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Post by satchitananda on Jul 13, 2019 7:55:00 GMT -5
The neo advaita satsang business sucks! When was the last time you attended a neo advaita satsang? Never
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Post by zendancer on Jul 13, 2019 7:58:47 GMT -5
The neo advaita satsang business sucks! How do you define neo-advaita, and why do you have such antipathy towards it? Just curious.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 13, 2019 8:03:05 GMT -5
When was the last time you attended a neo advaita satsang? Never I'll let Laughter take it from here. I can't be asked with your bi-polar.
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Post by satchitananda on Jul 13, 2019 8:08:51 GMT -5
The neo advaita satsang business sucks! How do you define neo-advaita, and why do you have such antipathy towards it? Just curious. Neoadvaita is a watered-down teaching of vedanta and it says practice is unnecessary.
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Post by satchitananda on Jul 13, 2019 8:11:43 GMT -5
I'll let Laughter take it from here. I can't be asked with your bi-polar. Presumably you have heard of YouTube. It's on the Bipolar channel.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 13, 2019 10:06:20 GMT -5
What are people's perceptions? The first lines of Merton's book, "Zen and the Birds of Appetite" is the best answer. "Zen enriches noone. There is no body to be found. The birds may come and circle for a while ... but they soon go elsewhere. When they are gone, the 'nothing,' the 'no-body' that was there, suddenly appears. That is Zen. It was there all the time but the scavengers missed it, because it was not their kind of prey."
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Post by zendancer on Jul 13, 2019 10:10:13 GMT -5
How do you define neo-advaita, and why do you have such antipathy towards it? Just curious. Neoadvaita is a watered-down teaching of vedanta and it says practice is unnecessary. The only ND teacher that I've heard say that is Tony Parsons, and it's his way of stopping peoples' minds. Most of the others generally say that practice is neither necessary nor not necessary and that the most important thing is insight into what's going on. As many of us have noted in the past, teachers have a choice of whether to meet the dreamer in the dream or refuse to meet the dreamer in the dream, and it's hard to know which approach is most effective. Practice is probably necessary for most people simply because they have extremely talkative minds and their attention is focused upon thoughts rather than "what is," but it's clearly not necessary for everyone. The basic seeker wants to know, "What do I need to do in order to find the truth?" A sage knows that at the center of that question is the illusion of a "me" who needs to do something in order to get something. The Zen approach is to say (often with no explanation), "Sit down, shut up, and meditate." Other traditions offer more explanation, and take a much looser approach. Tony Parsons says, "There's nothing 'you' can do (because who you think you are is not who you really are)." This claim can absolutely paralyze the mind, and I read one book about seven people who supposedly woke up as a result of being exposed to Tony's approach. Sometimes hearing this claim has the same effect as Tolle's thought, "I can't live with myself any longer." As you know, that thought made Tolle question whether he was one person or two people--one who couldn't live with the other--and that subsequent thought stopped his mind and became the doorway into the ND world. My approach, as well as your approach, is to meet the dreamer in the dream. We tell people that there is a value in becoming silent and attentive to "what is," and we explain meditative techniques that will foster silence and attentiveness, but if a Tony Parson's approach works for some people, why feel antipathy towards it? Who cares what wakes people up if it succeeds?
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Post by siftingtothetruth on Jul 13, 2019 10:30:56 GMT -5
What are people's perceptions? The first lines of Merton's book, "Zen and the Birds of Appetite" is the best answer. "Zen enriches noone. There is no body to be found. The birds may come and circle for a while ... but they soon go elsewhere. When they are gone, the 'nothing,' the 'no-body' that was there, suddenly appears. That is Zen. It was there all the time but the scavengers missed it, because it was not their kind of prey." It reminds me in an odd way of what was said of the Buddha in the Pali canon, that after his enlightenment his first instinct was not to teach. It was a tough path even for him to tread, most people wouldn't get it, and so why bother? Then, the story goes, Brahma appears to him and begs him to teach for the good of the world. "There are those with little dust in their eyes who will understand," he says.
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Post by satchitananda on Jul 13, 2019 10:34:40 GMT -5
I read one book about seven people who supposedly woke up as a result of being exposed to Tony's approach. I very much doubt that. In fact I doubt whether anyone has woken up as a result of going to a Tony Parsons satsang, unless by waking up you just mean some temporary stillness, but no Buddha has walked out of Parson's meetings. Neo advaita satsangs consist of an awful lot of talking about nondual concepts and pointers. That's okay to a limited extent as a preparation for a disciplined practice but these satsangs go on and on with the nondual conceptual talk. It's completely useless. Then if the ND teacher tells everyone they must practice self-inquiry, either they don't really understand it very well or they don't appreciate that not everyone is ready for it, that there has to be some preparation and some disciplined practice to go much much deeper into this. Ramana didn't tell everyone to practice self inquiry because he knew on a one-to-one basis what people were ready for. I have to say I can't stand these teachers and I can't bear to watch any YouTube videos of them. When a new interview comes up on batgap I usually watch it for about 2 minutes and then switch it off. The other side of the equation is that there are very very few serious seekers. That's why Self-realization is extremely rare.
