| Fw: REBIRTH: Documented Modern Scientific Evidence of Rebirth: Reinc
Murali posts: "....There were references to reincarnation in the old and New Testaments. In A. D. 325 the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great, along with his mother, Helena deleted references to reincarnation contained in the Bible. The second council of Constantinople, meeting in Ad. 553, confirmed this action and declared the concept of reincarnation a heresy. Apparently, they thought this concept would weaken the growing power of the Church.... Rajiv comment: Digestors like Carl Gregg love precisely this kind of claim. Everything they digest from dharma is said to have be already in early Christianity. It was lost due to politics over centuries. So now we are merely claiming back what was ours to begin with. Unfortunately, many people think they are doing themselves a favor by advocating this - also Jesus lived in India, Parmahansa Yogananda follower's claim that he equated Brahman = Christ.... The point is that these ideas were marginalized in Christianity for a reason - their incompatibility with Nicene Creed. You should understand why my target is this Creed per se. You cannot allow them to selectively import certain dharma ideas without working out the implications which topple their whole edifice of exclusivity. My point here holds for karma being accepted by many americans today, yoga, sacredness of earth, etc. One cannot pick and choose a few items here and there and digest them - rendering dharma redundant and its integrity compromised. Raj asks: "People who hold such "sameness" views regarding reincarnation in the bible need to be first clear about: "What" reincarnates? We know it is the Atman that goes through the birth-death-cycle. We have the entire Karma-Reincarnation phenomenon fully explained in our Dharmic traditions. Do the Abrahamic traditions have anything that is equivalent of Atman? Soul is NOT Atman. Soul CANNOT reincarnate. There is nothing in there about Karma - unless we compel ourselves to find it like Theosophy/Steiner/SRF folks do.
If at all reincarnation was there in the bible as suggested, it is just one more example of a Synthetic Unity of parts borrowed/stolen from elsewhere without bothering to properly understand and integrate into some existing system....
Rajiv comment: This is why in BD and various talks I explain that
atman is non-translatable and should be used as is in English. Not only
does soul not reincarnate, its relationship with God differs from the
atman-Brahman relationship in major schools of dharma; animals do not
souls where animals have atman and even plants do."
Prashanth wonders:
"Such confidence. I am sorry but you talk as though you know for a fact the there is an atman and a soul. I can never grasp how you can know such a thing exists."
Milanda Panha is a famous work of Buddhist literature that was supposedly compiled in the first century BC. The work is a dialouge about the Buddhist doctrine between the Bactrian Greek King Milinda and Buddhist monk Nagasena.Rajiv comment: The discussion and works we are dealing with concern TRUTH-CLAIMS of various traditions. Meaning we are comparing and contrasting what X and Y claim. I dont think you can prove ANYTHING in the realm of metaphysics using conventional notions of proof. We cannot prove karma theory or Original Sin, we cannot prove (or disprove) heaven/hell or reincarnation. But we are here to examine how they differ and what the implications are. If you want to inquire into whether atman exists or soul exists as a philosophical inquiry, I suggest a more productive use of your time would be to enroll in a curriculum on philosophy...." Sameer responds: Two remarks - firstly, the influence of Dharma on the west predates Christianity. For example, the Yogi Kalyana who accompanied Alexander on his way back, and took Samadhi in Persia, made a deep impression on the Greeks. Also, there was a Buddhist monastery in Alexandria, if I recall correctly. Rajiv comment: Indeed I am compiling influences in various periods. The pre-Christian influences are several - Buddhists brought the first bells to the Middle east which became church bells (Jewish temples did not have bells); monkhood went from Buddhism to Christianity (again not from Judaism); and so forth. But it does not negate my claim of more recent influences, does it?... Sameer-2: As regards westerners "merely claiming what is theirs to begin with", it must be pointed out that truth belongs to no one, it cannot be limited. Even if it is lost, it will be rediscovered. It does not belong exclusively to India either. Rajiv comment: Nobody denies this, but what does it have to do with my thesis? But people should have the grace to acknowledge the sources they have been inspired by.
Sameer-3: The SRF view of
Christ is the same as that of Yogananda and his Guru, Swami Yukteswar;
it is described in Yogananda's well known autobiography. Yogananda
claims to have personally communed with Christ ... these are matters
which one cannot judge without personal experience.
Rajiv comment:
...and a similar claim if often made by followers of Sri
Ramakrishna citing his own words. But the interpretation of 'Christ' by
these men differs from that of the Church. They simply use the term as
the western equivalent of Brahman, so the equation of Christ = Brahman
merely amounts to Brahman = Brahman by definition. This is a tautology,
nothing more. This is precisely why I introduce history centrism as
my category, because neither Parmahansa Yogananda nor Sri Ramakrishna
would accept a history centric notion of Christ as being the same as
Brahman. Of course you can call the truth by many names, but in the
process of renaming you must not alter its meaning. That point seems to
be missed in the above post.
Ramesh posts: Rajiv: You can download it... Rajiv closes with: "In chapter 2 of BD, Nicene Creed's incompatibility with dharma is explained using several points of difference, such as:
Koenraad Elst responds to Murali's original question: "At most a handful, and never as the normative teaching. ... Jesus goes against this hypothesis. There were all kinds of beliefs doing the rounds in the Hellenistic Middle East, and only some of these crystallized into Christianity, other were emphatically rejected. At any rate, the belief in reincarnation is *logically* incompatible with Christianity, which sees death [as] the cardinal problem of human existence. That much it has in common with Veda, Avasta, Daoism, which all glorify a vaguely defined value called [immortality]. But typical of Christianity (much less so for Islam and even Judaism, which follows the same creation story) is that it explains mortality as punishment for original Sin. This creates the need for salvation from sin and hence from mortality. The Christian Messiah (unlike the original Jewish Messiah, expected to come and restore the Kingdom of David) has to save us from sin and thereby from death. So, the birth and resurrection of Jesus only make sense within a framework that defines death as the central problem of human existence. Such is not the case at all in the reincarnation doctrine, where death is ephemeral, an illusion. In Jainism, Buddhism and the crypto-Buddhism that makes up much of post-Buddhist Hinduism, death is not the problem but is in a sense the hoped-for solution; while immortality is the problem, meaning the endless return to life. The Vedic seers, like the Hebrew sages and the Daoist "immortals", saw life as a good thing, to be cherished and prolonged. Christians partly agree, only they don't mean this life, tainted by irreducible sin, but a glorified life in Christ, whatever that may be. But the reincarnation beliefs, or at least their Shramanic versions (contrasting with those of many tribes the world over who believe in reincarnation and welcome it, or see it as a prize to be won) see life/incarnation as a burden from which we must free ourselves.... > In A. D. 325 the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great, along with his mother, Helena deleted references to reincarnation contained in the Bible.< Conspiracy theory. The editing of the Bible was a complex process, pretty much complete before Constantine.... >The second council of Constantinople, meeting in Ad. 553, confirmed this action and declared the concept of reincarnation a heresy. Apparently, they thought this concept would weaken the growing power of the Church.....The early Church fathers had accepted the concept of reincarnation. The early Gnostics-Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Saint Jerome, and many others -believed that they had lived before and would again (pp 35-36).