Dr. Vijai S Shankar MD.PhD.
Published on www.academy-advaita.com
The Netherlands
5th September 2017
Singular movement
“Life”
Life is full of actions. Work involves actions. Games involve actions. Behaviour involves actions. Writing, reading and speaking involve actions. Even resting or going to bed involves actions.
Human actions are diverse and include arts and entertainment, which are also a form of livelihood. This also includes driving to and from the situation or circumstance of work. Similarly, in sedentary, skilled or manual work actions are involved.
The enlightened have proclaimed that life is a singular movement. They also indicate that life goes only in one way, to mean that the one way is a singular movement and actions are not separate from each other.
The knowledgeable, however, believe and are convinced that life is made up of several actions, each separate from the other and so cannot be a singular movement. Superficial logic and reason indicate that the knowledgeable are right.
If life is a singular movement, as the enlightened have proclaimed, then it must be understood that actions too are a singular movement and that the actions are not separate from each other.
What could this deep, wise understanding be is the question?
The wise understanding would be the obvious, deep logic and reason that an action is a movement and that the body is in movement before the action. But the movement before the action is not labelled as an action.
Similarly, the body is in movement after the action. But the movement after the action is not labelled as an action. This implies that the body is always moving and that the moving body may or may not be labelled as an action.
Also, in an action that determines work, play, entertainment, arts or driving to and from to any form of livelihood, there are so many movements within the action that are neither determined as actions nor labelled as actions
This signifies that a distinct cut-off point between one action and the next is absent. This implies that the body is in a singular movement and this singular movement of the body appears intermittently as illusory actions.
This deep understanding of life indicates what the enlightened have proclaimed. Life indeed is a singular movement and actions are albeit an auditory and optical illusion of light and sound.
Author: Dr. Vijai S. Shankar
© Copyright V. S. Shankar 2017
Editor’s Note:
The conditioned mind of man and woman convinces them that they perform actions in life, that they are the doer. This conditioning not only separates one action from another, it also leaves a man and woman vulnerable to the emotional reactions, both positive and negative, of those performing the actions and those affected by them. The understanding of the wise, as revealed in this article, removes the burden of individual responsibility for actions, for there are no individual actions in the natural flow of life.
Julian Capper, UK.
German Translator’s Note:
Once again, the term oneness, properly understood, makes man and woman wise. In oneness there can be no separation between one action and another, one human and another, between human and nature. A singular movement mysteriously appears as man, mind and world, as described here by Dr. Shankar in the wise article “Singular Movement“.
Marcus Stegmaier, Germany.