Month: July 2024
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Advaita Vedanta Studies The Law Of Causality
In his commentary on Gaudapada’s Karika in the book The Manduka Upanishad: With Gaudapada’s Karika and Sankara’s Commentary, Swami Nikhilananda, en passant, sneaks in a real doozy of a remark: This Karika tells us that the chief duty of the student [of Advaita Vedanta] is to analyze the law of causality and find its illusory…
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Why Do I Still Get Sad Even Though I Meditate Daily?
While it’s true that I’m generally happier now than I was before I started meditating, I still experience sadness. Why do I still get sad even though I meditate daily? It’s enough to say that all of us have gone through a considerable amount of social conditioning and that we still carry a lot of…
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How Can I Always Remain As The Witness
Question: How can I always remain as the witness? You assume that you’re the mind and so have to “get back to” the witness. You also assume that you keep forgetting to take your stand as the witness and so you need to effortfully keep reminding yourself to be it. Drop these two assumptions. Aren’t…
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Is Nonduality Nihilistic?
In Vivekacudamani, a work by Shankara, the student asks (in my paraphrase): “I understand that I am to discriminate between the Self and the non-self. The non-self includes the gross body, the subtle body, and the causal body. All right, but isn’t there just voidness left after all phenomena have been negated?” After all, one…
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Lost My Head And Lovin’ It
✦ Common sense says that consciousness appears–somehow–inside the head. It’s also thought to be personal, private, limited, and localized. Is it? ✦ Common sense turns out not only to be incorrect but also to be the cause of suffering. ✦ What if consciousness is actually headless–that is, spacious, open, vast, and free? Let’s find out.…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 