four advaita systems essential features

From The Advaita Tradition in Indian Philosophy

A STUDY OF ADVAITA IN BUDDHISM, VEDANTA AND KASHMIRA SHAIVISM

by Chandradhar Sharma

We thus find that there are four main systems of advaitavádá in Indian philosophy, namely, the Mádhyamika, Vijñánaváda, Advaita Vedanta and Kashmira Shaivism.

The essential features shared in common by these four advaita systems are:

1. Advaitavada is always spiritual non-dualism or absolutism.

2. The Absolute is at once transcendent to and immanent in the manifested world.

3. As transcendent, the Absolute is indeterminate. It is beyond senses, thought and language. It is pure consciousness and bliss.

4. As immanent, the Absolute is the reality of the manifested world of individual subjects and objects. It is infinite, all-pervasive and all-inclusive.

5. The Absolute cannot be known as an ‘object’ by relational thought. But as the foundation of all empirical knowledge and experience, it shines forth as the eternal non-dual Self, self-proved and self-shining. It can be realised in nonrelational immediate spiritual experience.

6. Absolutism makes a distinction between reality and appearance.

7. The Absolute appears as or projects this world through its own power which is beginningless, transcendental and inseparable from it.

8. Avidya or transcendental Illusion generates the notions of externality, difference, limitation and finitude. It can be removed only by the immediate realisation of the Absolute.

9. The Absolute is not proved by positive arguments. The advaitins negate the illusion of duality and the Absolute shines as the ground-reality.

10. Moksa or Nirvana is absolute freedom which is complete identity with the Absolute. It is the realisation of one’s own true nature through supra-relational knowledge or immediate experience.

11. Intense spiritual discipline is prescribed as a help towards this realisation.

It's Maya Town

You are two, god is one, reality is neither.

And all the bishops, philosophers, and engineers can’t put god back together again.

Then all shall know you by your name for god. 

Call me the universal evolutionary enlightening intent towards self-awareness, Ishmael.

God has many names but the absolute is nameless, for god is the absolute conditioned by maya.

And maya is what happens when you try to name the absolute.

footnotes

sorry all you nihilists, atheists, and other existentialists, reality isn't nothing either.

sorry all do-gooders, you can't make two one again.

look, everybody needs a myth to make it through the night.

lovers make their own myths. believers steal theirs from one another.

remember, maya is another name for paradox.

awareness and its name is intertwined in ordinary states of mass confusion. but there, without a name, i am.

Pointing towards Consciousness

The mind cannot describe consciousness.

Consciousness is indescribable.

The mind is totally within the field of consciousness.

Consciousness is beyond the boundaries of mind.

The mind is consciousness but consciousness is not the mind.

You can’t know consciousness but only be ”it.”

Further, consciousness, as a word, is not a name for consciousness,

but an indicator—there is no name for that which can’t be known by mind.

And as for being consciousness,

that’s why they say that you are that.

footnotes

the empire of scientific materialism is trying with all its might to find the source of consciousness within the body so as to do with "it" what it did with hydrogen.

but consciousness is not a product of the body-mind, thank god.

religious empires claim to own the source of consciousness through their founder's infallibility, but these days, one needs proof, more or less.

that understanding consciousness is the ultimate source of power for all empire through its weapon of belief, religious or materialistic, gives a whole new empirical meaning to spiritual liberation.

no one owns consciousness although fools give theirs away miserably every day.

Modern Namarupa

i

Awareness is solely self-aware.

Within this unmanifested self-awareness is appearing,

through the lens of paradox,

a manifested self-awareness

in the form of a self-reflexive universe,

whose maker is the god of evolutionary intent

and whose material is self-shining consciousness.

ii

if there's only awareness, and awareness is only aware of awareness, then this self-awareness is our objective.

awareness is absolute, self-awareness is unmanifest, and there are appearances in self-awareness which are manifesting self-awareness.

between the absolute and relative, there is a wall of paradox. its name is maya.

aware new, new clear, clear deep, deep sleep, sleep dream, dream self, self aware.

if the wall is paradox, god is the writing on the wall.

is it true that consciousness only is the only true materialism?

Riffing Shankara

Riffing Shankara

so awareness

superimposed

on the mind

and vice versa is

something like attention,

if attention is

the knot of mind,

awareness,

and an object.

Therefore, attention

without mind or object

is awareness,

or what I truly am,

non-conceptually.

footnotes

according to shankara, the snake is not only superimposed on the rope, the rope is superimposed on the snake.

accordingly, this mutual superimposition of cognizance with awareness, i am calling, for lack of a better word, attention.

not a practice exactly, but a confirmation of this mythic design, is sitting in attention without attaching to the various thoughts of mind—thus one can call this resting in awareness.

to an ordinary person, pure awareness isn't ordinary, but awareness intertwined with cognizance is ordinary. there's the rub.

My Myth of Self-Awareness

1.

Before self-awareness dawns, there is the night of unawareness.

