I found this extract from a David Goodman interview on Ramana Maharshi. He is explaining the difference between the Maharshi's Self-Inquiry method and more classical methods of meditation (like you may find in Yoga for instance). Very interesting indeed!
I find this to be a very astute technique. In all spiritual traditions you want to stop the mind in order to realize you are not the ego. In some Indian traditions (including the one to which Ramana Maharshi belongs, the Advaita Vedanta), that which is beyond the ego, the Reality, is often called Self. Now this is highly disturbing, because you need to get rid of the "little"/"personal" self and merge in the real Self which is actually Brahman (the ultimate principle). Personally it doesn't really suit me since it is all to subjective (like in grammar) and.. personal:)
The Buddha was quite bright in denying the existence of self altogether. You may feel there is an "I", but upon analysis, you realize there is no such thing, and this is a great relief actually.
Ramana Maharshi's method is a very interesting one none the less because it engages the practitioner to always be with the sense of "I". It basically indulges the ego, and comforts it (whereas in Buddhism, the ego gets all defensive because of its negation). But as you follow it with your attention, you realize there's no such thing, or should I say, the little "I", disappears and lets you experience the big "I" which has nothing to do with the ego whatsoever.
Maharshi: follow the I all the way through until it finally dissolves.
Buddha: Analyse the mind scrupulously and you'll see there's no such thing as "I".
"Sri Ramana had a very appropriate analogy for this process. Imagine that you have a bull, and that you keep it in a stable. If you leave the door open, the bull will wander out, looking for food. It may find food, but a lot of the time it will get into trouble by grazing in cultivated fields. This is an Indian story. Here, there are no boundary fences, so cattle can wander anywhere in search of food. The owners of the fields our bull wanders into will beat it with sticks and throw stones at it to chase it away, but it will come back again and again, and suffer repeatedly, because it doesn’t understand the notion of field boundaries. It is just programmed to look for food and to eat it wherever it finds something edible.
The bull is the mind, the stable is the Self where it arises and to where it returns, and the grazing in the fields represents the mind’s painful addiction to seeking pleasure in outside objects. Sri Ramana said that most mind-control techniques forcibly restrain the bull to stop it from moving around but they don’t do anything about the bull’s fundamental desire to wander and get itself into trouble. You can tie up the mind temporarily with japa (repetition of sacred names) or pranayama (breath control), but when these restraints are loosened, the mind just wanders off again, gets involved in more mischief and suffers again. You can tie up a bull, but it won’t like it. You will just end up with an angry, cantankerous bull that will probably be looking for a chance to commit some act of violence on you.
Sri Ramana likened self-enquiry to holding a bunch of fresh grass under the bull’s nose. As the bull approaches it, you move away in the direction of the stable door and the bull follows you. You lead it back into the stable, and it voluntarily follows you because it wants the pleasure of eating the grass that you are holding in front of it. Once it is inside the stable, you allow it to eat the abundant grass that is always stored there. In this way you train it to stay home. The door of the stable is always left open, and the bull is free to leave and roam about at any time. There is no punishment or restraint. The bull will go out repeatedly, because it is the nature of such animals to wander in search of food, but every time you notice that your bull–mind has wandered out, tempt it back into its stable with the same technique. Don’t try to beat it into submission or you may be attacked, and don’t try to solve the problem forcibly by locking it up. Sooner or later even the dimmest of bulls will understand that, since there is a perpetual supply of tasty food in the stable, there is no point wandering around outside, because that always leads to suffering and punishments. Even though the stable door is always open, the bull will eventually stay inside and enjoy the food that is always there."
