Part 16-madhav tirtha- Being aware of the Self is the real meditation

https://www.davidgodman.org/dialogues-and-teachings-recorded-by-swami-madhavatirtha/2/ 

Q: In the alatha-shanti of Gaudapada’s Karika [v. 97], it is said that 

if the slightest vaidharmata bhava [the attitude that there is something that exists other than the Self] remains, 

then oneness will not be established and the breaking of the veil that covers the Self will not take place. 

In that context, what is the meaning of vaidharmata?

M: In that verse the term vaidharmata should be understood to be parichinna bhava [an attitude of restriction]. 

If you want God, he is there all the time. 

So long as the world is not realised to be false, thoughts of the world will keep on coming. 

So long as the snake is seen, the rope does not appear. 

The mind that creates the world will not be able to take the world as false. 

As it happens in the dream state, so it also happens in the waking state. Without the mind there is no world. In sleep, since there is no mind, there is no world. Therefore it is not necessary to think of the world that is imagined by the mind.

That which is nitya nivritta [always removed, that is, never existing] need not be given any thought to. 

A barber, after having thrown out someone’s hair does not count how many are black and how many are white as all of them have to be thrown away. 

Similarly, it is not necessary to count imaginary things. It is only necessary to cease to imagine that they are true. 

To remove the snake from the rope, it is not necessary to kill the snake. In the same way it is not necessary to kill the mind. By understanding the complete non-existence of the mind, the mind will go away.

The experience that is without the seer and the seen, 

that is without time and space, 

is the real experience.

 When we have a dream, we see many varieties of forms. Out of them we believe one form to be ‘my’ form and we also believe that ‘I am that’. If we are the manufacturer of the dream, then we are the actor in all the forms in the dream as well as the actor in our own form. 

The one who has the dream believes that all the forms [in the dream] are real, and that they are separate from each other. And he also believes that in the dream he himself has a form. 

He is not aware that he is both the actor of the dream and all the other forms [that he sees]. 

He realises on waking that everything in the dream was he and he alone. In the same way, a jnani knows that the world [being only a dream] is never created.

  Whatever is there is all his own Self, one and undivided.

Q: How to control such a mind?

M: Except for enquiry into the self, there is no way that the mind can be destroyed.

Q: How to meditate?

M: 

Being aware of the Self is the real meditation.

 When the mind gives up its habit of choosing and deciding, it turns towards its own real nature. 

At that time it gets into the established state. 

When the ego gets more powerful, entry into this state does not take place.

Q: Should we be patriotic and should we not serve our country?

M: First be what you are. Therein lies all truth and happiness. While trying to become someone.

Q: If one were to keep such a state of non-action, the mind would become void and no worldly activities could be done.

M: First obtain this state where no differences arise and then tell me whether actions can be done or not. 

Truly speaking, so long as the body is there, some activity is bound to happen. Only the attitude ‘I am the doer’ has to be given up. 

The activities do not obstruct. It is the attitude ‘I did’ that is the obstruction. 

Else, the ahankara gets in. 

You think that the world will be conquered by your power, 

but when you turn inwards towards the Self, 

you will know that a higher power is working everywhere.

.........

Power of Arunachala

https://www.davidgodman.org/the-power-of-arunachala/

So long as we feel the name and form of our body to be ‘I’, we cannot conceive God as being anything but a name and form.

 Even if we think that God is formless, that very thought about God itself is a form – a mere mental conception. 

This is why Sri Bhagavan says in the second line of the third verse of Ashtakam,

 ‘If one tries to think of your nature as formless, 

he is like one who wanders throughout the world to see the sky’.

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