Vedanta Verse 307

Suffering is there because of self error. Without Self-confusion, misjudging oneself as the form there can never be any sorrow. Thus suffering is due to something within us and not due to extraneous conditions. This is the absolute conviction of the Vedanta. All fear belongs to the class of sorrow.

Fear of death e.g. is not extraneous to us, one may have good health, money, power or whatever so called security of this ‘world’ yet may be affected by the fear of death, the fear of ‘loosing the self’. Wrong self judgment is the cause of the fear of death. This arises out of the fact that I resist ‘sitting down’ to reflect and discern the difference between the form and the seer of the form. I always wish to get occupied with so called ‘normal’ or ‘usual’ activities, like fending for my hunger and thirst, getting exhausted and then sleep and the rest of the time get pre-occupied with satiating my sexual appetite. We like to spend all our energies only for these four activities, eating, drinking, sleeping and progeny (sex).
To sit down to reflect or cogitate about our true nature is seen universally as either ’abnormal’ or ‘unusual’.
Vedanta focuses on the following points
Without the expereincer of the three states there are no states!
Without the dreamer there can be no dreams!
Without the conscious observer there is no world!

The greatest and the wildest illusion (mahamoha) is:
I will disappear and the world will continue.
This error has to be resolved. The absurdity of the error is like the dreamer thinking that ‘I’ will discontinue (when I move out of the dream and I wake up) but my dream world will continue to exist. The truth is the reverse which is:
I continue as the subject of all states while the world can become non existent.

Therefore this view that I am the form, judging myself the eternal being as non eternal is called the Ego and this has to be given up, abandoned by continuous reflection.

This wrong judgment is one’s own enemy (svashatru). This wrong judgment is the fundamental enemy. All topical enemies hide behind this fundamental enemy. This is compared to a thorn in one’s throat (gale kanthakavat) which disenables one to eat or drink however hungry or thirst one may be.

We are by nature Full, yet we are denied of this Fullness. The seeker and the struggler Xth man is the sought Xth man yet he is denied of this knowledge. The Xth man has no problem, he is the solution to all his struggle and search; however he is deprived of this illumination.

Therefore it is one thing to possess something and quite another thing to know that you possess that. This is important to harvest the benefit of what you possess. Otherwise it would be like the story of the beggar who lived and died in utter poverty not knowing the treasure that lay buried in the same spot where he begged day after day and finally died. I may be blissful atman, but if I do not know this and I live and die as a beggar then the loss is terrible for that jiva. Therefore to know my actuality is crucial and the entire enterprise of Vedanta is to bring this to light.

The text further says give up pramada. What is this pramada?
Pramada is giving importance to the casual things/ and neglecting or taking easy or giving no attention whatsoever to serious things. Casual things like food, sleep, marriage and children consume all out attention and time, we spend all our energy in this ever changing and fleeting things and we miss out on the most urgent and central issue figuring out about this Self.

This is done through discernment. Discernment is not separating two things that are mixed up; when two things get mixed up we need a process to segregate them. This is like rice corns and sand, a process is involved in separating the two. Discernment is not such an activity. It is seeing the obvious distinction that is already there.

I need to see that waves are non different from waters, I need to see that waves cannot exist without water while water can do very well without waves. The subject can do very well without the object like in deep sleep, while objects cannot do so without the subject. This seeing entails no process, and no process in fact can generate this epistemic change. Mistaking subject, the ever present seer for an object like body etc is not mixing them like milk and water, but radically misjudging one for the other. For correction of such misjudgment what is required is discernment. For this we need to seriously ‘sit down’ and reflect.

I need to reflect on the fact that I have no negation while all objects of the world, body, mind, memory, all my emotions, all my good and bad behaviors all my assumed identities have negation. With this great sword (mahaasina) I need to cut asunder the ignorance that I am the form.

The phrase ‘cut asunder’ implies violence, but we need to reinterpret the phrase to mean “correction,” it is by correction that we can get rid of this Ego, ‘I am the body.’ Correction is to know that I am the eternal knowledge and not the inert object.
Thus correction leads to the rediscovering oneself as the ever shining Blissful being without a beginning or an end. By destroying the self confusion one can ‘enjoy’ the Peace of the kingdom of Self.
The search of the Xth man all over the world for the so called lost Xth man is a painful and stressful activity; he will never find the lost tenth man. Searching for happiness, peace and eternity outside oneself in the creation is a wild goose chase, for one cannot find the self. It is like space which accommodates everything in creation going on a search for accommodation everywhere! We are the answer of all our problems.