Tag: philosophy
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Vivarta Vada And Self-inquiry
You may have heard this line from Chandogya Upanishad: “May I be many, may I grow forth.” Hearing it, you may have fallen to wondering: “How did the many actually come from the One?” What if manifestation never really happened? In this connection, let’s consider just one doctrine: vivarta vada. This teaching draws upon the…
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Whatever Happened To Work, Friendship, & Family?
Charles Taylor argued quite convincingly in Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (1989) that one of the hallmarks of modernity is “the affirmation of ordinary life”: immanent goods like family, friends, and work are to be embraced. This marks the turn toward worldliness that is a fundamental feature still of the…
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Going Beyond The Student-Spiritual Teacher Framing
We need a new, more deft understanding of “student” and “spiritual teacher.” In fact, ultimately both, rightly says The Avadhuta Gita, have to go. But first the promised understanding. The student in life–be he a spiritual practitioner, an entrepreneur, or (really) anybody–tells a story in which he, the protagonist, is struggling to follow the path.…
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Personal Peace Is Not The Ultimate Aim
The contemporary spirituality scene–be it New Age or Neo-Advaita–is lacking in many respects. Two such are pointed out by Swami Satyananda Saraswati in Rikhia: The Vision of a Sage, an account of the rural development project undertaken in Rikhia, India, starting in 1989. Satyananda, presumably speaking to younger disciples, asserts, “Personal shanti may be an…
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Why Does The Reiner Story Gnaw At Us?
Why is the Reiner story–the story about Rob and Michele possibly being killed by their son Nick–so horrifying? Why, that is to say, do some national and international stories grab us and tear at us while others do not? Aristotle knew well: the stories that really get or, even, gnaw at us are, properly speaking,…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 