If I correctly remember all the Ramana books I’ve read, and of course I don’t, it was Sadhu Om who invented the idea of describing Ramana’s method in English as “self-attention”.
Regardless of who invented it, Michael James, Sadhu Om’s friend, student, collaborator, and literary executor, has done a great deal to popularize the term.
Michael recently completed a book of Sadhu Om’s teachings called The Paramount Importance of Self-Attention which appeared in installments over 13 or 14 years in The Mountain Path.
I can’t imagine a better title. It perfectly captures the essence of Sadhu Om’s interpretation of Ramana’s instructions.
I like this use of the English word “attention”, and I’ve gotten into the habit of describing Ramana’s method as a “transfer of attention from mental activity to knowing.”
But verbal formulas, even the best, are seldom perfect. It’s hard for them to be perfect because words are names of concepts, and concepts are not the same kind of stuff as the things they describe. (Mathematical terms may be an exception.) As the old metaphor says, “the map is not the territory.”
The problem with the word “attention” in this context is that in order to pay attention to consciousness itself, which Ramana calls the source, we have to learn a new way of paying attention.
For our entire lives, “pay attention” meant “do a certain kind of thing with our minds.”
That familiar action, that thing we did with our minds, doesn’t work for transferring attention to the source.
Maybe “be aware of” is more accurate than “pay attention to” because that describes the goal of paying attention rather than the action.
But that has problems too.
We could try, “You want to bring about a state in which there is awareness of knowing instead of awareness of mental activity.”
Ugh.
There are no perfect words for our purposes. They are approximations. We should concentrate on understanding the things they describe, not on the words. Words are only tools.
The chef loves her copper-bottom pan but doesn’t mistake it for the omelet.
I remember we talked in the past about your use of Claude for translating Tamil texts, and at the time I think you were quite pleased with it’s ability to understand the subtleties and whatnot. As it tends to be reasonably strong with language in context, I wonder if it has any opinions on this use of ‘attention’ here?
Hi Ben. Yes, you hit the nail on the head. This exact question was one of the things I had in mind when you and I talked about LLMs.
To give you an idea of what the LLMs told me about this, I just chatted briefly with the current Claude so I could paste his comments here as an example of the longer conversations I had in the past. This conversation shows just one of the approaches I took. LLMs are like super dictionaries and super Linguees and super-patient bilingual native speakers rolled into one. There are many ways to use them for this kind of investigation.
Freddie:
How does Ramana define atma-vicara in Nan Ar?
Claude Opus 4:
Looking at Nan Ar, Ramana defines atma-vicara (ஆத்மவிசாரம்) most explicitly in paragraph 16:
“சதாகாலமும் மனத்தை ஆத்மாவில் வைத்திருப்பதற்குத் தான் ‘ஆத்மவிசார’ மென்று பெயர்”
Translation: “Keeping (or holding) the mind always in (or on) the Self (atma) — that alone is called ‘atma-vicara’.”
Freddie:
If Ramana had wanted to write a definition closer to the English phrase, “Paying continuous attention to the Self,” could he have written that in natural, idiomatic Tamil?
Claude Opus 4:
Yes, absolutely. If Ramana had wanted to convey “Paying continuous attention to the Self,” he could have written it quite naturally in Tamil. Some possibilities:
ஆத்மாவில் தொடர்ந்து கவனம் செலுத்துவது (ātmāvil toḍarndu gavanam celuttuvadu) – “continuously directing attention to/on the Self”
ஆத்மாவை இடைவிடாது கவனிப்பது (ātmāvai iḍaiviḍādu gavanippadu) – “observing the Self without interruption”
ஆத்மாவில் நிரந்தர கவனம் வைப்பது (ātmāvil nirantara gavanam vaippadu) – “placing constant attention on the Self”
These would be perfectly natural Tamil expressions. The fact that Ramana chose மனத்தை ஆத்மாவில் வைத்திருப்பது (keeping/holding the mind in/on the Self) instead suggests he meant something more specific than just “paying attention.”
His choice emphasizes:
The mind as what needs to be placed/held
A sense of establishing and maintaining a position (வைத்திருப்பது)
The Self as a location or state where the mind is held
This is more about the mind’s placement or establishment in its source than about directing attention as an activity. It suggests something more like abidance than mere attention.
“A sense of establishing and maintaining a position” – I like that.
