Fw: [NamoRamana] Fw: [NDhighlights] #3074 - Tuesday, February 12, 2008 - Editor: Jerry Katz

[Guest guest]

A brilliant helpful thoughtful oh so true article written by Dustin, posted at

Nondual Highlights by editor Jerry Katz. If you are a fan of pure Advaita and

yet feel unable to completely and permanently transcend the

mental/physical/spiritual body-mind complex morning noon and night, seven days

per week, you may be very much normal and right on track. Why not just continue?

Walk on!

-

Gloria Lee<editglo

awake<awakenedawareness > ;

namo<NamoRamana > ;

path<MillionPaths >

Wednesday, February 13, 2008 1:51 AM

[NamoRamana] Fw: [NDhighlights] #3074 - Tuesday, February 12, 2008 -

Editor: Jerry Katz

 

 

 

 

 

#3074 - Tuesday, February 12, 2008 - Editor: Jerry Katz

 

Nonduality Highlights -

<>NDhighlights<NDhig\

hlights>

 

 

 

 

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Today an article by Dustin. Congratulations to Dustin's family on their new baby

boy, born February 8, their third child. The more they have, the greater the

odds one of them will take the Highlights in the 22nd Century.

 

 

 

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More on teachers of nonduality and teaching nonduality today

 

by Dustin

 

from the Nonduality Community on Live Journal:

http://community.livejournal.com/nonduality/<http://community.livejournal.com/no\

nduality/>

 

With respect to the apparently flippant attitude that nondual teachers often

take towards personal practice, I'm somewhat in agreement with [Charlie Morris]

[see

http://community.livejournal.com/nonduality/150441.html<http://community.livejou\

rnal.com/nonduality/150441.html>]. It's not uncommon to see hardcore Advaita

guys keep returning to the same mantra about " nothing existing " and " there is no

path to follow -- just BE. " It's not difficult to take issue with that, because

it doesn't appear to address the myriad issues that people are faced with every

day. I mean, if I'm in the midst of a toxic and stressful job or maybe a painful

physical ailment, how does it help me if I'm told to " just BE? " (A close friend

with depression once blew up at me for suggesting that she just " go outside for

a walk. " My suggestion was a good one, and would have been therapeutic had she

followed it, but it didn't take into account that she wasn't able to crawl out

of her bed in the morning, let alone go for a walk outside.)

 

Having said that, I think it's important to look at the context from which these

hardcore teachings come. A hundred years ago, the general public would never

have had access to such esoteric teachings or teachers -- the only way they

could ever be exposed to this kind of thinking would be if they joined a Zen

monastery or something and studied at the hands of a good guru. Because the

profound insights of nonduality have traditionally been passed directly from

guru to student, guru to student, for thousands of years. It is only recently

that the sum total of these teachings has been typed out and indexed on the

internet for everyone to see.

 

This leads me to my next point. Most of us are not prepared to hear the most

profound of those teachings. We haven't been living in a monastery, undertaking

austerity practices and daily meditation and all that. And because we have no

basis in this way of life and we're so indoctrinated in modern ways and means,

we can't handle the Truth. Because from the most radical nondual standpoint

available, NONE of this stuff around us exists: it's all a mental construct and

the mind is just an electrophysiological apparatus that vibrates from the

essential energy of the universe. Underneath all the appearances and the sum

total of the physical world, nonduality (and Buddhism, and other traditions) all

teach that there is nothing: all is a void, emptiness, sunyata.

 

Now, whether that fact has any bearing on an ordinary person's sanity or

practice, I don't know I suspect that mostly, it doesn't. But I do know that the

nondual teachings which uncover the inherent flaw of thinking of ourselves as

individual entities unto ourselves are extremely helpful for anyone who's

suffering emotionally or psychologically (and who isn't?). If you can see past

the dream that you are who you think you are, then the suffering stops. If you

stop believing that you are this gnarled web of emotions, motivations, thoughts,

and this personality, then all the pain associated with that form of

self-identification just falls away. You give yourself permission to stop

cognizing this thing called pain, and you just live in the moment and let

whatever happens, happen.

 

Now I know that sounds like an overly passive approach to life (accept

everything! hold no expectations of anyone or anything! let whatever happens

happen!), and whenever I discuss this stuff with my scientifically-minded

physician wife, she goes ape on me. But if you've ever glimpsed nonduality for

yourself and if you've placed value on that way of looking at the world, then

the insights associated with that will genuinely remove all sense of suffering

in your life. True, you may physically suffer in all types of ways, but because

you're not identifying yourself so tightly with the apparent body-mind who's

undergoing the suffering, it doesn't feel nearly as bad. Because the moment you

remind yourself of Who You Really Are, the pain kind of dries up and blows away.

It can't sustain itself without your own mental energy feeding it.

 

Charlie also mentioned a shortcoming of nondual teachers in that they don't ever

give you any instructions about what to do, or how to apply these teachings in

your life, and all that. As far as that's concerned, I think you have to pay

attention to the context of those original teachings again: they were

traditionally passed down in monasteries from gurus to students over a period of

many years! Not many of us can suss out what these teachings mean without a lot

of effort and study and practice. But today, we can receive the most intense

nondual insights through a simple Google search.

 

I'm not discouraged by any of this, though. I think that anyone who can receive

the most profound nondual teachings and understand them, can themselves become

efficient vehicles for teaching other laypeople how to apply this knowledge to

their lives. But laypeople can't take the really hardcore teachings and apply

them to their own lives without some form of translation from somebody else. And

the person to perform that translation is, by definition, another good teacher.

Someone like Charlie, it sounds like.

 

Different teachers teach at different levels, and not every student is prepared

to hear everything that can be taught. But if people like Charlie (and doubtless

many other people reading this now) can spend time with the hardcore teachings,

then they can distill those teachings in their own mind to more useful and

accessible nuggets that their own students (or the general population) can use.

 

In this way, nonduality can be shared with the many instead of the few.

 

~ ~ ~

 

Visit the Nonduality Community on Live Journal:

http://community.livejournal.com/nonduality/<http://community.livejournal.com/no\

nduality/>