Category: philosophical counseling
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Sri Sadhu Om’s Defense Of Ramana Maharshi’s Self-inquiry
In what follows, I’d like to bring out what I think is most salient about Sri Sadhu Om’s defense of Sri Ramana Maharshi’s approach to Self-inquiry. In doing so, I’ll set aside his fervor and bombast and come straightaway to the pith. And the pith is not only that (1) Self-inquiry gets you a two…
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The Triangular Prison Of The Mind
In The Path of Sri Ramana Maharshi: Part One–The Jnana Aspect of the Teaching, Sri Sadhu Om tells us a story about a man who is apparently imprisoned. The story goes like this: The man, believing that he is in a triangular-shaped prison, continues to search along two walls that meet–let’s say–at a right angle. Along the…
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How Deep Sleep Dispels The View That I Am The Body
Preface Quite beautifully, Sri Sadhu Om, in The Path of Sri Ramana Maharshi: Part One–The Jnana Aspect of the Teaching, showed me how Sri Ramana Maharshi deployed “I am sleeping soundly” to unseat the “I am the body idea.” After all, most people believe that they are their bodies, that they are their minds, or…
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Buddhist Psychology On Selfish Desire
Stephen Ruppenthal provides us with a beautiful interpretation of the Buddha’s thoughts about “thirst” in The Dhammapada (trans. and ed. Eknath Easwaran). In the introduction to the Buddha’s verses on thirst (pp. 227-33), Ruppenthal begins by observing: “It has been said that Buddhism is essentially a psychology of desire” (p. 227). Eknath Easwaran’s gloss of…
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Pathways To The Tao #3: Excursus On Meditation
In the opening to “Pathways to the Tao #3: Excursus on Meditation,” I write: If one who enjoys a lesser happiness beholds a greater one, let him leave aside the lesser to gain the greater. Buddha, Dhammapada We should take the Buddha’s principle here very seriously. Even if we have the smallest glimpse of our true nature,…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 