SEEKING YOUR HELP -diversion

[Guest guest]

Namaste Sunderji,

This had better be a one-night diversion but I am sure

that it will have value with good-hearted intention.

One of Plotinus' pupils set off for India but his

guide got lost and they ended up in Rome....must have

been a shock. Columbus set out for India and look

where he ended up!!!

Thankfully advaita takes us beyond the 'me and mine'

culture that divides the world.

Maybe someone can tell the story properly for I heard

it some time ago, possibly in a conversation with an

itinerant Swami at Ramanashram. The gist of the story

was:

'Once there was a very successful and famous smuggler,

from Bombay, of gold etc. Finally he was caught and

when the judge demanded to know why he sought to

destroy the Bombay economy by smuggling all the gold

across India's borders he gave a sound defence. Was

not the court, and the judge, operating under dharma?

Were their geographic boundaries in the universal?

Were not country borders but a human invention? In the

universal there are no boundaries and hence he could

not be smuggling if the court came under universal

law.'

 

Truth is, of course, in no need of help in defending

itself and India needs not worry about having people

to defend its magnificent contribution to our

spiritual understanding. That is obvious for all with

eyes to see and ears to hear.

Early in life I used to go to J. Krishnamurti's

lectures in London as well as to those of an

Englishman,Dr Rolles, who at that time was setting up

a school of meditation. Both men exhibited a strange

quality in their features. Their faces vibrated subtly

so that it was impossible to say whether their

features were Asian or European. They could be neither

or both in my own vision. This was a quality that I

later perceived in others whom I would designate as

truly spiritual. Normally people's faces are held in a

tamasic rigidity according to their thoughts but for

some, when sattva dominates, their is a vibrant

freedom.

I find the same with the world's wisdom writing, there

is an outer form that I could locate geographically if

I wished according to the circumstances or needs of

some event. However, my own enquiry, which I am

sometimes brave enough to share with this group, does

not perceive such limits. Somebody else said it

better:

 

sám anyaá yánty úpa yanty anyaáH samaanám uurváM

nadyàH pRNanti |

tám uu shúciM shúcayo diidivaáMsam apaáM nápaatam pári

tasthur aápaH ||

 

‘Some floods unite themselves and others join them:

the sounding rivers fill one common storehouse.

On every side the bright Floods have encompassed the

bright resplendent Offspring of the Waters.’

RVII.35.3

 

I think that had better be enough from me on that

topic

--- Sunder Hattangadi <sunderh wrote:

> advaitin, Benjamin

> <orion777ben> wrote:

> >

> > Namaste Kenji,

> >

> > >One quote by Plotinus that we will be

> > >considering on that day is an effort to point the

> > >intellect to 'to hen', Greek for 'The One', which

> I

> > >would also call 'Tad Ekam':

> >

> >

> > I TOLD you that some Westerners had discovered

> nondual wisdom.

> > Though maybe Plotinus heard it from an Indian

> sailor and

> plagiarized

> > it! (Or maybe his guru Plato did this.)

>

> Namaste,

>

> Plato may have spent a decade in India when

> he left Greece

> after the death of Socrates. The 'Lost Years of

> Jesus' (age 14 to 32)

> seem to have been spent in India/Tibet.

>

> Regardless, they all were Rishis, who gave

> as much they took

> from each other's contemplations - more universal in

> their outlook

> than our present-day chauvinistic pre-occupations!

>

> http://www.aber.ac.uk/tfts/journal/archive/drew.html

>

> ".......In addition to these common themes, Drew

> sees some

> similarities between the philosophies of Pythagoras,

> Socrates, Plato,

> Plotinus, and that of the Indian thinkers. For

> example, Pythagoras's

> vegetarianism, reincarnation, and the transmigration

> of souls is

> present in Indian thought as well. A form of

> reincarnation resurfaces

> in Socrates and Plato too. In the Meno, Socrates

> explains that we all

> know everything because our souls have been

> reincarnated many times,

> and therefore have accumulated all knowledge. What

> we require is a

> Socratic midwife to bring the buried knowledge to

> the surface. Plato

> uses reincarnation in his cautionary tale from the

> Republic, The Myth

> of Er. In this work the unjust are informed that

> they will be

> sentenced to many painful lifetimes of rebirth.

> A possible explanation for so many parallels is that

> these thinkers

> actually made passages to India and learned the

> ideas directly from

> the Hindu masters themselves. There are records of

> the treks to India

> made by Appollonius and Alexander, but as for the

> others Drew states:

> Whether Plato and Pythagoras ever actually did get

> to India is in one

> sense no more material than whether Appollonius did.

> What is

> pertinent is that in associating these philosophers

> with the passage

> to India, imaginative fiction, bodying out the

> metaphors through

> which the Imagination is revealed, suggests that the

> tradition of

> which they are the protagonists owes India some sort

> of debt of

> recognition or acknowledgement. (120)..............

> "

>

>

> Regards,

>

> Sunder

>

>

 

 

 

 

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