Namaste,
It seems that non duality is becoming more popular in the west or outside of India, and many teachers are popping up ( I find it amazing that once one has some understanding they become a teacher, but that's another topic). What I find as a current trend is that they all claim to be Advaita teachers as a way to be connected to an ancient path to give itself more authority, but almost non of them will really quote, discuss or even given much credit to Smriti and Sruti, they may add the odd Sanskrit word in here and there and may mention the Bhagavad Gita and Upanishads, but it seems they are creating a new style of non duality which is unique. So what they tend to do is borrow a few words, even when they say "Advaita" it's a borrowed term, they are do not even encourage the study of Sanskrit literature. Perhaps in 10 years there will not be any mention of Bhagavad Gita, Upanishads but only of what Rupert Spira said, or Francis Lucille and the like.
This post is not to criticize them, as they have some valid points, mostly the audience may not be familiar with the tradition of Sanatana Dharma, Advaita is defined properly in its exact context, and one then may need to learn the whole vast spectrum diversity and literature within Sanatana Dharma, that's a lot of time that would need to be set aside. We may get lost in grasping, Siddhanta's. For example in a recent thread one person asked what are the fundamentals of Advaita, then he gets giving different threads to read, advised to read this book that book etc, but why not just say, just focus on awareness itself. In no way am I saying one is better than the other.
So a problem that I see may arise in the over simplification, where non dual teachers have reduced the vast teachings within Sanskrit and Sanatana Dharma tradition to just observing awareness, and calling everything awareness and that is awareness is all one, personally that doesn't really tell me much, its a nice meditation, but so much is missing, or is it? And then we have the vast amounts of books from Sanskrit culture, or written forms where they are studied in a systematic way to understand what Advaita actually means. Which would include a way of life, not just academic.
Is just going back to awareness enough, and if it is how descriptive does awareness become before it's translated into to much theory and jumble of words and concepts. And once one arrives at awareness surely its the result of accumulated past practice and purification. One may describe the view say from Mount Everest, but they may not mention that they had to battle hard to get there, and that leaves many people trying to jump from sea level to the top in one jump, and that sounds impossible to me.
So the conflict mentioned here is one of over complication against over simplification. Its far to easy to say just find a balance, that again simplifies it to much.
So there are a few points here
Are the teachings and teachers of Non Duality outside of India to be considered as Advaitists.
Is Advaita just one defined practice or school of thought.
Do we need epistemology and study of the teachings or can we just recognize that we are awareness.
And whatever else you can draw from this post
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