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Post by laughter on Jul 13, 2019 10:39:03 GMT -5
What are people's perceptions? The first lines of Merton's book, "Zen and the Birds of Appetite" is the best answer. "Zen enriches noone. There is no body to be found. The birds may come and circle for a while ... but they soon go elsewhere. When they are gone, the 'nothing,' the 'no-body' that was there, suddenly appears. That is Zen. It was there all the time but the scavengers missed it, because it was not their kind of prey." Stealth gull knows better and sits in wait.
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Post by siftingtothetruth on Jul 13, 2019 10:43:19 GMT -5
I read one book about seven people who supposedly woke up as a result of being exposed to Tony's approach. I very much doubt that. In fact I doubt whether anyone has woken up as a result of going to a Tony Parsons satsang, unless by waking up you just mean some temporary stillness, but no Buddha has walked out of Parson's meetings. Neo advaita satsangs consist of an awful lot of talking about nondual concepts and pointers. That's okay to a limited extent as a preparation for a disciplined practice but these satsangs go on and on with the nondual conceptual talk. It's completely useless. Then if the ND teacher tells everyone they must practice self-inquiry, either they don't really understand it very well or they don't appreciate that not everyone is ready for it, that there has to be some preparation and some disciplined practice to go much much deeper into this. Ramana didn't tell everyone to practice self inquiry because he knew on a one-to-one basis what people were ready for. I have to say I can't stand these teachers and I can't bear to watch any YouTube videos of them. When a new interview comes up on batgap I usually watch it for about 2 minutes and then switch it off. The other side of the equation is that there are very very few serious seekers. That's why Self-realization is extremely rare. In most of his recorded dialogues, Ramana more or less did recommend self-inquiry and/or he simply tried to point directly. Where people themselves wanted to ask about their current practice (e.g. japa), he sometimes encouraged them, but pretty much 90% of what he said was directed to self-inquiry or surrender -- either recommending it or engaging in it through dialogue with them by questioning their assumptions. And he didn't say much about preparation, really, though perhaps he should have said more. Though I'm no great fan of Tony Parsons or most of the neo-advaita teachers .
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Post by satchitananda on Jul 13, 2019 11:04:52 GMT -5
In most of his recorded dialogues, Ramana more or less did recommend self-inquiry and/or he simply tried to point directly. Where people themselves wanted to ask about their current practice (e.g. japa), he sometimes encouraged them, but pretty much 90% of what he said was directed to self-inquiry -- either recommending it or engaging in it through dialogue with them by questioning their assumptions. And he didn't say much about preparation, really, though perhaps he should have said more. The recorded dialogues were unsurprisingly the interesting ones which concentrated on his core teachings. He lived in Tirivannamalai for more than 60 years and had dialogue with thousands of people most of which weren't recorded. So I imagine he gave out a much broader spectrum of advice.
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Post by siftingtothetruth on Jul 13, 2019 11:26:46 GMT -5
The recorded dialogues were unsurprisingly the interesting ones which concentrated on his core teachings. He lived in Tirivannamalai for more than 60 years and had dialogue with thousands of people most of which weren't recorded. So I imagine he gave out a much broader spectrum of advice. Could indeed be... but to be honest I've read his corpus and a lot of auxiliary texts, and it's a little hard to find evidence of that. There are a few bits and pieces, but that's it. The vast majority of his original, specifically written work, too -- not dialogues -- is steadfastly self-inquiry/pure jnana/surrender. Everything else he tends to funnel right into that.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 13, 2019 12:05:47 GMT -5
Neo advaita satsangs consist of an awful lot of talking about nondual concepts and pointers. When was the last time you attended a neo advaita satsang? Never
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Post by satchitananda on Jul 13, 2019 12:23:57 GMT -5
The recorded dialogues were unsurprisingly the interesting ones which concentrated on his core teachings. He lived in Tirivannamalai for more than 60 years and had dialogue with thousands of people most of which weren't recorded. So I imagine he gave out a much broader spectrum of advice. Could indeed be... but to be honest I've read his corpus and a lot of auxiliary texts, and it's a little hard to find evidence of that. There are a few bits and pieces, but that's it. The vast majority of his original, specifically written work, too -- not dialogues -- is steadfastly self-inquiry/pure jnana/surrender. Everything else he tends to funnel right into that. Yes that's true, the writings are those of a jnani as one would expect. I can't remember the publication but I read about many visitors who were encouraged by Ramana to continue with their practices. It may have been japa or devotional practice or giving service etc. It all depended on the individual. But of course if someone was ripe to hear the teaching of pure jnana then it would be offered. But he also said that Bhakta was no different to Jnana as they both resulted in surrender.
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