message to my friends

[f. maiello]

Prashant Sharma wrote:
>
> On Wed, 12 Aug 1998, f. maiello wrote:
> > [...]...other margas and
> > sadhanas can get one there just as well, without the
> > ideas and theories of advaita;
>
>         Just how does one know that there is a "there"
> without advaita vedAnta telling so?

This is only a way of alluding to it from the assessment
of someone defining themselves as being "not-there."
And isn't the condition of what "there" may be like also
postulated by other spiritual philosophies, such as the
nirvana of the Buddhists, heaven of the Christians,
devachan or brahmaloka(?) of the Vaishnavas, etc.


> > and, secondly, if/when
> > finally and consciously abiding in the Self, the
> > sadhu's "experience" therein is likened to a buddhic
> > "white-out," where all conceptions, theories, and
> > even ideals are meager and fractional modalities and
> > involvements, with no more value than pesky insects
> > in the Garden of Bliss.
> >
> > As Buddha said, "Upon reaching the other shore,
> > why then carry the raft on your back?"
> >
>         Why then did Buddha expound a philosophy and thus
> (in your way of putting it) carry the raft on his back?
>

It was his prarabdha to be a teacher.  He was also utterly
detached from his teaching--which, incidentally, was the
antithesis of a philosophy or religion.  Which is, in fact,
where the parallel between his teaching and advaita lies:
specifically in the ajatavada doctrine: where there is no
liberation, no-one to be liberated; the absolute One-
without-a-Second is the *lone* reality.  (And for those who
think his doctrine was nihilistic: who or what enters and
dwells in nirvana?  A beingless Being?  His idea of anatta
is strictly concerned with the illusoriness of an [eternal]
individualized soul.  His idea of liberation from samsara
has to do with this [technically corporeal] soul's absorption
into its unborne, unknowable, inscrutable Source.  Moreover,
although Gaudapada and Sankara decried Buddha's teaching--
which, I submit, was due to the prevailing depreciation of
the Sanatana Dharma in those days, both Bhagavan RM and
Ramakrishna spoke highly of him.)

namaste