The Happening.

Verb and Action. 

घटना और कर्म

Question / प्रश्न 43

What is the difference between what happens and what is done?

घटना और कर्म के बीच क्या संबंध या अन्तर है?

--

विषय / object, विषयी / subject और and चेतना / consciousness.

One evening sitting on the river-bank when the waters were flowing slowly and the breeze fast, one was looking at the surroundings, observing the trees shedding the dry ripe leafs dancing in the middle while falling on the ground.

A boat carrying 3 or 4 persons sailing upon the river going away from this bank and slowly reaching the another.

It was a fishing boat where they would  often use it sometimes catching the fish from the river and sometimes carrying the people across from one to another bank.

One was just sitting on a flat and broad smooth rock there. A traveller was also there sitting besides him. The two knew one-another well enough and a formal conversation started between the two.

Though the people living in the nearby villages were neither very educated nor learned, they often go to and visit those nearby Ashrams where some spiritual teachers and the aspirants lived, would go and used to visit them.

The visitor beside him was one of those many visitors and so after exchanging a formal Namaste he began discussing a rather serious topic of Vedanta in a way that looked like a very simple question.

He asked :

What is the difference between what happens and what is done?

घटना और कर्म के बीच क्या संबंध या अन्तर है?

The boat had so far reached the other bank and may be returning soon.

There were no clouds at all in the sky and the dry leafs would occasionally touch them.

He took a leaf and asked to the visitor :

Where-from has come this leaf?

Oh! Don't you see they are falling from the trees?

Well, what do you think! Do they know and decide themselves about falling on the ground and flying in the wind, or this is a happening that is taking place without their voluntary or involuntary action?

The visitor smiled, and at once sensed that his friend was not kidding but was rather serious about the question asked by him. 

You see there are the pebbles, small and big stones strewn here and there on the ground. They can't fly in the air, nor can swim or float upon the waters.

What is the difference between them and the sentient beings like the birds, the fish, the animals, the trees and the humans?

Obviously it's the consciousness or the sentience that makes an object either a material thing or a living being.

So, what is then Life?

Isn't Life itself the consciousness?

But the words don't take us too far so as to arrive at a conclusion about :

What is the difference between what happens and what is done? 

घटना और कर्म के बीच क्या संबंध या अन्तर है?

The falling of the leafs on the ground or on the waters in the river and getting carried by them is a happening, while sailing the boat across the waters is an action.

But the common element between the two - either a happening or an action is the presence of someone who knows.

So there is this knowing  /  awareness / consciousness Underlying Principle.

Let us try to understand this in a better way. With your eyes open or shut, try to touch your thumb with your forefinger. You can feel / experience this again in two ways. 

You can either feel / experience your forefinger through your thumb and can call the thumb the subject and your forefinger the object. Again, you can repeat the same activity by assuming your forefinger as the subject and your thumb as the object.

The knowing, the awareness / the consciousness though remains the same, a superficial entity "the Thought" appears through this happening and is mistaken to be the one - independent thinker.

The memory causes the illusion and the apparent imposed continuity that is overlooked and the thinker owns the person.

Let us see this again to understand this in the framework of Vedantik parlance.

विषयी / The subject, विषय / the object and the चेतना / the consciousness together constitute the fictitious entity : the thinker, the mind, the ego, the intellect, the self, the individual, as if as to have existence other and one independent from the rest. 

Thinking is the happening, while the Thinker, -an idea only.

This very thinker, only because of the In-attention becomes the ego or self.

The same assumes the role of "doing". There is neither the action nor the one who performs the action.

All action and the idea "I do", -the sense of doing something wrong or right, virtuous or sinful is but only in, and the movement of thought.

The Attention of this In-attention, awareness of this whole activity on the part of the thought and memory liberates the mind from the ill-fated ill-conceived notion of the doer-ship.

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