How do nondual traditions view judging other people? A podcast from Satsang with Shambhavi
Podcast First Words
Student: Outside of like the actual human need for survival to discern danger and things like that, I’m noticing that the longer this is dragging out, everyone’s need to judge everyone and then I’m watching that also, like, arise in me and I was wondering if you could speak about that. Judging, judging people, judging people’s choices, judging people’s judgment and just noticing, feeling
Shambhavi: Yeah, I just want to send this message, first out, to anybody who considers themselves to be in a nondual tradition. When you have this kind of reaction to other people’s behavior, you know, some sort of way that you position yourself with respect to other people, they’re not really saying anything about the other person. They’re saying something about themselves.
You know, if they’re kind of earnest about it, which progressive liberal people tend to be, or new agey, spiritual people tend to be very earnest about that kind of thing. Right?
And if you’re in a nondual tradition and you’re in that circumstance, you really should think about how you’ve stepped out of the View of your tradition, how you have left it behind. Because everybody here is an aspect of God. Everybody here is God doing that, even the bad stuff. And see, this is what we don’t like to have to face when we’re in traditions that call themselves nondual. We don’t like to have to face the fact that we don’t get to call anything evil or wrong in some absolute way.
We can have our relative responses to things, but it can’t really come at the expense of denigrating someone else. But we get pleasure out of doing that. So whenever we hear anybody disparaging, denigrating, waving a banner about how someone else isn’t doing it right. One hundred percent of the time, that kind of thing is about the person doing it. It’s telling you what they want to say about themselves. And it’s a mode of separation.
