Actor Is Action
In our day to day world the "Doer" of any deed is the subject. She/he is the 'agent' of the action taken. In other words, no action can happen without the actor.
The Advaita holds that the Actor is non-different from the Action. The Actor and Action are not two.
Here is a short excerpt on the above matter taken from Chapter 3: Origination (utpatti prakaraNa) of Yogavasishta (being serialized at Advaita Vision).
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(From sarga 95, utpatti prakaraNa, yogavAsiShTha):
In our day to day world the "Doer" of any deed is the subject. She/he is the 'agent' of the action taken. In other words, no action can happen without the actor.
The Advaita holds that the Actor is non-different from the Action. The Actor and Action are not two.
Here is a short excerpt on the above matter taken from Chapter 3: Origination (utpatti prakaraNa) of Yogavasishta (being serialized at Advaita Vision).
***
(From sarga 95, utpatti prakaraNa, yogavAsiShTha):
Sage Vasishta: A flower bloomed. Fragrance
spread. Which is born first? It is not possible to say which originated first.
Both are born simultaneously. Similarly the doer and the action are not born
separately. They are born at the same time. Both have their roots in ignorance.
Individual beings also have their origin in ignorance.
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Mind is the result
of ignorance. The action is the effect of mind. Ignorance is like the branch
(of a tree). Mind is a flower. Action is
the fragrance. People normally say that the flower has come out of the branch
and the fragrance has come out of the flower. This formulation is true in some
sense, but it is not the whole truth. Both the flower and the fragrance have
come out of the branch and they have come at the same time. This is the actual
truth.
Similarly, mind
has come out of ignorance. Mind is the doer. The actions have sprung out of the
mind. So the sequence ‘ignorance -- mind -- action’ is the understanding in
common parlance. It is like the sequence ‘clay powder -- lump of clay -- pot.’
In a sense the pot
is clay and the clay is pot. Likewise, mind is action and action is mind. Or
actor is action and action is the actor. But what I proposed is still subtler
than that.
There is a time
lag between the lump of clay and its appearance as a pot. But there is no such
time gap between the flower and its fragrance. Fragrance does not have a
distinct form of its own different from the flower. Hence we are bound to accept that
flower and fragrance are born out of the branch simultaneously and that the flower
and fragrance are not two entities.
The position with
respect to the mind and action is also exactly the same. Both manifest
simultaneously from ignorance and are identical. The real cause for the emergence of a sense
of separate self is ignorance.
