> TurquoiseB wrote: > > I'm interested in hearing the fans of advaita (neo- or not) > or Byron Katie explain to me why what seems like a > contradiction to me isn't one. > > The desire in this case is to have no expectations of > others in terms of their behavior, and to see them as > other aspects of one's Self, if I've gotten what > Rory is saying. However, the desire to behave like that > is an expectation.
some of this is just Rory; he used byron katie to get his answers but your use of it would give you your answers; its very personal and there is no one right answer, except what -you- think. > One *practices* "a little Byron Katiesque Inquiry" >and intellectually convinces one's self that it is > relating to others on a non-judgmental level. the inquiry she teaches is much simpler than that; there is no convincing oneself of anything at all; you might end up less judgemental, but not because you are trying to be. > But it seems to me that the very *process* of > doing this is by definition a judgment upon one's *own* > self, a desire to *change* the way it's behaving and > "should" it into another form of behavior, an attempt > to moodmake it into acting the way that it "should." it is much simpler than all that; there is no desire to change, just a way of inquiry of your issue; there is no change of behaviour ... that would be mood-making; and yet as a side effect, her inquiry might actually change your original thinking, thus your behaviour would be different than it would have been, but only as a side effect. it works more like a koan than a mood making. it sounds to me that you have not actually tried her method of "four questions" inquiry, because it is actually very simple; but trying to describe it to someone who has not had the experience requires putting it into words, but that makes it sound more compicated than it is. > > I'm not particularly down on Byron Katie, or advaita, > or Rory...I'm just intrigued by the proponents of these > philosophies' ability to ignore what seems to me to be > a raging contradiction. If the practice they're recom- > mending to get beyond judgment requires "the work," > isn't that *by definition* a form of judgment about > judgment? im no expert on Byron Katie, but i did take a weekend seminar with her in Fairfield a couple years ago, and liked it enough to buy her book. The Work, as she calls it, is her work of spreading the method she discovered; but it doent mean it is "hard work" as in rigorous, or a judgement against judgments, in some hard sense; it is more gentle, just inquiry (only if you feel like doing it) she stumbled upon her methods via her own normal westerner life; it happens to have the advaita/non-dualist results; but it is "neo-advaita" because it just emerged in her life, it is not something she learned from some indian guru teaching from a tradition of non-dualism.
