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Sunday, November 13, 2011

The (Neo) Advaita Trap

Back already! Wow. So I realised I will pop in from time to time when I have something to share.

This video is actually rather hilarious; certainly if you've had an experience of the "neo advaita" crowd that seems to proliferate the internet and that has spread across the spiritual marketplace like fungus. Now, I am very drawn to authentic advaita and could write at length about it. I've found the teachings of sages such as Ramana Maharshi and Nisargadatta, and some of the advaita scriptures to be extremely helpful.

What seems to have happened however is that advaita has been distorted by a great many people, mainly westerners I believe, who have created a distorted variation and who sadly tend to become exactly the kind of obstinate, superior pains in the arse portrayed in the video. I'm sure you'll have encountered some of them. I feel there are a great many people out there who genuinely believe they're enlightened simply because their mind has latched onto a certain set of perspectives and beliefs relating to nonduality. They maybe have awakened a little, but if they have to spend all their time 'teaching' others how wrong they are and how 'enlightened' they are, then...meh. There's nothing stinks more than the spiritual ego. They serve as a lesson to us all how easy it is for the ego to hijack virtually anything. Truly, nothing is sacred to the ego! Nothing requires greater vigilance than the 'spiritual path'.

Enjoy the vid, it's really funny:


The Advaita Trap - The Cartoon
by: nondualxtra

3 comments:

Stephanie.crow@gmail.com said...

Please keep posting. Found your older blog today while researching Verse 33 of the Tao and totally resonated with what you had to say. Fit everything so perfectly that I wished to tell my Facebook friends and family I was learning that I just had to quote you. Hope you don't mind, and I look forward to reading more of your insights. Thank you!

The Crow said...

Funny you should post on this subject.
I recently started a new blog to address the very same thing, only about taoism, specifically.
http://taoism-is.blogspot.com/

Rory said...

Cheers for the link Crow, liking the new blog, especially the Toeism post haha! My mantra for the week is "reevaluate everything". It's too easy to remain with our assumptions about things (which are often wrong), but continually reevaluating and redefining, seeing with new eyes, helps keep things clearer and alive and true. So I think it's a v healthy thing to do.

Thanks Stephanie, I really appreciate your encouragement. You're very welcome to quote, I'm glad what I wrote made sense. I've started rewriting the Tao posts, just cleaning them up a bit and will repost them soon. I will definitely keep posting, in some form :)