Hi (Ruminations on authenticity)

[Guest guest]

Dear Shri JB,

 

There is truth in your words. They inform of the inauthenticity that

lies at the core of human-ness. Your words are a call to awaken from

the posturing of philosophy to the reality of life. But let us pause

for a moment here and ponder.... for, as beings-in-the-world, we are

not awake. We do not "live" in the present. Our thoughts are of

yesterday and of tomorrow while we lie asleep now to the Presence of

Life. The raindrop falls on our head and we do not see the Life that

imbues its existence.

 

What do we gain by "coming back" from the flight of philosophy to

the "reality" of life? May we not ask ourselves whether this mundane

life is truly an authentic life? Or do we only return from one kind

of posturing to another? Is it not true that the mundane life is full

of posturing and little pretences - the small lies we tell, the

facade of inauthentic masks we wear, the small questionable acts that

we perform in our daily lives? If I may speak somewhat freely on the

matter, I would say that the soul that has once glimpsed of the

beyond can never come back fully to the life of the mundane. Once it

has embarked on the search for truth it is marked as it were and

there is no return for it. It may pretend for a while that it is

happy here, but it is irrevocably yoked to the path of no return. It

cannot proceed ahead perhaps - maybe not as yet - but neither can it

return fully to this mundane reality. It has entered the life of

metaxy, the life of in-between, and must suffer it as a test on its

way to true authenticity.

 

It is true that there is often a large chasm between the free-soaring

flight of the philosopher's intellect and the prison of his mundane

life. But this chasm has its own value -- it makes inauthenticity

CONSPICUOUS. One day, the soul shall awaken to this conspicuousness,

and to its own pathetic plight in life. It shall tire of pretence and

inauthenticity and the caricature that it has made of itself, and

when it tries to go back to the "reality of mundane life", it cannot

do so because it has already tired of that too. That is its critical

point in the journey. It has now tired of everything. It has no

interest either here or there. It loses its taste for life. This

dispassion - varagya - is the beginning of the final journey to

authenticity, because the one thing that had held it back from living

the life of philosophy has now gone away - the passion for life.

Freed from passion, it now has no motivations otherwise, and its life

begins to accord with the flight of its philosophy. Its dispassion

towards the world gives it quietude, and this quietude opens the

gates to the fountain of an inner joy as the soul spirals rapidly

into the rapture of Union. And to true authenticity.

 

Warm regards,

Chittaranjan

 

 

 

advaitin, "new7892001" <JB789@h...> wrote:

> Dear Chittaranjan

>

> Thanks for the reply. Beautifully expressed.

> But back to actual life, I do - in moments - get intimations of

> the 'perfume' your words point to...

> But, to be honest, much of the time the 'Divind Madness IS missing,

> and only the 'normal' madness, Is.

>

> My question is, can one... - however thousands of times one reads

of

> the attributes of Brahman, however scholarly/knowledgeable one is

of

> the scriptures - can one ever come to It... actually?

> To 'surf' on a conceptual universe, however beautiful, can it ever

> take one to the 'substance' the word is _About_?

>

> What I see is, an infinitessimal number of realized ones;

> so WHAT are the rest of us busy with/doing, that make us remain

stuck

> where we are, though perhaps a bit more polished?

>

> As for 'belief', I have responded to a relatively old mail (on J.

> Krishnamurti's "followers" 'believing') and asked, "believe in

> WHAT?", but I received no reply/comment.

> Is it necessary to believe in, that it is raining, while rain-drops

> are falling on one's head?

>

> You pointed to the bridge between the _word_ 'rain' and the rain

> itself (life), as being 'Divine Madness'. Perhaps I recognize a bit

> of what the word points To, but if one tells that to one of the

> 99,999% of worlds population, at best they'll say 'great poetry!",

> while the factuality 'normal' madness will remain untouched.

> Not so?

>

> I am not trying to challenge for the fun of it; but I feel that

> perceptual sobriety of facts and honesty, is essential to prevent

the

> mind's structure from taking us on a ride of comforting self-

> deception.

>

> Warm regards,

> Jb

>

[Guest guest]

Namaste Chittaranjanji,

 

You said:

 

"There is truth in your words. They inform of the inauthenticity that

lies at the core of human-ness. Your words are a call to awaken from

the posturing of philosophy to the reality of life. But let us pause

for a moment here and ponder.... for, as beings-in-the-world, we are

not awake. We do not "live" in the present. Our thoughts are of

yesterday and of tomorrow while we lie asleep now to the Presence of

Life. The raindrop falls on our head and we do not see the Life that

imbues its existence."

 

It sounds as though you have done some serious study of Heidegger.

The expressions 'inauthenticity' and 'beings-in-the-world' strongly

suggest this. My hat off to you, as he is probably the most tedious

and painful of Western philosophers!

 

My impression, for what it is worth, is that whatever spiritual

insight he may have had was more simply and gracefully captured by

Zen sages and poets. Not to mention Taoism. (I don't know if

Indians were ever able to get so simple. A bit too cerebral perhaps.)

 

Hari Om!

Benjamin

[Guest guest]

Namaste Benjaminji,

 

advaitin, Benjamin <orion777ben> wrote:

>

> Namaste Chittaranjanji,

>

> It sounds as though you have done some serious study of Heidegger.

> The expressions 'inauthenticity' and 'beings-in-the-world' strongly

> suggest this. My hat off to you, as he is probably the most tedious

> and painful of Western philosophers!

>

> My impression, for what it is worth, is that whatever spiritual

> insight he may have had was more simply and gracefully captured by

> Zen sages and poets. Not to mention Taoism. (I don't know if

> Indians were ever able to get so simple. A bit too cerebral

> perhaps.)

 

 

I once had the opportunity of discussing Heidegger with a scholar

who'd done deep study of the philosophy. Martinji's terms and

expressions that I sometimes use are picked up (mostly) from this

discussion. As I'd mentioned earlier, my attempt at reading Heidegger

(Being and Time) was a failure. I found the linguistic aerobatics

quite forbidding and had to stop before I could get past the 50th

page. But I do admit that there is spiritual worth in Heidegger's

philosophy.

 

I agree with you that spiritual truths find simple and graceful

expressions in Zen and Taoism. The Chinese have largely maintained an

intuitive way of philosophising and have never got too cerebral. For

a brief period though, when Mohism was on the rise, they seemed to

have been tempted by the analytical method, but evidently it didn't

last very long.

 

By the way, there is in Kashmir Shaivism a path (or upaya) that is

similar to the Way of Zen - it is called Anupaya. It is the path of

no path - one goes on sitting or doing nothing just like you have in

Zen: "when sitting sit, when eating eat."

 

Warm regards,

Chittaranjan