By Any Other Name

By Any Other Name

Ramana uses the attribution “Self” in the same way that other teachers use the word Absolute. He wants you to understand that your true “self” is not different than the Self.

But the true self which Ramana points to, your Absolute self, has no characteristics. You might conclude that you are insufficient in this quality or that quality, but your Absolute nature is beyond the limitations of any quality. Qualities—pro or con—are a concoction of your mind. In other words, your beingness as Self is not dependent upon whether you are adjudged to be an adequate person or an inadequate person. A rose with five petals is not less of a rose than one with twenty-four petals. The Self is all that is, as Ramana says. The Self, then, constitutes the inadequate as well as the adequate.

No sky… No earth… But still, Snowflakes fall! – Kajiwara Hashin