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Anyone who is steady in his determination for the advanced stage of spiritual realization and can equally tolerate the onslaughts of distress and happiness is certainly a person eligible for liberation.
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A.C. Prabhupāda (The Bhagavad-gita (Bhagavadgita))
“
The question has often been asked; Is Buddhism a religion or a philosophy? It does not matter what you call it. Buddhism remains what it is whatever label you may put on it. The label is immaterial. Even the label 'Buddhism' which we give to the teachings of the Buddha is of little importance. The name one gives is inessential.... In the same way Truth needs no label: it is neither Buddhist, Christian, Hindu nor Moslem. It is not the monopoly of anybody. Sectarian labels are a hindrance to the independent understanding of Truth, and they produce harmful prejudices in men's minds.
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Walpola Rahula (What the Buddha Taught)
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This Self is never born, nor does It die. It did not spring from anything, nor did anything spring from It. This Ancient One is unborn, eternal, everlasting. It is not slain even though the body is slain.
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The Upanishads
“
I cannot say that I know Brahman fully.
Nor can I say that I know him not....
Nor do I know that I know him not.
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Prabhavananda (The Upanishads)
“
Hindutava's nationalism ignores the rationalist traditions of India, a country in which some of the earliest steps in algebra, geometry, and astronomy were taken, where the decimal system emerged, where early philosophy — secular as well as religious — achieved exceptional sophistication, where people invented games like chess, pioneered sex education, and began the first systematic study of political economy. The Hindu militant chooses instead to present India — explicitly or implicitly — as a country of unquestioning idolaters, delirious fanatics, belligerent devotees, and religious murderers
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Amartya Sen
“
People often ask me, what my religion is. I tell them, I am a Christian to the Christian, a Jew to the Jew, a Muslim to the Muslim, a Hindu to the Hindu, an atheist to the atheist, but the brightest nightmare to the fundamentalist.
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Abhijit Naskar
“
When the highest Chakra opens, you will find yourself sitting on the lotus of nothingness. The entire world will seem like mud upon which the lotus blooms. The mud is neither bad nor good. If you think it’s bad, you are still attached to it; you are still swimming into it. True detachment is the only way to slowly move upward from one Chakra to another.
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Shunya
“
Whether divine or human, it is precisely the imagination that fashions and recognizes the universe as meaningful, abiding, and valuable, that is to say, as real.
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William K. Mahony (The Artful Universe: An Introduction to the Vedic Religious Imagination (S U N Y Series in Hindu Studies))
“
The divine Ground of all existence is a spiritual Absolute, ineffable in terms of discursive thought, but (in certain circumstances) susceptible of being directly experienced and realized by the human being. This Absolute is the God-without-form of Hindu and Christian mystical phraseology. The last end of man, the ultimate reason for human existence, is unitive knowledge of the divine Ground—the knowledge that can come only to those who are prepared to “Die to self” and so make room, as it were, for God.
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Aldous Huxley (The Perennial Philosophy: An Interpretation of the Great Mystics, East and West)
“
Who really knows, and who can swear,
How creation came, when or where!
Even gods came after creation's day,
Who really knows, who can truly say
When and how did creation start?
Did He will it? Or did He not?
Only He, up there, knows, maybe;
Or perhaps, not even He
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Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
“
Hell is a western concept, invented to keep people to a path of righteousness out of fear. There is no concept of hell in Hindu philosophy or mythology.
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Christopher C. Doyle (The Mahabharata Quest: The Alexander Secret)
“
In the Vaisheshika branch of Hindu philosophy, there are nine universal substances or elements: earth, water, air, fire, sky, time, space, soul and mind.
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Akshat Gupta (The Hidden Hindu 2)
“
What is that by knowing which everything in this universe is known?’22 That is the answer that Hindu philosophy seeks to provide.
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Hindol Sengupta (Being Hindu: Old Faith, New World and You)
“
There are trillions of bacteria living in your body. As compared to planet Earth, your body is just a bacteria. As compared to the galaxy. the Earth is just a bacteria.
Only the experiences are real for the soul. The matter and thoughts are just props to create the experience.
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Shunya
“
The hell is not something which is full of trash, because one can adjust and find comfort in trash after some time. The hell is when our little temple of purity gets surrounded by trash.
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Shunya
“
Indeed, some of the problems commonly engaging the attention of philosophical thought appear to be deprived, not only of all importance, but of any meaning as well; a host of problems arise resting solely upon some ambiguity or upon a confusion of points of view, problems that only exist in fact because they are badly expressed, and that normally should not arise at all. In most cases therefore, it would in itself be sufficient to set these problems forth correctly in order to cause them to disappear, were it not that philosophy has an interest in keeping them alive, since it thrives largely upon ambiguities.
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René Guénon (Introduction to the Study of the Hindu Doctrines)
“
The basic recurring theme in Hindu mythology is the creation of the world by the self-sacrifice of God—"sacrifice" in the original sense of "making sacred"—whereby God becomes the world which, in the end, becomes again God. This creative activity of the Divine is called lila, the play of God, and the world is seen as the stage of the divine play. Like most of Hindu mythology, the myth of lila has a strong magical flavour. Brahman is the great magician who transforms himself into the world and then performs this feat with his "magic creative power", which is the original meaning of maya in the Rig Veda. The word maya—one of the most important terms in Indian philosophy—has changed its meaning over the centuries. From the might, or power, of the divine actor and magician, it came to signify the psychological state of anybody under the spell of the magic play. As long as we confuse the myriad forms of the divine lila with reality, without perceiving the unity of Brahman underlying all these forms, we are under the spell of maya. (...) In the Hindu view of nature, then, all forms are relative, fluid and ever-changing maya, conjured up by the great magician of the divine play. The world of maya changes continuously, because the divine lila is a rhythmic, dynamic play. The dynamic force of the play is karma, important concept of Indian thought. Karma means "action". It is the active principle of the play, the total universe in action, where everything is dynamically connected with everything else. In the words of the Gita Karma is the force of creation, wherefrom all things have their life.
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Fritjof Capra (The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism)
“
My brothers and sisters of America, there is not the least shadow of hope that India can ever be Christianised. After two hundred years of vain efforts and of spending millions of dollars with the prestige of the conqueror and backed by British bayonets, Christianity is not supported by the converts themselves. Every bit of Protestant Christianity in India is maintained partly by the money flowing from England and America, and partly by taxes imposed upon the Hindus against their will, which must be paid although the people starve.
The people of India as a whole are saturated with religious and philosophical thought. They think and ponder on spiritual matters from childhood to death. Even the street-sweeper is frequently more profoundly versed in subtle metaphysics and divine wisdom than the missionary sent to convert him.
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Virchand Gandhi (The Monist)
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In Hindu philosophy the three tenses—past, present, future—were said to exist simultaneously in God. God was timeless, but time was personified as the god of death. Descartes, in his Third Meditation, said that God re-created the body at each successive moment. So that time was a form of sustenance.
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Jhumpa Lahiri (The Lowland)
“
Suppose that the universe has a battery. If you take out the battery, universe becomes non existent. But then the battery will exist! Both the battery and the universe can’t be non-existent. When one is in existence, the other is in non-existence. This absolute combination is known by many names: Shiva-Shakti, Shunya-Srishti, Pure Feminine-Pure Masculine.
