Month: October 2022
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Administering Electric Shocks Or Sitting With One’s Thoughts?
1 In 2014, a study published in Science declared something that, to the researchers concerned, was quite surprising: In 11 studies, we found that participants typically did not enjoy spending 6 to 15 minutes in a room by themselves with nothing to do but think, that they enjoyed doing mundane external activities much more, and…
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Only Practice In Atma Vicara Makes Perfect
One elegant, and very intuitive argument, from Michael James’s Happiness and the Art of Being: An Introduction to the Philosophy and Practice of the Spiritual Teachings of Bhagavan Sri Ramana is worth sitting with: Only practice [in atma vicara, i.e., self-inquiry, self-investigation, or self-abidance] can make perfect. By repeated and persistent practice of turning our…
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The Truth Of Being Here Now
As Richard Alpert tells it in his now famous book Be Here Now, he went to India as a late–almost last–ditch effort after he realized that taking psychedelics, even heroic amounts, always left you down, always left you more or less where you were before. Such was–is–the nature of samsara. In India, Alpert met a…
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Turiya And Self-inquiry
Manolaya Sri Ramana really cuts to the chase: for serious sadhakas, there is no point to engaging in any meditation technique except Self-inquiry. This is because pranayama, counting exercises, chanting, etc.–while they have their modest place in the nondual spiritual life–nonetheless fail to get to the heart of the matter. They leave the central ‘problem’…
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The Four Noble Truths Of Advaita Vedanta
Naturally, the Four Noble Truths are expounded by the Buddha in the first sutra, The Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta (“Setting the Wheel of Dhamma in Motion”). I hereby offer what I take to be Advaita Vedanta’s riff on the following structure: Advaita Vedanta’s First Noble Truth The mind is suffering. This should be understood with the utmost…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 