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The Rope and the Snake: Metaphorical Exploration of Advaita Vedanta

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Professor Sharma, with incredible thoroughness looks at how the snake and rope analogy can be applied to philosophical systems, but does not get to the root of its meaning.

imagine... there is a candle burning in a dark place, one does not know where this place is or what it is, it is surrounded by the darkness of ignorance. around the candle is coiled a large snake, it is writhing and undulating, its tongue flikering in and out... a slightly frighteneing scene. the snake represents the grasping selfish ego. suddenly the candle is blown out (nibbana), smoke wafts away from it, and lo and behold daylinght! the snake has has miraculously become a rope, neatly coiled around the exinguished candle. it can now be seen that one is in a room, sunlight and fresh air breezing thought. that the snake has become a rope, can be compared to the blowing out of the flame of ignorance in the brightness of day. or the exitinguishing of the individual identity in anatman.

it may be accepted that when brahman atman is attained that the snake of the individual ego has dissolved into sameness, that all duality is melted away, but still a self of sorts remains. the significance of the rope is very similar to the significance of the snake, in that both are threatening, the snake more overtly so.

if the rope in part represents brahman, it has many uses, but its ultimate purpose can still seem very threatening.

the selfish ego is dangerous and unpredictable, especially if left to its own devivces. the rope is apparently a safer object, but seen from the point of view that i take, the purpose of the rope is to hang whats left of an identity. that all that one is may be replaced by emptiness. it is the representation of the ultimate deconstruction. the rope on which Brahman spiritually hangs himself. this is not nihilistic, since once emptied of all things... consciousness, awareness, being etc etc etc there still remains something that is a no thing. this no thing though not aware is not unaware. though empty, is not unfull. no longer is there any sameness, nor difference. looking deeply, though the appearance of both remain.

it cannot be denied by the Advaitin that the single most significant and somewhat intimidating purpose of a piece of rope is the ability to hang oneself with it, but this is what one must do spiritually (but not in reality of course) if one wishes to procede beyond samatman/brahman atman, and embody that which is beyond all change. empty of all characteristics, nothing to be destroyed and yet still something.

do not get the impression that i am a nihilist who wants people to harm themselves. i do not want that, but rather i look back to Jesus Christ who said that a man or woman "must die to self". that growth spiritually sometimes requires a form of dying to self. that one like the snake sheds the old skin into something new. or like a caterpillar that becomes a still crysalis which to all appearances does not seem to be alive, but hatches into a butterfly. lets be honest... that is the most potent metaphorical import of the rope.

White Lotus. x

atman= individual egotistical, individual, separatness.

samatta/samatman = one self, all things the same, one as all.

anatta/anatman = the dissolving of the five skhandas that give personal experience of self. no self any longer. disslution of ego. no longer me, nor mine.

sunyatta/sunyatman = replacing all that one is with emptiness in a tangible way.