What is advaita? Do you want a definition so you need not to think?
Better approach? What is not advaita. You discover what it is. You’re supposed to think.
Advaita is not a vada = intellectual gymnastics. Great scholarship and ability to speak well. Vada is a product of intellect.
Advaita is not religion. Religion is a belief.
Thinking and belief don’t go together.
Beliefs get inherited
Religion divides people
Advaita is a vision, darsanam. Call it darsanam rather than jnanam.
What you experience in your heart is advaita. Not what you believe/speculate in your head.
Oneness. There are not two flowers outside. There is one flower and one flower. Flowers/apples do not add.
Multiplicity and reality that we experience in the world. Is it real? One is real. You’re real.
What you can know about God in positive way is only none-sense. That god is an old guy in the cloud? The way to God is negative.
Negative understanding is the right understanding in philosophy. We’re not in a personality development class.
What remains as the residuum after dismissing all superimpositions, the nama-rupas, which are product of the human intellect. That means when the entire operation of the mind and intellect is put aside, what remains - the pure awareness absolute - that is the atma.
Brahman is immanent. If you stop there it becomes religion. At the same time it is transcendental - the prapancha doesn’t exist at all.
Vivekananda: every soul is potentially divine. The goal is to manifest this divinity within by work, by worship etc. This is the true religion.
Ignorant mind wants to believe rather than think.
Rituals are shaped by the desires and fears of the weak human mind.
Book, temples, forms are but secondary takes. Primary goal of human existence is to discover the divinity within.
There is no myself and there is no yourself. There is one self of the all. There is no friend, there is no foe.
What god/religion is not, you have to understand. What is true religion? That’s not the point. Supposed I tell you what it is you become my follower. And we’ll be following a system. That will be just imitation.
I’m not even a swami. Do you have any doubt about “aham brahman asmi”? That’s your problem?
Be still and know that you’re god.
If I’m Swami TV how can I be brahma as Swami TV? Fact is you all can consider me Swami TV but I’m not Swami TV. I know better than that!
World experience is no different from a movie experience. So what is there to find about the world? You want to find out what kind of snake it is? If it is not a serpent you need not find out what kind of serpent it is.
The god that you’ll find is a conceptual god. A god that is conceived by the human mind. And the mind shapes its god according to its desires, fears and other idiosyncrasies.
Godhead has constricted itself in you as the inner most reality. If you cannot see it you’re doing an injustice to yourself.
Rise above all the divisions and be the advaya atma. That’s the vision of Vedanta.