[Advaita-l] diction of mantras

[mwadhwa at uwm.edu]

Namaste Ramji,

Taking your name only liberates me what else is needed to say. :-)
        I would say that whatever you said is very well understood and
beautifully put. In fact I don't need to add anything. I am happy that people
are there who have wonderful insight into things. I would not add anything else
for whatever you said is fine.

Only thing I would like to say is that here on a common platform things can be
revealed or talked about on a common ground. It is fine to take any path. The
only thing that I would like to say as I heard someone wise saying this and
that is, "It is not good to get stuck with the finger and forget about the moon
towards which it is pointing." The only mistake that may happen is getting stuck
with the finger. Also we forget to understand most often as to in which context
are the things being said and start struggling with other details. Nonetheless
everything is a lesson to learn in this school of life. If I could learn from
my father I would have accepted many things he might have told me, but I had to
learn much more and in a much better way from my own mistakes, which I don't
think would be called mistakes. All is but learning and growing and unfolding
of inner consciousness.

As you said:
      "Not that I am complaining. Some people need tougher penances than others
and my lot fell on the tougher side. If you are lucky enough to be on the other
side, make the most use of it."

What I feel:
  I would like to say this that people are there who had to take that tougher
side, so it is I think with most of the people. I will definitely put myself on
this tougher side of which you are talking about, regarding others they can
surely tell. Still I don't think it seems easy at first to anybody.

   Also Ram, when I say things in the form of a negation  then it is due to this
tougher side that life tries to show, not otherwise. It  tries to bring
understanding through this razor's edge on which you have to walk most often.
Everybody has to walk. I can understand how difficult it is to even use words
on this path. I can see how sages might have struggled to embellish each verse
with a proper word for the scriptures. Still we are there to look at the words
in any way. It is all mind. They did their job, we have to do ours.

Something more:
There is still an underlying paradox: If you can maintain the peace of mind and
settle in that calmness which has already brought your mind into the depths of
peace, then turbulences on the surface of mind don't affect much. There you can
get to know that there is some change and you can see it as it is. The
projection of mind starts vanishing due to its utter introversion into some
unseen depths that can be felt easily. There you can see directly that some
play is going on externally, and you are also playing it in your own way.  You
can also see the phenomenon of conscious deep sleep takin place somewhere deep
down inside and you are aware of that.

Also:
There are two types of realized souls talked about in scriptures, I think you
are talking about the one with direct realization of truth.

Thanks for sharing your beautiful insight,
I feel like I shouldn't be writing much but I end up writing more. I think I
will be forgiven for my verbosity.


Pranaam,
Manish








Quoting Ram Garib <garib_ram at yahoo.co.in>:

**
** --- mwadhwa at uwm.edu wrote:
**
** > Where is the tag brother and which tag! Does the
** > name Advaita signify any tag on
** > itself. Has Shankara anything to do with it. Is
** > there anything which Advaita
** > doesn't accept or discard. In the very first hand it
** > discards everything and in
** > the other hand it accepts everything...
**
** Namaste Manish:
**
** I share your feelings and agree with most of the
** content of your mail. In my pursuit, I have not been
** as lucky as many of the members on this list. Yet, I
** am venturing to qualify your post with whatever little
** understanding of advaita-vedanta I have got. Please do
** not take it as argumentation. I am trying to test my
** own understanding through comments from the learned
** members of this forum.
**
** Prima-facie advaita is a path full of paradoxes. Some
** of the paradoxes that one may baffle about are:
**
** 1) It is a "pathless path", yet a well laid out path
** has been given by Sri Shankaracharya.
** 2) It cannot be described by words, yet Badarayana
** insists that it can be reached only through the words
** of scriptures.
** 3) It cannot be reached through action, yet it
** presupposes a life full of righteous action.
** 4) It cannot be taught by a teacher, yet a realized
** and scriptures trained teacher is essential.
** 5) It leads to the realization of essential unity of
** existence, yet it follows a path full of
** discriminations based on caste, gender and station in
** life.
**
** All these seeming paradoxes go away only when I
** understand the central paradox of non-dual teaching
** viz. dual level of reality. As per shankara and later
** advaitins transactional reality and absolute reality
** are on different levels even tough there is just one
** reality. In transactional reality, all the rules of
** normal transaction apply. Mixing up the two levels of
** reality causes lot of avoidable confusion.
**
** You write:
** "Where is the tag brother and which tag! Does the name
** Advaita signify any tag on itself."
**
** My understanding:
** For us "Advaita" is a tag that is necessary. -- For a
** realized person, it is useless.
**
** You write:
** "Is there anything which Advaita doesn't accept or
** discard. In the very first hand it discards everything
** and in the other hand it accepts everything."
**
** My understanding:
** Advaita accepts lot of things and then discards them
** at later stage. However, it doesn't mean that earlier
** stages were useless. We cannot directly start with
** later stages.
**
** You write:
** "Advaita is no philosophy in itself. Where psychology
** ends, philosophy begins and where even philosophy ends
** spirituality begins."
**
** My understanding:
** Very well said. However, shankara does not leave it to
** the whims of individual aspirant. He lays down a
** systemmatic path to take an aspirant from psychology
** to philosophy to spirituality and beyond.
**
** You write:
** "I would stay silent though, and argumentation is
** always useless, for it all of a sudden destroys the
** peace of mind."
**
** My understanding:
** Argumentation is not necessarily bad. If it destroys
** peace of mind, it is enough proof that we are at the
** transactional level and therefore will have to use the
** tools of understanding applicable at that level.
** However, argumentation may bear fruit only with
** someone whom you trust and therefore a teacher is
** necessary.
**
** You have a very good background and should be able to
** find some good teacher. As I said I have not been so
** lucky and therefore had to struggle at every step
** before even knowing what it was all about. Not that I
** am complaining. Some people need tougher penances than
** others and my lot fell on the tougher side. If you are
** lucky enough to be on the other side, make the most
** use of it.
**
** If there are any mistakes in my understanding, the
** blame lies with me. If there are any good points, the
** credit goes to my teachers.
**
** With regards,
** Ram Garib
**
**
**
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