Blog – Neev Community for Self Inquiry & Sustainability

The Puzzle of the Upanishads

The Upanishads are hailed as one of the most profound scriptures of mankind. Departing from the ritualistic traditions of the earlier Vedic age, the Upaniṣadic sages were engaged in a radical rethinking of the nature… Read More
Choiceless Awareness of the Tree of Fear

Fear is the most basic emotion of man. For those who are inquiring into the question of whether man can live in total freedom, the feeling of fear has to be understood. Fear exists at… Read More
Shabda Pramana: Enlightenment through Words in Advaita Vedanta: Presenting a Dialogue

Advaita Vedanta is unique amongst all paths for liberation. It is the only path that does not consider any form of action (meditation, yoga, chanting, worship) as the final means to liberation. These actions are… Read More
Attachment and Facing the Fear of Death

On reading one of my previous blog articles about the quest to understand death, an eighteen-year-old girl who is a member of NEEV Psycho-Philosophy group wrote about her own fear of death and her desire… Read More
Meditative Inquiry: Is Thinking Same as Being Aware of Thought?

The path to Self Realization or Liberation which starts from self-inquiry is a long one. I break the path into three different stages in ascending order – psycho philosophical inquiry, meditative inquiry and Advaitic inquiry.… Read More
Shankara: Not The Founder of Advaita Vedanta But A Link in the Timeless Tradition

There is a widespread notion that Shankara is the founder of Advaita Vedanta. Still, others think that he may have introduced some personal innovations in Vedanta by borrowing teachings from other schools. This article seeks… Read More
No Vedantic Schools of Duality Present Till the Time of Shankara

About half a century after Shankara, two schools developed: Dvaita (Dualism) and Vishishtadvaita (Qualified Non-Dualism). The founders of these schools seek support for their doctrines in the tradition of Vedanta. In this article, I show… Read More
Difficulties in Finding the True Method of Advaita Vedanta of Shankaracharya – Part 2 : Pre-Shankara Schools

In Part 2 of this series, I examine the multifarious teachers and schools of Vedanta that existed before the advent of Shankara. I also show how Shankara refers to some of them as knowers of… Read More
Difficulties in Finding the True Method of Advaita Vedanta of Shankaracharya – Part 1

Many seekers who are studying Advaita Vedanta personally or through a teacher may be totally unaware of the many schools of Vedanta as well as Advaita Vedanta. The teachings of Advaita Vedanta were systemized by… Read More
Unmasking Ourselves

All of us are aware that we put various masks with different people in different situations. Prompted by a Facebook post of one of my friends, this article asks whether one can live without any… Read More