< Untrue of most, perhaps true of Origen, but rightly repudiated by the Church. If its doctrine was to make sense, the free-floating ideas of reincarnation had to be rejected as logically incompatible. Christ's resurrection loses its [unique] and salvific charcater if we all resurect anyway through reincarnation. ....The Gospel peddlers in Kandhamal have nothing to do with a third-century heresy, they teach a religion solidly wedded to the non-belief in reincarnation. The only possible Christian belief in reincarnation is one that also doesn't fit your polemical needs, viz. the one peddled by the Jehovah's Witnesses .... that there is no soul capable of leading a dismebodied existence. In their view, you disappear completely when you die, and Christ after his Second Coming will revive you in your physical body so that you can live forever on this physical earth. On condition that you are among the saved ones, the others will remain dead and non-existent forever. So, the saved ones will reincarnate exactly once, after the Second Coming, and the others never. Incidentally, the title of this thread is rather mixed up. "Modern scientific evidence of rebirth" and "reincarnation was in the Bible" are two wholly different issues. The second one is a truth claim that happens to be mostly untrue, the first one is a call to seek the truth experimentally. Given the cornerstone value that most of you accord to the doctrine of reincarnation, it seems to me that it [should] be in your interest to invest massively in proving it scientifically. Among other things, it would blow (serious, doctrinal) Christianity away. " Koenraad Elst responds to another question from Sameer: "> I'm interested in what exactly Jesus about reincarnation ... can you give a reference. > Jesus, to the extent that we know him through the Gospel, never expounds on reincarnation. Hanging on the cross, speaking with the "good murderer", he assures him that they will see each other in Heaven. This may be taken literally or as a figure of speech, but it belongs in the then-common Hellenistic view of a soul surviving death and going places in the afterworld, without any hint at reincarnation. In John 9:3, Jesus refuses to feed the apostles' speculation that the blind-born child was paying for its own sins or for those of its parents: "Neither he nor his parents, but through him God's works have to be revealed." .....The Jesus you have to deal with, is the one peddled by the missionaries, streamlined into Church doctrine. And there, we see not only an absence of reincarnation belief, but compelling reasons to reject it. There are plenty of post-Christian New-Agers and New-Agey borderline Christians who try to combine a lingering belief in a saving Jesus with a trendy belief in reincarnation; they are our counterpart to the sameness-preaching moron Swamis. They don't do it as a strategy to mislead Hindus or so, they really mean it. But they too are mistaken: you can have reincarnation or you can have Christianity, but never both. Innocent as they may be in their motives, they do find a place on the U-Turn curve. They are usually not the kind of people who will raise chauvinistic objections to the whole idea of borrowing Indian beliefs, but they feel that if the reincarnation doctrine is true, and if saints and seers have existed in all continents, then they must have been aware of reincarnation. Ergo, if Jesus really was (leave alone the Son of God) an exemplary wisdom teacher, then he too must have been aware of it and taught it." Arun shares: "....The best work that I have found is "20 Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation" by Ian Stevenson, University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville. It has 7 cases from India, 3 from Sri Lanka, 2 from Brazil, 7 from native Alaskans, and 1 from Lebanon. These are supposed to be representative of 200 cases the author has investigated first hand. As a physicist I would say that there is no evidence of means of persistence of information about the individual after death that can make it innate knowledge to the next body somewhere else. Further, I don't think karma needs reincarnation to work. The consequences of every action visit someone or the other; and it is only our clinging to our individuality that makes us want the consequences to visit the same individual as committed the action. It also suits our notion of justice... To try to put a metaphor around it - the tree is the One, and this I is but a leaf. This leaf is shed and another leaf grows - it is a foolish conceit that this I-leaf was reincarnated as this other leaf. We need this illusion because without it, from the common perspective, the nature of the universe seems very bleak. The connection between this leaf and that leaf and all other leaves is the tree. The consequences of this leaf is expressed in varying degrees in the other leaves." Raghu comments: "I am not sure where the idea of an Individuated (i.e., separate) soul arises from. Neither the Yoga Sutras ( i have more than a passing familiarity with it) nor any Buddhist sutras imply a personal soul. they do speak about the impacts of Karma. This does not need great esoteric frame works to understand. Biologically, i carry the Karma of all my ancestors (apes and beyond too as Bill Bryson says in his book); psychologically i carry all the impacts of my parenting and growing up, sociologically i carry all the conditioning of my society. Spiritually the i can not exist if i have to discover this realm!..." Viswa responds to Arun: "The tree-leaf analogy is .... precisely what our dharma indicates about our relationship with the ONE. I am just a ‘leaf’ and so are others, and all belong to the ONE. The only difference is, as our shastras indicate, we will all blend into the ONE after death. Having read his Upanishads thoroughly Tagore was one very persistent believer in this life after death. Very consistently, through his songs (especially Brahma-sangeet) and poems, he talked of his blending into the ONE after death. " March 19
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Jitendra responds: "The director of this film is Evan Grae Davis. If you google ... you will see a lot of links who really he is. ... link with his connection to christ lutheran church.
Rajiv comment: BI has a lot of material on Lutherans, including a
whole chapter. They are amongst the most active in generating and
spreading atrocities literature, so this factoid is just another one of
hundreds...
March 22 Fw: [RISA-L LIST] Pluralism Conference cfp ... From: Franklin M.J. M.J.Franklin@...> To: risa-l@... Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2012 12:55 PM Subject: [RISA-L LIST] Pluralism... Rampersad posts: "Indian Pluralism and Warren Hastings’s Orientalist Regime 18-20 July 2012, University of Wales Conference Centre , Gregynog, Powys. Plenary speakers include Dr Natasha Eaton (King’s College, London ); William Dalrymple; Professor Carl Ernst ( University of North Carolina ); Professor Daniel White ( Toronto ). The aim of this conference is to provide a more complete and multidisciplinary picture of the amateur Orientalists of the Hastings circle and the politico-cultural significance of their work. Jones sought similitude between West and East, and part of this overarching project was to stress the compatibility of Hindu and Islamic mysticism. There was an imperialist ideological dimension here; it was a means of aligning the regime's need to appear both neo-Brahmanical and neo-Mughal....." Rajiv comment: The bit about William Jones is the standard stuff glorifying him. Someone should point out to them the facts about Jones revealed in Breaking India in the early chapters - about how Jones was obsessed with the Biblical Noah's sons as the races of humanity and tried to fit Hindus into that Biblical schema. His project had the over riding dimension of making "new" discoveries of civilizations fit into the Bible's idea of races... March 23
Ravi comments: "It is mind boggling what extreme individuality can do to a nice person's views on someone else being eaten up. At the core of the Christian message as spread historically is the idea of bypassing cultural diversity for the "one Kingdom Under God" (brilliantly articulated in BI & BD, & also by Arun Shouries detailed readings of Christian scriptures & effects). This kind of culturing still seems to survive robustly in otherwise compassionate & intelligent westerners who think nothing a host culture being a "sacrificial lamb" for the "Greater Good" ... of their own culture, which somehow is supposed to translate to "universal good"." Rajesh notes: "I believe the German lady has given a great hint as to why she made the U-Turn. She says: "What is lacking with them and most of the common clergy, no matter of which denomination, is the direct spiritual experience and the vision of the Truth, which is a fact indeed and no illusion." Many Christians who have a difficulty personally perceiving and experiencing the Divine in Christ, look towards Dharmic traditions to teach them methods of how to touch the Divine. They want to experience also. The lady learnt all she could with Sri Aurobindo. Then she went back to Germany and let her be re-baptized. Now as a Christian, she can superimpose her knowledge of the Divine on to Christ, and thus use the same methodology to experience Christ as she learnt for experiencing the Divine through Dharmic ways. During all this time, she was simply learning a new perspective how to view Christ and also Dharmic "technology" on how to "reach" him! The target had remained Christ for her the whole time. She could never manage to transfer her "loyalty" to Dharmic names for the Supreme! ... If one were to notice this involvement of the Westerners with Dharmic spirituality, in it they will always refer to the Supreme in general using terms like "Supreme", "Divine", "Bhagwan", "Ishwar", "Paramatma", etc. All these ways to refer to Him are generic. One can always superimpose these onto Jehovah or Christ, etc later on. Moreover this imagery is not idol-worship! However what these Westerners may hesitate to touch in Hinduism with a long pole, would be Vishnu, Shiva, Brahma, Durga, Ram, Krishna, etc. Meditating on these images would cause them discomfort.... Rajiv comment: Rajesh has captured the uturn psychology well. I go into extensive detail in the book. The western identity is history centric. It was never abandoned even in the depth of the person's love for Hinduism, guru, India, or whatever. It was merely set aside temporarily, perhaps in the unconscious. At a later date it pops up and resurfaces and then its uturn time! Many such persons do not have a premeditated goal to return to Christianity. They are open to new ideas but the