Tag Archives: spirituality

Repetition-1

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ROLE OF “REPETITION” IN SPIRITUAL INSTRUCTION, PRACTICE AND UNDERSTANDING — 1

All of spiritual instruction and learning has two aspects or dimensions:  The Theory and Praxis – a doctrine to understand and a method to practice, so that the former may dawn in the seeker’s mind as an experiential realization of his/her own. In advaita Vedanta the goal is to understand the Reality by dispelling the misunderstanding. The final understanding to arrive at is that there is no essential distinction between the jiva (individual self) and Atman (Universal Self), and further, that Atman, the Self, is Brahman (its cosmic extension, as it were). Here the two terms of the polarity, subject-object, get obliterated, given the intuition (anubhUti, akhandAkAra vRtti) that reality is One. Knowing and Being are no longer distinguishable from one another, when Happiness shines self-effulgently and this is encapsulated in the three-pronged expression, sat-chit-Ananda.

The method of imparting the above Non-dual message is usually by teaching (through gradual and progressive steps) so that the seeker intuitively grasps the Reality, the ‘what Is’. Normally a teacher is required for this education; otherwise, the scriptures (basically the prasthAnatraya; the purANas and specific treatises likes the prakaraNa grantha-s being the accessories) are the source to which one can access again and again. Saying ‘again and again’ implies repetition… or does it? Repetition of what? Continue reading →

Q. 352 – sexual desire and happiness

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Q: I have read the book ‘How to Meet Yourself’. I understand I think about desire; that it is a searching for a return to our natural state of happiness. I understand that we are already that, but when around women or just bored I start moving toward pornography to get relief from the desire. How exactly can I just access this happiness? Do I not take the desire seriously and not look at women, or do I need a more practical way to cope and not go down this spiritual route so to speak?

Answers are provided by: Ramesam, Sitara, Ted, Martin and Dennis. Continue reading →

Am I awake yet? – Fred Davis

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So, am I awake yet, or what?

by

Fred Davis

 

I edit Awakening Clarity, a Nondual blog, and as a result of that I get emails from the four corners of the worlds.  A fair number of them express confusion.  The writer has had some sort of spiritual experience.  And now they want to know where they are on the spiritual map.  One response that arises here when someone asks me something along the line of, “Hey, am I awake, or what?” is exactly this:

“If you’re concerned about whether you’re awake or not, then you’re not–at least not right now.”  Such a question simply would not occur to conscious awakeness. Generally, in fact, given the nature of the situation the person is writing in about, and their choice of language their letter contains convincing evidence that they are not awake right now–at least not in the way they are asking about.  In truth, everyone is always equally awake, so all we are ever talking about is whether or not we are consciously awake, knowingly awake–right now. If we can get clear on this we can see that there’s no room left for higher or lower, better or worse, more spiritual or less.  All of those things spring from beliefs, opinions, and positions (BOPs), which conscious awareness simply doesn’t have.  The apparently separate being it’s working through will certainly have a broad array of BOPs–that’s essentially what a separate being is–but not the awakeness behind it.  You will understand, of course, that language is failing us here; we do what we can. Continue reading →

What is traditional advaita?

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My teacher is a teacher of traditional advaita. I believe she is the only such teacher in the UK, if not in Europe. Some might look at what she teaches – Gita, Upaniṣads, Prakaraṇa Granthas (philosophical treatise) and stotras (devotional hymns) – and believe that they too, not only follow traditional advaita (because they too read these texts), but also have an additional, and arguably more powerful, key in the form of meditation or yoga or other such practice. Despite the surface similarity, however, I stick to my opening claim and will attempt to open up clear blue water between the teacher of traditional advaita simply by making clear what is mean by ‘traditional advaita’.

Two words set apart the traditional approach to teaching advaita from all others: sampradāya and pramāna.

Sampradāya is the established approach to unfolding the vision of Vedanta transmitted from one teacher to another. It is the traditional interpretation with a traceable lineage of teachers. Continue reading →

Common misunderstandings related to Vedanta

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Below is the view of a bright young friend, Prashant Parikh, a keen, enthusiastic student of traditional Vedanta…

There are some errors in understanding I come across routinely, so I’m addressing a few of them briefly.

1) The Self can’t be experienced: The human mind is designed to go outwards (or even inwards) to gain experience. That is good, it allows us to innovate and progress in our worldly lives. However, when it comes to gaining AtmA jñAnam, the mind again looks for experience of an object called AtmA. This will fail miserable. AtmA is the very Self, the subject. Only an object endowed with attributes can be experienced. The consciousness, which is the Self, cannot be known as an object of experience. The Self can only be understood through the process of acquiring jñAnam through the timeless veda utterances. Tat tvam ask [Thou art That] is the teaching of the Guru, aham brahman asmi [I am Absolute Reality] is the understanding of the student 🙂 Continue reading →

Pleasure of Sex vs. Bliss of Self in Brain Scans

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Khajuraho Temple Sculpture – 10th – 12th Century

Khajuraho and Kamasutra fire the fancy of any foreign tourist to India.  Add Spirituality and the heady mix becomes a killer app for seekers of quick-fix salvation for paying a visit to India!  Biologically sex evolved as a reproductive mechanism to possibly capture the advantageous heritable genetic traits from a partner.  Only humans and a few animals like bonobos and dolphins indulge in recreational sex.  Sex is closely tied to sensory perceptions and lies within the realms of the mind. Salvation transcends both senses and mind. “Rajneesh, the ‘horse’s mouth’ concerning the topic of enlightenment for Westerners for many years,” regrets James Swartz, “wedded two largely incompatible concepts, sense enjoyment and enlightenment.” One may lose ‘self identity’ and get enwrapped in an inexplicable joy in either of them as Brihadaranyaka Upanishad says. But the bliss of enlightenment and the pleasure of sensual gratification are totally different. Our brains can show it all very clearly!

Human brain is a mass of interlinked neurons piled up in three layers. At the bottom is the most primitive brain common to all animals. Continue reading →

Closer Than Close

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” a documentary that investigates the spiritual search; the search for the essential questions of human life: is there an eternal part of ourselves? what has lasting meaning? where do we find certainty? Rather than philosophical discussion, it explores the possibility of living a life devoted to a search for answers, and the radical possibility that answers exist, closer than we can imagine, within our selves.”

Watch this promotional video advertizing the DVD from Poetry in Motion Films.

Spirituality

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Today we bundle everything that is considered spiritual under the term New Age. There are even people, who consider psychotherapy as spiritual and again others who would call their traditional religious practices spiritual. Thus „spirituality“ is a broad field. Advaita Vedanta provides a very specific definition for spirituality that sets limits to this broad field. In Advaita Vedanta someone is considered spiritual only, if he/she wants to realize truth – the key to truth being realizing my true nature, who or what I am – as distinct from body and mind. Everything else may lead to spirituality, but will not provide the realization, that I long for.

Spiritual search 

All humans are seekers, all humans want to grow beyond themselves. Some want to multiply their possessions because they assume that thereby their limits extend. Others want to increase their quality of life because it helps them over the inevitable limits of human existence. Again others believe that such outer changes won’t be effective as long as one does not have a psyche that is able to enjoy possession as well as quality of life. These start to work at the psychological level to thereby grow beyond themselves. Others aim to extend their limits by exploring subtle phenomena and experimenting with them. Continue reading →