Eight Upanishads (Topic-wise) Part34

Part 33

Chapter 6 JnAna and moksha
6-9 Taittiriya Upanishad- Brahmananda Valli
6-9-5 AnuvAka 8 – Ananda MimAmsa
There is harmony and order in creation. Celestial entities are all the time engaged in their activities in a disciplined manner. It is possible if there is a ruler different from them. He is Brahman of Vedanta who is inactive but at his command all the worldly entities act as if He is the source of terror. This is one aspect. The Upanishad says that Brahman is the source of bliss in the world and in particular, the one enjoyed by a jiva. Whereas bliss is the nature of Brahman and is without any gradation and cannot be experienced, the bliss experienced by a jiva is graded and can be evaluated. Ananda MimAnsa is discussed in detail in (Ananda Mimansa | Advaita Vision)

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Dialog with Jeff Foster (conc.)

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13. You then talk about:“the collapse into not-knowing, the profound mystery…”I don’t know (!) what this means – sounds a bit too mystical for me.

14. “If anything, I’m saying the exact opposite, that the Mystery could NEVER be contained in ANY belief (especially simplistic neo-advaita beliefs!) ”Words never ‘contain’ the ‘mystery’, but they can be used to point to it. “Everything is here right now” does not provide any pointers that might overcome the essential ignorance.

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Eight Upanishads (Topic-wise) Part 33

Part 32

Chapter 6 JnAna and moksha
6-9 Tattiriya Upanishad- BrahmAnanda Valli
6-9-4 AnuvAka 7 (Pt 2)
The universe is made of matter and is essentially inert. But living and non-living beings are found in the universe. It means that there is an outside source of sentiency. This source is Brahman. Consciousness is the nature of Brahman. The consciousness is reflected in the subtle body of a jiva and the latter becomes sentient. Brahman is also the source of happiness. When consciousness is reflected in a calm mind, happiness is felt. Vedanta claims that there is not an iota of happiness in worldly objects. If happiness is the essential nature of an object, it should give happiness to everybody all the time. But it is not so. An object liked by a person may not be liked by another person. And an object liked by a person now may not be liked later.

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Dialog with Jeff Foster (part 2)

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The Discussion

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Eight Upanishads (Topic-wise) Part 32

Part 31

Chapter 6 JnAna and moksha
6-9 Taittiria Upanishad- BrahmAnanda Valli
6-9-3 AnuvAka 6

If a person says that Brahman is non-existent, he is adhArmic. Brahman-knowledge cannot be the goal of such a person. He does not accept the authority of the Vedanta sastras. For such a person a preparatory righteous life constituting karma yoga and upAsanA yoga would not make any sense. His life is meaningless. On the other hand, a seeker initially accepts Brahman because the scriptures say so and eventually, he clearly understands that Brahman exists not as an object, but as I, the very subject. It is different from and witness to the five sheaths.

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Dialog with Jeff Foster (part 1)

Continuing to look for essays and reviews etc. that are no longer available online, I came across the following dialog that I had with Jeff Foster in June 2007, after I had read his book ‘Life Without a Centre: awakening from the dream of separation’. In fact, the dialog is still available at the advaita.org.uk site but, since that site does not seem to be much visited these days, I thought it would be a good idea to republish here, as a follow-up to the recently posted article on neo-Advaita. A link to an extract from the book is included below and you can purchase the book at Amazon.UK or Amazon.com. Jeff’s website is here.  

This post will be in several parts. This first part contains our initial exchange; the remainder will contain the ensuing discussion. Readers should always remember that this was nearly 20 years ago and views may change. I understand that Jeff has said that he no longer holds some of the views that he did then.

In all parts, my words are in blue (Dennis Waite) and Jeff’s are in red (Jeff Foster).

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Surviving Death

A (Martin): There are some ‘facts’ or experiences by individuals in favor of what goes under the name of NDEs (near-death experiences) and LAD (life after death), but I will restrict my answer to the teachings of Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta – and my convictions (for what they are worth). And that, without holding a belief in the naive or popular notion of reincarnation, that is, reincarnation of the body

Consciousness (aka awareness), being the only or ultimate (exclusive) reality from the metaphysical viewpoint, does not need to preserve itself at any time. It simply IS, and is beyond the time dimension, which is an unreality for IT. This means that there is no death – of anything or any being – only apparent transformation of phenomena properly so-called. ‘I’ (‘you’) am not a phenomenon. ‘I’ am consciousness, pure, indescribable, and immutable. Obviously, by ‘I’ I don’t mean this body-mind.

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kenopanishad

Review of the commentary by Swami Dayananda Saraswati, Dennis Waite, ca. 2011

kenopanishad, Swami Dayananda, Arsha Vidya Centre Research and Publication, 2008, ISBN 978-81-906059. (230 pages), $12 from Arsha Vidya Bookstore, Arsha Vidya Gurukulam, Institute of Vedanta & Sanskrit, P.O. Box 1059, Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania, 18353, USA Tel: 570.992.2339 (http://books.arshavidya.org/) The book has an Introduction, Chapter-by-Chapter Index to the mantras, an alphabetical index to mantras, which are in Devanagari with Roman Transliteration and word-by-word meanings. There is extensive commentary and some quotations from Shankara’s bhAShya are included in footnotes. There is also a Conclusion and a section at the back with the complete Upanishad in Devanagari.

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Eight Upanishads (Topic-wise) Part 31

Part 30

Chapter 6 JnAna and Moksha
6-9 Taittiriya Upanishad BrahmAnanda Valli
6-9-2 AnuvAka 1(Pt 2) and AnuvAka 2 to 4

Upanishad describes Brahman as the source of creation which is the Tatastha (distant) lakshna of Brahman. Everything in the creation is born out of Brahman. Five elements, namely, space, air, fire, water, earth are born in that order. Plants and herbs are born from earth, food is born from plants and herbs, and from food, living being is born. The idea is that a human being is born from Brahman and to emphasize the idea, the teacher points out the different parts of the physical body, namely, head, right side in south, left side in north, middle portion is the body, and the portion below the waist as tail. The gross body is born of Brahman. A person is inclined to take gross body as Brahman. It is an interim position because gross body is finite and is discarded later. The Upanishad teaches discrimination of five-sheaths to understand formless Brahman. The gross body is food-sheath (Annamaya Kosa), made of food.

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Traditional versus Neo-Advaita (Conclusion)

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The term ‘neo-Vedanta’ is used these days to describe the teaching of Ramakrishna and Vivekananda followers. It is characterized by ideas such as the need to ‘experience’ Brahman through samādhi, since Self-knowledge is only an ‘intellectual’ understanding. Up until the late 20th C, it was also sometimes called neo-Advaita. It diverges from the Advaita as systematized by Śaṅkara because Vivekananda was adversely influenced by Yoga philosophy, incorporating some of their teaching and denigrating the scriptural authority of the Vedas. I am not addressing this further in this article. Read the excellent book by Anantanand Rambachan – ‘The Limits of Scripture: Vivekananda’s Reinterpretation of the Vedas’ – if interested. (Amazon UK; Amazon US)

My own book ‘Confusions in Advaita Vedanta – Knowledge, Experience and Enlightenment’ also has an account of the differences, and sources of confusion. (Exotic India; Amazon US). (N.B. there only seems to be a hardback available at Amazon UK at present, at a ridiculous price. Exotic India is much cheaper. It is in US but has free postage to UK. Alternatively, probably cheapest of all from the publisher, Indica Books, in India.)

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