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RS
Good question.
The “Personalist” monotheistic Vaishnavas who believe that God is a personal, loving being who grants Liberation to his devotees would probably disagree.
Shankaracharya actually instituted the Pañcāyatana devatā vidhi in which the abstract and Impersonal Nirguṇa Brahman could be worshiped as a Personal Iśvara - a fall-back position for those who needed such devotional practices and who could not cope with abstract meditation.
Saguṇa Iśvara in this system could be worshiped in five forms - śiva, viṣṇu, gaṇeśa, śakti and sūrya. And the devotee could choose one of them to be his iṣṭha-devata (tutelary deity). Thus there are many who do choose Viṣṇu and become “Vaiṣṇavas” but not exclusively so.
The vast majority of Vaiṣṇavas follow either Rāmānuja or Madhva.
Having said that - there is evidence of Advaita Vedānta (Non-dualism) in many of the texts accepted as canonical by the Vaiṣṇavas - the Bhāgavātam is a prime example, also in Nārāyaṇa & Mahā-nārāyaṇa Upaṇiṣads.
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A2A
You don’t become the awareness, you are the awareness. That’s what’s witnessing!
“We are looking for what’s looking” :-)
You simply notice something, anything, thoughts, emotions, body sensations, sounds from outside your meditation, and you notice the Noticer, that there’s a neutral awareness that’s noticing these things.
There’s been a lot of confusion on Quora about what this awareness is, where it came from, and what’s the proper nomenclature. Is it Consciousness? Acting on behalf of the Absolute? Is it . Turiya, the background that underlies and transcends the other three states of consciousness? Is it just Beingness? Can it be isolated in the subject-object sense? Or is it Emptiness, nothing there at all?
In the end, it doesn’t matter. It’s just mind again, getting hung up in semantics and concepts. As long as you can notice all your thoughts, feelings, body sensations and all other rising & passing phenomena (much of which you may have a judgment/charge on or feel the need to engage with,) and notice something that is aware of it, that is totally neutral and uninvolved with any of it, more like empty space, pure observer-ship, you have already succeeded in ‘witnessing.’
As you continue practicing meditation, likely there will come a point when you are less intrigued by all the thoughts, plans, desires, judgments and other phenomena, and more intrigued by the neutral watcher Itself. Then, naturally and without effort, you start to explore that Silence and Emptiness, start to identify Yourself as It, notice it’s Who You Really Are.
From that point on you may no longer call it ‘meditation‘ or ‘witnessing’ the awareness.’ You’ll simply call it Being. :-)
- Teja
The only way to really know the answer to this question is to stop thinking.
Many years ago, when I wanted to know what I was after thinking stopped, I sat in meditation. As I began sitting, I found that thoughts are very persistent and do not stop easily on their own.
I sat for a couple of hours night after night, diligently every night, establishing a safe space for my body and mind to slow down.
Eventually I reached a space where thoughts could come, but awareness was not drawn to them. Thoughts happened, but watching also happened. Then thought stopped, and only awareness remained.
The silence was profound, and the feeling of joy was amazing!
There are more answers beyond this, but the first answer that we find when thoughts cease is that yes, we still exist, and that Wow, I am the unbound, center-less awareness that is beyond thinking!
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True reading comes from pleasure, not obligation. When obliged to read something that doesn't speak to you, you'll ultimately forget it."
-- Sandra Cisneros, A House of My Own: Stories from My Life
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-- Jarod Kintz
Twilight stroll to compost bin
Two rusty leaves rap
I’m tagging off of Pausha’s answer, which is spot on. Nothing leads to awakening.
That said, the ‘forced-retreat’ effect of being shut-in at home, without being able to quickly drive off to one of your many distractions in life, as well as watching your money dwindle without being able to replenish, and worrying every little body sensation is a symptom and you’ve ‘got it,’ is forcing a lot of people to face their deepest fears in an unavoidable way.
Not everybody. In the age of Internet, plenty of people just glue their eyes to their screens and reroute their emotional processes to relentless browsing, semi-successfully avoiding encountering their fears and deeper nature.
But I am in contact with hundreds of people who are all admitting the quarantine has forced up their deepest fears & feelings in a way unmatched except for when they were told by their doctor that they had late-stage terminal cancer, or some similarly-intense sudden dissolution of their ‘known.’
So even though nothing leads to awakening, to paraphrase Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche: “Awakening is an accident. Being forced to get in touch with your deepest fears & identity may make you more accident-prone.”
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pa
First of all I love you.
Meditation is soothing and healing ointment for the mind.
It rocks the colic baby of the mind to peace using the stillness and silence that is present just behind each thought.
Can you see the white behind these words I type? Did you appreciate the white before I mentioned it? And as I mentioned it didn’t you feel, “Oh, of course! It’s been there all along!”
Do you see that these words I type are completely dependent upon the white for their existence, and that they exist inside the white?
The white is silent, says nothing, does nothing, it only exists, and yet by its passivity it allows the words I type to be, to come and go, to be written and erased, understood and forgotten, but the white remains, and it remains unchanged.
You are this “white”. You are the silence behind your thoughts, by whose contrast you can hear the thoughts at all.
Rest there, in the silence. Thoughts may be “typed” inside the silence as you sit and watch, but that’s okay. No need to say, “Go away”.
Just see that it is there and it is you, you are the silence.
Watch the thought take form, like a cloud in the sky that you are, and watch it pass, and observe that you remain unchanged.
So what? What benefit does this have?
The fact that this stillness remains unchanged implies it cannot disappear.
How could it? Disappearing would be change! The silence is literally nothing, and so is not composed, and what is not put together cannot be taken apart, and if it cannot be dismantled it must remain.
This means that the deepest part of you is eternally present, despite all the change that occurs so naturally within it.
This means you are eternal, that in your deepest essence you cannot be erased or dissipated.
You will never not exist.
Which means death is not the end.
Death is just another change within the changeless.
Death is not to be feared more than any other passing change you endure 1,000 times a day.
This confidence and victory over death finally sets you free to live, since the fear of death limits our living and striving severely.
Be the nothing you already are, and fly free like a new hatchling taking flight for the first time in the empty sky of all that is truly and finally real!
See you on the flip side brothers and sisters, where we find that each one of us is part of this one sky; this spirit of life and love.
Blessings!
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RISHIKESH UKHAND
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- Constantly comparing yourself to everyone else. – Don’t compare your progress in life with that of others. We all need our own time to travel our own distance. It’s perfectly OK to be different. Today, the only person you should try to be better than, is the person you were yesterday. Prove yourself to yourself, not others.
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