The title of this post refers to an article by Michael James. According to Michael: This is the crucial and extremely valuable secret that Sri Bhagavan [Ramana Maharshi] has revealed to us all about the nature of our ego or mind: If we attend to anything other than ourself, our mind will thereby rise and […]
A short love letter to India
India is the only human civilization that discovered Self-realization and created institutions to hand down that knowledge. India is the spiritual teacher of all humanity. Photo: Vitalla Temple in Hampi, Karnataka, India
The greatest miracle
Pain hurts. This is the greatest miracle we know of. If this sounds strange, please read on. I picked pain for my example rather than sound or sight or blueness or impatience or orgasm or affection or a billion other phenomena which are equally miraculous only because English happens to have a peculiar word, ‘hurt’, […]
General anesthesia and Advaita Vedanta
It is sometimes said that Advaita Vedanta began with Gaudapada’s commentary on the Mandukya Upanishad. It is from this Upanishad and commentary that we get the doctrine of the three states (waking, dream, and sleep) and turiya, the fourth. Whether Advaita really began with Gaudapada’s commentary, I don’t know. I’m not an intellectual historian. But […]
Nalla Pillai Mudaliar
The photo above shows Nallapillai Studio, a photography business in Kumbakonam, India, as it exists today. The business was created in 1878 by Nalla Pillai Mudaliar, the great-great-grandfather of the present owner. Nalla Pillai was a devotee of Sri Mouni Guru Swamigal. When I began writing this article, I thought that Sri Mouni Guru Swamigal […]
Catalog of Ramana photos
Realization.org recently published a gallery with about 1500 photos of Ramana. Further reading Ramana photo gallery on Realization.org Article about the Sri Ramanasramam photo archive Photo by Eliot Elisofon
Astonished by the vehemence with which he spoke
I recently posted a link to an article by David Godman that evaluates the accuracy of books that record Ramana’s teachings. One of David’s criteria for judging a book is whether Ramana reviewed and edited it. We can apply this criterion not only to whole books, but also to shorter pieces of text like the […]
P.R. Subramanian Iyer
P.R. Subramanian Iyer, known to friends as Mani and often identified as P.R.S. Mani, worked as a photographer for a movie studio in Tamil Nadu. He married the daughter of Ganapati Muni and died at 33. I think (but I’m not sure) that he is the man in the lower left corner of the photo […]
Neti neti
A friend of a friend studied French by reciting sentences like these: ‘Buenos días’ is not French. ‘அறிவே நான்’ is not French. ‘Ausgezeichnet’ is not French. ‘夫妻肺片’ is not French. And so on. He worked hard at it but his French was always awful. That’s neti neti. If you don’t know anything about neti neti, […]
Henri Cartier-Bresson
I hesitate to post Henri Cartier-Bresson’s famous photos of Ramana because some people find them sad if not gruesome. But it must be done. If you feel sad when you look at them, maybe it will help to remember Ramana’s famous words to devotees just before he died: You say I am going away. But […]