User talk:Asteramellus

Hello, Asteramellus, and Welcome to Wikipedia!

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Extraordinary Writ (talk) 23:35, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

realization.org

Check realization.org; really good! To my taste, while Mahayana-Buddhism has the best 'theoretical' underpinning of emptiness, the neo-Advaita branch has the best experiental descriptions. Regards, Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 04:48, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

thanks so much. Looking forward to reading there. Asteramellus (talk) 23:15, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

"The body" as vikalpa

Hi. I came coincidentally across two pieces of text which were quite informative; I thought you might be interested too.

Keiji Nishitani, “Religion and Nothingness”:

"Being self in not being self" means that the being of the self as a personal, conscious, corporeal human and the existence of the self as subject are essentially illusory appearances. It means, moreover, that the various phenomena of human body and human mind, and all of reflective knowledge wherein the self knows the self and objects, are essentially illusory appearances: what the ancients called “vain discernment” (vikalpa).

Michael James, “It’s “I am I” not “I-I””, https://realization.org/p/michael-james/i-i/michael-james.i-i.html :

As Lakshmana Sarma points out in his Tamil commentary on verse 30 of Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu, Sri Ramana described the experience of true self-knowledge as ‘நான் நான்’ (nāṉ nāṉ), ‘I am I’, in order to contrast it with our experience of the ego, ‘நான் இது’ (nāṉ idu), ‘I am this’, and he expresses the same idea in Chapter 9 of Maha Yoga when he writes, “the Sage calls this formless Consciousness the ‘I am I’ to distinguish it from the ego-sense which has the form of ‘I am this (body)’” (2002 edition, p. 149). That is, whereas we now experience ourself as ‘I am this body’, when this false ego-sense is swallowed by the clear light of true self-knowledge we will experience ourself only as ‘I am I’.

“I am this” does not only refer to the body, but also to self-representations, “vikalpa.” I always found this confusing, that RM juxtaposes the ‘true self’ with the body, as if there are no emotions, self-image, etc. But maybe this is a ‘failure’ of interpretation, as others have interpreted “this” as referring to the body. Nishitani makes clear that it is all about representations (compare Yogachara, ‘representation only’), mental images, ‘thing-thinking’. We can recognize that all what we conceive ourselves to be are representations, mental images; what remains, then (apart from the concrete, functioning body and mind), is ‘emptiness, the “I am (that) I am” (“I” am being), which is Svayam prakāśa (self-luminosity), turning back the radiance, awareness being aware of awareness. I use the word emptiness, because that’s how I experience it. It’s not some-“thing” you can pin down; ‘it’ is.

NB: nirvikalpa is not, or not only, I think, the absence of thought, but seeing-through this constructing of mental images, representations (see Kuntimaddi Sadananda, Journey Beyond: A Non-Dual Approach: Volume I). As vikalpa is something like 'erroneous thought' or 'erroneous mental representations', nirvikalpa is both (I think) sunyata/emptiness/[ure awareness and the stilling of desires etc. At least for me that explains how emptiness and desirelessness are related; both are 'no-mind'. Regards, Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 09:09, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

@Joshua Jonathan Thanks for sharing. The Nishitani quote is really helpful. Asteramellus (talk) 23:24, 5 January 2025 (UTC)