What I Love about Vedanta: By Jody Radzik

There’s a whole lot to love about Vedanta, as Vedanta straddles every spiritual ideology and practice that is known to man. It provides a marriage between Bhakti and Jnana yoga, bringing the ways of the heart and of intellectual discrimination together.

Ceaseless manifestation is the way of Mother Shakti, and Her constant acceleration makes the World an endless dynamo of creation. But Vedanta is like an eternal bell that rings in every moment of history. Its form finds the contours of every culture and society. All we need to do is hear it with the ears of the time and place we are in.

Vedanta tells us the truth. We are all the very same Pure Being. We are all identical with that one true reality, Brahman. All that we see and hear exists only as a dream called Maya, acted out on the stage of the world by Mother Shakti. She’s a puppet Mistress with a zillion hands with which she controls every single being in every universe! Not an atom moves outside Her power. It’s quite a show She puts on!

But the Jnana yogi knows that we are none other than the Self, and that the Self knows only the Self. The Oneness that we are is nothing other than That. There is no involvement in the ongoing drama of life for the Self. It exists as each one of us, but it doesn’t do a single thing. It doesn’t even watch.

So whom is the person writing this? If we are all the eternal Self, utterly free and untouched by anything of the world, then how can there be a writer who is separate from the reader?

For this answer we rely on Bhakti Yoga. It shows us the way as a devotee, a simple servant of the Lord. If we find our love for God, God returns it threefold. We can do our work and play our games, all in the context of being a devotee. Mother Shakti controls *everything* , but She has given us a little leash to play with. As devotees we love to give it back to Her, and let Her take the lead for good.

It is important to remember that Mother holds every key in our lives, including those to our own liberation. There are some who may try to go it alone, but in the end all are shown the Self by Mother’s grace alone.

It is Maya that binds us, and Maya that liberates us. All understanding has its source in our true nature as the Self, so Self realization is the greatest gift Mother can give. She would like to be more generous with it, but we fill our heads with ideas and expectations and thus blow a fog between our understanding and our Selves.

Fortunately, we have the shelter of the Great Saints and Sages to take refuge with. When we come to be blessed with sincere aspiration their grace will manifest in a myriad of ways, assuring us an appropriate course of action in our spiritual practice no matter what role we are playing in the world.

All we need to do is love them. Be like kittens mewing for our Mother. Let Her take care of everything. Vedanta does itself when powered by this love. We can throw out the books and techniques if we have this love. Living in this love will bring us to the clear and direct understanding that we’ve never been anything other than God, even as we continue to play as God’s devotee in this dream we call our lives.

This Swirling World

This swirling world is of no consequence.
What can it do to me! I am the always Eternal,
once bound, now ever free.

Distractions require connection, a person to
hold out the hook. I am the empty oasis,
there’s no words on the pages of this book.

The world plays out as a drama, the actors
immersed in their parts. I am now just the one
in the audience, and the stage has its source in my heart.

When awake we can see we are nothing, the vase holding
not even air. The flowers were just an illusion,
an idea that has never been there.
The you and the me are a myth, with relationship
the main arc of its plot. While that story
will go on forever, a part of it forever I’m not.

Jai Ma is the last of the hurdles, for in order to
correctly see, one must let go of every distinction.
Only then can one truly be free!