Cultivating and Uncovering Love.

[Joe Mc]

Listening recently to some 'neo advaitin' teachers, who say that meditation is not needed and in fact it is a hindrance to awakening. It feels to me like a partial truth which they never fully explain. Like for example there is one teacher who speaks alot about 'Huangpo' who was a Chinese Zen Master, who's writings they say are very direct and very close or accurate to what he actually said as they were written down on the day by a scribe.

What the Neo advaitin teacher never says is that Huangpo probably had meditated for over 30 years or more by the time he gave these inspirational talks ? Then he always goes on to say that meditation is not going to help etc. Also, with someone like the great Advaitin Master Ramana Maharshi who had a spontaneous awakening when he was 16 years of age and left home soon after. He sat in caves etc. for years on end, cross legged as if he was absorbing or integrating the awakening..he didn't just go on the teaching circuit as lots of 'Neo Advaitin' teachers do. It might even be said that he was refining his initial awakening through meditation, so again this question about meditation arises, if it is useful or if it is not in relation to Advaita Vedanta.

Without being disrespectful, I have to say that i get the feeling now, that some of the many 'Neo Advaitin Teachers' have only a philosophical viewpoint on Non-duality which is usually is very appealing at least to a curious seeker and one's own intellect but lacks the dynamic of 'Love' which a meditation like the Metta Bhavana encourages and cultivates ? Perhaps the new Advaitic movement mostly just gets a philosophical understanding of emptiness or non duality which however comforting and peaceful, is in my experience so far, only partial ? The dynamic of embracing life on a vibrant emotional level with a knowledge of emptiness doesn't come across alot with these teachers ?

So perhaps they forget to return to the market place ?The market place being the symbol for life itself as depicted in the sequence of paintings called the 'Ox Herding' paintings we find in Zen ? As the Zen saying also says, at the outset ..Rivers are Rivers, then they become something else, and in the end they become Rivers again, meaning that life goes on too and we are encouraged to engage with it dynamically not in some loose philosophical way.

For example we hear a child's cry for help, we spontaneous go to their aid through instinctual caring or compassion, does it matter that the act of love in this case is empty of inherent existence ? That nobody is crying and nobody is saving the child ? That may be the case philosophically that nobody is really there and that is were I'm feeling some of these guys are, they are trapped inside a philosophy more than an awakened reality ? Thanks for listening.