It is 50 years now since I graduated from high school. When I met my school friends a few years ago—I was seeing most of them after nearly 35 years—it was an emotional experience. Over tea, refreshments and lunch, we spent time reminiscing about the old days, remembering our teachers and friends and the fun things we did together in school. In subsequent meetings, usually two or three years apart, we continued doing the same. It also became quite apparent to me how much they had changed. I still carried in my mind the memory of the teenage selves of my friends, but the adult versions before me were different in surprising ways. It dawned on me soon enough that they probably thought the same about me.
When I tried to look at myself through their eyes, I knew why it would be easy for them to see the changes in me. It wasn’t too difficult for me either to see in how many ways the present me was different from the younger me. But because the evolution had occurred gradually, almost imperceptibly, I always felt I was and am the same person. I imagine most of us feel like that. In the face of undeniable and obvious changes, why do I feel that something within me has remained unchanged—and somehow I am still the same person?
Kenmore Square, Boston: 2012 (above), 1900 (below)
The same goes for our neighborhoods. Especially in urban areas, changes are occurring all the time. Old buildings are being renovated or pulled down to make place for new ones. The skyline keeps changing. Even within the last 25 years, it’s amazing how much Kenmore Square has changed—and yet it feels as if it is the same old neighborhood. There is clearly change and yet there is also this mysterious feeling that everything’s just the same. The Charles river flows by the Vedanta center. It feels as if it is the same river—but the water keeps changing all the time. Not for nothing do they say that no one steps into the same river twice.
Kenmore Square, Boston: 1972 (L) and 2021 (R)
Life seems to be an incomprehensible blend of constant change and unchanging constancy. It needs a measure of discernment to notice this blend. Most people get swallowed by the changes, internal and external, and all of their time and energy are spent dealing with the fallout that every change involves. Prayer, meditation and deep reflection help us to step back and taste a little bit at least of the changeless. Even the slightest glimpse of the changeless can be so exhilarating that we may want to return to it again and again. Which is why once we discover the sweetness in the practice of prayer and meditation, we want to spend increasingly more time doing them.
From the vantage point of the changeless, it is easy to see that all change is external. The body is changing all the time and so is the mind. Whatever is perceived by the body and the mind is changing too. It is pointless to resist the change since it is unstoppable. What we can do—what we should do, in fact—is to step back and find our roots in the changeless. That brings stability and security. We feel free because no longer are we pushed around by forces that trigger all the changes around us. Just as we can remain a witness of the changes “outside,” we can remain a witness of the changes “inside,” that is, inside the body and the mind. It doesn’t take too long to recognize that the outside/inside qualifiers are silly. Everything is outside when I become the witness.
Being a witness means simply seeing. Which is not easy. We don’t simply see. We react, we judge. We normally don’t see ourselves reacting. We don’t see ourselves judging. That is how we get sucked into all the changes and are affected by them. That is how we remain trapped in the phantasmagoria of karma and its results. To get out of this is difficult but not impossible. The method is to doggedly remain a resolute witness of not only what’s happening around us but also of how the mind is responding to it. Our success in being a witness is measured by how less reactive we are, how less judgmental, how calm we are and at peace with ourselves. The body and the mind continue to work—to do what they are trained to do in a way they are accustomed to doing. The witness simply sees. This becomes easier when we can shake off, at least to some extent, the body and the mind’s hold on us.
The witness is the changeless presence surrounded by change but not engulfed by it. The goal is to be the witness—the witness of life and death, of health and illness, of birth and rebirth, of heaven and hell, of good and bad, of friend and foe, of light and darkness. Eventually the polarities disappear and the changes subside. There are no more waves. The ripples vanish. The stillness of the ocean is all that remains. A witness is no longer a witness when there is nothing to witness.
We read in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad (2.4.14):
यत्र वा अस्य सर्वमात्मैवाभूत्, तत्केन कं जिघ्रेत्, तत्केन कं पश्येत्, तत्केन कं श्रृणुयात्, तत्केन कमभिवदेत्, तत्केन कं मन्वीत, तत्केन कं विजानीयात् ? येनेदं सर्वं विजानाति तं केन विजानीयात् ? विज्ञातारमरे केन विजानीयादिति ।
Yatra vā asya sarvaṁ ātmaiva abhūt, tat kena kaṁ jighret, tat kena kaṁ paśyet, tat kena kaṁ śṛṇuyāt, tat kena kaṁ abhivadet, tat kena kaṁ manvīta, tat kena kaṁ vijānīyāt? Yena idaṁ sarvaṁ vijānāti, taṁ kena vijānīyāt? Vijñātāram are kena vijānīyāt iti.
“(To the spiritually illumined) when everything becomes the Ātman, then what should one smell and through what, what should one see and through what, what should one hear and through what, what should one speak and through what, what should one think and through what, what should one know and through what? Through what should one know that, knowing which all this becomes known? Through what should one know the knower?”
The knower is known when I am still. When I simply am, not doing anything, not reacting, not judging. Simply being. Pure is-ness (sat) is also awareness (cit). It is infinite (ananta) and it is bliss (ānanda). It is not “it” but “me” the knower—the real me, the changeless me.