{"id":5609,"date":"2024-09-16T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-09-16T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/?p=5609"},"modified":"2024-09-16T05:49:10","modified_gmt":"2024-09-16T10:49:10","slug":"why-people-misunderstand-ramana-reason-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/why-people-misunderstand-ramana-reason-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Why people misunderstand Ramana: reason #2"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Other articles in this series:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/why-people-misunderstand-ramana-reason-1\/\">Reason #1<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Note: &#8220;enquiry&#8221; and &#8220;inquiry&#8221; are the same word.  It can be spelled either way.<\/p>\n<p>The term &#8220;Self-enquiry&#8221; is the second reason why people misunderstand Ramana.  This term is a misleading English translation of a Sanskrit phrase used by Ramana, <i>atma-vichara<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Self-enquiry&#8221; is a bad translation because it seems to mean &#8220;ask questions.&#8221;   That&#8217;s not what Ramana meant. We know exactly what he meant because he explicitly defined <i>atma-vichara<\/i> in his most important work, &#8220;Who Am I?&#8221;:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nThe name \u2018atma-vichara\u2019 refers only to always keeping the mind on oneself.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That&#8217;s from <a href=\"https:\/\/realization.org\/p\/ramana\/michael-james\/nan-yar\/nan-yar.html\">Michael James&#8217;s translation<\/a> of &#8220;Who Am I?&#8221; which I think is the best.<\/p>\n<p>Obviously &#8220;always keeping the mind on oneself&#8221; has nothing to do with asking questions.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/why-people-misunderstand-ramana-reason-1\/\">Reason #1<\/a>, based on &#8220;Who Am I?&#8221;, creates the same misimpression.  The two misunderstandings combine to create a widespread belief that Ramana&#8217;s method is based on asking questions.  This belief is wrong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Other articles in this series: Reason #1 Note: &#8220;enquiry&#8221; and &#8220;inquiry&#8221; are the same word. It can be spelled either way. The term &#8220;Self-enquiry&#8221; is the second reason why people misunderstand Ramana. This term is a misleading English translation of a Sanskrit phrase used by Ramana, atma-vichara. &#8220;Self-enquiry&#8221; is a bad translation because it seems [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6YVpx-1st","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5609"}],"version-history":[{"count":46,"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5609\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5777,"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5609\/revisions\/5777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}