finish chewing what is already in your mouth? Or are you present in your sense of taste, enjoying the texture and flavor of the meal while you are eating it?
This example represents self-control, accomplished by monitoring where your attention is directed when you are engaged in one of your five senses.
A great way to practice this is to always have some part of your awareness either inside your body or on your breath. At all times - while working, cooking, spending time with others, exercising, watching a movie, etc. Yes, it's a tall order. But start small and then build from there.
Continually maintaining conscious awareness of the inner body or the breath is one of the greatest spiritual practices you could ever undertake.
Click here for a quick meditation showing what it means to embody self-control by withdrawing your senses from objective things and allowing them to rest in their respective centers.
3. The third behavior trait he outlined is mental poise.
The Sanskrit word is Uparati, which means cessation or a stopping of worldly actions.
Christopher Isherwood translated this quality as "mental poise," which captures the true essence of the word - Uparati is when you respond rather than react to a worldly situation or mental imbalance.
Instead of trigger → reaction, there is trigger → regaining center → response.
Uparati/mental poise is unique from the first two behavior traits we looked at - tranquility and self-control - in that mental poise requires no effort.
How can you cultivate mental poise without any effort? It's easy - practice meditation.
Meditation softens the field of Chitta - a Sanskrit word meaning mind-stuff or the aspect of consciousness that governs emotional reactions.
For many, the current mental state is composed of triggers and reactions based on our previous traumas and life experiences. Meditation helps dissolve this by softening the field of Chitta and washing away the habituated mental grooves that govern our emotional reactions.
A Vedic Myth About Mental Poise
There's an old Vedic story that says this process is similar to taking an iron chisel and carving a line in stone - 10,000 years later when an archeologist finds it, the carving is still there. In the same way, our traumas and patterned responses are grooved into the Chitta, complete with associated neural wiring. These groove patternings are tough to break because, for most, they are automatic. When stress comes, you react based on the grooves your mind has hard-wired in. And then the new trauma stays there, pulling in future stresses that provoke the same wiring.
Then you start meditating. The ancients say that the field of chitta gets softer and softer, and habituated patterns begin to loosen. Stress comes, and you feel it; it affects you. But this time, it's like taking that chisel and making a line in the sand. It's there, but after a short time, the tide washes it away. And now, when new stresses come, they don't fall in that habituated groove because the Chitta was so soft that the stress mark was washed away in due time.
Then you keep meditating, year after year. The Chitta field becomes so soft and malleable that when stress comes, it's like taking that iron chisel and making a mark in water. The chisel cuts the water, as it were, but as soon a stress mark appears, it dissolves, and that mark will never bear the fruit of a habituated response.
In Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, he says that meditation neutralizes or calms the field of Chitta. It is never destroyed - it's an aspect of our consciousness that holds much value when in balance.
But when you can feel all of life, even the hard stuff, without getting caught up in emotional reactions, you also create more room to experience the joys of life - love, connection, and self-realization. In this way, letting go becomes an automatic process based on the state of your nervous system.
There's much literature written about this - my favorite being Bessel van der Kolk's The Body Keeps the Score. We now know that the body holds onto stress in its cellular memory. We also know that meditation aids the body in releasing stress. So why not give it a go? The only effort required is getting to a chair to meditate!
4. The fourth behavior trait he outlined is surrender.
The fourth of Adi Shankara's six behavior traits of a spiritual seeker is Titiksha, a Sanskrit term that means patient endurance in the face of suffering. In a modern context, it is often equated with forbearance or surrender. It's when you learn the art of gracefully accepting what is without complaining or wishing for things to be different.
It's crucial to emphasize that surrender in this context is not synonymous with giving up. Instead, it incorporates the idea that while surrendering, you will likely find the need for decisive action.
In moments of challenge or adversity when you are exhibiting an attitude of surrender, it is often more productive to ask yourself, 'What can I do from here?' instead of wasting energy on lamenting that things shouldn't be the way they are. This subtle shift in perspective is often enough to start the momentum of a positive shift forward.
Surrender does not advocate inaction; rather, it signifies yielding to the present reality while simultaneously cultivating the wisdom to discern the next right course of action. It is the harmonious marriage of acceptance and proactive decision-making.
This state of surrender can be nurtured naturally by redirecting your focus away from the incessant chatter of the thinking mind and into the realm of the body. Why? Because you will never discover the next right action amongst your thoughts. It will only float across your cognitive awareness when your attention is no longer held captive by the thinking mind.
5. The fifth behavior trait he outlined is faith.
Advaita Vedanta (non-duality) teaches us that there is only one thing, and this one thing appears in a myriad of forms. All the seemingly different forms and phenomena you see in the relative world spring from the One indivisible whole consciousness.
And since there is only one thing, I am that thing. You are that thing. We are all that One thing having human experiences through the lenses of egos, bodies, and nervous systems.
At your core, you are the one indivisible whole - the totality of the universe didn't create you - it became you in order to have this human experience.
