Category: philosophical counseling
-
For Nisargadatta, The Witness As A Bridge
In I Am That, Nisargadatta offers us not just any bridge but the most direct bridge from misidentification to Ultimacy. In fact, he couldn’t be any clearer about the role that the witness plays in his teaching: The person is never the subject [Nisargadatta tells one seeker]. You can see a person, but you are…
-
The Nondual Teaching: On The Teaching Tool Known As ‘Levels’
The Nondual Teaching: A Puzzle The nondual teaching can be very direct: You are Pure Awareness. That’s it. Period. Most pilgrims on the Way, however, will not be ripe enough to apperceive the Truth to which “You are Pure Awareness” is directly, vividly, immediately pointing. What then? On the Metaphor of Levels In The Direct…
-
Nisargadatta’s Teaching In 5 Verses
The earlier teaching of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj (as opposed to the late teaching focused centrally on the sense of “I am”) is nicely summarized in what I’ll term five verses to be found at the beginning of Maurice Frydman’s beautifully edited I Am That (1973): [Verse 1:] The seeker is he who is in search…
-
The Progressive Path Vs. The Direct Path
It’s taken me some time to understand why some teachers–most especially, perhaps, Atmananda and Jean Klein–have circled back quite often to critiques of the progressive paths and to apologias for the direct path. Since my background is in Zen Buddhism and in Advaita Vedanta, I’ve only ever known, with any especial tintimacy, direct path teachings.…
-
A Mind Free From Formulation & Conception
Niu-T’ou Fa-yung (594-657) asks the Patriarch, the Chan master Tao-hsin: “As you do not permit contemplation, what do you do when mental attitude emerges?” Tao-hsin: “The origin of mental attitude is neither good nor bad; its emergence is due to your mind. If your mind were free from formulation or conception, how could illusions occur?…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 