Not Gaudapada, but Buddha!

[Miguel Angel Carrasco]

Chandran, Nanda wrote:
        >       >Those of us who do so, end up being neither
        >       >here nor there, and may eventually end up creating a third tradition,
        >       >which tries to combine both.

        > As long as it's the truth, does it matter whether it's Advaitam or
        >Buddhism?

I agree wholeheartedly.

For those who give a great importance to lineage, orthodoxy, scriptures,
and tradition, what I am going to say will sound like rubbish (and to the
others too, perhaps). So I apologize if I hurt any feelings.

I consider the Buddha a jnani. And also many others who are not in the
Vedic tradition, like the Christian Meister Eckhardt, and the Muslim Ibn
El'Arabi. And consequently I see them as Advaitists. All of them held that
no observable reality was true Reality. That is enough for me. Because for
me the only essential truth is that what can be seen is not the Seer, and
the Seer is thus unexplainable. Everything else rests on this one truth.
For me the Upanishads have no more value than any other source, ancient or
modern, where I can find the same idea. And I call all of them Advaita. For
me Advaita is not a school of Vedanta, but the universal line of thought
that turns around the basic principle I said before. This thesis is not
mine. I picked it up from Aldous Huxley in his book The Perennial
Philosophy, which I think is very worth reading. Though Huxley doesn't call
it Advaita, I do. I think Advaita is a bud that blossoms in all religions,
once the true essence of religion is grasped: "religare", that is, to join
(yoga) all that is seen as separate now.

Some Non-Vendanta Advaitists:

Meister Eckhardt: "The knower and the known are one. Simple people imagine
that they should see God, as if He stood there and they here. This is not
so. God and I, we are one in knowledge."

Kabir: "Behold but One in all things; it is the second that leads you
astray."

St Catherine of Genoa: "My Me is God, nor do I recognize any other Me
except my God Himself."

St Bernard: "In those respects in which the soul is unlike God, it is also
unlike itself."

Bayazid of Bistun: "I went from God to God, until they cried from me in me,
'O thou I!' "

Sen T'sen: "When the ten thousand dharmas are viewed in their oneness, we
return to the Origin and remain where we have always been."

Ibn El'Arabi: "Thou art not thou: thou art He, without thou; not He
entering into thee, nor thou entering into Him, nor He proceeding forth
from thee, nor thou proceeding forth from Him. And it is not meant by that,
that thou art aught that exists or thine attributes aught that exists, but
it is meant by it that thou never wast nor wilt be, whether by thyself or
through Him or in Him or along with Him. Thou art neither ceasing to be nor
still existing. Thou art He, without one of these limitations."

Miguel Angel