Elections-09: Introspections of a Hindu-Nationalist

Hmm so the election results are out and as you can well guess they are totally against what I hoped for. But somehow I do not feel disheartened; instead I feel more energized. A feeling of “buckle up guys… if there is anything these elections has proved, it is that we have more work to do than we had estimated. So let’s get started immediately” engulfs me.

Although this is not a verdict I hoped for, it was something I was expecting to happen. There are some fundamental shifts taking place in the nature of Indian polity and society in general, but the BJP campaign did not/could not gear up to them. Here are some of my views on those underlying changes that have been taking place.

Before I begin, one more word. It is usual after every battle that all the people throng for friendship with the leaders if they won and crave for their heads if they lose. I am not interested in such distancing from the loser and indulging in that contemptuous “I told you so; if only you had listened to me” statements. This is more an introspection; from someone who feels he is part of the family and shares its destiny; and from someone who feels crying hoarse or feeling sorry is not a replacement for initiatives we have to take.

Ah one more word, please: We often tend to give elections and political spectrum in general more attention than they deserve. We feel they are the beginning and end of all; while the reality is far far away. However there is one item which I do attach importance to in the results: Irrespective of BJP winning or losing, the basic point is that the issues or what we are thinking are the issues are not finding much connect with the society today. We have full five years at our disposal to pick bones with cong, but this is the time to do some fundamental internal reshuffling as well, which is long overdue.


1. Outdated “Hindu Pride”
In the times till 90’s Hinduism was despised both in political and academic circles. Being a Hindu was looked as something shameful. A common Hindu used to be apologetic about his religion. In that context, the mobilization on the basis of Hindu pride was needed… and that’s what the Hindutva movements like Ayodhya did.

But now times has changed. Thanks to those 90’s movements, being Hindu is no longer something shameful. This has given way to more secure and stable feeling about being a Hindu. There is a genuine pride about Hinduism amongst its followers. The “Hindu Pride” is thus no longer an issue; for a Hindu today, it is rather taken for granted. The faith of Hindu of the old was feebly low due to constant attacks and thus its power has to be asserted through achievements like taking back Ayodhya. But the faith of Hindu now (thanks to the mobilization of those days) is more secure and stable that it does not feel threatened by mere destruction of Rama’s bidge (I am not saying the Hindu of today approves such destruction; I am instead saying that his faith does not feel threatened even if such act happens).

So the days of “Hindu Pride” are gone; it’s already a conquered fort. Time to move forward; time to reconvert Hindus into Hinduism; time to see that people who now Hindus only by association become Hindus who follow its ethos and values in their lives.


2. Politics of aspiration over politics of victimhood
Much of the politics of last two decades was centered on politics of resentment, be it caste or religion. This has given way to politics of aspiration (terms borrowed from Indian Express editorial). There were times when resentment of other caste/religion was the major factor in deciding to whom people voted. Lalu and Mulayam who benefited from scaring Yadavs and Muslims about others are the examples of those age. However this has come to an end as seen how Yadavs rejected lalu in Bihar and how Muslims did not buy similar tricks of Maya in UP. This is also apparent from how even after agitations in Jammu and Kandhmal, BJP failed to make any improvements in its vote tally there. In words of Sekhar Gupta:

“…the politics of grievance, rooted in our complex past, is giving way to the politics of aspiration. Or, as Thomas Friedman puts it, the weight of dreams is turning out heavier than that of memories… For, anybody who built a campaign on negativism, prejudice, victimhood and vengeance has been demolished …[the] more confident voter… is now willing to seek a stake in the future rather than be settling scores for the past.”

This is not to say that some of the issues like conversions or terrorism in front of the Hindu society have been solved. They are very much there. But the present Indian citizen prefers these to be tackled through institutions of the state, not by those outside it. Earlier it was an institutional problem in his eyes; now it is an implementation problem to him.

Now look at some of the issues taken by some of the Hindutva groups in the recent past: the likes of cross symbol on the new two rupee coin… comon guys if you search carefully, you will be able to find two perpendicular lines almost everywhere. Such agitations based on the feeling of “victimhood” has to be done with.


3. Controlling ones’ puppies
“Dogs of war” writes an asian times columnist “incline toward caution, which after all is how they grew up to be dogs. More worrisome are puppies, who do not know what danger is.” He then makes a very insightful observation: “Wars start because no one wants to disown his dog. If your dog bites a neighbor, your neighbor well might come after you with a shotgun.”

Confused… ok let me put it in perspective. The puppies here are the likes of Varun Gandhi, Sri Ram sena etc. Being puppies or inexperienced, they arrogantly go and bite neighbor; something experienced and battle hardened leaders in BJP like Advani etc never do. But what you do if your neighbor comes with a shotgun to kill that? The instinct is try to stand in the way or give some boring justifications of why it might have done so. In the end you sound like the one who secretly sanctioned all that even though in reality you did not.

The likes of Varun and Sri Ram sena run amok with the confidence of being under the Hindutva tutelage. While it’s true that most people in the Hinduva camp do not approve such acts as theirs, the protectionist instinct softens their stance, prompting them to give out some rationalizations of their acts. But these many times are very similar to the rationalizations we hear from liberals about Naxal violence and from Mullas about terrorism... something we abhor.

It’s not enough if you avoid hurting the neighbor. We also have to keep our puppies under control. And if they cross the line, we must also be ready to discard them instead of indulging in rationalizations (example: the type of strict adherence to basics shown by Republican party in kicking out Trent Lott).


4. The advent of the “Gentle” leader
Again going back to the old days, to become a leader you had to be a terrific and rubble raising speaker. But this expectation from the voters has changed. This has given way to preference for a gentle person. A look at the CMs of various states will prove my point. Be it Shivraj Singh Chauhan or Raman Singh or Nitish Kumar or Sheila Dixit or Naveen Patnaik or Yeddyurappa or Khanduri… all of them are “gentle” kind. They are not big controversy raisers nor those who hop media limelight all the time through their statements. They don’t talk much nonsense; they do not bother to heap their opponents in abuses. Modi's success too is on the basis of his Gujarat success story, not mere rhetoric.

The voter’s feeling today is that enough of rhetoric and abuses: tell us what solutions you propose. We must wake up to this (its not that congress came up with any solutions; but the excessive rhetorical criticism has backfired on BJP).

In this context it is also necessary to add one more word about the “youth” politics. Many blogglers have been arguing that one of the main reasons for BJP’s loss is lack of young faces countering those of Rahul to attract the young voters. Firstly I feel the “Rahul effect” is just exaggerated; I am sure most people who have seen him would have laughed at his childishness. I also reject the proposition that a leader must be young to attract young voters. Sheila Dixit’s case proves that it need not be the case. What the young prefers is a less rhetoric, more constructive leader, irrespective of age. Of course, as this is time for new ideas and , young blood is always preferable

5. The Cadre Dilemmas
Cadre and ideology centered parties are always better than individual based parties like that of congress. But there are some peculiar challenges which they carry along with them. Electioneering and campaigning requires considerable man power- people who can distribute pamphlets explaining the party policies, people who can guide their prospective voters on the day of voting, people who can help organize rallies and meetings etc etc. For congress to find people for such things is very easy: just pay. But for cadre based parties, it is very difficult to find people for all that. Imagine the amount of inspiration a person should have put aside his personal benefits and give his time for some election.

It requires a deep sense of dissatisfaction and frustration with the existing system that a person feels he has to put some of his self-interest aside and dedicate time for that ideal. A common cadre usually is thus likely to have much stronger opinions than the usual society. But Hindu-Nationalism is not merely about anger towards other systems. It is also accompanied by a deep belief in an alternate methodology. Thus while frustration with the existing system is the first step of becoming a cadre, harnessing and channeling that anger in disciplined and constructive manner is the second and more important part.

While that is desired, my personal observations internet world show that the second is not talking place (I am not sure of the real world; I am here only basing my opinions on internet world-whether you feel these observations can be extended or not is upto the reader). A common right-wing member of the yesterdays was a person who had one important quality: he was not a ravaging angry young man we see aplenty on internet today; but a person who has disciplined and channeled his aggravation properly. He just did not have questions for the “seculars”, he also had solutions and alternatives. The Hindutva members of the past gave hope and confidence in an alternate system; but the present one sounds more like a doomsday predictor.

The psychology behind it very simple: people don’t like to accept that they are deep soup. They thus switch to denial mode to your list of existing problems. Adjoin optimism with it and then you will find that they are more forthcoming to our line of thinking.

We can’t just heap lots of arguments on why the “seculars” are bad or how India is going to be doomed under them. We have to complete it with the more important part: what is the solution and alternative we suggest.

Of course I am not sure how much of blame for this can be laid at the feet of sangh, for they still very much stress these values. This is more an observation, than a complaint: that somewhere else things simply are not going as desired and that this reality needs to be acknowledged and attended to.


Conclusion
Before concluding just a quick point: just because I said we lack this, we failed at that etc, it does not mean congress has got it all right (the loss of its many central ministers prove that it has not). The congress and BJP just remained what they were. It is the Indian populace which moved, and that shift harmed the BJP more than congress. Now its time for BJP to come of the stagnation of ideas and reinvent itself from the basics. I concede a defeat in the battle, not war. So lets prepare for the next one.

Missionary agenda of YSR: From the horse's mouth

There are always allegations about the missionary zeal of the Christian Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, Y.S Rajasekhara Reddy or commonly known as YSR. But many times due to absence of hard evidence, these are often discarded as nothing more than chest-thumping.

For people who believe only in “evidences” here it is. I have collected all the Government Orders (GO) by the Government of AP allotting funds to various Churches in AP. My source of information is no secret either. It is the online portal of Govt of AP listing all the GOs it issued (the government portals are treasure houses of information; you just have to know how to dig out what you need). You can see the data in this page:

http://suryassk.googlepages.com/AP_GOs.htm

People are welcome to cross-check the information I have given from the GO portal (it also have the scanned forms in PDF form for more info if you wish) if they find what I wrote here hard to believe.

The following is the summary of the data from that sheet:

1. The GO portal is active only from February 2008, hence the data I have given is only of 1 year (ie., Feb 2008 to Jan 2009). Note that although vast, it is by no means comprehensive (ie., I have shown Govt 263.07 lakhs to Christian institutions. This amount is the minimum spent on them, not the maximum).

2. But even for a single year, an amount of 263.07 lakhs was given as aid to various Christian institutions.

3. More than 258 churches benefited from these grants for construction/renovation of churches.

4. An amount of 1316.54 lakhs was given as aid to various Muslim institutions through Wakf boards.

5. Not a single GO granting any aid to a Hindu temple can be found. This in spite of the fact that in AP, the Hindu temples are managed by the Endowments Ministry (put it simply they take all the money which the temples generate).

6. Govt takes away all the money which Hindu temples generate, but do not grant a single penny to any of its temples. It does not touch the money from Christian and Muslim institutions, but grants them huge amounts of money.


I have always argued that the “Missionary Charity” is just a myth. These new evidence only reinforce my earlier points. I do not want to waste more words how the Christian CM of AP is perusing his missionary zeal not just through individual actions, but also through direct grants from the Government of AP. As I said, the facts speak louder. Let the reader judge for himself.

PS: Special thanks to my friend Sandeep Verma and blogger barbarianindians for getting my attention to this aspect.

The fascination for Hi-Fi

Man always tried to extend the limits of his abilities. Thus the idea of conquering the most challenging of the tasks fascinates him (the ambitious Big Bang experiment is one such example).

However, this attitude sometimes leads into negligence to basics. For example, one air crash absorbs all our attention, even though the number of dead in simple road accidents may be a thousand fold more. AIDS immediately comes to the mind when we say medical challenges, while diseases like malaria continue to kill more than 3000 children per day in Africa. What’s more, the malaria deaths are totally avoidable and preventable. Yet millions of dollars are poured into AIDS “awareness”, while much simpler, yet lethal diseases are happily forgotten. We hotly discuss the energy crunch in India and alternate methods of filling it. While that’s good, fundamentals like good power management are overlooked. The topics of more IITs and IIMs are passionately debated. But when was the last time primary education discussed with such passion? We closely follow the scheduled space flights of NASA. But how much do we know about rurally relevant technologies?

We are fascinated about the Hi-Fi, but neglect the basics. This behavior can be better understood with a background of the “slacker wins” attitude. The typical youth fantasy today is about an acne-pitted, pizza-gobbling, beer-guzzling mind-altered college dropouts in cut-off jeans and flip-flops starting a website and becoming billionaires. As an Asian times article points out, this attitude is reflected in even movies like “Kung Fu Panda”, in which a fat and feckless panda who in two easy lessons becomes a kung fu master. As film critic Carina Chocano lamented in the Los Angeles Times, "The slacker panda whose favorite word is 'awesome' is singled out for heroism when all the other characters have worked long and hard (the definition of kung fu) and sacrificed for what they've accomplished.

Underlying the seemingly good-natured adolescent humor movie is a nasty streak of resentment. Young men today profoundly resent the notion that they must subject themselves to the discipline in order to learn and advance - precisely what martial arts propose to teach.

Discipline and sacrifice are the two fundamental requirements for any great achievement. But most of us today are not willing to go for it, yet we want “greatness”. Thus the fascination for the Hi-Fi --- its makes more sense to choose a challenging job and not accomplish it (as you do not wish to give up slacking) than to choose a job which is achievable (you have to burn out your fat for that then).

Greatness does not lie in occasional sparks of genius, but in consistent hard work. In the words of Swami Vivekananda: “If you really want to judge of the character of a man, look not at his great performances. Every fool may become a hero at one time or another. Watch a man do his most common actions; those are indeed the things which will tell you the real character of a great man.”. Time to put these words into practice.

Hail the new Nuclear Realities

Finally after rounds of tough negotiations the NSG has given a waiver for civil nuclear cooperation with India. The irony is that NSG was formed in 1974 in opposition to the nuclear tests by India. Now, that very NSG gives special exception to India.


The Imperatives: Much has been written in the media about the advantages it gives to nuclear power generation in India, so no point in repeating it. In my view, greater advantages actually come in the form of use of dual use technologies… a wide range of technologies which can give a great boost to defense technologies in addition to those in civil arena.


Kudos to… I am sure many of you remember the situation 10-15 ten years back with Bill Clinton at the office… much of the grumble was about making India sign CTBT. From that times the situation today is that India is the only country beyond the NPT and yet having a weapons programme. So what changed these realities?

First it is the BJP govt for boldly conducting nuclear tests… while previous govts like that of PV chickened out in the last minute under the international pressure. Although shocked at this open defiance by India, the international community had to finally come to terms with the reality that India has nuclear warheads. Its nuclear weapons are not going to vanish just because the world denies that India is a nuclear power.

Then to the Indian bureaucrats like Anil Kakodkar, Shiv Shankar Menon etc. I still have trouble accepting the fact MMS, the selected-PM and a frontal puppet indeed held to his positions strongly in these tough negotiations. I always have this complaint that Indian negotiators often behave very soft and sissy. It was pleasant surprise to see that in spite of the tough negotiations, the Indian counterparts conceded little. Perhaps the credit for it goes to the opposition parties. Though unintentionally, they too played a role.

Although the international negotiations employ sophisticated terms, IMHO they are not very different from an ordinary vegetable market. Till the last minute the other party will try to extract the maximum possible. However, if it is made adequately clear that you have only Rs10 in your pocket and the vendor can either sell it for Rs10 or forego the process has many times a “softening” effect on the vendor. Thanks to the tooth and nail opposition to this deal from other parties, it was clear to the international community that it was a case of not-an-inch more with the Indian party. In a way it ensured what Advani said in parliament when he stated that he was not against nuclear partnership with US perse, but only wants India to extract more. The international community thus was left with no other option but to choose partial cooperation with India over no-cooperation if pressed for more.

The credit thus goes to the Indian democracy, that although the parties change, the crucial policies are continued and enhanced; and with the opposition providing the needed checks and balances (before you jump on me with all talk about the nature of politicians in India, lemme clarify that I do not negate the rough and ugly side of our democracy; its just that I don’t think it is beyond the point of no-redemption)


The apprehensions of opposition: There has been much opposition to this deal, but much of it is just rhetoric with no real logic. The arguments of left against this are not even worth a refutation. The only credible resistance to it comes from the likes of Arun Shourie et al. I may not agree with all of what he says, but do commend the approach and intentions (in contrast to the Chinese Party in India… err CPI).

The main argument of the opposing groups to the deal is that it takes away the sovereign right of India to test nuclear weapons in future. To start to with, India has already conducted nuclear test, including the thermo-nuclear ones in the past and has nuclear weapons. These tests confirmed our capability to detonate a nuclear war head. Further nuclear tests in future will be required only if you want to improvise the efficiency of the warhead. But then, is it really critical? Whether you employ a 50% or 60% efficient nuclear war head, is it going to make such a big difference when the war head is NUCLEAR? Not so much… particularly when India with its no-first use policy is still critically dependent on its conventional capabilities. Thus it is wiser in my view to choose free flow of dual-use technologies for improving conventional defense over an efficiency increase in the nuclear warheads.

Now for arguments sake lets say India has to test its warheads… what then? As India is not a signatory of CTBT and remains doggedly so, it is not bound by any international laws against testing. There may be cries about it, but with a history of having unanimous UN resolutions passed against it for its earlier tests, this kind of likely opposition is nothing new for India. The only after-effect of some real consequence is the possibility of the international community ending its nuclear cooperation with India.

In this regard some of the arguments about discriminatory attitude towards India are indeed true. Nuclear weapon states like US or China can make tests and get away with it without any real consequences, while India may be “punished” for doing the same. But then we must also acknowledge some hard realities, however, uncomfortable they may be. An editorial in IE puts it in better words: [written before the final nod of NSG] “India can’t negotiate a complicated international agreement and expect everyone to roll over and say take whatever you want, we’ll just watch and applaud. Right now, India is a nuclear pariah, excluded from global nuclear trade, shut out from the club. The rules as they stand imply that India’s status should remain unchanged. The nuclear deal, as non-proliferation hardliners have said, makes an India-sized exception to global rules.” We can always complain that the exceptions NSG made are not enough. But then considering that the important objections of India are still intact, it is sensible to let the life go on with taking what comes while continuing the fight for the rest in future instead of a full or nil in one go approach.

Coming back to the case of testing… so what happens if India conducts additional nuclear tests in the future? There is no clear cut consequences list in that case. We have many for/against the deal commentators citing this act and that act to prove their case. Who is correct?

The basic fact is that this ambiguity of legal terms was a conscious effort to accommodate both the supporting and opposing parties. If there is a friendly administration in US in the time of tests, it may citing this reason and that can indefinitely delay any action… remember that NSG requires consensus to make any decision… thus a waiver requires support of all the 45 countries. But then by the same logic, all the 45 should support the cancellation of waiver and the NSG guidelines (para 16.c.3) makes it clear that the individual parties can continue the cooperation till then.

On the other hand if there is a hostile administration, it can take cover under this law and that and stop the cooperation. But then this is possible even if there are more stronger words in India’s case. Countries often hide behind some silly legalities of issues to delay or expedite any action (recall how US continuously denies the proliferation history of China in spite of many proofs and strong legal agreements). Thus the legalities are best left to the columnists to argue out. The fact stands out that US administration of the day decides what to do in that scenario.

But then the question still comes up… how can we leave the future of our fuel supply to the whims of govt in US. Here the need for vision to develop self-reliance assumes importance. If Indians go into a slumber depending wholly on the goodwill of US, then on one fine day they will realise that they may not have power in their houses unless they have friendly ties with US. Hence such behaviour can be dangerous. But then such risk is always going to be there. The same question can be asked about oil supplies we get from gulf. What if tomorrow they suddenly cut the oil supply? Thus we cannot go into isolation just coz of some risks involved in it.

If we delve deeper, nuclear option decreases the risk factor for India, not increase it, coz you cannot store up much oil for future use, but we can store nuclear raw material for future use too. In a press interview after the IAEA resolution, Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran clarified that the resolution provides for a strategic fuel reserve to be used for the lifetime operation of those reactors. “It means we can create a bank, and can fill it with fuel as and when we get fuel from other countries," and added that “this will allow for India's programme to go ahead without any disruption even if a dispute arises in the future.”

There are other considerations too… although much of the hopes of India’s self-reliance are based on its thorium reserves, by some estimates it will take atleast another 30years to make the process commercially viable, not to mention the subsequent time in building new plants with those designs. Even the road map of DAE on the subject reads “During the next 20 years, we would like to lay a firm foundation for the use of thorium by developing appropriating technologies.” We are still talking about laying foundation for the next 20 years and then making it commercially viable and then finally to build the plants. I will not be surprised even if it 2050 by they time they are ready.

On the other hand if it exposed to the nuclear know-how, even if in a partial manner, then thanks to the dual-use technologies a plethora of technologies like those in materials and thermal heat exchangers will be easily accessible. This can accelerate India’s own thorium research and thus decrease the lead time.

Another factor is that thorium, unlike uranium, is not readily usable. Thus we require some good amount to uranium and plutonium available with us to kick start the thorium programme. India does not have it at present. But the nuclear cooperation can provide the same.

Thus I feel in the longer run, it only increases the freedom of India, not decrease it. Then there is also another facet worth considering… India has only 0.8% of world’s uranium reserves. Due to lack of outside supply, it is forced to divert most of it to its existing nuclear power plants. Now due to the deal it can buy nuclear raw material for these plants from external sources and reserve its own uranium reserves for strategic purposes. Although the foreign countries are not going to supply India fuel for building more bombs, the deal overall only increases the amount of available uranium for strategic purposes.

India can extract enough of this deal even if it stays in place only for 10-15 years… and it stays even further then the nuclear fuel supply is only more welcome.

In Search of Some Balance…

We often see many heated discussions on many types of topics, essentially revolving around various personalities.

Few illustrations- our neo-Buddhist friends often come up with the argument of Shambhuka and his killing by Rama as a proof of caste discrimination. Our dualist and arya samaji friends try to quote bhajagovindam or some other verse of Sankara to prove that Sankara was against women or sudras. To be fair, even some Hindus do the same to others - be it Arun Shourie’s treatment of Ambedkar or Ayesha episode in Prophet’s life.

It will be of course to wrong to just right away brush aside these people as brainwashed or prejudiced. There is some principle they are all trying to highlight, be it against caste discrimination or gender discrimination etc etc.

But the error is they confuse a Personality from a Historical Person. They think that rejecting one is equivalent to rejecting the other. However that’s not the case.

For example, how does a devotee of Rama react to the question of Sambhuka- he will reply that “look brother, how can Rama who ate from the tasted fruits of Sabari ever discriminate another person on the basis of his caste; all those episodes should have been interpolations of later authors”.

It’s needless to say that the other does not buy this and keeps harping that it is the Shambhuka episode that is real, and Sabari might have been fabrication or dikhava. Naturally the fight goes on and on…

But what the first person does not realize is that the second person already agrees to the principle he is trying to bring out. The first person:
1. Feels that a concept is wrong (caste discrimination here)
2. He then feels that the personality in question is acting as a wrong example and hindrance to the acceptability of that principle.
3. He thus sets out to destroy that personality with a view to actually destroy that idea.

But when the second person does not even think that the personality in question holds such a view, the link in point-2 is broken. What happens thus is: though the first person starts the argument with a view of establishing a principle, he gets so engrossed in the argument that he forgets that both actually agree on the principle in question.

The same phenomenon can be seen in the reverse direction too… for example we used participate in some educational work in our nearby slum and used to have regular interaction with some kids there. Being maharastra, many of them were from families of neo-buddhist background and had great reverence for Ambedkar. The bookish-scholar I was, and having read Arun Shourie’s book on him, I did not have a great opinion of him, to put it mildly. I used to feel that a neo-buddhist guy naturally hates all the hindus and their gods. So when I used to visit some of their houses, I used to find it strange and contradictory that in many houses the hindu gods used to share space with their new gods viz. Buddha and Ambedkar.

It was later that I realized that Ambedkar for them stood for dalit empowerment and not exactly anti-Hinduism (note that I am referring here to lay followers; not the political class). It was only the bookish scholars on both sides who fight a futile battle over those things. When it comes to the actual follower, he has amazing ability to discriminate between both.

The same pattern can be seen even in many inter-sect debates too. Take for example, our Arya Samaji friend’s displeasure at Sankara in a recent thread. If we separate out all the strong and bitter words, what remains is that he opposes the singling out of women and sudras for vedic knowledge. Such person then feels that the teachings of Sankara are hindering those principles and hence opposes Sankara too (note that this is just an example and I am not commenting on any particular groups; to be fair there are also Advaitins who denounce the other dualist groups worshiping Shakti as illusion dwellers)

But when he poses these questions to people who revere Sankara, they will probably reply that Sankara meant “keep away from lust”, when he says “keep away from women” and as proof of this they cite many of those Sankara’s strotras extolling Shakti.

Swami Sivananda for example while commenting on Brahmasutras, when it comes to the Apasudradhikaranam remarks that this Bhasya is an interpolation of a later author. Other Adviatins cite the incident of Sankara and the Chandala to substantiate that argument.

In the end, an argument which started essentially to uphold some viewpoint lost itself somewhere and argument descends into an expression of one’s grammatical skills (when both parties actually agree to the principles in question).


One may ask is it not important to ascertain whether the person is question actually held those views or not? The answer to this takes back to the beginning of the post where we started with understanding the difference between a Personality from a person in history. None of us have empirical evidence of all the acts of Rama or Sankara. These personalities refer not flesh and blood people, but a set-of-ideas. Hence it also appropriate to judge them for what the follower understands them to represent, instead of what you or me understand them to represent. I feel if start to view things in this manner, we may agree with each other more easily. At least we can avoid fighting on things we don’t actually disagree.

Economics101 - Demystifying Economics

Economics is one field which completely surrounds us but which hardly understood by us. It is made more complicated by use of a jargon of complex terms. Hence this effort to give the reader a small introduction to this field.

Later Update: As it was too long, I have moved it to googlepages. You can read it here:
http://suryassk.googlepages.com/economics101

Religion and Humanity

Post of Thread starter:

Friends ! Here I am starting a new topic to understand religion and humanity impartially. Here I request post your views without criticizing any religion or community.
Here I start:
Different religions define life in different manners. There are many similarities and dissimilarities. And this variety is the beauty of world. If everything was alike then it would not have been so attractive. Variety of flowers makes a garden worth seeing.

My Reply:

You brought up a good topic (which is also proved by the fact that there are no responses to it )

There is an old story I remember. A hunter living in the forest once found a wooden bark in the form of a boomerang. It proved to be very helpful to him in his hunting. In the course of time, he slowly started to get attached to that boomerang.

As time went on, that boomerang slowly started to wear down and was no more useful. But as the hunter has become too attached to it, he kept using the same boomerang even though it was not really helping. Eventually he reached point where the boomerang was no use at all and this hunter unable to overcome his attachment to it could not leave it. Hence he no longer had any animals and eventually starved.

The case of humanity and religion is also something like that. Some persons realized various spiritual truths. Then religions came into existence in the form of various practices propounded by those spiritual men to imbibe those spiritual ideals they have realized.

But in the course of the time, the followers started forgetting that various practices are not the end, but the means. It is time Hindus ask themselves: who is a hindu – is it a person who covers himself with vibuthi and rudraksh, but does all the bad things or a person who even while believing in some other god, still is committed to the core to Bharat? Who is closer to Hinduism- is it Kalam or Lalu? Similarly the people of other religions too.

I like this “The Ideal of Universal Religion” and “The Way to Realization of a Universal Religion” lectures of SV very much. Quoting some bits from them:

[QUOTE]
Unity in variety is the plan of the universe. We are all men, and yet we are all distinct from one another. As a part of humanity I am one with you, and as Mr. So-and-so I am different from you. As a man you are separate from the woman; as a human being you are one with the woman. As a man you are separate from the animal, but as living beings, man, woman, animal, and plant are all one; and as existence, you are one with the whole universe. That universal existence is God, the ultimate Unity in the universe. In Him we are all one. At the same time, in manifestation, these differences must always remain. In our work, in our energies, as they are being manifested outside, these differences must always remain. We find then that if by the idea of a universal religion it is meant that one set of doctrines should be believed in by all mankind it is wholly impossible. It can never be, there can never be a time when all faces will be the same. Again, if we expect that there will be one universal mythology, that is also impossible; it cannot be. Neither can there be one universal ritual. Such a state of things can never come into existence;

What then do I mean by the ideal of a universal religion? I do not mean any one universal philosophy, or any one universal mythology, or any one universal ritual held alike by all;… What can we do then? We can make it run smoothly, we can lessen the friction, we can grease the wheels, as it were. How? By recognising the natural necessity of variation. Just as we have recognised unity by our very nature, so we must also recognise variation. We must learn that truth may be expressed in a hundred thousand ways, and that each of these ways is true as far as it goes. We must learn that the same thing can be viewed from a hundred different standpoints, and yet be the same thing….

…Then arises the question: How can all these varieties be true? If one thing is true, its negation is false. How can contradictory opinions be true at the same time? This is the question which I intend to answer. But I will first ask you: Are all the religions of the world really contradictory? I do not mean the external forms in which great thoughts are clad. I do not mean the different buildings, languages, rituals, books, etc. employed in various religions, but I mean the internal soul of every religion. Every religion has a soul behind it, and that soul may differ from the soul of another religion; but are they contradictory? Do they contradict or supplement each other? — that is the question. I took up the question when I was quite a boy, and have been studying it all my life. Thinking that my conclusion may be of some help to you, I place it before you. I believe that they are not contradictory; they are supplementary. Each religion, as it were, takes up one part of the great universal truth, and spends its whole force in embodying and typifying that part of the great truth. It is, therefore, addition; not exclusion. That is the idea. System after system arises, each one embodying a great idea, and ideals must be added to ideals. And this is the march of humanity. Man never progresses from error to truth, but from truth to truth, from lesser truth to higher truth — but it is never from error to truth. The child may develop more than the father, but was the father inane? The child is the father plus something else. If your present state of knowledge is much greater than it was when you were a child, would you look down upon that stage now? Will you look back and call it inanity? Why, your present stage is the knowledge of the child plus something more.

Then, again, we also know that there may be almost contradictory points of view of the same thing, but they will all indicate the same thing. Suppose a man is journeying towards the sun, and as he advances he takes a photograph of the sun at every stage. When he comes back, he has many photographs of the sun, which he places before us. We see that not two are alike, and yet, who will deny that all these are photographs of the same sun, from different standpoints? Take four photographs of this church from different corners: how different they would look, and yet they would all represent this church. In the same way, we are all looking at truth from different standpoints, which vary according to our birth, education, surroundings, and so on. We are viewing truth, getting as much of it as these circumstances will permit, colouring the truth with our own heart, understanding it with our own intellect, and grasping it with our own mind. We can only know as much of truth as is related to us, as much of it as we are able to receive. This makes the difference between man and man, and occasions sometimes even contradictory ideas; yet we all belong to the same great universal truth

[/UNQUOTE]

How come different Saints have different realizations?

Question:

if realisation is the answer to all, then how come different saints have different opinions. For example Shri Ramakrishna in his enlightenment used to visualise Goddess Kali, Gautam Buddha got the enlightenment concluded that there is no God and all things are subject to change. Jesus Christ preached love to God. Mahavir Jain mediated only to find there is no God but souls are present!! I mean different saints concluded different truths(existence of God,soul, no God, love to God,creator God, incarnated God and so on). If they all got the wisdom how their conclusions of realisation/enlightenment are different? There should be only one truth after realisation. May be the oath/approches be different but the truth should be one only na?

My Reply

>>> if realisation is the answer to all

Realization is not the answer to all the questions of everyone. It is just to the questions of the person who realized. The others are still bound to have questions. If I have a meal, it will be my hunger, not yours that will be satisfied; even if I give you a lengthy theoretical description of how each dish tastes. They may water your mouth and encourage you to satisfy your hunger. But there it ends.


>>> then how come different saints have different opinions.

Yes coming to the actual question- how come they “differ”. Whenever, wherever, whoever finds truth, it will be same because... because it IS truth. How can we then account this disparity?

What a rudimentary follower will do is to cry foul about the integrity of the other. A Christian to account for the difference in what the earlier messengers said and what Christ said will say that Jews corrupted the earlier messages. Muslims will say that Christians corrupted the Christ’s message hence the difference in the teachings of Christ and Prophet. Some Hindus will say that Vedas became corrupted by Upanishads. Some will say that Upanishads are corrupted by Puranas. Some will claim that Puranas are corrupted by some other things. Some will claim that Sankara was corrupted by Buddhism. Some will claim that Madhva was corrupted by Islam. etc etc etc etc. These type of things go on and on.

