Showing posts with label Difference Anxiety. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Difference Anxiety. Show all posts

Prevent Digestion and Distortion of Holi!

We thank Raj ji for this post that summarizes discussions on Holi from March and August 2013. Examples of how Holi festival of Hindus is being distorted and potentially ready to be digested either into some secular "festival of colors" or some Christian "Holy" day, etc. 



The discussion was initiated by a member who followed up with Desh from Houston who talked about the Holi celebration there: "I was one of the participants there. It was predominantly attended by Hindus.. It was a day of fun and colorful abandon!!

If the presence of a politician causes some surprise, so be it. Indians in Houston are now becoming more politically active especially with [] contesting for State Representative in the upcoming elections. She goes to work wearing "sindoor" in her "manage" every day and has a Ganesh ji locket around her neck always. And mind you, Pete (Olsen) is a strong supporter of all things Hindu and Indian; has been pro-India since the beginning of his political career."



Arun asks Desh: Why does our Holi celebration become an event of "digestion"?
I honestly fail to understand Desh ji's logic here. Can someone please explain?

Rajiv comment: I agree with Arun. The issue at hand is not about digestion, but about potential distortion. Digestion would be if (as in the case of yoga) mainstream Americans were appropriating Holi into some kind of festival claimed to be their own - as they did with Halloween. But the examples cited do not apply to American digestion of Holi, rather they concerned Indians in USA morphing their own symbols and festivals - i.e. difference anxiety from below.

Raj posts:
Digestion of Holi is happening at a rapid pace and it is now gone global. Please see this. The main "fun" aspect of Holi -throwing colors- got disconnected, secularized and now it has been digested.

In an earlier discussion on this topic of "Holi Digestion" (message 2343), it was about Americans participating in our celebration.... Now Americans have taken over. This Color Run was started by someone in Utah, where Holi celebration has been a big draw in recent years.
.... also starting this year [another example] ... The timing of this also coincides with when our local India Association usually organizes Holi - first or second weekend of April.

Babu: That celebration in Utah was done by ISCKON devotee and was done as per the Purana without any [digestion/distortion].... We will be doing the similar celebration in LA this summer. Holi similar to played by Bhagwan  Krishna in Golokdham is a traditional Vaishnav north India celebration.

Raj responds:
One more organization combining 5K races & Holi colors...  I have looked around and so far no organization has specified the ... Hindu culture as the source for this fun activity of throwing colors.

Easter & Mardi Gras - Digesting Holi
For many years our local India Association has celebrated Holi in April, as weather gets warmer. In the same event, they also have Easter egg hunts to make it more fun for children. With growing popularity of Holi, we can expect throwing colors to become part of "traditional" American Easter celebration along with the bunny & eggs which were digested from European pagans. Holi could get fully digested into Easter within this generation itself. ...our local ColorRun happened on April 6th, just after Easter (March 31st for 2013).

Holi colors are already directly associated with Mardi Gras now in New Orleans.

Rajiv comment: Mardi Gras is itself a digestion of pagan festival. The same predator is digesting everything else that it can eat up and turn into some exotic pop culture.

In another thread Shanti posts:
"I came across this article in the Sunday Times about Holi festival becoming a rage in Europe, being marketed as the 'Holi One'. I went to the HoliOne website to check. They acknowledge that they have been inspired by the Holi festival in India. But how long before it is called 'Holy One' ?

This also has to be looked at as another instance of digestion at the social level. It is a dangerous kind of 'digestion' as it is started by entrepreneurs with a seemingly innocuous money-making business purpose. Many would view it as harmless. Should we? "

From a recent facebook post by Raj:
"Yes, such false equivalence of similar sounding words, using folk etymology & fabricated folklore, are used to claim sameness of two vastly different systems - where one side has been a remorseless plunderer. You can easily spot the U-Turning 'liberal' when they claim "same knowledge/practice is available *everywhere*" while appropriating something that they clearly got only from India. Millions of heathens have sacrificed everything to preserve these cultural treasures, bravely facing centuries of slaughter & censure. But appropriators who don't know the history get offended if we barely raise an eyebrow. We are expected to just mutely watch. Only free speech we are allowed is politically correct silent sigh.