loyalty to the deeply ingrained sense of collective western history runs too deep to go away easily. Real transformation has not happened even after decades of dedication to a Hindu guru or movement. The uturn moment is when (due to a combination of circumstances and forces which I discuss in detail) there is an internal conflict between whats been learned new from dharma versus old western ego that pulls back. In cases where the latter wins, there is the uturn..." Dwai responds to Rajesh: "In response to rajesh's post, in my experience with iskconites, they have simply replaced their native abrahamic faith with a dharmic one. The tendencies and psychoses associated with the abrahamic still exist quite strongly nonetheless..." Arjunshakti adds: "I see Iskcon as a trojan horse after interacting with them since childhood. I've seen their paintings of krishna turn from Indian to European and its not surprising that they often say that Krishna was not an Indian even if he was born there.They dont even class themselves hindus but only when they need donations or are in trouble like in Russia presently they suddenly become hindus.For years they have been trying to break away Vaishnavism away from Hinduism.They class Jesus as a great Vaishnava but attack other Gurus like Vivekanada and others." Ravi responds: "While the criticisms may be valid to a point, the situation is far more complex than articulated by the personal experiences on certain aspects/people of ISKCON. Calling it a "Trojan horse" seems a bit too far, as is extrapolating from a few personal experiences to a whole movement. It it's original thrust it seems to have gone furthermost in getting devotees/followers to dissolve their existing identities to take on the "dvija /reborn" new personality based on Vaisnava sampradaya traditions. A movement has to be in constant interaction with the societies it lives in, & it should be more a comment on Western Universalism's attempt to digest ISKCON when we see the "traditionalists" vs the "new liberals" trying to get to lead the movement as we see now..." Sumant comments: "It is also quite telling how often these U-turns are followed up by an immediate commercial venture - a "project", starting a "Christian meditation" organization (which purges all references to the dharmic traditons from where these techniques were learnt), "research" that is very often (very well) funded by organizations with a Christian agenda. All of these are merely the Church in a different garb. The narrow, exclusive and divisive agenda of the Church stays intact in all such endeavours. Plus they also yield very real, material and career/commercial benefits. The spirit of sadhana, of the ego-less pursuit of self-enquiry - which is the raison d'etre of the dharmic techniques and an intensely personal pursuit - is discarded in this process and is replaced by the egoistic domination that the Church seeks, albeit in a more insidious form." Rajiv shares an update: ".... The German Uturn lady is now watching my various videos on YouTube and writes to me: "Thank you Rajiv for all your interesting videos! I'm learning more about India and western & eastern spirituality through your talks than during the last 30 years of my life in and outside the different ashrams." However, I don't expect that this will reverse her uturn, though it could slow it down..." [on 'mutual respect' ] March 23
Rajiv responds: BD does not want to be over-ambitious in opening a certain kind of debate. It does not want to rush ahead and foreclose opportunities. First we must get to the forums where difference can be discussed seriously and candidly. Only then can one begin to argue whats true and false. For now, BD merely wants to assert that truth-claims (not the same thing as truths) differ in very serious ways. Even winning our own leaders on this point is very difficult. Right here in Toronto I came across a popular interfaith Hindu who is so full of this "sameness" stuff. Very smooth talker, nice guy, full of humor, kindness, gentle body language. But he slipped out when I explained that such interfaith positions of sameness by Hindus are one-sided because others do not ascribe to them, and that our interfaith representatives need to undergo serious training because they are unqualified to speak for us. The large gathering at the temple applauded, but he left..." bluecupid asks: "If a religion says that Hindus are going to hell and that "idol worship" is shirk, how is it that Hindus can respect that religion? Rajiv response: we have explained several times before that "mutual" respect means that if the other party wont respect us, we do not have to respect him. It is not "unconditional" respect I offer but mutual. That is why hitler, bin laden, ravana, etc do NOT deserve respect under the "MUTUAL respect" principle - because their exclusivity disrespects others." Surya adds: "There is no paradox. We cannot let people get away with 'unless you prove us wrong, yours cannot be right'. Here is the argument, according to these people: (1) Our truth claim is X and your truth claim is Y. (2) X and Y are incompatible - both cannot be true at the same time. However, both can be false. Logical conclusion from the above definitions of X, Y is: (X AND Y) is always false. From this, it is true that X cannot be True unless Y is False. It follows that "unless you prove us wrong, yours cannot be right". Are these people correct then? No, the argument is not complete. Argument is incomplete because they are not showing a crucial but implicit premise. They are missing a crucial premise in the argument and that crucial premise depends on who is making the argument. If they are framing the argument, they add the implicit premise "X is True" because that is their truth-claim. The conclusion then is "Y is False". If you are framing the argument, you add the premise "Y is True" because that is your truth-claim. The conclusion then is "X is False". Each party reaches a different conclusion because they have different implicit premises, their respective truth claims. The only thing one can say for sure is that both these truth claims cannot be true at the same time. We both can agree that we have incompatible truth claims. We also can agree that we cannot prove our respective truth-claims. Now, we have the choice to acknowledge this explicitly and engage each other with mutual respect. If you hold that your Truth claim is the Truth, thus concluding that my truth claim is False, I could do the same from my end. Claiming that your truth-claim is true without evidence is exclusivity. This is going to keep us from engaging each other with "mutual" respect. This is the basis behind the concept of Mutual Respect explained in BD...." Shaas notes: "Just considering the meaning of the term "religion" already distinguish "true religion" and mere superstition. Latin Re-ligare means binding back, binding back to the source If a "religion" just talks but fails to actually give the experience of Self-realization, fails to connect to Âtmâ or Brahman, it does not deserve the name "Religion"." Rajiv comment: Balagangadhara's book "The Heathen in his Blindness" revolved on the very point that Latin 're-ligare' is not the same thing as Christian 'religion' even though the Christians (mis)appropriated) the Latin term. So one cannot go to the Latin meaning of a term and use that to interpret a later phenomenon where it was misapplied. Analogy: Yoga gets misappropriated to denote "Christian Yoga" where it gets a new meaning. Centuries later comes a scholar who uses the Sanskrit notion of yoga to interpret Christianity. That would be wrong." March 25
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Curating Rajiv Malhotra's Works. Online Resource, Database, Crowd Sourcing, and Expert Feedback on Contemporary Hinduism, Dharmic India, and topics covered in 'Breaking India', 'Being Different: An Indian Challenge to Western Universalism", 'Indra's Net: Defending Hinduism's Philosophical Unity', 'The Battle For Sanskrit', and the newly released book 'Academic Hinduphobia'.
Showing posts with label truth claim. Show all posts
Showing posts with label truth claim. Show all posts
RMF Summary: Week of March 19 - 25, 2012
March 19
Labels:
Atrocity Literature,
Book Review,
Carl Gregg,
Constantine,
Digestion,
History-Centric,
K. Ilaiah,
Koenraad Elst,
Milanda Panha,
Nehru,
NRI,
P.Yogananda,
Pre-Christian,
Ramakrishna,
rebirth,
RISA,
truth claim,
U-Turn
RMF Summary: Week of January 2 - 8, 2012
January 2
January 2
Arun's 2nd followup:
"Rajiv Malhotra acknowledges in his book, inspiration from Mahatma Gandhi; Mahatma Gandhi used to sing in his public prayer meetings, "Ishwar Allah Tere Naam..."; Gandhi was a stalwart of the Independence Movement; so something does
not square up here, I request that the writer reconsider his logic."
Rajiv's response:
Obviously this is not the first time such a proposal has come.
But it is fallacious. It assumes that if you reject position X of someone on a given issue then you must necessarily reject that person's position Y on a different issue. It is like a physicist (such as Arun) saying that since one disagrees with a particular theory of a scientist then one must reject everything written by that scientist.
I have been ... one of the first to point out in these egroup the fallacy of "Allah = Ishwar" and have mentioned Gandhi and many others for this flaw. I doubt he has read BD: In BD I
also name Baba Ramdev for saying that Aum = Allah = Amen, and I point out that as explained in Patanjali's Yogasutra, Aum is non-translatable. It is a vibration, not a concept that can be arbitrarily substituted with something else. So I definitely understand the falsity of equating such things.