There may be an element of truth in the factor that teachings got altered in the course of time. But that it itself will not answer all the questions. Followers of Saint-A may accuse that Saint-B was wrong and confused or much worse say that he is a fake and imposter. But the same logic also holds good in reverse as well. Hence let’s keep aside this “they got corrupted” reason.

There may be many imposters in the world and many more in the religious world; but there are also some personalities like a Buddha, a Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, a Christ, a Sankara, a Mahavir, a Ramanuja etc on whose personal character and integrity we cannot raise a finger.

If we look at the physical level, then all the various teachings of different religions makes it impossible to accommodate each other. But if you look at what is the idea behind all these that they are trying to express, it is the idea of man trying to go beyond the limitations of the nature.

If science can be called the struggle of man to conquer external nature, religion can be termed as the struggle of man to conquer internal nature. But he may not be equipped with a complex language to express his idea clearly.

If there is difference between a man and a child, it is not in what they want to express, but in the clarity with which they can express their idea.

The early man seeing the apple fall thought there was a demon there, invisible, which is trying to pull the apple down. He did not have the mathematics to explain it clearly like newton. But it is the same idea of gravity that he was trying to express, but only in a crude manner.

Thus formed various ideas in various societies and each, man trying to express a idea in various form, sometimes sophisticated, sometimes crude.

Am I then saying that the differences are coz the Saints goofed up on putting their ideas into words? Not exactly. The trouble is more with the very language.

Lets take a silly example to drive home the point: lets say you have tasted a mint chocolate and want to convey to the other how it tastes. How will we do it? It depends on the target audience. If you are in a place where they know the taste of “sugar”, then you will take that as the starting point and try to explain that the mint is also sweet like a sugar etc etc.

Now lets imagine you are in a different place where people don’t know what is sugar, but know of ice. Then to them you start explaining that mint feels “cool” like ice etc etc.

Your idea was same, so was what you were trying to convey. But when it comes to conveying it, the perceptions of people come into picture. If that is the case with a simple eatable, imagine the difficulty involved with the case of Absolute, which is beyond even the realm of mind.

Christ might have comprehended the reality, but when he was trying to teach it to the people from Judaic background, he will start with the identification of that with the 'father in heaven'. This 'father in heaven' was no longer an angry, jealous god of the old testament, but a Loving god. But he was still the “father in heaven” they know nevertheless.

If a Saint goes to the devotee of Krishna, then he will not start off with saying “here stop calling the reality in that name, and adopt this name”. He will instead fine tune the understanding of that devotee that Krishna will be with such and such qualities.

Let me give you one example of such a phenomenon from your post itself. You said “For example Shri Ramakrishna in his enlightenment used to visualise Goddess Kali”.

Now this is the description of his first vision of Goddess Kali in Sri Ramakrishna’s own words “I felt as if my heart were being squeezed like a wet towel. I was overpowered with a great restlessness and a fear that it might not be my lot to realize Her in this life. I could not bear the separation from Her any longer. Life seemed to be not worth living. Suddenly my glance fell on the sword that was kept in the Mother's temple. I determined to put an end to my life. When I jumped up like a madman and seized it, suddenly the blessed Mother revealed Herself.

The buildings with their different parts, the temple, and everything else vanished from my sight, leaving no trace whatsoever, and in their stead I saw a limitless, infinite, effulgent Ocean of Consciousness. As far as the eye could see, the shining billows were madly rushing at me from all sides with a terrific noise, to swallow me up! I was panting for breath. I was caught in the rush and collapsed, unconscious. What was happening in the outside world I did not know; but within me there was a steady flow of undiluted bliss, altogether new, and I felt the presence of the Divine Mother.”

That was his vision of Kali in his own words. When we hear vision of Kali, we start imagining that the Kali with four hands, a sword, etc etc came appeared in front. But in his own words it is “a limitless, infinite, effulgent Ocean of Consciousness”. We may term it with words it in english, but that Ocean of Consciousness itself was Kali for him. Hence he will say “vision of Kali”. But either the teacher may present it in the perspective of the seeker or the seeker may understand the same from his perspective and hence the differences.

Veg vs Non-Veg: Killing of plants justified??

Question:

As we know that we kill plants and animals for food. But Is Killing them so that we stay alive is justified? We are told to be compassioante for all living beings. Is this compassion and love is restricted to human beings only. Also we realise or worship the God within every creature.

I agree that killing a creature for defense is right but killing plants and animals for food is which I feel something wrong. I know it is necessary to kill them for food but will it not lead to bad karma right from our birth. if this is the case then I wonder why the system has evoloved like this? Is Darwin theory of survival of the fittest makes us to stay and others to perish.Even Plants and animals have the right to live.Please if you all can enlighten me as this question is coming again and again in my mind.

My reply:

>>>But Is Killing them so that we stay alive is justified? I know that human beings are the most intellect and superior living beings on earth.But does that give us the license to kill or is it because that only we can realise God spiritually.

You are looking at only external life- but what about internal life. If starving and suicide not a form of violence?

The first requirement to get a clearer idea of this topic is to drop the barriers between internal and external. Whether seen from the lofty ideals of Advaita that there is no difference and all that exists is divine- both inside AND outside or even general common sense POV where world is a continuous existence of life.

Hence there is no “outside” and “inside”.

Now coming to non-violence. Firstly we should ask ourselves whether total non-violence is possible? If we do not consume plants, then we kill ourselves and there is still violence there. Then the plants and animals etc also form their own food cycle. A tiger may live on a deer; a deer may live on a tree; a tree may live by suppressing other plants.

Hence, whether you life it or not, there is always an element of violence involved in some form or other. Hence the next best thing we should aim is not “eliminate” violence, but minimise it. This is done by balancing the internal violence with the external violence. Different people may have different levels of cut off- some of them being:

1. The worst form is to breed, raise animals to only kill them. This is more rampant in Europe etc. They breed animals in excess to their natural ability just for the sake of killing them for food.

2. The next level is to form a part of natural food cycle. A tribal man might not be breeding animals for killing, but will consume them just like any other animal might consume it.

3. Then comes the attitude where you don’t kill any animal or in any way influence in the killing of an animal, but if somebody does kill it, then there is no harm in taking it. Buddha and Buddhists are known to follow this level. They do accept non-veg food as biksha coz the animal has not been killed coz of them, but irrespective of them and the excessive wasted food is being offered to them as biksha.

4. Then is the level of most vegetarians- do not consume animal meat in any manner, but cultivate plants to eat.

5. Then is the level of Sages who live in forests etc. They do not cultivate plants for food, but rather consume whatever has naturally fallen from trees etc.

6. The final is the way some of the Jain monks do- totally abstain from food, lest you kill someone. This again in the other extreme in my view.


There are no hard and fast rules- where you draw the line is something dependent on the nature of the person.

>>>I mean will it not lead to bad karma?

That’s a big subject in itself. The results of Karma do not dependent on the physical acts, but the attitude of the person in doing so (refer to this post for more on that subject).

One accumulates bad karma NOT by bad action, but by bad thought. In most day to day cases, bad thought precedes a bad action, hence people naturally identify bad action with bad karma. However the subtle difference needs to be maintained.

Let me give an example- take all the poltugiri steps that Pandavas take in Mahabharata under the guidance of Krishna to kill Kauravas. They are surely bad actions in the physical sense. However, the Pandavas did not accrue any bad karma coz they were not motivated by bad thoughts- i.e., the motive for their actions was not selfish, but unselfish upholding of Dharma.

In the same manner, if food is consumed with a sense of enjoyment (as they say, some people live for food, instead of food for living) then it accrues bad karma, for the motive there is enjoyment. But if it is consumed with a sense of duty, as a means to sustain this body, the perfect instrument given to us for Moksha, then it accrues no bad karma at all.

Horoscope – to believe or not to believe

Are Horoscopes correct? Whether to believe them or not? I am sure most of had this doubt.

There is some truth in this whole horoscope business. To my understanding it works out something like this:

Firstly, it is a common misunderstanding that a horoscope has our “destiny” predetermined in it and that we just follow it like puppets. That’s not true- a horoscope does NOT tell you your future. Rather it calculates your past and present karma and extrapolates it into the future.

It is like a mock test. A mock test based on your preparation in the past forecasts how many marks you may get if you continue with the same preparation. But that does not decide your test out come. You still have things in your control and by effort, we can change that.

A horoscope has to be seen only in that view. If a horoscope tells you that you are going to have such and such thing in future, it only means that based on your present karma and assuming that the present trend continues, you will get such an outcome in the future. But we do still have the power to change it.


One more question related to this believe-not_to_believe is why is there so much non-uniformity in the forecasts; for some ppl things turn out exactly the same, for some ppl they do not. If jyotishya is right, it must be right for everyone. Why this difference then? The following are some of the reasons for it:

1. Jyotishya is very much dependent on factors like time, place of birth etc. Even a 5 min difference in birth time or time of sunrise in that place may make huge difference in your jataka. In some cases we do have accurate timing, but in some cases, we may have the wrong time of birth, thus wrong horoscope.

2. As I said earlier, you can still with strong will change the forecasted outcome.

3. Seen isolated, this whole thing is nothing more than a bunch of numbers. A jyotishi has to understand what those refer to and based on it tell one about the horoscope. This involves insight and keen understanding. Something like a share market- anybody can tell you what the share rate of a company is, what’s the growth rate is etc. But it requires an insight to tell what those numbers mean, whether it is “good” or “bad” etc etc.

Are Yoga and Meditation interrelated?

Question:

In the below website and the links, I studied that meditation is related to yoga. It says the third step in yoga is meditation.

http://yoga-essenceoflife.blogspot.com/

As far I know, that meditation can be practiced on our own but not yoga. We need to study yoga from a well known teacher in that. If that is true, Can we practice meditation our own???

Is that meditation becomes a part of yoga???

Please reply.

My Reply:

First and foremost: Yoga does not mean a series of physical exercises like aerobics.

As the hinduwisdom website says “The aim of Yoga is to tear the veil that keeps man confined within the human dimension of consciousness. Yoga, is the union of the individual soul with the Supreme Soul”.

Sri Aurobindo commenting on the nature of Indian mind says “she saw that the physical does not get its full sense until it stands in right relation to the supra-physical; she saw that the complexity of the universe could not be explained in the present terms of man or seen by his superficial sight, that there were other powers behind, other powers within man himself of which he is normally unaware, that he is conscious only of a small part of himself, that the invisible always surrounds the visible, the supra-sensible the sensible, even as infinity always surrounds the finite. She saw too that man has the power of exceeding himself, of becoming himself more entirely and profoundly than he is, - truths which have only recently begun to be seen in Europe and seem even now too great for its common intelligence…

Then with that calm audacity of her intuition which knew no fear or littleness and shrank from no act whether of spiritual or intellectual, ethical or vital courage, she declared that there was none of these things which man could not attain if he trained his will and knowledge; he could conquer these ranges of mind, become the spirit, become a god, become one with God, become the ineffable Brahman.

Yoga is the “means” to the aim Sri Aurobindo talks about in the earlier para. It comprises of lot of steps. The body according to yoga is an “instrument” we have to reach the goal.

Yoga also has some exercises which aim at maintaining the body in healthy condition. But these are prescribed with the motive of keeping the “instrument” in good condition. Mere longevity of the body is never the aim of Yoga. A banyan tree lives for 500 years, but still it’s a banyan tree never the less. By ensuring the good condition of the instrument, Yoga tries to smoothen the path of man knowing his real nature.

That part of Yoga which deals with the physical longevity of the body is called “Hatha Yoga” and comprises of a series of body-exercises. Usually the yoga is identified with this. But this is actually a minor part of Yoga.

If Hatha Yoga is the part of Yoga in which we try to control our body, Meditation is the part of Yoga in which we try to control our mind. Thus in my view meditation can be termed as a subset of Yoga.

BTW both Yoga and meditation require a teacher. It is not advisable to say see a TV programme and try practicing it.

Sanyasa vs Grihastha

One often comes around arguments that either try to place Sanyasa or Gristha superior to the other. But I find this whole debate of Grihastha vs Sanyasa as dumb and stupid. Each caters to different people.

That’s fine you may say. The real question is which caters to whom- how can one know that one is following Sanyasa as a form of austerity and not as a form of escapism; how can one know that a person is living a Gristha life as a form of spiritual endeavor and not for indulgence and enjoyment?

Swami Ashokananda in his book “Spiritual Life” gives a simple but very useful guide. A person trying to attain Moksha by freeing himself of all the attachments should ask himself this simple question: “Is the person attracted to the objects of attachment even when he is away from them?” For example let us say you are attached to a particular sweet and cannot stop yourself from eating it. Now the above question will transform itself as: (1) are you not able to control yourself only after seeing the sweet or (2) are you hounded by it even when it is not in your surroundings.

If the answer is (1), then it helps to separate ourselves from that. If (2) is the answer, then even separation from it is not going to help as the sweet now is not in the physical world, but our mind. We must in that case try to settle the matter in that surroundings itself.

The same logic holds for Sanyasa vs Grihastha question. Are we attracted to the objects of enjoyment even when they are not around?

[1] If yes, then in that case it helps to separate ourselves from the objects of attachment and renounce the world. If you still stay in the world, your indulgence will increase.

[2] If no, then it means that the objects of enjoyment have entered our mind. Thus it is no use even if you go into a forest. The same mind is still with you and will continue to hound you. In that case it is better to stay in the world and even while following your daily routine, give them a higher direction. Do each daily routine as an act of worship and offering to the lord (this idea is the origin of the concepts like Pati-dev; griha-lakshmi, bala-gopala etc etc).

None is greater than other. It’s just that one suits one individual, the other suits another. The following is a story narrated by Swami Vivekananda in his Karma Yoga lectures which explains this point very well:

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If a man retires from the world to worship God, he must not think that those who live in the world and work for the good of the world are not worshipping God: neither must those who live in the world, for wife and children, think that those who give up the world are low vagabonds. Each is great in his own place. This thought I will illustrate by a story.

A certain king used to inquire of all the Sannyasins that came to his country, "Which is the greater man — he who gives up the world and becomes a Sannyasin, or he who lives in the world and performs his duties as a house holder?" Many wise men sought to solve the problem. Some asserted that the Sannyasin was the greater, upon which the king demanded that they should prove their assertion. When they could not, he ordered them to marry and become householders. Then others came and said, "The householder who performs his duties is the greater man." Of them, too, the king demanded proofs. When they could not give them, he made them also settle down as householders.

At last there came a young Sannyasin, and the king similarly inquired of him also. He answered, "Each, O king, is equally great in his place." "Prove this to me," asked the king. "I will prove it to you," said the Sannyasin, "but you must first come and live as I do for a few days, that I may be able to prove to you what I say." The king consented and followed the Sannyasin out of his own territory and passed through many other countries until they came to a great kingdom. In the capital of that kingdom a great ceremony was going on.

The king and the Sannyasin heard the noise of drums and music, and heard also the criers; the people were assembled in the streets in gala dress, and a great proclamation was being made. The king and the Sannyasin stood there to see what was going on. The crier was proclaiming loudly that the princess, daughter of the king of that country, was about to choose a husband from among those assembled before her.

It was an old custom in India for princesses to choose husbands in this way. Each princess had certain ideas of the sort of man she wanted for a husband. Some would have the handsomest man, others would have only the most learned, others again the richest, and so on. All the princes of the neighbourhood put on their bravest attire and presented themselves before her. Sometimes they too had their own criers to enumerate their advantages and the reasons why they hoped the princess would choose them. The princess was taken round on a throne, in the most splendid array, and looked at and heard about them. If she was not pleased with what she saw and heard, she said to her bearers, "Move on," and no more notice was taken of the rejected suitors. If, however, the princess was pleased with any one of them, she threw a garland of flowers over him and he became her husband.

The princess of the country to which our king and the Sannyasin had come was having one of these interesting ceremonies. She was the most beautiful princess in the world, and the husband of the princess would be ruler of the kingdom after her father's death. The idea of this princess was to marry the handsomest man, but she could not find the right one to please her. Several times these meetings had taken place, but the princess could not select a husband. This meeting was the most splendid of all; more people than ever had come to it. The princess came in on a throne, and the bearers carried her from place to place.

She did not seem to care for any one, and every one became disappointed that this meeting also was going to be a failure. Just then came a young man, a Sannyasin, handsome as if the sun had come down to the earth, and stood in one corner of the assembly, watching what was going on. The throne with the princess came near him, and as soon as she saw the beautiful Sannyasin, she stopped and threw the garland over him. The young Sannyasin seized the garland and threw it off, exclaiming, "What nonsense is this? I am a Sannyasin. What is marriage to me?" The king of that country thought that perhaps this man was poor and so dared not marry the princess, and said to him, "With my daughter goes half my kingdom now, and the whole kingdom after my death!" and put the garland again on the Sannyasin. The young man threw it off once more, saying, "Nonsense! I do not want to marry," and walked quickly away from the assembly.

Now the princess had fallen so much in love with this young man that she said, "I must marry this man or I shall die"; and she went after him to bring him back. Then our other Sannyasin, who had brought the king there, said to him, "King, let us follow this pair"; so they walked after them, but at a good distance behind. The young Sannyasin who had refused to marry the princess walked out into the country for several miles. When he came to a forest and entered into it, the princess followed him, and the other two followed them. Now this young Sannyasin was well acquainted with that forest and knew all the intricate paths in it. He suddenly passed into one of these and disappeared, and the princess could not discover him. After trying for a long time to find him she sat down under a tree and began to weep, for she did not know the way out.

Then our king and the other Sannyasin came up to her and said, "Do not weep; we will show you the way out of this forest, but it is too dark for us to find it now. Here is a big tree; let us rest under it, and in the morning we will go early and show you the road."

Now a little bird and his wife and their three little ones lived on that tree, in a nest. This little bird looked down and saw the three people under the tree and said to his wife, "My dear, what shall we do? Here are some guests in the house, and it is winter, and we have no fire." So he flew away and got a bit of burning firewood in his beak and dropped it before the guests, to which they added fuel and made a blazing fire. But the little bird was not satisfied. He said again to his wife, "My dear, what shall we do? There is nothing to give these people to eat, and they are hungry. We are householders; it is our duty to feed any one who comes to the house. I must do what I can, I will give them my body." So he plunged into the midst of the fire and perished. The guests saw him falling and tried to save him, but he was too quick for them.

The little bird's wife saw what her husband did, and she said, "Here are three persons and only one little bird for them to eat. It is not enough; it is my duty as a wife not to let my husband's effort go in vain; let them have my body also." Then she fell into the fire and was burned to death.

Then the three baby-birds, when they saw what was done and that there was still not enough food for the three guests, said, "Our parents have done what they could and still it is not enough. It is our duty to carry on the work of our parents; let our bodies go too." And they all dashed down into the fire also.

Amazed at what they saw, the three people could not of course eat these birds. They passed the night without food, and in the morning the king and the Sannyasin showed the princess the way, and she went back to her father.

Then the Sannyasin said to the king, "King, you have seen that each is great in his own place. If you want to live in the world, live like those birds, ready at any moment to sacrifice yourself for others. If you want to renounce the world, be like that young man to whom the most beautiful woman and a kingdom were as nothing. If you want to be a householder, hold your life a sacrifice for the welfare of others; and if you choose the life of renunciation, do not even look at beauty and money and power. Each is great in his own place, but the duty of the one is not the duty of the other.

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Re-examination of fundamentalism of BJP and Modi

Re-examination of fundamentalism of BJP and Modi

This is actually an article I wrote long time back. In the recent times of Gujarat election coverage of the media, I was tempted to post in it my blog. But waited till the results as back them it would have appeared more like promotion.

It is now become a fashion in many english media to write about growing Hindu “fundamentalism” and demonize BJP and Sangh as fuelling hatred towards other religions to the level that they are trying to kill every non-Hindu at the earliest possible moment. Enough opinion pieces have been written. I don’t want to lend credence to these “opinions” by doing the same. Instead I choose to let the facts do the talking.

In the five years of NDA rule, nothing of the sort which the commies predicted has taken place. There were no large scale killing of Muslims, there was no destruction of Muslim places of worship nor was there a temple build at Ayodhya forcefully.

So let’s get down to basics and look at the statistics instead of the scaremongering by media. Communal violence in India occurred in each and every year from 1954 to 1985. The total number of communal incidents in those 31 years was 8,449 (an annual average of 273), the total number of persons killed in that period was 7,229 (an annual average of 233), and the number of persons injured in those incidents was 47,321 (an annual average of 1,526). (statistics quoted from here)

After 1985, communal riots have also occurred in every year from 1986 to 1995, once in 1997, twice in 2002 and once in 2003. Thus if you see the only moment of low point in the incidents of communal violence is post 1997, which include six years of BJP in power.

All these statistics are of both Hindus AND Muslims died. I remember reading in a book that in the early fifties, Jayaprakash Narayan tabled a Home Ministry report which has investigated riot incidents and found that 22 out of total 23 were initiated by Muslims. Of late the government is not releasing the details of the dead in communal violence from sixties.

The only case against the BJP & Modi is the Gujarat riots in 2002. But even here the statistics do not prove any “Hindutva laboratory”. Contrary to the screams that thousands of Muslims being killed in those riots, the official figure is around 900. The case against Modi is not about killing the Muslims, but of official-willful-negligence, the same which is against Rajiv Gandhi for Sikh riots. Negligence does not make the mistakes right, but it is surely a LOT different from enthusiastic killing.

Moreover, how accurate is it to throw the blame on BJP alone for that when many congress workers also participated. Quoting from August 9, 2003 edition of Times of India:

----->8-----

But when it comes to the involvement of its own party cadre in the killings, 10 Janpath maintains a deafening silence…

According to the JUH, "most Congress corporators" and some Congress leaders of Gujarat had actively participated in last year's riots.

Mahmood As'ad Madani, JUH general secretary told The Times of India: "We wrote letters to Congress president Sonia Gandhi, gave a list of Congress leaders involved in the riots, asked her to take action against them but to no avail."

On April 29, 2002, for example, the JUH received a list of 25 Congress leaders from its Gujarat chapter, which was promptly forwarded to her. This included a former Congress minister, a sitting MLA and a former MP.

Then on August 20, Madani reminded Gandhi: "Similarly our appeal forwarded to you in respect of involvement of Congress MLAs, corporators and workers in Gujarat carnage along with the list of culpable names remains disregarded." when it comes to the involvement of its own party cadre in the killings, 10 Janpath maintains a deafening silence.

According to the JUH, "most Congress corporators" and some Congress leaders of Gujarat had actively participated in last year's riots.

-----8<-----

Riots happen in a state- the state machinery takes 3 days to get law and order back. Later some member of BJP and Congress are accused of their participation the riots… and what’s the conclusion we are supposed to draw – that BJP is communal and congress the secular force fighting those communal groups!!! I leave that to the intelligence of the reader.

I am not putting these points to say that Modi is a messiah of communal tolerance. But there is no case of Modi ‘plotting’ to kill Muslims either. The point I am trying to make is one cannot dub this as a trend and attitude of sangh to persecute Muslims. Modi did not win because of Gujarat riots, but won in spite of them. If Gujarat voted him again, it is not coz the Gujarat has suddenly become “communal”, but coz (1) they think that there is not much a CM could have done to control the rage during riots; after all he is a CM, not an omnipotent god to just say halt and all those people full of rage suddenly dropping their violence (2) the overall benefits they got far outweigh the shortfalls that those mistakes can be forgiven.

Sanskrit in the Mottos of some popular organizations

Thanks to the prevailing "secular" atmosphere in the country, there was a huge hue and cry in the media about the recent ruling of Allahbad High Court on Gita as a national dharm granth. Secularism has now become equal to the negation of any kind of religious symbolism. So I did a small search of the Mottos of various organization in India. Surprisingly many of the Mottos, including that of our Indian State itself (Satyameva Jayate) are in Sanskrit and taken from Hindu Scriptures like Gita and Upanishads.

People who are shocked at the mere reference by a "secular" court to a "religious" Gita may ponder on these:

S.No	Organization	Motto			Meaning
1.	Indian Navy	Shano Varuna			May the Lord of the Oceans be Auspicious Unto Us (Tattraiya Upanishad)
2.	Indian Air Force	Nabha Sparsham Deeptam			Touching the Sky With Glory (Gita 11:24)
3.	Indian Coast Guard	vayam rakShaamaH			We protect (Bala kanda of Valmiki Ramayana)
4.	Reserve Bank of India - Bankers Training College	buddhau sharaNam anvichcha			Seek Refuge in Reason - Let intelligence be thy sole quest (Gita 2:49)
5.	Life Insurance Corporation of India	yogakshemam vahaamyaham			I shall take care of the well-being (Gita 9:22)
6.	Defence Service Staff College	Yuddham pragayya			To war with wisdom
Some Army Units
7.	The Madras Regiment	Swadharme Nidhanam Shreyaha		It is a glory to die doing one’s duty
8.	Grenadiers Regiment	Sarvada Shaktishali		Ever Powerful
9.	The Rajputana Rifles	Veer Bhogya Vasundhara		The Brave Shall Reap the Earth
10.	The Dogra Regiment	Kartavyam Anvatma		Duty Before Death
11.	The Garhwal Rifles	Yudhaya Krit Nischya		Fight With Determination
12.	The Kumaon Regiment	Prakramo Vijayate		Valour Triumphs
13.	The Jammu and Kashmir Rifles	Prashata Ranvirta		Valour in Battle is Praiseworthy
14.	The Jammu and Kashmir Light Infantry	Balidanam Vir Lakshanam		Sacrifice is a Sign of the Brave
Universities
15.	Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad		Vidya Viniyogadvikāsaha
16.	Indian Institute of Management Bangalore		Tejasvi Nāvadhitamastu
17.	Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode		Yogah Karmasu Kaushalam
18.	Indian Institute of Technology Bombay		Gyanam Paramam Dhyeyam
19.	Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur		Tamaso Mā Jyotirgamaya
20.	Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur		Yogah Karmasu Kaushalam
21.	Indian Institute of Technology Madras		Siddhirbhavati Karmaja
22.	Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee		Shramam Binam Na Kimapi Sādhyam
23.	Kendriya Vidyalaya		Tat Twam Pushan Apavrinu
24.	Central Board of Secondary Education		Asato Ma Sadgamaya
25.	Bengal Engineering & Science University,Shibpur		Uttisthita Jagrata Prapya Baraan Nibidhata
26.	Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani		Jnanam Paramam Balam
27.	Gujarat National Law University		Aa Na Bhadro, Kratavo Yantu Vishwata
28.	Indian Statistical Institute		Bhanineshvaikyasay Darshanam
29.	Devi Ahilya Vishwavidyalaya		Dhiyo Yonaha Prachodayat
30.	Madan Mohan Malaviya Engineering College, Gorakhpur		Yogah Karmasu Kaushalam
31.	Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology, Allahabad		Siddhirbhavati Karmaja
32.	National Law School of India University		Dharmo Rakshati Rakshata
33.	Sri Sathya Sai University		Sathyam vada dharmam chara
34.	Sri Venkateswara University		jnanam samyaga vekshanam
35.	University of Calicut		Nirmaya Karmana Sree
36.	University of Colombo (Sri Lanka)		buddhih sarvatra brājate
37.	University of Delhi		Nishtā drithih Satyam
38.	University of Kerala		Karmani Vyajyate Prajna
39.	University of Moratuwa (Sri Lanka)		Vidyaiwa Sarwadhanam
40.	University of Peradeniya (Sri Lanka)		Sarvasva Locanam Sāstram
41.	University of Rajasthan		Dharmo Vishwasya Jagatah Pratishtha
42.	Sri Venkateswara University		jnanam samyaga vekshanam
43.	Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology, Nagpur		Yogah Karmasu Kaushalam
44.	West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences		Yuktiheena Vicharetu Dharmahnih Prajayate
45.	Andhra University		Tejasvi Nāvadhitamastu
46.	Banasthali Vidyapith		Sa Vidya Ya Vimuktaye

PS: Thanks to the following sites for helping me as a good starting points.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Military_Unit_Mottoes_by_Country#India

http://hitxp.wordpress.com/2007/03/03/great-sanskrit-hymns/

http://www.answers.com/topic/list-of-educational-institutions-which-have-sanskrit-phrases-as-their-mottoes

Smasana Vairagya case of Independence Day

Smasana Vairagya is one of the nyayas in the Sanskrit literature and means “burial ground renunciation”

The elaboration to it is that a person once was passing through a burial ground. Seeing the burning bodies there, all the same manner immaterial of greatness or the inferiority of the person when he was alive, he was stuck with the temporal nature of this world. He was then overtaken by immense vairagya (sense of renunciation and distaste for world). He then walked four steps ahead, came back in the regular world and forgetting all that earlier feeling, started to indulge himself fully in his regular activities.

This nyaya or simile is used wherever one shows momentary enthu for something in the impulse of the moment, but forgets all about it later.

This is also very pertinent to our “Independence Day” frenzy. Come Independence Day or Republic Day and the whole media goes frenzy with “patriotism”; the mails boxes are filled with spam; orkut threads are full of messages telling other people to keep Indian flag as their DP etc etc.

We do require occasions to celebrate our nationhood and to remind ourselves of our responsibilities as citizens. However we should avoid the danger of confusing the reminder of a responsibility with the responsibility itself.

Is nationalistic feeling something that is done by seeing some patriotic movie twice a year, speak some great words and then it is “business as usual” for the rest of the year?

Agreed, it is better to think of our nation at least twice a year, than to completely forget it; but nationalistic spirit should not be degraded to these superficial things. Our national responsibility is much more than attending a flag hoisting ceremony or watching a movie twice a year.

Left-wing extremism: The "root causes" trap

Recent cover story by Indian Express on Left-wing extremism in India brought the looming danger on India to the fore-front once again. There was also an old article of Arun Shourie on the same topic.

I dont need to discuss how big the threat is. I wish to focus on the usual 'justifications' provided to this phenomenon by left-leaning intellectuals, like - it is "poverty" or "caste" that is the "root cause". I wish to explore the real "root causes".

There is no denying the fact that there are some critical ground level problems like poverty and caste which need to be dealt with in combating naxal problem. However, to lay the entire blame on these factors alone will be over simplification. There are many many more factors which increase which this problem. Some of them being:

1. Development is not just State’s but your responsibility. Most of the complaints of the left-wing extremists border along the lines that the state did not provide them the necessities. But it is not State’s business to provide you, it is also yours.

In most of the instances in history, commie anger is more a result of laziness to work, instead of deprivement. When India became independent, Bihar, Bengal were some of the most advanced states; while many states like Maharastra, Gujarat, A.P were far behind. Later, some people worked hard for their development, and naturally developed; some others waited for free lunches from govt, and took to arms when they did not get it.

Factor which makes the difference here: Ideology, not ‘poverty’.


2. Armed struggle as a valid means to archive ones’ goals Take the case study of Kerala and Bihar. A century back, both of them had worst kind of caste-problem. Swami Vivekananda even goes to the extent of calling Kerala “lunatic asylum” of those days for that reason. But thanks to the efforts of people like Narayana Guru, Kerala demonstrated a path to social emancipation without invoking the dualism of the oppressed and the oppressor. Bihar on the other hand took the path of conflict and of violence as a valid means to archive its goals and the result is worse than what was initially the condition.

Factor which makes the difference here: Ideology, not ‘caste’.

3. Lack of differentiation between State and Government. State comprises of all the constitution, legislation, executive, judicial etc institutions. Whereas Government is a sort of tenant of the state, and goes in accordance to the constitution and customs of the state.

They may be angry with some political party or regional group. But they hate not just those governmental things, but the properties of whole state. They target railways, factories, etc etc. These are not govt. properties, these are state properties. So their anger against a political party or a regional group turns into anger not just for them alone, but against the whole "Republic of India".

Factor which makes the difference here: Ideology, not ‘poverty’.


4. Working within system vs working outside system. Democracy does not mean that every citizen thinks alike. There are bound to be differences. I too have lot of things in the Indian constitution and laws which I don’t agree with. The point is how you go about the differences.

It is like a large family. If you have an opinion different from the majority of the family members, you can exert your best to convince the others to your opinion; but meanwhile as long as the functioning of the family is concerned, I will happily submit myself to the majority opinion. Change in the system I want, but through the system; not by splitting up and waging a war against the former.

Factor which makes the difference here: Ideology, not ‘poverty’.

There are many more factors like this. If we neglect all these factors and only harp on they being 'marginalized', I strongly feel that we are aggravating the present situation and sowing seed for future problems.

Stuff like unemployment etc may be the factors contributing. But there are many more ideological factors which complete the journey from "want of bread and dignity" to "want to overthrow the Indian state in an armed struggle". The question we should ask ourselves is "can we afford to neglect these factors and continue to spread the auro of permissiveness?"

Omnipotent God- A logical contradiction?

Just some random musings....

