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An interview with Greg Goode
has just appeared in Nonduality Magazine:
http://nondualitymagazine.org/nonduality_magazine.4.greggoode.interview.htm
Here are some selections.
I like this from the bio:
Greg Goode is the author of Standing as
Awareness and the forthcoming The Direct Path: A User
Guide, both from Non-Duality Press. He is currently working
on a book on emptiness. Greg's approach to nonduality is
experiential, open, down-to-earth and non-dogmatic. He has
a Ph.D. in Philosophy and has studied deeply in both Western and
Eastern approaches. Eastern influences include: Shankara,
Gaudapada, Nagarjuna, Chandrakirti, Tsong-Khapa, Honen Shonin,
Shinran Shonin, and Sri Atmananda, Francis Lucille, and the Ven,
Chin-Kung, Western influences include: Protagoras, Heraclitus,
Gorgias, Sextus Empiricus, George Berkeley, David Hume, G.W.F.
Hegel, Ludwig Wittgenstein, W.V.O. Quine, Nelson Goodman, Brand
Blanshard, Jacques Derrida, Wilfrid Sellars, Michel Foucault,
Pierre Bourdieu, Richard Lanham and Richard Rorty.
This is from the interview:
NDM: In
the preface of your book, "Standing as Awareness", you
say that “by standing as awareness, you experience the world
quite directly, without having to perfect anything or become
anything."
However, Shankara said that there are certain
prerequisites and qualifications for someone to be able to do
this as outlined in his Vivekachudamani. Do you also feel
that someone has to have these prerequisites to do the direct
path?
Greg Goode:
To stand as awareness is not a goal-seeking activity. It’s
more like a loving openness to awareness, a falling in love with
awareness and wanting to delve into its deepest secrets.
Not for any discernable reason either. It’s like
immersing yourself in the question “What would awareness do?”
You come to discover that awareness doesn’t act or do
anything. And at the same time, nothing is left
undone. This confirms the experiential nonduality of your
experiences in various nondual investigations.
So – is the direct
path for everyone? No. No path is. People are
different so paths are different. There’s no “one-size
fits all” teaching.
What about the
qualifications you mention from Advaita Vedanta? Called in
Sanskrit the Sadhnana Chatustaya (fourfold preparatory process),
it includes discrimination of the unchanging from the changing,
dispassion or non-clinging to the fruits of one’s actions, a
set of behavior traits (including discipline, concentration,
faith, forbearance, and the toleration of hardships), and finally
a yearning for liberation from the limitations of life and
death. You could look at them broadly as a set of
behavioral traits that foster adaptive and life skills.
Plus that yearning for liberation.
Other paths, such as
Kabbala and the emptiness teachings from Madhyamika Buddhism have
their “pre-requisites” as well.
When I took the Chinmaya
Mission Advaita Vedanta classes years ago, our teacher explained
that once upon a time in India, these Hindu qualifications could
be treated as actual barrier-to-entry-style pre-requisites.
The family Hindu guru would teach Hinduism, but he might not
admit anyone to the study of the “higher” teachings
(Vedanta) unless that person manifested these four qualities in
their life, or at least the strong promise of these
qualities. In this way, the four qualities did act as
pre-requisites.
Nowadays, of course, the
teachings of Vedanta have slipped away from this kind of social
control. People encounter Vedantic or Advaitic teachings on
the Internet in text, audio, video and chat form, as well as in
books available for overnight delivery. People hop from one
teaching to another, and create mixtures and combos of anything
they like.
In a way, the four
qualities are still with us, but they play a different role
now. They are not an absolute or necessary condition.
But they do tend to exert a clever “invisible hand”
effect on the aspirant. It all depends on the aspirant’s
goals for the teaching. To the extent that a person expects
a phenomenal or practical goal from the teachings, the invisible
hand will pull them at least partly away from the teachings to
some other pursuit that handles their life-issue more
squarely. And they can combine the other pursuits with the
direct path as well. There is no rule that says that one of
these must be done first.
Some people desire
liberation as a means to other ends, and it is here that the
invisible hand operates. Some of the goals I have heard
people assert for the direct path (at least at first) include
solving dental and surgical issues, healing from neurological,
bacterial and viral disorders, curing candida and chronic fatigue
syndrome, keeping themselves (or even their spouse) from
cheating, getting better grades in school and better prices when
they sell their houses, and increasing the personal traits of
courage, concentration, intelligence, will power, discipline,
fame, and the ability to write well!
The direct path doesn’t
set out to accomplish these practical goals. A skillful
teacher can assist a student, pointing out other resources and
remaining available however they can. But as long as the
student really desires to accomplish one of these other goals and
uses the direct path as a means to these ends, then the invisible
hand will do its work.
A person can mix and match or go back and
forth between the direct path and their other pursuits. And
a caring, experienced teacher is supportive of the student.
In the days of yesteryear, the Chinese Ch’an student might
say, “Master, I want to learn better calligraphy.”
The teacher would say, “Ah, go see Master Han in the East.”
Or “I want to become more flexible for
k’ung fu.” The teacher would say, “Ah, go
see Master Yun in the South.” But if the student said,
“I want to learn the secret of life and death,” the
teacher would say “Go to the kitchen and wash the dishes.”
It’s the same way today. If a
person desires not to improve phenomenality but to be totally
free of it, then the direct path can be a perfect fit.
~ ~ ~
Read the entire interview here:
http://nondualitymagazine.org/nonduality_magazine.4.greggoode.interview.htm
Greg's book, Standing As Awareness
may be ordered from Amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/Standing-as-Awareness-Greg-Goode/dp/0956309151/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_c
or from the publisher, Non-Duality Press:
http://www.non-dualitypress.com/product.aspx?p=3bad52f6-b114-4a76-a02f-1e72379b66d0