Need of the hour -28
OUR INNERSELF – ADVAITA
-J.P.Bharathi
Isn’t the path of Advaita the path of Inquiry?
There is a well recognized and received wisdom around here in the world about mid life crisis…. usually it inflicts people (normal people I mean!) as they grudgingly enter their forties and plough their way through life. Lot of funny things keep happening around this tricky milestone…. hypnotism is likely one of those outward expressions of not knowing what else to do with life!
Could we choose to take a more intensive ritualistic tradition…. philosophy? This in particular will endear us all the more! I would love to see distilled expressions of our life’s teachings even as we read scriptural interpretations on Hindutva…. more specifically Advaita. This more than anything else that we may choose to busy our self which will yield the most enriching dividends…. With philosophy, my dear readers, life can only begin to get more interesting! We can choose to become an observer of life while playing an active part ourself! It’s as if we are playing role, while at once watching the play ourself! That could be fun.
The only word of caution is philosophy can be intoxicating…. powerful and enriching while at the same time risky and overwhelming. Manage it well and we will be doing well…quite well!
Isn’t the path of Advaita the path of Inquiry?
The power of discrimination and reasoning. That’s the power we are bestowed with and the power that has made us progress from the stone ages! That inquisitiveness! That Inquiry into things, which are around us, is the tool and the guiding lamp into our futures! Inquisitiveness! Which makes us ask the questions on ‘What’, ‘Why’, ‘ How ‘, makes us focus silently on that pregnant question of “Who Am I”?
Why am I wasting time here supporting the arguments we have already laid out so clearly? Let us get back to our centre of focus – Advaita!
Yes, Advaita is a useless framework for someone who has not cultivated the power of Inquiry within himself? For who the question of “Who Am I?” is nothing beyond the biological existence, for him Advaita is “useless stencil (In C.Rajagopal’s introductory words! Before Bhajagovindam song of MS Subbalakshmi).
Philosophy of Advaita is like a Hypothesis, which has been constructed for us, for an enquiring mind? We could prove or disprove based on our abilities but the journey in itself is bound to be transformational…. (So I presume!)
How can one make anyone believe on the Oneness when one sees not just duality…. but multiplicity? Only Faith? But Faith in whom? When it is just the question of blind faith it is no Advaita! Ofcourse, it can still be religion though.
However, when one constructs the right hypothesis (Advaita) and goes about with that power of inquiry, discrimination? One is sure to be delivered onto the doors of transformation? …That transformation which might ‘hopefully’ abandon that identity as we thus embark upon that journey towards that enduring truth?
That Truth, which is definitely singular………..but for those, eyes which can see?
Just a thought from my end …did we realise Advaita is ‘A-dvaita’? It is not ‘Ekathwa’? Isn’t it profound that despite having the choice of words! It is not come to be known as ‘Ekathwa’…put in English can we say ‘Monotheism?”‘ Perhaps there lies the distinction between enduring power and the destructive power one invokes?
Keep it flowing….the inner self, Advaita
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