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Shunya
“
Be a mirror! Reflect everything; keep nothing. No matter what passes in front of the mirror, no image remains. KEEP NOTHING!
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Nancy Freeman Patchen (Wisdom of Hindu Philosophy: Conversations with Swami Chinmayananda)
“
Faith springs from understanding. It is a conviction that grows from understanding.
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Nancy Freeman Patchen (Wisdom of Hindu Philosophy: Conversations with Swami Chinmayananda)
“
Unselfishness is Purity.
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Samarpan (The Hindu Way)
“
If you cannot be a human, instead you prefer to be a Christian, Muslim, Hindu or anything else, then how dare you call yourself a human!
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Abhijit Naskar (Lord is My Sheep: Gospel of Human)
“
HINDU religion is nothing more than my PENIS
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P.S. Jagadeesh Kumar
“
If we wish to understand Indian thought, we must return to its sources, that is, to the great civilization that preceded the arrival of the Aryans, which has continued to the present time and of which the Shaiva religion, the cosmological theory called Sâmkhyä, the practices of Yogä, as well as the bases of what we consider to be the Hindu philosophy, are part.
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Alain Daniélou (While the Gods Play: Shaiva Oracles and Predictions on the Cycles of History and the Destiny of Mankind)
“
The average person wastes his life. He has a great deal of energy but he wastes it. The life of an average person seems at the end utterly meaningless…without significance. When he looks back…what has he done?
MIND
The mind creates routine for its own safety and convenience. Tradition becomes our security. But when the mind is secure it is in decay. We all want to be famous people…and the moment we want to be something…we are no longer free.
Intelligence is the capacity to perceive the essential…the what is. It is only when the mind is free from the old that it meets everything new…and in that there’s joy. To awaken this capacity in oneself and in others is real education.
SOCIETY
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. Nature is busy creating absolutely unique individuals…whereas culture has invented a single mold to which we must conform. A consistent thinker is a thoughtless person because he conforms to a pattern. He repeats phrases and thinks in a groove. What happens to your heart and your mind when you are merely imitative, naturally they wither, do they not?
The great enemy of mankind is superstition and belief which is the same thing. When you separate yourself by belief tradition by nationally it breeds violence. Despots are only the spokesmen for the attitude of domination and craving for power which is in the heart of almost everyone. Until the source is cleared there will be confusion and classes…hate and wars. A man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country to any religion to any political party. He is concerned with the understanding of mankind.
FEAR
You have religion. Yet the constant assertion of belief is an indication of fear. You can only be afraid of what you think you know. One is never afraid of the unknown…one is afraid of the known coming to an end. A man who is not afraid is not aggressive. A man who has no sense of fear of any kind is really a free and peaceful mind.
You want to be loved because you do not love…but the moment you really love, it is finished. You are no longer inquiring whether someone loves you or not.
MEDITATION
The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.
In meditation you will discover the whisperings of your own prejudices…your own noises…the monkey mind. You have to be your own teacher…truth is a pathless land. The beauty of meditation is that you never know where you are…where you are going…what the end is.
Down deep we all understand that it is truth that liberates…not your effort to be free. The idea of ourselves…our real selves…is your escape from the fact of what you really are. Here we are talking of something entirely different….not of self improvement…but the cessation of self.
ADVICE
Take a break with the past and see what happens. Release attachment to outcomes…inside you will feel good no matter what. Eventually you will find that you don’t mind what happens. That is the essence of inner freedom…it is timeless spiritual truth.
If you can really understand the problem the answer will come out of it. The answer is not separate from the problem. Suffer and understand…for all of that is part of life. Understanding and detachment…this is the secret.
DEATH
There is hope in people…not in societies not in systems but only in you and me. The man who lives without conflict…who lives with beauty and love…is not frightened by death…because to love is to die.
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J. Krishnamurti (Think on These Things)
“
What benefit have the Hindus derived from their contact with Christian nations? The idea generally prevalent in this country about the morality and truthfulness of the Hindus evidently has been very low. Such seeds of enmity and hatred have been sown by the missionaries that it would be an almost Herculean task to establish better relations between India and America...
If we examine Greek, Chinese, Persian, or Arabian writings on the Hindus, before foreigners invaded India, we find an impartial description of their national character. Megasthenes, the famous Greek ambassador, praises them for their love of truth and justice, for the absence of slavery, and for the chastity of their women. Arrian, in the second century, Hiouen-thsang, the famous Buddhist pilgrim in the seventh century, Marco Polo in the thirteenth century, have written in highest terms of praise of Hindu morality. The literature and philosophy of Ancient India have excited the admiration of all scholars, except Christian missionaries.
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Virchand Gandhi (The Monist)
“
Black and white come together.
Brown and blue come to gather.
Boys and girls come with love.
Straight and gay come as a dove.
Jewish and Muslim, open your mind.
Christian and Hindu, be very kind.
Sikh and Buddist come with the sun.
All children, let's have some fun.
We are your children; we are the future.
Let us love and trust each other.
Let not the gun, let not the shored,
But let peace and love win this world.
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Debasish Mridha
“
There is a Hindu school of philosophy that says that we are not the actors in our lives, but rather the spectators, and this is illustrated using the metaphor of a dancer. These days, maybe it would be better to say an actor. A spectator sees a dancer or an actor, or, if you prefer, reads a novel, and ends up identifying with one of the characters who is there in front of him. This is what those Hindu thinkers before the fifth century said. And the same thing happens with us. I, for example, was born the same day as Jorge Luis Borges, exactly the same day. I have seen him be ridiculous in some situations, pathetic in others. And, as I have always had him in front of me, I have ended up identifying with him.
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Jorge Luis Borges (Professor Borges: A Course on English Literature)
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Vedanta is the teaching of the Upanishads, a collection of dialogues, stories, and poems, some of which go back to at least 800 B.C. Sophisticated Hindus do not think of God as a special and separate super-person who rules the world from above, like a monarch. Their God is “underneath” rather than “above” everything, and he (or it) plays the world from inside. One might say that if religion is the opium of the people, the Hindus have the inside dope. What is more, no Hindu can realize that he is God in disguise without seeing at the same time that this is true of everyone and everything else. In the Vedanta philosophy, nothing exists except God. There seem to be other things than God, but only because he is dreaming them up and making them his disguises to play hide-and-seek with himself.
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Alan W. Watts (The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are)
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The essence of Hindu philosophy is being and becoming. To know a saint, one has to become a saint. To see God, one has to become God. To know the Truth, one has to become One with the Truth. This is the difference between material and spiritual wisdom. In the material world, the knower and the object of knowledge always remain separate. In the realm of spirit, however, the knower, the object of knowledge, and knowledge itself all merge into one. Oneness is the ground of being of the spirit. It is the ultimate reality of spirit.
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Shuddhaanandaa Brahmachari (The Incredible Life of a Himalayan Yogi: The Times, Teachings and Life of Living Shiva: Baba Lokenath Brahmachari)
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A Christian sits in his or her well and thinks that the whole world is his or her well. The Jew sits in his or her little well and thinks that it is the whole world. A Muslim sits cooped up in his or her tiny well and believes it to be the whole universe. The same goes for a Hindu and all others.