Now my "use" of Gandhi is very careful, and by no means a blanket endorsement. (I do NOT given any human a blanket endorsement because I believe in making my own assessment on each claim on its individual merits.) What Arun needs to do
(after reading BD) is to point out specifically where and for what purpose I invoke Gandhi, and then criticize that per se. For instance, I give Gandhi credit for doing purva paksha of the British Empire in his 1909 book, "Hind Swaraj" that was one of the earliest works to launch the independence movement. I also cite him as an example of someone wanting to remain non-digestible into English language (so he coined a whole vocabulary of non-translatables like svaraj, satyagraha, swadhyay, svadharma, etc. in terms of which he explained to
his followers, rather than using the English substitutes), or his dress or eating, or his lifestyle amongst the Indians, etc.
..."
Carpentier notes:
"Not to forget that so many western-educated Indians have mixed feelings or relatively little attention for their creed. They are vaguely embarrassed by the "polytheistic", "idol worshipping" label and often take refuge in some sort of secular Buddhism or universal mysticism with few specific cultural characteristics. By the way this is also the way most Westerners feel about their own Christian birth-faith. Secularism has yielded this result in most parts of the world."
Ram asks searching questions:
"Indian academics in India itself and abroad, have not done more for the Indian cause and the Hindu cause for various reasons, of which the main one is painfully simple. They do not see it as their job to do something dangerous like reversing the gaze on their western teachers and hosts.
The academic's job is to advance himself by research and teaching within the accepted borders and parameters, and doing a purva paksha of the west or western models is not part of the game.
We Indians from the Caribbean (two million by the way) have been in the West a long time and have seen many of ours become academics and professionals since the fifties of the last century. We have been holding Indian conferences of academics since the seventies, and seen loads of papers, books and seminars taking place. I would say less than one percent, maybe less than one tenth of one percent. That's less than one in a thousand.
The next question would be even simpler. Why? We know the answer well- it's because academics are generally not brave people. They are not iconoclasts, questioners of the established order. They are conventionalists, system clones with no appetite for making waves. They are not keen to threaten their lucrative and high status posts by screaming out that the emperor has no clothes. Especially not for the sake of lowly and despised ordinary Indians, the pool from which they emerged. The academics, like the professionals, try to stay as far away from the ordinary Indians as possible, physically and intellectually and socially too. They have been digested by the academic establishment of the west and turned into the caricature coconut- brown outside, but white inside.
You would do well to expect little from them in the future, and you will understand why we have got so little from Indian academics in the past 60 years. But you will get attacks from them galore as they gaze with horror on us "unqualified" amateurs attempting to bring about social change for the downtrodden Indians and Hindus. We can say with conviction that Indian academics have played only a miniscule role in the many social, cultural and political movements among Indians, the ones that brought about significant social change.
....
In addition, academics tend to be fiercely loyal to the disciplines, the institutions and the countries in which they were trained, and would normally consider it heresy to even dream of "criticizing" the system that gave them their treasured status in life. Rajiv is fortunate indeed in that he is self taught, and escaped the institutional treadmill that creates so many useless (to us Indians and Hindus) Indian academics.
...
It's a fair question to ask: What percent of those academics have attempted anything remotely like Rajiv Malhotra?"
Mukund responds to Ram:
Mukund's response to Ram: What you are telling about Academicians is cent percent correct. They find their discipline more important (than anything else). This is mainly because they are blank in any of the other subjects/disciplines. That is the effect of Education System of Lord Macauley and developed by Descartes. The Education has been broken down in subjects and thereby your thinking gets restricted to the subject/discipline. You do not get knowledge since knowledge consists of integrated outcome of all (possible) subjects. That
is the problem with the modern education system.
Rajiv comment:
How true! I just finished presenting my talk at the Vedanta Congress that is being held in Delhi. Did it via Skype. There was a lively Q&A in which the final comment from an Indian academic was precisely that my book fails to comply with established methodologies. I replied that his was a colonial mindset - to fence Indian minds into "sanctioned and approved methodologies of the humanities" each of which is imported from the west - marxism, subaltern studies, postmodernism, etc. I told him that I refuse to be
in a box defined by others, and that he should think of the methodologies I use (each chapter is almost a separate book with its own distinct methodology) as my original methodologies. I am under no obligation to comply with his kind of colonial mindset. I am told he is some senior/important professor so I might have offended him, but that's the way it goes. "
Viswa comments:
While I like the distinctions that Rajiv has defined to distinguish the Brahmanical philosophy from that of the Judeo-Christian, there may be another fundamental point of distinction: Cyclical (in the Brahminical) vs. Linear
Progression (in Judeo-Christian)
Rajiv response:
First, lets not call it Brahmanical as thats a colonial term meant to de-legitimize dharma by calling it the construction by some evil/wily brahmins. It would be like calling Christianity "Pope-ism" for instance. BD explains the shrutis are a-purusheya (authorless), hence not some texts constructed by brahmins. .... its already factored in chapter 2's notion of about history-centrism and the linearity of prophetic revelations, and contrasted with karma-reincarnation.
| Dravidian Empire Strikes Back: Seminar for rebuttal on 'Breaking India A. Neelakandan shares: K. Veeramani, the Dravida Kazhagam (Dravidian Association) supremo, has made the following announcement: "On January 8 and 9 there is going to be a seminar on 'Breaking India' to 'expose this book which is a cunning Brahmin conspiracy' fabricated by two Brahminical preachers, Rajiv Malhotra and Aravindan Neelakandan'." The event will be held at Periyar Thidal, Chennai, and the title of the seminar is 'Breaking India or Breaking Aryanism'. |
January 2
| ISKCON website: Allah and Krishna Are The Same Person ?!
