Reality is on no side of duality, and not even in the middle

Acharya Prashant

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Reality is on no side of duality, and not even in the middle

Dear Sir,Its all still there: the anger, the hatred, the jealousy, the envy, the pettiness and the comparing- all the works of the ego. Not only are they alive, they are kicking. Today morning I sensed them while talking to someone. Now it has left a cloud of severe depression 😦

Response:

What is the cause of depression? The event or the expectation that it should not have happened?

You have been building this expectation day in and day out. You read, you contemplate, you are rushing towards a target. Is it a surprise that you will be hurt?

Anger , hatred, jealousy, envy, can they go away just because the angry, hateful, jealous, envious mind wants them to go away?

Dont set targets , your targets will come from your past – the very thing that you want to get rid of.

Dear Sir,

Thanks. Its clearing.

Today I joined a group of people in Mumbai who were an “advaita” meet up group. They watched a 2 hour video of the talks of a fellow who is a follower or Ramana and Nisargadutta.

He claims to be enlightened and says that for him enlightenment was the understanding that there is no doership: that nobody does anything. That no one can do anything and everything is pre-ordained by karmic law. In other words no one can even contemplate about the self or become aware if it is not pre-destined.

While I was able to accept a large chunk of what he said, I argued with the group about one thing only: they seemed to take destiny to be some sort of rigid doctrine carved in stone. I am no proponent of absolute free will but I do believe in degrees of freedom, in that he claimed that all actions are conditioning and genetics. Even awareness won’t change that, it will just reduce condemnation. This would render a lot of what the Buddha said to be pointless. I mean there is dependent origination and we are constrained by our circumstances, by our nature and by external elements but that does not imply that everything is pre-ordained. There is no doer but there is doership and somehow to say that all doership is decided beforehand is an extreme stand. I don’t think Buddha felt that way.

What are your thoughts about this, Sir?

The group was sad overall. They drank beer and player poker after the talk!

Response:

Indefinite changing into the definite, none-one into many, and no-will into will: you know all of this. You know that reality is on no side of this, and reality is not even in the middle.

To say things are pre-ordained is to miss reality; to say free will exists is to miss it again. Both assume cause and effect, both assume something is happening (movement and change), both assume time and mind, both assume duality.

One side, other side…Maya gives one enough options. 😉

– Based on my interactions on various e-media.

Dated: 2nd February,’12

This article has been created by volunteers of the PrashantAdvait Foundation from transcriptions of sessions by Acharya Prashant
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