Let us consider the assertion that God is omnipotent. So can God create a task that he himself cannot accomplish? If he can, then there exists a task which he cannot do. If no, there still remains a task which he cannot do.

Hence by definition, an Omnipotent God is a logical singularity. However (and here it gets interesting), it does not necessarily prove that God does not exist. It only leads further to two more options:

a) School of thought One [e.g. The Hindu Purva Mimansa School] - "Reasoning grasps reality completely. If something is a logical discontinuity, it is false and must be rejected. God is a discontinuity, and worse a singularity. We reject the existence of God. God does not exist. Those who abandon this logical strictness abandon reason. They can rationalize anything, right or wrong."

b) School of thought Two [e.g. The Hindu Uttara School] - Logic presumes a separation of subject from object. This again leads to two more subsets:

b.1) logic is wrong
b.2) separation is wrong

b.1) [eg: Hindu Dvaita schools] Separation of God and observer is real, therefore logic is not final wisdom. Logic is a human reconstruction of reality. It is not reality itself. Thus logically contradictory beliefs can be true at the same time.

b.2) [eg: Hindu Advaita schools] In this world, as the law of causality is real, logic too is real. The logical singularity can be overcome if the separation of subject and object is unreal and if the whole master set itself is singular in nature. Thus logic is real, so is the logical singularity. It is the separation which is unreal.


Moreover, all these problems of omnipotence, yet not able to do something come up when we deal god as a personal, different being. The statement "doing a task" presupposes a task to do (with its different initial and final states), a doer to do the task. Basically its demands a reality with multiple points. However, the other way to escape a logical singularity is when the whole set itself becomes one. When there is only one, there is no question of logical singularity.

Rise and Fall of Civilizations

The question which comes many times in our minds when we read the world history is what makes a civilization great or why is that some civilizations who archive great heights suddenly decline; why is that at one point in time one civilization acts a upholder of free thinking and acts as a fundamentalist group at some other point of time.

I think there is nothing holy about any civilization. Each has its times of glory and times of shame. Rise and fall of civilizations by and large follow a pattern independent of the nation. Only the means and reasons change from one to another. But the over all graph is not much different in any case.

1. People not satisfied with the state of things try to change it. They work real hard to make their group strong. At this point they do not shy away from using violence against groups which it perceives as danger to it. But this is combined with a strong love for an ideal and feeling of brotherhood for those who share that ideal (presently India is in the initial stages of it and China in more advanced stages of this; the early Islamic fundamentalism can also be partly attributed to the same).

2. Sooner or later their efforts yield fruits, resulting in a strong group. This also decreases the amount of insecurity and the group grows bold enough to tolerate other groups without worrying about them as “threat” (you can note that China now is more comfortable than before about new ideas and persons).

3. Freedom of ideas follow and the group advances greatly in various spheres, making the living standards very comfortable. (the Islamic civilization at the zenith of its Iranian glory; like America presently... no matter what its foreign policy, we have to concede that US provides the greatest freedom of ideas today of all nations)

4. The following generations being brought up in that comforts becomes reluctant to work hard and is satisfied with the state of things. It loses ambition to do anything (the way Europe is becoming today; and the way Islamic society was before the fall of ottoman empire; or the way India was just after the Buddhist-Ashoka times).

5. They naturally become weak and fall prey to another rising group. They start worrying about their great heritage and close themselves to protect their “glory”. In the process they cocoon themselves. Stagnation and degeneration follows. (like Islamic world today, slowly declining from its glorious days in Turkey and Iran; the way Hindus closed themselves into don't-touchisms and kitchen rules when Islam and then Europe was at rise).

6. Goes back to point 1.

Prophet Mohammed in Hindu Scriptures??????!!!!!

One comes across many Islamic sites these days claiming that Prophet Mohammed is prophesied in Bhavishya Purana and the Kalki, the tenth Avatara of Vishnu Hindus are eagerly waiting to come at the end of Kali Yuga has already come 1400 years ago in the form of Prophet Mohammed and they are yet to realize it.

It is obvious that this is 24 carat crap. No proofs are actually required. However for person who has an element of doubt or is curious to know, I am presenting some points against these theories:

1. Though the name of the Purana is Bhavishya purana, it is actually a misnormer. The purana mostly deals with the Surya and Chandra dynasties (ie., Ramayana and Mahabharata). It also deals with greatness of the dates and worship of Lord Vishnu, Shiva and Surya; description of the heaven etc. In all, the subject matter of Bhavishya Purana seems to be an attempt to prove and establish the supremacy of Brahma.

2. Actually, Puranas are NOT scriptures of Hinduism. Its true that many Hindus revere them, but there it stops. None considers them as “authorities”. They fall in the Smriti portion of the Hindu Scriptures –ie., books which change according to time, place and person and hence are only to be considered as counsel and not as authorities- no different from all the management books you find in market today like "seven habits of successful men", "you can win" etc etc.

3. Even among the puranas it is accepted fact that many of them have been extensively changed in the last thousand years and Bhavishya Purana tops this list. This was done either by some Muslims trying to convert Hindus to Islam or by some over zealous Hindus trying to prove their loyalty to their new ‘rulers’.

4. I tried very much to find a copy of BP, but was not successful. I could only lay my hands on an a book summarizing BP and I did not find any such references in that book. There are no such references in an telugu translation of the book as well. So the bottom line is that it is very very difficult to find an copy of BP and even in the editions I managed to lay my hands on, I did not find any such references. Though I don’t have any references to give, a friend who knows lot better than me that there are many versions of Bhavishya Purana (BP) and that these so called references of Prophet are traced back to only one source, thus making it unreliable.

5. This fact is acknowledged even among orthodox circles. They do not readily accept anything from BP, unless the same is substantiated in other more reliable books also.

6. This is one side of it, but there will be always some people who will be never ready to accept what they don’t want to believe. Hence to such Muslims I can only say, if you believe that Prophet Mohammed is the 10^th incarnation of Vishnu, then you are welcome to worship the other previous incarnations of Vishnu (Rama, Krishna) as well :D.

7. There is a saying that the best way to defeat a ridiculous argument is to be more ridiculous. And our ISKCON, the Hindu version of Abrahamic religions does not want to be left behind in this. So it came up with the same tactics- it claims that Prophet Mohammed is indeed prophesied in BP, but not as an avatara, but as an illusionist coming in the form of a pisacha. It too gives its own version of “references” etc. It is redundant to mention that this too is fake, but then as I said, for some only these type of arguments work.

So I can safely conclude that all these stuff of Prophet in the Hindu scriptures is either misinformed or wrong propaganda. Muslims who indulge in this should realise that one need not produce (so-called) references from Hindu scriptures for converting Hindus or for making them respect Prophet. The principles are more important. If the life of Prophet, Christ etc is worthy of respect, Hindus will do so, even if not mentioned in their scriptures. If their life and teachings are not worthy of respect, Hindus cannot show respect to them, inspite of any references in the ‘scriptures’. Hence it is waste of energies to concentrate on such false propaganda. Instead focus on what they said and how they lived may be more helpful.

Dharma- Individual Collectivism

The cold war conflict between capitalism represented by US and communism represented by Russia may be a twentieth century phenomenon, but the conflict of the ideas each were representing was not. The conflict between individualism and collectivism is probably as old as the human history.

On one side is the extreme form of individualism where an individual’s interests hold supreme even at the cost of others in the society; where an individual can amass as much resources as he can just coz he is more capable/lucky than others. On the other side is the extreme form of collectivism where the individual is nothing but a social animal; where the individual has to blindly follow the whims of the mob.

On one side the challenge is excessive selfishness which will lead in constant conflict between various groups. On the other side the challenge is how to motivate the person to aspire for excellence when the returns he gets are anyway the same and when you are pulled down when you try to raise above the mediocre.

Which one of these should we then choose. The answer everyone will give is balance both of them. True, the secret is the balance. But the thousand dollar question is how to strike it. How to create a model where these two aspects of individual good and collective good are accommodated in harmony with each other?

It is in this context the eastern concept of Dharma comes to our rescue. The simplest definition is “Dharma is that which connects, relates effectively and harmoniously an individual to the collectivities” (like family, community, society, nation, humanity and the whole world and beyond). Thus bringing harmony with all others around is Dharma. Dharma holds things together. As Kumari Nivedita in a talk observes “When I think of others' rights, it is Dharma. See the beauty, we did not start by asserting our rights. Rather we started by talking about duties. If each starts asserting rights, there will be only fights as we are seeing now. So each one is told to follow his/her Dharma. The husband’s Dharma becomes the right of the wife and wife's Dharma becomes the right of the husband. The mother's Dharma becomes the right of the children. The children's Dharma becomes the right of the parents.”

The motive is internal, not external; therefore we need extraneous stimuli. Unlike the communist nations, we did not need an external state to force us to be responsible towards the society. At the same, the collective has been made part of the individuals thinking.


Let me illustrate my point further by using Prisoner’s dilemma situation. The classical prisoner's dilemma (PD) is as follows (I am reproducing the wikipedia article on PD here): Two suspects, A and B, are arrested by the police. The police have insufficient evidence for a conviction, and, having separated both prisoners, visit each of them to offer the same deal: if one testifies for the prosecution against the other and the other remains silent, the betrayer goes free and the silent accomplice receives the full 10-year sentence. If both stay silent, both prisoners are sentenced to only six months in jail for a minor charge. If each betrays the other, each receives a two-year sentence. Each prisoner must make the choice of whether to betray the other or to remain silent. However, neither prisoner knows for sure what choice the other prisoner will make. So this dilemma poses the question: How should the prisoners act?

The dilemma can be summarized thus:

	Prisoner B Stays Silent	Prisoner B Betrays
Prisoner A Stays Silent	Both serve six months	Prisoner A serves ten years Prisoner B goes free
Prisoner A Betrays	Prisoner A goes free Prisoner B serves ten years	Both serve two years

Let's assume the protagonist prisoner is working out his best move. If his partner stays quiet, his best move is to betray as he then walks free instead of receiving the minor sentence. If his partner betrays, his best move is still to betray, as by doing it he receives a relatively lesser sentence than staying silent. At the same time, the other prisoner's thinking would also have arrived at the same conclusion and would therefore also betray.

If reasoned from the perspective of the optimal outcome for the group (of two prisoners), the correct choice would be for both prisoners to cooperate with each other, as this would reduce the total jail time served by the group to one year total. Any other decision would be worse for the two prisoners considered together. When the prisoners both betray each other, each prisoner achieves a worse outcome than if they had cooperated.

We can observe that the apparent rational path (ie., to betray) and the real rational path (ie., not to betray) are different. The basic structure of the game is reflected better in situations that larger groups, perhaps entire societies, face. A common view is that a multi-player PD structure of Garret Hardin. Each member of a group of neighboring farmers prefers to allow his cow to graze on the commons, rather than keeping it on his own inadequate land, but the commons will be rendered unsuitable for grazing if it is used by more than some threshold number use it. More generally, there is some social benefit B that each member can achieve if sufficiently many pay a cost C. We might represent the payoff matrix as follows:

	n or fewer choose C	more than n choose C
C	C	C+B
D	0	B

The cost C is assumed to be a negative number. The "temptation" here is to get the benefit without the cost, the reward is the benefit with the cost, the punishment is to get neither and the sucker payoff is to pay the cost without realizing the benefit. So the payoffs are ordered B > (B+C) > 0 > C. As in the two-player game, it appears that D weakly dominates C for all players, and so rational players would choose D and achieve 0, while preferring that everyone would choose C and obtain C+B.

Unlike the more straightforward generalization, this matrix does reflect common social choices -- between depleting and conserving a scarce resource, between using polluting and non-polluting means of manufacture or disposal, and between participating and not participating in a group effort towards some common goal. When n is small, it represents a version of what has been called the "volunteer dilemma". A group needs a few volunteers, but each member is better off if others volunteer.

The multiple PD game diagramed above has a somewhat different character than the two-player PD. First, even if each player's moves are entirely independent of the others, the alternatives represented by the columns in the commons matrix above are no longer independent of the alternatives represented by the rows. My choosing C necessarily increases the chances that more than n people will choose C.

This demonstrates very elegantly the moral dilemmas we face everyday- whether to stick to the rules even though they may some times be “apparently” unfavorable, or seek the path of immediate self-interest. How can we make the individuals align their individual good with collective good without any special effort? It is here that the concept of duty-centric dharma comes in. In the above multiple PD my choosing of C necessarily increases the chances that more than n people will choose C. In the same manner each individual sticking to Dharma also increases the chance of overall people sticking to it thus ensuring order.

There is a famous dialogue which comes in Mahabharata. Draupadi, obviously fed up with her suffering, once asked Yudhishthira, “What have you got by following Dharma? You have been only suffering in your life.” Yudhishthira replies, “Draupadi, I know you say this not because you really mean it but because of the extreme sufferings and humiliations you underwent. I follow Dharma not because by following it I get something. I follow it because it is to be followed.”

We are no longer bothered whether others follow a righteous path or not. Hundred people may not follow their dharma, but that is no reason for me to be unrighteous. I follow the right path, for its own sake, immaterial of what others do.

Thus the focus shifts from “are others following right path?” to “am I following the right path?” …And to the Hindus, thanks to the concept of Karma this line of thinking comes much easily as concept of Karma ensures that no good or bad action ever goes waste without producing the results. If I follow the path of Dharma, I may not be able to get the results immediately or in a way I expected them, but it is bound to give good results.

Let me conclude by quoting Pirsig in a book on Hindu-Buddhist Dharma “Dharma is duty. It is not external duty which is arbitrarily imposed by others. It is not any artificial set of conventions which can be amended or repealed by legislation. Neither is it internal duty which is arbitrarily decided by one's own conscience. Dharma is beyond all questions of what is internal and what is external. Dharma is Quality itself, the principle of "rightness" which gives structure and purpose to the evolution of all life and to the evolving understanding of the universe which life has created."

This will be the ancient Hindu response to the challenges thrown up by the 19th and 20th century ideologies.

PS: My approach here was based on utilitarian grounds. However, lemme clarify that utility is not the test of truth. The path of Dharma has to be followed, irrespective of the considerations whether it is beneficial or not. My only idea was to point out that even on the utilitarian grounds following one’s Dharma makes sense.

Suggestions for Hindu Renaissance

We see various threads in various communities about topics that Hinduism is in danger; Hinduism is facing threats from other religions etc etc. While they may be right, the question which naturally comes to our minds is "what can we do for Hindu Renaissance"

The following are my 2 cents on that subject. Others are welcome to add. Before I go into the subject, there are three points which are to be kept in mind.

Point 1: Hinduism holds that all paths lead to the same goal. Hence, we accept all other forms of worship apart from our own. We accept the Christian way of worship and also the Muslim way of worship. We not just tolerate, but accept them as valid... for the so-called tolerance is just self-righteous attitude- "I am right, you are wrong, but I am still 'tolerating' you". That’s not our attitude.

Our problem with other religions is their dogmatic attitude. We don’t have problem with the way Christians worship their god; we have problem when they dogmatically say that their path alone is true and all other paths are wrong. We have problem when they hurl abuses at us and our gods and call them satanic. We don’t have problem if they call Christianity a true religion, but we have problems when they say Christianity is the ONLY true religion. We have problem when they call Hinduism a false religion and ask people to convert and adopt various means like force and fraud to do it. The same is the case with Muslims.


Point 2: The battle these days is not between two separately standing groups, but between ideologies. The battle now is in the minds of the people.

Many of the so-called-intellectuals (read commies) do not behave anti-Hindu coz they consciously think "ok let’s be anti-Hindu", but coz many really feel that they are on the right side.

The media does not consciously think "ok let’s portray Hindus badly"- they really think that their position is right. So is the case with other institutions in India.

In theory, they are all good institutions.. the problem is in the direction, not in the motives. Same is the case with many p-seculars.

Hence what we have to recognize is that the battle now is in the minds. Things like "I will kick the p-secs", "the media is a demon" etc etc will not help.

Psychological-warfare is the reality today (note: I said psychological, not mere intellectual)


Point 3: The main emphasis of my points is "what we can do", not what we demand others to do.

I can demand that Muslims and Xtians should cease to be dogmatism, I can demand that govt stop its minority appeasement policies... I can demand and demand lot more. But how many of them are going to be accepted? So my focus here is not what we can demand from others, but what we can do in that direction. If others too accept some of the demands, well and good. But we cannot sit and wait for them to do so. We have to act.


Now coming to the points:

1. Character: This is of foremost importance. Though it is universally lacking, it is no justification for us. Nothing can be done by people who lack personal character. Hindus may cry foul about others, but until we conduct ourselves in a righteous manner, nobody can help us. Also, people judge a religion by its followers- if its followers are lacking in character, then so will be the opinion about the religion. Hindus are the brand ambassadors of Hinduism.

2. Strength: Hindus badly lack this. Strength here means Physical, Intellectual and spiritual strength. Why is an ordinary Hindu a coward and justifies his cowardness with various theories?
The first part is physical strength. We should never ignore the importance of having a strong body. We lack intellectual strength also. We simply feel that we have so many problems, but do not have the strength to tackle them ourselves. We just wait for some person to come and do all our work. One more Sankaracharya, one more Vivekananda. But what can even they do, if we do not have the strength enough to preserve what we have.

3. Pride: Hindus have been thought from day one in the schools that their forefathers were bunch of tribals; that their religion does not contain anything except some out dated practices and that their history is just a chronology of defeats. Hindus do not take pride in calling themselves Hindus. They are not even aware of the great philosophical and literary works in Hinduism. They just blindly ridicule everything in Hinduism. So, we have to first create pride among Hindus about Hinduism. We may talk and talk on how to protect Hinduism, but all that will be futile until we tell people why we have to protect Hinduism... what is there in it that is worthy of protection. Once we convince people of that and in taking pride about being Hindus, then the rest wil automatically follow.

4. Unity: The slavish mentality is that if one person tries to climb up, the rest try their best to bring him down. We should rather create unity among the Hindus. We should cease to act as an individual or as a member of a caste or a region, but acts as part of the Hindu society.

And this is not going to come if we sit and shout "come- unity, come- unity"... it comes by acting so. "You may not recognize that you are united, but still I will stay united with you; even if you are not helping me, I will still help you"- must be our attitude.

5. Redundant Practices: There are some old redundant practices like: Caste, Child marriages. Every effort should be made to remove these discriminations. Protecting Hinduism does not just mean protecting it from "others", but also from selfish and bigoted Hindus also.

6. Economy: Money always played and is going to play an important role in the society. You cannot teach the intricacies of the Upanishads to a hungry stomach. So, every Hindu should either directly contribute to the less privileged Hindus or contribute it to some good Hindu organizations. It is a good habit to fix that one will donate this much % of his/her salary to such causes and do so.

7. Service: One should always try to serve the less privileged in what ever means possible to them. Thanks to the NRI culture, people started thinking that they are giving some money and that will take of the service. But we have to remember that the Hindu society does not need our money, but our heart and soul- our services. Money is important, but not the most important. I will say a 30mins of service activity is more worthy than thousands of rs.

And it is two-sided- not just the served, but the person who did the service also transforms himself. It helps in getting a first hand feel and understanding of the real issues. People sitting in a/c rooms and theoretically talking about solutions and giving cheques are no help. What is wanted is a heart that feels. I understand it is very difficult for many; but try to do atleast something, no matter how little it is.

8. Re-conversions: As someone said, there are only two types of religious groups in India: Hindus and ex-Hindus. We should remove the anathema against reconversions and actively reconvert the willing. I am not talking about this from mere numbers point of view. Rather it has the ability to transform the outlook of Hindus from a slavish mentality trying to protect itself and an heroic mentality ready to conquer new frontiers.

Instead of passivity, activity; for the standard of weakness, the standard of strength; in the place of a steadily-yielding defense, the ringing cheer of the invading host. Merely to change the attitude in this way is to accomplish a revolution.

Anyhow, this must be accompanied by even more important thing: Hinduising the Hindus.

9. Awareness: Many Hindus are not even aware of the threats against Hinduism. Simply if a missionary comes in a good dress and speaks in a nice language, they fall for him; some even donate some money for them thinking that they will be using it for service purposes. But hardly do they know that this very money is used to convert some of the Hindus, and then make them stand against Hindus. Awareness is power, and for this all possible means should be explored.

Very very rarely do I come across a Hindu who understands mass psychology. There are people who really feel for the Hindu cause, but they sometimes blabber pathetically leading to the complete opposite of the desired. As I said earlier, the war now is in at the psychological level, hence it is very important to understand how it works and use it properly.


I feel that these are some things we need to concentrate upon. These may not stop the next terrorist from bombing another Indian city; these may not stop the next innocent Hindu falling for the missionary tricks and converting; these may not stop the next bill legalizing illegal immigrants into Assam from being passed.

But they can create a Hindu society which can archive all of them and much much more in the future... naah they can even create muslims and xtians who feel it is "cool" to be a Hindu.

Rebirth and the Population growth puzzle

I am sure many got this doubt in their minds that we say a jiva is taking birth after birth until he gets Moksha… but then if the same number of souls are reborn, how then is the population of humans on earth increasing. Shouldn’t it be constant?

[Note: though this is not the exact word, for the ease of understanding here, we will use Soul interchangeably with jiva]

The following are my 2 cents on this question. We know a very very little portion of the reality, hence I don’t claim it to be “THE” answer… I am just putting forward my understanding of various possible solutions after discussion with various wise people on this subject.


1. First and foremost- this “many” or the concept of separate jivas is just a reflection of the one. Like the one sun is reflected in various water surfaces and appears many, similarly, the jiva is such reflection of Brahman. Jiva is a like an instrument. From the Paramarthika level, there was never any individual soul, nor any re-birth. So there is no case of “increase” or “decrease” of number of souls, for there is no plurality in the number of souls.

2. Now coming to the Vyavaharika level, unlike the Semitic religions, Hinduism believes that plants and animals too have souls. Hence, one should not only concentrate on the human population. The animal and plant life also is to included in any discussion about rebirth. However, this aspect alone still does not fully answer the puzzle as atleast at the beginning of the Earth there was arguably no life and hence no plants+animals+humans.

3. But then there is one more aspect to be considered. Our scriptures talk of 14 planes of existence, of which humans are on the 8th; the higher planes include gandharva loka, deva loka etc etc. Their details may be symbolic in nature, but one thing we can be sure is that there does exist different planes of existence.

Hence when we talk of number of souls, we have to take into consideration the other planes of existence into consideration. Add to this the possibility of not just different planes, but different world itself. Yoga Vasistha talks of various parallel worlds at the same time. Since we don’t know much about them, we can only say possibly the number of souls in all these planes and worlds put together is constant.

4. There is also a different way to look at the whole phenomenon: why should we think that all the jivas are created at a single moment in the beginning of this cycle? Srusthi need not be a momentary process for all the souls to be created at a single point in time; it can as well be continuous process for jivas to be created at different point of time in a cycle. We can observe that even within a cycle, before the pralaya, individual souls are getting liberated, and hence putting a stop to their cycle of rebirth. Thus when a jiva can cease to exist within a cycle, it is also quite possible that a jiva can as well be start to exist within a cycle, without any need for it to get started only at the beginning of a cycle. Also, what can you call as the “beginning” of “cycle”? [I don’t know of any references either supporting or opposing my third possibility. It’s just *my* opinion.]

5. Actually what is life? what is the exact demarcation between life and life-less? If it is the consciousness which has manifested itself into various forms, that isn't it then true that the only difference that exists is not of type but of degree? A stone may be a very very low manifestation of consciousness and the human a very very high manifestation. But the difference is not of the type, but of the degree. Hence, are we not narrowing down our understanding by considering only more evolved forms and drawing an artificial demarcation line which actually does not exist? I can safely say that this whole process of counting only certain types as having soul and terming the others as "soul-less" is a basic flaw.

6. Finally there is the famous “poornamadah…” (part of a complete is complete in itself)… isn’t part of the infinite still an infinite? If Brahman is infinite, then isn’t its projection too not infinite?

If in that manner, the number of jivas is infinite, then what is “increase” or “decrease” in the number of jivas? It is like asking whether the number of drops in ocean increase or decrease.

Social Responsibilities and Govt.

Came across this interesting article by Gurumurthy in Indian Express:

And yet ‘we’ are less civilised than ‘them’

[Assuming you have read the article]

Most of the responses I get from people are either about how materialistic ‘they’ are or the other extreme of taking great trouble of finding some instance where Indians did not help their fellow Indians, but rather harassed them.

But both the responses will be to miss the forest for the trees. The point there is not whether the Indian society is perfect or whether it is the worst society.

The point I am trying to focus is that Nations are not merely made by Govts, instead they are made by people/communities.

Let it be the govt banning child labour or domestic violence or more issues, the attitude these days among the common people seems to be that it is govt’s business to tackle social problems. They forget that a minister signing a paper to stop domestic violence in no way really changes the society, unless the individuals in the society are changed.

I don’t deny that we require laws. But laws are not the ultimate.

Aren’t we going more towards a situation where the individuals cease to think in the community terms and look to the govt for everything?

I am not expecting any answers… just thinking in that direction.

Answers to some questions of a Christian

The following is the reporduction of a discussion with some Christians in a orkut community:

Emralda's Question:
Dear Hindu friends, I'd like to know your answers to the below questions. If you could take a few minutes to think about them, I'd be thankful.

What is the object of worship?

What is the purpose of prayer?

What is a human person?

What is sin?

What is salvation?

What is "good" conduct in society?

What happens after death?

How is one converted into the religion?

Thanks guys. Take care and God Bless!!


My Reply:
These are my views about Hinduism

>> What is the object of worship?

Idols are the preliminary means of worship. Higher include mental worship, yoga and meditation.

>> What is the purpose of prayer?

Strengthening the will. The Hindu idea is that man is the creator of his own destiny… and constant remembrance of an ideal either in the form of a god or saint strengths the human will to archive it.

>> What is a human person?

Divinity is the essential nature of humans… so is of all other creatures. Off-springs of humans will be humans and off-springs of a elephant will be an elephant. In the same manner, divinity and not sinfulness is the essential nature of children of god.

>> What is sin?

That which makes us more individualistic and selfish and thus makes us limited.

>> What is salvation?

Complete freedom… freedom from suffering, freedom from limitations of the world, freedom from one’s own desires.

>> What is "good" conduct in society?

this is based on the concept of Dharma. That which is unselfish and that which sustains the society is good. That which is selfish and destroys the society is bad. There are no hard and fast rules about god said like this, so this is bad or good.

>> What happens after death?

If he has not yet attained salvation, he takes birth again.

>> How is one converted into the religion?

how do i become a singer? - sing songs; how do i become a cricketer? - play cricket;
how do i become a hindu? - practice hinduism. That’s all there is fixed formal way of ‘converting’ to Hinduism. (see this blog entry of mine if you want more info)


Effulgent's Response:
Surya,
I have a few questions to your answers. If you don't mind, I'd appreciate some explanation on the following.

1) man is the creator of his own destiny

What is God's part in "destiny"

2) If he has not yet attained salvation, he takes birth again.

How will he "attain salvation"?


My Reply:
>> [1) man is the creator of his own destiny]

>> What is God's part in "destiny"

The Hindu-Buddhist-Tao-Sikh-Jain religions are not centered around belief in God, but rather centered around the concept of Dharma.

The god in Hinduism is not above Dharma, but he who has a role to play in the smooth running of Dharma. We don’t say “Rama is our god, so what Rama did is correct”. Rather we say “because Rama followed Dharma, he is great.”

To give a crude example, we humans can be compared to small pieces of ferro-magnetic iron pieces and God a huge magnet. Just like the ferro-magnetic material gets magnetic properties by rubbing to that big magnet, the humans become more and more Dharmic by constant remembrance in the form of worship and meditation of God. The inherent quality of magnetism can be compared to Dharma here.

So the God in Hinduism does not directly interfere with the ‘destiny’, but is rather a part in the functioning of Dharma.


>> [2) If he has not yet attained salvation, he takes birth again.]

>> How will he "attain salvation"?

Complete freedom is the idea of salvation. Complete freedom is gained when there are no limitations on us. There will be limitations on us as long as there is something beyond ourselves. There will be something beyond ourselves as long we have the idea of “not-I”. The idea of “not-I” will be there as long there is an idea of “I”. So remove this idea of “I” and you will attain salvation. Thus salvation means to completely annihilate the idea of “I” (ego). He who does so attains salvation.


Geetika's Response:
So it is the duty that is "rightness", neither external or internal, and one figures out this duty through prayer and meditation, right? So how is this duty then fulfilled exactly?

I guess the main difference between Christianity and Hinduism is the nature of God. In Hinduism there doesn't seem to be a "God" with His own character, separate from His creation, but rather a universal sense of the divine that exists in all creation.

Anyway, so my other questions are: what is the purpose/meaning of life, what is the purpose of salvation and where does the idea of love fit into all of this?


Effulgent's Response:
Surya, Can a person really anhiliate 'I'? According to you, can a person attain salvation (in your terms)?


My Reply:
@Geetika
>>So it is the duty that is "rightness", neither external or internal, and one figures out this duty through prayer and meditation, right? So how is this duty then fulfilled exactly?

If you are thinking duty as social obligations, then let me add that social duties are just part of the Dharma. Duty means that which needs to be done for the smooth functioning of Dharma.. it may be internal or external or in society.

Though prayer and meditation are helpful, they are not a necessity. A sincere atheist may be better placed than a religious-hypocrite in my view. There is no fixed book or prophet who is needed to help ppl figure this out. Different ppl may get though different means. The crucial things is not how they get it, but how sincere and determined they are to get it. If they are sincere, things are bound to come some way or other.

>>In Hinduism there doesn't seem to be a "God" with His own character, separate from His creation, but rather a universal sense of the divine that exists in all creation.

Hinduism and other Eastern religions does not believe in creation (in the sense that God decided to create the world on one fine day). So there is no creator god in Hinduism, so there is no question of it being separate from “creation”.

Also God is not an individual, but a quality... a divine perfection if we can put it that way, to which every human can also attain. The Buddhahood is the essential nature of all beings and everyone can attain it. If some thing is once possible, it must be always possible again. Universality is the basic requirement of any law to be true (else there will be anomalies). Repeatability is a corollary of universality.

If it is possible for one to see God, it should be possible for all to see God. If Meera saw Krishna, I too should have the potential to see Krishna. If one can be a son of God, any other person also should have the potential to be son of God. ('potential'- meaning- may not be immediately, but surely has a chance, provided he is determined). This may sound blasphemous according to AR.

>>what is the purpose/meaning of life

The word “purpose” presupposes that there is some intelligent being who created the life and as he did some act, his actions must have a purpose. When there is no creation, there is no purpose of creation. The word purpose also presupposes a personal god, which need not be the case.

So the question should be “what is the aim of life” (hope you understand the subtle difference between aim and purpose). The aim of life is freedom or salvation.

>>what is the purpose of salvation

Finding the fundamental human motive to all actions has been always been the complex question before thinkers. Marx tries to explain everything in terms of money, while Darwin tries to explain it as “survival instinct” (Freud unable to explain suicide also introduces another thing called “suicide instinct”). Like that different possibilities are given as per what is the basic human motive…. What drives men to do something and not to do something?

In Hindu view, the most fundamental of all is “freedom”. In what ever ppl do, you can see that they this is the one factor are work always. Whether it is survival instinct (freedom from pain) or suicide instinct (freedom from unavoidable pain) or craving for money (freedom from limitations and dependability) or concept of hell and heaven (freedom from death) or unselfishness (freedom from limited ‘ego’)…. Whatever be the action, you can see that this is one motive which is present in one way or other. Concept of Mukti(salvation) is based on this idea only.

>>where does the idea of love fit into all of this?

I never actually tried to fit in things, rather I study them as they are. So I can only talk about what is the role love plays in Dharma.

As we have seen earlier, Dharma is in the inherent order. So “what binds things together and does not allow them to go into chaos thus maintaining the order” is just another form of putting Dharma. It is in this context loves comes. Love is the means in which one thing binds to the other… binding an individual to another individual; individual to society; society to society; individual to god; god to individual… so on.


@ Effulgent
>>Can a person really anhiliate 'I'? According to you, can a person attain salvation (in your terms) ?

To be honest, I have never attained that state, so what I say in this regard will only be secondary knowledge and not direct knowledge. Many many Saints claim to have attained that state and they say that everyone can attain it.

Though one may not have totally annihilated ‘I’, times will come in one’s life where you catch glimpses of such ego-less state as if the doors of the infinite have been opened, which makes you feel that there is truth in the claim of the sages.

So if you ask me my personal opinion, yes I think it is possible.

Understanding how Mind works

Question:
I have a few doubts ...
Does bad thought mean bad karma ??
and
God "created" everything( action ). So is he too bound by the laws of karma ??
Is that why he has to incarnate himself ???
What does our scripture say about Karma ??
Does bad thoughts result in "bad" Karma.
Please enlighten me !!


