Practical Vedanta

Significant progress is being made for the publication of my new book, IVRI: The Essence of Hebrew Spirituality, 21^st Century Perspectives on an Ancient Tradition. It looks like it may be ready within 4 to 6 weeks. In the meantime, following is an excerpt on Practical Vedanta:

Concepts of non-theistic divinity can be found in the mystical branches of many religious traditions, including Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, and Taoism. In Indian Yoga/Vedanta, “Braham” is the designation for the impersonal underlying permanent unified field in the realm of the absolute, of unmanifest potentiality. It is the basis for the Indian notion of “monism” as distinct from “monotheism”. It has parallels in the Buddhist concept of Shunyata/The Void and in Jewish mystical concepts of Ein/Ayin. (The “void” is not really empty, it is actually paradoxically brim full of all potentiality, but in an unmanifested state, so it is seemingly void in contrast with external manifestation). Proponents of this notion like to point out parallels to the “unified field” theory posited by modern physics, claiming that meditative practices of their spiritual traditions led to inner mystical revelation of this same state thousands of years ago.

Some versions of this notion has led to what critics rightfully regard as perspectives of life-escaping “Impractical Vedanta”, a viewpoint shared by various schools of thought, and prevalent in certain Gnostic schools. This is the idea that equates the permanency of the absolute realm with reality, and the impermanency of the realm of the relative with unreality and illusion. There is great value placed upon the absolute of permanency, and little value placed on the relative of impermanency. Since the only thing that is permanent is this underlying monistic state, it is the only reality and the only thing of any real value. Everything else in the relative world, by virtue of being impermanent, is of little value and illusory. Spiritual practices are intended to extricate oneself from the never-ending wheel of illusion and the inevitable suffering caused by virtue of impermanence in the realm of relativity. This is accomplished by establishing oneness in identity with the realm of the unchanging absolute, and by doing so, exiting out of this miserable world.

There is some jumping to conclusions involved in this perspective, as impermanence does not necessarily equate with unreality and illusion. Just because something is not permanent and subject to change, death and decay, does not mean that it is not real. Its reality may be of a different nature than the reality of the absolute and unchangeable, but it is still a reality. The tips of the waves of an ocean are not unreal or illusory; the incomplete, partial perception that they are separate and independent, that there is no ocean of which they are a part, indeed, which is their very unifying substance and upon which they are totally dependent – that is the illusion. Waves come and go, the ocean remains, but they are both real. There is something precious and poignant to the ever-changing, fleeting waves and the delicate, fragile little bubbles that comprise the foam at their tips. And at the same time, there is something wondrous about their resilience and persistence whereby they continue to rise and fall. And thus the perspective of the school of life-embracing “Practical Vedanta”, which recognizes this fallacy and values life in the relative world of materiality, but from a deep spiritual perspective. Spiritual practices are not intended just to literally extricate one from the material world, but also to provide a proper spiritual grounding to be better equipped to function at a high capacity within the material world. The source of suffering is the erroneous conclusion that there is only impermanence, diversity and relativity, with no recognition of an underlying substratum of permanence and unity. Discovering and establishing identity with the Unifying Oneness from which multiplicity emerges provides that spiritual grounding. Some forms of Buddhism develop this further through the concept of Bodhisattva — practitioners who have grounded firmly in the beyond, but who are devoted to serving in the material world, and not leaving it behind.

Quote of the Week 126 - The Self is Everything

You cannot see the Seer of seeing. You cannot hear the Hearer of hearing. You cannot think the Thinker of thinking. You cannot understand the Understander of understanding. He is your Self, which is in everything. Everything other than Him is irrelevant.

-- Brihad-Aranyaka-Upanishad, as found in The Yoga Tradition; Its History, Literature, Philosophy and Practice by Georg Feuerstein

Interview with Rabbi Gershon Winkler

Here is a link to a good interview with Rabbi Gershon Winkler

http://www.intuitivesoul.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=475:gershon-winkler-280110-author-of-daily-kabbalah&catid=15:radio-show-archives&Itemid=61

You can copy and paste the above into your search engine, or you can just click onto the title of this entry, and it should take you there.

Quote of the Week 125 - Art and Life

Art imitates life, it doesn’t duplicate it.

-- A message received from the superconscious. I’m passing it on, for whatever it is worth.

Quote of the Week 124 - True Compassion

True Compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Quote of the Week 123 - Viktor Frankl

[The following is from the entry in Wikipedia about Viktor Frankl, a truly remarkable person, who is the focus of one of the chapters in my upcoming book from a guest contributor. There are also some wonderful video interviews of Frankl on YouTube that you can access if you Google “Viktor Frankl”]

It was due to his and others' suffering in these camps [Nazi Concentration Camps] that he came to his hallmark conclusion that even in the most absurd, painful and dehumanized situation, life has potential meaning and that therefore even suffering is meaningful. This conclusion served as a strong basis for Frankl's logotherapy. An example of Frankl's idea of finding meaning in the midst of extreme suffering is found in his account of an experience he had while working in the harsh conditions of the Auschwitz concentration camp:

... We stumbled on in the darkness, over big stones and through large puddles, along the one road leading from the camp. The accompanying guards kept shouting at us and driving us with the butts of their rifles. Anyone with very sore feet supported himself on his neighbor's arm. Hardly a word was spoken; the icy wind did not encourage talk. Hiding his mouth behind his upturned collar, the man marching next to me whispered suddenly: "If our wives could see us now! I do hope they are better off in their camps and don't know what is happening to us."

That brought thoughts of my own wife to mind. And as we stumbled on for miles, slipping on icy spots, supporting each other time and again, dragging one another up and onward, nothing was said, but we both knew: each of us was thinking of his wife. Occasionally I looked at the sky, where the stars were fading and the pink light of the morning was beginning to spread behind a dark bank of clouds. But my mind clung to my wife's image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look was then more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise.

A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth -- that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way – an honorable way – in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, "The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory...."

Another important conclusion of Frankl was:

If a prisoner felt that he could no longer endure the realities of camp life, he found a way out in his mental life– an invaluable opportunity to dwell in the spiritual domain, the one that the SS were unable to destroy. Spiritual life strengthened the prisoner, helped him adapt, and thereby improved his chances of survival.

Liberated after three years of life in concentration camps, he returned to Vienna. During 1945 he wrote his world-famous book titled ...trotzdem ja zum Leben sagen (Ein Psychologe erlebt das Konzentrationslager) (translated: "...saying yes to life in spite of everything; A Psychologist Experiences the Concentration Camp)", known in English by the title Man's Search for Meaning. In this book, he described the life of an ordinary concentration camp inmate from the objective perspective of a psychiatrist.

Viktor Frankl often said that even within the narrow boundaries of the concentration camps he found only two races of men to exist: decent and unprincipled ones. These were to be found in all classes, ethnicities, and groups. He once recommended that the Statue of Liberty on the East coast of the US be complemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West coast, and there are plans to construct such a statue by 2010. Frankl is thought to have coined the term Sunday Neurosis referring to a form of depression resulting from an awareness in some people of the emptiness of their lives once the working week is over.