I’m going to kill two birds with one stone with this post. Oops — what an ugly metaphor. I’ve been hanging out with my cats too much. They’re so adorable I keep forgetting they’re sociopathic murderers.
First thing I’m going to do is analyze and translate Ramana’s definition of “atma-vichara” from Nan Ar. This is relevant to the question of whether Sadhu Om’s translation of that term, “self-attention”, is a good one. I raised that question in this post a few days ago. Ramana’s definition of the term can help us answer it.
Second thing is show how I used an AI to help write this post. This is relevant to some of the comments attached to that earlier post.
Transcript of my conversation with the AI
I don’t know Tamil, but this particular AI (Claude Opus 4) knows both English and Tamil extremely well. I wish I could have simply asked it to translate Ramana’s definition and analyze it for me but the results would have been mediocre. To get excellent results I had to talk to the AI for hours, asking dozens of questions about grammar and word meaning, suggesting lines of reasoning, and challenging its replies. I had to put a lot of work into this. I want to show how I did this as an example of how to get excellent results from an AI for this kind of task.
I used Claude Opus 4 because as far as I know, it’s the smartest AI at this moment for textual analysis. The word “Opus” is significant. I wouldn’t use Claude Sonnet 4 for this purpose. His big brother Opus is much smarter.
Translation
“‘Ātma-vichara’ means only keeping the mind always in the Self”
Tamil Transliteration
sadā-kālam-um maṉattai ātmāvil vaittiruppadaṟku-t tāṉ ‘ātma-vicāram’ eṉḏṟu peyar
Word-for-Word Gloss
sadā-kālam-um = at all times / always
maṉattai = mind (accusative)
ātmāvil = in the Self (locative)
vaittiruppadaṟku = to keeping / to holding
tāṉ = only / alone (emphatic particle)
‘ātma-vicāram’ = ‘Self-observation’
eṉḏṟu = thus / that (quotative particle functioning as copula)
peyar = name
Grammatical Breakdown of vaittiruppadaṟku
vai (வை) – root verb meaning “place, put, keep”
-ttu (த்து) – past participle marker (functioning as part of compound verb)
iru (இரு) – auxiliary verb meaning “be, remain, stay”
vaittu + iru = compound verb meaning “keep placed” or “maintain in position”
-ppa (ப்ப) – infinitive marker
-daṟku (தற்கு) – dative suffix meaning “for” or “to”
Actually -adaṟku with initial ‘a’ assimilated
The complete form vaittiruppadaṟku is a dative infinitive meaning “for keeping” or “to keeping.” The compound verb construction indicates continuous state rather than one-time action.
Self is sat,chit, ananda, three combined.
I wonder, have you ever explored The Path of Sri Ramana in the original Tamil via Claude? I wonder if that wouldn’t be useful to some degree – having an additional Tamil text to provide context or understanding, particularly from someone who is supposed to have been an excellent communicator of Ramana’s message. Though I believe Sri Sadhu Om knew English, at the end of the day we all communicator best in our mother tongue.
Hi Ben. No but I’ve done that with Guru Vachaka Kovai.
Sadhu Om, as recorded by Michael James:
“Being eternally aware of nothing other than oneself is sahaja samadhi (which is another name for manonasa, atma-jnana or jagrat-sushupti), and trying to be always aware of nothing other than oneself is practising sahaja samadhi. Sahaja samadhi is our goal, and the only way to attain it is to practise it here and now.”
Hi Mr. B. When you post quotations here, could you please include a citation (information that tells other people where to find the quote). I’ll do it for you this time. The quote is from The Paramount Importance of Self-attention by Michael James, entry for 16th August, 1978.
From What is Self-Attentiveness?, a letter by Sadhu Om, (The Mountain Path, July-September 2009):
“You ask whether being attentive to the feeling of one’s existence-consciousness is (a) feeling one’s existence or (b) watching the feeling that exists. Both are correct, for they are one and the same. Feeling, watching or attending is consciousness (chit), which is the same as being or existence (sat). So long as we feel our attention to be other than our being, we are told to make effort to attend to our being, but when we do so correctly (that is, when we turn a full 180 degrees towards our being) we will find that our very being is itself attention to our being. In other words, we will realize that our existence and the consciousness of our existence are one and the same, after which we will find that no effort is required to attend to self, for self-attention (sat-chit) will be known to be our effortless and natural state. That is why verse 990 of Sri Ramana Sahasram ends by saying, “… But why even attend, when my very existence (sat) is itself attention (chit)?””
Thanks for this citation.
An astounding similarity with Dzogchen-Teachings.
I excerpted the whole of Sadhu Om’s letter for reference. :))
Thanks, Gouda. I reprinted the complete letter on realization.org to make it easier for people to find in search engines and, for people who prefer html to pdf, easier to read. And thanks Hans for making me think of doing it.
Complete letter
I have tried to find out the translator of the letter by Sri Sadhu Om, unsuccessfully.
Freddie, do you know if Michael James has done the translation?
Thank you for editing a sepate page.
Hans
Sorry, Hans, I don’t know. Maybe he wrote it in English with Michael’s help?