Vedanta is Dynamic, Based on Reason A PARTHASARATHY
Today, religious systems are governed by maxims and mandates. The
science of religion has been reduced to mere allegiance to
personalities. There is a saying: Grammar is the grave of
language. Try to save the grammar, keep it invariable, the
language will be dead. Just so, the rigidity of preceptors and
precepts saps the vitality of religion.
Worldwide, the intelligentsia — particularly the youth
— detest rigidity. They do not wish to be dictated by
doctrines and dogmas. Young men and women ought not to be
oppressed with the Thou shalts and Thou shalt nots. Whatever is
forced is never forceful. Desire for anything only increases with
restriction and prohibition. Static precepts, superstitious
beliefs and mechanical rituals are being thrust on people. It
frustrates them. Rather, they need to be educated with the
know-ledge of life and living. The higher values of religion have
to be presented systematically and logically to the modern
intellect. Look at Vedanta in its pristine glory. Make an
independent assessment of truth without relying on authorities.
Bernard Shaw once remarked that the most intelligent person he
had met in his life was his tailor — "because he is the
only one who takes fresh measurements every time I go to
him". Take up Vedanta in the same manner; try to verify the
knowledge in the context of life. When you try out the
philosophical truths in your day-to-day living, you become
established in Vedanta.
However, most of us become passive recipients of knowledge.
Some accept a religious belief just because it is the oldest and
others, because it has a huge following. Still others accept it
because it comes from a great personality. Few get to the merit
of the teaching, much less imbibe the spirit of religion. There
is a blind following everywhere.
Such an approach to religion has brought about a spiritual
epidemic. It is practically destroying the human race. If
religion is to serve people it has to be accepted on its own
merit. Not on authorities. The study of Vedanta will reveal to
you that it is founded on its own authority. It is based on
reason and logic. So we must approach Vedanta the way we would,
science or mathematics. When you study science you do not accept
statements just because they have been laid down by a Newton or
an Einstein. A faith that is founded on authority is no faith.
Take up Vedanta on its own merits. Do not allow the personality
and life of a spiritual master to interfere with his teaching.
The life and teaching should be considered separately. Only then
you will be able to enter into the spirit of religion.
Truth is your own. Nobody can claim it. You do not have to sell
your liberty to a spiritual guru. The gurus drew their
inspiration from their own Self. The same fountainhead of
inspiration is within you. You can do the same. There is no use
relying on external forces for gaining internal strength. You don’t
have to retire to the forest for the study and practice of
Vedanta. Vedanta is not a retirement plan but a technique of
dynamic living. No doubt this knowledge of life and living sprung
originally from the deep recesses of the Himalayan ranges. The
rishis had to retire to the jungles to pursue their study,
reflection and experimentation. But practitioners of Vedanta,
having acquired the knowledge, can work in their respective
fields of activity. Historically, even preachers of Vedanta were
actually engaged in serving the world. They were not recluses but
men of action working in a spirit of renunciation.
from CityCamping list:
excerpt from "A Good House" by
Richard Manning
========== "I was flying back to Montana one clear
winter's morning early in
1991. I had been on a magazine assignment of a curious
sort, one
that had originally been my idea. I had been chasing groups
of
people who live in motor homes, a new sort of nomad class.
Most are
retirees, people we call "secure" when what we mean to
say is that
they have a lot of money. They must have to afford the life
they
have chosen: cramped "houses" that cost well over
$100,000 on
average, sometimes going as high as $500,000 or more. These
behemoths stalk about the country at the rate of about 5 miles
per
gallon, seeking nothing so much as the road. We see them
queued up
at the gates of national parks or, during the winter in the
Sunbelt
states, stanchioned cheek by cowl in RV parks, aluminum ghettos
wrapped around golf courses. We conclude that these people
are
seeking scenery or sun or something like that, but this turns out
to
be not at all true. They are not seeking, they are
fleeing."
"They flee the death of cities or small-town America or
community,
or, in a darker sense, they flee people different from
themselves.
They flee change and loss of control. In their refugee
status they
are not that different from all of us, a lost and wandering
people, a
people without place. Whenever I visit the suburbs I am
amazed how
few people walk. The curtains are all closed, making
windows
useless. Virtually all houses face not outdoors to their
land but
indoors to the television, our identical window on our identical
world."
"I once talked to a motor-home nomad who had been camped
for months
in the middle of the California desert. Outside her
$100,000 motor
home an inverted garbage can lid served as a bird feeder.
"What birds are those, " I asked her, because I was new
to the region
and couldn't identify desert species. "What are those
shrubs they
use for cover?"
"Those," she said, "are just birds. Just
birds you always see. And
that is just brush."
There was no use in her learning the names of the birds that had
come
to live there. She watered no trees and planted no
seeds. In a
short time she would be gone, down the road. Her culture --
ours --
is incapable of inhabiting a place for thousands of years.