My Reply:

>> Does bad thought mean bad karma ??

Very nice topic, something which was never discussed here. We can discuss the working and control of mind first (this in itself is a great topic). As “though” is something to do with mind, once we understand the working of mind, we can understand the whether it has any effect on the karma or not.

The Hindu view is that there are three states of mind:

1. Sub-conscious
2. Conscious
3. Super-conscious

Conscious state is when we are aware of what we are doing, what we are think etc etc. The intellect is working in this state.

Then there is the sub-conscious state. We may not be directly aware of its working, but it plays a more important role in deciding the things. Our dreams, or things like hypnotism etc are based on this state.

The western psychology also agrees with the same till now. But Indian psychology has one more level, what it calls, Super-conscious state. Here the person is more than awake. But limited logic is no longer binding on him. This is the state in which what we call things like intuition, telepathy etc etc happen.

When we perceive something through our senses (in the conscious plane) it creates a respective effect on the sub-conscious plane. If mind is compared to a lake, then the new though in it can be compared to a new whirlpool into it. This whirlpool is called vritti

Just like a lake may take and exhibit disturbances only on the surface for us to perceive, all the working is in the sub-conscious. Or you may take another example, the conschious mind is the all the info we dump into a computer from the input-output divises. But the working of that system will work not just on the latest signal, but all the previous stored up signals as well.

The mind also works something in those lines. Vritti (whirlpool, thought-wave) arises in the mind-ocean. It operates for sometime. Then it sinks below the threshold of normal consciousness. From the surface of the conscious mind wherein it was uppermost for some time, it sinks down deep into the region of the subconscious mind (Chitta). There, it continues to be a subliminal action and becomes a Samskara (impression). A conscious action-whether cognitive, affective or conative-assumes a potential and hidden (Sukshma and Avyakta) form just below the threshold of consciousness. This is termed a Samskara.

If vritti is the disturbance in the mind (disturbance here need not be seen only in a negative manner- its just an additional information from outside), this vritti creates a corresponding samskara or impression on the mind.

Today I may read about such and such person. From reading it either a positive or negative impression is created about that person in my mind. But the moment I change my attention to some other thing, this will be lost from the conscious mind. But it will be still stored in the sub-conscious mind. When I again in later time happen to meet this person, all the old impressions from the sub-conscious mind will come again and corresponding emotions will also accompany and I will feel happy or angry seeing that person.

What a person is decided by sum total of these samskaras. If there are more good samskaras in him, he is said to be good and if has more number of bad samskaras, he is said to be bad.

So essentially, Samskaras decide what a person is and how he behaves. Vrittis or thoughts from the conscious mind decide what Samskaras are formed.

Thus in a way every though has its effect on making a person what he is. So, the answer to the question is yes. Bad thought does mean bad karma (for karma is nothing but accumulated past impressions)

And this is the way Karma works… though our own minds… not by some supernatural phenomenon, with a chitragupta sitting somewhere in sky and keeping track of our karma account.


Question:

>> So, the answer to the question is yes. Bad thought does mean bad karma (for karma is nothing but accumulated past impressions)

What abt inauspicious thoughts that crosses the mind in a flash? do they also become a bad karma?

>> Today I may read about such and such person. From reading it either a positive or negative impression is created about that person in my mind

now I read abt Hilter and concentration camp, then I am bound store a negative impression in my mind...so if I meet him(Juz imagine), I am bound to get angry...now will that also become a bad karma?

What I want to know is, do all negative thoughts mean bad karma?

>> If I day night fill my mind with good thoughts then acting good will not be even take any effort… its will become a instinct.

Problem is with filling the mind with only good thoughts...Its damn difficult...Actually I have heard a saying

"Try to forget me, thats the best way to remember me"

Personally, I experience the same thing...The more I force myself, the monkey mind never listens and takes me in the opposite direction...So, How to fill ourself with good thoughts alone?

PS: MIND is awesome and very powerful...juz try to control it, to realise its true power


My Reply:

>> [So, the answer to the question is yes. Bad thought does mean bad karma (for karma is nothing but accumulated past impressions)]

>> What abt inauspicious thoughts that crosses the mind in a flash? do they also become a bad karma?

In auspiscious thoughts are more a result of karma, not the cause.

Why does inauspicious thoughts flash in the mind? It is coz they are not in the conscious mind, they are present in the sub-conscious and they come to the conscious level due to some stimuli.

For example, I see a certain guy and immediately I am full with anger. Here the thought you are seeing is not the cause, but the effect of previous anger stored against him.

So, such thoughts does not become bad karmas- rather they are the results (unless one instead of containing them tries to harness them)


>> [Today I may read about such and such person. From reading it either a positive or negative impression is created about that person in my mind]

>> now I read abt Hilter and concentration camp, then I am bound store a negative impression in my mind...so if I meet him(Juz imagine), I am bound to get angry...now will that also become a bad karma?

What I want to know is, do all negative thoughts mean bad karma?

Yes negative inputs does mean bad Karma. But there are two important things to remember:

1. Negative here means not in the real world, but our reactions to it. For example, if you read the history of Hitler and concentration camps, they in themselves does not invoke any karmas. Rather, it is your reaction to those which will evoke thoughts. Thus if reading them invokes a feeling of sympathy and concern in you, then they become good thoughts and Karma, not bad. Instead if the suffering invoke a sort of pleasure in you and you enjoy that sort of violence, then it leads to bad karma.

Hence, the word “negative” here is to be used here referring to our reactions, not merely to physical things.

2. The second point is the difference between the cause of negative thoughts and the negative thoughts coming as an effect.

If you input a vritti in the mind lake, that disturbance, though lays hidden for sometime, will come out one day. But in the first case you are introducing a vritti and in the second, it is coming out as a result. Once this comes out, you can contain it and hence end that karma there or you can let yourself further be controlled by that thought and thus make that earlier impression much stronger.

So it NOT the case that every thought that crosses the mind will create bad karma- rather it will be our reaction to it that will decide what will happen.

One more word in this regard. Many people might have experienced that in the beginning of their spiritual life, the negative thoughts seems to be increasing, instead of decreasing.

There is nothing to be worried about it. This happens coz now they are more conscious of the negative thoughts that’s all. Also, when you start cleaning an ink pot by pouring water in it, all that residual ink starts coming out of the bottle. Same will be the case with the mind. When we start pouring in good thoughts, all the previous negative impressions will start coming up.. and sometimes with much more vigiour. There is nothing to be worried about it… continue to pour in good thoughts and in due course they will subside.


>> [If I day night fill my mind with good thoughts then acting good will not be even take any effort… its will become a instinct. ]

>> Problem is with filling the mind with only good thoughts...Its damn difficult...

Of course it is… it is not the work of a day or two-it requires a lot of practice.

Also, as Krishna says in Gita, even a little of this Yoga will bring immense help.

And that’s the beauty in Hinduism- you have infinite number of chances- the war continues until you finally win… and there is no defeat for you; there is only postponement.

I may go at a snails pace, will very little improvement in a day…. doesn’t matter. What matters more is the direction you are going. Are you improving or falling further. No problem, even if the smallest of the improvement, it is an improvement never the less

The key line here is NOT whether you are being successful or not, but it is are you making an attempt?


>> Actually I have heard a saying

>> "Try to forget me, thats the best way to remember me"

>> Personally, I experience the same thing...The more I force myself, the monkey mind never listens and takes me in the opposite direction...So, How to fill ourself with good thoughts alone?

That depends on one’s personal nature. Even there you are trying to “forget Him”, hence you are in a way remembering Him.

It is indeed very difficult to get the monkey called mind into the control, but the key line as I said earlier is “are you improving; are you making an attempt”. Just think of this, and leave the results to the feet of the Lord. As Ramakrishna Paramahamsa used to say, if you take one step toward God, God will take ten steps towards you. But you have to fist take that one step.

Neo-Buddhism

[If some one does not know what neo-Buddhism means, then I suggest he first read this article]

Quite occasionally we read news that some dalits have converted to Buddhism at such and such place. Now what should be our stand towards it.. what are the various pros and cons involved in it?

Conversions based on conviction are welcome, for Hinduism is an umberalla group of various traditions and beliefs and the conversion of one from one to another does not hurt it in any manner. The Hindu identity should be on the top one, then one can be a Advaitin, Dvaitin, Madhva, Buddhist, Jain, Animist, Shakti….. all of them are okay. Increased importance of any one of them is not a threat to Hinduism in any way, for all of them are same in spirit.

If you are referring to political conversions, like that of Neo-Buddhists, then I feel the following conclusion of Koenraad Elst on this subject sums it up very well:

---------------8<---------------

Neo-Buddhim is based on a mistake. Dr. Ambedkar opted for Buddhism on the somewhat contrived assumption that the Buddhist Sangha Councils provided a native model for modern parliamentary democracy, and mostly on the wrong assumption that Buddhim was an anti-caste reform movement. In Hindutva literature, in a few marginal corners, the latter assumption has been criticized, sometimes with reference to corroborative Western research. However, emanating from upper-caste Hindutva authors and written in a heated polemical style, this is unlikely to reach let alone convince the neo-Buddhist audience.

The neo-Buddhists are not Hindus, because they say so. Indeed, whereas all the other groups considered developed their identities naturally, in a pursuit of Liberation or simply in response to natural and cultural circumstances, only to discover later that this identity might be described as non-Hindu, the neo-Buddhists were first of all motivated by the desire to break with Hinduism.

The most politicized among them, all while flaunting the label “Buddhist”, actually refuse to practise Buddhism: because it distracts from the political struggle, and perhaps also because the Buddhist discipline is too obviously similar to the lifestyle of the hated Brahmins in its religious aspect. It doesn’t come naturally to political militants to sit down and shut all activist concerns from their minds, whether to recite Vedic verses or to focus on the dependent origination of their mental motions.

Yet, in broad sections of the converted Dalit masses, the practice of Buddhism is catching on. From a Hindu or a generally spiritual viewpoint, this is one of the most hopeful and positive developments of the post-independence period: many thousands of people who had truly been a Depressed Class, confined to lowly occupations, suffering humiliation and low self-esteem, often steeped in superstition and given to alcoholism, entered the path of the Buddha. Rather than talk about the spiritual path and the glories of India’s sages, as anglicized upper-caste Hindus do, they talk politics but do regularly sit down to apply the methods taught by the Awakened One

Most thinking Hindus, from Veer Savarkar to Ram Swarup, have welcomed the conversion of Dr. Ambedkar and his followers to Buddhism. Rather than joining hands with the Christians or Muslims, Dr. Ambedkar stayed within the national mainstream by taking refuge in the Buddha, thus averting what to Hindus looked like a looming disaster. That he abjured the Hindu Gods and the label “Hindu” seemed to matter less, especially when research shows that many neo-Buddhists still participate in Hindu forms of worship.

That the neo-Buddhists will move closer to the Hindu mainstream, and possibly even take a leadership role in future waves of religious revival, is rendered more likely by the evolution in society. Thanks to education, reservations, and the ever-widening impact of modernization on all Indians regardless of caste, the actual living conditions and cultural horizons of Dalits and upper castes become ever more similar. It is logical, then, that caste animosities will gradually give way to the increasing realization of common Indian and common human concerns, in mundane as well as in spiritual matters.

So, from the Hindu viewpoint, the practical conclusion ought to be: let the neo-Buddhists be non-Hindus. Their chosen religion will shield them from maximum exposure to anti-Hindu influences, and will encourage in them doctrines and practices with which most Hindus are familiar. The religious development and deepening of neo-Buddhism and the process of social reform and psychological modernization in Hindu society ensures that the two will meet again in the not too distant future.

--------------->8---------------

It is desirable and easy if we can assimilate those people directly into the spiritual traditions of Hinduism. However, if it is not possible in some cases, then the next best option will be to let them reject the Hindu label and assume the Buddhist label; we will ensure that they are atleast close to that Buddhist spirituality; once they come close to the Buddhist spirituality, they are already there, for there is no difference between Buddhist spirituality and Hindu spirituality. It will be basically a round about way of doing things, but if we don’t have any other better options, then let this be done.

Sanyasa- escapism?

Question:
Taking Sanyasin is wrong practise indeed. Vedas are definitely against it. Then why do they include it in Varnashram. Was Varnashram framed by the society?? It is said that we should have our Snanam once we see a Sanyasi. Then why do we fall at their feet.
Moreover Sanyasi's principle is to live a life((which according to them is Maya(Mith))) without any publicities and they shud'nt mingle with society. They shud take rest in a mat made of Dharbai.But now a days they become Gurus and they travel from state to state and country to country by plane or any mean which is air conditioned.


My Reply:
Firstly, no where in the Vedas does they talk about Sanyasa. It is just due to half-knowledge some people have.

Also, existence of fakes in no way undermines the importance of Sanyasa.

Rather it reinforces its importance. It is only 100 or 500 rupee note that people fake. They don’t fake a 2 rupee note. The existence of the fake does not bring down the prominence of Sanyasa, rather it only proves that there is some inherent supremacy in it which people are trying to exploit.

Of course, one should be careful of fakes and they should be dealt strongly. But their mere existence does not in anyway undermines the importance of Sanaya order. Rather, look at it this way: fakes in India have to fake themselves not as kings or business tycoons but as beggars to gain social status- this speaks volumes about the central ideals of India.

-----8<-----

A parting Address was given to Swamiji by the junior Sannyâsins of the Math (Belur), on the eve of his leaving for the West for the second time. The following is the substance of Swamiji's reply as entered in the Math Diary on 19th June 1899:

This is not the time for a long lecture. But I shall speak to you in brief about a few things which I should like you to carry into practice. First, we have to understand the ideal, and then the methods by which we can make it practical. Those of you who are Sannyasins must try to do good to others, for Sannyasa means that. There is no time to deliver a long discourse on "Renunciation", but I shall very briefly characterise it as "the love of death". Worldly people love life. The Sannyasin is to love death. Are we to commit suicide then? Far from it. For suicides are not lovers of death, as it is often seen that when a man trying to commit suicide fails, he never attempts it for a second time. What is the love of death then? We must die, that is certain; let us die then for a good cause. Let all our actions — eating, drinking, and everything that we do — tend towards the sacrifice of our self.

You nourish your body by eating. What good is there in doing that if you do not hold it as a sacrifice to the well-being of others? You nourish your minds by reading books. There is no good in doing that unless you hold it also as a sacrifice to the whole world. For the whole world is one; you are rated a very insignificant part of it, and therefore it is right for you that you should serve your millions of brothers rather than aggrandise this little self.

"With hands and feet everywhere, with eyes, heads, and mouths everywhere, with ears everywhere in the universe, That exists pervading all." (Gita, XIII. 13)

Thus you must die a gradual death. In such a death is heaven, all good is stored therein — and in its opposite is all that is diabolical and evil.

Then as to the methods of carrying the ideals into practical life. First, we have to understand that we must not have any impossible ideal. An ideal which is too high makes a nation weak and degraded. This happened after the Buddhistic and the Jain reforms. On the other hand, too much practicality is also wrong. If you have not even a little imagination, if you have no ideal let guide you, you are simply a brute. So we must not lower our ideal, neither are we to lose sight of practicality. We must avoid the two extremes. In our country, the old idea is to sit in a cave and meditate and die. To go ahead of others in salvation is wrong. One must learn sooner or later that one cannot get salvation if one does not try to seek the salvation of his brothers. You must try to combine in your life immense idealism with immense practicality. You must be prepared to go into deep meditation now, and the next moment you must be ready to go and cultivate these fields (Swamiji said, pointing to the meadows of the Math). You must be prepared to explain the difficult intricacies of the Shâstras now, and the next moment to go and sell the produce of the fields in the market. You must be prepared for all menial services, not only here, but elsewhere also.

The next thing to remember is that the aim of this institution is to make men. You must not merely learn what the Rishis taught. Those Rishis are gone, and their opinions are also gone with them. You must be Rishis yourselves.

----->8-----

All paths are true VS (re)conversion to Hinduism

Many Hindus sometimes raise this doubt that as Hindus hold that all paths are true, why does then one need to (re)convert to Hinduism or in other words is not allowing someone to (re)convert to Hinduism a negation of the principle of plurality.

Such arguments only show that one did not fully understand the significance of the “many paths are true” point. The Hindu idea is that each individual is different and unique. No two individuals think alike, talk alike, like the same things etc etc. No two individuals have the same psychological structure. Hence, it is imperative that no single particular form or concept of worship (henceforth referred as “path”) is capable of catering to the vast human diversity. Thus, Hinduism acknowledges that multiple paths are not just acceptable, but necessary.

The question then naturally comes up- why (re)convert? The answer is because there are many paths and the path should be selected by the individual.

Let’s take an analogy: you tell a kid that he can take any flavour of ice cream he wants; any flavour is fine.

Now based on this, we cannot force the kid saying, you must take this vanilla flavour; you are free to take any flavour and vanilla is that “any” flavour.

The “any path is true” is meant for the **individual** to make the choice. Hence conversion is very much acceptable, provided the person is willing.

Those who say “it is bad to (re)convert others to Hinduism” are behaving against the spirit of this “many paths true” for they are denying the freedom of the individual to choose any path are confining the individuals freedom to only the religion he is born in.

It is like saying “your gold is my gold, my gold is your gold; your gold be with me, my gold also be with me”. All paths are true, so let Hindus convert to other religions if they wish; all the religions are same, so let’s not (re)convert anyone!!!

So let’s throw open the doors and invite all... whoever is willing to come are welcome.

My Favourite Books

These is my list of favourite books on Hinduism:


1. Lectures from Columbo to Almora, by Swami Vivekananda. Wonderful set of lectures filled with ideals of nationalism and spirituality. If I had power, I would have made this book compulsory in all schools. Online link of the book.

2. Jnana Yoga, by Swami Vivekananda. An in-depth introduction to philosophy. Online link of the book.

3. Bhakti Yoga, by Swami Vivekananda. Deals with the concept of Bhakti, unselfish devotion etc. Online link of the book.

4. Karma Yoga, by Swami Vivekananda. The Yoga of Action and unattached work. Online link of the book.

5. Raja Yoga, by Swami Vivekananda. About the principle behind pranayama, meditation, patanjali yoga sutras. Online link of the book.

6. Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, translated by Swami Nikhilananda. I always feel that studying/seeing the life of a Saint has thousand times more powerful impact than hundreds of theories. They don’t “preach” religion, they live it. They are the standing testimonies of the truth of the scriptures. For people with more sincere spiritual orientation. Online link of the book.


All the above six books are also available in book form in any of the Sri Ramakrishna Mission or their outlets in many Railway stations. They are also very very cheap. If you study the above 6 books, I am confident that you will cover more than 95% of Hinduism (of course that’s only the theory part, practice is an individual initiative, which no amount of book reading can give you)

Apart from the above, the following are some nice books, worth reading:

7. India’s Rebirth, by Sri Aurobindo. A wonderful book on spiritual-nationalism. It may be available at some Indological book stores or Motilalbanarasidas publishers. It is slightly costly (around 300). The same book is also available online here.

8. Autobiography of a Yogi, by Paramahamsa Yogananda. Very nice book, and perfect introduction to Indian mysticism for westerners and urban Indians. Conveys things more through real life experiences of the author than in terms of Author. Is a very famous book and will be available in any major book store. It is also available online here.

9. For the Hindutva case against Missionaries, Marxists, Mullahs (the 3 M’s), I find Arun Shourie’s books best. His writing style, facts he presents and his arguments are too good and compelling. He has written a LOT of books, but the must reads in them are:

(i) Harvesting Our Souls
(ii) Missionaries in India
(iii) Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud
(iv) The World of Fatwas, Or, the Shariah in Action
(v) Only Fatherland : Communists, 'Quit India,' and the Soviet Union

Unfortunately, all of them are published by usual publishing houses and hence costly. But they will be easily available in any major book store.


10. There are a LOT of more very good books, which is not possible for me to list them all. I will just give links to websites which host a lot of good books.

(i) Complete works of Swami Vivekananda: http://ramakrishnavivekananda.info/

(ii) Most books of Sri Ramana Maharshi, downloadable at: http://www.ramana-maharshi.org/downloads/downloads.htm

(iii) Works of Swami Sivananda of Divine life society available at: http://www.dlshq.org/download/download.htm

(iv) Good English translations to Upanishads and other important books: http://shastras.com/

(v) Collection of various translations and commentaries of Gita, along with audio of verses: http://www.gitasupersite.iitk.ac.in/

(vi) Best site for Hindutva related stuff. No rhetorics… presents the case in a perfectly logical manner:
http://voi.org/

Why Bharat is a Nation

This standard commie crap that India is nothing but a bunch of warring kingdoms unified by British etc etc etc has wide ranging implications. What unfortunate turn of events has come over India. Indians have to prove to fellow-Indians and others that India is indeed a nation. “Intellectual reasons” are needed for a truth which is simply obvious if you close your eyes and ask your heart.

Let it be. That should not discourage us from trying to prove the same.

Before I go into the subject, I will like to add one more word- people might have noticed that I have used the word Bharat and not India. This is to avoid any confusion between the present State of India and the historical India with the land presently called Pakistan included. Hence, I am using the word Bharat due to this reason.


Now coming to the topic… what is a Nation. The defining perspectives of nationhood are typically multidimensional. A nation is not just a geographic area separated from the world by internationally accepted boundary lines; a nation primarily exists in the minds of its citizens. Hence, in one sense, the defining perspectives make a nation.

Most of the confusion in this regard owes its origin to some of the misconceptions spread by the British. They did not find any merit in giving the Indian nation more than two hundred years of existence. In order to ensure their own dominance, they strongly asserted that there has never been an Indian nation before the nineteenth century. Their contention was that there was only a zone called India consisting of small kingdoms ruled by different dynasties. According to them the concept of unified Indian nation emerged as a result of the enlightenment brought about by western education among the elite.

All this confusion can be overcome by first understanding the difference between Nation with State and what patriotism means.

Why should one be even patriotic at all? Is it because we just happen to be born in this country by some random turn of events not in my control (assuming one does not believe in Karma and Reincarnation).. is it because some guys sitting in delhi made a line on maps and then told us that this part is India, this part is Pakistan etc etc and that they have to be loyal to it?

No, I don’t think that can be the case. If that is to be true, then nationalism is just jingoism. A nation is not a mere geographical or political entity. It is rather the name given to the collective consciousness of a group of people bound together by common set of ideals etc. Though these ideals cannot be tooo specific (else there is nothing in common) these cannot be at the same time too vague and hence absurd. (like “humanity”, “mankind”)

Just like a unit of army may have a particular goal to be archived which it does thinking and working as a group, nation is a group of people who are brought together by common ideals, aims and easy of getting together. This may be helped by factors like common history, common culture, common geography etc etc.

The bottom line is the individual ceases to act as an individual and acts as a part of the group (this need not be seen as a negation of citizen’s individuality. Its just a realization that individual interests too are best served by acting together).

Patriotism is the name given to the responsibility towards the web called Nation of which is also a part.

Thought a Nation is set of individuals bound together by a common ideal, they need a agent through which their collective aspirations are given shape. Thus comes the idea of State. A State is a political set up which acts on behalf of the (majority) individuals (note the difference between a Nation and a State)

The state is the means a nation chooses to give certain amount of freedom to the individual but enforces some minimum solidarity towards the Nation.

Now having established the difference between a Nation and a State and that a Nation is much much more than mere political entity, lets come back to the topic.


Cultural Oneness:
Are there are pointers which can prove that indeed such collective consciousness was present among the people of Bharat? Is the idea of Bharat a mere British contribution of was there earlier? Yes it was.

The idea of India, as Bharatavarsha or Aryavrata, appears to have been alive for thousands of years in our stories, thousands of years before there was an America or a Great Britain or a Mexico or France.

From the Manusmriti, we learn of the land of Aryavrata stretching from the Himalayas and Vindhyas all the way to the eastern and western oceans. Without the idea of Bharata, there could have been no epic called the Maha-Bharata that engaged kings throughout this land of Bharata. The story of Mahabharata shows a remarkable degree of pan-Indian context and inter-relationships, from Gandhari, the wife of Drithrashtra who came from Gandhara, (spelled as Kandahar in present-day Afghanistan), Draupadi from Panchala (present day Jammu and Kashmir), all the way to Arjun meeting and marrying the Naga princess Uloopi on a visit to Manipur in the east (from where he gets the `Mani' or Gem). Interestingly, Arjuna is said to have gone on a pilgrimage to the holy places of the east when this happens, showing the current North-East was very much linked in this. Finally, Krishna himself is from Mathura and Vrindavana (in UP) though his kingdom itself is in Dwarka (Gujarat).

Similarly, the story of Ramayana draws the north-south linkage from Ayodhya all the way down to Rameshwaram, at the tip of which is finally the land of Lanka. Note that it is not, for this particular thesis, important that the stories are historically accurate.

What we are interested in rather is whether the idea of India or Bharatavarsha or Aryavrata as a culturally linked entity existed in the minds of the story-tellers and ultimately in the minds of the people to whom these stories were sacred. And these stories were then taken and told and retold in all the languages of the people of this great civilization, till the stories themselves established a linkage among us and to the sacred geography they celebrated. This sacred geography is what makes northerners flock to Tirupati and southerners to the Kumbha Mela.

And the diffusion of these common ideas was certainly not only from the north to south. The great Bhakti movement started in the 6th and 7th centuries AD had its roots in the south in the Tamil and Kannada languages. Even while the boundaries of kingdoms changed, enormous cultural and religious unity continued to take place across India. It started off with the Alvars and the Nayanars (Tamil, 7th to 10th century AD), Kamban (Tamil, 11th century), Basava (Kannada, 12th century) and moved on to Chaitanya Mahaprabu (Bengali, 15th century), Ramananda (15th century, born in Allahabad of south India parentage, guru of Kabir, 15th century), Raskhan (16th century), Surdas (Braj, 16th century), Mirabia (Rajasthan, 16th century), Tulsidas (Avadhi, 16th century), Nanak (Punjabi, 16th century) and Tukaram (Marathi, 17th century), among the many. All these together weaved a garland across the land that spoke again of our common truths, our common cultural heritage.

The Bhakti movement retold our ancient stories in the language of the common people, in Marathi and Bengali, in Avadhi (present day UP) and Bhojpuri (present day Bihar), in Gujarati and Punjabi and in Rajasthani. We can marvel at the cultural unity in India, where while the Bhakti poets initiated the great movement for devotion to Shiva in the south, the erudite philosophy of Kashmir Shaivism was being developed coevally in the north.

Or that Kamban in the south was the first poet to take the story of Rama to the major regional languages, and Tulsidas, much closer to Ayodhya, came centuries later. Or that the great Krishna bhakta Chaitanya was celebrating his devotion to the King of Dwarka in Bengal while Tukaram sang praises of Lord Vithal in the west. An immense body of pan-Indian worship revolved around the triad of Vishnu, Shiva and Shakti in their various forms – whether as Rama, Krishna, Sri Venkateshwara, Sri Dakshinamurti, Jagdamba, Durga Mata or Kali. These common stories were told and retold without the mandate of any central church and seeped through the pores of the land of Bharata, forging a shared bond, unlike any other seen on the planet.

It was this idea of civilizational unity and sacred geography of India that inspired Shankaracharya to not only enunciate the mysteries of the Vedanta but to go around setting up mathas circumscribing the land of India in a large diamond shape. While sage Agasthya crossed the Vindhya and came down south, Shankracharya was born in the village of Kalady in Kerala and traveled in the opposite direction for the establishment of dharma. If this land was not linked in philosophical and cultural exchanges, and there was no notion of a unified nation, why then did Shankracharya embark on his countrywide digvijay yatra? What prompted him to establish centers spreading light for the four quadrants of this land – Dwarka in the west (in Gujarat), Puri in the east (in Orissa), Shringeri in the south (Karnataka) and Badrinath (Uttaranchal) in the north? He is then said to have gone to Srinagar (the abode of `Sri' or the Shakti) in Kashmir, which still celebrates this in the name of Shankaracharya Hill. What better demonstration that the idea of the cultural unity of the land was alive more than a thousand years ago?

And yet, these stories are not taught to us in our schools in India. We learn instead, in our schools, that the British created India and gave us a link language, as if we were not talking to each other for thousands of years, traveling, telling and retelling stories before the British came. How else did these ideas travel so rapidly through the landmass of India, and how did Shankracharya circumscribe India, debating, talking and setting up institutions all within his short lifespan of 32 years?

These ideas of our unity have permeated all our diverse darshanas. We have talked about Bhakti and Vedanta and the epics of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. But this idea of unity was not limited to particular schools. They were equally present in the tantric schools that exerted a tremendous influence on popular worship. Thus we have the legend of Shakti, whose body was carried by Shiva and cut up by Vishnu, landing in 51 places throughout the landmass of India that are now the site of the Shakti Peetham temples. The body of Shakti, or so the story goes, fell all the way from Neelayadakshi Kovil in Tamil Nadu to Vaishno Devi in Jammu, from Pavagadh in Gujarat to the Kamakshi temple in Assam and 47 other places.

Why would the story conceive of these pieces of Shakti sanctifying and falling precisely all over the landmass of India, rather than all of them falling in Tamil Nadu or Assam or Himachal (or alternately, Yunan (Greece) or China, or some supposed `Aryan homeland' in Central Asia) unless someone had a conception of the unity of the land and civilization of Bharatavarsha? Whether these stories are actual or symbolic, represent real events or myths, it is clear from them that the idea of India existed in the minds of those that told these stories and those that listened.

Together, all these stories wove and bound us together, along with migration, marriages and exchange of ideas into a culture unique in the story of mankind. A nation that was uniquely bound together in myriads of ways, yet not cast into a mono-conceptual homogeneity of language, worship, belief or practice by the diktat of a centralized church, intolerant of diversity.

If the concept of India did not exist earlier, why did the British, when they landed in Bengal, form the East India Company and not East Bengal company- how is it possible unless the conception of the land of India (a term derived from the original Hind) was shared by the natives and the British? They used this name much before they had managed to politically hold sway over much of India, and before they educated us that no India existed before their arrival. Why would the Portuguese celebrate the discovery of a sea-route to India when Vasco de Gama had landed in Calicut in the south, if India was a creation of the British Empire?


Ethnic/Civilizational Oneness:
The other pet argument people like to give is that India is a conglomeration of different set of invaders coming and settling here in different points of time.

The recent gene studies on the DNA samples of the people of India suggest the complete opposite. See tis research paper for example:

The Genetic Heritage of the Earliest Settlers Persists Both in Indian Tribal and Caste Populations
The American Journal of Human Genetics

Two tribal groups from southern India—the Chenchus and Koyas—were analyzed for variation in mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), the Y chromosome, and one autosomal locus and were compared with six caste groups from different parts of India, as well as with western and central Asians…. H, L, and R2 are the major Indian Y-chromosomal haplogroups that occur both in castes and in tribal populations and are rarely found outside the subcontinent.... Haplotype frequencies of the MX1 locus of chromosome 21 distinguish Koyas and Chenchus, along with Indian caste groups, from European and eastern Asian populations. Taken together, these results show that Indian tribal and caste populations derive largely from the same genetic heritage of Pleistocene southern and western Asians and have received limited gene flow from external regions since the Holocene. [Source]


Political Oneness
Having seen how Bharat is culturally and civilizationally one, I come to the next topic of political unity.

As I said different political kingdoms does not in any way disprove nationhood. For example, in US all the 50 states are very different in many many ways, they even have double citizenship, different laws etc. But such mere administrative differences cannot disprove the concept of Nationhood.

Having said that, we can see that many successful attempts at political unity too were also made in India.

Among the earliest political consolidations, even by the dates of present colonial scholarship, was under the Mauryas from the 6th century BC to the 3rd century BC, when most of India was under their rule.

After the Mauryas, there was repeated political consolidation of large parts of India, even when all of it was not under a single rule. The Kanishkas consolidated the north from the Hindu Kush Mountains to Bihar and south to Gujarat and Central India. The Satavahana Empire, considered to be founded by high officials of the Mauryas, consolidated the south and central parts.

The Gupta Empire again politically consolidated the area from Afghanistan to Assam and south to the Narmada, possibly exerting political control even further down south. Samudragupta led an expedition all the way down to Kanchipuram in present Tamil Nadu. While the southern areas were not formally part of the Empire, they were quite likely de-facto vassal states, paying tribute to the Emperor.

Note that it would be a thousand years after the Mauryan Empire was established and even much after the Gupta Empire that the Anglo-Saxons in the 5th century AD would first move into the region that would later be called England. It would be nearly five hundred more years before the territory of England would be consolidated as an independent political entity. Only much later would there be attempts at unity of `Great Britain'. The `United Kingdom' that includes Scotland, Wales and Ireland, as we mentioned earlier, is only a recent political artifact.