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Abhijit Naskar
“
The ancient rishi Patanjali6 defines yoga as “neutralization of the alternating waves in consciousness.”7 His short and masterly work, Yoga Sutras, forms one of the six systems of Hindu philosophy. In contradistinction to Western philosophies, all six Hindu systems8 embody not only theoretical teachings but practical ones also. After pursuing every conceivable ontological inquiry, the Hindu systems formulate six definite disciplines aimed at the permanent removal of suffering and the attainment of timeless bliss. The later Upanishads uphold the Yoga Sutras, among the six systems, as containing the most efficacious methods for achieving direct perception of truth. Through the practical techniques of yoga, man leaves behind forever the barren realms of speculation and cognizes in experience the veritable Essence. The Yoga system of Patanjali is known as the Eightfold Path.9 The first steps are (1) yama (moral conduct), and (2) niyama (religious observances). Yama is fulfilled by noninjury to others, truthfulness, nonstealing, continence, and noncovetousness. The niyama prescripts are purity of body and mind, contentment in all circumstances, self-discipline, self-study (contemplation), and devotion to God and guru. The next steps are (3) asana (right posture); the spinal column must be held straight, and the body firm in a comfortable position for meditation; (4) pranayama (control of prana, subtle life currents); and (5) pratyahara (withdrawal of the senses from external objects). The last steps are forms of yoga proper: (6) dharana (concentration), holding the mind to one thought; (7) dhyana (meditation); and (8) samadhi (superconscious experience). This Eightfold Path of Yoga leads to the final goal of Kaivalya (Absoluteness), in which the yogi realizes the Truth beyond all intellectual apprehension.
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Paramahansa Yogananda (Autobiography of a Yogi (Self-Realization Fellowship))
“
On 1 August 1939, Savarkar spoke at a public meeting organized at Tilak Smarak Mandir in Poona. In his speech, he talked about the three different schools of thought prevalent in the Congress, led by three different leaders—Gandhi, Subhas Bose and Manabendranath Roy—and how it is different from the school of thought of the Hindu Mahasabha. He said: In today’s Congress, there are three schools of thought . . . Gandhian school of thought has truth and non-violence as its key ideas. But Gandhian non-violence is inimical to Hindutva. Hindu philosophy says violence for violence sake is bad, but violence is permissible to destroy evil and protect the good, and such violence is good conduct. But Gandhian thought makes no such distinction. They believe in non-violence under all conditions. Second school of thought is led by Subhas Bose and the Forward Bloc. His policies and means used are similar to our thought process and we could work together on certain issues, but even they are obsessed with this mirage of Hindu-Muslim unity. The third school of thought is of Manvendranath (sic) Roy and that is not acceptable to us at all. They believe in the policy of active Muslim appeasement. The Hindu Mahasabha has the interests of Hindus in mind always.
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Vikram Sampath (Savarkar: A Contested Legacy, 1924-1966)
“
The hero is the man of self-achieved submission. But submission to what? That precisely is the riddle that today we have to ask ourselves and that it is everywhere the primary virtue and historic deed of the hero to have solved. Only birth can conquer death—the birth, not of the old thing again, but of something new. Within the soul, within the body social, there must be a continuous “recurrence of birth” a rebirth, to nullify the unremitting recurrences of death. For it is by means of our own victories, if we are not regenerated, that the work of Nemesis is wrought: doom breaks from the shell of our very virtue. Peace then is a snare; war is a snare; change is a snare; permanence a snare. When our day is come for the victory of death, death closes in; there is nothing we can do, except be crucified—and resurrected; dismembered totally, and then reborn.
The first step, detachment or withdrawal, consists in a radical transfer of emphasis from the external to the internal world, macro- to microcosm, a retreat from the desperation's of the waste land to the peace of the everlasting realm that is within. But this realm, as we know from psychoanalysis, is precisely the infantile unconscious. It is the realm that we enter in sleep. We carry it within ourselves forever. All the ogres and secret helpers of our nursery are there, all the magic of childhood. And more important, all the life-potentialities that we never managed to bring to adult realization, those other portions of our self, are there; for such golden seeds do not die. If only a portion of that lost totality could be dredged up into the light of day, we should experience a marvelous expansion of our powers, a vivid renewal of life. We should tower in stature. Moreover, if we could dredge up something forgotten not only by ourselves but by our whole generation or our entire civilization, we should indeed become the boon-bringer, the culture hero of the day—a personage of not only local but world historical moment. In a word: the first work of the hero is to retreat from the world scene of secondary effects to those causal zones of the psyche where the difficulties really reside, and there to clarify the difficulties, eradicate them in his own case (i.e., give battle to the nursery demons of his local culture) and break through to the undistorted, direct experience and assimilation of what C. G. Jung has called “the archetypal images.” This is the process known to Hindu and Buddhist philosophy as viveka, “discrimination.
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Joseph Campbell (The Hero With a Thousand Faces)
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A Christian sits in his or her well and thinks that the whole world is his or her well. The Jew sits in his or her little well and thinks that it is the whole world. A Muslim sits cooped up in his or her tiny well and believes it to be the whole universe. The same goes for a Hindu and all others. Also, atheists are no different from all those orthodox believers.
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Abhijit Naskar
“
If we ask a random orthodox religious person, what is the best religion, he or she would proudly claim his or her own religion to be the best. A Christian would say Christianity is the best, a Muslim would say Islam is the best, a Jewish would say Judaism is the best and a Hindu would say Hinduism is the best. It takes a lot of mental exercise to get rid of such biases.
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Abhijit Naskar (Neurons of Jesus: Mind of A Teacher, Spouse & Thinker)
“
So what actually goes on with all this religion business? Does it really matter whether you’re a Gnostic, a Christian, a Muslim, a Shi’ite, a Hindu, a Taoist, a Rosicrucian, a Jew, a Witch or a Jehovah’s Witness? Not in the slightest. (Well, it might matter if you’re a Jehovah’s Witness). Does it matter if you follow the teachings of Confucius, Buddha, Ramakrishna or Mary Baker Eddy? Of course not. Does it matter if your ritual object or talisman is a cup, an amulet, a tabernacle, a horseshoe, holy water, a wishbone, a Sanctus bell, a St. Christopher, a baptismal font, a rabbit’s foot, rosary beads, a broomstick or a seven-branched candlestick? No, it’s just something to focus your mind on. The real power is within you.
Just as long as it doesn’t become a cop-out. Which it so often does. Why? I’ll tell you. Because Rag, Tag & Bobtail are not willing to take responsibility for their own lives. They need someone to tell them what to do and what to believe. But in reality you don’t need anyone. It’s all there inside you. You grant your own absolution. Hey, it’s your life! You certainly have more control over your ultimate destiny than a priest.
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Karl Wiggins (Wrong Planet - Searching for your Tribe)
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The brahminic Hindus treat even the books written by Dalitbahujans as untouchable. Historically, not only the Dalit body but also books written by Dalit and OBC scholars remained untouchable. That was the reason why untouchability has been imposed on Ambedkar’s theoretical writings for a long time in India. Intellectual untouchability was/is more dangerous than physical untouchability.
