[Advaita-l] Advaita: A humble question

[Praveen R. Bhat]

Namaste Aadityaji,

One of the ways our scriptures explain what advaita is, would hopefully be
useful. They say that it is YOU!

Now, you start questioning so: whether you are a belief, a path, a
destination or something else? If you start analyzing, in the end, you
don't believe that you are, you know that you are. You know that you are
*conscious*, you are conscious of your being *existent*. That knowledge is
not parokSha, mediate, you do not need someone else to tell you that you
are conscious and existent. The knowledge that you have of your just being
present, not without the attributes of being so-and-so, belonging to
so-and-so, is firsthand, aparokSha, immediate. Nor do you need a path to
reach yourself. Not having a path, you are not the destination, because how
can you reach what you already are. So it is the truth as it is, without
superimposition which we naturally have.

This *you* told by shastras to each one of us is known as *I* by each one
of us. The I cannot be dual, since for each one of us another is an object
known as not-I, but I remains the eternal subject. For a subject,
everything exists because the subject I exists, not otherwise. I am the
only truth there is. When the non-dual is understood, the role as a subject
dissolves as well.

That said, since we take ourselves to be something other than we are, we
need all the teaching that can make that as-though known, and since one has
to start somewhere with a questioning mind, it has to be with shraddha,
belief, pending understanding. Then, shravaNa, manana, nididhyAsana, become
the path and you yourself become an as-though destination.

To summarize again, it is not really a belief because it is akin to saying
I believe that I am. It is not really a path because its akin to saying
that I need a path to reach myself. Its not really a destination because
its akin to saying that I have not attained myself.

gurupAdukAbhyAm,
--Praveen R. Bhat
/* Through what should one know That owing to which all this is known!
[Br.Up. 4.5.15] */

On Fri, Jan 29, 2016 at 4:00 PM, Aaditya via Advaita-l <
advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org> wrote:

>
> I want to know if Advaita is a:
> - belief system.
> - a path.
> - the destination.
> - something else.
> Kindly explain.
>
>