तत्त्वबोधः Tattvabodhaḥ
Knowledge of Reality
Tattvabodha is a short text attributed to Śaṇkarācārya that introduces various teaching methods used in the Upaniṣads in a very concise and clear manner. It is the first book taught by Swami Dayananda in each of his 3-year residential Vedānta courses. Tattvabodha unfolds the transformative vision of Vedānta, namely that you are already what you seek to become, while providing a strong foundation for further in-depth study.
Class 1 July 31, 2014 Download Audio
The struggle to become happy; Distraction and novelty; Desire prism; Perfect bubble bath; Pressure to become; Borrowed happiness; Get out of jail free card.
Class 2 August 7, 2014 Download Audio
Sentient toaster; Self-awareness, self-conclusion, self-inadequacy; Knot of the heart; Happiness triggers; Fire on the hill; Causeless joy; What bus do I catch?
Class 3 August 14, 2014 Download Audio
An inkling of freedom; Paperback knowledge; Puruṣārthāḥ – 4 pursuits; Drink ghee ’till you drop; Dharma – Just common sense; Ahiṃsā; Vāktapas; Locus of error; Thugs at dusk; Mumukṣutvam – My hair is on fire!; We are all Dorothy in the land of Oz; Green cheese moon; Believe? Experience? Create, acquire, transform, purify? Do I need wetter water?
Class 4 August 21, 2014 Download Audio
Our journey; Limited + limited = ?; The only search there is; A head over my shoulders; Attaining the attained; Six pramāṇa-s – How we know what we know; Body – a perceived thing; Did it rain?; If it quacks like a duck; An elephant in my hand; The 10th man; The end of my tether; When the teacher comes; Seeking denies the presence of the sought; What problem?; Ārṣa-dṛṣṭi = Guru-dṛṣṭi -> Śiṣya-dṛṣṭi; Holding up the mirror.
Class 5 August 28, 2014 Download Audio
Knower-known-means-knowledge; The power to veil and project; Indirect self-knowledge? There is no path; A curious predicament; Fiji Swami; Mangala Śloka; Who is the guru?; Parīkṣya lokān – Examining experience; Thinking in Sanskrit; Epistemological Jeopardy; Resolving into reality.
Class 6 September 4, 2014 Download Audio
Anubandhacatuṣṭayam – who, what, why & how; Crystal ball gazing; Sādhancatuṣṭayam – Adhikārī – Qualified student; Yoga of Archery; Primary Sādhana; Śravaṇa – Exposure to the means of knowledge; Manana – Shaking to remove error, vagueness, doubt; Nididhyāsana – Contemplation on the contemplator; Secondary Sādhana – Preparing who you think are you; Contemplation on the contemplator?; Nothing here but conscious existence; No complexity; Ekam Advayam – One, Non-dual; Burning out melodrama; Compassion towards the wanting self; No need to judge oneself by the obtaining condition of the mind.
Class 7 September 11, 2014 Download Audio
Viveka & Vairagya – Discriminative discernment and objectivity; Disentanglement from the trivial; Ephemeral things; Tamboura of desire; Silence of fullness; What I do and what I want; Vastu – Here’s the thing; Brahman – How big is big? Nouns modify adjectives? Red balloon austerities; The imp of ahaṃkāra I-notion; Abiding knowledge; Equational tension; Indirect knowledge of timelessness; I am God, but how about you?
Class 8 September 18, 2014 Download Audio
Śama, Dama, Uparama, Titikṣā; You’re ugly and your mother dresses you funny; A matter of choice; Input & output; Craving dead animals; Svadharma; Candy for breakfast; Allowing thoughts to come, to go; Transient-based meta-self-judgement, not; Expression of mumukṣutvam; My horse ran away; Grant me serenity.
Class 9 September 25, 2014 Download Audio
Order of emotions; Compassion for our own and another’s predicament; The cubical of this individual life; Meta-emotions; Welcoming anger; Fearless compassion; Ahaṃkāra & Tvaṃkāra; Pigeonholing another; Mental-emotional packages; Sitting with a wise man; You never meet the same person twice; Are you a cat or a chicken? Not bound by previous behavior; Śraddhā – Trust in words of teaching and teacher; Samādhānam – Absorption in a flow of thoughts; Mumukṣutvam – Top of the leader board; For a sādhu; Student’s readiness provides opportunity for teacher to reveal what he sees; A living vision; Types of saṃnyāsa; The role of a monk; Dispassionate passion.
