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#3074 - Tuesday, February 12, 2008 - Editor: Jerry Katz
Today an article by Dustin. Congratulations to Dustin's family on their new baby boy, born February 8, their third child. The more they have, the greater the odds one of them will take the Highlights in the 22nd Century.
More on teachers of nonduality and teaching nonduality today
by Dustin
from the Nonduality Community on Live Journal: http://community.livejournal.com/nonduality/
With respect to the apparently flippant
attitude that nondual teachers often take towards personal
practice, I'm somewhat in agreement with [Charlie Morris] [see http://community.livejournal.com/nonduality/150441.html]. It's not uncommon to see hardcore Advaita guys
keep returning to the same mantra about "nothing
existing" and "there is no path to follow -- just
BE." It's not difficult to take issue with that, because it
doesn't appear to address the myriad issues that people are faced
with every day. I mean, if I'm in the midst of a toxic and
stressful job or maybe a painful physical ailment, how does it
help me if I'm told to "just BE?" (A close friend with
depression once blew up at me for suggesting that she just
"go outside for a walk." My suggestion was a good one,
and would have been therapeutic had she followed it, but it
didn't take into account that she wasn't able to crawl out of her
bed in the morning, let alone go for a walk outside.)
Having said that, I think it's important to look at the context
from which these hardcore teachings come. A hundred years ago,
the general public would never have had access to such esoteric
teachings or teachers -- the only way they could ever be exposed
to this kind of thinking would be if they joined a Zen monastery
or something and studied at the hands of a good guru. Because the
profound insights of nonduality have traditionally been passed
directly from guru to student, guru to student, for thousands of
years. It is only recently that the sum total of these teachings
has been typed out and indexed on the internet for everyone to
see.
This leads me to my next point. Most of us are not prepared
to hear the most profound of those teachings. We haven't been
living in a monastery, undertaking austerity practices and daily
meditation and all that. And because we have no basis in this way
of life and we're so indoctrinated in modern ways and means, we
can't handle the Truth. Because from the most radical nondual
standpoint available, NONE of this stuff around us exists: it's
all a mental construct and the mind is just an
electrophysiological apparatus that vibrates from the essential
energy of the universe. Underneath all the appearances and the
sum total of the physical world, nonduality (and Buddhism, and
other traditions) all teach that there is nothing: all is a void,
emptiness, sunyata.
Now, whether that fact has any bearing on an ordinary person's
sanity or practice, I don't know. I suspect that mostly, it
doesn't. But I do know that the nondual teachings which uncover
the inherent flaw of thinking of ourselves as individual entities
unto ourselves are extremely helpful for anyone who's suffering
emotionally or psychologically (and who isn't?). If you can see
past the dream that you are who you think you are, then
the suffering stops. If you stop believing that you are this
gnarled web of emotions, motivations, thoughts, and this
personality, then all the pain associated with that form of
self-identification just falls away. You give yourself permission
to stop cognizing this thing called pain, and you just live in
the moment and let whatever happens, happen.
Now I know that sounds like an overly passive approach to life
(accept everything! hold no expectations of anyone or anything!
let whatever happens happen!), and whenever I discuss this stuff
with my scientifically-minded physician wife, she goes ape on me.
But if you've ever glimpsed nonduality for yourself and if you've
placed value on that way of looking at the world, then the
insights associated with that will genuinely remove all sense of
suffering in your life. True, you may physically suffer in all
types of ways, but because you're not identifying yourself so
tightly with the apparent body-mind who's undergoing the
suffering, it doesn't feel nearly as bad. Because the moment you
remind yourself of Who You Really Are, the pain kind of dries up
and blows away. It can't sustain itself without your own mental
energy feeding it.
Charlie also mentioned a shortcoming of nondual teachers in that
they don't ever give you any instructions about what to do, or
how to apply these teachings in your life, and all that. As far
as that's concerned, I think you have to pay attention to the
context of those original teachings again: they were
traditionally passed down in monasteries from gurus to students
over a period of many years! Not many of us can suss out what
these teachings mean without a lot of effort and study and
practice. But today, we can receive the most intense nondual
insights through a simple Google search.
I'm not discouraged by any of this, though. I think that anyone
who can receive the most profound nondual teachings and
understand them, can themselves become efficient vehicles for
teaching other laypeople how to apply this knowledge to their
lives. But laypeople can't take the really hardcore teachings and
apply them to their own lives without some form of translation
from somebody else. And the person to perform that translation
is, by definition, another good teacher. Someone like Charlie, it
sounds like.
Different teachers teach at different levels, and not every
student is prepared to hear everything that can be taught. But if
people like Charlie (and doubtless many other people reading this
now) can spend time with the hardcore teachings, then they can
distill those teachings in their own mind to more useful and
accessible nuggets that their own students (or the general
population) can use.
In this way, nonduality can be shared with the many instead of
the few.
~ ~ ~
Visit the Nonduality Community on Live Journal: http://community.livejournal.com/nonduality/