Inquiry into Existence: The Lamp of Knowledge

Product Description

Because reality isn’t what it seems to be, Vedanta exists. Animals don’t need scriptures on enlightenment. They don’t worry, because they accept reality as it is. Worry distinguishes us from every other living being; the ancient texts define human beings as “those that worry.” Aside from the natural worries of everyday life, some of us are bedeviled by an obvious conundrum: why, if reality is one – as is clear to any thinking person – does it appear to us as a duality, a division between the self and the world? This existential confusion compromises our ability to enjoy the freedom that is our birthright. Why and how non-dual reality appears as a duality – and what can be done about it – is the essence of Vedanta and the main theme of this wonderful fourteenth-century analysis of existence/consciousness by Vidyaranya Swami, Panchadasi, with commentary by James Swartz.

About the Author

James Swartz was born in Butte, Montana, in 1941. He grew up in Lewiston, Idaho, and had a very happy childhood. The small world of Lewiston could not contain him, however, and at seventeen he left for a military prep school in Minnesota. He spent two years in a liberal arts college in Wisconsin, was expelled for disciplinary reasons and enrolled at the University of California at Berkeley in 1963. Six months short of graduation he ran off to Hawaii, where he started a successful small business. But something was terribly wrong; at twenty-six he had become an alcoholic, chain-smoking, gluttonous adulterer, and life in every respect was not worth living. One day in the post office in Waikiki he had a life-changing epiphany that put him on the path to freedom. For more about that remarkable journey, read
Mystic by Default.