message to my friends

[Greg Goode]

At 03:49 PM 8/14/98 -0400, f. maiello wrote:

>I can only speak from my own "experience" associated with
>what I had previously undertook in Zen Buddhism, which was
>an unfoldment of the intuitive faculty embracing what is
>referred to as kensho (which is the precursor to satori,
>being a temporary visitation [to the satori state], which is,
>in turn, the Zen equivalent of sahaja nirvikalpa samadhi).
>And this so-called kensho was *identical* to my subsequent
>repeated visitations of the turiya state, via savikalpa
>samadhi (where the ahamkara is temporally transcended yet
>remains latent due to vasanas and thus continues to reappear).
>So that, there was the pattern for an identical outcome as
>a result of undertaking two different approaches.  This is
>why I maintain that non-duality is universal, in principle
>as well as "experience."

Two comments here:

1. This kind of multiple-path experiencing is apparently the sort of thing
that Ramakrishna did with various entire religions, and he spoke of the
sameness of the highest states spoken of by each.  And didn't one of the
Shankaracharyas visit Ramakrishna and confirm or validate his jivanmukta
state?  Or am I mis-remembering?

2. I agree that non-duality is universal.  It has to be universal, if it is
true at all.  There can't be non-duality in one corner, and duality in
another.

Earlier, Frank said that jnAna is not an experience, because:

>Yes, it is technically not an "experience," since there is
>no identifiable subject witnessing an objectifiable event.

I couldn't agree more.  What's more, with this definition, no experience is
an experience.  When you see a tree, or a vision of Ishwara, or hear some
music or taste some food, there is experience but no experiencer.  The
experiencer only comes afterwards, the ego, claiming credit for the
experience as *its* experience.  But even this claiming-experience, while
it is happening, has no identifiable subject.  It seems to *point* to a
subject, but it itself is just like the experience of the tree or Ishwara
or music or food.  Without an identifiable subject, the experience is not
even an object.  This is controversial, and I can't think of a scripture or
Shankara quote to support it right now, so I don't want to take a lot of
space arguing for it on this list.

--Greg

>From  Fri Aug 14 19:10:15 1998
Message-Id: <FRI.14.AUG.1998.191015.0400.>
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1998 19:10:15 -0400
Reply-To: ramakris at erols.com
To: List for advaita vedanta as taught by Shri Shankara
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From: Ramakrishnan Balasubramanian <ramakris at EROLS.COM>
Subject: Re: New member introduction: shrI Subhanu Saxena
Comments: To: List for advaita vedanta as taught by Shri Shankara
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Vidyasankar Sundaresan wrote:

> Re: vedAdhyayana - the injunction is not that *only* one's own SAkhA
> should be studied, but normally one makes a beginning with it. So, this is
> not a restrictive injuction (niyama-vidhi) or an excluding injunction
> (parisaMkhyA-vidhi). If it had been otherwise, it would be inconceivable
> that SankarAcArya wrote commentaries on the upanishads of all four Vedas.
> But there is always room for new precedent, dictated by exceptional
> circumstances.

There is no excluding injunction for other shAkas, but there's certainly
the injunction that one's own shAkha _must_ be studied. It's clear from
the statement I quoted

svAdhyAyo.adhyetavyaH.

adhyetavyaH leaves no room for doubt about this. And Mahasannidhanam's
statements also clarify this. Down the line he also says:

"Adhyayana should be done to the extent possible. At least Rudram,
chamakam, sUktas and other mantras essential for puja etc, should be
learnt. It is not difficult to spare some time in the morning or evening
for learning veda. _It is best if everyone learns one's shAka
completely_".

I have read the injunctions about this in some other places also, but do
not have them here. Learning some other shAka before learning one's own
is somewhat like doing pa.nchAxarI japa without doing sandhyAvandanam. I
think Jaldhar's point is well taken.

And of course I clarified in my last post that other shAkas are not
taboo. I don't think Jaldhar thinks that either. As regards
sha.nkarAchArya, it's quite probable that he learnt his veda completely
before studying others. As it is, there are people even now who complete
their shAkha in about 6-7 years. For someone like sha.nkarAchArya, it
should have taken a shorter time. Of course there may be another set of
rules for people who have taken up sannyAsa, regarding taking up studies
from some other shAka. When sannyAsa is embraced even the pUrvAshrama
name, gotram etc are forgotten, so this shAkha distinction would most
probably not apply to sannyAsis (The last is pure speculation on my
part, but seems reasonable). What I have said definitely applies to
others, though.

Re: Ram Chandran's comments that this is not the Vedic age. I submit
that the age is as vedic or as unvedic as we want it to be. If we were
really interested in the veda-s we would be sitting in India and
learning from the right people. But instead we are here: engineer in
Maryland in my case or economist in Virginia in your case. So, IMO there
is no point in blaming the age. I don't want to get involved in this
line of discussion once again: namely my opinion vs your opinion, ending
in hurt feelings, so I'll make this my last post unless the discussion
is based on vedas or smR^itis. I also hope that the above is taken in
the right spirit.

BTW, inspite of being outside India for all his life, Jaldhar has done a
good job than most of us (me at any rate) of mastering his shAkha. So,
it shows "Where there is will, there is a way". There's no substitute
for hard work and diligence.

Regarding sha.nkara's works: I am not sure what your question means.
There are no works of sha.nkara other than in Sanskrit. There have been
tranlslations of course. Eg, in the ramaNa nURRiraTTu, Ramana Maharshi
has translated (into Tamil) the Vivekacudamani in prose, the Atma bodha
in verse, and some other works like Hastamalaka stotram, dakshinamurti
stotram etc also. I can lend this to you if you wish.

Rama

>From  Fri Aug 14 19:49:41 1998
Message-Id: <FRI.14.AUG.1998.194941.0400.>
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1998 19:49:41 -0400
Reply-To: ramakris at erols.com
To: List for advaita vedanta as taught by Shri Shankara
        <ADVAITA-L at TAMU.EDU>
From: Ramakrishnan Balasubramanian <ramakris at EROLS.COM>
Subject: Re: message to my friends
Comments: To: List for advaita vedanta as taught by Shri Shankara
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Greg Goode wrote:

> Two comments here:
>
> 1. This kind of multiple-path experiencing is apparently the sort of thing
> that Ramakrishna did with various entire religions, and he spoke of the
> sameness of the highest states spoken of by each.  And didn't one of the
> Shankaracharyas visit Ramakrishna and confirm or validate his jivanmukta
> state?  Or am I mis-remembering?

I was staying out of this discussion for obvious reasons :-). I am doing
so because the name Shankaracharya has cropped up. I don't want some
misconceptions to be propogated.

No, no one confirmed his jIvanmukti. In fact, the very way Ramakrishna's
experience of different religions is described makes it VERY clear that
he wasn't talking about the non-dual truth as described by the
upanishhads and confirmed by sha.nkara et al. It's a heart  warming
story, but not the experience described by advaitic sages. Perhaps he
(Ramakrishna) attained advaita siddhi later.

Rama