my article

In a comment on one of my recent articles, The ego is essentially a formless and hence featureless phantom , a friend called ‘Sleepwalker’ quoted a sentence from its thirteenth section, Can self-awareness be considered to be a feature of the ego? (which I had quoted from We are aware of ourself even though we are featureless , the second section in one of my earlier articles, Being attentively self-aware does not entail any subject-object relationship ), namely “When we say, ‘I slept peacefully last night’, we are expressing our experience of having been in a state in which we experienced no features”, and asked whether the peacefulness of sleep is not just a feature. Since the concept of nirviśēṣatva (featurelessness or absence of any distinguishing features) is a significant and useful idea in advaita philosophy, and since it is very relevant to the practice of self-investigation, I decided to write the following detailed answer to this question: In what sense is the peacefulness...

When Sri Ramana translated Vivēkacūḍāmaṇi into Tamil prose, he composed a maṅgalam or ‘auspicious introductory verse’ for it. Recently a friend asked me to translate this verse, because he was not satisfied with the translation of it on page 212 of The Collected Works of Ramana Maharshi , which is as follows: Rejoice eternally! The Heart rejoices at the feet of the Lord, who is the Self, shining within as ‘I-I’ eternally, so that there is no alternation of night and day. This will result in removal of ignorance of the Self. The original Tamil verse is: அகமெனு மூல வவித்தை யகன்றிட வகமக மாக வல்லும் பகலற வகமொளி ராத்ம தேவன் பதத்தினி லகமகிழ் வாக வனிசம் ரமிக்கவே. ahameṉu mūla vaviddai yahaṉḏṟiḍa vahamaha māha vallum pahalaṟa vahamoḷi rātma dēvan padattiṉi lahamahiṙ vāha vaṉiśam ramikkavē . In a Tamil verse the words are coalesced according to natural euphonic principles of syllable-conjunction called puṇarcci or sandhi (which for example will cause in certain circumstances a final ‘u’ to ...

I am currently preparing to upload four new e-books to the Books section of my website , namely Sri Arunachala Stuti Panchakam , Sri Ramanopadesa Noonmalai , Part Two of The Path of Sri Ramana and Sadhanai Saram , and I am drafting introductory pages for each of these. The following is an extract from the introductory page that I have drafted for Sri Arunachala Stuti Panchakam : ஸ்ரீ அருணாசல ஸ்துதி பஞ்சகம் ( Sri Arunachala Stuti Panchakam ), the ‘Five Hymns to Sri Arunachala’, which is a collection of the principal devotional songs composed by Sri Ramana, is the first section of ஸ்ரீ ரமண நூற்றிரட்டு ( Sri Ramana Nultirattu ), the Tamil ‘Collected Works of Sri Ramana’. The following are the five main songs that comprise it: ஸ்ரீ அருணாசல அக்ஷரமணமாலை ( Sri Arunachala Aksharamanamalai ), the ‘Bridal Garland of Letters to Sri Arunachala’, is a song composed in the metaphorical language of bridal mysticism or madhura bhava (the affectionate attitude of a girl seeking union with her lover...

A few weeks ago a very long anonymous comment was posted on one of my recent articles, Self-attentiveness, effort and grace . Though this comment was posted under the identity ‘Anonymous’, the name ‘Michael Langford’ was written at the end of it. I do not know whether or not this comment was actually posted by Michael Langford (though I suspect it probably was not), but except for his name at the end of it, the entire comment is a verbatim copy of a webpage that he wrote entitled Sri Sadhu Om - Self Inquiry , which is one of the many pages in the Awareness Watching Awareness section of the Albigen.Com website. Most of this webpage, Sri Sadhu Om - Self Inquiry , is an edited copy of chapter seven of Part One of The Path of Sri Ramana , a PDF copy of which is available on my website, Happiness of Being . However, before his edited copy of chapter seven, Michael Langford has written the following two introductory paragraphs: Sri Sadhu Om spent five years in the company of Sri Ramana ...