The Practice of Advaita

[Guest guest]

I’m back from vacation, and although I’m using a different email

account, it’s the same old Max.

 

I enjoyed the thread on the practice of Advaita.

 

I believe it is meaningful to speak of ‘the practice’ of Advaita.

A simple definition would be that a practice of Advaita is a way of

life which furthers Self-realization and which assumes the truth of

the Advaita presumption of one nondualistic reality.

 

This simple definition can be elaborated in different directions

according to one’s particular take on Advaita Vedanta. As one who

relates best to the “Realistic Advaita” of Aurobindo and

Radhakrishnan, I do not doubt the relative, dependent ‘existence’

of people like you or me, as ‘transient formations’ within the one

reality, and a practice of Advaita is merely living in such a way

as to become more aware of our transience and dependence and of the

One Reality of which we are a small, brief self-expression.

 

Speaking more particularly from the perpsective of Aurobindo’s

Integral Yoga, I see the practice of Advaita as virtually

indistinguishable from Jnana Yoga. A simple yet full statement

about Jnana Yoga is that it involves three areas: reasoning,

experience and grace. As the yoga of self-knowledge, reasoning is

one of its primary means of being, but so is meditation and the

mystical experience which unfolds therein. Lastly there is grace,

which is not a result of practice but a Divine response to a life,

and a response which often feels like it is influenced by practice,

although it may be that the practice is the ‘externalized’ first

movements of the self’s Lila of grace.

 

Like others, I look forward to the Gita Satsang, and this topic is

addressed therein in several places.

 

Namaste,

-- Max

 

I liked this:

> From talk given by Swami Vivekananda in London -1896.

>

> "And this is the practical side of Vedanta. It does not destroy

> the world,

> but it explains it, it does not destroy the person but explains

> him; it does

> not destroy the individuality, but explains it by showing the

real

> individuality. It does not show that this world is vain and does

> not exist,

> but it says 'Understand what this world is, so that it may not

> hurt you'.

 

_______

 

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