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Kancha Ilaiah (Why I Am Not a Hindu: A Sudra Critique of Hindutva Philosophy, Culture and Political Economy)
“
The etymological meaning of Veda is sacred knowledge or wisdom. There are four Vedas: Rig, Yajur, Sama, and Atharva. Together they constitute the samhitas that are the textual basis of the Hindu religious system. To these samhitas were attached three other kinds of texts. These are, firstly, the Brahmanas, which is essentially a detailed description of rituals, a kind of manual for the priestly class, the Brahmins. The second are the Aranyakas; aranya means forest, and these ‘forest manuals’ move away from rituals, incantations and magic spells to the larger speculations of spirituality, a kind of compendium of contemplations of those who have renounced the world. The third, leading from the Aranyakas, are the Upanishads, which, for their sheer loftiness of thought are the foundational texts of Hindu philosophy and metaphysics.
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Pavan K. Varma (Adi Shankaracharya: Hinduism's Greatest Thinker)
“
Meanwhile in India, Dayananda Saraswati headed a Hindu revival movement, whose basic principle was that the Vedic scriptures are never wrong. In 1875 he founded the Arya Samaj (Noble Society), dedicated to the spreading of Vedic knowledge – though truth be told, Dayananda often interpreted the Vedas in a surprisingly liberal way, supporting for example equal rights for women long before the idea became popular in the West.
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Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow)
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A true religion has two important limbs: the ritualistic injunctions and the philosophical support. Most of us generally accept the former as religion. But the rituals and formalities are mere superstitions without philosophy; philosophy reinforces the external practices of the formalities and blesses them with a purpose and an aim. Even so, philosophy without any actual practice is madness. Ritual and reason must go hand and hand.
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Nancy Freeman Patchen (Wisdom of Hindu Philosophy: Conversations with Swami Chinmayananda)
“
Christian missions to India imply that India is a land of heathens, and, therefore, stands on the same level with the Andaman or the Fiji Islands. That a country which has been recognised in all ages the world over as the mother of all religions and the cradle of civilisation should be considered as pagan, shows how much ignorance prevails in Christendom.
Since the Parliament of Religions, I have been studying Christian institutions, and I have also studied the way in which the Christian ministers and the missionaries are manufactured in this country, and have learned to pity them. We must not blame them too severely, because their education is too narrow to make them broad-minded. I grant that they are good-hearted, that they are good husbands and often fathers of large families, but generally they are very ignorant, especially of the history of civilisation and of the philosophy of religion of India. Most of them do not even know the history of ancient India.
We know that in this age of competition, centralisation, and monopoly, very many people are forced out of business. The English say, 'The fool of the family goes into the Church'; so that when a youth is unable to make a living, he takes to missionary work, goes to India, and helps to introduce among the Hindus the doctrines of his church, which have long since been exploded by science.
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Virchand Gandhi (The Monist)
“
The Hindu doctrine teaches that a human cycle, to which it gives the name Manvantara, is divided into four periods marking so many stages during which the primordial spirituality becomes gradually more and more obscured; these are the same periods that the ancient traditions of the West called the Golden, Silver, Bronze, and Iron Ages. We are now in the fourth age, the Kali-Yuga or “dark age”, and have been so already, it is said, for more than six thousand years, that is to say since a time far earlier than any known to “classical” history. Since that time, the truths which were formerly within reach of all have become more and more hidden and inaccessible; those who possess them grow fewer and fewer, and although the treasure of “nonhuman” (that is, supra-human) wisdom that was prior to all the ages can never be lost, it nevertheless becomes enveloped in more and more impenetrable veils, which hide it from men’s sight and make it extremely difficult to discover. This is why we find everywhere, under various symbols, the same theme of something that has been lost—at least to all appearances and as far as the outer world is concerned—and that those who aspire to true knowledge must rediscover; but it is also said that what is thus hidden will become visible again at the end of the cycle, which, because of the continuity binding all things together, will coincide with the beginning of a new cycle. (The Dark Age, p. 3)
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René Guénon (The Essential René Guénon: Metaphysical Principles, Traditional Doctrines, and the Crisis of Modernity (The Perennial Philosophy Series))
“
Valkan life was one of violence, but it had not always been so. In their worship of the flesh of the earth, the hair of the forest, the breath of the wind and the bones of rocks, they had long abandoned their worship of wonder, of knowledge. The Valkas had been holders of arcane secrets, passed on from one generation to the next through word of mouth; knowledge that had helped them tame nature. Now, they just lived with the answer their ancestors had unravelled, having entirely forgotten their questions.
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Gourav Mohanty (Sons of Darkness (The Raag of Rta, #1))
“
We in the West regard the universe as a creation of God; like an invention or a product. After he created the universe, God set himself to oversee it and manage it. We see God as our boss. He created the universe, he is present in it, he manages every part of it, but he is still separate from it. It's like he installed video cameras all over the universe, so he can see everything that happens, and he can cause this or that to happen, but he is not a part of what happens. The Eastern view is very different. To the Hindu, for example, God didn't create the universe, but God became the universe. Then he forgot that he became the universe. Why would God do this? Basically, for entertainment. You create a universe, and that in itself is very exciting. But then what? Should you sit back and watch this universe of yours having all the fun? No, you should have all the fun yourself. To accomplish this, God transformed into the whole universe. God is the Universe, and everything in it. But the universe doesn't know that because that would ruin the suspense. The universe is God's great drama, and God is the stage, the actors, and the audience all at once. The title of this epic drama is "The Great Unknown Outcome." Throw in potent elements like passion, love, hate, good, evil, free will; and who knows what will happen? No one knows, and that is what keeps the universe interesting. But everyone will have a good time. And there is never really any danger, because everyone is really God, and God is really just playing around.
”
”
Warren Sharpe (Philosophy For The Serious Heretic: The Limitations of Belief and the Derivation of Natural Moral Principles)
“
Our senses are imperfect. We are very proud of our eyes.Often, someone will challenge, "Can you show me God?"
But do you have the eyes to see God? You will never see if you haven' the eyes. If immediately the room becomes dark, you cannot even see your hands. So what power do you have to see? We cannot, therefore, expect knowledge (Vedas) with these imperfect senses.
With all these deficiencies, in conditioned life, we cannot give perfect knowledge to anyone. Nor are we ourselves perfect.
Therefore we accept the Vedas as they are.
”
”
A.C.Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (Sri Isopanisad)
“
God is a man.
God is a woman.
God is a child.
God is a grownup.
God is a person.
God is a father.
God is a mother.
God is a brother.
God is a sister.
God is a parent.
God is Christian.
God is Muslim.
God is Buddhist.
God is Hindu.
God is love.
God is black.
God is white.
God is brown.
God is red.
God is Spirit.
God is light.
God is movement.
God is energy.
God is nature.
God is power.
God is thoughts.
God is words.
God is expressions.
God is experiences.
God is reality.
God is the sky.
God is the stars.
God is the planets.
God is the world.
God is the universe.
”
”
Matshona Dhliwayo
“
Today Hindu revivalists, pious Muslims, Japanese nationalists and Chinese communists may declare their adherence to very different values and goals, but they have all come to believe that economic growth is the key to realising their disparate goals. Thus in 2014 the devout Hindu Narendra Modi was elected prime minister of India thanks largely to his success in boosting economic growth in his home state of Gujarat, and to the widely held view that only he could reinvigorate the sluggish national economy. Analogous views have kept the Islamist Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in power in Turkey since 2003. The name of his party – the Justice and Development Party – highlights its commitment to economic development, and the Erdoğan government has indeed managed to maintain impressive growth rates for more than a decade.