Rajiv Malhotra shares: "Please read the attached discussion that Krishna and Allah might be the same person. Implication: In that case, Quran represents his more recent teachings than Gita, being newer than Gita, and hence a later "release" we must upgrade to. Bottom line: if they are same then whats the problem with converting to Islam??? My book BEING DIFFERENT was the result of hundreds of such views, debates, etc I encountered over many years, and formulating DIFFERENCES carefully such that the other side CANNOT ACCEPT OUR CORE IDEAS. I did not include Islam in this book to prevent making it twice the size and diluting the focus. But similar differences are applicable. Examples: Krishna never says he is the only avatar or the only one, and acceptance of this makes the Islamic claim that Mohammed is the final prophet erroneous. Reincarnation and karma taught by Krishna are not digestible into Islam either. Yet, by reading the attached interpretation you will realize how massive is the campaign to digest us by offering arguments that praise us (on the surface) in order to have our naive masses and foolish leaders buy the sameness nonsense." Arun responds: "There is in our tradition, Kabir, who allegedly sang:- Alakh Elahi ek hai, nam darya do Ram Rahim ek hai, naam darya do Krishna Karim ek hai, naam darya do Kashi Kaba ek hai, ek Ram Rahim Alakh (the Invisible) and Elahi (the Lord) are one, with two names Ram and Rahim are one, with two names Krishna and Karim are one, with two names Kashi and Kaaba are but one, with two names. The above teaching will also be found in the Sikh Gurus. To understand this *fully*, we need to look at three points of view: 1. Hindu point of view, 2. Islamic point of view, 3. Outsider (neither Hindu nor Muslim point of view). The summary is that to the Hindu, the sameness of Ram and Rahim is as real as the sameness of Vishnu and Shiva. This is a respectable position within Hinduism. In the Islamic point of view, Ram, Vishnu, Shiva are false gods. To the objective outsider also, Ram != Rahim. In my opinion, Hindus need to both preserve their own point of view, as well as understand that it is meaningful only to them, and to no one else..... ..... Further, just as a plebiscite to establish a dictatorship is meaningless, since a dictatorship will terminate the supremacy of the people's will which is the premise behind the plebiscite; just as the right to sell oneself into slavery is likewise a contradiction of the theory of human rights; similarly, the coexistence implied by "sarva dharma sama bhava" does not grant you the right to proselytize. Moreover, just as I do not abandon my commitment to democracy simply because there are so many states without it, I do not abandon my commitment to religious coexistence, because there are so many peoples inimical to it. My ideas lead to peaceful coexistence, while yours require the extirpation of one side or the other; and in this, I claim a definite superiority of my ideas. Moreover, if one side has to vanish, it won't be mine." Rajiv's response to Arun's comment: "I want people to read Arun's well argued statement below. But I beg to differ in his interpretation of the Hindu view. The key to my position is the invocation of the famous verse ""sarva dharma..." in which the definition of WHAT CONSTITUTES DHARMA (AS DISTINCT FROM A-DHARMA) is usually left out. Not every "claim" of truth is truth. Ravana also had his claim of dharma, so did Hitler and Bin Laden. If all claims of dharma were valid, then why the need to have the Mahabharata? Why is Arjun asked to fight to protect dharma against a-dharma, if there is no difference between them? The catastrophic misunderstanding many Hindus have, as reflected in Arun's analysis below, is that all religious "claims" are regarded as valid dharma. They are not, as the above examples of Hitler, Bin Laden, Ravana illustrate. Organized religions are mere claims by some powerful institutions. The winners in world conquests got to write history (the word history itself comes from "His-Story" meaning God's story as claimed by some desert tribal leaders). But the criteria of what is dharma cannot be as facile as "might is right". There are 2 flaws in Arun's unstated assumption: (1) Whosoever happened to prevail historically in defining "religion" did an authentic job. (2) All such religions are to be equated with dharma. I vaguely remember that Arun and I have been around this block several times many years ago...I am glad to welcome him back and hope people will read his analysis carefully and with due respect " Arun's followup: ".... e.g., Taliban ideology won't pass muster to be considered dharma. Likewise, it rules out Hitler and it rules out Crusaders. The average follower of a religion is given an ethical discipline to follow that includes the golden rule, and it is with this aspect of the religion that we can hope to coexist. The point I was trying to it should be seen as a Hindu ethical principle, not as a fact about the world. It is not something to be abandoned, but to be applied correctly. We should understand all the premises underlying the idea, and not apply it in situations where these premises are being undermined. So, e.g., the evangelist's activities are contrary to this principle, and we would not apply this principle to him." Rajiv's response to first followup: ...I hope we can agree to the following propositions: 1) Dharma is not same as religion, hence all religious paths are not necessarily dharmic. 2) Even within the vocabulary of religion, what we have today are "claims" of truth, and like all claims in science, law, etc. they need to be put to test under some accepted criteria.... 3) If you do step 2, you have to go through each verse of Qu'ran/Bible and apply the test to pass judgment whether it is dharmic or not. Examples: "Thou shalt not worship any other god besides me" - does that pass the test? "Kill the infidels" - does that pass the test? On the other hand, one can also find numerous statements that DO pass the test of being dharmic. I dont know any guru who goes about pontificating all religions are same and all religions are dharmic to have done any such exercise with rigor... 4) Objects X and Y can have both similarities and dissimilarities. A bicycle is similar to a truck because: both have wheels, both are means of transportation; both use steel for construction; both require a human to drive; etc. That does not make them the same. I hope serious readers of BD will raise exception every time they hear this sameness nonsense..... Please once again watch my Mark Tully video entirely, which I feel gets this methodology across very explicitly." Venkat comments: "...peculiar syndrome at work here amongst Hindus. When confronted with some disturbing verses in the semitic scriptures .. they will jump to their defend it as in "Oh no, Christians have actually misunderstood the verse. Jesus never said that.....!" Rajiv response: In chapter 1, I coin the term "difference anxiety from below" to explain this syndrome. Jithu adds: " ... Aurobindo Ghosh, the great Hindu poet-philosopher, posed the question about Islam: "You can live with a religion whose principle is toleration. But how is it possible to live with a religion whose principle is 'I will not tolerate you'? How are you going to have unity with these people?... I am sorry they [Gandhi and Nehru] are making a fetish of Hindu-Muslim unity. It is no use ignoring facts; some day the Hindus will have to fight Muslims and they must prepare for it. Hindu-Muslim unity should not mean the subjection of Hindus. Each time the mildness of the Hindus has given way. The best solution would be to allow the Hindus to organise themselves and Hindu-Muslim unity will take care of itself, it will automatically solve the problem. ...I see no reason why the greatness of India's past or its spirituality should be thrown into the waste basket, in order to conciliate the Muslims who would not be conciliated by such policy." Desh responds: "... "God" when verbalized is the God of the verbalizer, not the "real entity". Verbalizing of an entity defines it. The way God and its characteristics have been defined in various religions and Dharmic traditions are very very different. So, contrary to the claim of "Ishwar Allah tere naam" - the truth is that BY DEFINITION, Ishwar and Allah are NOT equivalent. ..."
Rajiv's response:
Das comments:
"If Allah (the great one) is simply one of the attributes Krishna (all attractive) therefore Vedic religion is much wider hence can have the effect of islamic followers converting to Vaishnavas."
Rajiv's response: This is logically flawed. Lets use some basic rigor. You cannot simply assume that X's attributes (i.e. Allah's) are a subset of Y's attributes (i.e. Krishna's) without looking at ALL of their attributes. ... Imagine a Venn diagram you learned in high school, in which two circles partially overlap. But each has a lot of space outside the other. This is closer to the situation of Allah and Krishha - there are overlapping attributes but neither is a proper subset of the other. The argument mentioned by Shri Das is very typical of the simpleminded pop dharma that's commonly taught" |
"Rajiv Malhotra acknowledges in his book, inspiration from Mahatma Gandhi; Mahatma Gandhi used to sing in his public prayer meetings, "Ishwar Allah Tere Naam..."; Gandhi was a stalwart of the Independence Movement; so something does
not square up here, I request that the writer reconsider his logic."
Rajiv's response:
Obviously this is not the first time such a proposal has come.
But it is fallacious. It assumes that if you reject position X of someone on a given issue then you must necessarily reject that person's position Y on a different issue. It is like a physicist (such as Arun) saying that since one disagrees with a particular theory of a scientist then one must reject everything written by that scientist.
I have been ... one of the first to point out in these egroup the fallacy of "Allah = Ishwar" and have mentioned Gandhi and many others for this flaw. I doubt he has read BD: In BD I
also name Baba Ramdev for saying that Aum = Allah = Amen, and I point out that as explained in Patanjali's Yogasutra, Aum is non-translatable. It is a vibration, not a concept that can be arbitrarily substituted with something else. So I definitely understand the falsity of equating such things.
Now my "use" of Gandhi is very careful, and by no means a blanket endorsement. (I do NOT given any human a blanket endorsement because I believe in making my own assessment on each claim on its individual merits.) What Arun needs to do
(after reading BD) is to point out specifically where and for what purpose I invoke Gandhi, and then criticize that per se. For instance, I give Gandhi credit for doing purva paksha of the British Empire in his 1909 book, "Hind Swaraj" that was one of the earliest works to launch the independence movement. I also cite him as an example of someone wanting to remain non-digestible into English language (so he coined a whole vocabulary of non-translatables like svaraj, satyagraha, swadhyay, svadharma, etc. in terms of which he explained to
his followers, rather than using the English substitutes), or his dress or eating, or his lifestyle amongst the Indians, etc.
..."
Carpentier notes:
"Not to forget that so many western-educated Indians have mixed feelings or relatively little attention for their creed. They are vaguely embarrassed by the "polytheistic", "idol worshipping" label and often take refuge in some sort of secular Buddhism or universal mysticism with few specific cultural characteristics. By the way this is also the way most Westerners feel about their own Christian birth-faith. Secularism has yielded this result in most parts of the world."
Ram asks searching questions:
"Indian academics in India itself and abroad, have not done more for the Indian cause and the Hindu cause for various reasons, of which the main one is painfully simple. They do not see it as their job to do something dangerous like reversing the gaze on their western teachers and hosts.
