Why the spiritual philosophy of Vedanta appeals to me

Dear friends,

A fellow reader and subscriber, Sampath, asked me to list ten things I like about the spiritual philosophy of Vedanta, the bedrock of my life. I don’t have ten things, but I do have one—the one—that resonates most and makes me a fan of this belief system for life: Vedanta believes that true divinity lies within oneself.

How empowering of a thought, I thought, when I first heard this over a decade back. Me, as an individual, is elevated to a godly level. The optimism of it stuck.

The belief system of Vedanta re-engineers your thinking inward to search for knowledge that you likely possessed all your life but were simply not aware of it. It’s a spiritual philosophy that puts your Self on a pedestal.

Self, elevated

Vedanta asks us to trust our own Self and look within to find our divine nature and lead a more meaningful life. In fact, our life’s quest itself is to discover knowledge about our Self. The word Vedanta is a coming together of two words: veda which means knowledge and anta which means end of.

The knowledge referred to in Vedanta is as much the knowledge about God as it is about enquiry into knowledge of our own Self or our divine nature. God in Vedanta is the supreme "Brahman", but the belief is that God resides within us itself as our divine nature, "Atman".

So yes, you may pray to Gods in many forms. Hinduism, the philosophical foundation of Vedanta—certainly has many manifestations of gods and goddesses, but ultimately, the Divine Life lies within us, and it is up to us to discover it through a careful study of our Self.

I find such a belief system to be extremely accessible and comforting, given that it grants more power to me as an individual.

Self, discovered

I am absolutely fascinated with the process of self-discovery that the Vedantic belief system triggers. If you adhere to this spiritual path to its core, there is a cushiony, yet firm fall back on the core belief that no matter what, your own Self will show up for you. You’ll find answers to things no matter how crazed it is around you, because your own Self is the best source of knowledge and your best friend.

What’s the point of Self knowledge one might ask, and why is the Self divine?

As I had mentioned in a previous post, Take a vacation within, the Self, in the Geeta, with “S” in caps, is not that person based on your interpretation of your own body, mind, personality, or your roles in life—our common understanding of the self (with a lower case “s”). You are, most likely, not what you think you are.

Our true Self is really perfection (see my previous post on Befriend the sakshi in you, and lead a better life). Think about when you were younger or even tiny and how you jumped with divine joy when you liked something. Over the years, experiences and life happen and we become a tangled web of emotions, thoughts, and beliefs that take us farther and farther away from this innate perfection. We doubt, we worry, we make decisions based on an entity within us that’s increasingly distanced from our Self—we consider ourselves to be our Mind and our Intellect, the thinking part of us to be us, and that heavy hand of reason confounds us further by leading us into a tangled web of emotions and experiences.  We don’t listen enough to our inner voice and even ignore it, because we are conditioned to stray away from this original Self. The journey back into our Self, the pool of wisdom, which is divine, is the goal of practicing Vedanta.

Mental clutter, cleared

This is one quest where the journey is arguably more enjoyable than the destination.

That’s because the journey inward towards our divine nature can only happen if we tune off our Mind more and more, aka slap our thoughts several times a day as if they are an unwelcome intruder.

A simple expression of this exercise happened earlier this week. I was troubled by something that happened at work. I joined the virtual meeting a bit late and heard the last bit of the conversation about a writer being required for a certain project and I was a bit perplexed that my supervisor did not reach out to me about this opportunity (I am a writer on my day job as well). In the past, I’d have entertained many a story in my head about what this could mean. I still did think about it—a bit—but I made sure I was aware that my mind was going to spin stories to make me feel more disgruntled. Of course it did, and it did catch me off guard a couple of times, but I became a sakshi or a witness and alerted myself to these potential mental machinations that are common to all of us. Hence, I did not fall prey to them.

This separation of me from my mind comes from awareness and knowledge of how the mind works and takes us closer to the Divine Self, the place to be. There is no judgment there, just stillness and awareness.

I still don’t have an answer to my work conundrum, but I am not caught in a web of tales either. The more you practice being a sakshi, the more meaningful and less stressful life appears. Things fall by the wayside and become non-entities and you tackle the core of your life more meaningfully.

Vedanta works

Simply put, Vedanta works, and I use its guiding principles for everything from navigating my professional life and understanding friends and family, to coping with health issues, with a core principle being that at some level, even the worst or best experience in life is an act in a play where I am a sakshi or a witness. However, I use these experiences to discover my Self and realize the strength and beauty that lies within. I am happy to have found a handy friend right within me to help me fine-tune life with the best mental lube available and attempt to be a better person toward others, with the key word being “attempt”, as its always imperfectly perfect. That’s a Vedanta state of mind and I like it.

Meaningfully yours,
Anu Prabhala

PS: I am not an expert in Vedanta. My knowledge is guided by my guru, Swami Dheeranandaji at the Chinmaya Mission Washington Regional Center to who I remain eternally indebted. And of course, all the readings including the Bhagavad Geeta that we are encouraged to study. The teachings of Vedanta are mostly found in the texts of the Upanishads, the Brahmas Sutras, and the Bhagavad Gita.