I have posted here before about digesting Holi. RM had predicted that it'll become part of Easter. Just like the Christmas tree. What's worse: some of the funds raised by these color runs could be getting funneled thru do-gooder 'charities' that are involved in heathen cultural genocide. To demonize us, foremost authority 'scholar' #WendyDoniger has written that our barbaric Hindoo ancestors used to throw blood on each other for Holi. If such shaming & censuring doesn't make the heathen give up, secularize, appropriate & christianize it: yoga, bharathanatiyam, holi etc




http://modgepodgefeminism.wordpress.com/.../is-color.../

http://the-exercist.tumblr.com/.../why-i-will-not-join...

http://browngirlmagazine.com/2013/04/color-run-controversy/

http://youarenotdesi.tumblr.com/.../for-nadya-i-read-your...


 

RMF Summary: Week of March 29 - April 4, 2013

March 29
Hindu Dharma and Homosexualiy
How does Dharma view homosexuality, transgender issues? what would be a dharmik stand on these LGBT right movements?...

Vishal shares a link on this topic: "Homosexuality and Hinduism, Arvind Sharma.pdf".

alak shares a link:
Hinduism is one of the most liberal belief systems when it comes to the treatment of Homosexuality.

Check this pdf for more details

People have considered Homosexuality to be a western import but that is not the case. Indians did not harbour prejudice against the notion till they were brought into a Christian education systems imparting Anglo-Saxon values.

April 1
US president Barack Obama throws weight behind yoga
Ganesh shares: The White house has wholeheartedly embraced Yoga as a worthy physical activity at a time some schools in America are railing against the ancient Indian practice, saying it promotes Hinduism.

Though this may sound great news at a time when a Vatican exorcist Fr Gabriele Amorth called yoga "evil", as has been discussed, yoga, thanks to over-zealous, self styled yoga promoting Hindu guru's in their quest for commercial benefits have ensured making yoga just a physical activity (As has been discussed quite a few times in this group). And this statement by US President Barrack Obama in support of yoga is only going to see more such over-zealous Hindu guru's selling yoga using sameness theory, furthering the process of digestion...


We will cover this thread below in a separate post.
April 1
Is Mr. Devdutt Pattanaik plagiarizing Rajiv Malhotra's Work???
Namaste, I came across Devdutt Pattanaik'

s speech on YouTube on "Why the West sees India as Chaos?". The ideas he is talking about are striking similar to ...

April 4
Musician John Cage and the Indian connection
Subra shares a link: ...One remarkable aspect of Cage's music, derived from his close study of Indian traditions, was the notion of "disinterestedness" — which is not to be confused with "indifference."
... By the 1950s, however, Cage had started to drift away from the Indian spiritual traditions as he became more deeply immersed in the work of D. T. Suzuki....

Wikipedia notes:
"..Through his studies of Indian philosophy and Zen Buddhism in the late 1940s, Cage came to the idea of aleatoric or chance-controlled music, which he started
composing in 1951"

"...Cage accepted the goal of music as explained to him by [Gita] Sarabhai: "to sober and quiet the mind, thus rendering it susceptible to divine influences"...."

this was a link in a newer article that talks of 'Eastern Philosophy':  The Science of How Your Mind-Wandering Is Robbing You of Happiness



April 4
Lotus Bank in Detroit: A Case Study in Difference Anxiety?
Karthik shares: ".. I came across this rather shocking story in the news. A bank called Lotus Bank in Detroit, founded by Indian Americans, with mostly Indian-Americans on its board of directors and mostly Indian-American customers, is being sued for civil rights violations by two of its Indian-American customers.

Reason? The extreme racism with which three of the bank's white employees have treated Indian-Americans.

The outcome is that none of the three white employees accused of racial discrimination against Indians have been sacked. And that's where I believe the Difference Anxiety comes in. I would love to hear more about this from anyone in the Detroit area, or who happens to be familiar with Lotus Bank. It would also be great to hear exactly why the bank's Indian-American directors have chosen this path of forgiveness.... 


