In so far as the suggestion is that the English word ‘prostitute’ does not capture the connotations of the earlier uses of ‘Veshya’, as I said, I agree with all of you. In this sense, if you further suggest that ‘Apsara’ should not be considered as a synonym for ‘prostitute’, I would also agree. I do not suggest that ‘apsara’ and ‘prostitute’ are synonyms: for two words to be synonymous in this …
You suggest that calling Apsaras as “prostitutes in the court of Indra” is an extreme statement. Of course, you would be right if you mean that the English word does not carry all the connotations of ‘Veshya’ or even that our current usage of the word ‘Veshya’ is not as rich as the earlier uses of the same word were. You are right too when you point out that the word ‘Kama’, as a pursushartha, …
1.1. The Indian traditions did not have the same attitude as Christianity towards prostitution or adultery. And the Indians of yesteryears were not defenders of the Victorian (and Christian) morality. Of course, I approvingly said that the “Indians are not prudes” but this approval has to do with the thrust of Indian thought, as I have understood it: the impossibility of prohibiting or making …
Let me invite you to do a thought-experiment along with me.
Imagine that all human beings seek happiness. Imagine too that they can all achieve this state of being. Because, as I said in one of my posts, there are no qualifications (or requirements) to reach this end-state; any and all ways are conducive to reach this end-state: thinking, meditation, music, dance, and, yes, even going to temples …
I think there is a simpler answer to why we do not eat beef: “we do not see it as food.” In the same way people in the Nazi concentration camps and the Ethiopians during the famine did not see fellow human beings as edible items, we do not see cows as food. (Contrast this with the story of a plane crash in the Andes Mountain some three decades ago, where the dead were cannibalized by the living in …
Traditions are inherited practices, which mean two things: they are both transmitted and learnt. The learning occurs through imitation, following instructions, through stories and so on. Consequently, traditions ‘change’ (i.e. undergo modifications) even as they are being transmitted and learnt. This makes traditions flexible and adaptive.
Human practices conserve, that is, we do not go around …
1. Here is one way of looking at what stories are. They are symbols. What are they symbols of? Well, they could symbolize acts; they could also be symbolically interpreted as justifications of such acts. Under this construal, a story requires an interpretation: one has to interpret the story as a symbol of either an act or as its symbolic justification. (The same applies to looking at stories as …
A science of cultures is not Atmagyaana or Brahmagyaana. Let me also add that I find a quest for happiness a normal human striving.
According to the Indian traditions, experience itself is a state of being: anubhava. In my story, so is happiness (or atmasaakshaatkaara). Need one be enlightened in order to speak about enlightenment? Should that be the case, one cannot strive for enlightenment at …
Why did Christianity become a ‘universal’ religion? How did Christians replace the ‘chosen’ people? What was the logic behind the transformation of the Jewish god into God of the humankind? In the literature on the subject that I have read, the first two questions get a historical (semi-psychological) answer. Traces of this answer can also be found between the lines in ‘The Heathen…’. There is a …
Let us begin with the idea that religion is some kind of a system (or structure or whatever you feel like using) that maintains itself. That is to say, it is able to reproduce itself, and sustain itself. I call this the ‘simple reproduction’ of religion. This dynamic enables not only the reproduction of the community of believers but also the experiential intelligibility that the Cosmos has for …
Assume that India (or any other society) does not have an ethics. What would happen? Surely, if ethics has something to do with coordinating human actions, we know of several ways to do the same without taking recourse to ethical thinking: laws, rules (like those in games), agreements, pacts, covenants, … are some of the candidates.
Assume that India does not know of normative ethics. So, what is …
There are other normative statements besides ethical ones: even aesthetic statements are normative (when you judge something to be ugly or beautiful) or statements about the presence of other values (say, ’the meaning of life’ questions). I have never denied it. As you rightly point out, legal norms are normative but they are not co-extensive with the ethical ones.
If there are standards to …
We need to tackle the following issues properly if we want to get a handle on normativity and its relation to a configuration of learning.
1.1. Normativity cannot be the product of ethical learning. If it were that, say, by being a biological inheritance, then normative thinking would be the form of all ethics and my claim is that it is not so.
1.2. Nevertheless, we need to explain the success of …
I still have some difficulty in figuring out the problem about normative ethics expressed on the Abhinavagupta forum. There is obviously something that bugs people, but I cannot make out what it is.
First, about the counter evidence. If the Indian film censor board is a statutory body, then it derives its powers from the laws that have brought such an entity into being. Its tasks (viz. whether it …
X asks: I am unable to figure out what the special significance is of not having a ‘moral ought’ in the Indian traditions. If ‘should not’ and ‘must not’ have the same practical consequences as ‘ought not’, that is we are obligated to behave in a certain way, why does it make a difference how it is expressed in our language?
Your question is probably the best way of showing the difficulty we have …
Whenever I discuss the absence of normative ethics in India, people, especially Indians, get agitated. They hear me say that India has no ethics. Consequently, they want to show that I could never be right in my claim. This has happened on the Abhinavagupta forum as well.
Perhaps, I should say that the Indian understanding of ethics is different from the western understanding. While this might …
My proposal addresses itself to the following observation: the natural sciences, as we know them today, arise in the western culture. What ’natural sciences’ mean in the above statement is clarified by other sentences that say, for example, ’the rest of the world has accepted the western science and technology..’ or ‘we need to learn science and technology form the west..’ When we make these kinds …
The absence of supernatural entities in the Indian traditions may seem counterintuitive to many. We can let someone else do the talking for us, namely Dale B. Martin in his interesting book Inventing Superstition: from the Hippocratics to the Christians (Harvard University Press, 2004): “One of the basic arguments of this book is that, contrary to many modern assumptions, the category of “the …
Let us retain the translation of ‘Anu’ as ‘appropriate’ or ‘apt’. Let us emphasize the active dimension of the word ‘Bhava’ to translate it as ‘coming into existence’. (‘Existence’ and ‘being’ are also acceptable translations of the word ‘Bhava’.) Then ‘Anubhava’ would mean an apt way of coming-into-existence. The problem here is this: we can ask the question, coming into existence of what? Of …
The biggest issue is: what is experience? All the Indian traditions have been busy with answering this question. But both posing this question and answering it are themselves experiential, as far as the Indian traditions are concerned. For instance, according to the so-called Buddhist traditions, the structures-in-experience are not given in the experience itself: the impermanence and transience …
