langten69 said:

Each individual formula is a derivation of the universal formula. And each individual formula is tailor made for each individual and their unique goals.

---

  The water fits its container!

BrendanFlock said:

Each person has their own individual formula for success..

---

I admit, there is a part of me always seeking the formula, trying to perfect it... but reality is so elusive!

In response to that dilemma, I will re-post this excerpt:

syncro said:

To add, the main thing in the design for which fruits are offered up in nonattachment to them, is the practices. They may be said to be given from beyond, and therefore not to have attachment to fruits. It's easily applied to everything.

Same as God/Guru not needing appreciation, but we need to learn to appreciate. Total dependence is total independence returned which is the point. Someone's breaking you out of prison, or leading you to a treasure, you don't know the way, and we don't know the depth of means or remembrance that we offer.

I've thought that if offering the fruits of practice to that on which they are focused, it's as if that divine adeptness has done the practice for you.

---

Quote:

So perhaps the ego liberates itself by becoming a middle man? Receiving grace, then returning grace to its Source... Ultimately realizing, itself is grace uninterrupted

---

Quote:

Enlightenment calls you to accustom yourself to the internal quietude of knowing rather than the clamoring tension of questioning

---

Blue Cthulhu said:

So perhaps the ego liberates itself by becoming a middle man? Receiving grace, then returning grace to its Source... Ultimately realizing, itself is grace uninterrupted

---

Quote:

Yes. For Śaṅkara, sat, cit, and ānanda point to Brahman’s essential nature, not three separate properties that compose it. Brahman is nondual and partless; the words indicate what it is like to recognize reality, rather than attributes added to an otherwise qualified thing. “Bliss” here is not a passing pleasurable feeling.

That is distinct from the ānandamaya kośa. The kośa belongs to the individual’s subtle/causal experience and is still something to be distinguished from the Self. Its “bliss” is conditioned and limited—associated especially with deep sleep or other states of relative mental quiet—not Brahman’s absolute ānanda. So there is no contradiction: ānanda is intrinsic to Brahman; the bliss sheath is a limited, dependent appearance or reflection of it, and is not itself the ultimate Self.

One nuance: “reflection” is a useful Advaita teaching explanation, but it should not be mistaken for saying Brahman literally changes or sends a portion of itself into the sheath. The reflection depends on the reflecting condition; Brahman does not.

---

langten69 said:

Blue Cthulhu said:

So perhaps the ego liberates itself by becoming a middle man? Receiving grace, then returning grace to its Source... Ultimately realizing, itself is grace uninterrupted

---

Egos need not be liberated more than a glass need be liberated from the water within it. It is the self which desires to be free from the ego just as the water desires to be free from the glass it has been placed in

However, glasses and egos have their purpose for a time to experience the perspective of containing infinity within definite dimensions

---

Blue Cthulhu said:

langten69 said:

Blue Cthulhu said:

So perhaps the ego liberates itself by becoming a middle man? Receiving grace, then returning grace to its Source... Ultimately realizing, itself is grace uninterrupted

---

Egos need not be liberated more than a glass need be liberated from the water within it. It is the self which desires to be free from the ego just as the water desires to be free from the glass it has been placed in

However, glasses and egos have their purpose for a time to experience the perspective of containing infinity within definite dimensions

---

But if the glass realizes that it is actually made of water, too, and only imagined itself to be a confining glass... then All is One.

I guess I push back on the idea that is out there that we need to escape our ego, destroy it, somehow do away with it. It either isn't real in the first place, or it IS real and is simply an aspect of ourselves that we have thrust into darkness, thereby requiring illumination.

---

💯

There is no need to escape. Everything has its own function. Everything is one and we are everything.

The purpose of the ego is to confine infinity into a specific bandwidth of experience that we ourselves individually choose. Our egos are of our own design.

The glass has the purpose of containg and the water has the purpose of filling

It is yin/yang

The illusion is that the glass and the water are not one. They simply serve different functions in this illusion.