To discover the Divine Presence you seek, turn your gaze inward, for it is your true essence. You don't need to find divinity - you are divinity covered by lifetimes of accumulated traumas and stress.
To find Divine Presence, you uncover the divinity within.
If there's no higher power to worship, then what is faith's purpose?
In Vedantic philosophy, you are the Veda, and you are the Guru. The faith you seek is faith in your Self - not your small self with its wandering mind and endless fears, but your Self, the part of you underneath all the noise, the part that intuitively knows the way.
Therefore, ask yourself: Are you faithful to what you know you must do?
Do you know deep down that being consistent with a daily meditation practice will improve your life experience? To what degree are you faithful to that intuitive pull? This is faith in one's Self.
Do you know deep down that you have a dream, a calling, or something you must do? To what degree are you faithful to that intuitive pull? This is faith in one's Self.
To what extent do your actions align with your aspirations? This is faith in one's Self.
To what extent can you sense beyond the voice in the head and listen to that intuitive tug of charm that uses no words? This is faith in one's Self.
6. The sixth and final of Adi Shankara’s behavior traits a spiritual seeker should embody is called Samadhana, a Sanskrit word meaning concentration.
But it’s not just any concentration - it’s the ability to direct one’s attention away from self-soothing or self-destructive thoughts and re-direct it to the one thing that truly matters - Brahman, which is the Sanskrit word for Totality, Consciousness, Universe, Nature, God, etc.
Concentration, in this sense, is not the same as focus. Focus harnesses the item in question and excludes all else. Concentration includes all possibilities but gives preference and attention to the favored object.
Vedic Meditation is of great use in developing this ability. With daily practice, you effortlessly train your mind to allow all and give preference to what’s charming at the same time.
Concentration is not a hard discipline but a loving commitment to what truly matters.
Practicing Samadhana
To practice Samadhana, see to what extent you can hold your attention on the backdrop of Being that is always present within you. Vedic Meditation is also beneficial here because you effortlessly learn to recognize this transcendental reality, slowly allowing it to become your identity.
If continually sensing the backdrop of Being is challenging, start with an anchor. Anchors are a tool that the mind and body can use to stay grounded in presence, which is crucial to developing Samadhana.
Popular anchors are the breath, the inner body, and sound. Although the most challenging, the present moment as an anchor is a very powerful practice, as long as you stay present without any thought that things should be different from how they are. I recommend reading the chapter “Portals to Presence” in Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now to explore anchors further.
Signposts that you’re well on your way to stabilizing Samadhana:
To what extent can you live in the moment rather than your story about how the moment should be?
To what extent can you regard the voice in the head as not who you are?
To what extent can you hold opposing truths in your awareness without judgment and condemnation?
4. Longing for liberation
The last and final of Adi Shankara's qualities a spiritual seeker should embody is the longing for liberation.
Grace
I like to call it grace. But not in the Judeo-Christian sense, where you are spiritually poor and needy, and some higher being outside of yourself gifts you peace, answered prayers, etc., if you behave appropriately or say the proper prayers.
With Advaita Vedanta, there is no second being. There is only One, and you and I are each individual expressions of the one whole being. The goal of life is to realize this essential nature within us, the one true reality, in its undifferentiated state.
And if you’re reading this email, practicing Vedic meditation, or if these sorts of things interest you, then you desire to realize your true Self and your true nature. This is grace.
So where does this desire to realize your true nature come from? It comes from your highest Self. You are calling yourself right here right now to join in the knowledge of the infinite, in the understanding that you are one with everything that is.
There is nothing wrong with you. You are perfect, pure, and blissful just the way you are. You just don’t realize it because you’re covered with too many stresses. As a result, your higher self calls you forward and lets you know it’s okay to let go of the stresses and realize your true nature.
If you are responding to that desire, then you are embodying devotion. And your devotion has given you the gift of grace.
How to increase grace through devotion
Every time you sit down for your 20-minute twice-a-day meditation practice, you gift yourself another layer of devotion, leading to the grace of the infinite.
Every time you feel an uncomfortable emotion, you’re gifting yourself grace because, in feeling the emotion, you let it go and realize more of your true essence.
You embody grace when you realize the voice in the head is running rampant, and you continually decide to rest in the witness consciousness instead of allowing the voice to become your identity.
Whether you can feel it or not, your true essence is existence-consciousness-bliss. Remembering this fact over and over and over again, you are gifting yourself grace.
While living in a dark world where there is fighting, anger, hatred, abuse, and egoic delusions everywhere, you know that there is something more. You know that there is an underlying field of existence-consciousness-bliss and that you are a part of it.
You commit to practices such as meditation, learning, and present-moment awareness to realize this divine nature within yourself. This is devotion leading to grace - it is the greatest gift on the spiritual path, and you have gifted it to yourself.
1 From Adi Shankara’s The Crest Jewel of Discrimination, as translated by Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood
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