After the Gupta Empire, the Chalukya-Chola dynasty consolidated most of India in the south, leading expeditions even up to the north of the Ganges river.

Later on, much of India would be consolidated again under the Mughals, and after the Mughal empire disintegrated, by the British.

So while the British were the last power, before the current state of India, to administratively consolidate its territory (as well as to divide it up as they left), they were by no means the first ones to do so.

Even when multiple kingdoms existed, these kingdoms were not like the countries of today with a passport and visa regime needed to cross and all kinds of regulations on movement of goods and people. A continued exchange of ideas, people, goods and scholarship took place throughout the sub-continent, largely unmindful of the boundaries of kingdoms.

Furthermore, the territorial boundaries of India were largely maintained. There were few, if any, times before the British came when large parts of India were consolidated into kingdoms that were centered outside it. There were no significant long-lasting kingdoms, for instance, that ruled from Persia to the Ganges plain, or from Burma to Bengal, or from China or Tibet to Delhi. There was a separateness and integrity to this land.

Even in the case of the British, when all of India became part of a larger empire centered outside it for the first time, it was clear that it was distinct from Burma, for instance, even though they were contiguous land areas ruled by the British. And thus the freedom movements in Burma and India were separate. Burma and India did not become one after their respective independence, nor was there any call by Indian or Burmese nationalists to do so.

Thus there was an idea of India that made it be regarded as a separate and whole, even through political change and shifting boundaries of internal kingdoms.



In conclusion, I can only say that this crap of Bharat is not a Nation before and thanks to British for making it one is just a case of a lie repeatedly told until people started taking it as a sort of truth.


"India is not just a piece of land, not merely a collection of people, but a conscious spiritual being, a Divine Power, a Shakti, Devi, Goddess. India is Mother India, a living form of Divine Mother." ~ Sri Aurobindo


Disclaimer: Many part of this I plagiarized from this article and some are my additions.

Should we Evangelise?

Krinvanto Vishvam Aryam [Lets Aryanise the world] ~ Rig Veda

There have been great conquering races in the world. We also have been great conquerors. The story of our conquest has been described by that noble Emperor of India, Asoka, as the conquest of religion and of spirituality. Once more the world must be conquered by India. This is the dream of my life, and I wish that each one of you who hear me today will have the same dream in your minds, and stop not till you have realised the dream. They will tell you every day that we had better look to our own homes first and then go to work outside. But I will tell you in plain language that you work best when you work for others. The best work that you ever did for yourselves was when you worked for others, trying to disseminate your ideas in foreign languages beyond the seas, and this very meeting is proof how the attempt to enlighten other countries with your thoughts is helping your own country. One-fourth of the effect that has been produced in this country by my going to England and America would not have been brought about, had I confined my ideas only to India. This is the great ideal before us, and every one must be ready for it — the Conquest of the whole world by India — nothing less than that, and we must all get ready for it, strain every nerve for it… Up, India, and conquer the world with your spirituality! ~ Swami Vivekananda


So yes we SHOULD evangelise. Its not merely about giving good thought to others. It is the much needed antidote for the slavish mentality which has been gripping the Hindus.

In my opinion even the talks of “first protecting the Hinduism from the onslaught of Semitic religions” is also just another form of this slavish mentality. Real pride is not content with defending what one has, but is also keen on sharing our ideals with the entire world.

Instead of passivity, activity; for the standard of weakness, the standard of strength; in place of a steadily yielding defense, the ringing cheer of the invading host. Merely to change the attitude of the mind, in this way is already to accomplish a revolution.

It is surprising to think how radical a change is entailed in many directions by this conception. We are longer oppressed with jealousy or fear, when we contemplate encroachments on our social and religious consciousness. Indeed, the idea of encroachment has ceased, because our work is not now to protect ourselves but to convert others. Point by point, we are determined not merely to keep what we had but to win what we never had before. The question is no longer of other people’s attitude towards us but rather of what we think of them. It is not how much we kept but how much we annexed. We cannot afford to lose, because we are sworn to carry the battle far beyond our remotest frontiers. We no longer dream of submission, because struggle itself has become only the first step towards a distant victory to be won.

This is by no means to say that we should also do all the sort of things which we hate others for doing against us. We not just aim to aryanise the world, we do it the Aryan way. As Swami Vivekananda adds to the above para “ Ay, as has been declared on this soil first, love must conquer hatred, hatred cannot conquer itself. Materialism and all its miseries can never be conquered by materialism. Armies when they attempt to conquer armies only multiply and make brutes of humanity. Spirituality must conquer the West.”

Disclaimer: I freely plagiarized from Sister Nivedita, making minor changes to suit the context. Hence could not quote.


Onkar's original post on this subject:
Considering that India, the country with the largest number of Hindus in the world is under attack from Chrsitian and Muslim evangelists, who are trying anything and everything in their power to convert and subvert Hindus into leaving their tradition and accepting a foreign faith and culture, what should be the duty of the Hindus in this regard?

While there are some organisations that are proselytising Hinduism to those who have converted to other religions to bring them back to the Hindu fold, these organisations have a fundamentally political motive and therefore, will have limited success in reaching out to the people.

Also, these organisations will have little influence on people outside India. The only Hindu lobbies outside of India are those of Hindus who have settled abroad, and even their children and they themselves are subjected to conversion attempts, depending on what country they are in.

Therefore, I think the need of the hour is, as Swami Vivekananda said, that Hindu organisations that have the economic clout should start proselytisation not only in Indian regions where Hinduism is dead or dying, but also in foreign countries where Hinduism even has a marginal foothold, and attempt to make this foothold stronger.

To me, it does not matter what kind of Hinduism is being preached to the people, which is why I commend the ISKCON people even though I do not agree with their philosophy, for spreading Hindu values and ideas in foreign lands.

However, some people say that it is against the spirit of Hinduism to evangelise, since all religions are the same.

Rama & agnipareeksha of Sita

This question of why Rama, the maryada puroshottama, the perfect human, asked Sita to prove her purity. More often than not, while the leftists cry hoarse over women's inequality and the rightist cry hoarse over the need to preserve the "nari samman" over this, the underlying concept of the king not being a autocrat, but a subject to the people's will is lost! so's the underlying concept that the king must be free of moral stains.

The following is my reply in a thread on this subject of Sita's agnipareeksha:

Before going into the topic it is first understand the very concpet of incarnation. Quoting from here:

-----8<----
The Hindu divinities issue no commandments. They do not automatically retaliate by rejecting or threatening to excommunicate us if we live by our own code of morality rather than follow their precepts. And yet they have clever ways of quietly intruding into our lives and knocking at the doors of our consciousness. It is very common, for example, for a dutiful son to be praised as Ram, or a talented daughter commended as a virtual Saraswati. I have often heard a happy and satisfied mother-in-law refer to her son's wife as the 'coming of Lakshmi incarnate' into her home. One constantly meets the living incarnations of Hindu gods and goddesses in everyday life. Frequently their worldly behave-alikes are genuinely loveable and even inspiring in the way they live up to their chosen commitments.

Thus, Hindu devis and devatas are not distant heavenly figures, but a living presence in most people's lives. They hold powerful sway as moral exemplars who demonstrate standards of morality that even ordinary people can aspire to emulate. But the codes of morality they demonstrate are not prescriptive. They are there to provide valuable insights into certain enduring values that people use in their own lives in an extremely flexible way, keeping the immediate situation in mind. Hindus usually do not fall into the trap of uncritically replicating the behavior of the deities they revere, for that would produce absurd or tragic results.

A special feature of Hinduism is that there is no sharp divide between the divine and the human. Various gods and goddesses take an avatar and descend to earth to appear among humans like ordinary mortals in intimate familial relationships.

They are often willing to be judged by the same rules and moral yardsticks that one would use for a fellow human being. Devotees and non-devotees alike have the right to judge them by how well they perform or fail to perform the roles they have chosen.

They neither claim perfection nor do they command us to unquestioningly approve of all they do. They allow us the freedom to pass judgements on them, to condemn those of their actions that we consider immoral or unfair, and to praise those actions we find honorable or worthy of emulation.
----->8------

The concept of Avatara is that the infinite, limitless by his own will bounds himself and takes the form of a on earth. He too thus cannot remain untouched about the general human limitations like hunger, sleep etc. But his struggle against all these human limitations is to be an example and inspiration for others too. The Narayana who is the limitless, out of love for jivas enters the world of limitations to uphold the Dharma.

In my opinion the very concept of God coming as a human and showing by example is one of the highest ideas humans have ever conceived.

I in my present position not being able to do an Herculean task and god just waving his hand and it being done, is fine, but not a great ideal in my view. "He is powerful, so he did it, I am powerless, so I cant do it" is the typical idea one forms. But the belief that God himself has come down as a human to our level to show us by example in his own life. A god, attaining Moksha is no great a deal. But the same god, being born like one of us, having been subjected to the same type of problems and limitations, but raising above them is surely a great idea, even if it is just a belief.

Why am I talking about all this instead of simply answering your question… I am coming to that only.

The episodes of gods are meant to illustrate the same. When someone comes into the relativity (world), there is always both good and bad sides of it. What is good to the snake is bad to the frog.

Though Rama never personally doubts Sita, he has some duties as a king and he has to make a choice. What is correct for Rama as a king is bad for Rama as a husband. Either way something is going to be effected. Rama choose his duty as a king. He personally endured lot of pain for that.

Different people may have different opinions about this decision… some may prefer choosing his duty as husband more than his duty as king… each may have his own personal opinions over this issue. What this incident aims to demonstrate is the complexity of the world and taking the “good of the most” route out of any such thing, even if that is personally a painful one (in this context one has to keep in mind that Hindus recollect this incident, not with a smile, with a pain in their hearts). The same explanation also holds in the case of Rama killing Vali from behind.

Time Periods of Yugas

Question:
hi all
i had always wondered abt the time period of different yugs.
can someone tell me the the exact period of dwapar yug, treta yug, satyug and finally kalyug and can they anyway be connected to the dates or years that we understand?????


My Reply:
The purana concept of Yuga time scales is:

1. Satya Yuga or Krita Yuga - 1,728,000 years
2. Treta Yuga - 1,296,000 years
3. Dvapara Yuga - 864,000 years
4. Kali Yuga - 432,000 years

But there is many other views about the same. I find the concept of Yugas put by Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri (guru of Paramahansa Yogananda) more appealing.

Quoting from wiki:

In his book, The Holy Science, Sri Yukteswar explains that the descending phase of Satya Yuga lasts 4800 years, Treta Yuga 3600 years, Dwapara Yuga 2400 years, and Kali Yuga 1200 years. The ascending phase of Kali Yuga then begins, also lasting 1200 years; and so on. The ascending phase of Kali Yuga began in September of 499 CE. Since September 1699, we have been in the ascending phase of Dwapara Yuga, according to Sri Yukteswar. Evidence exists to support Sri Yukteswar's theory. For example, the average life span is getting longer (see above).

According to the traditional concept, the 4 yugas go in a cycle. ie:

Satya Yuga --> Treta Yuga --> Dwapara Yuga --> Kali Yuga --- end of a cycle --> Satya Yuga…..

But according to Sri Yukteswar Giri:

Satya Yuga --> Treta Yuga --> Dwapara Yuga --> Kali Yuga --- end of a cycle --> Kali Yuga --> Dwapara Yuga --> Treta Yuga --> Satya Yuga..

Also in his his case, the shift from one yuga to another is not sudden but continious. ie, the ending phases of Dwapara yuga and beginning phases of Kali yuga will overlap. Then there is ascending and descending of each yuga.

I am no scholar in this regard, but I find this more appealing, as somehow the concept of a wavy-cycle of time appeals more to me than the concept of abrupt shifts in a cycle of time. This concept of abrupt shifts from full Kali to Satya yuga is more like a some vague unknown reason (seen from the concept of impersonal, abruptness is always less appealing to the mind)


PS: The wiki article on Hindu Cosmology is a nice place to start with.

This article by Subhash Kak is also worth reading.


Question:
Surya, doesn't this negate the concept of pralaya?


My Reply:
According the puranic metrics of time:

One cycle of the above four yugas is one mahayuga (4.32 million solar years)

A manvantara consists of 71 mahayugas (306,720,000 solar years)

After each manvantara follows one Sandhi Kala of the same duration as a Krita Yuga (1,728,000 = 4x solar years). (It is said that during a Sandhi Kala, the entire earth is submerged in water.)

A kalpa consists of a period of 1,728,000 solar years called Adi Sandhi, followed by 14 manvantaras and Sandhi Kalas.
A day of Brahma equals
= (14 times 71 mahayugas) + (15 times 4x solar years)
= 994 mahayugas + (60 x solar years)
= 994 mahayugas + (6 times 10 x ) solar years
= 994 mahayugas + 6 mahayugas
= 1000 mahayugas

The concept of Pralaya comes after the end of day of Brahma.

In Hindu cosmology, a universe endures for about 4,320,000,000 years (one day of Brahma, the creator or kalpa) and is then destroyed by fire or water elements. At this point, Brahma rests for one night, just as long as the day. This process, named pralaya (Cataclysm), repeats for 100 Brahma years (311 trillion human years) that represents Brahma's lifespan.

So as it appears, the cycle of pralaya comes into picture only at the end of a day of Brahma (ie., one kalpa or 1000 Maha yugas) There is no reference of any pralaya occurring at the end of each maha yuga as well. So no pralaya is taking place in between the end of a maha yuga and the beginning of a new one until the end of 1 kalpa (1000 maha yugas.)

Hence in both the case, pralaya can be accounted.

Should India become a Hindu rastra?

Every term these days has assumed political overtones and many have lost their meaning. So I can’t comment on what name India should assume, but these are some things which I think India should adopt:

1. Each and every person should be free to follow his/her religion.

2. No religious abuse of any kind should be allowed and if there are some people abusing other religions and its beliefs, then they should be dealt with seriously.

3. Religious conversions through coercion, force, fraud should be banned and serious action be taken on people who do it.

4. The state should not selectively allow only particular religions to preach their religions in schools and not allow other religions from doing so. Schools owned by Hindus should be allowed to teach Hinduism in their schools; similarly schools owned by Muslims and Christians.

5. State should stop meddling with the control of temple funds and diverting it for other purposes.

6. Instead of trying to negate the culture and traditions of India, state should try to actively try to promote them.


If this is what a Hindu rasta means, then yes I want a Hindu rastra; if this is what a secular nation means, then yes I want a secular nation... Give it whatever damn name you want. What really happens in it is of more concern to me than the name.

If you think I cleverly evaded the question, then no I did not. I seriously think that there is no difference between a real secular state and a real Hindu state.

Religion doesnt really matter?

Question:
Recently I had an argument with my friend...

I said All these service organisations must slowly spread our religion also...

She said
Nowadays I feel service to the human being next to u is more important...It doesnt matter what their religion is...so if a christian missionary is helping ppl and demands they get converted in return, whats the harm in that? U cant talk abt karma and bhahman to a hungry stomach...Atleast they lead a happy life...
Assumption here being missionaries do really help.


Now I have some issues with this....Now we are in a majority and hence we still have the freedom to practise our religion without any trouble...suppose we allow conversion(because it removes the guy's day-to-day problems and Religion doesnt really matter), soon we will become minority...then will I have the same freedom? How much trust can we place in Abhrahamic religions, that they will not try to convert us by sword when they become majority?

Or Am I wrong? we mustnt mix service with religion...would we turn out to be like christian missionaries whose main is conversion...


My Reply:
There are many flaws in that line of thinking of your friend. Some of them:

1. The proposition is a typical “your gold is my gold, my gold is your gold; your gold be with me, my gold also be with me” attitude – religion does not matter, so lets not convert others, religion does not matter, so lets allow others to convert (this same religion does not matter is also presented with replacing “all religions are same stuff”)

2. The helplessness of the exploited is no justification for what the exploiter has done. For example, suppose a criminal uses an orphan child to do theft, then it is a unfortunate event for the child (exploited), but this does not justify what the criminal (exploiter) has done. In the same manner, the hunger of the exploited does not in any way justify the exploiter misusing it. Rather it makes it a bigger offense.

3. The whole debate revolves around the assumption that Christian missionaries do really help. But for few cases like that of Mother Theresa (though she too was involved in conversions), the work of Missionaries cannot be termed help. I have argued in this blog of mine that missionary charity is just a myth.

4. One should distinguish between help and ensuring dependability. Making one self sufficient or atleast helping one in that direction is called help. But making one more dependent cannot be termed help. We have often seen that big countries like US etc some times give money to the small countries in the name of help. But they do it in realms such that it does not really help the person, but only makes him more dependent (like giving free cars and selling you oil- just an example). The case of African countries which have seen huge conversions in the last century serves as an example. Those people did not become independent, but rather became more dependent.

5. Keeping aside the economical factors, the major concern is the separatist tendency which is accompanied by these conversions. The case of North East is a perfect example for it. No matter what the temporal benefits, one cannot encourage such things- do we allow people taking money and turning against the country. Then why should we allow this, even if this happens at a milder pace and manner.

6. Having said all, I agree to the point that religion is not more important than a hungry person. But that’s the whole damn point you idiot (missionary): religion does not matter, so shut your mouth and sit in your home; help if you can, but don’t do business and call it help; at least don’t do in the name of religion.


Question:
can service organisations run by hindus, also use it as a medium to spread religion?Or Am I wrong? we mustnt mix service with religion...would we turn out to be like christian missionaries whose main is conversion...

My Reply:
Can service organizations run by Hindus also use it as a medium to spread religion?? A definite Yes. Why not?

Saving the "humanity" as a whole is good, but it starts with first saving yourself... hence I see nothing wrong in maintaining a preferential attitude (wrt protection of Hinduism) in service... after all it is Hinduism which is motivating that service to fellow men.

That being said, even self-preservation is impossible if one cocoons himself; rather one should be boldly willing to take the battle to new frontiers.

Basically it depends on the situation... if we have 10 rotis, we share them only within our family; but if we have 100 rotis, we go out and share them with others also and hence in a way also increase the boundaries of our family.

Hinduism - Philosphy or Religion?

Question:
I have seen few hindus who claimed that hinduism is not religion but a philosphy, is this true ? and if it is religion , how come gods originated from a philosphy ?


My Reply:
Hinduism has two main parts:

1. Jnana
2. Bhakti

Jnana is the philosophical part and Bhakti is the faith/beliefs/rituals part.

They are like two overlapping circles. There are some portions which are purely philosophical but nothing to do with Jnana. In the same way there may be some parts which are purely Bhakti and may not have (or may not be known) any philosophy.

Jnana and Bhakti are like Science and Engineering. I think there may be some people from non-science backgrounds here, so lemme first explain the difference between them.

Science is concerned about the principle and understanding of various phenomenon, while engineering is more bothered about just to get things done. Take making of fire for example. Science is knowing why fire is created, what should be the type of materials which can be used, whether the reaction is exothermic or endothermic, what are the atomic mass loss due to this, what is the efficiency etc etc. While engineering on the other hand is to simply get things done… knowing which materials can make fire (not bothered about what are their internal properties which makes it possible) and what’s the easy way to make it.. that’s all.

In the same way Jnana is to know how prayer works, what’s the nature of soul etc etc. Bhakti is not being bothered about thus “how” and simply get the things done.

Of course both are actually inseparable. Just for the sake of understanding I have mentioned them separately. Just like science helps engineering and vice-versa, inculcating Jnana helps Bhakti and inculcating Bhakti helps Jnana.

It the combination of these two that we call religion.


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

There was another intresting discussion on the subject of "Hinduism - a way of life" with a christian. The discussion is as follows:

Geetika said:
I am starting to have a pet peeve about the phrase "way of life". Everyone says their religion is not a religion, but a "way of life". What is that supposed to mean?

My Reply:
Usually Hinduism, Buddhism, Zen, Tao etc like to call themselves as “way of life” than as religions.

Most probable reason why most eastern religions tend to disassociate with the term religion is coz most of the times the term religion is defined or understood using all Semitic ideas.

Take the point one in above dictionary definition of Religion itself, posted by Paul. It reads Belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers regarded as creator and governor of the universe

But the truth is that most of the ER (Eastern Religions) don’t believe in a “creator” god.

So many followers of ER don’t like to call their religions as religions coz the word religion itself is defined in a different context.

Now about the other point of are not other religions a “way of life” too. People tend to use “way of life” when the choice is in the hands of the individual.

When ER’s say a “way of life”, they really give the freedom of beliefs to the individual and doesn’t impose them. While in the case of Christianity that “way” of life is fixed (or comparatively rigid) so its more apt to call it a “rule of life” than “way of life”.

Agreed that if seen from a purely grammatical angle, the “way of life” statement is flawed, but when seen in the context and essence your pet peeve is just nit picking.


>> but a "way of life".

Trying to careful mislead by emphasizing at the wrong words?

You have put the “way of life” in quotes, but what more important is what preceded it. Christianity claims itself to be “THE way of life”, while ERs claim to be just “A way of life”. The important difference is what precedes the way of life — THE or A.

Women in Hinduism – Refutation of the Islamic propaganda

Call it irony or the inability to project a good picture of what their own religion say about women, the net these days is filled with false propaganda from the Islamists writing all types of crap against how women is treated in Hinduism. There are numerous websites in which excited morons mirror the same pages.

I usually don’t argue much with those guys. It’s a terrible waste of time… to put it in Onkar’s words “A muslim comes and tells you to cut your penis, and the Hindus want to have an intellectual argument with him”.

Anyhow, it is necessary that no doubts exist on these subjects in the minds of Hindus. Hence, keeping the not-so-fully-knowledgeable-Hindus in mind, I wrote this refutation, taking one such page as sample. I did not go into sentence by sentence refutation, but only concentrated on understanding the misleading means adopted in such articles.


Question:
Here a guy is quoting a lot of things, claiming to be from Vedas.

http://tinyurl.com/yyax4w

All this is plagiarised from here...

http://www.geocities.com/~abdulwahid/hinduism/hindu_women.html

Is there any truth in it? Or a case of out of context quoting?


My Answer:
What a joke… such person talks about the condition of women according to Hinduism!!! The article follows all the typical misleading tactics used by such type of morons. Some of them are:


1. Bank on the ignorance of the reader: What these idiots usually do is write whatever crap they want to write and then put then put a “sacred Hindu scripture” in the bracket, so that the reader feels “just like Quran is the sacred and unquestionable authority for me, this must be the same for the Hindus… chi chi what they speak of”.

They typical straw men cases… take up a book and then make it the holy scripture of Hindus. The same is done there with Manu Smriti. How many Hindus even ever saw a copy of Manu Smriti?? – will not be even 0.1% of Hindus.

And even from a religious stand point, Smritis/Dharma Shastras are actually more social recordings than ‘scriptures’. Anyone can write a Dharma Shastra. I too can write a Dharma Shastra by my name, mentioning my opinions about how society should be… what should be the duty of husband, wife etc etc. The point is how accepted it is?

Also, even from an orthodox standpoint, Parasara Smriti, not Manu Smriti is the Smriti presently for Hindus.

The same with the case of many other “scriptures”. The author also extensively quotes “Panchatantra” as a Hindu “scripture”, while any idiot knows that it is a stories book.

Hence, half the quotes given there as “this is what the “holy” books of Hindus speak” have no social acceptance, nor religious. Take a book and attribute it to Hindus- how convenient!


2. Circular references: This typical trait of Marxist historians, discussed in detail by Arun Shourie in his “Eminent Historians” (which in my view is a must read book for any person with serious interest in history).

I used to observe with grin that the pen-names of all the authors in the Dalististhan were typically of the type “Sita XYZ”, “ABC Sharma” etc… names which I never actually have seen people having. I used to get puzzled at that time, but later realized the psychology of it after seeing some muslim trolls on orkut.

Someone reads extracts of it and says “hey look, it is written by some Sita_____, coming directly from a Hindu himself, hence it must be true”. Then some other such writer quotes this author and make their article look more scholarly.

Four people sit together and write anti-Hindu stuff. I quote the other three, and they quote mine… and all of them appear full with references.

The same is seen in this case. Seeing the squalre bracketed references in that article, it is obvious that the author is more interested in showing that he has done “thorough” research. If you are acquainted with real research papers, then you will realize that they don’t quote a guy ever two words. It is only in this type of cases where they want to “show” something, they do that excessive quoting. The calculation there is rarely does one care to carefully look into the books given in the references, dosent matter even if they are “Women in Delhi Sultanate” or “`India as described by the Arab Travellers”.

But to make it sound more “balanced”, quote from some that good, well accepted books stuff like “Rama killed Tataka” (who is a Rakshasi), and then add his own, “by doing so, he did not show any respect to women”. For a person who only sees the references will feel, “Oh god even such accepted book is part of the references”, while people do not note that he has only quoted harmless and useless matter from that book.


3. Put the heading you want and give a different reference: See for example the following

Once again we hear that Sati is sanctioned by the Vedas:
"..is enjoined by the Vedas,"[Br.P. 80.75] [Sheth 103]
and is
"greatly reputed in all the worlds"[Br.P. 80.75] [Sheth 103]

The heading there goes as “sanctioned by Vedas”, and then as if he is giving the references from the Vedas… but lo… he does not quote any Vedas… rather he quotes another person saying it is there in Vedas.

One usually sees the heading and then does not go into the details- so one finds, “oh Vedas too say it”, while in reality the author has not quoted the Vedas there.

The same is seen in this case also: Talking about women and Visashnavism he says:

"Chaitanya thought it to be a sin to talk, think or even dream of women and that even the sight of a wooden statue of a woman can distract the mind and be responsible for immorality. He advised people to avoid being alone even with their own mother , sister or daughter."[Nand 124-127]

He then puts italics and indentation to it, as in the cases where he has given references to other “holy books”, hence creating the feeling that “ok this too must be from some “holy” book. But if one cares to go to the bottom and check it, then the [Nand..] is “`Women in Delhi Sultanate’” book.

I am sure 99% of people will not verify it. Seeing the formatting, they will assume that this too is from a “Hindu holy book”.


4. Giving half the reality: While talking about the women in Buddhism and Jainism, the author quotes:

"Buddha is said to have induced his disciples not to look at a woman or even talk to her"[Sacred Books of the East,XI p.91 cited in N.N.Bhatt p.44]

Firstly, as I said in points 2 and 3, he did not quote any relevant book there. He quoted another person that’s all… not any Buddhist scripture, but maintained a formatting of italics and indentation to mean it is indeed a “holy scripture”.
If that is one part, the other part is that even that reference is half. If Buddha asked his male disciples not to look at women, he also gave the same advice to female disciples, not to look at men. He only talked from the stand point of a monk abstaining from all kinds of sexual thoughts and their possible sources. It does not mean any bad thing towards women. But careful half-quoting gives an altogether different meaning.


5. Coming to the so-called-vedic references. Apart from the cases of heading of “vedic refrerence” and then quoting a different book (as elaborated in point-3), there are not more than 2-3 of places where actually some veda reference is claimed, so it is comparatively easy to prove them false.

Take the verse where the author gives “vedic proof” from existence of Sati in Vedas and gives the reference of Rig Veda X.18.7. This is that Rig Veda X.18.7 from sacred scriptures:

Let these unwidowed dames with noble husbands adorn themselves with fragrant balm and unguent.
Decked with fair jewels, tearless, free from sorrow, first let the dames go up to where he lieth (##)


It only talks about “unwidowed” and not about “widows” so where does the case of sait arise??

Or the Taittriya Samhita which he gives as a proof for the “Vedic reference” of female infanticide. Here is the Taittriya Samhita VI.5.10.3, which he claimed to be the proof for female infanticide:

Offspring and cattle are born through the cups, goats and sheep through the Upançu and Antaryama, men through the Çukra and Manthin, whole-hooved animals through the season-cups, kine through the Aditya cup. The Aditya cup is drawn with the largest number of Rcs; therefore kine axe the most numerous of cattle; in that he thrice draws apart with his hand the Upançu (cup), therefore the female goat gives birth to two or three, but sheep are more numerous.

The Agrayana is the father, the tub is the son; if the Agrayana is exhausted, he should draw from the tub; that is as when a father [1] in destitution has recourse to his son. If the tub is exhausted, he should draw from the Agrayana; that is as when a son in destitution has recourse to his father. The Agrayana is the self of the sacrifice; if the cup or the tub should be exhausted, he should draw from the Agrayana; verily from the self he develops the sacrifice. The Agrayana is drawn (with a verse) in which there is no discriminating mark; he draws with a pot, he offers with (the vessel) for Vayu; therefore [2] (a man) is a slayer of a Brahman (through slaying) an embryo which has not been discriminated. They go to the final bath; they deposit the pots, but lift up (the vessels) for Vayu; therefore they deposit a daughter on birth, a son they lift up. In that be utters the Puroruc, it is as when one brings (something) to a superior; in that he draws the cup, it is as when having brought (something) to a superior one proclaims (it); in that he puts it down, it is as when having deposited something with a superior one goes away. Whatever of the sacrifice is accompanied by a Saman or Yajus, is loose; whatever by a Rc is firm; they are drawn with a support in front to the accompaniment of a Yajus, (they are drawn) with a support behind to the accompaniment of a Rc, for the support of the sacrifice.
(##)

Basically it is a verse talking about Soma Sacrifice (ie., fire ritual) and the renewed taking of Agrayana cup. Nothing about “killing a female child”.

Also, one should remember that Sanskrit in general and Vedas in particular are very symbolic in nature. Hence, they should never be intreperted literally. For example, the words for Earth, Mother, Horse, Cow etc are same. If one wishfully intreprets things according to what he wants without seeing it in the full context.

Do I need to prove more on how “true” are these “Vedic references”


6. Hiding of the necessary facts or twisting them: For example, Hindu society is not a “book” based religion. Hence, books in the lives of Hindus have no more value than “scholar opinions in an encyclopedia”. If we don’t like a book, we simple write a new book. The “references” given there are baseless… but even if for arguments sake they are true, they are of no value to the Hindus.

Or the cases where the author talks of hundreds of women jumping into fire. It is true that there exist such instances. However, its more important when such things happened… they happened when a king lost to Islamic invaders and the royal women to guard their honour against the invading barbarics and avoid being taken by them as slaves choose to die instead (refer: Muslim Slave System in Medieval India)

Also, it depends on how you interpret things. For example, talking about the “lowly” treatment of women, it is very common to see these days people quoting that some book saying “a woman in her childhood is protected by father; in her youth, she is protected by husband; in her oldage she is protected by son”.

Many people interpret it as a symbol of the “low” treatment of women. But I fail to understand how it is so. It does not talk about suppressing womens liberty. It only talks protecting a woman. That does not necessarily mean that she cannot protect herself; it can also mean that, it is always some man’s responsibility to protect the women, whether father, husband or son. It is their responsibility to ensure that woman is always looked after.



Does one need more proof to say it is a crap?

Worship of the living God

Was reading a book containing selections from different lectures of Swami Vivekananda. Found this one very nice and sharing it here:

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the secret of religion lies not in theories but in practice. To be good and to do good — that is the whole of religion. "Not he that crieth 'Lord', 'Lord', but he that doeth the will of the Father".

Be moral. Be brave. Be a heart-whole man. Strictly moral, brave unto desperation. Don't bother your head with religious theories. Cowards only sin, brave men never, no, not even in mind.

If you are really pure, how do you see the impure? For what is within, is without. We cannot see impurity without having it inside ourselves. This is one of the practical sides of Vedanta, and I hope that we shall all try to carry it into our lives.

Doing good to others is virtue (Dharma); injuring others is sin. Strength and manliness are virtue; weakness and cowardice are sin. Independence is virtue; dependence is sin. Loving others is virtue; hating others is sin. Faith in God and in one's own Self is virtue; doubt is sin. Knowledge of oneness is virtue; seeing diversity is sin.

The watchword of all well-being, of all moral good is not "I" but "thou". Who cares whether there is a heaven or a hell, who cares if there is a soul or not, who cares if there is an unchangeable or not? Here is the world, and it is full of misery. Go out into it as Buddha did, and struggle to lessen it or die in the attempt. Forget yourselves; this is the first lesson to be learnt, whether you are a theist or an atheist, whether you are an agnostic or a Vedantist, a Christian or a Mohammedan. The one lesson obvious to all is the destruction of the little self and the building up of the Real Self.

After so much austerity, I have understood this as the real truth — God is present in every Jiva; there is no other God besides that. 'Who serves Jiva, serves God indeed'

These are His manifold forms before thee,
Rejecting them, where seekest thou for God?
Who loves all beings without distinction,
He indeed is worshipping best his God.

You have read “matrudevo bhava, pitrudevo bhava” – ‘Look upon your mother as God, look upon your father as God’, - but I say “daridradevo bhava, murkhadevo bhava” – the poor, the illiterate, the ignorant, the afflicted – let these be your God. Know that service to these alone is the highest religion.

