Advaita not only resolves the age-old conflicts between science and spirituality, it obliterates the very source of our questions.
Advaita teaches not that we are saved or doomed, but that we are enshrouded in ignorance. It teaches us that we are not who or what we think we are, in fact, that "who's" and "what's" are illusory fabrications. That's a tough sell, and it usually registers only after extensive investigation into the transience of every aspect of our existence. We don't want to be reminded of this. On the contrary, from the moment we are born we are called to "walk, run, chase, flee" after things of the world. We are conditioned from birth to arise from oceanic bliss like swirling and sucking waterspouts, transience devouring transience, without respite wherever we roam. And then? Dissipation, dissolution, despondency, death. The illusory ego and all of its illusory treasures resolve back into the ocean of consciousness.
Such is a typical life. We dance upon the waters of a mirage. We squander our days chasing after ceaseless cravings, held hostage to mind and body--to what end? Wealth? Power? Egotism run amok. Ignorance breeding futility. No matter what we amount to in worldly terms, we are ever children implacably buffeted by a cosmos we will never trust or control. We attempt to whistle past the graveyard with our emotional myths and our intellectual moats, but to no avail. Still the thought of death, especially our own annihilation, chills to the bone.
Advaita teaches not that we are saved or doomed, but that we are enshrouded in ignorance. It teaches us that we are not who or what we think we are, in fact, that "who's" and "what's" are illusory fabrications. That's a tough sell, and it usually registers only after extensive investigation into the transience of every aspect of our existence. We don't want to be reminded of this. On the contrary, from the moment we are born we are called to "walk, run, chase, flee" after things of the world. We are conditioned from birth to arise from oceanic bliss like swirling and sucking waterspouts, transience devouring transience, without respite wherever we roam. And then? Dissipation, dissolution, despondency, death. The illusory ego and all of its illusory treasures resolve back into the ocean of consciousness.
Such is a typical life. We dance upon the waters of a mirage. We squander our days chasing after ceaseless cravings, held hostage to mind and body--to what end? Wealth? Power? Egotism run amok. Ignorance breeding futility. No matter what we amount to in worldly terms, we are ever children implacably buffeted by a cosmos we will never trust or control. We attempt to whistle past the graveyard with our emotional myths and our intellectual moats, but to no avail. Still the thought of death, especially our own annihilation, chills to the bone.
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