Befriend the sakshi in you, and live a better life

Dear friends,

There are many expressions centered around the concept of distance, and its benefits to us. Take for example, “absence makes the heart grow fonder”, “time heals”, and “keep at arm’s length.” They refer to the ability of distance to sooth, restore, and even protect. What if we were to take the safety net of distance and use it to protect ourselves against life’s ups and downs?  

According to the ancient philosophical tradition of Vedanta, not only is this possible, but it is advisable to be a sakshi or have a witness attitude towards life.

That means, we learn to become more of an observer in a world where we are pulled in a million directions by what we see, smell, taste, hear, and touch. By being a sakshi in the here and now, we realize that we are not our emotions and feelings, but something else inside us. We become empowered to explore a side of us we have always had within—but that we ignored—and reach the seat of wisdom itself within us, our Divine Self.

Sakshi inside us

Sakshi or the realm of pure awareness exists within each of us.  Say you are watching a morning sunset in Santorini, Greece, just taking in the still blue Aegean Sea, the pink sky, the blue domed buildings revealing their whitewashed walls underneath—you are just in the moment of watching the caldera being lit by the morning light, you are a sakshi. Perhaps you have an epiphany or two about life or yourself. The minute you start crafting a text or a Facebook post about how gorgeous the place is, inviting friends to plan their next girls hangout here, you pull in the faculty of your mind and intellect and cease to be a sakshi.

What’s the big deal with cultivating this awareness within us, you may ask.

The Vedanta explains that practicing being a sakshi or a witnessing consciousness puts an automatic distance between life experiences and our body, mind, and intellect or the BMI. And that’s a good thing, as the body, mind, and intellect (BMI) are ever changing instruments in our life that cause a lot of ups and downs and therefore they are not our true Self.  Our body ages, thins, fattens up and at every age, and we have expectations of it. The mind, well, we all know, experiences constant thoughts that spit out one drama after another. The intellect, our discriminating power, often falls prey to its other two counterparts if not guided by the right knowledge.

Then, we are left to wonder, “Who am I? at the end of the day, if straddled in the constant coming and going of experiences and thoughts, our mind scattered here and there.

The Vedanta explains that a more meaningful path in life is to become a witness to our experiences. Be aware: I am aware I am crying, I am aware I am shouting, I am aware I am angry, or I am aware I am dejected with life at this moment. By doing so, we feel more distant from the emotion we are experiencing or the resulting consequence of our action. Say we are angry at our child for something s/he has done. Taking a few deep breaths and just parking ourselves as a sakshi—as opposed to blurting out something in anger—is likely to help the anger dissipate and resolve the situation more meaningfully.

Practicing being a sakshi is also part of the bigger goal in Vedanta of discovering our Self. Note that the ‘S’ in the ‘Self’ is capitalized to make it distinct from what we normally refer to as the self with the small ‘s’; i.e., our self as our body, mind, and intellect. Since the body, mind, and intellect are ever changing, the only unchanging entity left in us is our Self or plain awareness, what Vedanta also calls the supreme Brahman or the Divine Consciousness. Sakshiis a part of this consciousness. In fact, in the Vedantic tradition, so supreme is the sakshi that God and sakshi are spoken about in the same breath in this verse from the Bhagavad Gita:

gatir bhartā prabhuḥ sākṣhī nivāsaḥ śharaṇaṁ suhṛit

(Chapter 9, verse 18)

Here “prabhu” or God, is referred to as the “sakshi” or the witness.

It is commonplace today to pop an Advil or a Tylenol or some painkiller when we have a headache. It has been established scientifically that taking one will dull our headache—somebody studied it, and we follow it. Why then aren’t we studying the one entity we live with all our life—our Self? What’s the Self, how does it behave, what makes it tick, what is it we are made of? These questions should preoccupy us most.  In the introduction to Drg Drsya Viveka, a beautiful text attributed to the 8^th century scholar and teacher, Sri Adi Sankaracarya, Swami Tejomayananda explains:

 “Having taken ourselves for what we are not, we suffer endlessly in life. We seem to be conditioned and bound by our own misconception. Therefore, the purpose of this discrimination is to know our own true nature, thereby ending all sorrows for all times and gaining absolute unconditional bliss.”  

How practicing being a sakshi helps

Being an observer is a majestic and powerful perch on life as its quietude allows us to know our true Self and delve into parts of us that we never knew existed, because we were busy being pulled in myriad directions by the body, mind, and intellect. Recognizing that the only thing in us that remains unchanged is our awareness, we can right away stop identifying with what we are definitely not: our body, mind, and intellect.

In Drg Drsya Viveka, Sri Adi Sankaracarya explains, we never say “My eye sees the pot”, even though that’s the reality. We say, “I see the pot.” Similarly, we say “I am fat”, not “my body is fat” causing us enormous grief. Further, we say, “I am depressed”, whereas it’s our mind that’s depressed. We never confuse ourselves with the book we are reading, he explains, then why do we confuse ourselves with our mind that keeps thinking and producing thoughts? Silly, isn’t it?

Once we realize this, we can cultivate an essential distance between the experiences that cause us grief in our life, and thereby gain strength through the neutrality or the wisdom this distance brings within us.

Using the body, mind, and intellect to our advantage

Does this mean that the body, mind, and intellect have no place in our lives? Of course not. As humans, we have no choice but to live with our body, mind, and intellect, but we must learn to use them as tools to benefit our Self.

When we sit behind the wheel of a car, explains Swami Dheeranandaji, we don’t become the wheel, but we drive the car using the wheel. So we must use the wheel of our body, mind, and intellect to accomplish things in life without ever forgetting that we are not these entities, but that they are subservient to our supreme Self or the sakshi within us. For example, when I am writing, I use my intellect to analyze materials, my mind to formulate thoughts, and my hands to type. However, who I am, is the stillness of the Divine Self that is enabling my body, mind, and intellect unfold and allowing that perfection of writing to happen and manifest on paper.

Essentially, sakshi is a call to understanding our real Self with the calm of an observer, fall in love with it, and make it an ally for life.

Do you agree with the wisdom of being an observer? Please do share your thoughts.

Meaningfully yours,
Anu