The academic's job is to advance himself by research and teaching within the accepted borders and parameters, and doing a purva paksha of the west or western models is not part of the game.
We Indians from the Caribbean (two million by the way) have been in the West a long time and have seen many of ours become academics and professionals since the fifties of the last century. We have been holding Indian conferences of academics since the seventies, and seen loads of papers, books and seminars taking place. I would say less than one percent, maybe less than one tenth of one percent. That's less than one in a thousand.
The next question would be even simpler. Why? We know the answer well- it's because academics are generally not brave people. They are not iconoclasts, questioners of the established order. They are conventionalists, system clones with no appetite for making waves. They are not keen to threaten their lucrative and high status posts by screaming out that the emperor has no clothes. Especially not for the sake of lowly and despised ordinary Indians, the pool from which they emerged. The academics, like the professionals, try to stay as far away from the ordinary Indians as possible, physically and intellectually and socially too. They have been digested by the academic establishment of the west and turned into the caricature coconut- brown outside, but white inside.
You would do well to expect little from them in the future, and you will understand why we have got so little from Indian academics in the past 60 years. But you will get attacks from them galore as they gaze with horror on us "unqualified" amateurs attempting to bring about social change for the downtrodden Indians and Hindus. We can say with conviction that Indian academics have played only a miniscule role in the many social, cultural and political movements among Indians, the ones that brought about significant social change.
....
In addition, academics tend to be fiercely loyal to the disciplines, the institutions and the countries in which they were trained, and would normally consider it heresy to even dream of "criticizing" the system that gave them their treasured status in life. Rajiv is fortunate indeed in that he is self taught, and escaped the institutional treadmill that creates so many useless (to us Indians and Hindus) Indian academics.
...
It's a fair question to ask: What percent of those academics have attempted anything remotely like Rajiv Malhotra?"
Mukund responds to Ram:
Mukund's response to Ram: What you are telling about Academicians is cent percent correct. They find their discipline more important (than anything else). This is mainly because they are blank in any of the other subjects/disciplines. That is the effect of Education System of Lord Macauley and developed by Descartes. The Education has been broken down in subjects and thereby your thinking gets restricted to the subject/discipline. You do not get knowledge since knowledge consists of integrated outcome of all (possible) subjects. That
is the problem with the modern education system.
Rajiv comment:
How true! I just finished presenting my talk at the Vedanta Congress that is being held in Delhi. Did it via Skype. There was a lively Q&A in which the final comment from an Indian academic was precisely that my book fails to comply with established methodologies. I replied that his was a colonial mindset - to fence Indian minds into "sanctioned and approved methodologies of the humanities" each of which is imported from the west - marxism, subaltern studies, postmodernism, etc. I told him that I refuse to be
in a box defined by others, and that he should think of the methodologies I use (each chapter is almost a separate book with its own distinct methodology) as my original methodologies. I am under no obligation to comply with his kind of colonial mindset. I am told he is some senior/important professor so I might have offended him, but that's the way it goes. "
Viswa comments:
While I like the distinctions that Rajiv has defined to distinguish the Brahmanical philosophy from that of the Judeo-Christian, there may be another fundamental point of distinction: Cyclical (in the Brahminical) vs. Linear
Progression (in Judeo-Christian)
Rajiv response:
First, lets not call it Brahmanical as thats a colonial term meant to de-legitimize dharma by calling it the construction by some evil/wily brahmins. It would be like calling Christianity "Pope-ism" for instance. BD explains the shrutis are a-purusheya (authorless), hence not some texts constructed by brahmins. .... its already factored in chapter 2's notion of about history-centrism and the linearity of prophetic revelations, and contrasted with karma-reincarnation.
| Viswa: Many on this forum have tended that there is an "Indian" or a "Hindu" cause or agenda that is being addressed by BD. I, for one, do not know of any single Indian or Hindu cause / agenda. Just as Hinduism accepted even the agnostic and the atheist (at least, up until the point when Manu tried to fossilize everything, including the caste distinctions) any "dharmic" tradition will have to be heterodox and cannot claim "to be one with the divine" as the only purpose of Hindu philosophy. There are the Samkhya / Charvaka / Tantric philosophies that are extremely materialistic in their fervor (as opposed to the spiritual ones). In the same context, the non-Brahmanical agenda in India cannot be ignored by a forum like this.... Rajiv response: BD (which you should read first) is careful not to define dharma in a limited manner. I consulted, debated and spent considerable time with thinkers of numerous dharmic traditions before developing these differences with western universalism. I included non advaitic views of Vedanta, as well as Buddhism, Tantra, etc. I agree that there is an unfortunate tendency among some to see dharma in a narrow context. BD spends much time explaining the diversity within dharma as one of its key features. Srinivas comments: ".. I've put down my thoughts on BD at: http://srinisview.blogspot.com/2011/12/being-different.html I want to know if is there a reason why Dvaita philosophy doesnt find a mention in BD? There is no reference to Madhvacharya or his Tatvavada (Dvaita) philosophy anywhere in the book! The irony is, Advaita, a philosophy that says "everything is same and all differences are an illusion" is used to argue for respecting differences while Dvaita philosophy which argues for diversity is left out all together." Rajiv's response: It is FALSE that I use the philosophy of "everything is same and all differences are an illusion". I never use "illusion" - in fact in all my work i am highly critical of it. In BD if there is one school of Vedanta I lean towards its that of Sri Jiva Goswami (who adapted, "enhanced" Ramanuja's school, and called it achinta-bheda-abheda) and this is elaborated in the appendix. This type of reaction above is similar to the reaction of Shail Mayarama (subaltern Marxist scholar in Delhi, with whom I have scheduled a videotaped debate), who pompously read out a list of her favorite thinkers and complained that I did not use them. ... my reading of the scholars she named was probably deeper than hers, but that it would be IRRELEVANT TO THE THESIS OF THE BOOK just do drop names and theories that are not required. This book is not your typical literature survey where the writer wants to impress how much he has read. The criteria here is fresh original insights that make a new kind of impact. Let us understand the GOAL OF BD. So, back to Srinivas's point: This is not a treatise on dharma - i can refer you to plenty of works on that and I have NO INTEREST to write topics that are ordinarily pursued by many others. So what you as a dvaita proponent must ask is a different question about BD: Do the differences between dharma and Abrahamic faiths apply if one used dvaita as the dharma? So, you must ask the following: Difference-1: Is dvaita's notion of karma-reincarnation different than Christianity's Original Sin, Virgin Birth, Redemption, etc. (known as Nicene Creed), and are they mutually incompatible? I claim the answer is yes. If you agree then you agree with my thesis-1. I need not have references to every darshana... I did not make the case on behalf of dharma without doing my homework. Difference-2: Integral vs. Synthetic Unity: Here you might have a point because it would seem at first that dvaita falls into synthetic unity. But translating dvaita as dualism is misleading because it is not the same kind of dualism as the western sense. In BD, Integral unity is also argued for Buddhism to show that it does not depend upon the notion of Brahman. My case is not to prove sameness internally in the dharma camp, but to prove