Indian Traditions

If you insist that without situating Gita in the massive text that Mahabharata is, we cannot understand or interpret Gita, then you provide such a gigantic con-text to the 18 chapters that the Gita is, and because a move like this can only give interpretations of a small text by situating in such a huge con-text, any and almost every interpretation can become valid or acceptable or permissible. …

One could justifiably see spirituality (the Jewish, Christian and Islamic) as ‘Adhyatma’ if one focusses on the psychological transformations that a human being undergoes in the process of moving from the mundane life to a ‘spiritual’ one. You would be closer to the notion of ‘Adhyatma’ if you can also additionally guide such a process. Such guidance requires, of course, that there is some deep …

It is broadly accepted that one of the most important functions of language is to describe the world outside it. Could it be the case that when it comes to the Indian systems, they all (whether it is Advaita vedanta, Yoga vasistha, visista advaita) are teaching one to act, to live in a particular way? In other words, they are not saying what there is in the world but are manuals in a manner of …

I will take up some of the general points, which I think are relevant to the Indian American community at large. First, let me say I am impressed by the dynamism present in this community. In spite of the demands of daily life, Indian Americans find the time and energy to engage in intellectual debates about the nature of their traditions. In spite of the discrimination and “religion oppression” …

Some Swamiji claims: “One cannot experience the Atman[, the Atman] is the witness, it is what experiences.” Obviously, this is a very rough and approximate formulation. This statement is both wrong and right in different ways. (a) In the very early days, when I began to develop my meditation exercise, I ‘sensed’ the vague presence of an observer (somewhere present in the background of my …

Consider the fact that the Indian ‘gods’ are portrayed in at least two ways. First, there is their portrayal with four arms (say) and there is their portrayal in completely human forms. Krishna has four arms (with Shankha, Chakra, Gada and Padma or one hand with a blessing palm or downward indicating a mudra of some kind) and he also has a fully human form. The balakrishna’s I have seen give him …

9.32 Bhagavadgita māṃ hi pārtha vyapāśritya ye ‘pi syuḥ pāpayonayaḥ striyo vaiśyāstathā śūdrās te’ pi yānti parāṃ gatim The situation is a bit more complex. The word ‘yoni’ here does much more work than one assumes. All the four are born from ‘Yoni’ but yet are distinguished in terms of punya and paapa. The last two are earnt by the organism in question: ‘svayaarjita’, suggesting that being a …

Actually, there are two questions that need to be distinguished from each other. There is, firstly, the question about the nature of ‘Eastern’ Christianity. If it is muted in its proselytizing drive in all cultures the same way and if it is ’tolerant’ in exactly the same way in all cultures, it makes sense to ask the question whether (a) different factors in all these cultures have brought about …

Christianity (to some extent Judaism), presented an idea, unknown to the world in which it grew, namely the Pagan world of Rome. The idea was that human beings are creatures of God and that they belonged to His domain. He was the dominus or the Lord of the domain. As a result, human beings should not be arrogant, but must be humble instead. (As the ‘Book of Job’ in the Old Testament makes it …

If the ‘I’ cannot be individuated or described, then there is no possible distinction between the ‘I’ and ‘the Brahman’. They are different names for ‘self-awareness’ which pick out the differential access that individuals have to ‘self-awareness’. Hence, the curious distinction that some Indian traditions make. On the one hand, the ‘I’ is alleged to be identical with the ‘Brahman’; on the other, …

You say: “there seems to be an underlying assumption that all participants in the thread seem to be making. The assumption being that all these texts have the same end goal in mind, and that this end goal is enlightenment/eudaimonia/happiness. I submit that such an assumption is unwarranted.” It is not an assumption but an explicit hypothesis, as far as I am concerned, that all the Indian …

If you want to use Nirvana Shatkam*,* it might be more productive to choose translations which do the job that the text can. Because of that, a ‘faithful’ translation of Sanskrit into English is not the primary requirement; the process and the goal should determine how the words are best understood. With this in mind, some suggestions regarding the translation of the Sanskrit verses. It is …

Balagangadhara’s recent article on Enlightenment (Gyanodaya); this is based on his enlightenment. If you got questions on this paper, participate on The Heathen in His Blindness Yahoo group . Check the embedded PDF file: PDF Document

I would like to address a very basic issue that many of us have confronted. In its simplest form, the question is this: What should we, a small slice of the Indian intelligentsia, be doing? We can vent our anger and frustration at the way the Indian politicians are handling (or mishandling) the Kashmiri situation; we can express hurt and outrage that ‘Hindus’ are singled out for special treatment …

Editor’s note: This article appeared in the Journal of American Academy of Religion Abstract The paper attempts a contrast between the process and the structure of the Christian and the Indian spirituality. Drawing attention to their dissimilarities, it attempts to reformulate the differences among the Indian traditions in a novel way. It argues that cultures and traditions are not just different; …

I The Sanskrit word (that I know) that comes closest to the Greek ’telos’ is ‘Sankalpa’. It means ’to mentally determine’, ‘formulation of an end’ ‘desirous of (an end)’, ‘anticipation (of an end)’ etc. It also means ‘Buddhi’ in some contexts. One of the primary properties of religion is that it generates questions about “the meaning and purpose of life”, “meaning and purpose of existence” and …

The problem with the advaita tradition today is its lack of intelligibility. ‘Maya’, for instance, does a tremendous lot of explanatory work, but it is hardly clear what it is; multiple concepts like ‘manas’, ‘buddhi’ and ‘chitta’ occur and we do not know how these concepts relate to each other, whether they refer, whether they are a part of psychological theorizing or merely an exercise in …

As I have often said, the most intriguing aspect of the Indian culture is the kind of knowledge it produced and encouraged people to produce: experiential knowledge which emerges by systematically reflecting on our (human) experiences in the world. As human beings, our experiences are many: no one set, no one kind of experience exhausts what we go through. From the purely personal experiences of …

Before deciding about whether or not Vivekananda was ethnocentric, jingoistic or even plain intolerant, one has to understand what Vivekananda was saying. In doing so, the interpretative “principle of charity” requires us to render him maximally consistent. Consider the title of this thread: “All religions are true”. Spelling-out Vivekananda’s stance regarding this theme presupposes the ability …

When we consider Paul Hacker’s story on ‘inclusivism as a typically Indian thought form’, all we can conclude is that he has used a typically Christian thought form to understand an aspect of the Indian cultural traditions, which he is unable to understand because it is completely different from what he knows. Hacker’s inclusivism is merely an attempt to strip the following Christian account from …