RMF Summary: Week of April 9 - 15, 2012

April 9
Should we offer 'mutual respect' to a 'bad' ideology
Analogy: Suppose we offer a million dollars to some bad person, on the condition that he must kill himself. A naive criticism would be that we are giving money to a bad person. But a proper understanding would be different: In order to claim the money, he has to first kill himself, and then the dead person is simply unable to make any claim. So its a good offer to make.

Similarly, the mutual caveat in 'mutual respect' must be understood properly. If accepted by the other side, it forces the demise of the exclusivity clause of that ideology - because the exclusivity clause compels them to regard all others as false religions and not worthy of respect. There is a domino effect if they accept the offer - without exclusivity the entire logic falls apart. So we are not 'giving away' respect to someone who does not deserve it. We are forcing their demise if they accept it, and we are forcing them to admit their arrogance if they cannot accept it.

For many years, I have been asked in numerous talks: Why would you respect bin laden, hitler, etc? My answer in talks and writings has been consistent: Because such a person cannot respect others, he will not get our respect; the respect being offered demands reciprocity. It is not unconditional respect. The word 'mutual' is not extraneous; it makes all the difference.

It was Swami Dayananda Saraswati's stoke of genius to offer Cardinal Ratzinger (the present Pope Benedictine) 'mutual respect' instead of 'tolerance' in the UN Millennium Summit of 2000. BD's chapter 1 explains what happened as a result. It gave swamiji the moral high ground and put the Vatican in a corner. It exposed their hypocrisy....

My reason for this post is that despite many attempts to explain this point as a strategic ploy, I sometimes get 'critiques' sent to me by those who just dont get it.....

Anil responds:
"Actually I used to think about Mutual Respect as Rajiv ji puts it but found it does not work in reality - the [evangelist] missionary respects the other pluralistic view but he expects respect for his view to convert that view in the same mutual understanding - so he says he respects the Hindu universality and its need not to convert anyone but please respect mine to convert you. This is Mutual Respect."

Rajiv comments on the under-preparedness of the average debating Hindu and the tendency to underestimate the opponent's skill level:
Mutual respect has to be explained deeper than mere talk. Such an evangelist posture is disrespect camouflaged as respect, just to fool Hindus who are unable to debate. I love taking on such persons in debate. Hindu leaders who cant do this run away, which has not helped, as it shows fear to the youth.

Once you open the debate on mutual respect, be prepared to take it all the way into history centrism and its nasty implications. Be prepared to take that further into synthetic unity and the history of the West in that way of seeing things, and so forth. In other words, dont start a debate you have not had enough experience engaging in at many levels; otherwise you will deplete your arguments quickly and then make a fool of yourself. 99% of the Hindus involved in public representation are unschooled and inadequately read in the subject. They want quick visibility but are unqualified.


 Pradip shares an experience in the U.S:
"... we rented a church auditorium for celebration.The next week many church members came to know that we had moorties of our deities during the celebration there,
were totally displeased, and decided not to rent the lace to us again.Thus unhappy, the church had a long talk over it with our organizer... [she was] saying to them that all
gods are equal, so she couldn't comprehend the  unhappiness of the church members.The church leader told her if she believed all gods are same, then, she should convert to christianity and join his church.She was flummoxed. ...

Rajiv comment: "If all gods are same, then you must convert to christianity": This is simply an illogical conclusion. Never fear such fools - just call out
their foolishness.

btw: I dont agree that all deities are the same - they refer to distinct intelligences that comprise the Supreme Being. Sort of like departments of a complex entity, though this analogy is reductionist. Each does give access to the entirety, so they are not isolated, separated; but they are distinct accesses points. The notion of ishta-devata is wonderful, giving you "equal value" with "distinct access"."



Sreekumar adds:
""Ekam sat vipra bahudavadanti". Different people approach or access the absolute (Ekam, not one but absolute), differently. As you wrote, there are different
access points.

Rajiv comment: There are different access points but not all of them lead to the same place. Contrary to the popular saying, not all rivers lead to the ocean: some rivers end up in the Dead Sea.

But I can still respect the other person (who is heading towards the dead sea) despite knowing that his ideology is misleading him - as long as it is his private life only, and does not effect me."

anon asks:
"I often wonder how debate might be useful when engaging with individuals who are clearly deficient in rationality?