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow)
“
Well,' I answered, 'when a Westerner discusses, say, Hindu-ism or Buddhism, he is always conscious of the fundamental differences between these ideologies and his own. He may admire this or that of their ideas, but would naturally never consider the possibility of substituting them for his own. Because he a priori admits this impossibility, he is able to contemplate such really alien cultures with equanimity and often “with sympathetic appreciation. But when it comes to Islam - which is by no means as alien to Western values as Hindu or Buddhist philosophy this Western equanimity is almost invariably disturbed by an emotional bias. Is it perhaps, I sometimes wonder, because the values of Islam are close enough to those of the West to constitute a potential challenge to many Western concepts of spiritual and social life?
”
”
Muhammad Asad (The Road to Mecca)
“
In fact, Hinduism�s pervading influence seems to go much earlier than Christianity. American mathematician, A. Seindenberg, has for example shown that the Sulbasutras, the ancient Vedic science of mathematics, constitute the source of mathematics in the Antic world, from Babylon to Greece : � the arithmetic equations of the Sulbasutras he writes, were used in the observation of the triangle by the Babylonians, as well as in the edification of Egyptian pyramids, in particular the funeral altar in form of pyramid known in the vedic world as smasana-cit (Seindenberg 1978: 329). In astronomy too, the "Indus" (from the valley of the Indus) have left a universal legacy, determining for instance the dates of solstices, as noted by 18th century French astronomer Jean-Sylvain Bailly : � the movement of stars which was calculated by Hindus 4500 years ago, does not differ even by a minute from the tables which we are using today". And he concludes: "the Hindu systems of astronomy are much more ancient than those of the Egyptians - even the Jews derived from the Hindus their knowledge �. There is also no doubt that the Greeks heavily borrowed from the "Indus". Danielou notes that the Greek cult of Dionysos, which later became Bacchus with the Romans, is a branch of Shivaism : � Greeks spoke of India as the sacred territory of Dionysos and even historians of Alexander the Great identified the Indian Shiva with Dionysos and mention the dates and legends of the Puranas �. French philosopher and Le Monde journalist Jean-Paul Droit, recently wrote in his book "The Forgetfulness of India" that � the Greeks loved so much Indian philosophy, that Demetrios Galianos had even translated the Bhagavad Gita �.
”
”
François Gautier (A Western journalist on India: The ferengi's columns)
“
If to a person religion means reading books and obeying every single word from it without the slightest bit of reasoning, then such perception would only bring destruction upon the person and the world. Also there are people who use the words from those books to justify their own filthy actions. Let’s take a conservative Muslim, for example. Say, the conservative Muslim male Homo sapiens (I won’t call such creature a human, regardless of the religion, since his action here shows no sign of humanity) is found to be beating his wife. Now, if someone says to him “this is wrong”, he would naturally reply, “this is a divine thing to do, my book says so”. Now, if a Christian says “my book is older, so you should stop obeying your book and start obeying mine”, there will come the Buddhist, and say, “my book is much older still, obey mine”. Then will come the Jew, and say, “my book is even older, so just follow mine”. And in the end will come the Hindu and say “my books are the oldest of all, obey them”. Therefore referring to books will only make a mess of the human race and tear the species into pieces.
”
”
Abhijit Naskar (In Search of Divinity: Journey to The Kingdom of Conscience (Neurotheology Series))
“
Varanasi is the holiest city in Hinduism in India, which is a very unique city in india. The land of Varanasi (Kashi) has been the ultimate pilgrimage spot for Hindus for ages. Often referred to as Benares, Varanasi is the oldest living city in the world. Ganges in Varanasi is believed to have the power to wash away the sins of mortals. Ganges is said to have its origins in the tresses of Lord Shiva and in Varanasi, it expands to the mighty river that we know of. The city is a center of learning and civilization for over 3000 years. With Sarnath, the place where Buddha preached his first sermon after enlightenment, just 10 km away, Varanasi has been a symbol of Hindu renaissance. Knowledge, philosophy, culture, devotion to Gods, Indian arts and crafts have all flourished here for centuries. The holy city has many other temples also. The Tulsi Manas mandir is a modern marble temple. The walls of the temple are engraved with verses and scenes from Ramcharitmanas, hindi version of Ramayana, written by Tulsidas ji who lived here. Varanasi has produced numerous famous scholars and intellectuals, who have left their mark in respective fields of activity. Varanasi is home to numerous universities, college, schools, Madarsas and Pathshalas and the Guru Shishya tradition still continue in many institutions. The literary tradition of languages, dialects, newspapers, magazines and libraries continue to even this day. In varanasi one must have to do Boat Ride.
”
”
rubyholidays
“
Les vérités métaphysiques ne peuvent être conçues que par une faculté qui n’est plus de l’ordre individuel, et que le caractère immédiat de son opération permet d’appeler intuitive, mais, bien entendu, à la condition d’ajouter qu’elle n’a absolument rien de commun avec ce que certains philosophes contemporains appellent intuition, faculté purement sensitive et vitale qui est proprement au-dessous de la raison, et non plus au-dessus d’elle. Il faut donc, pour plus de précision, dire que la faculté dont nous parlons ici est l’intuition intellectuelle, dont la philosophie moderne a nié l’existence parce qu’elle ne la comprenait pas, à moins qu’elle n’ait préféré l’ignorer purement et simplement ; on peut encore la désigner comme l’intellect pur, suivant en cela l’exemple d’Aristote et de ses continuateurs scolastiques, pour qui l’intellect est en effet ce qui possède immédiatement la connaissance des principes. Aristote déclare expressément [Derniers Analytiques, livre II] que « l’intellect est plus vrai que la science », c’est-à-dire en somme que la raison qui construit la science, mais que « rien n’est plus vrai que l’intellect », car il est nécessairement infaillible par là même que son opération est immédiate, et, n’étant point réellement distinct de son objet, il ne fait qu’un avec la vérité même. Tel est le fondement essentiel de la certitude métaphysique ; et l’on voit par là que l’erreur ne peut s’introduire qu’avec l’usage de la raison, c’est-à-dire dans la formulation des vérités conçues par l’intellect, et cela parce que la raison est évidemment faillible par suite de son caractère discursif et médiat.
”
”
René Guénon (Introduction to the Study of the Hindu Doctrines)
“
La conséquence immédiate de ceci, c’est que connaître et être ne sont au fond qu’une seule et même chose ; ce sont, si l’on veut, deux aspects inséparables d’une réalité unique, aspects qui ne sauraient même plus être distingués vraiment là où tout est « sans dualité ». Cela suffit à rendre complètement vaines toutes les « théories de la connaissance » à prétentions pseudo-métaphysiques qui tiennent une si grande place dans la philosophie occidentale moderne, et qui tendent même parfois, comme chez Kant par exemple, à absorber tout le reste, ou tout au moins à se le subordonner ; la seule raison d’être de ce genre de théories est dans une attitude commune à presque tous les philosophes modernes, et d’ailleurs issue du dualisme cartésien, attitude qui consiste à opposer artificiellement le connaître à l’être, ce qui est la négation de toute métaphysique vraie. Cette philosophie en arrive ainsi à vouloir substituer la « théorie de la connaissance » à la connaissance elle-même, et c’est là, de sa part, un véritable aveu d’impuissance ; rien n’est plus caractéristique à cet égard que cette déclaration de Kant : « La plus grande et peut-être la seule utilité de toute philosophie de la raison pure est, après tout, exclusivement négative, puisqu’elle est, non un instrument pour étendre la connaissance, mais une discipline pour la limiter »1. De telles paroles ne reviennent-elles pas tout simplement à dire que l’unique prétention des philosophes doit être d’imposer à tous les bornes étroites de leur propre entendement ? C’est là, du reste, l’inévitable résultat de l’esprit de système, qui est, nous le répétons, antimétaphysique au plus haut point.