We want to worship a living God. I have seen nothing but God all my life, nor have you. To see this chair you first see God, and then the chair in and through Him He is everywhere saying, "I am". The moment you feel "I am", you are conscious of Existence. Where shall we go to find God if we cannot see Him in our own hearts and in every living being?

If in this hell of a world one can bring a little joy and peace even for a day into the heart of a single person, that much alone is true; this I have learnt after suffering all my life; all else is mere moonshine.

If you want any good to come, just throw your ceremonials overboard and worship the Living God, the Man-God — every being that wears a human form — God in His universal as well as individual aspect. The universal aspect of God means this world, and worshipping it means serving it — this indeed is work, not indulging in ceremonials... Millions of rupees have been spent only that the temple-doors at Varanasi or Vrindaban may play at opening and shutting all day long! Now the Lord is having His toilet, now He is taking His meals, now He is busy on something else we know not what. ... And all this, while the Living God is dying for want of food, for want of education! The banias of Bombay are erecting hospitals for bugs — while they would do nothing for men even if they die! You have not the brain to understand this simple thing — that it is a plague with our country, and lunatic asylums are rife all over.

Look upon every man, woman, and every one as God. You cannot help anyone, you can only serve: serve the children of the Lord, serve the Lord Himself, if you have the privilege. If the Lord grants that you can help any one of His children, blessed you are; do not think too much of yourselves. Blessed you are that that privilege was given to you when others had it not. Do it only as a worship. I should see God in the poor, and it is for my salvation that I go and worship them. The poor and the miserable are for our salvation, so that we may serve the Lord, coming in the shape of the diseased, coming in the shape of the lunatic, the leper, and the sinner!

The first of all worship is the worship of the Virat — of those all around us. Worship It. Worship is the exact equivalent of the Sanskrit word, and no other English word will do. These are all our gods — men and animals; and the first gods we have to worship are our countrymen. These we have to worship, instead of being jealous of each other and fighting each other.

This is the gist of all worship — to be pure and to do good to others. He who sees Shiva in the poor, in the weak, and in the diseased, really worships Shiva; and if he sees Shiva only in the image, his worship is but preliminary. He who has served and helped one poor man seeing Shiva in him, without thinking of his caste, or creed, or race, or anything, with him Shiva is more pleased than with the man who sees Him only in temples.
A rich man had a garden and two gardeners. One of these gardeners was very lazy and did not work; but when the owner came to the garden, the lazy man would get up and fold his arms and say, "How beautiful is the face of my master", and dance before him. The other gardener would not talk much, but would work hard, and produce all sorts of fruits and vegetables which he would carry on his head to his master who lived a long way off. Of these two gardeners, which would be the more beloved of his master?

Shiva is that master, and this world is His garden, and there are two sorts of gardeners here; the one who is lazy, hypocritical, and does nothing, only talking about Shiva's beautiful eyes and nose and other features; and the other, who is taking care of Shiva's children, all those that are poor and weak, all animals, and all His creation. Which of these would be the more beloved of Shiva? Certainly he that serves His children. He who wants to serve the father must serve the children first. He who wants to serve Shiva must serve His children — must serve all creatures in this world first. It is said in the Shâstra that those who serve the servants of God are His greatest servants. So you will bear this in mind.

Let me tell you again that you must be pure and help any one who comes to you, as much as lies in your power. And this is good Karma. By the power of this, the heart becomes pure (Chitta-shuddhi), and then Shiva who is residing in every one will become manifest… And if a man is selfish, even though he has visited all the temples, seen all the places of pilgrimage, and painted himself like a leopard, he is still further off from Shiva.

You are the highest temple of God; I would rather worship you than any temple, image, or Bible. Why are some people so contradictory in their thought?... They say they are hard-headed practical men. Very good. But what is more practical than worshipping here, worshipping you? I see you, feel you, and I know you are God... The only God to worship is the human soul in the human body. Of course all animals are temples too, but man is the highest, the Taj Mahal of temples. If I cannot worship in that, no other temple will be of any advantage. The moment I have realised God sitting in the temple of every human body, the moment I stand in reverence before every human being and see God in him — that moment I am free from bondage, everything that binds vanishes, and I am free.

Bring all light into the world. Light, bring light! Let light come unto every one; the task will not be finished till every one has reached the Lord. Bring light to the poor and bring more light to the rich, for they require it more than the poor. Bring light to the ignorant, and more light to the educated, for the vanities of the education of our time are tremendous! Thus bring light to all and leave the rest unto the Lord, for in the words of the same Lord "To work you have the right and not to the fruits thereof." "Let not your work produce results for you, and at the same time may you never be without work."
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Our unbiased media!!!

I always wonder at the amount of strong-but-not-so-open-bias of the English media in reporting news on communal issues. Hence when I came to know the news that a Muslim mob killed 2 police constables in Bhiwandi, Mumbai (which BTW is 80-85 Muslim) in developments related to issue of constructing a police station in a place adjoining a Mosque, I was naturally curious on how our media reacted. So I was surfing various popular news papers about what they had to say on this issue.

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2 policemen stabbed to death in Bhiwandi
The Hindu

Bhiwandi (Maharashtra): Two policemen were murdered and set afire by a mob after two persons were killed in police firing in the curfew-bound textile town of Bhiwandi during violent protests against construction of a police station next to a mosque.

Authorities stopped the construction even as curfew remained in force in the town, where tension continued to run high for the second day on Thursday. Head constable Ramesh Jagtap and constable B.N. Gangurde of Narpoli police station were stabbed to death near Kotara Gate locality and later set afire on Wednesday night, police said, adding the mutilated bodies of the two were found nearly 500 metres from the mosque.

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Policemen killed, thrown inside burning bus
Indian Express

Mumbai, July 6: A DAY after the charred bodies of two policemen were found in the Vanjerpati area of Bhiwandi, investigations have revealed that the policemen were patrolling the riot-affected locality on a motorbike and were attacked by a mob after their vehicle skidded due to the rains.

‘‘At about 9.30 pm, the constables were out patrolling the streets when their bike skidded as the road was slippery due to the rains. Both fell off,’’ said Director General of Police P S Pasricha.

‘‘A short distance ahead, a mob burning buses saw the two policemen and started pelting stones at them. The constables were not burnt alive.

They were stoned and stabbed to death by the crowd. The mob might then have thrown their bodies into the fire,’’ Pasricha added.

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Mob, cops clash; 4 killed near Mumbai
Rediff

Four persons have been killed in clashes between the police and residents of Bhiwandi, a textile town 50 km from Mumbai.

A mob allegedly lynched two policemen, while two persons were killed in police firing, as protests against the construction of a police station next to a mosque turned violent.

…Two persons were killed in police firing and at least 25, mostly policemen, injured in stone pelting on Wednesday, police said.

Residents of minority-community dominated Bhiwandi have been opposed to the construction of a police station adjacent to the Quarter Gate mosque in the heart of the town. They claim that the plot is a burial ground for the community.

UNI adds:
The Maharashtra government late on Wednesday night stayed the construction of the police station.

Deputy Chief Minister R R Patil is likely to visit the town and hold discussions with the citizens and the police.

Talking to UNI, a senior officer in the district termed the incident as the most unfortunate and said these were the handiwork of some fanatics. The plot was in possession of the police since 1920 and they have every right to construct structures over it, he said.

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I searched NDTV, but could not find any link. Guess they did not even cover it.

Sadly, the media did not disappoint me. ALL of them just wrote ‘mob’, but made no reference to the nature of it. But if some Hindus even say they are not going to allow Muslims in garba dance, they will be a full coverage in the front pages, followed by detailed analysis and editorials condemning a possibility which never even happened.

I don’t want to divert, but still it may be worth recollecting what Rajeev Srinivasan points out in this article about media bias taking the Chandrasekharan's report in “The Washington Post" on Godra as example.

GODHRA, India, March 5 - For two days, as the Sabarmati Express snaked across northern India, some Hindu activists in cars S-5 and S-6 carried on like hooligans. They exposed themselves to other passengers. They pulled headscarves off Muslim women. They evicted a family of four in the middle of the night for refusing to join in chants glorifying the Hindu god Ram. They failed to pay for the tea and snacks they consumed at each stop. When the train pulled into this hardscrabble town in Western India on the morning of Feb. 27, the reputation of its rowdiest passengers preceded it. When they refused to pay for their food, Muslim boys among the vendors at Godhra station stormed the train

'Hindu activists' were 'hooligans', but Muslim 'boys' (so innocent!) stormed the train. wink, wink, nudge, nudge, "boys will be boys."

Indeed a unbiased treatment I say!

Hinduism vs Humanism !!

I see a lot of Hindus holding that humanism is more important than religions and hence in that process shun their Hindu identity. The following is a post made in that context, trying to analyze this apparent contradiction between Hinduism and Humanism.

Question:
No religion is bigger than Humanism
Why to fight for religion?

My Reply:
Arg.. these humanists. In my view they are just apologists selling old wine in new bottles.

Doesn’t the Hindu scriptures resonate with the idea of “vasudaiva kutumbakam” – the world as one large family?

Doesn’t the Shanti mantras in the Upanishads go on as “let everyone be happy, let everyone attain life fulfillment.. Shantih Shantih Shantih”

Doesn’t the Rig Veda declare “let noble thoughts come to us from ALL directions”

Are there any references to any Saint saying that they are only for Hindus? Didn’t they always maintain an universal attitude? They rather said that something which is not universal in nature is not truth at all coz it is limited.

Did anyone see any Hindu criticizing the forms or worship or the religious ideals of other religions and calling them “false” (I am speaking of religious/philosophical condemnation, not the condemnation of the dogmatic aspects in them)

Doesn’t the Vedas declare that “truth is one, but sages call it by different names”

Doesn't Hinduism say that every human is divine... nay even the animals and plants are divine?

So what’s this fuss about “Humanism”. Is Hinduism not already “humanist”… why do we need to bring some new European terms to drive that idea.

It is like that old man carrying a goat story. Once a man was carrying a goat on his shoulders. Some set of people wanted to get that goat.. but how to do it. While the guy was walking, the first comes and says to the person.. why are you carrying a dog with you?

The man replies that it is not a dog, but a goat and proceeds with his journey. Then after some time the second man comes and asks the same question… why are you carrying a dog. The man again clarifies that it is not a dog but a goat.

This repast third time… fourth time… fifth time. Finally the man starts thinking that he is really carrying a dog, else why shouls all those people say it… leaves the goat (which he thought to be a dog) there and starts searching for a goat.

The situation of Hindus today is no different. Hinduism is already universal enough in nature. But some groups have repeatedly tried to malign it. So the new set of apologetic Hindu breed try to shy away from that identity, instead of trying to clean that malign and try to assume more fashionable identities like “religious humanism”, “spiritual”, “Humanist” blah blah.

[Sorry for my outburst. It was a general post about the above mentioned type of apologists in orkut. Please don’t take the post as aimed a *you*. ]


>> Why to fight for religion?

Nobody here is keen to fight for ‘religion’, but for the ideals which come to represent in the form of religion.

We stand against the dogmatism of calling all other paths false and be damned to hell if you don’t accept Christ as your last savior. We fight the dogmatism of calling all non-muslims kafir and maintaining a derogatory outlook of them. We fight the dogmatism which expresses itself in the form of conversion by force, money, fraud and sows the seeds of separatism and hatred. If you don’t also agree to it, then you are contradicting yourself. But if you also support this, then let me tell you that in the existing state of affairs, you stand the danger of being called a fundamentalist.

Hypnotised Realization!!!!!

This is another intresting puzzle posed by Krishna

Krishna’s Post:
I have a query which I feel ye scholars should address. If a person is hypnotised to make him believe that his mission is only devotional service to God or if a person is hynotised to make him develop full faith in Ajata Vada, is he moving towards the path of realization.

This question seems ludicrous at first sight, but let me ellaborate. There are a lot of swamis out there who can perform mass-hypnotism. Say a swami hypnotises his apprentice to make him develop full confidence in chanting, so much so that he is totally indebted to Krushna just as Mirabai was and keeps on chanting and loving Krushna day in and day out, can this be considered a mode of realisation?

Also if a person is hypnotised to believe that all are in reality one, such that he sees all in him and him in all, is he moving towards realization? I know that you guys would give an obvious NO, but can you justify your NO.

What if say my client till the moment of death keeps chanting just as Mira did until death or is totally convinced about the truth of Ajata Vada? Dont tell me that doubts will continue to exist on the subconscious plane, because hypnotism itself implies control at a subconscious plane.

My Reply:
An incident from the life to Swami Vivekananda comes to my mind. Once he was giving a lecture and was in full flow of ideas and the audience were listening in full attention and to put it symbolically in another state altogether as a result of the high spiritual state SV was in. Suddenly a person stood up and asked SV, “Swamiji are you hypnotizing us?”. SV replied “no I am only trying to de-hypnotize you. You have already hypnotized yourself thinking that you are this body etc etc. I am only trying to de-hypnotize and tell you about your true nature.”

Now coming to the question, hypnotism can be done only done to a weak mind. The whole funda of hypnotism is that a weak mind is controlled by a stronger mind. So it is certainly possible for one spiritual gaint to hypnotize someone to anything… to Bhakti marga in your question. But we have to remember that the person who is hypnotizing does so at the cost of spending his mental energies and hence becomes weaker; and the person who is hypnotized will as a result of frequent hypnotism will get used to it and so higher and higher energies are required to hypnotize him (just like a drunkard can take more alcohol than a guy who has it only occasionally).

So a person may be temporarily hypnotized but never can it be done permanently. If it is not real, sooner or later he will realize.

And this temporary surrender to someone else due to being hypnotized can be explained away as his karma-phala through that guy.

>> Also if a person is hypnotised to believe that all are in reality one, such that he sees all in him and him in all, is he moving towards realization? I know that you guys would give an obvious NO, but can you justify your NO.

Truth is something that never contradicts itself and can always be repeated any number of times. So the ‘realization’ in that condition does not count as realization; one just thinks he is, which does not make it real.

Its just like some hippies taking drugs and feeling that they are in some high spiritual state. It does not make it true, only one may think it.

But if the person really experience/knows that reality and has indeed realized that oneness, it will be surely called realization. But then it is no more hypnotism, coz hypnotism is making the false feel true. If the person really realizes, then it will be making a true feel true, and hence no more hypnotism.

Probably the question you meant t to ask was: is realization only possible through self effort or is it also possible by grace say of guru.

In my view it is possible to have realization through the grace (actually self effort is still involved in making oneself fit for grace). Rakhal (later Swami Brahmananda) was one of the favorite disciples of Sri Ramakrishna. Due to the grace of Sri Ramakrishna, he was a realized soul. Even then he always used to completely immerse himself in spiritual sadhanas. Once a devotee asked him why he was still immersed in Spiritul Sadhanas, for which he replied “Through the grace of Sri Ramakrishna I have attained realization, but I want to make it my own”. … it’s the difference between the owner and a rental person. The person living on rent in a house may have all of the house, but does not have power to give it to someone else according to his will. But the owner can have all of the house and also give to someone else on rent according to his will.

Krishna’s Reply:
No Surya, I do not agree with what you say - That only a strong mind can hypnotise a weaker mind. If that were true, there would be nothing such as self-hypnosis.

What is hypnotism? It is the process of offering suggestions or vrittis to the subconscious mind. It can be done by yourself to yourself. You can record your voice on micro-phone, and enter a stage called Alpha State and etch those suggestions in your mind. It is nothing miraculous. To better explain this, let me resort to an example. Just like how you feel breathing is natural because it is a subconscious thought, you can feel Bhakti or working hard for an exam or quitting smoking is natural if you are given a post-hynotic suggestion by yourself to yourself.

Also, the concepts of Vivekananda do not apply here, because the existance of something like self-hypnotism itself denies his arguments. So what do you say now?

Hypnotism just like Raja Yoga is covered with a shroud of mystery and mysticism, a proper understanding of the way it works will tell you that it is nothing harmful. You can contact any pshychriatist for the purpose. In light of these points, what are the answers to my questions?

P.S. And Yeah! I have read your arguments in SV's book on Raja Yoga. And I do not agree with SV's views here, and that is why this question is all the more pertinent

My Reply:
May be first we can then define what hypnotism means, then go on further.

My whole analysis is on the definition that hypnotism is control over a mind, so in that self-hypnosis does not make sense as it is a active phenomenon and not a passive one.

Ok, lets leave mine and come to yours: It is the process of offering suggestions or vrittis to the subconscious mind.

If it is simple process of offering *suggestions*, then it is no more a control. Hence the very question of being hypnotized into following bhakti or ajata vada is absurd.

The situation then will be no different than from how the seeing lot of violence on TV creates more subconscious vrittis in the mind. Whether someone else tells your subconscious or your yourself record it tell yourself or you get through some audio-visual modes, here the effect on subconscious is not about the mind being controlled but being disturbed by creating vrittis. In the calm lake of mind, someone throws a stone and disturbs it. This can be done by anyone even by oneself.

Fine upto now, but then your following statement in accordance to your definition of hypnosis by saying “hypnotism itself implies control at a subconscious plane”

So you are applying two different definitions at two different points. Either make it just offering vrittis, or control over mind.

If it is offering vrittis, then it does not require a stronger mind, but the vritti WILL die down sooner or later.

If it is control of mind, then my earlier explanation holds.

So what ever definition of hypnosis you take, you will realize that the effects of it are always going to be temporary and can never be permanent.

If you ask does it make sense that others/surroundings effect my subconscious mind and hence accelerate or delay my spiritual growth… yes it is quite logical. That’s why the concepts of satsangh and staying away from bad company come into the picture.

Symbolism of Goddess Kali

Goddess Kali evades the understanding of most. The way She is represented not just makes it difficult to understand but sometimes even terrifying. But the symbolism of Kali is one of deep philosophic importance. I stumbled upon the following writeup on this topic. Its simply great:

Kaali Maata (Meaning and Significance)
Kaali is one of the best known, but poorly understood forms of the Hindu Goddess. She is dark destructive and terrible in image. She is allied to the forces of death and destruction. The most common image of Kaali shows her dancing on Shiva. This article aims to give an insight into Hinduism's use of such mystic imagery.

About Kaali :
The Sanskrit word Kaali literally means "time". Kaali is the feminine word for time, for which the masculine is "kaala". Time as we are forced to understand it, is the foremost power that we experience. Kaali is the personification of time and it is not surprising that the deity of time has a terrifying image. After all, time is the slayer of all. Time is the very stuff that our lives are made of - to waste time is to waste life. The reason as to why time is represented in a feminine form is that time is the great womb - the great mother - from which we are all created - therefore it has a feminine quality. Time is also the force which causes all living beings to perish. Therefore Kaali is like the mother who destroys the children which she has created - which is one of her frightful features. Yet, through the action of time, Her action, occurs our salvation. Through time, over repeated births, we experience all that we have to and learn all that we must learn in order to merge back into our eternal existence, from which we fell into limited time and space.

Does Kaali actually have a separate consciousness or is she just a representation of time as an unthinking scientific principle?

Hinduism personifies what to us are abstract spiritual truths as Gods and Goddesses. Spiritual ideas are clothed in concrete imagery, and approached as living beings. This does not reflect a lack of reasoned thinking, or attachment to form, but rather an experiential contact with the higher truths, as living forces. Hinduism creates a personal relationship between ourselves and the forces of the cosmos, and eventually leads us to realise that these forces are within us rather than separate. All forces of the universe are pervaded by consciousness, hence the reason as to why they are approached as living beings is because in reality, they are. The purpose of vivid imagery is that whilst meditating upon the image, our mind is shocked into thinking into the depths of the concept we are trying to understand and know, beyond our usual conditioned ideas.In that way we can really experience the truth of time as an awesome conscious force and understand how our existence relates to it.

Why Is She Dancing On Shiva?
Shiva, in the Shaivite tradition, is the all pervading eternal primeval consciousness of the universe and beyond, who is beyond motivation. Hence, He is commonly shown as meditating in tranquil. His action and motivation occur only prior to the final destruction and dissolution of this cycle of creation. Hence, when Shiva dances, it is considered to be the terrible awesome dance of destruction.

It is on the passive, ultimate reality of Shiva, that Kaali (time) does her dance, causing the constant cycles of creation, life and death of all things in the universe. Shiva is the substratum upon which Kaali acts. Hence, in this part of the Hindu spiritual traditions, the entire divine action and existence is represented by the dance of Kaali (time) upon the changeless all pervading consciousness, Shiva.

The Shiv tattava (Divine Consciousness as Shiva) is inactive, while the Shakti tattava (Divine Energy as Kali) is active. Shiva, or Mahadeva represents Brahman, the Absolute pure consciousness which is beyond all names, forms and activities. Kali, on the other hand, represents the potential (and manifested) energy responsible for all names, forms and activities. She is his Shakti, or creative power, and is seen as the substance behind the entire content of all consciousness. She can never exist apart from Shiva or act independently of him, i.e., Shakti, all the matter/energy of the universe, is not distinct from Shiva, or Brahman, but is rather the dynamic power of Brahman.

A puzzle on Emancipation

This was a interesting puzzle posed by Krishna and my reply to it.

Krishna:

Whose name should we hold sacred; Who is that All-glorious, Resplendent Being Who is imperishable among all the perishable things; Who having made us enjoy the bliss of emancipation again invests us with bodies and thereby gives us the pleasure of seeing our parents? It is the All-glorious, Eternal, Immortal, All-pervading, Supreme Being Whose name we should hold sacred. He, it is, Who helps us to enjoy the bliss of Emancipation and then bring us back into this world, clothes us with bodies, and thereby gives us the pleasure of seeing our parents. The same Divine Spirit it is Who regulates the period of Emancipation and lords over all.

RIG VEDA 1:24, 2.

What are the implications of this verse?

There is no permanence in liberation from Life and Death (notice the underlined part)

A soul might be liberated in this kalpa but after the mahaKalpa - The Grand dissolution. Does the jivas return? Adhyaasa remanifests?

This puts all the vedantin philosophy under a re-examination (or does it) . Because most (99.99%) of the Vedantins be they from dualist, monist or qualified monist sects believe in permanence of Liberation. So what are the implications of this verse?

First look at this verse may make the reader rethink his philosophy. But another interpretation, to this verse : Does this fill in the vedantic gaps? ( like the actual cause of unreal adhyaasa? )

This is a very good read on the implications.

However, total justice is not done as the argument presented is one sided.

I am looking forward to a good discussion.

My Reply:

The idea of liberation is not that a being is there and it is free forever in the future, but the very idea of time is annihilated and hence it is free. Sometimes the word eternal is used to just finger point at the reality; but this should not be misunderstood as final. By liberation, soul does not become free in time eternally, but it becomes free from time.

Let us take an example: suppose there is a ocean and we are different drops in it. Once a drop is formed, it has an individuality, an "I". So it also starts to be effected by various results of the duality. But once the drop becomes one with the ocean, it is nolonger exists and the drop is gone free from the effects of duality for ever.

But at the same time there may form another drop with the same water again and undergo all the cycle again. But here it is not the same old drop which has again come under the effect of duality.

In the same manner, a soul once liberated becomes free for ever; but after a mahapralaya one more soul may appear. But this is nolonger to be seen as the same soul as the previous. The history of the first drop once it mixes again in the ocean is no longer present; time becomes irrelevant to it coz the very individuality itself is lost.

But seeing from a view point of another drop whose time is going on, the first drop was formed, then gone and then again a drop formed.

So the basic mistake here is while saying the soul becomes eternally free, we are talking from the stand point of the time as seen from the first drop. But when we are saying that the drop which lost its individuality has is again having an individuality, we are talking from the view point of time as seen from another drop which is being witness to this process. We are mixing up statements from two different stand points of time.

Dibya’s Reply:

Krishna:

The translation you are using already has certain interpretations ingrained in it. It is not literal enough so that you can actually base any objective argument upon it. Let me provide you a faithful translation so that you guys can base your arguments upon it:

Rgveda 1.24.1-2:

कस्य॑ नूनं क॑त॒मस्या॒मृता॑नां॒ मना॑महे॒ चारु॑ दे॒वस्य॒ नाम॑।
को नो॑ म॒ह्या अदि॑तये॒ पुन॑र्दात्पि॒तरं॑ च दृ॒शेयं॑ मा॒तरं॑ च॥१॥

Whose (kásya) now (nUnam) ... Of which God (katamásya devásya) among the immortals (amR'tAnAm) shall we think (mánAmahe) of the esteemed name (cÁru nÁma)? Who would have given* us again (káH naH púnaH dAt) to the great Aditi (mahyái áditaye), so that I could see (dRsheyam) my father and mother (pitáram mAtáram ca)?

अ॒ग्नेर्व॒यं प्र॑थ॒मस्या॒मृता॑नां॒ मना॑महे॒ चारु॑ दे॒वस्य॒ नाम॑।
स नो॑ म॒ह्या अदि॑तये॒ पुन॑र्दात्पि॒तरं॑ च दृ॒शेयं॑ मा॒तरं॑ च॥२॥

First among the immortals (prathamásya amR'tAnAm) we shall think (vayám manAmahe) of the esteemed name of Agni (agnéH cÁru nÁma). He gives/would have given* (sáH dAt) us again to the great Aditi, so that I could see my father and mother.

* The Vedic verb-form "dAt" is not very specific for tense/mood - so it may be debated upon whether the RSi wants or not to impart some amount of uncertainty, here. Otherwise, the meaning is pretty much clear ... right?

The translation Krishna provided already contains some interpretations of the terms Agni, Aditi, etc... And remarkably, the verses have not spoken a single word about emancipation - at least not directly.

I am not challenging any interpretation. However, I would prefer a literal reading of the verse as a starting point, rather than some interpretation already imparted into the items which are open to different interpretation.
---

>> What is the source of your Verse, I would very much like to read your version of the vedas.

My version? Oh no, I have no my version of Vedas. This is just a word-for-word translation from the Rgveda, which I myself made right now - seeing that the original translation used was not a close one. I don't have any problem with the interpretation you have provided, but people may actually need not bring in the question of "emancipation" to interprete this verse - that was all I meant...

Aurundhati Roy – the godess of small lies

I was wondering whether to post this or not- as she doesn’t even deserve a separate a post in my blog . But then, I never miss an opportunity to pull the legs of commies . The hypocrisy of this whole brigade simply stinks. She writes pages about a non-Hindu killed, but never even mentions a word when Hindus are killed- did you ever see her talk about Kashmir, except saying that the terrorists are actually “freedom fighters”. She yells at the top of her voice that she does not have any freedom of speech in India- how ironic! She pleads for the pardon of Afzal, but did you ever talk about victims of terrorism.. how can she- she doesn’t even accept that they are terrorists.

The following are some of the relevant press coverage on her:

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Goddess of small lies!
By Balbir K. Punj

Roy, in her article Who’s she when she is at home? (The Outlook May 6, 2002) had given a vivid account of a mob attack on house of ex-Congress MP Iqbal Ehshan Jafri, who was unfortunately killed in the riots. Roy gave a graphic detail-“mob broke into the house. They stripped his daughters and burnt them alive”.

This event became a media-occasion for Roy to demonise Hindutva. But those who had read The Asian Age (May 2, 2002) would not have been impressed because in it late Ehshan Jaffri’s son T.A. Jaffri said -“Among my brothers and sisters, I am the only one living in India. And I am the eldest in the family. My sister and brother live in the US. I am 40 years old and I have been born and brought up in Ahmedabad”. So Roy was describing the stripping and killing of Ehshan Jafri’s daughter’s in Gujarat riots, who in reality were safe in another part of the globe.

Roy had begun her charter of hate with another damning description: “Last night a friend from Baroda called. Weeping. It took her fifteen minutes to tell me what the matter was. It wasn’t very complicated. Only that Sayeeda, a friend of hers, had been caught by a mob. Only that her stomach had been ripped open and stuffed with burning rags. Only that after she died, someone carved ‘OM’ on her forehead”.

Shocked by this despicable “incident”, I got in touch with the Gujarat government. The police investigations revealed that no such case, involving someone called Sayeeda, had been reported either in urban or rural Baroda. Subsequently, the police sought Roy’s help to identify the victim and seek access to witnesses who could lead them to those guilty of this crime. But the police got no cooperation. Instead, Roy, through her lawyer, replied that the police had no power to issue summons. Thus she hedged behind technical excuses

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Arundhati Roy, Vikram Seth in encroachment case
Times of India

BHOPAL: The families of two of India's best known authors, Arundhati Roy and Vikram Seth, have been issued notices by a local Madhya Pradesh court for allegedly encroaching on a tribal's land.

Forest officials Nishikant Jadhav and JC Sharma are the other two parties in the case who have allegedly built cottages on land belonging to Vijay Singh Desh in Hoshangabad's Pipariya district, 200 km from Bhopal.

Acting on a complaint, the local tehsildar court in Pipariya on Friday issued notices to all four occupants and asked them to remove the encroachments by July 7.

According to the complaint, all four are said to have built their cottages on Desh's land despite his objection.

Later, they also got a road constructed on another portion of the land with the result that the tribal was left with only that bit on which his house was standing.

"First, they constructed their houses on my land and then the road. When we pointed out that the place they were using for constructing their house and road was ours, they didn't pay any attention because we are poor people," said Vijay Singh's wife Sukhdevi.

Having unsuccessfully pleaded to all four several times to vacate his land, Vijay Singh finally complained to Sub Divisional Magistrate Niaz Ahmad Khan in May this year.

On investigating the matter, Niaz Ahmad found the complaint to be correct and forwarded the case to the court of Tehsildar ML Solanki.

Solanki said: "Action will be taken against all the four if they fail to comply with the court orders... The cottages were constructed despite objections by the up naib tehsildar (local official)."

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Hence I conclude, she is just a media hype.

Belief is a *belief* dear - and hence only personal

It is a common sight that when ever we argue with a christian or a muslim on a subject, he will usually resort that it is his belief and I have the freedom to believe. He will say “Christ or Allah has ordered me to convert all” or say “it is my belief that all idolaters are erroneous” etc etc -- and there ends the scope for all debate. In this context it is very important to understand what belief itself is and what its limitations. The following is one such discussion I had with a Christian:


Thomas’s Post:
I, as a Christian, believe that Jesus Christ came into this world for the remission of sins of the whole mankind. Before Jesus left this world, he commanded his disciples to "Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.


My Reply:

>> I, as a Christian, believe that

Believe.. aha that’s the word. See, as a Hindu, I am not very much bothered about what you believe in. I respect your beliefs- whether you believe that Christ is the god or son of god or whatever, its secondary for me.

What bothers me is when people forget that a belief is a belief and not a unquestionable truth. You don’t have any “proof” to prove that Christ is god (nor do I for saying Rama is)- you believe it to be true.

Now this belief is totally a personal thing. As long as you are the only one concerned, you can believe whatever you want to. But it irks me when one forgets that his belief is just a belief and then either maintains a superior or scornful attitude towards others.

All the arguments which goes on in between the followers “of the book” is something similar to this analogy. Two kids are fighting over whose father is greater. Kid-1 shows his red colour book and says “this book says those who are taller are great; I believe in this book; so my father is great”

To this kid-2 showing his yellow colour book replies, “this book says those who are heavy are great; I believe in this book; so my father is great”

All the arguments of Christians/Muslims about their religion are also very similar.

Christian shows me his bible and says that this book says Christ is the one and only saviour. I say, good for, but I don’t believe in me, so leave me.

A sensible guy should drop it there. But most Christians return and say “see my god asked to spread this message”

I reply, great, good for you, but no thanks I am not interested… leave me alone.

But he still comes to me and says “no you don’t understand, it is out of love that I want to share this with you” and says so he keeps pestering me until I really get fed up and say get lost.

He then replies again, “why do you hate me, I am only trying to spread the message of Christ”

…hello.. who is bothering whom? To borrow from Onkar’s example, it is like putting a gun on the head and saying “please please accept what I am saying… I love you and want to remove this gun from your head… but I cant do it until you agree to what I say; so please please agree to what I say”

The problem here is, as I have already pointed out, that people forget that their belief in Christ and bible is just a belief… and hence though have complete freedom to follow anything, you don’t have any right you press it upon others or form a preferential world view on the basis of that belief.

But the problem is that a VAST majority of Christians do form such preferential world view. You can judge yourself in accordance to your parameters, but you cannot judge others according to your parameters!

A friendly critique of “ancient Hindu science”

No I am not one of those commies who think that the Hinduism are nothing but a bunch of primitive beliefs. If you have observed my posts, you will realize that I am a great lobbyist of the great Hindu Heritage.