In this particular case it seems like a classic case of as rajiv pointed out -- "foolishness" plain and simple. Would a meaningful dialog be possible in such a case?

It would be more beneficial for communities to rally, raise funds and build establishments of reasonable sizes (proportional to size of funds raised)?...."

Rajiv comment: These are not mutually exclusive activities. Both are needed because the pursuit of one does not exempt you from addressing the other. ... given our dharma's sociopolitical condition today .... we cannot run away from all other people. We cannot refuse to work with others in our professions and isolate our kids from others' influence (unless you want to join the Amish community). So the issue of how to engage others in mainstream forums (schools, universities, media talk shows, public policy forums, etc.) does not go away. .....Bottom line: The above is an emotional, not rational approach, hence not practical. It WILL get you a big applause at the next gathering of Hindu activists." 

Sameer asks:
"Consider an ideology which you regard as wrong and misguided, but which does "respect" your own ideology.

Can you "respect" that other ideology? If you freely express your belief that they are wrong, would you still be respecting them?

Rajiv comment: This is a great question: Can I have mutual respect for someone who I know to be wrong? Is the other person's 'knowledge of truth' a necessary condition for him to be respected?

First of all, our ancestors practiced purva paksha even with opponents who they knew to be wrong. If they had refused to engage in respectful debate with those they considered ideologically flawed, there would not have been any debates at all. They would have been of the same caliber as the tribal warriors of the Middle East desert. Respectful debate does not mean I must agree with you. I can
argue against you, and yet we can respect each other for having different worldviews. Respecting the other does NOT mean I accept his faith for myself. I practice my faith without imposing upon him and he must practice his faith while respecting me.

Secondly, lets separate PRIVATE belief in ideology from PUBLIC conduct. Whatever private ideology you subscribe to, I can still respect you and your right to
hold that ideology. It is your own private life ... Reciprocity means that you do not attempt to interfere with my private ideology, hence you cannot try to convert me.

My attack is on those with exclusivity claims. I cannot be guilty of having my own ideological exclusivity claims which all others must accept in order to deserve my respect." 

Koti comments:
"Good analogy. Pope can not respect Hinduism and remain a Pope. That is blasphemy. Swami Dayananda can respect Christianity and can still not violate Hinduism. Pope can only respect Swami as individual and with hope that he will embrace (not just respect) Christianity and reject Hinduism." 

April 9
Exclusivism eloquently demonstrated in 5 minutes
Surya posts: Exclusivism eloquently demonstrated in 5 minutes. David Platt on Universalism, Rob Bell, Love Wins, Heaven and Hell  (youtube video)


April 10 
Re: in India Greek philosophers
Surya responds to an earlier post from last week:... Maria Wirth wrote: " ... interview with the Woodstock School Principal Dr. Long about education in the Pioneer. He talks about the philosophical...

Thanks for bringing up this important issue to the forum.  I will proceed with one very reasonable assumption that Long is a Christian.

I will start with a discussion of the method argumentation required here.

Recently, when I went to buy a car, the eager dealer walked me through the aisles to show his large inventory.  He paused for a moment next to two cars and asked, "Which do you want to buy?  The red car? Or the blue car?"

As a smart buyer, I may say neither and dodge being forced into buying one of those two cars. As a smarter buyer, I would say that this is not an EITHER-OR situation.  A car is a bundle of features.  I do not have to pick between two bundles posed to me.  If I am smart, I can put together the right bundle that suits me.

Someone asked me recently whether I am a Conservative or a Liberal.   I explained that this is a poorly posed choice.  What if I am a financial conservative but a social liberal?  Why do you  have to bundle everything conservative into one artificial bundle and everything liberal into another artificial bundle and then force the issue on me as an "either or" situation?

Understanding this argument is very important if we have to stop artificially bundled concepts being imported into India under the guise of religion and bring along culturally subversive behaviors and attitudes into the country that way.  Suddenly, these culturally subversive ideas are legitimized by bundling.

