Vedanta
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Hearing, reflecting, and meditating are the three main disciplines of Vedanta. At first you hear that Brahman alone is real and the world unreal. Then you reflect upon this idea and become convinced of it through reasoning and discrimination. And finally you meditate on Brahman, the Absolute Reality, relinquishing the unreal world. That is all.
Otherwise what does it avail if you hear and understand the teachings of Vedanta but do not try to renounce what is unreal? That is like the knowledge of worldly people. This kind of knowledge can not help you attain Reality. You need conviction and renunciation – only then can you succeed. Otherwise you are saying, ‘There is no thorn, no pricking’; but the moment you touch a thorny plant, those thorns get into your hands, and you cry out with pain.
You are saying: ‘This world does not exist. It is unreal. Brahman alone exists,’ and so on, but the moment you come in touch with the sense objects of the world, you immediately consider them real and get attached to them. Once a monk came to live in the Panchavati of Dakshineshwar. He would talk about Vedanta extensively with people. Then one day I heard that he was having an illicit love affair with a woman. I went in that direction to answer the call of nature and found him seated in the Panchavati. I said to him, ‘You talk so much about Vedanta – now, what is this?’ He replied: ‘What does it matter? Let me explain to you that I have done nothing wrong. When everything in this world is unreal in the past, present, and future, how can my slips of character be real? They are also unreal.’ Disgusted, I said to him, ‘I spit upon such Vedantic knowledge of yours!’ Worldly people have that kind of knowledge about Vedanta. This knowledge is no knowledge at all.
- Sri Ramakrishna,
Sri Ramakrishna and His Divine Play, P428
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