Class 10 October 2, 2014 Download Audio
Sitting on Santa’s lap; Ātma-anātma-vivekaḥ; Discriminative inquiry into me and everything else; Am I what I perceive? Where did my soul go? Oneness romanticism; Radical non-duality; The body is student housing; My special superpower; How did I become mortal? Bionic little finger; Eye of the eye; Mind of the mind; Anyonyādhyāsa – Is fire round and heavy?; I illumine all; I accommodate all; Thoughts leave no contrail; Asangaḥ; Accommodating 3-dimensionality; Awareness is not antagonistic to erroneous self-notions; Do not confuse limited experience with being limited.
Class 11 October 9, 2014 Download Audio
Identity; Unexplored territory of who I am leaves a blank, filled in by the world; Commitment to structure of individuality; Hairy skin bag; I fill roles; Ted talk; Disentanglement; Present awareness of vast internal environment; Untinged; Thought worms; Upanishad reality tale; Satyam and mithyā; Meet Mr Tuccham; Square circles; Ghaṭam solo in Ādi tālam; Where did the pot go? Name and form, centered on the tongue; Notional reality; World does not cover reality; Incidental potness; Clay, thoughts – No independent reality; I am not hidden by thought; All pursuits resolve in knowledge; No accomplishment greater than recognizing that you are the truth of everything that is.
Class 12 October 16, 2014 Download Audio
Words to describe our notion of the nature of things; Plastic flowers, wet water; The emperor’s new clothes; Mithyā – dependent reality; Shifting the whole game; I’ll take the gold; 1+1+1+1+1=1; Real leptons? No discontinuity of existence; Aham asmi – I exist; Aham bhāmi – I shine; Do I need to remove thoughts to reveal conscious existence? Transcend the shirt to see the fabric? Existence is the most personal thing that there is; The only solid place to stand is on that ‘I Am’; How do you talk about something from which nothing is separate; Treating everything with the value that it has on the level that it is.
Class 13 October 23, 2014 Download Audio
Ātmā kaḥ – What is the self? Joyful roles; False self-assertions; Transient notional ornamentation; 5 kośa-s – natural points of misidentification; Raised consciousness? I am not catching the train of thoughts, but stand on the platform observing; Consciousness is not sticky; The self requires no means of knowledge to be evident; Luminosity of the mind is borrowed; Pratibodhaviditam matam – The nature of ātmā is recognizable in every cognition; Viśeṣaṇa become lakṣaṇā – adjective referencing a singularity reveals svarūpa, does not qualify; Homework – look at where the I-thought lands; 3 śarīra-s & 5 kośa-s – models to encapsulate limited self notions; Duḥkha & sukha vṛtti-s – happiness state-transition diagram; I am free to have sad thoughts.
Class 14 December 11, 2014 Download Audio
Incidental criteria-based self-definitions; Rascal “I”-notion; 4-fold qualifications – internal context for clarity of knowledge; “I” + x = happiness, security; Solving for x with kāma, artha, dharma = saṃsāra; Industries of inadequacy; Everything is an ornament to my gold; Always experienced, I am mistakable; Shiny shell-silver and rope-snakes are basis for binding likes and dislikes – rāga & dveṣa; Laboratory of experience; 3 bodies, 5 kośa-s, 3 states of experience – I am the knower, all else is known; Gross-subtle-causal body continuum, the not-me is mithyā; What is is sat-cit-ānanda-svarūpaḥ; Materialistic vs spiritual views of consciousness; Borrowed moonlight; Getting sucked into the vacuum of my transactional reality; Sitting with the vision, training the ahaṃkāra.
Class 15 December 18, 2014 Download Audio
Where to draw the line between I and this?; Context setting; If I am not the body, where is mortality for me?; The self is never covered; Just try to get rid of consciousness; Dehātmabuddhiḥ; Sat-cit-ānanda-svarūpaḥ; Consciousness-existence lends itself to all experiences; What timeframe do we use to define now?; I am the truth of this moment; Capital B bliss?; At-home-ness; Discovering the non-wanting person, svarūpānanda, the search stops; Satyaṃ jñānam anantaṃ brahma; Ānanda, pūrṇatvam, gifted to us by Mother Śruti with the knowledge that I am already what I seek; All creation is just entertainment; Rarity of human birth; Redefining the I-thought; As-though going about my business; Big transformation of understanding to disentangle me from not-me.
