non-duality
Guru
Do you really think a spiritual teacher can teach you anything?
How can the guru really know what is right for you?
Every word of his leads you into further illusion,
Concept upon concept,
A field full of traps
– do not walk there!
– do not listen to him!
Nisargadatta Maharaj: How a ‘self-realised person’ sees the world
Questioner: Is your world full of things and people as is mine?
Nisargadatta Maharaj: No, it is full of myself.
Questioner: But do you see and hear as we do?
Jesus and non-duality
Also see:
The Non-Dual Vision of Jesus Christ and the teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi
The Sermon on the Mount According to Vedanta (Jesus, Christanity, Advaita and Non-Duality)
In non-dual teachings, the basic teaching is that the sense of self that we presume ourselves to be is a fiction. What remains after this is seen is a mysterious and ordinary sense of ‘divine oneness’. One ramification of this teaching is that we can learn to see that we are not the authors of our own actions even though we appear to be. This is known as non-doership. This teaching is often stated explicitly in non-dual traditions such as Advaita Vedanta, Zen, Dzogchen and Taoism.
In theistic traditions like much of Hinduism and the Abrahamic traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, non-duality is still expressed, but its form often differs. Continue reading
All exist in me
Confusion, anger,
love and life –
All exist in me.
No ego
If you say “spiritual enlightenment does not exist”,
You have denied yourself, and anyone who believes you, a route to end suffering:
“Suffering can end”, thus the wise ones have proclaimed.
If you say “you can be enlightened”, “your suffering can end”
Then by saying ‘you’, you are perpetuating the false concept of self.
Suffering can end, but your suffering cannot end.
Continue reading
The way beyond effort and effortlessness
In the mind made clear by practice,
(naturally resting,
empty of thought,
self-shining and luminous,
effortlessly present)
a phrase uttered can reveal the transcendent,
as can a gesture, glance, object or experience. Continue reading
It is here!
Don’t try to figure it out,
The mind will never get this.
My mind still hasn’t got it,
Yet I am.
There is nothing to find here.
No matter how hard you look
You can never find it.
Ahh! It is here!
Bulldozer spirituality
To verbally espouse and preach spiritual things can be deeply inappropriate:
Do you tell someone who is suicidal,
That their problems are due to a false notion of self?
Or that all phenomena are insubstantial, formless and everchanging?
Or that like the desert mirage, life and its problems are a dream?
It would be like telling someone who is choking that ‘ALL IS ONE‘. Continue reading
Everything is impersonal
A person is an expression of the universe:
what we call ‘the personal’ is actually a specific/particular way in which ‘the impersonal’ is functioning.
So,
the personal is actually impersonal.
Or,
there is nothing personal.
Which means:
everything is impersonal.
Or,
There is no person.
Tom Das 