{"id":5595,"date":"2024-05-23T14:09:32","date_gmt":"2024-05-23T19:09:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/?p=5595"},"modified":"2024-09-16T05:22:48","modified_gmt":"2024-09-16T10:22:48","slug":"why-people-misunderstand-ramana-reason-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/why-people-misunderstand-ramana-reason-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Why people misunderstand Ramana: reason #1"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Other articles in this series:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/why-people-misunderstand-ramana-reason-2\/\">Reason #2<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It&#8217;s hard to pick the number one reason why people misunderstand Ramana because the top two reasons are very similar and they reinforce each other.  But a choice must be made, so here goes:<\/p>\n<p>The question &#8220;who am I?&#8221; is the number one reason. <\/p>\n<p>Ramana used this phrase as a name for the method he taught.  It&#8217;s also the name of the short textbook he dictated and edited that describes the method.  For example, in the first paragraph of that booklet he refers to the method as \u201cthe awareness-investigation called \u2018who am I\u2019\u201d.  That quote comes from <a href=\"https:\/\/realization.org\/p\/ramana\/michael-james\/nan-yar\/nan-yar.html\">Michael James&#8217;s translation<\/a> which I think is the best.<\/p>\n<p>The misunderstanding is this: many people assume that the practice consists of asking that question.  <\/p>\n<p>This is wrong.  The practice is something else entirely.<\/p>\n<p>Ramana chose that name &#8220;who am I?&#8221; not because it describes the practice but because the purpose of the practice is to reveal the answer.<\/p>\n<p>The actual practice is this: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nFocus attention incessantly on yourself.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That&#8217;s a literal translation of Ramana&#8217;s words in his textbook, <a href=\"https:\/\/realization.org\/p\/ramana\/michael-james\/nan-yar\/nan-yar.html\"><i>Who Am I?<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n<p>That practice has nothing to do with asking &#8220;who am I?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>This use of the attention causes the mind to sink into the Source aka Heart aka Self aka sat-chit-ananda aka Brahman aka pure consciousnessn, and that is the answer to the question, &#8220;who am I?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>But you don&#8217;t find that answer by asking a question.  You find the answer by focusing attention incessantly on yourself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Other articles in this series: Reason #2 It&#8217;s hard to pick the number one reason why people misunderstand Ramana because the top two reasons are very similar and they reinforce each other. But a choice must be made, so here goes: The question &#8220;who am I?&#8221; is the number one reason. Ramana used this phrase [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6YVpx-1sf","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5595"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5595\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5775,"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5595\/revisions\/5775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}