Don't Mention the Camel

One thing that comes across forcefully from the study of the Indian tradition of philosophy is its simplicity.

It's easy to miss this if one's knowledge of it is entirely mediated through a group. If a term is spent studying five verses, it is likely that most of us have forgotten verse 1 by the end. It can become a bit like studying a flower by training a powerful microscope on it - one loses the sense of a beautiful object that can be appreciated immediately and in its totality, without a lot of thought.

Not that Advaita Vedanta is "philosophy for dummies" - not at all. But it can seem as though we can't see the bigger picture because of our love of close analysis. And then, when someone asks us what 'philosophy' means, we are stuck for an answer. It's a bit like the old story of the seven blind men describing an elephant. I'm sure that a blind man could tell me amazing things about an elephant's knee - its texture, its smell, its bulk - but I would not for that reason wish to be blind. We privilege the fine detail at the expense of the eye's ability to take all in at a glance. Both are needed.

The antidote to this is to read the Upanishads or the Gita oneself - not taking years over it, but reading 20 pages at a time. Read an Upanishad at a sitting, or even two Upanishads. If you find a bit that's obscure, don't fret about it, just skip on and come back to it later. Dip into the Vedas. Or read a modern Advaitin such as Nisargadatta, Ramakrishna or Vivekananda.

Another valuable approach is to read a good Western account of Indian philosophy (I'm currently reading Paul Deussen's The Philosophy of the Upanishads). Why? Because some things are too obvious for an Indian to mention. It's the same reason why there are no camels in the Koran - they were so common that there was no need for an Arab to go on about them. So if we want to get the Upanishadic spirit, we need to understand not only the words on the page, but also those that are present but not on the page.

Or, you could go along to a class offered by one of the many Indian centres of learning. I understand from more than one friend that the Chinmaya organization has some superb teachers. Apparently it's an excellent complement to School study.

When I was a child I had a board game that said, "A minute to learn - A lifetime to master". It might take more than a minute to learn Advaita Vedanta, but it doesn't take a lifetime. Get the basics under your belt, in whatever way you can, and devote your life to mastery.