Can iishvara pull out a jiiva from bondage?

[jkcowart@cari.net]

---------------------

At 01:49 PM 03/22/2000 -0500, Jaldhar H. Vyas wrote:
>What makes one eventually tire of Maya?  This is also a form of desire.

I had suggested an intent.

>But how can the inner witness intend anything?  It is that's all.  It is
>the conscious jiva that desires the objects of samsara, then eventually
>tires of them and desires liberation.  _Then_ desire is transcended.

I think it is not the intent of the witness per se, but the intent of the
"whole thing" to begin with.  The entire cosmos is always returning
to Brahman--and yet is never not Brahman.  It is beyond words.  Intent
is the best *I* can come up with at the moment--modified perhaps as
"original" or "ultimate" intent.

>Here's the thing, the Advaita Acharyas even though they taught it was
>illusory supported religion.

When I spoke of non-attached belief, adherence to tradition, and religious
practice, I was not degrading religion--only warning against attachment
to it.

>Why would they do that?  Because we (meaning the
>entities participating in this mailing list) are beings of ordinary
>consciousness not awareness.  We cannot just a priori assume that
>awareness.

Quite so--and surely in my own case.

>Actually one particular religion--that of
>the Vedas.

And yet it is my dharma to be a Christian.  Like Raimundo Pannikar,
I need not give up the religion of my birth to embrace advaita.  In
fact, Pannikar says that the true Christian relinquishes "Christianity"
(as attachment to a form) but practices "Christianness" in love of
others and gratitude to Spirit for the life he (or she) lives.

There is a strong non-dual tradition in Christianity (Eckhardt and
others).  As for practice, Jesus said:  "The one who is doing the truth
is coming to the light." (St. John's Gospel, 3:21).  That truth is not
reserved only to a certain group, is it?  [I know people are killing
one another over this very issue, but they ought not to be.]

Indeed, as for particular scriptures, Krishnamurti said: "Truth is a
trackless land."  There is, in fact, *no one* to follow into it.  It is
understood only by that *seeing* which comes to one as one waits
upon it, like Titiksha *bearing up* this life itself (or another, or
many more) with patience and joy (in the midst of both suffering
and happiness).

Christ and Krishnamurti may be outside Vedantic tradition but they
are not on that account withheld from understanding the essential
principle of advaita.

>. . . the philosophies that developed in India have not been . . .pessi-
>mistic [regarding suffering].  Even the Buddhists who recognized
>the truth of suffering also held the hope that that suffering could
>be ended.

By struggling against it or by non-attachment to it?  I should think
it would be the latter.

With respectful regards,

John

J. Kingston Cowart, M.S.
San Diego, California
<jkcowart at cari.net>

--
bhava shankara deshikame sharaNam

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