that they SHARE A COMMON DIFFERENCE WITH THE ABRAHAMIC CAMP. The project here is not what you are superimposing based on your prior knowledge. I maintain that dvaita is NOT synthetic unity in the Abrahamic sense as explained in BD. The NATURE OF THE INTEGRAL UNITY differs between advaita, vishitadvaita, achinta-bheda-abheda, dvaita, madhyamika Buddhism, Tantra, Kashmir Shaivism, Sri Aurobindo. I could write a whole book on comparative philosophy INTERNAL to the dharma systems - but thats irrelevant here.... Difference-3: Order-Chaos relationship contrasted with the Biblical view of "Chaos = Satanic". ... Difference-4: Non-translatability of Sanskrit... If you agree with each difference then your point is pedantic. If you disagree then your post should show HOW IN THE CASE OF DVAITA THE DIFFERENCE WITH ABRAHAMIC RELIGIONS DOES NOT APPLY. Merely listing thinkers and works I "ought" to have referred to is not a valid criticism - the same point I will argue once again with Shail when she lists Indian thinkers she happens to be familiar with as ones that I ought to have included. Why? Going beyond these differences, does dvaita lead you to refute my thesis on Western Universalism - that WU is not a valid or certainly not the only kind of universalism? Does dvaita lead you to refute my thesis that we have failed to reverse the gaze at the west and we better start doing that? ... Now, it should be YOUR job as dvaita scholar to take BD deeper and show in greater detail how the differences and major theses work specifically from a dvaita school. ...Why is that my job as well? " Srinivas follows up: "...The central idea in BD is to establish irreconcilable differences between east and west while respecting them for what they are. Given this idea and the 4 main differences you have highlighted, you have picked the dharmic streams that at their core do not accept any existence or reality apart from Brahman. So instead of Christianity's "I'll respect you only if you are Christian", the Brahman-is-all-there-is streams claim is "I respect you because you, I and everybody are essentially one and the same". So the respect here is not because of differences but because of sameness. This could be one critique of the book." Rajiv's response to followup: The above is not accurate of my position, as Buddhism is a clear example of not accepting Brahman, and yet I made considerable efforts to include Buddhism within the "dharma civilization" in contrasting with Abrahamic. Note my criteria for integral unity is NOT any specific "entity" (like Brahman) but merely that unity pre-exists and is not being "put together" by us - whereas in Aristotle (used extensively in this argument in BD) billions of entities pre-exist as parts and then become wholes. The implication is that when unity is put together out of parts, it runs the risk of falling apart no matter how strong the glue. This leads to the west's "fear of chaos", the subject of following chapter. Whereas if there is integral unity it being built into the fabric of reality cannot fall apart - hence comfort with so-called "chaos. Chpt 3 (Integral/Synthetic contrast) serves as the foundation to argue in chpt 4 why westerners fear chaos. Integral unity is NOT devoid of internal structure - that might be the point of confusion. It is not void, with all structures dismissed as maya/illusion. I have difficulty with ultimate reality as nothing, I prefer ultimate reality as everything. Unity has internal structure built into it. But these every "things" are not by themselves as in Aristotle. In Buddhism, with no Brahman as the unity, all entities are co-dependent upon each other and hence comprise a unified whole. ... internal purva paksha is replaced by an EXTERNAL purva paksha. What would be nice is for dvaita thinkers today to do a purva paksha of Christianity, Islam, etc. Tell us what keeps you distinct from them - otherwise you ought to convert and join them to make life simple. This is the challenge I open up for you. I am convinced that BD opens the door for numerous dharma traditions to do their own version of these differences,... Once we reverse the raze, we emphasize difference with the west. Once we do that we do not get digested. That's the game plan." Rakesh responds: ..shri chidambaram swaminathan.: ... advaitha does not negate differences, but sees a common thread. Even the Sankara who preached impersonal Brahman, wrote devotional hymns to the various deities as well as recognized caste duties etc. At a phenomenal level, being different is the reality, advaitha does not dispute that. It mentions that the same Brahman has become all of this, and since the Brahman has become all of this, we should respect the differences, knowing these differences should not blind us to the fact that there is a commonality Maya vada (as opposed to advaita ) probably became strong when india was reeling under conquests and illusory escapism was important to forget the painful reality or one needed an excuse to start following practices of conquerors such as meat eating or looking down upon idol worship." Rajiv's comment: Watch my video at Swami Dayananda Saraswati's ashram in which at the very end he explains difference as a pre-eminent teacher of advaita today. Difference at the level of manifestation is there, it is the reality we live in. Achieving unity consciousness is through transcendence and NOT by evading the difference at the present level of consciousness. See .... bluecupid responds to the original question on name: When Muslims refer to the "attributes of Allah" they are refering to 99. That is known as the 99 Attributes or the 99 Names. See: From the point of view of the Bengali Vaishnava writer Bhaktivinode Thakur (1838 - 1914), the names of Bhagavan can be divided into 2 types; gauna and mukhya. Gauna names are those names which deal with Sri Krishna Bhagavan's relation to maya-shakti such as Ishwar, Paramatma, Shristi-karta, Jagat-pati, etc. Mukhya names are the names used in Divine Lila and denote intimacy between Sri Krishna and his parikaras - such as Yashoda-nandana, Gopinatha, Radhanath, etc. Chanting such names give rise to the experience of Braj-rasa in the bhakta's consciousness, whereas the gauna names do not. The gauna names are arasik, nir-rasa, or without rasa. The concept of Allah as described in the Quran itself is an a-rasik concept of God. The 99 Names/Attributes of Allah found in the Quran are all gauna names relating to maya-jagat and do not denote any sense of Divine Lila or rasa of any sort. January 2
January 2
January 2
January 4
Arun comments: "While recognizing the Anglosphere as a digestion apparatus, in the spirit of Being Different, we should recognize, appreciate and even publicize the differences within the West, and not lump them together when they should not be. So, e.g., we should separate out the political-legal traditions that grew out of the Magna Carta and events in the history of England (Anglosphere would be a convenient term) versus the Nordic traditions versus the French versus the German. Rajiv's response: 1) BD goes through great pains to differentiate Catholic from general Christian from Judeo-Christian from Western Enlightenment and so forth. 2)BD thesis says if "West" has 10 entities and 7 of them are stomachs for digestion, we deal with those 7, and understand OUR difference with THEM in order to RESIST DIGESTION. 3) BTW, a lot of "German" tradition is a product of German Indology's digestion of Sanskrit texts and to a large extent French thought since Saussure onwards - the history of Indological UTurns is a separate book of mine. 4) We dont want to waste time addressing the west in totality - i.e. avoid knowledge for knowledge sake or just to impress..." Manas shares: "To add to Mr. Malhotra's points, here is another wonderful example of a leftist Indian historian, Neeladri Bhattacharya (a product/member of the JNU Marxist-historians cabal), who seeks to eschew Eurocentrism (at least in words), but then propounds the same Euro-American centric constructs of Indian history. Also note his aversion to "Indian civilization", specially any positive portrayal of ancient India. This reflects perfectly in the revised NCERT history and social science textbooks. The history books were revised under Bhattacharya's supervision (during the late Arjun Singh's watch as HRM during UPA 1.0), and end up propounding negation of atrocities during medieval period by Islamic invaders and a subtle to not-so-subtle negative deconstruction of ancient Indian (read Hindu) history. As someone who went through the NCERT system many years ago, I found the revised books worse than the previous ones in terms of their portrayal of Hinduism and Indian history.
Listen to his apologetics here ..."
