Category: philosophical counseling
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Are The Three Pillars Of Zen Unique To Zen?
The three pillars of Zen aren’t really the three pillars of Zen. They’re, rather, the three forces that motivate any serious sadhaka to realize atma svarupa. These pillars are: great determination, great trust or faith, and great doubt. If your spiritual temperament is marked by power or zeal, then you are to let great determination…
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What Is The Meaning Of Sri Ramana’s ‘Go Back The Way You Came’?
One key to understanding self-inquiry is to get, at the level of practice, what Ramana Maharshi means when he says that you need to “go back the way you came.” 1. When Ramana Maharshi says, in particular, that at the root of all thoughts is the I-thought, what he means is that all objective experiences…
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Self-inquiry Is Not Neti Neti
One common mistake is to think that self-inquiry is identical with neti neti. The latter is, at most, only a “preliminary study” that prepares the ground for self-inquiry proper. Thinking “I am not the body, not the senses, and not the mind” may be a good start. Indeed, a deep investigation, in the vein of…
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Approaching Ajata Through Self-inquiry
The ultimate teaching of nonduality is ajata: nothing ever came into being; or: nothing ever happened; or: only being is and non-being, necessarily, is not. One can discover the truth of ajata through an incisive type of self-inquiry. Here is Sri Sadhu Om making a most significant remark in passing: In that state of true…
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Self-inquiry And This Divine Comedy
Let’s really try to understand Ramana Maharshi’s teaching on self-inquiry. Why does he insist, second only to sacred silence (mauna), that it’s the next highest teaching? Consider the matter this way: In order for there to be a sense that I am experiencing such and such, there really has to be “an I” that’s playing…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 