More Topics
Adi Da's Image-Art and Photography
Adi Da created visual, literary, and performance art for more than forty years with a single intention: to produce works of art that would draw people beyond the feeling of egoic separateness into the feeling of the inherent unity of existence. Adi Da's artistic output includes drawings, paintings, sculptures, and a large body of groundbreaking photographic, videographic, and digitally composed work. Adi Da's art was featured as an official solo collateral exhibition at the 2007 Venice Biennale. He was also the first contemporary artist invited by the city of Florence to mount a solo exhibition (in the historic Cenacolo di Ognissanti). His work is in numerous private collections and has been exhibited in museums and galleries around the world.
The Sacred Literature and Theater of Adi Da and Adidam
Adi Da's principal literary work is His trilogy entitled The Orpheum, and subtitled, "The Tragic History of The Recent Return of Orpheus, or, The First Room In Three Books". The trilogy is comprised of three volumes: The Mummery Book, The Scapegoat Book, and The Happenine Book.
Adidam and Music
This section is about all the different roles music has played (and continues to play) in Adidam. It includes: The restoration of a culture of sacred music;
devotional music as a regular element in the practice of Adidam; chanting as a discipline; Swadhyaya chanting; ordinary chanting versus kirtan; drawing upon traditional musical genres and creating new ones; improvisation and self-transcendence in the music of Adidam; Sacred Offerings and chanting occasions; music as Sacred Art and means for growing in the relationship to Adi Da; and more.
Spiritual Recognition of Adi Da
Who is Adi Da? In His Talks and Writings over the years, Adi Da has used various phrases to suggest something about Who He is in spiritual terms, and the spiritual uniqueness of His appearance here. The phrases have included: "Divine World-Teacher", "Promised God-Man", and "first, last, and only seventh stage Adept". Not all that surprisingly, phrases like these often stir up strong reactions in people who hear them. Our Western culture gives us the means by which we can train our palates to recognize a fine wine; our ears to recognize a musical masterpiece; our eyes to recognize a beautiful woman or handsome man. But we are provided with no training that allows our heart to directly recognize a great Spiritual Master, or a human incarnation of the Divine. This section explores the matter of spiritually recognizing a great Spiritual Being, by people who are not confined to the materialistic viewpoint and who do have a greater sensitivity. Fortunately for the rest of us, it is possible for those who do not have any (or much) spiritual sensitivity to develop a sensitivity to the Divine Itself through the tangible human form and Spiritual Transmission of Adi Da, as many of His devotees can attest.
At Adi Da Samrajashram, in the early evening of Thursday, November 27, 2008 (Fiji time), Avatar Adi Da Samraj departed from the body. Many times throughout His life, Avatar Adi Da Samraj prepared His devotees to rightly understand the significance of His human lifetime: the fact that it would inevitably come to an end at some point; and that the primary purpose of His life and work was to establish the means necessary for all future generations to be able to link up with Him, making the Way of Adidam available to all in perpetuity. This section explores both Adi Da's Passing (referred to as His "Divine Mahasamadhi") and the natural companion topic: the future of Adidam.
The Books of Adidam
A recent study by Dr. James Lewis found that 54.5% of those people who became devotees of Adi Da indicated that their initial point of contact with Adidam was a book. The study also found that 20.6% of devotees had 4-year college degrees; 23.5% had a Master's degree; and 17.7% had a Doctoral degree. Dr. Lewis added, "If these findings can be extrapolated to current members, then the educational level of Adidam outpaces all other new religions for which educational statistics have been collected." This section is all about the books of Adidam: the source and purpose of Adi Da's Teaching, recently published books, free eBooks, a fairly complete index of all the published books, and a consideration of the differences in Adi Da's Teaching over the years.
Crazy Wisdom and "The Way That I Teach"
"Crazy Wisdom" refers to the unconventional means (also traditionally referred to as "skillful means" in the Mahayana Buddhist tradition) employed by the Master to serve the Spiritual liberation of His or Her devotee. Adi Da is sometimes referred to as a "controversial teacher", and there is no doubt that most of the "controversy" stems from a misinterpretation of the period of His Teaching Work when He used "Crazy Wisdom" means extensively with all His devotees interested in participating. Because of such misunderstandings, we have put together this section on Adi Da's "Crazy Wisdom", to clarify the principles behind it and to illustrate the benefits derived from His "Crazy Wisdom" Work through firsthand stories from devotees.
Practical Lessons in The Way of Adidam
Both individually and collectively, Adi Da's devotees have learned many lessons about how to practice the Way of Adidam in a fruitful manner. This section contains stories of devotees living various aspects of the practice. These experiential stories complement the instructions and descriptions in the Source Texts and practical texts, helping to bring Avatar Adi Da's words to life, and illustrating (sometimes unexpected) issues that may come up in the actual living of the practice. We have only just opened this new section; over time, we will be adding many more stories and lessons from devotees.
Divine Utterances
This section includes a small selection from the many thousands of Adi Da's Divine Utterances (which Adi Da sometimes humorously called "Holy Mutterances") that He spoke or wrote from 1972 to 2008: incisive, Revelatory aphorisms or brief passages that flow from Adi Da's Divine View of everything.
Glossary of Places, People, Practices and Other Special Terms Used on This Website
From 1972 through 2008, Adi Da made thousands of unprecedented communications about the nature of Reality, the Divine Revelation He offers to all, and the Way that enables all to Realize what He is Revealing. The inadequacy of conventional English for expressing these communications led Adi Da to develop a large body of specialized terminology designed to be up to the task of making (and simplifying) these communications — in much the way that scientists develop specialized terminology in their fields of expertise. The articles, stories, and audio/video clips on this site often make use of Adi Da's unconventional terminology. For this reason, we indicate such terminology with a double line under a word or phrase that looks like this. When you hold the cursor over such a doubly underlined expression, a window will pop up, containing a glossary entry for that expression. If you move your cursor into the window, it will "solidify" in color. If you move your cursor outside the window, the window will disappear after a short time. You can also reach this glossary with all the entries in one place, by clicking on the link, "MORE GLOSSARY ENTRIES." Besides specialized terminology, our glossary also contains entries for people (e.g. Chögyam Trungpa), places (e.g., Adi Da Samrajashram), books (e.g., the Bhagavad Gita), etc. associated with (or relevant to) Adidam.
