Tag: nisargadatta

Steady Wisdom: Day 104

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Steady Wisdom: 108 Verses On Changing My Thinking

DAY 104

There is no “is” or “is not.”  There is no duality or non-duality.  In truth, nothing arises from me.  What more is there to say?
– Ashtavakra Samhita 20:14
Meditation

Non-duality is a concept based on the belief that duality is a real thing that exists in opposition to myself.  But how can this be?  I am one alone and I do not change.  Therefore, nothing can arise from me.  Duality is not even possible in the first place, so what to speak of describing its effects as being either existent or non-existent?

When the duality which forms the basis for all words and descriptions is recognized to be the illusion that it is, how can I truly be described?  I simply am what I am.  What more is there to say?  

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Steady Wisdom: Day 83

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Steady Wisdom: 108 Verses On Changing My Thinking

DAY 83

I have no attributes.  I am action-less, eternal, ever-free and indestructible.  I am not the body which is unreal. 
-Aparokshanubhuti V.27
Meditation

This much is obvious: The body possesses attributes such as tallness, shortness, thinness, fatness etc.; the body performs action; the body is subject to beginning and end, to creation (birth) and destruction (death). 

This much is also obvious:  Because the body is an ever-changing collection of attributes that has a beginning and end, it is unreal; I am reality itself so I cannot be the body; further, I am the knower of the unreal body so for this reason too, I cannot be the body.

My firm conviction is: Because I am not the body, I am not bound by it; I am not defined or limited by its attributes; I perform no action whatsoever; I have no beginning, no end and I cannot be changed.  OM. 

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Steady Wisdom: Day 73

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Steady Wisdom: 108 Verses On Changing My Thinking

DAY 73

I am like the ocean and the universe is like the wave.  Knowing this, there is nothing to be renounced, accepted or destroyed. 
-Ashtavakra Samhita 6:2
Meditation

The universe is but an illusory appearance of my own self.  Therefore I alone exist.  Since nothing other than myself exists, there is nothing available for me to accept, reject or destroy.  OM. 

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Steady Wisdom: Day 65

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Steady Wisdom: 108 Verses On Changing My Thinking

DAY 65

The universe is merely an illusion.  Of what interest can it be to me?  What reason is there to fear death? 
-Ashtavakra Samhita 3:11
Meditation

The body-mind will surely die.  But seeing as the body-mind is part and parcel of the illusory universe, its death is also illusory.  What reason is there to fear an illusion? 

Further, what does an illusion have to offer me?  Similar to the way that food in a dream cannot satisfy hunger in the waking state, I cannot find satisfaction or security in the illusory world after I’ve awoken to my true nature as the absolute reality.  OM. 

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Steady Wisdom: Day 64

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Steady Wisdom: 108 Verses On Changing My Thinking

DAY 64

The mind’s discriminating cognition, “I am the knower alone, never an object of knowledge, pure, eternally liberated” belongs to the intellect.  It is a transitory object known to me. 
-Upadesha Sahasri 12:14 (Metrical)
Meditation

Self-ignorance, in the form of a thought such as the firm conviction “I am the body-mind” is an object known to me.  Self-knowledge, in the form of a thought such as the firm conviction, “I am the self” is also an object known to me.  Since it is clear that both self-ignorance and self-knowledge are objects known to me, I realize that I wasn’t deluded in the first place.  Nor am I now an enlightened.  I am, and always have been, the eternally liberated self (not that I was ever bound).  OM. 

Read Series Introduction