I I think that the multiple routes that exist in the Indian culture and those that individuals follow are on par with each other. From within any one of these, the other routes appear as moments. However, this does not privilege any one route above the other. If one were to suggest, say, that the Puranic stories are simplifications of the Upanishadic insights then one has to endorse a claim of the …

Here is a new book by S. N. Balagangadhara and Sarika Rao: What does it mean to be ‘Indian’? US version can be had for $12.00; Indian version for Rs. 349. Here are the UK, Candian , EU versions. Any questions, comments are welcome and you can post it onhttps://groups.io/g/TheHeathenInHisBlindness This book tries to answer a question that is also its title. This book shares some of the results 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” …

Retrospective and Prospective at Indic Academy (2020) Reading Indian Texts (2018) Is this possible? Mythic Society Book Rerelease (2018) History vs. Itihasa, Para and Happiness (2017) What do Indians need, a history or the Past? A challenge to Indian historians (2014) RRI-4 Truth & Falsity; the Witness & the judge; judicial facts (2012) Secularization Balagangadhara & Jakob de Roover (2011) On …

1. In this talk, I would like to focus on the two attitudes that I have towards your project. It is not that I have ambiguous feelings; no, I have two distinct feelings. On the one hand, I am convinced that you will not reach your goal because such a goal is unreachable. Not only that. Your goal is undesirable and best abandoned. On the other hand, if you strive with integrity, clarity and passion …

[Original Dutch article published on Sep 30, 2003; English version is due to google translate and some minor changes] Edward Said is dead. Last Wednesday he lost his battle with cancer. The influence of this Palestinian writer in all areas of the social sciences of the last quarter century is immense. Many will remember him from Delhi to Dar Es Salaam, from Paris to Chicago; many will also write …

There are multiple kinds of interpretation. For instance, there is interpretation of symbols in a domain like Physics: μ (in elementary optics) is “interpreted” as the refraction index of a substance. We use a more or less analogous notion of “interpretation” in Chemistry, Mathematics and so on. In logic, we speak of “interpretation of variables” like p, q, etc. Here, it means that the letters …

The western intellectual tradition has bemoaned the fact that the Indians never indulged in history-writing (or historiography). In this tradition, there is an obsessive need for collecting “facts” about the past. This is partly the result of how Judaism, Christianity and Islam (the three Semitic religions) look at themselves and their own past: everything they claim about their past (the Flood, …

Two caveats. One: the commentary is very, very short. To write down all the things I want to say about this citation requires a long paper and not a brief mail. Two: I have not checked either the citation or the reference (Brihadaranyaka upanishad - I.iv.10). I assume that both are accurate. This (Self) was indeed Brahman in the beginning. It knew itself only as “I am Brahman.” Therefore it became …

Assume that you get a Ph.D student who wants to do medical research. He comes to you and tells you that he wants to find out an answer to the burning question about why people get sick. Would you be able to guide this student in answering his question or give one answer to it? Your answer would be: it depends. You would also further say to him, ‘choose a particular disease, choose a particular …

Let me begin with the following dialogue between a Swiss-German and a young Balinese (from Bichsel, Peter, Der Leser, Das Erzählen: Frankfurter Poetik-Vorlesungen, 1982, Darmstadt und Neuwied: Hermann Luchterhand Verlag. Pp. 13-14, my translation and italics): When I discovered, or when it was explained to me, that Hinduism is a pedagogical religion, namely, that in so far as the best “good deed” …

I Question: “Certainly that Brahman == self-awareness == Atman is also a matter of direct experience, not of intellectual reasoning?” Let me first begin with reason and then drift towards experience. Suppose, as an expansion of the sentence that ‘Atman is Brahman’, it is said: “Atman and Brahman are identical to each other”. What kind of sense does it make and how do we explain that sense? Let us …

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 …

You say that you experienced Shakti as an emanation of a force that is overpowering and palpable; you also say that you felt the ‘presence’ of Shakti strongly. These two sentences make one think that you felt the presence of the force. In that case, there are only two routes open to us: (a) either reject that we have knowledge of the world which forbids linguistic utterances from infusing material …

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 …

Two points should be kept in mind before using these examples: (a) the examples illustrate that the distinctions are not unknown to an English language-user (b) the distinction does not require denying the knowledge that we have about the world. These merely indicate that the distinction between ‘real’ and ‘existence’ might be worth a serious investigation. A possible set of examples: Not Real but …

Question: I have some problems understanding apara, para, existence, and presence. Apara exists, but is not present; para is present but does not exist. Are you saying that what is present does not exist, what exists is not present? If so, how can you reconcile with our common sense notion that what exists is present? Even though presence doesn’t imply existence, we can’t say that existence imply …

It would be a good thing to narrow-in on the ‘spookiness’ of the accessing ‘Real’. However, because there is a very great danger that ‘access’ can be conceptualised as an access to a ‘supra-mundane’ or a ‘spiritual’ world, or to a world that is not accessible to ‘sciences’ but can be ‘spiritually’ accessed, etc. a few extra words are required. Therefore, an attempt that might reduce one possible …

Let us agree on the proposed division into two categories: “1) That which exists or could exist (2) That which could not and does not exist but is present (therefore ‘Real’)”. Let us also accept that (1) collects: “(a) everything that we know like Earth, stars, mud, (b) everything that we can think of or imagine - models, formulas, triangles, present and future scientific theories, tooth fairies, …

For more, check this post: Freeing the Indian Traditions? Government Control of Temples in India and Freedom of Religion