FW: Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi on the reality of the world

[Guest guest]

10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy">

10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy">

font-family:Tahoma;font-weight:bold">Harsha

[harsha (AT) cox (DOT) net]

Wednesday, November 24, 2004

3:01 PM

advaitin

RE: Re:

Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi on the reality of the world

12.0pt">

10.0pt">Always a pleasure to read you Sri Frankji!

Will forward this to HS as well.

Sri Ramana used to say that just as an elephant

wakes up seeing the tiger in

his dream a devotee wakes up upon seeing the Guru

in the dream.

Such is the mystery of grace.

Love to all

Harsha

_____

frank maiello [egodust ]

Wednesday, November 24, 2004 10:25 AM

advaitin

Re: Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi

on the reality of the world

hariH OM!

bhaskar-ji,

namaste.

in my view, it's a mistake to take anything out of

context from a

given teacher and settle upon what's indicated

therein as gospel.

one really needs to read everything possible about

their teachings

before being capable of reaching an understanding

of what they're

trying to convey.

each of the world teachers knew they had to speak

differently to each

individual's (or groups of individuals) level of

understanding. for

example, sri ramana has elsewhere stated that the

world is NOT

unreal. he's also said that the world was

real as well as unreal,

again, depending on the person's

understanding.

buddha and jesus used the same method.

once it happened that buddha employed the whole of

this method in the

course of a single day, well knowing that his

disciple, ananda, was

overhearing his different responses to 3 different

people, on whether

or not there was a substratum diety. he

affirmed to one, denied to

the other, and to the third he neither affirmed

nor denied. ananda

was perplexed by his different responses and asked

why buddha

contradicted himself. buddha replied:

[paraphrasing here] "this

miraculously worked out so that the highest

teaching could be

transmitted to *you*, ananda. For it shows how one

needs to be

liberated from dwelling on fixed ideas, for such

are traps preventing

final enlightenment." (this also shows how

most researchers (seekers)

erroneously concluded that buddha was

atheist! this was so because

most people at the time were entangled in the

*exclusive* [and

therefore delimiting] concept of deity, which he

denounced so that

they had the opportunity of freeing their minds of

such habit of

limitation. his highest teaching [as were

also jesus' and ramana's]

was that the ego-Mind needs to be ideologically

transcended and the

primal awareness leftover then has no place left

to go but naturally

sinks into the Heart of the Self.)

this is NOT to say that one's ishtadevata has no

place in one's

sadhana, or even in the case of a jnani, one's

practical lifestyle.

rather it's saying that the mind also needs

attenuation insofar as

the release of obsessing on any one area, be it

bhakthiyog, karmayog

or jnanayog. these are collectively

purushotamayog--or as sri ramana

calls it, mahayog--which engages a *blend* of the

three as a means or

path to jivanmukthi. as ramakrishna once

said, yoga is likened to a

thorn of vidya used to remove the thorn of avidya;

and when the thorn

is removed, *both* [thorns] are discarded!

OM ramanarpanamasthu!

frank

[Non-text portions of this message have been

removed]

Discussion

of Shankara's Advaita Vedanta Philosophy of nonseparablity of Atman and

Brahman.

Advaitin List Archives available at: http://www.eScribe.com/culture/advaitin/

To Post a message send an email to :

advaitin

Messages Archived at: advaitin/messages