What i’d love to ask Claude (and I ought to do it myself, though yours may be more primed for it given that it likely remembers all of your previous conversations about Ramana) is what it thinks about the notion of self-attention as the stopping of a process rather than an active “doing” per se – i.e that the cessation of the outward-reaching we nearly always do with our attention is in and of itself equivalent to self-abidance. I think there’s some truth in that as a pedagogical tool, insofar as it gets one to relax and open up to “proper first person attention” as Sri Sadhu Om says.
Always interesting how different people approach the question of trying to communicate this. Thought about this the other day when I remembered our brief discussion regarding John Sherman and the “just one look” method. Richard Lang’s Headless Way is another unique attempt at getting that initial introduction to Self.
Hi Ben. I agree that’s a very important question. I’ve been satisfied with the answer in paragraphs 3 and 6 of Nan Ar so I probably didn’t ask the LLMs. But I think it would be an interesting thing to discuss with them and if you do, I’d be curious to hear what they say.
The only context I give Claude for new conversations is the following documents in the form of text files in the original languages. In that form the documents take up very little context. I put these seven files in “Project Knowledge” in a project and start a new chat for each topic. That’s how I generated the little chat in my previous reply.
If I don’t give Claude Ramana’s actual texts to work off, he’s useless. Either he’ll confabulate or say only trivial things. If you want the files, you can download them (and others) from the Ramana’s Writings page on realization.org.
For this kind of question I make a point of giving him Ramana’s works only in the original languages to minimize the extent to which his thinking gets contaminated by translators’ interpretations. Some contamination is impossible to avoid since he’s read a lot of translations and commentary in his pretraining days.
The Tamil/Sanskrit files are the last ones in each section on that page.
Nāṉ Ār
Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu
Upadēśa Sāraḥ
Upadēśa Undiyār
Ēkāṉma Pañcakam
Āṉma Viddai
Appaḷa Pāṭṭu
I did play around with it a bit just now, and it’s definitely interesting. I only gave it the original Tamil for Nan Ar exclusively, just as an initial test, and asked Claude if there was evidence for self inquiry as the cessation of a practice rather than a new activity. It says:
——
Key Tamil Terms That Suggest “Ceasing” Rather Than “Doing”
“மடங்கும்” (maḍaṅgum) – This word appears repeatedly and means “to subside,” “to be absorbed,” or “to cease.” Ramana uses it for how the mind naturally returns to its source. It’s not an active forcing, but a natural subsiding.
“திரும்பிவிடும்” (tirumbiviḍum) – “will return by itself.” Notice the passive construction – the mind returns on its own when you do the inquiry.
“சும்மா விருப்பது” (summā viruppadhu) – This is crucial! “Summā” means “just so,” “simply,” or “without doing anything.” “விருப்பது” means “to be/remain.” So this is “simply being” or “just remaining as you are.”
The Revealing Passage in Paragraph Six
Look at this key line:
“நானார் என்று விசாரித்தால் மனம் தன் பிறப்பிடத்திற்குத் திரும்பிவிடும்”
“When you inquire ‘Who am I?’, the mind will return to its birthplace by itself.”
The verb “திரும்பிவிடும்” indicates the mind naturally goes back – you don’t force it back.
“விசாரணை” (Vicāraṇai) – Investigation, Not Activity
The word for inquiry, “விசாரணை,” suggests investigation or looking into, not creating or doing something new. It’s more like removing obstacles to see what’s already there.
The Spider Analogy is Telling
Ramana uses the spider analogy – just as a spider draws its web back into itself, the mind draws the world back into itself. This is a natural process, not an effortful one.
The Train Analogy in Paragraph Thirteen
“புகை வண்டி சகல பாரங்களையும் தாங்கிக்கொண்டு போவது தெரிந்திருந்தும்… ஏன் கஷ்டப்படவேண்டும்?”
“Why should we suffer by carrying our small bundle on our heads when we know the train carries all burdens?”
This suggests stopping the effort of carrying burdens, not taking on a new effort.
My Reading
Based on the Tamil, Ramana seems to be describing cessation of outward projection rather than a new doing. The inquiry “Who am I?” appears to be more like:
A gentle turning of attention
A stopping of the habitual movement outward
A recognition of what’s already present
A natural returning, like water flowing downhill
The practice is more about not feeding the outward movement of mind rather than actively creating an inward movement.