”
”
René Guénon (Introduction to the Study of the Hindu Doctrines)
“
a Chinese poem says: Entering the forest, he does not disturb a blade of grass; Entering the water, he does not cause a ripple. For the image represents a number of qualities which are, in fact, aspects of the same thing. It represents the sage’s freedom and detachment of mind, a skylike consciousness in which experience moves without leaving any stain. As another poem says: The bamboo shadows sweep the stairs, But stir no dust. Yet, paradoxically, this detachment from is also a harmony with, for the man who goes into the forest without disturbing a blade of grass is a man in no conflict with nature. Like the Native American scouts, he walks without a single twig cracking beneath his feet. Like the Japanese architects, he builds a house which seems to be a part of its natural surroundings. The image also represents the fact that the way of the sage cannot be traced and followed, since no authentic wisdom can be imitated. Each man must find it for himself, because there is really no way of putting it into words, of reaching it by any specific methods or directions. But there is actually the most intimate connection between these two apparently separate uses of the metaphor—the way of the sage, on the one hand, and the impermanence of life, on the other. And the connection reveals the one deepest and most central principle of those Asian philosophies which so puzzle the Western mind by identifying the highest wisdom with what, to us, seems the doctrine of abject despair. Indeed, the word despair in a particular sense is the proper translation of the Hindu–Buddhist term nirvana—to “de-spirate,” to breathe out, to give up the ghost. We cannot understand how the Asians manage to equate this despair with ultimate bliss—unless, as we are prone to suppose, they are after all a depraved and spineless people, long accustomed to fatalism and resignation.
”
”
Alan W. Watts (Become What You Are)
“
On a break from the tour, I went south to Bali, a place the choreographer Toni Basil, whom Eno and I had met during the Bush Of Ghosts sessions, had recommended as being transporting and all about performance. I rented a small motorcycle and headed up into the hills, away from the beach resort. I soon discovered that if one saw offerings of flowers and fruit being brought to a village temple compound in the afternoon, one could be pretty certain that some sort of ritual performance would follow there at night.
Sure enough, night after night I would catch dances accompanied by gamelan orchestras and shadow-puppet excerpts from the Hindu Ramayana--epic and sometimes ritual performances that blended religious and theatrical elements. (A gamelan is a small orchestra made up mainly of tuned metallic gongs and xylophone-like instruments--the interplay between the parts is beautiful and intricate.) In these latter events some participants would often fall into a trance, but even in trance there were prescribed procedures. It wasn't all thrashing chaos, as a Westerner might expect, but a deeper kind of dance.
As In Japanese theater, the performers often wore masks and extreme makeup; their movements, too, were stylized and "unnatural." It began to sink in that this kind of "presentational" theater has more in common with certain kinds of pop-music performance that traditional Western theater did.
I was struck by other peripheral aspects of these performances. The audiences, mostly local villagers of all ages, weren't paying attention half the time. People would wander in and out, go get a snack from a cart or leave to smoke a bidi cigarette, and then return to watch some more. This was more like the behavior of audiences in music clubs than in Western theaters, where they were expected to sit quietly and only leave or converse once the show was over.
The Balinese "shows" were completely integrated into people's daily lives, or so it seemed to me. There was no attempt to formally separate the ritual and the show from the audience. Everything seemed to flow into everything else. The food, the music, and the dance were all just another part of daily activity. I remembered a story about John Cage, who, when in Japan, asked someone what their religion was. The reply was that they didn't have a strict religion--they danced. Japanese do, of course, have Buddhist and Shinto rituals for weddings, funerals, and marriages, but a weekly thing like going to church or temple doesn't exist. The "religion" is so integrated into the culture that it appears in daily gestures and routines, unsegregated for ordinary life. I was beginning to see that theatricality wasn't necessarily a bad thing. It was part of life in much of the world, and not necessarily phony either.
”
”
David Byrne (How Music Works)
“
The purpose of religion was to help humans lead a peaceful life, not to take away life. God/Allah/Ishvar or Hindu/Muslim/Christian are just words - words created by different human minds. Instead of blindly following the outdated ideologies, use your own mind to realize the truth that you are not just a label. You are a living entity - the very manifestation of the energy you call God. Energy has no form or gender, but different languages have created different images, thus leading to discrimination and conflict to an extent that people can kill on name of religion. If a religion causes one to take innocent life, then we don't need a religion. we just need human beings on earth.
”
”
Rashmit Kalra
“
Hinduism perhaps is always better lived first, and then understood; like any path of wisdom and spirit. Hinduism is often described as a way of life rather than a religion, perhaps, for that reason. We do not begin with a theory or doctrine that we then try to bend the world to conform to. We are, one might say, ‘spiritual anarchists’. We are ever evolving, ever free. Our constraints on occasion have been responses to history and circumstances rather than our own effort to impose our will onto others; in our philosophy, we have no Others, no reviled category for non-believers. We can be atheists, and Hindu. We can be monotheists and polytheists. But in all our freedom, we do, still, have a sense of a center of gravity; and that is the sense of You, Alone, around which we have created all our philosophy, culture, art, science, and indeed civilization too.
”
”
Vamsee Juluri (Rearming Hinduism: Nature, Hinduphobia, and the Return of Indian Intelligence)
“
Ghar wapsi, conversion tools of politicians for political purposes’ Lalmani Verma | 318 words Eminent educationists on Saturday concluded that issues like “ghar wapsi” and “religious conversion or reconversion” are “tools beings used by politicians to gain political mileage”. At a seminar organised by Centre for Advanced Studies of Allahabad University, Department of Philosophy, professors from several state varsities unanimously spoke against such programmes, saying that religious conversion was a rare practice that could not be performed by inducing fear or allurement. Among the attendees were Professors Lalji Bajwa, Shabnam Hameed, Aziz-ur-rehman Siddiqui, M Massey, S P Pandey and Kripa Shankar. Prof Massey is the principal of Christian College in Allahabad while Prof Pandey and Prof Kripa Shankar are with Banaras Hindu University.
”
”
Anonymous
“
But how shall an Occidental mind ever understand the Orient? Eight
years of study and travel have only made this, too, more evident that not
even a lifetime of devoted scholarship would suffice to initiate a Western
student into the subtle character and secret lore of the East. Every chap-
ter, every paragraph in this book will offend or amuse some patriotic or
esoteric soul: the orthodox Jew will need all his ancient patience to forgive
the pages on Yahveh; the metaphysical Hindu will mourn this superficial
scratching of Indian philosophy; and the Chinese or Japanese sage will
smile indulgently at these brief and inadequate selections from the wealth
of Far Eastern literature and thought. Some of the errors in the chapter on
Judea have been corrected by Professor Harry Wolf son of Harvard;
”
”
Will Durant
“
the ritualistic injunctions and the philosophical support. Most of us generally accept the former as religion. But the rituals and formalities are mere superstitions without philosophy; philosophy reinforces the external practices of the formalities and blesses them with a purpose and an aim. Even so, philosophy without any actual practice is madness. Ritual and reason must go hand and hand.
