Neti, Neti and Lila

I am not a Hindu. With all due respect, I find it a confusing religion, but, there are 2 useful concepts that Hinduism uses.

First, is neti, neti. I am told that means, roughly, not that, not that. When a student comes to a teacher, he is asked to start listing the attributes of God and to each, the teacher responds, "not that, not that" (neti, neti). When the student has no more attributes left to name, it is said that he/she is ready to begin study. In ither words, you must abandon all preconceived notions when studying the Divine, because it is beyond all human thought. This is similar to Meister Eckhart's ( a medieval monk) statement that the greatest journey one can make is to 'leave God to find God. Your Creator is a mystery, insolvable to us, beyond our comprehension. The Jewish mystics say that God Ein Sof, in his totality, before and beyond manifestation is unknowable to man. This is hard for us to accept, but it is true and we would be much better off if we could accept that, as it would put a damper on dogma. As humans we seem doomed to keep trying to solve this unsolvable mystery. That is okay, as long as we realize that any answer we may find is at least partially wrong. It keeps us humble. It also keeps us from being strangled by our concepts.

The other concept I love is the Universe as lila, the Divine dance. All of the cosmos is an ever changing swirl of matter and spirit. When we understand that it is God dancing with God, we learn how truly marvelous it is and how everything, the good and the bad, the ugly and the beautiful, is filled with the Divine. Alan Watts, a writer and philosopher from the 60s said that the Universe was simply God playing hide and seek with Himself, we just had trouble understanding that it was all just a game. In other words, lighten up.