——-
It makes me think of John Wheeler’s old talks about bringing home trunks full of Tamil texts and thinking that he had the answer (“if only I could read it!”). An invaluable tool to have these LLMs available, but I am wondering what percentage of the texts it was trained on creep into its responses. Regardless, definitely interesting.
Well, you asked Claude for evidence supporting a point of view and he gave you evidence for that point of view. I think maybe he’s in confirmation-bias / make-the-user-happy mode here. If it’s not too much trouble, could you try rephrasing your prompt in a neutral way like this:
“People are divided on the following question. [Describe the opinion without hinting what you think.] Some people agree. Other’s don’t. Please analyze and give me an unbiased evaluation of the arguments on each side.”
P.S. In case you haven’t used Claude 4 much yet, it’s much more inclined to confirm what the user says than the earlier Sonnet 3.x models. At least that’s true of Opus 4. It’s almost impossible to get it to disagree with me. I often use it to criticize my writing, and if it doesn’t point out mistakes it’s useless, but it’s difficult to get it to do that. My system prompt contains about 300 words repeating in various ways, “Tell me when you disagree with me. Point out logical errors. Be blunt. Don’t be afraid to hurt my feelings.” Etc. Has almost no effect. Anthropic went too far in training Opus 4 to make the user feel good.
A quick experiment feeding Claude only the Tamil of Nan Yar and asking about doing vs cessation in terms of self-inquiry “practice.”
It replies:
—————
Key Tamil Terms That Suggest “Ceasing” Rather Than “Doing”
“மடங்கும்” (maḍaṅgum) – This word appears repeatedly and means “to subside,” “to be absorbed,” or “to cease.” Ramana uses it for how the mind naturally returns to its source. It’s not an active forcing, but a natural subsiding.
“திரும்பிவிடும்” (tirumbiviḍum) – “will return by itself.” Notice the passive construction – the mind returns on its own when you do the inquiry.
“சும்மா விருப்பது” (summā viruppadhu) – This is crucial! “Summā” means “just so,” “simply,” or “without doing anything.” “விருப்பது” means “to be/remain.” So this is “simply being” or “just remaining as you are.”
The Revealing Passage in Paragraph Six
Look at this key line:
“நானார் என்று விசாரித்தால் மனம் தன் பிறப்பிடத்திற்குத் திரும்பிவிடும்”
“When you inquire ‘Who am I?’, the mind will return to its birthplace by itself.”
The verb “திரும்பிவிடும்” indicates the mind naturally goes back – you don’t force it back.
“விசாரணை” (Vicāraṇai) – Investigation, Not Activity
The word for inquiry, “விசாரணை,” suggests investigation or looking into, not creating or doing something new. It’s more like removing obstacles to see what’s already there.
The Spider Analogy is Telling
Ramana uses the spider analogy – just as a spider draws its web back into itself, the mind draws the world back into itself. This is a natural process, not an effortful one.
The Train Analogy in Paragraph Thirteen
“புகை வண்டி சகல பாரங்களையும் தாங்கிக்கொண்டு போவது தெரிந்திருந்தும்… ஏன் கஷ்டப்படவேண்டும்?”
“Why should we suffer by carrying our small bundle on our heads when we know the train carries all burdens?”
This suggests stopping the effort of carrying burdens, not taking on a new effort.
My Reading:
Based on the Tamil, Ramana seems to be describing cessation of outward projection rather than a new doing. The inquiry “Who am I?” appears to be more like:
A gentle turning of attention
A stopping of the habitual movement outward
A recognition of what’s already present
A natural returning, like water flowing downhill
The practice is more about not feeding the outward movement of mind rather than actively creating an inward movement.
Sorry about the double post of mine, I thought it didn’t go through the first time.
You make good points about the potential bias in my question to Claude. I did subsequently attempt a more neutral prompt to see which side of the effort (constant vigilance!) vs. no effort (simply being) debate it landed on, but it’s a bit long so I’ll send it over in an email.
My most recent experience about this is that attention directed ‘outward’, even if to a thought, is actually a oneness with whatever it is focused one. Invariably, this means one has lost sight of, or forgotten, the source of this focus – one’s Self.
Claude’s term abidance seems very appropriate, because if there is no ‘outward’ focus, attention as an activity of the imagined separate being ceases to exist. This abidance then is experienced as the absence of attention.
Of course, one comes to realize there is no ‘outwards’ and this abidance extends to be all-inclusive (Ramana: ‘There are no others.’) . . . all-inclusive except for the now dissolved imagined separate ego . . .