Quote:

However, glasses and egos have their purpose for a time to experience the perspective of containing infinity within definite dimensions

---

Quote:

Everyone is trying
To get to the bar
The name of the bar
The bar is called heaven
The band in heaven
They play my favorite song
Play it one more time
Play it all night long
Heaven
Heaven is a place
A place where nothing
Nothing ever happens
Heaven
Heaven is a place
A place where nothing
Nothing ever happens
There is a party
Everyone is there
Everyone will leave
At exactly the same time
It's hard to imagine that
Nothing at all
Could be so exciting
Could be this much fun
Heaven
Heaven is a place
A place where nothing
Nothing ever happens
Heaven
Heaven is a place
A place where nothing
Nothing ever happens
When this kiss is over
It will start again
It will not be any different
It will be exactly the same
It's hard to imagine
That nothing at all
Could be so exciting
Could be this much fun
Heaven
Heaven is a place
A place where nothing
Nothing ever happens
Heaven
Heaven is a place
A place where nothing
Nothing ever happens

---

syncro said:

It's interesting as a practice, like only contemplating Tat Tvam Asi, Thou Art That, and like volumes, chapters are put just to the effects, truths of the logic. Or it seems like a nice inner repetition, Tat Tvam Asi, ...

207. The Blissful Sheath (Anandamaya)
is that modification of Nescience which
manifests itself catching a reflection of the
Atman which is Bliss absolute; whose
attiibutes are pleasure and the rest ; which
appears in view when some object agree-
able to oneself presents itself. It makes
itself spontaneously felt to the fortunate
during the fruition of their virtuous deeds
from which every corporeal being derives
great joy without the least effort.

to AI: Does Shankara agree with Satchitananda as fundamental? He also speaks of the bliss sheath as a composite or reflection.

Quote:

Yes. For Śaṅkara, sat, cit, and ānanda point to Brahman’s essential nature, not three separate properties that compose it. Brahman is nondual and partless; the words indicate what it is like to recognize reality, rather than attributes added to an otherwise qualified thing. “Bliss” here is not a passing pleasurable feeling.

That is distinct from the ānandamaya kośa. The kośa belongs to the individual’s subtle/causal experience and is still something to be distinguished from the Self. Its “bliss” is conditioned and limited—associated especially with deep sleep or other states of relative mental quiet—not Brahman’s absolute ānanda. So there is no contradiction: ānanda is intrinsic to Brahman; the bliss sheath is a limited, dependent appearance or reflection of it, and is not itself the ultimate Self.

One nuance: “reflection” is a useful Advaita teaching explanation, but it should not be mistaken for saying Brahman literally changes or sends a portion of itself into the sheath. The reflection depends on the reflecting condition; Brahman does not.

---

---

Quote:

I’d qualify “suffering,” though: the gunas aren’t simply three quantities of pain. The Gita links rajas with painful results and tamas with darkness, while sattva can bring relative well-being. Yet all three can keep one bound to embodied existence. That doesn’t mean the body is only tamasic, or that being embodied is a moral failing; it means the body-mind is part of the field in which all three modes operate.

---

Quote:

Sāṃkhya is a classical Indian philosophical tradition that helps explain the gunas beyond the Gita’s practical descriptions of food or behavior.

Its basic distinction is between puruṣa—pure witnessing consciousness—and prakṛti, material nature. The body and mind belong to prakṛti, which is constituted by sattva (illumination), rajas (activity), and tamas (inertia or concealment). The gunas aren’t separate “ingredients” that make some things good and others bad; they’re the interacting modes through which material nature operates.
yogawithsubhash.com

In this framework, suffering and bondage arise from mistaking the changing body-mind for the conscious self. Sāṃkhya’s route to liberation is viveka—discriminative insight into the difference between puruṣa and prakṛti. So cultivating sattva may help clarify perception, but freedom ultimately means no longer identifying the self with any guna or with the body-mind’s changing states.

---