Nisargadatta Maharaj

It is always part of my direction to include spiritual teachers outside of the Zen Tradition, I do this in a effort to awaken seekers to the fact that no religion has the corner or the ultimate source or 'enlightenment' under their purview. It is a simple fact that people are waking up in all corners of the globe, and they might practice very different processes, yet when they wake up the essence of their teaching is the same. Thus I offer a humble Indian man who taught out of his apartment and never established great temple's or legacies, and yet his teaching is clear and timeless. But, I will let you the viewer decide.

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj (birth name: Maruti Shivrampant Kambli) (April 17, 1897 – September 8, 1981) was an Indian spiritual teacher and philosopher of Advaita (Nondualism), and a Guru, belonging to the Inchgiri branch of the Navnath Sampradaya.

One of the 20th century's exponents of the school of Advaita Vedanta philosophy (nondualism), Sri Nisargadatta, with his direct and minimalistic explanation of non-dualism, is considered the most famous teacher of Advaita since Ramana Maharshi.

In 1973, the publication of his most famous and widely translated book, I Am That, an English translation of his talks in Marathi by Maurice Frydman, brought him worldwide recognition and followers.

According to Sri Nisargadatta the purpose of spirituality is to know who you are, a viewpoint he expounded in the talks he gave at his humble flat in Khetwadi, Mumbai, where a mezzanine room was created for him to receive disciples and visitors. This room was also used for daily chantings, bhajans (devotional songs), meditation sessions, and discourses.

He talked about the 'direct way' of knowing the Final Reality, in which one becomes aware of one's original nature through mental discrimination, a method which is common to the teachers of the Navnath Sampradaya. This mental discrimination or the Bird's way ('Vihangam Marg') was also presented by Nisargadatta's co-disciple, Sri Ranjit Maharaj; wherein Self-Knowledge is gained just as a bird flying in the sky goes easily from branch to branch, instead of slowly crawling its way up the tree like an ant, as in the 'Pipilika Marg'. Here the disciple reaches straight to truth, without wasting time in long drawn out practices that would take him to the 'fruit' no doubt, only slowly. He proposed to use one's mental faculty to break from the unreal to the real, and the mind's false identification with the ego, simply by listening to and constantly thinking over what the master has said, and knowing that "You are already That"