New member introduction: Olivia Cattedra

[ken knight]

Swaminayrayan wrote

> The 'heart' is as much a body part as is the 'mind'.
> How come, you are trying to falsify the fact WHICH
> IS
> that they are indeed separate from one another?
> Again,
> how can you state that the correct standpoint to be
> addressed is their UNITY?
Namaste Swaminarayan,

You are a naughty man, you have ignored my reply to
your Avadhut Gita quotes and jumped in on this
response of mine, taken it out of context, and now
given me another shloka from the karika without the
reference. Last night I wrote a detailed reply to this
posting but the system failed to send it so I will
write a brief part now and more later.
Please accept my apologies for introducing these
Western terms 'head/mind' 'heart' into our dialogues
but I was responding particularly to Olivia's
introduction.
Our own recent discussion on chitta, buddhi and manas
etc was valuable and we do not need to start the same
dialogue again from another viewpoint.
Let us instead start from the other end:
'Only that which has a boundary can be divided'.  As
you will have noted in another thread people were
discussing samadhi recently. As soon as something is
named then there is division so a next stage of
division is inevitable so we hear of nirvikalpa
samadhi and savikalpa samadhi.
If we start from a viewpoint of duality then this use
of division has its value but ultimately the first
statement of unity is the only reality.
When I use the terms 'head' and 'heart' the context is
that of a Western audience who have no knowledge of
Vedanta. I ask them to point to themselves and
inevitably they point to a central spot about a palm
width beneath the chin..let us call it the 'heart' for
discussion purposes only. When I ask them to point to
where they spend most of the time they point to their
forehead. We are trained into the latter mode of
observation by this society so I encourage them to
listen not with the 'head' but with the 'heart'. This
makes a shift from 'listening' to being : 'in
listening'.
Initially Westerners heard advaita with the'head'
because of past training and some groups tend to do so
still.
The danger of the division of 'head' and 'heart'is
that now the tendency is to separate the functions and
being of these 'two' and to try to 'hear the mantra in
the cave of the heart' etc.
I accept that this is a superficial and 'gross'
practice but it is a step forward in the way the
average person lives their life here in UK. Just watch
the people walk in the streets and you can see them
being pulled ...by a subtle string as it were...by
their foreheads.
>
> Both these parts are indeed united,respectively, as
> an
> integral part of this 'BODY'.Is that not so? And
> from
> the Advaitic point of view ,BOTH THESE ARE TO BE
NEGATED!


Of course but by whose effort? If you are not careful
you can end up trying to stop thinking about the
monkey by trying to stop thinking about the monkey.

The Mahavakyas will come in to play for those who can
hear such a teaching.

I do not think it is worth following this one too far
as I was writing with a particular context in mind.

Om sri ram
ken Knight



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