advaita as a way of life

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namaste.

 

Advaita has been looked at in many ways: advaita as a religion,

advaita as a philosophy, advaita as a tool (for moksha), advaita

as a way of life. The purpose of this post is to show advaita as

a way of life is the only way the sages meant it.

 

advaita as a religion: advaita had its beginning in the Hindu

religion (sanAtana dharma). Quite often, wrongly, advaita is

viewed in that religious context, as the end-all. The thinking,

incorrectly, was that practitioners of Hindu religious acts

have an inside track at Self-realization. I do not think there

is any truth in this particular way of thinking. Even in the Hindu

religion, advaita is associated with smArtha karmA-s. A vaishNavite

is considered not an advaitin. Advaita is more than a religious

practice.

 

advaita as a philosophy: shri shankara put advaita on a strong

philosophical footing. And, because of the work of these revered

AcAryA-s, advaita can stand logic as well as any other philosophy.

However, advaita is more than the philosophy. By taking advaita as

a philosophy, and emphasizing discussions of advaita on a

philosophical basis, in my view, the real beauty of advaita is not

looked at. By concentrating on the philosophy, we are looking at it

as an intellectual exercise only, and as I said many times on the

List, the knower and the Knowledge would still be separate even after

mastering the philosophy. Advaita is more than the philosophy.

 

advaita as a tool: The objective of human embodiment is moksha.

It was viewed, wrongly, that moksha is still a step away from

advaita, i.e. use advaita as a tool in order to attain moksha.

The typical example of this line of thinking is: remove a thorn

with another thorn, and after the thorn is removed, throw away the

two thorns. Here, moksha is viewed as a state of experience of

infinite bliss and advaita is viewed as a mechanism to reach that

state.

 

advaita as a way of life: advaita is more than what is described

above. As per my understanding, advaita is a way of life where we

attend to our daily acts with contentment, with equality and

sameness of all. We do not have to spend time discussing what is

sat-cit-Ananda, what is brahman and so on in order to attain moksha.

They are simply intellectual exercises which bear no fruit. Simply,

lead a life of contentment with no desires and no attachments. That

itself is moksha. If that is not moksha, I would like someone to

tell me what is moksha. I believe that is what the sages of the

upanishads described as advaita. Life of shri RamaNa maharShi of

modern times is a good example of what I mean of advaita as a way

of life.

 

However, make no mistake about it. It is not easy to lead a life

of advaita. If the jIva is not pure internally, there will be

continuous internal forces on the jIva which pull him/her away

from that way of life. Many people of modern times (and I am sure

of earlier times as well) mistook advaita to be simple, without the

requisite preparation and inner purity. Such people end up in

trishanku swarga of life, neither fulfilling the human duties nor

reaching the higher state of realization. But once that inner purity,

tR^ipti, and vairAgya are there, it is only infinite bliss. It will

not be an experience like there is an experience and an experiencer,

but all will be rolled into one.

 

 

Regards

Gummuluru Murthy

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