|
A Quote to Wake Up To “Many mistakenly feel relieved from the burden of responsibility for their own behaviour because of erroneous conclusions drawn from their spiritual experiences of no-separation. Realising that “everything is the self,” they concluded that therefore there was nothing and nobody to be responsible for. In this way of thinking, responsibility implies duality, and any notion of responsibility is therefore seen to be an _expression_ of ignorance. In this view almost any form of conduct becomes acceptable-when one proponent was asked why he habitually acted rudely and with dishonesty, he said “Oh, that’s not real, that’s just my personality.” Another student said, “Nothing matters because it’s all Self.” Others have answered with incredulity when asked about responsibility for behaviour, “How can there be responsibility in freedom? Who’s responsible?”…..Many people do have profound experiences when exposed to such teachings, but the teachings usually have the effect of enslaving a person to a deluded view that they are completely free simply because they have had a glimpse of the fact that there never could have been a separate entity who could be bound in the first place. It is at this point the Advaita view, as it is frequently proclaimed these days, becomes patently ridiculous. Such a view can make a person extremely confident, because any difficulty that one is faced with, from within or without, can be “Advaited” by saying that it is all unreal or all the Self anyway….. However, this confidence becomes a form of arrogance, a form of self-delusion, when it is used to avoid one’s own difficulties or areas of avoidance in order to obliterate the uncomfortable, dualistic facts of one’s own situation. The Advaita view can paralyse a person and prevent him or her from sober self-introspection because to consider one’s “self” is to entertain illusion, is to deny one’s own realisation, is to embrace the falsity of dualism. In this way, the opportunity to truly be free to face any difficulty or imperfections in one’s own character is destroyed. Any desire to change anything, in this view, is seen to be coming from the ego, from ignorance, because change implies separation and only ego could want change.” -Andrew Cohen Unless a person is perfectly, fully and finally Liberated by these (Advaita) teachings (a very rare event) their lives will be to some extent an _expression_ of duality and an _expression_ of ignorance. To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!'
SPONSORED LINKS
YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS
|
- [FairfieldLife] Doin' the Advaita Shuffle Vaj
