[Advaita-l] What do Advaitins practice for the realization of Self?

[Praveen R. Bhat]

Namaste Greg ji,


> You spoke a bit about nididhyasana. Could you please elaborate on it, like
> how nididhyasana should be practiced?
>
First off, I shall particularly avoid the word practice although I know it
is also in your subject line, because it leaves an erroneous impression
(that I suspect you might have as well): that knowledge from scriptures is
theory and nididhyAsana is practice which leads to mokSha/ realisation. The
reason it is erroneous is because practice would mean karma and karma
cannot lead to mokSha! Nonetheless, nididhyAsana is practice, but not one
that leads to mokSha but removes pending obstacles after shravaNa that
block mokSha. Only shravaNa leads to mokSha, though manana and nididhyAsana
both are needed after shravaNa for removal of doubts and removal of
fallback into earlier wrong notions, respectively.

That said, tradition accepts two ways of nididhyAsana, one using yoga and
the other without it. The word nididhyAsana itself supports both approaches
as the word is formed from a derived root, the original root being dhyai
chintane, to contemplate. This is the same root from which the word dhyAna/
meditation is also derived. In other words, nididhyAsana is abhyAsa or
continuously contemplating on the ideas as learnt during shravaNa OR
meditating on the conclusive understanding about oneself as learnt during
shravaNa. For more details, refer to the Gudarthadipika commentary of
Bhagavan Madhusudhana Sarasvati on Bhagavadgita 6th chapter.

The breathing technique, etc, that you mentioned elsewhere are considered
as preparatory and external limbs even in Ashtanga Yoga. In Vedanta, it is
already covered as part of upAsanas spread across karmakANDa and
jnAnakANDa. In the meditative process of nididhyAsana, one can say that it
is somewhat equivalent to the 6th-7th limb of Yoga (some may include the
8th as well). There has been a lot of debate on this topic as to whether or
not Yogic and Vedantic meditations differ on this very list across years.
If interested further, pls search for the 10-part article on the same by
Vidyasankar ji.

gurupAdukAbhyAm,
--Praveen R. Bhat
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