”
”
Nancy Freeman Patchen (Wisdom of Hindu Philosophy: Conversations with Swami Chinmayananda)
“
BEING A HINDU is a rational and fascinating involvement in spiritual knowledge and in its practices offering comprehensive choices. It is also an engagement in philosophies for analytic stimulus to debate life beyond religion.
”
”
Promod Puri
“
In a medical context, such an etiology can mean that some Hindus would welcome suffering rather than try to alleviate it. Palliative care, for example, may not be desirable if the Hindu believes that her suffering is the expression and manifestation of pāpa (demeritorious) karma. A Hindu may believe that relieving suffering may merely delay the manifestation of pāpa karma. The relief, then, would only be temporary and may even incur more pāpa and prolong or intensify the inescapable.
”
”
Massimo Pigliucci (How to Live a Good Life: Choosing the Right Philosophy of Life for You)
“
In this connection, unlike their Christian counterparts, Hindus are not disturbed with anavasthā (infinite regresses). The necessity to posit a “first cause” that had no previous cause, as the Christian philosopher Thomas Aquinas suggested, does not appear on the Hindu radar. So there are some metaphysical questions that are neither asked nor answered by Hindus.
”
”
Massimo Pigliucci (How to Live a Good Life: Choosing the Right Philosophy of Life for You)
“
Dalitbahujan structures, though they encompass a far larger number of people, indeed the whole working mass of India, is treated by brahminical literary, political and legal texts as nonexistent. As a result, even historians and social scientists from other parts of the world constructed Indian culture and history either in conformity with brahminical theocracy or critiqued it in its own terms without comparing it with the secular and democratic social systems of the Dalitbahujans. If only that had been done, every observer (if not from India, at least from abroad) could have realized that India has always been divided into two cultures and two civilizations: the Dalitbahujan and the brahminical. But this fact has been systematically glossed over.
”
”
Kancha Ilaiah (Why I Am Not a Hindu: A Sudra Critique of Hindutva Philosophy, Culture and Political Economy)
“
Just as they are shouting from their rooftops (and they have very big houses) ‘Hinduize India’, we must shout from our toddy palms, from the fields, from treetops and from Dalitbahujan waadas, ‘Dalitize India’. We must shout ‘we hate Hinduism, we hate Brahminism, we love our culture and more than anything, we love ourselves’. It is through loving ourselves and taking pride in our culture that we can live a better life the future.
”
”
Kancha Ilaiah (Why I Am Not a Hindu: A Sudra Critique of Hindutva Philosophy, Culture and Political Economy)
“
For those who have been denied the right to write a text, writing a text of their own history and that of the Other is also a process of their socio-political movement. Though the movement of writing has its own limitations, it breaks the shackles of those who were denied writing. Writing becomes a weapon of the weak. In a casteist society, the brahminic forces who prevented this writing by the Dalitbahujans had made the physical struggles of millions of Dalitbahujans invisible. When a historical struggle becomes invisible, it does not kindle the fire of liberation. The process of writing in the face of bitter opposition is a torturous course. Yet this process has to go on without end.
”
”
Kancha Ilaiah (Why I Am Not a Hindu: A Sudra Critique of Hindutva Philosophy, Culture and Political Economy)
“
One, Hinduism has never been a humane philosophy. It is the most brutal religious school that the history of religions has witnessed. The Dalitbahujan castes of India are the living evidence of its brutality. Second, even if Hinduization expresses a desire to humanize itself in future, there is no scope for this to happen, since the history of religion itself is coming to an end.
”
”
Kancha Ilaiah (Why I Am Not a Hindu: A Sudra Critique of Hindutva Philosophy, Culture and Political Economy)
“
The questions that I am concerned with in this book are about the very survival of Indian society. How Hinduism failed in constructing the dignity of labour; how it repeatedly attacked the productive values and energies of Dalitbahujan masses; and thereby how it attacked the productive culture itself. How it constructed violence as its social and spiritual essence.
”
”
Kancha Ilaiah (Why I Am Not a Hindu: A Sudra Critique of Hindutva Philosophy, Culture and Political Economy)
“
The concept ‘Brahmin’ in my diction does not mean knowledge. It means consumption of the socio-economic resources of the nation without investing any amount of labour power in it. It means consumption and destruction of national resources without any understanding and effort for rebuilding such resources. The concept ‘Sudra’ does not mean a particular people who are stupid with an un-cultured existence. It means the construction of the knowledge of production, of innovation of agrarian and artisan technology. The concept ‘Chandala’ does not mean unworthy of being a human being and leading an impure life in a spiritual sense. It means making the villages, the towns and the nation pollution free. The Chandalas are the builders of a culture that kept the living environment clean. It implies the transforming of skin into leather, into commodities. The notion ‘Brahmin’ in essence, on the other hand, represents unclean ugliness. The concept ‘Dalitbahujan’ now in essence means constructing the science of leather technology, building up the scientific use of manure, constructing the tools of production which not only improved our production but also kept our environment green and clean. Brahminism is the opposite of all this. It is the other name for consumption of natural resources without regenerating them. While Dalitism is positive, Brahminism is negative. India as a nation, thus, needs to undergo a revolution of reformulating knowledge and language.
”
”
Kancha Ilaiah (Why I Am Not a Hindu: A Sudra Critique of Hindutva Philosophy, Culture and Political Economy)
Kancha Ilaiah (Why I Am Not a Hindu: A Sudra Critique of Hindutva Philosophy, Culture and Political Economy)
“
If the Brahmins, the Baniyas, the Kshatriyas and the neo-Kshatriyas of this country want unity among diversity, they should join us and look to Dalitization, not Hinduization.
”
”
Kancha Ilaiah (Why I Am Not a Hindu: A Sudra Critique of Hindutva Philosophy, Culture and Political Economy)
“
Sonnet of A Religious Person
I spent years as a Christian,
I didn't find God.
I spent years as a Muslim,
I didn't find God.
I spent years as Hindu and Sikh,
Still there was no inkling.
I spent years as Buddhist and Atheist,
Still I understood nothing.
I did it all, prayers, rituals, meditation,
None of it brought me serenity.
For serenity has been all along,
At the feet of the ailing humanity.
I shelved all scriptures and stood as human.
Kindness alone is the sign of a religious person.
”
”
Abhijit Naskar (Earthquakin' Egalitarian: I Die Everyday So Your Children Can Live)
“
The latter layer of Atharva Veda Text includes three primary Upanishadas influential to various schools of Hindu philosophy. These include the Mundaka Upanishada, the Mandukya Upanishada and the Prashna Upanishada.
”
”
Ram Nivas Kumar (MANUSMRITI THE GREATEST KNOWLEDGE: Code Of Social Conduct)
“
In their original historical context, these verses were astonishing. In the ancient world, virtually all the major “isms”—Platonism, neo-Platonism, Gnosticism, Manichaeism, Hindu pantheism—taught a low view of the material world. In these philosophies, salvation was conceived as a complete break between matter and spirit, a flight from the physical world. To make that break, adherents adopted a regimen of asceticism to suppress bodily urges and desires.
