Theos-Talk Archives (November 2002 Message tt00698)

--- In theos-talk@y..., "rnewman2003" <robertnewman@e...> wrote:
> THERE'S THIS DIFFERENCE, AND THERE'S NO REFUTING IT, 
> UNFORTUNATELY FOR ADHERENTS OF ADWAITA VEDANTA: Those who have 
> experienced and described the supreme personality invariably have 
> also experienced and described the impersonal aspect of absolute 
> reality, and they state from their direct experience of both that 
the 
> personality is the ultimate aspect.

That is true if they are devotees of the dualistic (Dwaita) school. 
Those who study in my school (i.e., Zen) insist that anything which 
has form is intrindicsally illusory and that the ultimate reality is 
necessarily formless and void. One must therefore press on from any 
experience which has form until one arrives at the formless. The 
tesimony of hese masters is the opposite of the ones you quote.

The teaching of the Buddha was that the personal deities of the 
Hindus may exist, but that they are not enlightened and therefore 
cannot assist others in attaining what they have not themselves 
attained. For them to try to confer what they do not have would be 
the ultimate application of the axiom that those who cannot do teach, 
or the blind leading the blind. Sankara's system is clearly Buddhist 
in origin and Sankara himself was referred to as a crypto-Buddhist.

Ultimately the only thing that matters is the experience, though, and 
not the theory.

Anyway, thanks for your interesting comments. Yes, I have read the 
VEDANTA SUTRAS (otherwise known as the BRAHMA SUTRAS).