Vedanta

At long last, I return. It's been a very busy few months, but I want to share with you my impressions of a recent Carlos Pomeda DVD I watched regarding Vedanta. The schools of thought characterized as Vedanta arose during a period of much prosperity in India. It was a great time for scholars and intellectuals of all stripes and was marked by spirited philosophical debate. While there were three main branches of Vedanta, Advaita, Ramanya, and Madhva, I will focus on Advaita, the "non-dual" system.

Advaita Vedanta asserts that everything is Brahman, the Absolute. There is no difference between us and them, us and a rock, us and "God." Doesn't sound so different from everyone having Buddha nature, right?

Advaita Vedanta is credited with dealing the death blow Buddhism in India, but it is interesting to note that the former borrows an important concept from the latter. Shankaracharya, the father of Advaita Vedanta, used maya, or illusion, to explain the apparent contradiction between the universe being all one and our perception of it as many. Maya has two powers, veiling and projecting, and with those powers, it supports the errroneous notion in our minds that we are separate, discrete beings.

So the implication for our practice, and for our sense of who we are, is that we already are that which we seek! We just have to learn to see through the illusion! Again, this doesn't sound so different from Buddhism!