[MD] Wisdom

[118]

Hi Dan,

Thanks for the refresher.  I do believe there is much we can learn from the
original philosophies.  The trick is translating the dialect to make it more
immediately accessible to our present state of understanding.  Neti Neti
does not quite do it.  And if by God you are talking Christian Sunday School
God, I agree completely.  No big brain in the sky for me.  It is tricky to
use the word god since it has so many meanings.  For many, Brahman is a god,
at least that's what my Hindu friends say.  It is also posted as such on
Hinduwebsite.com.  Again it is the fault of translation.  So I have chosen
not to capitalize it when it is not the Christian variety.  Many would
translate Brahman and Atman as the father and the holy spirit.  This works
for me if I take a mystical approach and fool around with definitions.
 Thanks again for the analogies.

Mark

On Sat, Oct 16, 2010 at 9:54 PM, Dan Glover <daneglover at gmail.com> wrote:

> "What is the wisdom contained in the Upanishads? To answer, I must say
> something about the word Upanishad. The Sanskrit roots mean "sit down
> near" - Upanishadic wisdom is the sort that you might get by sitting
> down near your guru or spiritual master and engaging in a dialogue. It
> is quite distinct from the sort of wisdom that you might get by a
> detached pursuit of truth for truth's sake, and it is miles apart from
> the knowledge that you gain when your objective is a course grade or
> some other credential.
>
> "Moreover, the Upanishadic wisdom obtained through intense interaction
> with a guru is not quite the same as that attained simply by a careful
> reading of the Upanishads. An intellectual attempt that is not also a
> spiritual search can get no further than a surface hold on Upanishadic
> truth. Upanishadic wisdom is, in the last analysis, something that
> needs to be recognized nonconceptually. Hence, I cannot pretend to be
> transmitting Upanishadic wisdom to you. What I aim to do is simply
> explain the concepts that might provide the intellectual bearings for
> a spiritual search that eventually does away with the need for
> intellectual bearings." [Guidebook to ZMM]
>
> Dan comments:
>
> When a person's intellectual cup of tea is full to the brim, there is
> no room to form a Dynamic understanding that does away with the need
> for intellectual tea. All they have a taste for is intellectualism.
> They want to talk instead of listen... they want to shout out how much
> they know and how smart they are for knowing it... they tend to
> denigrate those who make any attempt to shock them out of the
> intellectual malaise in which they have unwittingly become ensnared.
>
> "To get an idea of Upanishadic truth, you need to have some
> understanding of two key concepts, "Brahman" and "Atman." The word
> Brahman comes from the Sanskrit root that means "to grow." The
> Upanishadic thinkers used this word to refer to the source of all
> beings, that from which everything in the universe grows. Brahman is
> thus a creator of sorts, but not like our Western God, who creates out
> of nothing a world that is distinct from God. Brahman grows into or
> becomes the many things of the world. At the same time, Brahman is not
> exhausted by the world of things but remains its own reality, which is
> true reality. One must not reduce Brahman to the many things that
> Brahman somehow becomes; rather, the many are to be reduced to
> Brahman.
>
> "The Upanishads are filled with stories in which spiritual masters
> enjoin spiritual seekers to peel away the layers of the universe in
> order to discover the subtle essence of all. This discovery, which is
> to be prized beyond all else, is not attainable through ordinary ways
> of knowing, for ordinary perceptual/conceptual knowledge is geared
> toward marking off qualities from other qualities and objects from
> other objects, while Brahman is neither a particular object nor a
> particular quality but that which underlies all objects and qualities,
> the unqualified ground, the Pure Object. No wonder, then, that it is
> spoken of as "that from which words and thought return without having
> attained it" (Taittiriya Upanishad, Ch. II, sect. 4, 1.1).
> Nonetheless, although concepts cannot get a hold on Brahman, they can
> be used !o point the way toward it. The Upanishads are full of
> analogies that are meant to provide a notion of Brahman (e.g., the
> salt that pervades the water and is in our awareness without itself
> being an object of direct perception). And lest seekers confuse the
> analogy with the reality, they are continually reminded that Brahman
> is neti, neti, "not this, not this." Analogies and negations do not
> attain the goal but they at least mark off a path from which seekers
> will eventually leap into transcendental consciousness." [ibid.]
>
> Dan comments:
>
> Dynamic Quality of the MOQ is not the same as the concept of God. It
> is Pure Quality or the Pure Object Brahman. We can point to it
> intellectually and via analogy but never gain a grasp on it
> conceptually. It is not this, not that.
>
> Thank you,
>
> Dan
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