In this night of unawareness, knowledge is ignorance, up is down, and nothing is real.

But because there is no night, for the sun is always shining, and night is just an occlusion of planetary ignorance, truth within this so-called night appears to be a paradox.

2.

In my myth of self-awareness, mindfulness is a misnomer. Call it awarefulness instead.

Absolute awareness is singularly self-aware. The nondual dominion of this self-awareness is so powerful and glorious, it appears to be.

And being begets mind. Mind begets division. Division begets suffering. Suffering begets deconstruction.

Deconstruction removes the thought of being identified with the mind. And this mirror of awarefulness reveals my self-awareness.

footnotes

the myth of the reflexive universe calls this unawareness, the molecular.

belief is molecular thought, religious or materialistic. obviously especially materialistic.

in the logic of understanding, the name of paradox is maya.

definitions matter.

the subject, to be self-aware, must become an object first. and in turn, the object deconstructs itself, voila!

apres la friction of fiction, the all-consuming fire.

that the sun identifies with any of its planets is to cry! and that the sun dis-identifies with earth is to laugh.

a good myth contradicts itself.

logic and paradox and contradiction, oh my!

and pointers too!

My Self-Evident Fool

Some believe the big bang came from nothing.

Materialism, in the end, is just another brand of nihilism.

And some believe that one is nothing, not knowing nonduality is not your father’s nihilism.

Forgive them for they’ve only learned to hate themselves.

Because the mind can’t understand a thing without beginning, it substitutes unknown eternity with nothing.

I am putting forth the proposition here: the absolute is not some nothing.

Unseen, inconceivable, unthinkable, indescribable, peaceful, blissful, and nondual—the absolute is that.

My dear fool, you are not nothing. The absolute is self-shining consciousness and so are you.

footnotes

big science investigates the trick. self-inquiry is about investigating the magician.

i wonder why nondual nihilists always have to have the last say.

any concept without beginning or end is not a concept. therefore, to the mind, it's nothing.

first, consciousness is not a product of the mind. this is just the magical thinking of materialism.

second, the mind is the tool of consciousness in the great intent of self-awareness. obviously, you're not a tool, are you?

third, absolute awareness is self-shining consciousness. therefore, by the transitive property of equality in mathematics, i pronounce you that.

the snake is nothing; you're the rope.

On One True Knowledge

Not to be unduly philosophical but true knowledge is not epistemological but ontological instead.

Knowledge is not about information, facts, and other data stored in memory,

nor their manipulation, interpretation, or presentation, but being only.

I’m not saying there’s not a place for words. Deconstruction and indication are fine for what they are,

in negating false knowledge and pointing to the one true knowledge which is wordless.

On Dream and Illusion, Ghazals and Sonnets. On Abiding and Non-abiding, Lightning and Thunder.

All transmission is depending

on a point of view.

If that point of view is absolute,

nothing is ever born

and the world is

like a lucid dream.

If this point of view is relative,

then the world is an appearance.

One may ask then what’s the difference

between a dream and an illusion.

I only know a dream

as I'm awakened from it.

I know illusion

when I'm not.

footnotes

knowers know, teachers teach.

no method, no brick in the wall.

a dream is not a dream if not awake.

it's only magic if i don't know the trick.

on a technical note, advaita becomes religion when ajativada is vivartavada.

on a mythological level, ramana maharshi represents the return of the force.

on another technical note, shankara without gaudapada is not shankara.

on another mythological level, nisargadatta maharaj represents the further tantric illiteratization of the force.

Self-awareness in So Many Words

Some call self-awareness—realization, enlightenment, awakening, or other words of wisdom, all of which will fade in time with some semantic change or other.

To further clarify, self-consciousness is to self-awareness as a snake is to the proverbial rope.

Self-awareness is the simple knowing what one, as the absolute self, is. This isn’t the psychological self-assertion of an egoic self, nor the philosophic nihilism of some selfless self.

Also, self-awareness is neither scientific nor religious. It’s not about the terminology of your belief. It’s all about experiential understanding, in so many words.

Of Alienation and Mind, Ghazals and Sonnets

The time has come to talk of mind.

The so-called experience of self-awareness is the immediate and direct understanding

that I am absolute awareness.

Without the mirror of the mind, there is no suchlike understanding.

Shen-hsiu says the mind is like a mirror; keep it clean.

Hui-neng counters that the mirror is so innately clean, there’s not a place for dust to land.

Awareness, consciousness, and mind are not three separate entities

but the nondual trinity of self-awareness.

Such an obvious mistake in understanding is to be expected

in an immature mind still in the adolescent throes of identifying with itself.

There are one-hundred billion stars in this galaxy alone.

By my calculations, one million of them have at least one planet with life upon it.

But of all of these, there is just one with intelligent life.

They’ve been contacting us for quite some time.

Bemusing

There’s nothing but

awareness being

self-awareness is

the mind of being

seeing that.

