Why should Advaita Matter?
With regard to my article on Intentblog, Prabhakar, a commenter, raised a question – Why is it important to discern whether everything is illusion or reality? After all, he says, the actions would be the same. This same question was also raised in front of me earlier.
To me here is the difference:
Until you realize that what you are "seeing" or reacting to is merely an "dream" or "illusion", you will play along. The motivation to be a "WITNESS" as opposed to be a player is absent until then.
And Until you can be a witness with no value judgment, you cannot be at "peace" required for the best effects of meditation and slowing down of the restless mind.
The "faith" in the "Illusion" is probably the starting point for one to at least investigate the possibility of playing a "witness".
Until then, you are pushed into the direction of "doing good".. which to me is like Playing God! Why? To understand this you need to discern what you MEAN when you say you are DOING GOOD?
In that phrase – GOOD refers to the result.. and not the action. For action in itself has no value to it of good or bad. It assumes a value from what we perceive to be the result.
So, in a sense, we already have decided that Action A will result in Result X… and knowing fairly well that result is NOT in "our" hands!
That is why Morality is relative. Everyone has his/her own action to result equation and Values for result variable X!
The Law of Karma that Lord Krishna advised on deliberately BREAKS this connection between Action and Result.. in as direct a manner as he possibly could. In fact, I sometimes think that a war scene in that "story" may actually have been intended to drive home this very DISSOCIATION in the most telling a manner possible!!
That was precisely why Swami Vivekananda also suggests (in an equally "blasphemous" a fashion to the contemporary world) when he said that "you cannot do any GOOD"!
That was not rhetorical. He was basically stating the obvious corollary of the Karma Law that Lord Krishna suggested.
That is why Gita’s message is probably not important because it was given by Krishna.. but Krishna becomes important because he brought existing knowledge to the public in the most direct and telling fashion! He may or may not have been an incarnation (I dont personally care who or what he was).. but his choice of situation and words and examples makes the age-old message more useful. (In fact he refers to most of the wisdom he gives to Arjuna as "Gyanijan aisa kehte hain" or "So say the wise ones").
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