”
”
Nancy R. Pearcey (Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality)
“
Acceptance – the beautiful way out
*Acceptance is a wonderful tool to relieve yourself of the pull and push between the past and future.
*With acceptance you fall into the present straightaway.
*The first thing is to accept all the happenings of the outer world and all the happenings of the inner world.
*Whatever problems you have in the outer world and whatever problems you have in the inner world, just accept them in their entirety.
*Summarize all that you experience as problems and accept them in totality.
*Accept all guilt, all mistakes and all failures.
*Even if you cannot accept, accept that you cannot accept. You will then relax and guilt will drop from your mind.
*Just try this small experiment: Just relax for three days with complete. acceptance. If you relax for three days without the pull and push in the inner and outer worlds, are you going to lose all your wealth? Surely not! So there is no problem. In three days you are not going to lose anything. Why don’t you give it a try? *Just for three days, sincerely, utterly, accept everything in your life one hundred percent!
*If you are not able to accept one hundred percent then accept that you are not able to accept one hundred percent.
*Even the acceptance of ‘I am not able to accept myself in the inner world and outer world’ will make you drop from the pull and push between the past and future.
*The moment you understand, ‘I am unable to free myself from the pull and push of desires and fears, I am not able to accept my reality,’ that very understanding will start doing its job.
*If you can fall into the present moment, relaxing from the outer world and inner world things, in three days you will have a glimpse:
*What is life? What does it mean to live in the present moment? If this happens to you, you will experience such ecstasy, such a different space, such a different life that you have never
experienced before.
*You have lived based on your philosophy for maybe the last thirty years. Just for three days, don’t try to alter anybody in the outer world.
*You will see that when you experiment with such great techniques, they work miracles in your being.
*They start a great alchemy process in your being.
*If you are not able to be sincere, accept that you are not able to be sincere. Even that sincerity is enough. You will start seeing a different space in you.
”
”
The SPH JGM HDH Nithyananda Paramashivam, Reviver of KAILASA - the Ancient Enlightened Hindu Nation
“
The place for various debates, research, development, is the unique contribution and unique component belongs to only Hinduism, Hindu tradition. No religion allows debate other than Hinduism. No religion allows research and development other than Hinduism. Hinduism is a religion encourages logic. In this religion, with this basic infrastructure, intellectual infrastructure, you cannot make slaves and build large buildings. That is why I am wondering what kind of charismatic enlightened beings would have been there in this infrastructure, able to inspire and convince millions of people and concentrate them towards one-pointed action. I am very sure, at least they had ten human-beings to the level of the charisma of incarnations, at least ten human-beings who were radiating, who were charismatic to the level of incarnations! Otherwise, see we are not primitive religions where you just infuse certain faith and certain fear and greed, and they just do what you want. No! It is a religion of debate. And, you need to know, every day, in all the Akhadas, morning collectively practising Yoga, and night sitting and collectively having ‘khandana-mandana’ (refuting or destroying an opponent’s philosophy, and embellishing one’s own philosophy), ‘vaadha prathivaadha’ (philosophical arguments and counter-arguments), is a lifestyle!
”
”
Paramahamsa Nithyananda
“
Our highest aim is therefore to become aware of the unity and mutual interrelation of all things, to transcend the notion of an isolated individual self and to identify ourselves with the divine reality. For the Hindu or Buddhist, this realization, which is known as enlightenment, is much more than a mere intellectual act. It is a religious experience involving a total change in the state of consciousness. Eastern philosophy can therefore never be separated from religion.
”
”
Fritjof Capra (Patterns of Connection: Essential Essays from Five Decades)
“
As Hindu thought and metaphysical experiences evolved even further (as I said, the Hindu lineage is very long), the two previous focuses of exploration—nature and the individual—were combined. You could find the Eternal by either means, they discovered, and they combined the two in the form of a summary of all previous findings. This summary was called the Bhagavad Gita.
”
”
Matthew Barnes (The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 101: a modern, practical guide, plain and simple. (The Ancient Hindu Enlightenment Series Book 1))
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According to Indian tradition, fundamental truth cannot be attained through daily, busy life, but only by the concentrated mind. The concentration of mind is variously called yoga, samādhi, or dhyāna. Yoga (etymologically the same as the English yoke) means "attaching the mind to one object," "concentrating the mind on one thing." Samādhi means "putting together (the mind which always tends to disperse)." The Hindu yoga school probably started before the common era, but its most important scripture, the Yoga-sūtra, was composed by Patañjali around the fifth century C.E. Many new yogic sects subsequently developed. One of them, Haṭhayoga (haṭha, "force, pertinacity") which developed after the twelfth century C.E., specializes in bodily training, in the belief that the body's function and the spirit's function are inseparable.
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Akira Sadakata (Buddhist Cosmology: Philosophy and Origins)
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Sanatana Dharma is advaita sanskriti,
that is, a culture of nonsectarianism,
Hindutva means mindless saffronization.
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Abhijit Naskar (Tum Dunya Tek Millet: Greatest Country on Earth is Earth)
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Dear love, I'm Hindu by birth, I'm Christian by heart, I'm Muslim by body and you're my religion.
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P.S. Jagadeesh Kumar
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The idea of transmigration hardly appears in the Hindu Ṛg Veda (12th–8th century B.C.E.), though by the time the new religious movements arose in the sixth to fifth centuries B.C.E., most of the important ones included a philosophy of transmigration, outstanding examples being Buddhism, Jainism, and the religion of the Ājīvikas. We also find the idea in Brahmanism in the new literature called the Upaniṣads.
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Akira Sadakata (Buddhist Cosmology: Philosophy and Origins)
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In this task of freeing my mind of superstitions,
Vivekananda was of great help to me. The religion that he preached——including his conception of Yogawas based on a rational philosophy, on the Vedanta, and his conception of Vedanta was not antagonistic to, but was based on, scientific principles
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Subhas Chandra Bose (An Indian Pilgrim (unedited))
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The obsessive passion of Pururava for Urvashi that led to his downfall would become manifest generations later in Shantanu, not once but twice, first in his love for Ganga and then his love for Satyavati, with the same disastrous consequences. Because human memory is short, and history always repeats itself.
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Devdutt Pattanaik (Jaya)
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Where Christian, Muslim, Sikh 'n Jew,
sit and share a cup of stew,
Where Buddhist, Atheist, Jain, Hindu,
live and laugh as one life crew,
There beyond, where sentience lets no storm to brew,
Out of the fossil, into the fervor, I shall meet you.
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Abhijit Naskar (Visvavictor: Kanima Akiyor Kainat)
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Shankara’s views were gradually accepted, possibly because he presented brahman both as the cosmic principle and as a personal god (isvara), which added emphasis to the teaching of the later Upanisads and to that of Patañjali. Advaita Vedanta thus reinforced the teaching of the Bhagavadgitä and the concept of liberation (mukti) by grace (prasäda), faith (sraddha), and devotion (bhakti). It succeeded in reviving the ancient belief in the affinity of mankind with the world of nature. From being merely one of the darsanas, the Vedanta became an element that permeated all Hindu cults and dissolved sectarian distinctions. It gave to the Supreme Essence (paramätman), Vishnu and Shiva the common, all-inclusive designation, ‘Isvara’.
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Margaret Stutley (Dictionary of Hinduism: Its Mythology, Folklore and Development 1500 BC - AD 1500)