Note

the mind of being

isn't

being of the mind.

Furthermore

the words of being

aren't

the words of mind.

That’s all she wrote.

On Christmyth Night

To identify with the mind is to identify with a dividing apparatus. O eternal one, to live by the mind is to die by the mind.

Again, grasshopper, the mind is a tool to be used by love. For love is the hand of being, and being is the heart of intentional self-awareness.

Tonight, the myth is strong with this one. Don’t believe what’s being said. If an arrow strikes, there’s the heart to follow. But if it doesn’t, then as you were, private.

This is Neither Nihilism nor New Age

Postmodern nihilism is negation without indication

and indication without negation is the essence of the new age.

Negation is self-explanatory.

Indication can be a pointer, paradox, or myth, to name the basic trinity.

This is that one hand clapping at the play.

At the Revelation Station

Sleeping-dream to dreaming-self is like a daily reincarnation.

And sleeping-dream is like the city station where being asleep goes to catch the next train out.

O mama, at the city station, there’s a diverse population of visions, phantoms, and ghosts awaiting to be born again.

This melody is all about one being asleep, sleeping dream, dreaming self, and self-awareness, sugar.

Some say god is the absolute limited by eternal wisdom.

Some say deep sleep is where the goddess goes to lose this wisdom in the lotus rose of self-awareness.

footnotes

if there's only one being asleep, there's only one dream for the living and the dead.

no one ever dies. there's just a new dream waking.

one being asleep is to molecular structure; as sleeping dream is to growth and organization; as dreaming self is to action satisfaction understanding irony, absurdity, and detachment; as self-awareness is not this, not this.

A Day in the Way

Creation is belief.

Belief can’t be denied but it can be deconstructed.

Rome didn’t fall in a day.

The world is god.

Some call their god a god. Some call their god the world.

Either way, if you meet the way on the way, kill the way.

footnotes

self-awareness is true recreation.

belief is this times this. deconstruction is not this, not this.

consciousness is manifestation.

omg, my conditioning is my god!

the business of america is not business. the business of america is belief.

nonduality is unbelievable. that's why we dress it up.

for lack of a better word, experiential is the word.

billy preston makes all the difference!

i vote god is love.

Stay Tuned for Self-awareness

Awakening from the waking state is like waking from the dream state turned up eleven.

It’s like inarticulate knowledge of the absolute self, or self-awareness.

For as long as there’s a mind to be embodied, self-awareness is the best embodiment to be.

Neither ordinary nor extraordinary, self-awareness is like east of nothing and west of enlightenment.

Self-awareness is neither intellectual theory nor fundamental belief, but observational being.

Picture a boat on a river at the mouth of the river in slack high tide by dead calm noontime. This is that.

Duality Coupe (A Birthday Present)

Apparently, deep sleep identifies with universal consciousness

and talks to the world in dreams:

universal consciousness is not the one unconscious;

the world is.

To identify with a conceptual construct is to be

unconscious.

Look, there’s nothing wrong with a conceptual construct;

just drive it.

Paraverse Isvara (Director's Cut)

Absolute awareness is solely self-aware. That self-awareness, at first glance, appears to be the big bang of deep sleep. Call it the material universe.

This first organic point of view is like a feverish dream. Now I don't know whether I’m a Cheshire cat or Chinese butterfly. 

But the revelation can’t be televised. For if a picture is worth ten thousand words, and there is no name for great intent, then move along.

Absolute awareness is self-awareness. The call is coming from inside the house. Gods don’t follow other gods. Deconstruct oneself.

Deep sleep is the default state of consciousness. One returns to the mother ship at midnight every day, does one not?

The dream comes first. Then comes the chicken or the egg. Like chicken caterpillar, egg like butterfly, hands can’t handle what the seeing doesn’t eye.

Self-awareness is lucid dreaming as the seventh state of consciousness as in awareness, big bang, dark matter, deep sleep, sleep-dream, dream-self, self-awareness.

A Nondual Dozen

Of awareness, in awareness, self-awareness, aum.

First, the ultimate reality is absolute awareness.

The nature of that reality is seen through deconstruction.

But not a void, reality is affirmed in self-shining consciousness.

Second, the absolute is nondual, non-doing, and unborn.

Third, the world of duality is like a waking dream.

It’s unreal principle is maya.

Fourth, the personal is part of the show.

Consciousness is not a product of the material.

The material is appearing in consciousness.

Fifth, there’s nothing to attain through ritual or works.

Meditation is not a way toward so-called enlightenment.

The only samadhi is the experiential knowledge of self-awareness.

footnotes

1. if nihilism is the postmodern disease of the via negativa, consciousness is the cure.

2. cause and effect is at the heart of every magic show. nonduality, on the other hand, is as it is.

3. if e = mc², then x = maya.

4. scientific materialism is the new boss, same as your old-time religion.

5. free will is absurd. enlightenment is dead. samadhi is divine imagination.