The following arrived as part of an email from a friend. We liked it an thought you might too…

At a fundamental level there appears to be a distrust or even dislike of learning and scholarship throughout society and indeed amongst most satsang givers and attendees. The scholarship of Wei Wu Wei, of Rumi, of Li Po, and many others seems somehow to be dismissed as irrelevant to their teachings. It appears that amongst most of the current crop of neo-Advaita, Cha’an, and similar pillarists, there is a somewhat appalling dearth of knowledge. This seems to be part of the doxa that the world is somehow of less import than the ’spiritual’, as though the two were somehow separate. Or even that reality is or could be something other than that which appears. There seems to be a belief that insight somehow precludes scholarship, or that scholarship may slow insight.

It may be that this underlying viewpoint has prevented many from perceiving their own ‘burning in the fire of truth’ as little more than an epiphany and psychological release. There is a huge literature, both scholarly and based in the sutras of the wise that speaks to this point. Ramana Maharshi himself warned of it; as did Nisagardatta Maharaj, Rabbi’a, and a host of others.

‘Awakening’ I would suggest, neither requires nor mandates such epiphanies but is more about a simple ease of being. It has little to do with ‘bliss’ or ‘release’ or even ‘freedom’. Eventually such concepts are realized for what they are, and attention to them becomes superfluous.

True scholarship is akin to or perhaps identical with deep meditation. Not mediation as an obfuscatory blissed out perpetual samhadi; not the thinking masked as observing per the vipassana tradition; nor the numb automatonia of the chant, recitation of holy names, or other techniques supposed to suppress ideation. But rather meditation as attention itself. True scholarship, like true meditation, is pure unwavering attention. Joy not exclusive of deep knowledge automatically results when only one thing is kept in sight. As the sixth Delhi Lama said, when he concentrated his entire being upon the thought of his girl friend - only then did he became a Buddha. Or as the great scholar Ibn el’Arabi wrote, awakening was impossible until he put all of his attention upon wine. Note that attention to one thing only is not exclusivity, but rather total and complete inclusivness. Attention to one thing only, as is the case in true scholarship, allows all that appears, all creation, to cast light upon the object of attention. In the easy and relaxed unwavering Light which results concepts such as ‘awakening’, ‘enlightenment’, and the like are seen for what they are, and permanently abandoned.