Reinvent The Self!

It is a common observation or experience. Some saint, yogi, philosopher, or person shares with everyone what he found, or what he realized that made him happy forever or enlightened. He always shares this for the benefit of all. And really, it might help somebody get inspired and it could make him follow the path towards enlightenment. Then people come to him, start studying him. They slowly start appreciating what he said, or what he found. This is OK.

The side effect of all these things is it gives rise to a new sect, a new cult, a new religion, so to say. In case of Buddha, who is widely regarded as the 9^th Avatar of Vishnu, his followers, instead of following his teachings, preferred to start a new religion (they may not like to call it religion) in the name of Buddhism. That is, instead of celebrating their own experience towards enlightenment that they got by following the teachings of Buddha, they preferred to celebrate Buddha himself. And slowly it gave rise to a sect. Buddha himself said, “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!”.

In trying to passionately follow some saint, or person, we slowly and indirectly develop hatred towards other side of the argument, alternative views, or other experience. It gets bitter and bitter over the time and becomes acrimonious. Madhva strongly refuted Adi Sankara. Adi Sankara strongly refuted Buddha. And so on.

I strongly believe that one should keep moving ahead as he comes across different viewpoints by encompassing them. As Rudyard Kipling said, “If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you but make allowance for their doubting too!” I feel, second is more important or to put in other words, latter is a prerequisite to doing the first, if you want to keep moving forward.

However, we see that Buddha never refuted anything or established anything by himself. He just shared his experience and in fact, urged others not to believe him but instead to experience the truth by themselves. It is sad to see people talk or behave as if they own Buddha, or they know Buddha better than anyone else!

Recently, I too came across this acrimony. I follow Eckhart Tolle and am quite impressed by his book “A New Earth”. I followed him to the extent of joining his “School of Awakening” program. In that process, I also joined his official Facebook groups. Till this point, all merry! I tried to post something as a question and put my opinion around that. This went against their (group’s) taste and my post (question) did get rejected. Similar experience in another group. Perhaps I questioned one of Eckhart Tolle’s teachings, or perhaps I showed my disagreement to just one of so many things he said. In turn, I got rejected. All my rights to follow the truth were revoked. I happily quit those groups. I wanted to follow the path to the truth and not the Facebook groups. Please!

If your questions are questioned, then there’s no one left to give any answer. The truth shines bright within you if your question seeking it is genuine and that It has Its own ways to take you to the Answer you wanted to get! Love the Truth. The most interesting thing is if you start loving the truth, you end up loving everyone.

Compassion! Free of acrimony. Free of refutation, reputation, repudiation!

I tend to call this inTOLLErance! And I wish everyone gets around with this in his own and unique path towards realizing the Truth!