Class 16 January 8, 2015 Download Audio
A teacher is able to show the student that the student doesn’t have the problem he thinks he has; What do you mean by “I”; Ātmā is both known and unknown – that’s the rub; I am always here; Locked and loaded, and ready for trouble; Tools to pry our self-identity away from the anātmā; Neti-chisel; If ātmā were totally transcendent there would be no mokṣa, freedom; Tangible body; Made of inert materials; Determined by karmaphalam; A rental; Here as a guest; Karma-yogī opportunities for emotional growth; All is grace; 6 natural modifications; Subtle body; Monkey body – monkey thoughts; Anthropomorphization; 5 inputs; 5 outputs; 5 systems; Emotions; Decisiveness; Am I 17 or 19?
Class 17 January 15, 2015 Download Audio
1/2 + (4 * 1/8); Resolving microcosm into macrocosm; Getting a handle on anātmā; Knocking on every door; From the obvious to subtle; Is God a clock-maker or finger-poker? Abhinna-nimitta-upādāna-kāraṇam; No belief in God, only God; Do I limit God?; Pot-makers & spiders; Devatā-s; Splatter-prayers; No discontinuity between Bhagavān and anything in my experience; Gaṇeśa; Greasing the skids; From tamas to rajas to sattva; Creation and character; Realigning incongruities between values and actions; Triguṇātmakamāyā; Spontaneous dharma; Table run-aways; Emotional tapes; Frequency, intensity, duration; Hoarders; Joy – an adaptive evolutionary mechanism; Endless lifetimes; Satsang and śravaṇam; Beating up saints; Extrication from saṃsāritvam.
Class 18 January 22, 2015 Download Audio
The goat ate it; 5 Prāṇas; Ritual invokes the inner devotee; Naivedyam & grace; Where the rubber hits the road; Tangible, intense, real?; Mensa or Densa? Given givens; Genetic or environmental karmajanyam; Influencing expression of karmic predispositions; Resistance or acceptance? 9-fingered person, 10-fingered world; Promoting sattvaguṇa, calmness, generosity, open heart; Acceptance and change; Karmaphaladātā; Constrained heart; Beady eyes; Transforming anger into love; Intention and prayer; No fear, no condemnation; Even faults are vibhūti; Honoring this incarnation; Creation – transformation from unmanifest to manifest state; Redwood fog; Great consternation in my soul; The Lord’s compression algorithm; Beginningless ignorance; Māyā.
Class 19 January 29, 2015 Download Audio
Kāraṇaśarīra – Causal body; Ignorance is neither real nor unreal; Mysterious causes; Try to cut space with a knife; Huge vistas of ignorance; Three states of experience – waking, dreaming, deep sleep; Om; I inform all experience, undefined; Remove the wave to see the water? I never wake, because i never sleep; Uninterruptible consciousness; Fully dressed; Two core identities – doer & experiencer; Dream analysis; Emotional knots & reactivity; Unconscious; Gentle alertness; Laws of the heart; Fully formed dreamer; Dream Lord – maker and material; Liberated while dreaming; Achilles’ heel; Fragile assumptions; Dream bricks hurt; In its own time; Snoring; Fire of corporate sādhana.
Class 20 February 5, 2015 Download Audio
Avasthātrayasākṣī; Abiding, unchanging, presence in 3 mutually-exclusive states of experience; Viśva – Waker; Firing on all 3 bodies; Taijasa – Dreamer, effulgent one; Confusing the tangible with the real;Mustached dream dogs; Prājña – Deep sleeper; Potential me; Recollecting the collected; Happily ignorant; Nothing to write home about; Self not intrinsically witness; Nityaśuddhātmā; Fearlessly fearful; Upādhi – as though qualifying; Red crystals; No new experience needed; Understand truth present in all experiences; Blasphemy; What is Upaniṣad; No place to go; Śāstra-guru-śiṣya-dṛṣṭiḥ – Scripture-teacher-student-vision; Catching up the mind; Acceptance and effecting change; Listening for svadharma; Effectiveness; Reveling in the mystery of Bhagavān;
Some class audio recordings pending
ँ़ नमो भगवते दक्षिणामूर्तये मह्यं श्रियं मेधां प्रज्ञां प्रयच्छ स्वाहा ।।