But I sometime see some posts by my co-religiousts claiming that air planes, nuclear weapons….. etc etc are mentioned in the Hindu scriptures and that to safe guard them they knowledge was later destroyed etc etc. This following post of mine was written in that context:

I follow the premise of “not accepting something true until proved to be true”. Thus though I am open to the possibility of technologically advanced civilization in India (more so after reading the “Foundation Trilogy” of Isaac Asimov) I do not still accept this due to lack of sufficient proof in this regard.

True, Ramayana talks about Pushpaka vimana and Mahabharata talks about time travel. But we should also differentiate between a concept and an actual existence.

For example, the Einstein’s relativity theory talks about the possibility of a person traveling at half the speed of light and his mass increasing in that plane. What we have to note here is that it is just a theoretical concept. We still do not have rockets which can fly at the speed even comparable to light speed.

In the same way, when Ramayana or Mahabharata talks about air travel or time travel, they need not mean the actual presence of these things, but rather the concept of these things, which were put in the form of myths.

Of course to even have these concepts is really a great thing and we have every reason to be proud of the ancient concepts. But lets not over do it.

I was observing the same in the “Meaning of Gayatri Mantra”. I did not want to spoil their party hence remained silent. But these things like om refers to the sound of galaxies moving at a speed of… blah blah. From what I know, om refers to nirguna Brahman and the funda of chanting is that each word is linked with an idea and by repeating these bijas, we are invoking that particular idea.

Actually I feel this over doing of stuff is but a different kind of slavish mentality. “we have knowledge of planes, we had knowledge of nuclear bombs, we had knowledge of the galaxies rotation around earth” etc etc. On the surface they sound like they are having great pride in the achievements of Hinduism.

But if we scratch deeper we will observe that they have already accepted the western achievements in science as higher in status and are thus bent upon the same things in the Hindu scriptures as well.

Why should one think that we are great coz we did what the westerners are doing today ages ago. They may be good in material science and we are great in spiritual sciences. Why should we evaluate ourselves with the parameters of west? Is it not a indirect slave mentality?

Swami Vivekananda at a place warns us against two kinds of extremes. “In our sight, here in India, there are several dangers. Of these, the two, Scylla and Charybdis, rank materialism and its opposite arrant superstition, must be avoided.

There is the man today who after drinking the cup of Western wisdom, thinks that he knows everything. He laughs at the ancient sages. All Hindu thought to him is arrant trash — philosophy mere child's prattle, and religion the superstition of fools.

On the other hand, there is the man educated, but a sort of monomaniac, who runs to the other extreme and wants to explain the omen of this and that. He has philosophical and metaphysical, and Lord knows what other puerile explanations for every superstition that belongs to his peculiar race, or his peculiar gods, or his peculiar village. Every little village superstition is to him a mandate of the Vedas, and upon the carrying out of it, according to him, depends the national life.

You must beware of this… Avoid these two... Avoid all mystery. There is no mystery in religion. Is there any mystery in the Vedanta, or in the Vedas, or in the Samhitâs, or in the Puranas? What secret societies did the sages of yore establish to preach their religion? What sleight-of-hand tricks are there recorded as used by them to bring their grand truths to humanity?

Mystery mongering and superstition are always signs of weakness. These are always signs of degradation and of death. Therefore beware of them; be strong, and stand on your own feet. Great things are there, most marvellous things. We may call them supernatural things so far as our ideas of nature go, but not one of these things is a mystery. It was never preached on this soil that the truths of religion were mysteries or that they were the property of secret societies sitting on the snow-caps of the Himalayas. I have been in the Himalayas… These mysterious societies do not exist anywhere. Do not run after these superstitions. Better for you and for the race that you become rank atheists, because you would have strength, but these are degradation and death. Shame on humanity that strong men should spend their time on these superstitions, spend all their time in inventing allegories to explain the most rotten superstitions of the world. Be bold; do not try to explain everything that way. The fact is that we have many superstitions, many bad spots and sores on our body — these have to be excised, cut off, and destroyed — but these do not destroy our religion, our national life, our spirituality. Every principle of religion is safe, and the sooner these black spots are purged away, the better the principles will shine, the more gloriously.



Another post elsewhere on the same subject:

One has to understand the difference between a concept and reality.

Today, from the standpoint of relativity we can say that if one travels at half the light of speed, his weight is going to fall this much. But this does not in any way mean that there exists today planes which can travel at half the speed of light.

In the same way, the references to vimanas only prove the concept was there. Was there actual implementation of these? We don’t know- and we have no proof yet.

I don’t understand why people have to take only extreme standpoints- either blindly reject everything in the Hindu books or on the other extreme, try to find some logic in every village superstition.

Actually, I feel this too is a slavish mentality in a different form- trying to finding in our texts what the west has found; if west has found this great thing, then, see we too have found it before- is the attitude.

Why should we even bother what west has found- does it make Hinduism any less special if we do not find everything the west found in our books. We had much bigger issue to dwell upon.

It is said that Yogis can know everything. Now does that mean the rishis thousands of years earlier know railway stations and computers? They might have, had they focused their mind on that subject. But they had much bigger issues to ponder about- the nature of human soul. If the west tried to control the created, we tried to control the creator.

Ahimsa - Boon or Bane of Hinduism?

Question:
Ahimsa is very much mistaken.
It is not 100% non-violence.
WHen violence is the only way to uphold dharma there is nothing wrong in using it. But unfortunately many think ahimsa means the other wise. The biggest exponent of ahimsa is Gandhi - and i can say many of the ills of Hinduism now can be attributed to the cowardly idea of ahimsa propogated by Gandhi. Wat are your opinions?

My Reply:
Extremes look alike and hence usually are confused with each other. One cannot see if there no light or if there is full of light.

As I keep repeating, there are three states: Tamasic, Rajasik, Sattvik

It is said that when 18 invading horsemen invaded Nalanda university, more than 10,000 Buddhist monks there fled. They ran in fear and justified it to themselves as “non-violence”. This is tamas.

When Arjuna faced similar dilemma in Mahabharata war, Sri Krishna advises him to fight the adarma as it is his duty to do so. This is Rajasik

What is real non-violence is displayed by Buddha himself. When angulimali came to attack Buddha… Buddha did not run away like is disciplines in the name of non-violence. He did not feel the need to take arms like Arjuna to protect his dharma. His mere presence changed angulimali.

To compromise with falsehood is not tolerance or nonviolence. It is self-destruction. To turn away in fear or hesitation, not to stand up for what one believes is true, is not modesty but self-betrayal.

Real tolerance is not timidity but spiritual strength. What Buddha did is the highest form of non-violence… he did not run away, nor did he accept falsehood. Even the concept of violence has gone from his mind.

If one has not attained to that state, then the next best thing to do is stand up and fight in the name of Dharma as Sri Krishna advised Arjuna to. If we have greater power, we will fight adharma on the spiritual plane, else we will fight it on the physical plane; but uphold we will Dharma always.

Question:
Surya - whether the non-violence followed by Buddha is applicable to the islamic terrorism that is unleasehed on Hindus and Hinduism? I will say rajsik way is best to deal with it rather than saatvik - what is your opinion?

My Reply:
Well, Sattva is always highest. In Rajas you silence a enemy; in Sattva you make the enemy a disciple… so obviously it’s the better one.

See you are seeing from only the single personalities, while I am seeing it from a scale of mass psychology.

When I say fighting non-violence on spiritual plane, I am not saying that we send a emissary to Osama and Musharaff… what I mean is erode their mass base--- reconvert back the masses with spirituality. This will reduce them to nothing.

Violent methods are sometimes necessary and I am not against them. But they are temporary in nature. A lasting solution can be only spiritual in nature, it cannot be forced from outside, it has to be from within.

Hence the way to fight Islamism or any other threat on any given day is only spiritual… various threats assume threatening postures only on the basis of mass support to it. So the only way to kill them is to erase that… this can be done only a spiritual action. Flood the people with spirituality, make them Hindus and the threat is gone.

Many people restrict their lives to only physical plane and thus do not understand the power of spiritual force. But it is the most potent of all, coz it works on the minds, which in turn guides the body.

A friendly counsel to Hindutva-vaadis

The post title may be little inappropriate, as I am myself a Hindutva supporter and believe that good of Hindus is good of Indians and good of Indian is good of Hindus.

This post is mainly aimed at people who claim to be Hindutva supporters and flood various communities sloganeering various pet subjects and more interested in name-calling and labeling “others” as “psedo-seculars”, but present a horrible reasons for thieir stance on various subjects.

Where I differ with many people who usually argue in favour of Hindutva is in the way of working.

That’s why I created this thread to express my view point and why I am against certain things.

As you all know my love for stories and analogies, let me start with another one. In the wake of 9/11 attacks, there were many conspiracy theories which were floated saying that a Boeing could not have hit pentagon, and that the evidence which is being suppressed by FBI suggests so. Some allege the FBI itself made very funny and ridiculing videos against the US administration about the same conspiracy theories ie., FBI knows some person has a substantial argument against them, so they instead create another fake guy and present the argument against FBI in a very silly manner.

The FBI was not foolish in doing this; their aim was to create a bias in the peoples mind. To put in more simple terms X has a opinion which has a strong basis. Y does not like people to listen and accept what X says. So Y himself starts shouting about what X has been saying. But says so in a more loud manner and in a ridiculous manner.

Often people form opinions not the basis of what is the argument, but on the basis of who presents it and how it is presented. So FBI chooses some stupid person to present that argument in a really silly manner. This thus creates an opinion in the minds of the ppl that the argument too is silly and stupid. So even when some other person presents the same argument against US administration tomorrow, ppl just laugh at his theories.

I don’t know whether such incidents really occurred or not. But there is a great psychological lesson for us to learn there… people more often than not form opinions not on the basis of what is the strength of the original argument, but on the basis of how and who it is presented. Even our media too uses the same funda… there are many good persons who can with proper reasons and logic explain and defend Hindutva. But the media never call them; instead it chooses some real jokers and portray what they say as the arguments of Hindutva.

Please understand what is happening… not just the person, but even what he is advocating is being portrayed as silly. Why… because of the simple reason that we are not clear in what we are saying and because all we do are emotional outbursts.

We don’t need not even try to persuade everyone. Just place the facts, minus that rhetoric and any clear thinking individual will come to the same conclusion. But the unnecessary and avoidable emotional rhetoric makes others close their minds to what you are going to say.

What are we going to get by sobbing all the time “hindus are under threat Hindus are under threat”. Nobody is going to bother about all that baby crying.

We want people who can focus on “what needs to be done”, instead. To know the problem is but only first step. The problem is not going to solve itself if we sit and cry about the problem.

We shout “protect Hinduism, protect Hinduism”, but have we made sure that people are convinced that Hinduism is worth protecting.

Live the Hindu ideals, learn more about various aspects of Hinduism and also make others aware of it. Once it is done and when once we people are convinced that Hinduism is worth protecting, and then you and I do not even need to anything. They themselves will ask how to spread these Hindu ideals.

We cannot become protectors of a treasure, the value of which we ourselves do not know.

Being emotionally attached to the Hindu cause is not enough. It must be accompanied with a calm and clear thinking mind of how to archive it. We want infinite enthusiasm for Hindu renaissance. But we want infinitely more patience to see that this enthusiasm endures itself and does not die out.

And lets not think too much of ourselves. If Rama wanted, he could have killed all the Ravana’s army. It is the good fortune of vanaras that they got a chance to contribute. If Krishna wanted, he could have single-handedly killed all the Kaurava army. It was the good fortune of Arjuna and others that they got a chance to contribute.

In the same manner, either with us or inspite of us, this Sanatana Dharma of ours is always going to live. It’s the grace of god if we get a chance to contribute. Ours is only to work, the results are to the lord.

Why am I telling this… this attitude of karma-yoga removes all the frustration, dogmatism, hatred in us give us a calm mind… and a calm mind, patient mind always produced better results that an agitated and restless mind. An agitated mind filled with frustration only worsens things.

Most of the reactions of Hindus reflect a weak individual not sure what is going to happen to his religion. Instead we want people who are confident of the strength of Hinduism and are willing to take the battle into the enemies own frontiers. Not whiners, but karma-yogis!

The Saga of Hindus in Bangladesh

It is unfortunate that even many of the so-called Hinduvta-vadis are preoccupied, while the condition of Hindus in Bangladesh is much much more alarming.

A general look at the demograpics of BD will prove the same:

Year - % of Hindus in BD
1951 - 22.89
1961 - 19.28
1971 - 14.30
1981 - 13.04
1991 - 11.37

[Source: http://www.cpsindia.org/downloads/religious/Summary3c.pdf ]

While the % of Muslim population in India has increased by 20.7%, the % of Hindus in BD has fallen by 50.3%.

If that is not enough, then there are lot more factors to it: the constant influx of Bangladeshi Muslims into Assam and West Bengal.

This book is worth reading in on this subject: http://www.bengalvoice.com/

I dont know what exactly can be done... but the state of things greatly depresses me.

Who is the 9th Avatara- Buddha or Balarama

We find often confliciting list of dasavataras in various places. Some say it is Buddha, some say it is Balarama. Which of them is true.


Dasavataras according to the popular view today:

1. Matsya
2. Kurma
3. Varaha
4. Narasimha
5. Vamana
6. Parusharama
7. Rama
8. Krishna
9. Buddha
10. Kalki

Dasavataras according to some Vaishnava schools:
1. Matsya
2. Kurma
3. Varaha
4. Narasimha
5. Vamana
6. Parusharama
7. Rama
8. Balarama
9. Krishna
10. Kalki

There are some things which come more from "social acceptability" rather than any strict yes or no.

According to majority of Hindus, Buddha is an Avatara of Vishnu. But for some Vaishnava sects, Balarama and not Buddha is the avatara (not all vaishnas, Madhvas for example also consider Buddha to be an avatara)

And the number 10 for avataras itself is a popular figure, but not the only figure. Bhagavata talks about 25 avataras of Vishnu.

IMHO it is more a qualitative thing than quantitative. Sri Krishna in Gita simply says whenever there is adharma prevailing, I will come to restore the dharma… that’s all.. no fixed numbers.

I visualize it in this manner: if there a small amount of low pressure (adharma), it will also result in a breeze. If there is a greater amount of low pressure a strong wind will result (a sage) and if the low pressure is very high, a cyclone will result (an avatara). Its just qualitative.

There are no hard and fast rules to out a cut off and say above this is a cyclone, below it is not. For different persective, there may be different number. In the same manner different ppl adopt different cut off and say such and such manifestation of divinity is a avatara and such and such is not, and there can be no straight answers to it.

But if we consider the majority viewpoint, like we do in any matters of public opinion, then Buddha and not Balarama is the avatara of Vishnu.

Suicides kill more people

Found an intresting article in Hindustan Times. As HT does not give archives, I am copy-pasting the whole article here. The reason why it this issue intrests me is beczuse it reiterates what I always hold: "Talking big-big emotionally about various issues and making dharnas about them is just like trying to cure the symptom, not the disease. The bigger goal is to make life and living it meaningful... and here in comes the role of spirituality. If that is not done, there is not use of having more maerial comforts.

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Before you finish reading this page, perhaps in the next 10 minutes, some 300 people would attempt and 20 would succeed in committing suicide somewhere in the world.

More young adults die from suicides than from AIDS, congenital defects, heart and neural strokes, cancer, pneumonia, and lung diseases combined, according to the World Health Organization. More people kill themselves than are killed in wars, terrorist violence and murders put together.

In societies like India, where the common man’s social awareness is abysmal, we underestimate the problem for two main reasons: First, we believe that suicide has always been around and, therefore, we can not help matters beyond a point; and second, we associate the phenomenon with dense mysteries of the human mind rather than with everyday social occurrences. A policy-related phenomenon As a result, we rarely hold prosaic government policies or preventable mental health issues re- sponsible for suicides. Even the most pre- dictable social triggers do not result in policy in- tervention despite the fact that more than 500 Indians kill themselves every day, according to National Crime Records Bureau figures.

We should be worried because the number of suicides in India is consistently rising and the victims are increasingly at the height of their potential earning capabilities. The most vulner- able age group, for both men and women, is be- tween 35 and 44 years of age, according to WHO. Basic sociology, no rocket science French sociologist Emile Durkheim pioneered empirical methods to study collective tendencies as far back as in mid 19th century. He collected statistics from many European countries to prove that most suicides were attributable to tangible factors like a society’s moral guidelines, its unfair division of labour, its lopsided stages of industrialization or simply an individual’s improper integration in society.

Sociology today is a more precise field. Hundreds of studies are available on work, family or urbanization related pressures. Many societies are translating this knowledge bank into strategies and services like ready mental health treatment, restricting access to lethal means (gun control, secure access to pesticides) community sensitization, quick crisis response and rehabil- itation for survivors. Historical consensus against suicide Suicide is a complex psycho-social phenomenon linked to extreme pain and anxiety. Its root cause leaves an individual deeply anguished within and his quest for relief pushes him to the brink. Most religions reject killing of self but suicides have somehow sneaked into most mythologies. The boxes below list these historical paradoxes and the story below left examines common causes of suicides.

In the age of reason, most philosophers have contested the individual’s right to end his life from moral or ethical standpoints. The crux of the argument is that liberty is indeed about choices but taking one’s own life precludes the individual’s ability to make further choices. What needs to be done? India’s own experience with its high numbers of farmer suicides clearly establishes many firm patterns. The story below right shows that the reasons and consequences of the farmers’ actions have been nearly identical at most places. Over half a dozen rigorous studies and surveys have prescribed interventions like low interest credit to increased public spending on agriculture.

The guidelines of WHO and the International Association of Suicide Prevention are so succinct that they have shown dramatic results in many countries. The bottom story shows that global solutions are all there but policy interventions are nowhere in sight.

----------->8----------

Reformation - the Hindu way

I find the following words of Swami Vivekananda on the subject of reforms and reformers very pertinent today.

This is selections from a lecture given in Madras more than 100 years ago.

---------8<--------

Now I come to the reform societies… To the reformers I will point out that I am a greater reformer than any one of them. They want to reform only little bits. I want root-and-branch reform. Where we differ is in the method. Theirs is the method of destruction, mine is that of construction. I do not believe in reform; I believe in growth.

I do not dare to put myself in the position of God and dictate to our society, "This way thou shouldst move and not that." … the only thing we can do is to understand that all this work against evil is more subjective than objective.

The work against evil is more educational than actual, however big we may talk. This, first of all, is the idea of work against evil; and it ought to make us calmer, it ought to take fanaticism out of our blood. The history of the world teaches us that wherever there have been fanatical reforms, the only result has been that they have defeated their own ends.

… Such is the testimony of history against every fanatical movement, even for doing good. I have seen that. My own experience has taught me that. Therefore I cannot join any one of these condemning societies. Why condemn? There are evils in every society; everybody knows it. Every child of today knows it; he can stand upon a platform and give us a harangue on the awful evils in Hindu Society. Every uneducated foreigner who comes here globe-trotting takes a vanishing railway view of India and lectures most learnedly on the awful evils in India. We admit that there are evils. Everybody can show what evil is, but he is the friend of mankind who finds a way out of the difficulty. Like the drowning boy and the philosopher — when the philosopher was lecturing him, the boy cried, "Take me out of the water first" — so our people cry: "We have had lectures enough, societies enough, papers enough; where is the man who will lend us a hand to drag us out? Where is the man who really loves us? Where is the man who has sympathy for us?" Ay, that man is wanted. That is where I differ entirely from these reform movements. For a hundred years they have been here. What good has been done except the creation of a most vituperative, a most condemnatory literature? Would to God it was not here! They have criticised, condemned, abused the orthodox, until the orthodox have caught their tone and paid them back in their own coin; and the result is the creation of a literature in every vernacular which is the shame of the race, the shame of the country. Is this reform? Is this leading the nation to glory? Whose fault is this?

... You must go down to the basis of the thing, to the very root of the matter. That is what I call radical reform. Put the fire there and let it burn upwards and make an Indian nation. And the solution of the problem is not so easy, as it is a big and a vast one. Be not in a hurry, this problem has been known several hundred years.

... How difficult it is to look through each other's eyes, and that is the bane of humanity. That is the basis of hatred and jealousy, of quarrel and of fight. Boys, moustached babies, who never went out of Madras, standing up and wanting to dictate laws to three hundred millions of people with thousands of traditions at their back! Are you not ashamed? Stand back from such blasphemy and learn first your lessons! Irreverent boys, simply because you can scrawl a few lines upon paper and get some fool to publish them for you, you think you are the educators of the world, you think you are the public opinion of India! Is it so? This I have to tell to the social reformers of Madras that I have the greatest respect and love for them. I love them for their great hearts and their love for their country, for the poor, for the oppressed. But what I would tell them with a brother's love is that their method is not right; It has been tried a hundred years and failed. Let us try some new method.

Did India ever stand in want of reformers? Do you read the history of India? Who was Ramanuja? Who was Shankara? Who was Nânak? Who was Chaitanya? Who was Kabir? Who was Dâdu? Who were all these great preachers, one following the other, a galaxy of stars of the first magnitude? Did not Ramanuja feel for the lower classes? Did he not try all his life to admit even the Pariah to his community? Did he not try to admit even Mohammedans to his own fold? Did not Nanak confer with Hindus and Mohammedans, and try to bring about a new state of things? They all tried, and their work is still going on.

The difference is this. They had not the fanfaronade of the reformers of today; they had no curses on their lips as modern reformers have; their lips pronounced only blessings. They never condemned. They said to the people that the race must always grow. They looked back and they said, "O Hindus, what you have done is good, but, my brothers, let us do better." They did not say, "You have been wicked, now let us be good." They said, "You have been good, but let us now be better." That makes a whole world of difference. We must grow according to our nature. Vain is it to attempt the lines of action that foreign societies have engrafted upon us; it is impossible. Glory unto God, that it is impossible, that we cannot be twisted and tortured into the shape oil other nations.

I do not condemn the institutions of other races; they are good for them, but not for us. What is meat for them may be poison for us. This is the first lesson to learn. With other sciences, other institutions, and other traditions behind them, they have got their present system. We, with our traditions, with thousands of years of Karma behind us, naturally can only follow our own bent, run in our own grooves; and that we shall have to do.

--------->8-------

Seeing now a day how the modern day reformers behave, I feel how true his words are. Actually most of the today’s commies just enjoy ridiculing and feel proud to fashion themselves as "reformers"

Vedantic Tales

Found the online version of the book "Vedantic Tales" by Sister Gargi.

This book is one of my favouriates and was delighted to find an online version of it.

This story ("I Carry") in particular is a must read.

Pakistan heading for breakup?

I always loved news from across the border, particularly when it is a bad news for them.

According to an editorial in Dawn, pakistan is facing similar circumstances as it did preceeding the Bangla fiasco.

CAN the building of the Kalabagh dam and the bombing of Baloch insurgents (or call them miscreants) lead to the break-up of the federation? The need is to confront this question.

The federal government would rather duck the question altogether while its spokesman Sheikh Rashid prefers to answer it by breaking the necks of those who talk of a break-up.

Some time ago, CIA came out with a report that pakistan would most likely be a filed state by 2015 (or 2020?). Seen in that context, do the current events portend to a result which was predicted by experts.

Out of the four provinces, Balochistan and NWFP are mired with insurgency and in direct conflict with the 'punjabi' army. Mushraf's insistance on going ahead with KBD will strain Sind's ties with Punjab and lead to further hostilities.

Meanwhile, the recent developments in PoK have not been too positive. UN has cancelled the aid flights after its choppers were forcibly taken over by quake affected people. NATO is planning to get out it by Feb, a time when winter will still be at its worst. Whether pak army is doing the needful and filling the void is anybody's guess.

====

Some more points later:

"all those who live by the sword, die by the sword" (bible)

Pakistan better learn this lesson fast. The very reason of its formation was that "different set of people cannot live together"

It argued this point saying Hindus and Muslims being different cannot stay together.

It was later the turn of Bangladesh to teach the same lesson to Pak. Their own argument "different set of people cannot live together"... this applied to East and West Pak.

Now the same lesson which Pak thought to others seems to be again being thought to Pak.

India on the other hand has always maintained that it IS possible for different set of people to live together by highlighting their commonalities instead of differences. So even thought it had seen more separatist struggles than Pak, none of them have succeeded and will succeed.

PS: Trouble is building, but to breakup is a far streched.

=============

India's options in Balochistan
Was thinking from long time about what are India's options on this issue.

1. Open military support is ruled out as that will mean a war.

2. A covert military support too does not seem very good coz not only it will mean that India imitates what Pakistan does, but also it will be counter productive for the baluchis. Their genuine efforts will be simply labelled as "Indian consipiracies"

3. Nobody really cares for pure diplomatic rhetoic.

4. Nor can we sit quite seeing what is going on. Pak army does not have enough helicopters for rescue operations in POK but still uses them for bombing in Balochistan .


I really liked what the author of this article suggests:

But there is scope for gestures. One such gesture could be for India to insist on Baloch participation in the on-going tripartite ( India , Iran and Pakistan ) exploratory talks on the gas pipeline from Iran . The gas pipeline has to pass through Baloch territory. Its security in Baloch territory can be assured only by the Baloch people, who have to have their due share of the transit fee and other benefits of the pipeline.

Pakistan deprived the Baloch people of their due share of the benefits flowing from the discovery of gas in Baloch territory. India should not be a party to any arrangement proposed by Pakistan , which would deny the Baloch people their share of the benefits flowing from the gas pipeline from Iran . The present tripartite talks should be converted into four-party talks involving the participation of the Balochs.


Some more rants later:

bumping this thread after reading this article.

In the lines of my above post about how India could help Balochis, I got a one more devilish thought .

Pak army has presently mobilized most of its forces in crushing the rebel there. It has to even divert its forces from waziristhan where a virtual Taliban rule is existing.

The next time a terrorist attack in India happens again (which BTW happen quite frequently) India should mobilize its forces to the border just like it did after the parliament attack. But this time not to fight a war, nor to send ‘signals’ (which failed last time) but with the only purpose of locking the Pak army in the India border (ofcourse under the pretext of ‘anger over terrorism’).

BTW I think it is this type of considerations that are behind the ‘peace’ moves of Mushy. Peace with India in the present circumstances is not a gesture but a necessity of pak.

Does God exist

Question: hey.. is god really thr.. any proof of its existence ......... I started beliving.. only fate is thr.. and everythng is predefined fr us.. is tht true... do tell me

My Reply:
Tricky question and there can be no single word answer.

Most ppl in world, barring Atheists have some or other concept of supernatural. If we really think this is the also the most natural thing. Humans always tried to break the limitations which nature internal and external forces it on them, but have never able to score a complete victory. Every time the humans are reminded of their limitations. It is thus the first reaction of the human mind to accept that there is a greater power than he has.

But this may take different forms. Some may try to personify the forces and give them forms; like the fire god, the tree god etc. Some others may not be satisfied by this and thus try to look for a greater bigger all powerful god, who controls and dictates all the things.

Some other may just try to view god as a impersonal, ie., not as conscious person making some decisions, but things just happening as it is their essential nature.

In personal concept, we look at God as a being taking conscious decisions eg: a snake biting. It is consciously doing it. On the other hand, impersonal concept, things just happen, coz it is their essential nature. eg: fire burning something. Unlike a snake, fire does not think whether to burn or not, it simply does.

In these two also there are lot many variations of thoughts possible. Each person held a particular concept of this divinity and thus essentially everyone believes in (his concept of) God. Only atheists do not satisfy this criteria coz they do not have even a concept of god; they borrow a concept of god of someone else and reject it.

So the question one should ask is not whether God is there or not, but whether *his* concept of God is complete or not.

Speaking from this angle, God always exists for that individual, coz he has visualizing a certain concepts as God. The real question is “is that concept of god complete or incomplete”

Lets take one example. Suppose a thief is thief in a room. If a child is there, he does not feel that there is a thief trying to steal something. On the other hand if a grown up man is there, he may feel that there is some thief trying to seal something. If there is a Saint in that room, the saint having no concept of ownership may not even feel that someone is stealing his things.

In all the three cases, a person coming a taking something is real, equally real is another person seeing this. But their attitude is completely different and all of these concepts are true for them. What child thinks is true for the case of child; what saint thinks is true for the case of saint. (as long as one does not interchange one’s ideas on others) all of them are essentially true.

In the same manner, for everyone who has a concept of God, god exists for them. God does not exist only for ppl who do not even have a concept of God.

If we think from this perspective, no longer do we think in terms of binary true or false. We realize that all of them are true. Only some are complete, some are incomplete. So we realize that a person does not go from falsehood to truth, but from lower truth to higher truth.

======

In his early days, Narendranath (later Swami Vivekananda) a doubt whether there is God and can he be seen used to haunt him. He has met many ppl, but none was able to give him satisfactory answer. Finally, one day he goes to Sri Ramakrishna and asks the same question: “have you seen God?”. Without a moment's hesitation the reply was given: “Yes, I have seen God. I see Him as I see you here, only more clearly.” He later explains that it is not just him, but anyone who sincerely seeks God can see him.

Narendra was astounded. For the first time, he was face to face with a man who asserted that he had seen God. For the first time, in fact, he was hearing that God could be seen. He could feel that Ramakrishna's words were uttered from the depths of an inner experience.

======

Arthi has raised an interesting point [in my scrap]. When I say “concept of God”, do I mean to say that God is merely a concept and not an entity?

Before I go into that, we should realize how limited out everyday experiences and senses are and that reality may be much much more than what just appears to our eyes.

With the present eyes we have, we see things only in the visible range. Now suppose instead of these eyes, we are fitted with eyes which see in X-ray range, then I will not see a “person” but will see a skeleton. If I replace them with eyes which can see in infrared range, I will probably see a colorful balloon. Now which of these is true, which is not?

How can you be sure that you are in waking state instead of sleep in which all of this what you see is just a dream. Just think, when we sleep, we may have some dream, and the dream may appear so much real for us. As long as you are sleeping, is there any way we can tell that we are dreaming? No. Only when we are awake, do we realize that we were dreaming. In the same manner, is it not possible that we are actually dreaming now that we are awake? I know it sounds very weird.. but try to disprove that possibility, you cannot!

Anyone remembers the Schrödinger’s cat in the box example? In that, by opening the box, we are not just observing, but in a way determining the state of cat.


We can go on seeing similar examples. These example are not directly related to our topic, but essential in un-conditioning the way we are conditioned to think. What we can understand from all these is that reality is far more than what our limited senses can perceive and that the mind actually plays a LOT more crucial role in making our surroundings than we think it does.

Hinduism for an Indologist

Question: Branching off from discussion on monotheism vs polytheism, I would like to discuss more on the prejudices and fallacies in the classification of religion in the East.

It might be desirable to discuss on what needs to be done to change this prejudiced approach - what kind of changes in education system, or the those in the nature of study of history would help remove such prejudice, whether in India or in the West and whether inside the education-circles or outside. Any perspectives philosophical or not, are graciously welcome. Ref: Orientalism

My Reply:

Is the classifications itself wrong
Surely not in my view. Classification is a very basic human tendency. The problem of western classifications of Eastern religions is not actually about classification per se, but wrong method of classification. (of course classification should not be everything, else we will miss the bigger picture—I will come back to this point in the end)

Most of the western studies (or the present day Indian academicians who are also highly influenced by that) tries to fit in Hinduism in some of he categories they are already aware of.

If they really want to classify Eastern religions, then first make the classification of Eastern religions and western religions. Then in the Eastern religions make a set of sub classifications and in the western religions make a separate set of classifications (like polytheism, monotheism etc etc.)

The problem is when they try to fit in every new religion they found into some of the existing sets they already know and are comfortable with. For example, as Anurag pointed out, Hinduism can as well be called Animism. But then for Hindus Hanuman does never represents a monkey, but is a symbol of Bhakti and strength. If you ask a Hindu what he is reminded of by the word monkey (ie., the monkey nature) then he is more likely to reply “the mind which runs after desires”

So to put this evolved Hindi thought which differentiates the external form and the inner spirit in the same category as the primitive idea of worshipping a monkey (and symbolizing monkey) will surely give a wrong idea of Hinduism.

<<what kind of changes in education system, or the those in the nature of study of history would help remove such prejudice, >>

The academicians first need to make the distinction between eastern religions (ER) and western religions (WR) very clear. Some of the main differences between the two are:

1. WR are mutually exclusive ie., you can either be a Christian or a Muslim. But ER are mutually inclusive ie., you can be both a Hindu and a Confucian at the same time.

2. In schools a child is thought that Quran is holy for Muslims, Bible for Christians and Gita for Hindus. What they don’t tell is that, unlike Abrahamic religions, scriptures are not bounding on the Hindus.

