Tag: religion
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Ramakrishna Cuts Through The Divine Mother
The Sword Of Discrimination Reaching the end of his rope, Ramakrishna said to Totapuri, his Vedantic teacher: “It is hopeless. I cannot raise my mind to the unconditioned state and come face to face with Atman.” “What?” Totapuri replied. “You can’t do it? But you have to!” Searching about excitedly, he picked up shard of…
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Metaphysical Commitments In Raja Yoga & Advaita Vedanta
Which metaphysical commitments draw Raja Yoga (the path of willpower and concentration) together with Advaita Vedanta (the path of knowledge)? In Meditation and Its Practices: A Definitive Guide to Techniques and Traditions of Meditation in Yoga and Vedanta, Swami Adiswarananda tells us that there are four such principles–namely, the “divinity of the individual soul, [the]…
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Can We Know God?
The following is a Q&A that follows my long form essay, “On Not Getting To Denmark.” Question I think it was Pope Benedict, who said “one thing that atheist and believers have in common is they will both learn the truth when they die.“ And that is so true because both sides believe a certain…
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Indiscriminate Benevolence In A Society Without God
When I was living in St. Louis around 2006, I re-read Theodor Adorno’s darkly acerbic Minima Moralia. I recalled, just today, one of his searing lines about “indiscriminate benevolence”: Indiscriminate benevolence towards all constantly threatens that coldness and remoteness against each, which are once again communicated to the whole. Francis Fukuyama and Phil Zuckerman (in…
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A Direct Path Compression Of Drig Drisha Viveka
The opening verse of Drig Drisha Viveka states: Form is the seen, the eye is the seer; that eye is the seen, and mind is its seer; thoughts in the mind are seen by the Witness which alone is the Seer, but can never be the seen. —Drig Drisha Viveka, trans. and commentary by…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 