Her husband pointed out the nearby mountains as the scenic
advantage
of their place, and I asked him their names.
"Those are the foothills," he said, as if
mountain ranges required no
more identity than "the mall," or "the
strip," or "McDonald's."
"In this, the motor nomads are simply a distillation of
what all of
us have become: a people without a place. We have taken our
lives
out of the context of the land, above the land.
Literally. One can
see this most clearly on airliners. Watch the new class of
flying
itinerant merchants, men in gray suits and laptops. Watch
them board
and stash carry-ons in the overhead, then throw identical folds
into
identical jackets and stow them at the top of the rack.
Even before
takeoff, briefcases are snapped open, calculators are powered up,
and
numbers are crunched. Watch them land in a new place and
never
notice the window, as if the view were identical to that of the
last
place they did not see. To them, whose job it is to distill
all
places to the ultimate line of profit and loss statement -- the
new
map of the landscape -- this place is indeed identical to the
last.
They are at ease here above the land, distant and disdainful of
Earth."
"As I flew around the country chasing motor-home people,
I watched
such scenes play repeatedly. I saw America, and then I flew
home to
Montana. I was convinced it was time I built a house.
The clear
winter morning that I headed home was a Sunday. In a
half-full
airliner the sun broke hard through the right bank of
windows. Few
gray suits were present. These were different people.
The crowd ran
heavy to jeans and nylon jackets. As the airliner neared
Missoula, I
noticed people moving around the plane, shifting to the right
side
and watching the sun play across the snowcaps of the Continental
Divide. Most of us, it appeared, were going home. We
began naming
names. People pointed out the Bob Marshall, the Swan Range,
The
Mission Mountains, the Garnets and the Sapphires, and below, the
sedate, winding valley of the Clark Fork River. They said
the names."
"Then the airliner banked over Mount Sentinel and began its
descent
to a runway at Missoula. A descent to a landing. Land
that I know.
As we approached, I could see it all coming into focus on
progressively more intimate scales: first the mountain ranges;
then
individual valleys; then creeks and draws; and finally, tucked
behind
a softly rounded but hard-cut mountain, a gulch that held the
very
land that is the context of my house. As the focus shifted
from the
grand sweep to the minute and individual bits of land, it
occurred to
me that this is how we find our homes. We find them, then
we build
them."
Photo:
Foothills of the Sierra, coming down from Sequoia National Park.
California.
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teaching over the last fifteen years. Peter had the good fortune
to meet the Tibetan lama Thubten Yeshe, founder of the Foundation
for the Presentation of the Mahayana Tradition in 1974. Lama
Yeshe accepted him as his student and in 1978 he was ordained as
a monk. In 1983 he completed a PhD in the philosophical
psychology of the Madhyamika school of Mahayana Buddhism. His
other teachers included Lama Thubten Zopa Rinpoche, Geshe Thubten
Loden, Geshe Lhundup Sopa, Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche and Sogyal
Rinpoche. After nine years as a celibate monk, Peter handed back
his ordination. As a postmonastic he embarked on an intensive
exploration of Western forms of healing and therapy.
In 1986 he began
offering adaptations of Mahayana wisdom to mental health
professionals. His workshops integrated Buddhist nondual wisdom
with an understanding of group dynamics. He subsequently founded
the Center for Timeless Wisdom (wisdom.org), a Californian
nonprofit organization, which offers contemplative dialogues and
retreats in Australia, USA, Europe and Israel.
In response to requests from the many mental health professionals
who attended his workshops, Peter has taught the principles and
practices for a nondual psychotherapy. He also offers individual
counseling sessions to clients in many countries.
In 1998 he teamed up with Dr. Mantel (President of the
Association Internationale de Psychiatrie Spirituelle) to
organize the first-ever conference focusing on the contribution
of nondual spiritual experience to psychotherapy. This took place
at the Mt. Madonna, California. The Center for Timeless Wisdom
continues to sponsor an annual conference on Nondual Wisdom and
Psychotherapy, with the additional support of graduate schools
such as Saybrook Institute, California Institute of Integral
Studies, JFK University, the Association of Transpersonal
Psychology and the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology.
Peter’s books include The Ontology of the Middle Way
(Kluwer, 1990), Reasoning into Reality (Wisdom Publications,
1994), Essential Wisdom Teachings (with Penny Fenner,
Nicolas-Hays, 2001) and The Edge of Certainty: Paradoxes on the
Buddhist Path (Nicolas-Hays, 2002). His psychological essays have
appeared in journals such as the Journal of Contemplative
Psychotherapy, Revision, Journal of the International Association
for Spiritual Psychiatry, Psychologia (Tokyo), and 3e millenaire.
Besides offering experiential workshop Peter has given
presentations of his work at institutions such as Stanford
Medical School, Columbia University, Saybrook College, California
Institute of Integral Studies.
"I was flying back to Montana one clear
winter's morning early in 
"Those are the foothills," he said, as if
mountain ranges required no