3. WR think that they alone are true and all other wrong, but ER maintains that they are just a path.

4. WR allows you to reason, but only within the bounds of “THE book” and where there is a conflict, it is the reason which should give away. But in ER, Truth is not a static quantity and if someone comes up with a proof of something which is against reason, then the religion can be changed (as it is a dynamic quantity). For example, almost all present day Hindus accept that eclipse happens due to earth’s motion and not due to “Rahu & Ketu swallowing moon”

5. WR think that their religions are the perfect, and there is no possibility of changing them. Even if some changes are made, they do it as “God gave it perfect, humans corrupted it later; hence this change”. But ER (as the example Anurag gave) are just like a boat to cross the river. Crossing the river is more imp. Religion is just a means. Thus ER does not have any problem in accepting any faults in their religion.

@ the discussion between Anurag and BD about the classification, eastern and western etc

I really feel you are unnecessarily arguing about a trivial point. Its true that classification IS present in the Hindu context too. For example what are all these nyaya, mimamsa, Vedanta, advaita, dvaita etc.

The difference is not really in the classification, but in the motive/idea behind classification. For WR the whole is sum total of different set of individual classifications. For ER the classification is a part of the Whole

They may appear same, but there is a subtle difference between the both. Let me give an example: ER: a building will have an eastern view, a north view etc. The building is one. But as we cannot look at the building simultaneously from east and west, we deal with it in parts and then get the whole.

WR: It is similar to some shape constructed out of different toy blocks which children play with. A more apt example may be a 100 rs bundle. The whole (bundle) is not actually an entity, but a sum total of individual entities (1rs note).

So classification the eastern is aimed not at knowing the classified, but to know the whole through the parts.

The same is reflected in the social classification as well. The western concept was ‘race’, each a different entity and a society sum total of different races. But the Indian concept was of caste. (not talking about the later degeneration). Each occupation as a part of social functioning.

<<Hinduism a culture or a philosophy? Is there a way you actually become a hindu or stop being a hindu?>>

The concept of culture is a very complex one to understand. But to put it in simple terms, I will say “Culture is the collective intelligence & experience of a civilization cumulated over ages AND means that civilization has developed to pass this to future generations”

This may not be the perfect definition of a culture, but the best I could give. It is not mere habit they aim to create through culture, but character.

Now the philosophy part belongs to the underlined “intelligence” part in the definition. Philosophy does not have any sense of time or person.

Thus I may be an advaitin by philosophy, but my culture is a collective product of the early tribal concepts+ early vedic rituals + Upanishads + Buddhism + Advaita + Bhakti.... just like quantum theory may be the present theory, but science is sum of the early particle, wave nature of light theories and the present quantum theory.

Status of chamatkaari babaas

Question: I’ve heard a lot abt these chamatakaari babas in India.....they do tricks like ...producing an egg from throat, getting things in their hands out of nowhere n other things....they also have a huge following. what’s there status n role in Hinduism......do they enjoy a strong religious position?

My Reply:
Yes its true that India has always been famous for such miracle men. One cannot find them so easily, but they do exist.

Its also true that there are some ppl who can really of such things, although many are just fakes, who cheat by different techniques.

But even if one can really do so, his status is not high in Hinduism.

Miracles and Mystery mongering are the symptoms of a weak mind, not a strong one. While one is on the path for Mokhsa, one naturally gets these powers. But if the person is weak, he becomes a slave to these powers, and forgets the higher goal, which is Moksha. But a real aspirant will be vigilant, and will not care for such powers.

So in Hinduism such type of miracle mongers do not have a very high status.

On one occasion Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa proposed to transfer to Narendranath (later Swami Vivekananda) many of the spiritual powers that he had acquired as a result of his ascetic disciplines and visions of God. Naren had no doubt concerning the Master's possessing such powers. He asked if they would help him to realize God. Sri Ramakrishna replied in the negative but added that they might assist him in his future work as a spiritual teacher. 'Let me realize God first,' said Naren, 'and then I shall perhaps know whether or not I want supernatural powers. If I accept them now, I may forget God, make selfish use of them, and thus come to grief.' Sri Ramakrishna was highly pleased to see his chief disciple's single-minded devotion.

So you can see that the so-called miracles are quite possible but there is nothing great in them. Greatness lies in not-using them. How can a person who displays such acts in exchange for some 10/- be great?

For more explanation on how such things are possible, you can read this lecture.

<<There's nothing wrong with Tantrik powers.>>

I did not say any such thing against tantrik powers.

I said using them is bad.

If the powers come, it is a symbol that that sadhaka is improving in his spiritual path. But it is wrong if the sadhaka starts using them, and gets lost of the real goal.

<<do u really believe in tantric powers n supernatural powers?>>

yes, such things seems perfectly possible in my view.

Agreed that there are lot of fakes, who do some simple tricks. But that does not undermine the tantrik powers.

There are some things like creating something out of nowhere, reading the mind, being at two places simultaneously, floating in air, living only on air etc etc.

Such things ARE possible. Don’t ask to rationally explain how they work. I don’t know, but they simply work.

Anyhow, I repeat, such things can never be the goal of spiritual sadhana.

Read the Autobiography of a Yogi book. Its really a great one, you will love it. Its also available online. What makes it great is that I can only quote or tell others experiences, but in this book, the author is a realized yogi, and writes his own experiences.

<<Surya, I am not sure about ethical correctness of using Tantrik powers.

For instance, using them to climb a rope suspended in thin air or to walk on water or to blow fire out of your mouth clearly does not serve any purpose; but what about using them to cure cancer or to find a medicine for AIDS?

On the face of it, such an effort seems laudable, but then it is interfering with natural course of events, and shouldn't be encouraged. But again, the whole of modern civilization interferes with natural course of events including modern medicine and building dams; so clearly there is a grey area here.

I am confused. >>

good point! I never thought about this. I have my own doubts in this matter, but will try to share what I feel.

Helping or not is something which depends on what is the goal of human life. If it helps someone in that process, it is help; if it does not, it is not help.

If the difficulty of one is in the material place, then help also should be in material place. If the difficulty is in spiritual, the help also spiritual. But one cannot interfere with the ones' physical plane with something from spiritual plane. The basic idea is that everyone has to workout their respective Karma. There is no escape from this.

Hence the help which is offered is mostly spiritual in nature. It is better to teach the man to fish, rather than give him fish. That’s what they try to do.

In my above posts, I was straightly talking about people who have not realized. They are not eligible for help as they themselves need help, and also they do not know the nature of the workings of the infinite. Not everyone can be a doctor. We have to study the human anatomy first.

So such help by such ones' is ruled out, but as such help itself is not ruled out. Otherwise the concept of an avatara coming from time to time, coming and helping the humanity doesn’t make sense.

I think it is more about ones' ability to know how a person can be really helped. Giving him the medicines etc are not real helps, the real help is to show one's own treasures, the point out his real nature, which gita describes as "fire cannot burn, water cannot wet....."

Lets define Hinduism

I see a lot of confusion even among Hindus about what is meant by the word Hindu and what is Hinduism.

People may ask what is the need to define things in the first place. It may be true that defining something restricts it. But we cannot deny that every religion should have a central focal point which keeps its followers together. We cannot be too vague in understanding ourselves. The idea of not confining ourselves is good, but cannot be taken to its extremity at the cost of losing our individuality and distinctiveness.

Some common origins of the word are that it was originally meant to refer to ppl who live on this side of Sindhu, or in other words whose motherland is India are Hindus.

But then this is a ooooold definition of the word. With time, lot of changes have taken place and there the very religions who invented this word Hindu to differentiate us from them have converts here. Also there are many Hindus who have migrated to other places. Then there are gora Hindus who converted to Hinduism. Also there are many ppl in places like Indonesia whose motherland is Indonesia but follow Hinduism.

The other suggestion is that those who follow Vedas be called Hindus. But then is it really fair when actually more than 90% of the Hindus probably do not know even a single verse from the Vedas?

The other definition of those who follow Santana Dharma is too generic to qualify as a definition.

Then it can said that those who follow the Hindu way of life are Hindus. But this too is a circular definition. We then are left with the task of defining the “Hindu way of life”

I suggest that we can define Hindus as “People who follow native Indic traditions”.

Thus this way all the Vedantins, Buddhists, Jains, Sikhs, Atheists, Animists, Tribals etc come under this. He may thus be anywhere in the world, but if he follows these which are native Indic, he is a Hindu.


Comments welcome!

India's lost girls

I was reading this blog of my friend. Some of the data left me shocked and puzzled.

According to some groups like Lancet estimate that more than 10million female births may have been lost over the past two decades ie., 5 lakh every year.

But the Indian Medical Association and some other groups dispute with these staggering figures. They say the figure is close to 2.5lakh per year. (link)

Anyhow lets not prove Hitler correct when he said “one death is tragedy, thousands of deaths are statistics” by getting lost in all this number game. As long as there is even a single child being killed before or after birth, just because she is a girl, we as a Nation lose.

Its really a sad that in the land of Shakti worship and where the most popular PM is a woman (same case in the other sub-continental countries like Pak, BD, Sri Lanka where women are/were at top places.. in comparison to America where there is no woman president yet), woman is now being viewed as “negative”.

What puzzled me more is look at the census of the last century. I was under the impression that this male:female ration was much worse in the past and as we are slowly developing and moving into the new era, it must have improved (the typical English educated mindset where we think in the past we were bunch of ppl with primitive practices). Just have a look at the male female ratio in the last century:

Years Sex Ratio
1901 972
1911 964
1921 955
1931 950
1941 945
1951 946
1961 941
1971 930
1981 934
1991 927
2001 933

ie., contrary to my assumption, the sex ratio became worse in the last century (the argument that modern technology in the form of prenatal scans helped it is not valid as they only came in the 80s)

1/30/2006 11:26 PM
Whats more… this article claims:

The practice is common among all religious groups - Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Muslims, and Christians – but appears to be most common among educated women, a fact that befuddles public health officials and women's rights activists alike.


This trend also fits with census figs. But I could not still understand why it is more amongst the literates (lets not call them educated)

Is it because of my belief that secular education has almost nothing to do with how ethical you are? And that spiritual education is the only way out? Is it the feeling that a poor but socially conscious spiritual person telling an "uneducated woman" that killing a girl child is something that god does not like, may be much more effective than a high-class society lady telling "educated women" in a conference that for sake of social equality and gender non-discrimination, and feministic reasons, girl child's be not killed ?

I donno, I am just lost.. Do whatever you want, just get the damn practice stopped !

Question: Again our so called great Indian culture is to be blamed here.. Because girls r seen as a burden to a family..I see girls don't strive in their career(talk abt ratio of girls in the IITs)..just sit around..do a BA and get married! This mentality has to change..every girl in a family shud make her own mark and set examples to other families!..ofcourse for tht the parents also have to provide her wid ample opportumities!

My Reply:
It is a good habit to read the post fully and listen patiently what the other is saying instead of just seeing the subject and then jumping to post what the preconceived opinions are.

Please read my posts fully. As you can observe there, the sex ratio has actually gone down in the last century from 972 in 1901 to 933 in 2001. Had your point abt the "Indian Culture" been true, the trend would have been opposite.

Please also read the link I posted where it is said that "the practice... appears to be most common among educated"

Also I could not understand the correlation between more women working and female ratio. Certainly there are more women working these days, than a century older, but that has not helped the sex ratio.

Not just in comparison with the past, your argument fails even within the states. According to the 2001 census, Delhi which has possibly more “educated” and “working women” has a very poor ratio of 821 in comparison to say Tamil Nadu, where the 986 (the national average is 933). BTW Delhi does much worse than even Bihar which has 921.

I was also under the same impressions as you are, but we need to let the facts speak, instead of our prejudices.

The Four Ashramas in life according to Hinduism

There are four ashramas or stages of life according to Hinduism:

1. Balya, childhood
2. Brahmacharya, the life as a student
3. Grihasta, householder
4. Sanyasa, renunciating everything

Hinduism also indentifies four valid goals of life: Artha, kama, Dharma, Moksha

Of these Moksha, freedom from all the attachments is given the higest importance. Then comes Dharma or righteousness. This again has two aspects:

1. Internal
2. Social

Internal Dharma, which means defining something as good/bad based on the attitude of the person. If something is done with an unselfish attitude, it is higher than that which is done with a selfish attitude.

Then comes social dharma, which is more like social convenctions. Not all have a well reasoned logic, but they are necessary for the smooth functioning of the society. For example, why do we dress in certain manner, or dress at all. It is for the society's conventions. There is not pure logic in these, but are still followed.

Then Artha is given importance, then comes Kama.

You can see that all these are ordered in accordance to the amount to unslefishness.

First is Moksha coz it is the aim for total non-attachment.

Then comes Dharma, coz you are fulfilling your duties at your own cost towards a society, country, thus even though a limited amount of unselfishness, still high in nature.

Then comes Artha. Here you are working with a view of your own benifit, but in doing you are also indirectly producing sulprous which is necessary for the functioning of the society.

Then comes Kama, as here only your own pleasure is the issue. There is no big unselfishness involved. So this is inferior to others in the preferance, but this in itself is not totally wrong. Only point is if there is a conflict, this should be the first to give way.

In the four stages, the first is simple chilhood.

Then comes the student age. This is the age where the student is supposed to concentrate on acquiring knowledge.

Then is the Grihasta where with the knowledge acquired, the person goes into the society to live the life according to the Dharma. He marries and also fulfills his duties towards his family, society, nation etc.

The last is Sanyasa where he leaves everything and tries to be free from all attachments and attain Moksha.

One can make this trasition in a way, time he wants(assuming he is mature enough to handle the new responsibilities). But is also imporant to show some respect to societies conventions. Sometimes its not just that you understand what you mean, it is also important that other understand what you mean.

For example, if I want to express my love to a small kid, the usual way is we kiss him. In some other places, they turn thier hands in peculiar way, in some other place, they hold his cheek with their hand. Mind you none of these is any actual expression of love. But the society understands such acts and through it also the motive. Now if suppose I argue, why should I only express my love in those forms. I can as well beat the child to express the love. But the problem is other will not be able to understand it.

Questioning the myth of Missionary charity

"Even if Missionaries are converting people by wrong means, how does it matter. Will a hungry person care for food or religion? Why do Hindus cry foul at Missionaries when they are helping the people. So what if they ask the ppl to convert to Christianity in return?"

This is the most common argument you hear in any discussion about the activities of Christian Missionaries. I have already discussed the national and moral implication of conversions earlier. In this topic I will try to focus on myth of Missionary Charity.

As they say, one fact talks louder than thousand opinions. So I will try to give more of facts, figures and media references. Let the facts speak for themselves.

The problem in dealing this question is that the bias against Hindu society is soo institutionalized in this regard that hardly anyone even realizes it. So our original question can be divided into three parts:

1. State control of Hindu money
2. Direct/Indirect state support to Missionaries
3. Media bias towards Christian missionaries and against Hindu charities.


1. I don’t know about the law in all of the states, but I can talk about Andhra, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Here the state govt controls all the temples in that state and all the money is directly handled by the respective state govts. In states like AP there is also a separate ministry called endowments ministry for the same.

And the revenue from these temples is not a small amount by any means. Tirupathi temples gets an annual revenue of 20 crores by just selling the hair offered by devotees. (yea it is the same temple which Amitabh Bacchan visited recently and gave 8 crores ). The total annual income just from the tirupathi temple itself runs into hundreds of crores. If this does not awe you, here are some more statistics:

"annual revenue from offerings alone, as TTD chairman T Subbirami Reddy says, is expected to cross Rs 800 crore this year... On an average, the temple gets 10 kg of gold (almost all in the form of ornaments) in its hundials. At the current market price of Rs 578 per gram for 22 carat gold , it amounts to Rs 57.8 lakhs per day. And it has another eight tonnes of gold ornaments studded with stones, lying in bank lockers, the value of which has not really been estimated." (link)

The state govt diverts most of the money to other governmental activities. Just to give an idea of how HUGE is the money involved is in these things, let me produce the rough translation of a recent news article in a telugu newspaper:

The Govt of Andhra Pradesh has decided to sell 7000 acres of land belonging to various temples in AP. The govt expects an income of 20 thousand crores <:o> by selling these lands. The govt has also not ruled out that the money generated from this may be in future diverted to other projects. (news link for those who can read telugu)

If you are thinking this is too much... wait. This is just the first stage. The total property is much large.

Now I really don’t have much problem with state controlling these properties. After all, it’s the same for me whether Hindu money is used for some god or for the needy in my country.

But lets not forget one things… it is HINDU MONEY. Atleast give the due credit to the hindus. Forget about other temples, if we just use the money from tirupathi temple and give money for buying souls, we can easily have double the numbers what Missionaries are having now.

Which makes me feel that Hindus are just being penalized for being good and not using their money for doing soul business but rather allowing the use of its money for developmental activities. And this is soo institutionalized that the nehruvian socialists come to Hindus and give them lectures about Missionaries giving the needy some money, even if it is a business.


2. The state in the name of minority institutions directly/indirectly helps the Missionaries.

India’s constitution has certain provisions whereby minorities are exempt from certain requirements in running their own institutions. (ref this article). Thus if a minority guy wants to set up a minority institution, say a school, the rules are much relaxed for him. While a Hindu school does not have any freedom in the subjects and constitution of the school, a Minority institution has the freedom to include some religious subjects. They also in many cases get funding from Minority commission of India. As the following analysis on the state of Educational institutions in Kerala reveals:

The education scenario is one of the major sectors where the organised strength of the minorities in Kerala (where Christians and Muslims constitute around 19% and 25% respectively) is used in a covert manner. In this sector the majority (Hindu) community as well as the government altogether controls only 11.11 per cent, on the other hand the church controls 55.55 per cent and Muslim religious organisations 33.33 percent of the total institutions. At present the professional education sector of Kerala is somewhat under the full control of the minorities. About 12,000 engineering seats and 300 medicine seats are in the minority institutions and they are fully controlling the admissions. At present 60 per cent of the seats of the paramedical courses are controlled by the organised minority religious leadership. (link)

The same trend is seen in other sectors as well. Sometimes govt does not directly spend some money on a developmental activity, but instead does so through some NGOs. Last year AP govt under the able leadership of CM, YSR Reddy (who BTW is a Christian convert) decided to use some of the money from tirupathi for providing medical services. And he selects Madras Medical Mission for doing that!!! .... the money belongs to Hindus, the state gives it to Missionaries to use it for conversions!!!

There are lot of such instances. See for example the following pioneer article:

It has, for instance, been claimed that, in 1997, the Karnataka Government received a revenue of Rs 52.35 crore from 2,64,000 temples. Of this, Rs 17.33 crore was returned to the temples for maintenance; Rs 9.25 crore allocated for madarsa development and Rs 3 crore for church development. The balance Rs 22.77 crore was diverted towards Government programmes. The situation was much the same in 1998.

However, in 1999, it is alleged, the State collected Rs 65.35 crore in revenue; gave Rs 15 crore for temple maintenance; and diverted Rs 27 crore to madarsa development and Haj subsidy and Rs 8 crore for church development. No details were available about the use of the balance Rs 17.35 crore.

In 2000, the temples generated a revenue of Rs 69.96 crore, but received only Rs 13.75 crore for maintenance. The madarsa-Haj subsidy rose to Rs 35 crore. In 2001, temple revenue further rose to Rs 71.60 crore, while maintenance grants shrank to Rs 11.50 crore, and madarsa development funds rose to Rs 45 crore. Church development received Rs 10 crore. In 2002, the State received Rs 72 crore as revenue, returned Rs 10 crore for temple maintenance, and granted Rs 50 crore for madarsas and Rs 10 crore for churches. (link)

Money belongs to Hindus and the credit goes to Missionaries for their noble act of soul business!!!


3. Why is that the moment one talks about charity, only some Christian nun helping some poor guy come into the ppls mind? There are LOT many Hindus who dedicated their whole life to serving others. But how many even know their names… what makes their service inferior to that done by Mother Theresa? They too dedicated their complete lives for serving others.

There are many Hindu organizations like Sri Ramakrishna Math, Art of living, Seva Bharati, Aurobindo Ashram, RSS, Swadhyay Parivar, Sarada Math, Shri Swaminarayan Sanstha, Mata Amritanandamayi Math, Vanavasi Kalyan Ashram, Ramachandra Mission, Gayatri Parivar, Chinmaya Mission, Divine Life Society……..involved in various kinds of service activities. Anyhow they just limit themselves to service, and not to soul-Business.

But again, their positive aspects of condition-less service and silent work without any we-did-this propaganda are made their weakness and commies tell Hindus how the Missionaries are better coz they are doing business in the name of religion!!!



I can only conclude that this whole crap of Missionaries at least helping a poor guy, and Hindus doing nothing, but only crying foul about Missionaries is baseless. Thanks to the "Nehruvian Socialism" and Missionaries, the whole thing is so institutionalized that most Hindus themselves don’t realize it and remain silent when such crap arguments of "people convert out of hunger" are offered. Its true that people convert due to hunger, but Missionaries are not doing any act of charity. They are just taking the Hindu money, and giving it to ppl fashioning it to be their own... ie., Hindus are converted by Missionaries by using the Hindu money.

Caste problem and the communist approach

Question: What can we do to end the caste discrimination

My Reply:
Caste problem is gets greater attention than it actually does. The reslut is continous reminder of the lower castes that they have been supressed, for hundreds of years by the upper castes. The result again is the lower castes want their revenge; then again the upper castes will. We will be where we started with only the roles changing from time to time.

1. Dont be reactionary. The reactionary type of methods have always done more bad than good. If you can construct, do so, or else stand aside and watch, but do not destroy.

All types of rallies, dharnas etc are made against Brahmins. There is no place where they are not critised, abused, so much so that they in turn have become the victims sometimes of the caste. This only generates hatred, and moves them farther.

2. The effort should be made to mix the hearts of the ppl.

Take two cases for example: Kerala and Bihar. Hundred years back, there was strong caste problem in both places. But both reacted differently to this problem.

In Kerala, with the influence of Narayana guru, the caste problem was addressed with love and spirituality as the basis, and the discrimination there is not there now, as it used to be.

But in Bihar. There it was a fight & hatred, not of love and consideration, and what do we have now- only oncreased problem.

3. Teach everyman his and others divinity. When he understands that it is the same Atman which is the real nature of every being, no higher or lower ideas remain.

4. Let economics take lead over such considerations. Such economic interdependence forces interaction and mutual help.

5. Dont bringdown the ideal of a religious person. We see that many ppl opposed to caste, start doing things like abusing the rituals, Vedas etc. They try to bring down the ideal of Vedika, and create equality- by making everyone a brute.

But this is not the way. Vedic knowledge is the ideal of humanity in India.Brahimin exclusiveness is bad, not brahiminhood.

If the knowledge of Vedas is what makes a Brahimin great, then teach them to everyone. Teach the knowledge of Upanishads to everyone. But do not stop one from learing Vedas.

========================

The following is a post I wrote as a reply to a quetion about caste problem and the discussion included many the communist approach to this problem. The original question got deleted, so I cannot put that. Anyhow, the reply is complete in itself... hope the reader will not be having any problem following.


Dude, did oppression in the name of caste happen in the past? Yes. But why are we still bothered about it. Most ppl are educated Hindus, and nobody cares jack about one being superior/inferior based in birth. Yes, suppression does still happen in some parts of India. I don’t deny that. But what the point in blaming all the Hindus for that. Most urban Hindus, who form most part of even web forums, do not care about any supremacy theories and are doing their best to eradicate the evils of caste system.

But the problem is ppl like you, who do not either have patience, but think the only aim of life can be to keep complaining. What is the need to blame all Brahmins here for being casteist etc, just coz you don’t like them. I have not seen any post by a person in this forum who supports suppression of ppl in the name of caste.

The world is not black OR white. If some Muslims tells you that the true meaning of Jihad in Islam is twisted, some hypocrites are very ready to accept. Even if they have not read any thing, they will tell, “I don’t know, but I am sure they don’t mean it”. But the same guys accuses Ramayana of being a book which advocates caste suppression. If you tell that caste in this regard is not meant as a higher/lower but, just a symbol of the ones’ qualities, you will be named a fundamentalist.

I am not interested into going whether the above cases are true or false. I just wanted to illustrate the hypocrisy of the ppl, yes commies. Why is one who says ‘Jihad does not mean anything bad, but it used in a bad way some ppl’, clarifying about Islam, and why does a person who says Ramayana does not mean to tell kill Shudras, becomes a fundamentalist Brahmin Bastard. If this is not hypocrisy, what is it then?

<<The problem with Brambhins is that, they never tried to feel the feelings of other caste. The Hinduism you people talk about, always will create a hierarchy, where Brambhins will always be in top, by default.>>

Tell me seriously how many ppl have you seen on orkut, who want to maintain their ‘hierarchy’. Seriously man, I am very interested in knowing how you form this opinion. If you can plz post the links of the threads, where ppl said a Shudra is a low-being.

If not, then plz refrain your potings. And looks at the words you have written- Brahmins. Are you not also guilty of generalization? It is ppl like you who make sweeping generalizations and spread hatred. Can you deny that in the whole post you are guilty of generalizations, and accusing all of Brahmins?

<<We, have denied them from education from generation to generation. Our, Hindu religion have thrown them out from the society, before British came…… I really don’t think, u people want to bother about this things >>

come out of the past. It is true that dalits had very bad conditions in the past. But why still bother about. More importantly, when the ppl are trying to end all this suppressions, and evolve collectively as a developed country. They are making efforts, they are trying to change the situation. And if you look at the past and the present, a LOT of change has taken place. It will take time for the whole of society to change, and we need patience, and continue the work calmly. There is no point in keeping on complaining, when ppl themselves are working to change the situation. You may think it is some great think to do. you are free to think as you like, but just coz ppl don’t share your conspiracy theories you cannot name them fundamentalists.

There are two kinds of criticism. One in which the person who criticizes feels sad that he has to criticize, but still does so to point out the mistake for the collective improvement. This type of criticism is positive and helpful for the society. But the other kind of criticism is there where ppl criticize just for the sake of criticism. They have no interest in the matter; they just derive joy in doing so and in calling names. The Muslims trolls and ppl like crabby may be put into this section. This comes of the superiority complex, that islam IS great, that what my commie book says IS correct, and that I alone am a intelligent being here, all others being fools. This type of criticism is just a mental exercise on the part of that person just to show his (or his ideology’s) superiority, and has no positive contributions to the society.

<< Yes, my identity is fake. Because I feel unsafe, talking anything against Hinduism. I felt something is wrong here>>

Internet hatemongering is no new phenomenon. There are Muslim trolls, Hindu trolls. We have to live with that. Why do you think we have the thinking faculties- to decide for ourselves what is true and what is false.

<<How to get rid of the curses we already have in Hindu-religion. How to define God. We are really confused about that. You people never cared>>

Lack of definition of God a curse? We not just don’t, but cannot define god, coz a God defined by something is to make him limited- to put limits on him. If you want you may start a different thread about it, or you may see this old thread.

As per any other curse, two things are very important in my view: Enthusiasm and patience. Its not enough if you have enthusiasm. You will try a day or two, and soon that dies down. You must have patience too to work things out. This patience is very essential to keep the enthusiasm alive. Without patience, enthusiasm will not sustain itself. If you think that changes can be made to the world in one day, then you are surely mistaken.

Every fool can show the defects in the society, but he is a friend of humanity who show the way out. If you can, we will be happy to learn. But don’t blame others that they have not been able to find a complete solution. That is a blame which you too have a share. and ppl should get out the syndrome of perfect solution or no solution. The world is not like you will get 100 or 0. Even if not fully viable, its enough if it helps in a small manner. And stop brooding over weakness. "The remedy for weakness is not brooding over weakness, but thinking of strength".

Celibacy and Brahmacharya

Copy-pasting Omkar's post on this topic:

Celibacy is considered by many to be important in Hinduism, and not having sex is considered to be something that adds to the spirituality of the person.

This could not be farther from the truth.

I am starting a new thread for this topic because the Vegetarianism thread was being hijacked by this topic, and I felt that this issue merits a separate discussion.

So, this couldn't be farther from the truth, I said. There are others that sit on the the other extreme, quoting khajuraho as an example. They should understand that khajuraho is an aberration, and that it's a tourist spot, and not a place for pilgrimage. Khajuraho is simply a temple built by a king who had a fondness for erotica and it shows that sex is not taboo in Hinduism. But please do not harbour the misconception that Hinduism encourages promiscuity.

Celibacy is used as a translation for Brahmacharya fast and loose. This is also incorrect. Why? The word Brahmacharya speaks for itself. It means, action with consciousness of Brahman.

BG 4:24 couldn't make it any clearer. Please refer.

Therefore, while eating, riding a car, having sex, and so also in all actions, when one is conscious that it is the Brahman that is doing these things, that is Brahmacharya. The fundamental concept of Brahmacharya is to get rid of the idea of oneself as the creator and realise that it is Brahman that is the subject, object and result of all actions.

Having this thought process constantly is Brahmacharya. If celibacy was so essential for enlightenment in Hinduism, why would most of the sages that composed the Vedas and Upanishads married men? This is my fundamental argument against the necessity of celibacy.

But then, one cannot say, I will quench the sexual urge and think of the Brahman. This is incorrect. This is what Japanese Buddhists call False Satori, the realisation that one is enlightened.

Just as a crazy person does not know he is crazy, an enlightened person does not know he is enlightened.

This does not mean enlightened people are crazy It is just to say that the experience of enlightenment is not experienced at all(!) and any such experience that one may have (such as the christian rapture) are momentary and will pass. Such highs can be achieved using drugs also.

So what is moksha? Moksha is the realisation that all that is happening around us is just a dream and we are the dreamer. But we can never have this realisation, because otherwise the dream will be broken. This is the philosophical construct that Siddhartha Gautama grappled with before declaring everything to be void. Of course, that is just escapism. Further inquiry is asked for.

So is Celibacy important or not? Yes and no. It is important because initially, suppressing all desires allows one to train the mind to focus. When one is studying for an exam, one suppresses the desire to watch a cricket match on TV, or to go out and play cricket oneself. This suppression helps, provided it is seen through. One trains the mind not to think of cricket. Of course, the desire is strong and the mind keeps wavering off, thinking of what the score may be. But one trains it nevertheless. After a while, this becomes a habit, and one doesn't think of the score at all. One trains the mind to be content to just read the headlines the next days paper to see what the result of the match was.

Once the mind has been trained thus, there is nothing wrong in watching a game of cricket on the television when the circumstances allow for it, and one enjoys watching the game. But the mind is trained to shut the desire to watch the game should something more imperative come up.

The same goes for sex. The urge for sex is such that no matter how much one quenches it, it will still exist. Maybe not for sex with the same person, maybe some other person, but it will exist. So going about quenching this thirst is a bad option. Why? Simply because it is a waste of time, just because it is extremely enjoyable to sit in a bath tub, drinking wine and reading an interesting book, does not mean that it's a good idea to do it all the time.

That is the idea of Brahmacharya. Once one is a Brahmin, there is nothing left to achieve at all, since all actions have oneself as the subject, object and the result. Therefore, the act of sex and the act of watching football on tv become one and the same, an enjoyable act to pass the time that the physical body has on earth.

However, the physical body does have responsibilities, referred to as dharma in the BG, which need to be fulfilled. Therefore, getting food, providing for dependents and ensuring the general well being of itself and those dependent on it have to be performed nevertheless.

The very act of eating food is a punya karma because it fulfills our dharma towards the physical body. The act of sex becomes a punya karma because it fulfills our dharma towards our partner. But it is dharma only when it is seen as such, not when it becomes a pretext for promiscuity. The feeling of performing dharma should be what engages the sex drive, and not the other way around, where dharma is used as an excuse by one's libido to satisfy itself.

I hope I have clarified the position of Hinduism, at least my understanding of it, towards sex and celibacy.

Question on this topic in a related thread:
Suryaa, your and my name have the same meaning...now that we know each other for long you are still a muystery for me...One of the most important thing mentioned in the link is about brahmacharya...Even asaram bapu says in his almost every satsanga that to channel youth power Brahmacharya is of utmost importance. ofcourse no one is opposing marriage but most hindu youth does not understand what is brahmacharya....do u wana start a new thread....


My Reply:
Doesn’t matter, understanding Hinduism is important, not me

Jokes apart, I never give too much importance to things like non-vegetarian food or celibacy coz I believe in parallel working and not in 1,2,3 kind of working.

As Krishna says in the Gita "Even a little of this Yoga will bring great good"

So I don’t prefer to tell this is imp or that is imp. Let the individual take up what is easy for him to start with. We can only work in the line of least resistance. So making a beginning somewhere in some aspect *he* likes is more important than starting where *I* think is imp.

In spiritual life all the things are interconnected and hence working in one area will have its effect on other aspects also. For example, if there is a person who is like a typical western youth having all sorts of habits, but is sincere at heart. Now I think it is better that one tries to direct this as sincerity in say service activities. Let him have all his habits, but let him start somewhere. And other things follow naturally.