Month: February 2024
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Do I Have To Get Rid Of The Ego?
Suppose, for the purposes of the following investigation, that there is the horizontal plane as well as the vertical dimension. In this schema, “the horizontal plane” refers to the natural flow of objective experiences while “the vertical dimension” refers to Witnessing Consciousness. Take a set of objective experiences like: Meanwhile, I am the Witnessing Consciousness…
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Who Is Cleaning Up?
Step 1: Who Is Cleaning Up A weird thing happens as you begin to examine certain thoughts and feelings. You begin to realize that you’re carrying around deep hurts inside of you. (Not yet, however, do you consider the assumptions: “carrying,” “inside of,” and “you.”) They’re like pieces of heavy luggage. That’s an astonishing insight.…
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Only One Experience Can Arise At Any One Time
Advaita Vedanta advances the upaya that only one experience can arise at any one time. In this line of inquiry, it assumes that time exists, and it doesn’t take up non-ordinary cases. These will be revisited at the appropriate time. Assume for the time being, then, that time exists, and assume for the moment that…
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Do I Have To Concentrate (Hard) In Order To Meditate?
When we think of meditation, what often comes to mind is some technique that teaches one to concentrate on an object and to set all other experiences off to the side. I want to argue that while there is value in this kind of meditation technique, there is also–such becomes clear in due course–something wrongheaded…
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Practice, Understood As Action, Cannot Remove Ignorance
Advaita Vedanta takes very seriously Shankara’s claim in his little textbook Atma Bodha that “[a]ction cannot remove ignorance; but knowledge disperses it as light disperses darkness.” This, effectively, rules out karma yoga as “a way” of coming to Self-knowledge directly. But can we pull out more from Shankara’s statement? In the hands of Atmananda, we…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 