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Is Advaita* philosophy fatalistic? Escapist? Depressing? Negative?
Perhaps, if you’re asking from the perspective of an assumed independent entity, one who claims personal responsibility and purpose and is driven by either the carrot dangling from the stick in front, or the pressure of the ‘thou shalts’ from the rear. Perhaps, if you believe in goodness and evil, right and wrong, and that it’s ‘you’ that exercises the power to choose between them.
Perhaps not, if you’ve looked deeply and discovered that the independent person you took yourself to be is (gulp) a construction built up from thoughtstuff. Perhaps not, if, having profoundly understood this, you see that beliefs aren’t something you have but what the imaginary person is.
In the world of appearances, it always depends on where you’re looking from.
Looking from the absolute impossibility of independent person-hood, to whom could it matter? Looking from the relative reality of a daily life however – the one we apparently inhabit – it matters all right. Damn right it matters.
But there’s something about the weird knowing (weird in that there’s no knower) that ‘I’ is the ball of thoughts bouncing back and forth in an infinite rally creating the illusion of separation, as well as their very source, that bestows the freedom to be fully and fantastically human.
This is life’s ultimate brain-numbing and head-shaking paradox.
~
*Advaita = not two. Actually, not even one. Indivisible thusness.
echoes from emptiness 
Just found your blog, quite by chance – it’s featured as a working example of this theme in wordpress.com.
Very happy to have done so! So much to express that words seem to belittle. An art I’m still in the midst of capturing and refining. Somehow, finding here fits with my Aspiration.
Listening to the echoes……
Gladness! Thank you for your comment dear Ashok. I’m delighted to be introduced to your new blog too, and look forward to your posts. Yes – so much mutual resonance here!
Thanks also for subscribing here, and at http://thisunlitlight.com/
Interesting to find that you’re from Sydney – this evening I write from the Central Coast…
With love
~ miriam louisa
Thank you! Again, right now feeling such a welling of expression that would take hundreds of comments to unfold…
I have been so reticent for many years to express anything from my experiences, and living somewhat incognito. It’s like I’m being pushed now, and compelled to speak in a very frank way to mind in its hiding places, about its life.
Packed Aspiration…
I really love and appreciate your delight! It’s very heart warming to feel your clarity. Please do keep checking in, I’m still in many ways a rough Instrument being honed and readied.
With love,
Ashok.
Wonderfully worded my dear. My favorite line: “You see that beliefs aren’t something you have but what the imaginary person is.” I believe I will have to quote the no-you on that in a post one day. 🙂
In my latest post, Empty Mind, Full Heart (http://theawakeneddreamer.com/2012/02/10/empty-mind-full-heart), there is a playful grappling at hand, with the pardox of nothing/everything, fullness/emptiness.
What I love about your phrasing of the “balls of thoughts bounding back and forth in an infinite rally” is that it conjures the idea too, of atoms, all boucing around to create the WHOLENESS of say, a chair, or a person…if each atom imagined itself as a separate entity, a separate SELF, it misses the beauty of the PARTICIPATORY dance that is dancing it.
Which leads me to the “no control” line of Advaitists….as if in having no “I” there is an abdication of any freewill, any movement. What I am discovering is that there IS in the place of the illusion of control, participation.
Stay tuned, that’s the next blog post, “Ksses from God” where I tackle the utter magic of iife with wideawakeness.
If I am in Austrailia one day (my partner from there originally) let’s have a meeting.
Lori Ann
So satisfying to get your perceptive response – thanks Lori Ann.
Yes, your last post “Empty Mind, Full Heart” was wonderfully playful and yet deeply profound. I love the way ineffable wideawakeness is expressing via your word-weaving.
Your observations re “participation” are keen. This is the word that’s KEY as far as poets of all mediums are concerned. Nondual participation – a contradiction in terms, yet the only way this no-doership can express its doingship. We need a new language – I’ve coined a few mongrels since the *echoes* began rippling into consciousness, and I notice with amusement and delight that they have become commonspeak in this genre. I’m sure you’ll make some juicy contributions too.
Am tuned for those “Kisses from God”!
Love from steamy downunder ~ ml
I wish there was a “like” button! Thumbs Up!
Thanks for the feedback Chad! Perhaps I’ll activate that little “like” button after all… 🙂
Love, ml
oh yes~beautiful “brain-numbing” …
this piece reminds me of an Aboriginal painting, where the artist is depicting two perspectives at once, leaving the viewer in the choiceless dance of suchness~
…..Let’s allow the mournful animals
of our reluctance to curl up
in our laps and rest there,
at peace, stroked by
the loving hands we grew to
touch ourselves in the place where
we have never been divided, never been
other than the poignant part of
ourselves, the star cream beauty,
come to flesh for the festival of
fleshiness, this embodiment of
light, God made, God mad,
flush with the rush of pulsing
oxygen, this breathing heart,
the source and destination of
all light, unbearable intensity,
furnace of happiness, fueled by a
fire without end, the smeared ash of
our surrender fingered across our foreheads
so all can see the testimony of
Love’s glad disaster.
~Bob O’Hearn
Beautifully said, Miriam! Paradox seems to be woven right into the very fabric of being – and I’m glad! It keeps things amusing!
I’m happy to have heard these echoes, and found these writings… they are a joy.
In love and laughter,
~ Ben
Love, laughter and gratitude to you dear Ben – I’m so happy to meet you!
~ miriam louisa