Most of my time was spent in meditation. My portion of the house was rented out and I gave the income to my family. A year went by in which I did little except meditate. A job was found for me in a local mica company where I worked as a clerk-typist for about five months.
I had no interest whatsoever in the work. I did it only because my family insisted that they needed more money. At the beginning of I resigned my position and persuaded my mother to accompany me on a trip to Sri Ramanasramam.
My pilgrimage to Ramanasramam began at the local train station in Gudur. While I was waiting for the train to arrive, my mother started talking to two women who were also waiting for the same train. It was soon discovered that they too were heading for Ramanasramam.
They were accompanying Sathyananda Swami, a long-time devotee of Ramana Maharshi. When this swami was informed that we were on our way to Tiruvannamalai and that we were planning to visit Ramanasramam for the first time, he invited us to join his party. I was delighted by this fortunate turn of events.
I felt that Bhagavan himself had sent one of his devotees to guide us to his ashram. The journey took all day and it was well after dark when we finally arrived in Tiruvannamalai. We spent the night at a choultry and the following morning we walked to Ramanasramam in the company of Swami Sathyananda.
Instead of approaching the ashram by the main road, we ended up arriving through the back gate, located between the kitchen and the storeroom. As we were climbing the steps that led up to the gate, we saw Bhagavan walking slowly in the direction of the cow shed.
Bhagavan noticed us, stopped for a few seconds to look at us, and then carried on with his walk. The second day of my visit was Vijayadasami, the final day of the festival. In the afternoon I stood in front of the Mathrubhuteswara Temple, waiting for Bhagavan to appear. He came out of his small room, accompanied by Swami Sathyananda, entered the new hall that was in front of the temple and took his seat on the stone sofa.
There were only a few devotees present at the time. I went up to Bhagavan and made a full prostration in front of him. When I stood up, Bhagavan looked intently at me for a few moments. I withdrew and went to look for a place where I could do self-enquiry and not be disturbed by the other devotees.
I selected a pillar that was outside the door that Bhagavan had entered through and sat down in front of it. Though I was outside the hall, Bhagavan could still see me from where he was sitting. Shortly afterwards I saw Muruganar taking a seat close to Bhagavan. I noticed that other devotees were entering the hall. After a few minutes Muruganar came and sat down next to me.
A few other devotees came and sat near us. As it did so, the gracious smiling face of Ramana Maharshi appeared within me on the right side of the chest. There was something like a lightning flash that resulted in a flood of divine light shining both within and without.
It seemed to be lit up with a radiance that exceeded innumerable lightning flashes rolled into one. The bliss and joy these experiences gave me brought tears to my eyes. A torrential flow welled up within me and rolled down my face.
I was unable to control them in any way. It was permanently destroyed through the grace of my Guru in his holy presence. I remained absorbed in the Self, without body consciousness, for about three hours. The experience was so intense, even when I opened my eyes I found I was incapable or either speaking or moving.
The realisation had caused an immense churning within the nervous system, so much so that when body consciousness returned, I felt extremely weak. When I was finally able to register what was going on around me, I noticed that everything was perfectly normal. Bhagavan was still sitting on his couch and all the assembled devotees were pursuing their normal duties and activities.
My tears and my loss of consciousness had not attracted any attention at all. I remained where I was for another three hours because I was incapable of movement of any kind. I remember hearing the dinner bell and the noise of the Vijayadasami procession as it went round the temple, but I was too absorbed in the Self to contemplate either eating or joining in the celebrations.
The following morning I still felt very weak. Thinking that I might feel better if I ate some food, I started to walk towards town to see if I could get a meal at one of the hotels there.
Unfortunately, I overestimated my strength. Before I could find a place to eat, I had an attack of dizziness and collapsed on the street.
A friendly passer-by took me under his wing, ascertained that I needed food, and then guided me to a hotel that was located on the south side of the temple. I felt much stronger after the meal and I had no difficulty returning to the ashram. Later that afternoon I went up to Bhagavan in the darshan hall, prostrated before him, and handed him a note via his attendant Venkataratnam.
Bhagavan read the note, looked at me for a moment, and then his face lit up in a radiant smile. Anatta or anatman is one of the Three Marks of Existence. The other two are dukkha roughly, unsatisfying and anicca impermanent. In this context, anatta often is translated as "egolessness. Of critical importance is the teaching of the Second Noble Truth , which tells us that because we believe we are a permanent and unchanging self, we fall into clinging and craving, jealousy and hate, and all the other poisons that cause unhappiness.
Other Theravadin teachers, such as Thanissaro Bhikkhu , prefer to say that the question of a self is unanswerable. He said,. When later asked why, he said that to hold either that there is a self or that there is no self is to fall into extreme forms of wrong view that make the path of Buddhist practice impossible.
In this view, even to reflect on the question of whether one has or does not have a self leads to identification with a self, or perhaps an identification with nihilism. It is better to put the question aside and focus on other teachings, in particular, the Four Noble Truths. The Bhikkhu continued,. At that point, questions of self, no-self, and not-self fall aside.
Mahayana Buddhism teaches a variation of anatta called sunyata , or emptiness. All beings and phenomena are empty of self-essence. This doctrine is associated with a 2nd-century philosophy called Madhyamika , "school of the middle way," founded by the sage Nagarjuna. Because nothing has self-existence, phenomena take existence only as they relate to other phenomena. For this reason, according to Madhyamika, it is incorrect to say that phenomena either exist or don't exist.
The "middle way" is the way between affirmation and negation. Mahayana Buddhism also is associated with the doctrine of Buddha Nature. According to this doctrine, Buddha Nature is the fundamental nature of all beings. Is Buddha Nature a self? Theravadins sometimes accuse Mahayana Buddhists of using Buddha Nature as a way to sneak atman, a soul or self, back into Buddhism.
And sometimes they have a point. It is common to conceive of Buddha Nature as a kind of big soul that everyone shares. To add to the confusion, sometimes Buddha Nature is called "original self" or "true self.
Mahayana teachers mostly say that it is incorrect to think of Buddha Nature as something we possess.
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