So thanks to a commenter on one of my videos, I heard a new definition of Advaita Vedanta that I hadn’t heard before: ‘end of words.’ And this is perfect.
Advaita is the word we use to define nonduality. It’s translated as ‘not two’ or ‘not dual’ (not two things, Advaita). What it means is that there are no words of any kind that can describe the truth. Anything that you use to try to describe the truth is not going to be the thing you are describing.
You’ve got the word, and then you’ve got the thing, so that’s always two things, right? Remove the word, and all you have left is the thing. That’s the trick of Nonduality.
Our brains tend to put a word on things because we are talking entities. So ‘end of words,’ and most specifically, Advaita is talking about finding yourself as a singularity. You are the one who is you, and every time you try to find that outside of yourself, you’re always going to find two things.
You remove the definition and you literally remove the thing that you’re trying to find. Now there’s one thing: you living your life.
End of words. I love that.
No words are ever going to describe truth. Not one perfect word, not a million words, not a big, huge paragraph of descriptions. Ironically enough, nonduality people love to get into these huge descriptions of how to not have a description!
Many of us studying Nonduality are Western English speakers. Not only are we working with words, but we are reading all these translations. The urge to our ego is too much. We start sticking in all sorts of important-sounding words like Brahman and things like that. Our vocabulary grows to be huge while our understanding diminishes.
A thousand words are not going to describe it, a whole book is not going to describe it, a volume of 10 books is not going to describe it. Nothing’s going to describe it because as long as you’re using words, it can’t be done.
So, it’s nice to take this as a basic reality of nonduality and Advaita.
It’s also the reality of all the other paths to God too—that you can’t describe it; words are not going to get you there. That’s why the path of Love is the path of love. It says love will get you there, doesn’t usually, but at least it’s hopefully not trying to use a whole bunch of words, right? End of words.
Speaking of which, I do have a book on nonduality. What I’ve attempted to do in this book is talk about nonduality and Native wisdom and weave them together. So, when you read the book, you’ll see that it goes in circles and circles and circles where I’m painting pictures and destroying paradigms, saying ‘this thing isn’t true, that’s not true, this isn’t true, that’s not true.’ But see the world and see the birds and see the mountains. It goes in circles and circles and circles. Maybe it’ll get you somewhere. This is the hope, anyway. End of words. So, I’ll stop talking now.