Arjunshakti responds:
"This all reminds me of the Borg Collective. Anyone who is familiar with star trek would know of the Borg a race of cybernetic organisms who instead of destroying you assimilate you along with your culture but you end losing your own individual identity in the process of assimilation to become part of a collective consciousness but under the agenda of the Borg which claims this all part of enhancement and perfection .So these Marxists Indians s may be anti west but at the same time use the same western frameworks because they are
assimilated without even realizing it...." Rajiv response: A nice metaphor to get the point across. January 4
January 5
January 5
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January 7
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Labels:
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Breaking India,
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truth claim
RMF Summary: Week of December 19 - 25, 2011
December 19
| 2009 discussion on Kashmir at Harvard - attended by Angana Chatterji
In light of the recent dismissal of Angana Chatterji, who Rajiv did highlight in BI, I wanted to look into some of the company she kept. No surprises that... |
December 19
December 20
"Let us not put Eliade or Joseph Campbell on the U-turn boat. Their works consist in highlighting and bringing out the mythical, cosmological aspects of the Western traditional cultures in order to reconnect with the Perennial Philosophy. Everyone must work on the truth from the departure point of his own civilisation by rediscovering its roots and its hidden meaning. Rajiv's response: Both these characters definitely ARE prominent uturners. I am glad Come expressed his support for them, as I want to provoke puncture this kind of aura of people like Campbell (and many others glorified in "American Veda" type of works). You can add Jung to this list and many other lineages of so-called "western" pioneers who were unfair in hiding their Indian sources in order to be seen as "original" thinkers. In the case of Campbell, people in India praise what they see as his love for Indian spirituality. But he lived many years in Esalen where he facilitated many uturns. Read his book "Baksheesh and Brahman", written after he had finished his mining expedition to appropriate Indian things, and in it the whole tradition is depicted as a form of corruption by brahmins to dupe the masses.... ... The fact that people today dont see these as uturns is precisely what makes that work so important. Such "bridge builders" were biased and served as the stomachs of the digestive system. The whole Perennial Philosophy is merely stage-2 of the uturn." Mrithak asks Rajiv: "I was wondering your view on Rudolph Steiner as my wife is a Waldorf school teacher. Steiner is very sympathetic towards Indian traditions in his works such as " how to know higher worlds" and even has incorparated the Guru-kula model of having the same teacher for all subjects till 8th grade. Interestingly Steiner says that he has a "Guru" but won't reveal the name of his Guru. Rajiv response: Rudolph Steiner is an important uturner. After J. Krishnamurty was selected to head the Theosophists, Steiner quit the movement because he wanted that post. Till then, he had learned a lot from Indian sources, as did most Theosophists. He wrote a fairly ok interpretation of Gita, etc. Steiner then started his own anthropomorphism movement. This was initially a sort of half-way place combining Hinduism and Christianity - the way most uturns begin. As it evolved, it got more and more distant from Hinduism. I would say he was in the same league as Carl Jung - (1) learned from Hinduism; (2) then used it to construct his own hybrid of Christianity and Hinduism; (3) gradually after the founder's death the movement distanced from the Indian sources and became increasingly neo-Christian. .... Today, both these movements are among the "new" and "liberal" thought that is seen as a part of the development of western thought. In other words, they have used dharma to reinvent Christianity. There remain some Indian terminology and many ideas are borrowed as is clear. BUT THEIR LEADERS TODAY DO NOT WANT TO BE TOLD THIS PUBLICLY, OR AT LEAST THEY WILL NOT LIKE TO TALK ABOUT THIS. I approached the Steiner people to get them interested to do a project explicitly on "Indian influences on Rudolph Steiner and his education system." Informally they accept "some influences" but do not want to emphasize this aspect. Similar influences also exist in the case of Montessori and her famous school system. She spent many years in India as a shelter during World War 2, and thats where she wrote some of her important works on education. She had good relations with Gandhi, Ramana Maharshi, and various others. But try asking the headquarters of the Montessori system to celebrate the "Hindu education system's influences". I have been around the block engaging dozens of such groups since the 1990s. In fact the Theosophy folks in Adyar, Tamil Nadu show no interest to celebrate their appropriations of Hindu thought." Kirit comments: "What a revealing yet sad fact to know for a person like me who has held Montessori in high esteem for many reasons including having had owned a Montessori school, and who has studied Jung as a psychotherapist, while being ignorant about direct Hindu influences in their work. ..." Rajiv's response: ... My interest in the appropriation of education per se started when in the 1990s I saw a course at Princeton Univ called "the history of universities". The textbook had zero mention of Nalanda/Taxishala or any other Indian center of learning. It was all about Alexandria, Greece, Europe and the West. I approached the professor and suggested that he include the history of ancient universities in India. His predictable response said things like: "I am unaware of any such Indian universities", "there is no reliable source on this", "we want to stay away from rightwing chauvinistic claims", etc. Luckily, I found in the Princeton library a 3 volume history of Nalanda written by a western scholar, using sources from visiting Chinese and other students who had written of their experiences at Nalanda after returning back to their home countries. Even after I showed this "source" material, the prof was unwilling to include anything about India, giving the excuse that he was "unqualified" to teach such a complex matter without first spending a lot of time to study it for himself. ... then I came across an entirely different and very CONTEMPORARY example of a MAJOR educational movement in the west that (according to official accounts) owes its origins to one man living in Europe (now in his 90s). This methodology of learning has become extremely mainstream and is spreading like wild fire. But the smoking gun came when I happened to meet a western woman by chance at a talk on uturn i was giving in a university. She told me that she had an interesting "example" of uturn to bring to my attention. What transpired was amazing .... What resulted is now a solid chapter on this particular case study, which clearly establishes the Indian origins of something very modern and of relevance today. Meanwhile, a friend's wife teaching at the Princeton Waldorf school (a system started by Steiner using what he regarded as "his own" theory of education) related some incidents that happened in the school. They were teaching many India/Hindu techniques but never acknowledging the source or any links at all with dharma. After I gave her some background and encouraged her to open the subject, she approached the head of school, but was told in direct words that "Hinduism could not be introduced into the curriculum or mentioned as a source" - even though Steiner himself was heavily influenced by dharma. ... one man who claimed to be "bridging" the east-west was a Steinerite. He was some senior official in an organization that researches and promotes Steiner's philosophy called anthropomorphism. He was speaking "on behalf of" hindu/buddhist thought - often these folks who are middlemen in the appropriation serve as proxies representing dharma in ways that are remarkably authentic if the audience is sophisticated. ... From their research output I discovered how very cleverly they were replacing all references to Sanskrit terms, dharmic paradigms, and turning this into "new western thought" by so-called pioneers like Steiner and many others, and/or "old western thought" that could combine Hellenistic (Greek) and Hebraic (Judeo-Christian) thinkers. Indian civ was being digested into the belly of the west. ... So even before coming to Maria Montessori's Indian influences, there is a whole history of how Indian education has become digested into the west. ... a group with centers across USA that has started spreading Sri Aurobindo's philosophy of education after removing Indian sources (or turning them into a small footnote of "minor influence"). .... Just in case you imagine that there is a support base for my work, you are sadly mistaken. 99% of the "support" offered is either a waste of precious time, or else it ends up being someone with self-serving agendas that only make things worse. Our tradition today simply lacks the mechanisms for consistent support for original research that has the potential for being a game changer. Its too much filled with politics, pettiness, short-term "whats in it for me"..." Venkata.. responds to bluecupid: "The word 'liberal' in the US context and perhaps in the European context too, seems to have taken a meaning of its own ... I have found many of them art Hindu-haters too... It is not clear ( at least to me) why persons in the West influenced by the four thought processes by Bluecupid below, should wish to take to Dharmic traditions. 1. Liberalism 2. Secularism 3. Feminism 4. The Sexual Revolution Perhaps if we go in to this phenomenon deeper we may come tofind why people get disappointed or take a U turn or become uncomfortable in the 'culture' but not in the philosophy of Indian society." Rajiv response: In Uturn I examine the psychological, political and social forces at work on these people. Many of them ran away from something in the west, rather than specifically towards dharma for positive reasons. When the fad appeal wore off they made uturns. But they got transformed by the journey, hence they had a need to digest what they had learnt into their own western framework. Gurus have failed to uproot the western fixations in order to clear the soil of its preconditions, and then plant the new knowledge. Buddhists do this re-conditioning more systematically, hence they have fewer uturns (although they have them as well). The process known as "conversion" is precisely to remove past conditioning and axioms, in order to properly plant new ones. Hindu gurus have been reluctant and even afraid to convert. So the new knowledge gets added without first cleaning the vessel from the old contaminants. This fails to be sustainable when the old/new civilizational assumptions are inherently incompatible as BD shows." bluecupid responds: "Rajiv and I deal with 2 different sets of "liberals". I'm not mixing it up with Christians or academics. The people I deal with are "liberal minded" non-academic folk who practice yoga or partake in one or many forms of Eastern traditions, often on a surface level but sometimes going deeper. They are nice, open-minded people who are not interested in joining any organized religious cult." Rajiv response: It is precisely these "nice and open minded" persons I did research on at dozens of yoga centers, meditation centers etc. Yes they are "nice", but within the safe boundaries of their comfort zone as "westerners". This zone assumes a sense of american exceptionalism. Try contesting "western Universalism" - they will continue being "nice" but will not call back even though they will show interest. You have a limited experience of american liberals, and that too untested by provoking the safety net. ...." December 20
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