IN THE END

The final paragraph of the previous posting is misleading.  It reads, “’Whatever this is’ has been and always will be protective of you.  We do not know why this is.  It has saved many of us more often than we can count, mainly saved us from ourselves, but then also saved us from others.  ‘Whatever this is’ allows us to do what we will in the world, while, paradoxically, not allowing us to do it at the same time.”  A sentence should have been added that this is how we perceive it to be.  We think that we are being protected and guided throughout our lives.

In point of fact, “Whatever this is,” speaking now of Vedanta's Atman/Brahman, is only a watcher, an observer, a witness, not at all a participant in our lives.  What participates is karma.  This is the meaning of the final sentence in that posting, “It can only go this one way.”  A person’s life can only go according to his good and bad karmas, with which everyone is born, and can only play out in the manner karmas play out.  Even an awakened, liberated, illumined person who, accordingly, will never generate any further karmas, must still endure the burning off of the last of his past karmas.

This would explain, to name one example, how Thomas Merton, the notable Trappist monk, writer, and mystic, who doubtless was an enlightened soul, could, in a trip overseas, step out of his bath, touch an electric fan that proved to have faulty wiring, and be electrocuted.  “How could God allow this to happen to the likes of Merton?” was surely on everyone’s lips. 

But, alas, the explanation that it is purely karma at work in our lives and not something divine is also a perception.  It is how we explain the course of our lives to ourselves even though in the end we don't really know.

"WHATEVER THIS IS."

"Whatever this is” is an alternative expression to “God,” since the word “God” comes with a lot of baggage; it means a lot of different things to different people. 

“Whatever this is” is a presence that one feels, meanwhile; it is something other than the person while at the same time being the person.  It has no attributes, for to assign it attributes is to limit it, much like the word “God” does.

Vedanta, while using “God” synonymously with Atman/Brahman, also uses the expression “net, neti,” meaning “not this, not that.”  Buddhism does not have to worry about this since it does not acknowledge anything divine, referring instead to “higher levels of consciousness” and even, on occasion, “the deathless.”

The feeling one gets from “whatever this is” is love.  Oddly enough, some of us have never used the word love when speaking of spirituality, although many, especially Christians, use it all the time.  The word “love” also means different things to different people.  

What kind of love are we talking about here then, considering that there are many kinds of it, brotherly love, parental love, platonic love, erotic love, compassionate love?  It is none of the above.  The above are all human loves, loves of the relative world, limited loves.  

Were we to use human terms, just for the sake of discussion, we would say that this love is, at the very least, unconditional, never threatening or scolding, and always warm.  It is a love that comes when someone knows everything about you, what you have done and what you will do in the time you have left, where you have been and where you have yet to go, and when you will die.

“Whatever this is” has been and always will be protective of you.  We do not know why this is.  It has saved many of us more often than we can count, mainly saved us from ourselves, but then also saved us from others.  “Whatever this is” allows us to do what we will in the world, while, paradoxically, not allowing us to do it. 

It can only go this one way.

LANGUAGE OF GOD

The language of God is inspiration.  However, inspiration is an end in itself; it need not lead to anything beyond it.

A DEVELOPMENT: A SHORT STORY

He closed his blog on the four-year anniversary of its launch.  The blog contained 275 posting on the subject of Buddhism and Vedanta, mostly Vedanta.  The reason he ended it was because of a spiritual turning of the tide for him.

It came with his realization that for him the contemplative life, what he wanted, was not thinking about God, which was what writing a blog was, but being with God and God being with him.  This last phrase “God being with him,” was the key to his decision, because he’d never before thought of his relationship with God in quite that way, as a reciprocal relationship, where they both participated in it.  This was good.

How was it, though, that he was able to keep writing about Buddhism and Vedanta for so long?  Well, Buddhism he was already familiar with, having been a student of it since his college days back in the 1960s.  Vedanta, on the other hand, was completely new to him, so he had a lot to learn, hence much to share with his readers.

Why Vedanta?  He became interested in it thanks to Christopher Isherwood, the novelist, who was an initiate of the Vedanta Society of Southern California, headed by Swami Prabhavananda.  Oddly enough, he had been introduced to Isherwood’s writing by way of a lady who lived downstairs from him when he lived in Whittier, California. 
 
She loaned him her copy of A Single Man to find out, he came to assume, whether he, like Isherwood and the central character in the novel, was homosexual.  She had had designs on him for some while and wanted to discover whether she was wasting her time with him or not.  She would know by his reaction to the book.  It so happened he liked the book very much but not for the reason she was looking for.

Anyway, via Isherwood he became more and more interested in Vedanta and before long found himself in a Vedanta spell.  Only after writing his blog on the subject for four years did the bubble finally burst.  Ironically, he had just purchased Shankara’s Crest Jewel of Discrimination translated by Prabhavananda with commentary by Isherwood, but now, it appeared, he would have to set that aside.

The question remaining was where did he go from here?  Did he head off in a different direction, a poetry blog maybe, or just be content with keeping his mouth shut from here on?

Here’s what it cames down to:  The primary motivation, the engine behind his staying with Vedanta, and Buddhism, for so long was something he did not know he was still carrying with him.  Back in 2009, he experienced what he took at first to be Zen samadhi but what proved to be, as described in Vedanta, the Atman in him awakening into Brahman, God.

So, again, for him the contemplative life, what he wanted, was not thinking about God, which was what writing a blog was, but being with God and God being with him.  What he did not anticipate was that when one had such a relationship with God, the Atman, who is the personal aspect of God, was inclined to speak up.  Now he had to find someplace to put this speaking up.