To strike down all philosophical thought of Indian origin blindly and trying to supplant it with Western philosophical thought just because it came artificially bundled with Christianity is anti -cultural, and anti-national behavior.  The above argument offered by a Christian teacher in India,  quoted above, is exactly that: anti-cultural and anti-national.  You are forcing Indians to denounce Indians ideas or things and replace them with Western ideas or things just because they come bundled with Christianity.

Following Christianity in India does not have to mean that you jettison everything Indian and replace it with what comes bundled with Christianity imported from West.  If it meant that, then Christianity is anti-cultural and anti-national.

Now, the alert BD reader quickly raises an objection that this argument will lead to encouraging inculturation. 

Indeed.  We need to consider both arguments together.

The well-laid argument then is a two-sided coin.  Essence of this coin is "DO NOT make artificial or synthetic bundles".

Artificial bundling is disingenuous.  It can slip into culturally subversive attitudes and behaviors.  Artificial bundling is synthetic unity.

....In a recent article on this forum, Ram wrote that Christianity should be stripped down to its own contributions.  He is right on.   He is saying NO to synthetic bundles. "

April 10
A stellar example of Western Universalism
Dear all, I've been familiar with the writings of Lawrence Auster (a Conservative traditionalist Catholic) for quite some time. He is an extremely erudite and...

April 10
NY Times - Digesting Yoga into Islam  
Nikudi posts: Here is an article from today's NY Times about Yoga and Islam. Yoga's Hindu roots are being clearly stripped out in order to make it "acceptable" to Muslims. The Imam who advocates such approach clearly says that if the Sanskrit benedictions are left out, Yoga can be more appealing to Muslims...."

Bhattacharya posts:
"Aside from its content, the tone of the article is notable for promoting digestion. Read this passage, invoking an undefined 'American conception' of yoga:

"For many immersed in a culture where vinyasa yoga is more readily associated with a New York Sports Club than a Hindu temple, the origin matters little. And for some of the devout living here, the American conception has overridden the beliefs with which they were raised."

.... reminded me of an older NYTimes article, in which Yoga digestion was discussed in a similar, matter-of-fact manner, almost a 'how-to guide' for Yoga digestion.
I reproduce the earlier article below. It's rife with disturbing examples of Yoga digestion, but pay special attention to the writer's tone. And look for the section describing how Shal-OM replaces Om, very similar to the line I quoted from the more recent piece. Oddly, it seems NYTimes likes to print this type of article every few months or so:
....  " TO 'om' or not to 'om': For those who teach yoga in schools, that is a question that arises with regularity.The little syllable, often intoned by yoga students at the beginning and end of class, signifies different things to different people. But with its spiritual connotations, it is a potential tripwire for school administrators and parents, along with 'namaste' and other Sanskrit words, chanting and hands in the prayer position...." 

Ravi: Of the many comments this article has (111 & counting), one stood out for me as a classic example of Western/abrahaimc Universalist exclusivist
attitude:

"...As an observant Jew I am not comfortable performing sun salutations or invoking the names of Hindu deities any more than I would kneel in a church. But take out the references to hinduism & I can participate.

Religion isn't a buffet table for people to sample. For many people of faith seemingly innocuous practices from other cultures do conflict with their beliefs. I applaud the yoga instructors in this article for finding ways to
accommodate their students. "

So it appears that Religion" is'nt a buffet table, meaning Abrahamic ones, but "cultures" are, so that the item called "yoga" can be evaluated by itself, &
reshaped willy nilly....

Renu: The problem is that majority of us Hindus were brought up with the idea of sharing knowledge freely as that keeps it going and getting better. It is in recent years of Patent and copyright laws, that are causing a lot of
distress; these ignorant persons are super hungry to own and make money; want to own even trees, plants and things given by Bhagavaan. So there has to be a way to stop thru an international law any such digestion. ....what we need is a mass movement towards an understanding among majority of people that they need to take their lives in their own hands not leave to Churches who go around converting and Jihaading in the name of god/allah or what ever.

Pradip: The comment section following the article has several interesting comments. one that I liked is: "yoga, when practised regularly, will eventually make you revolt against monotheist intolerance, and thus endanger
your religion. buyers beware."

Poonam: Personally, after supporting that yoga is for everyone & not just Hindus, & that it has nothing to do with Hinduism, I have, as I grew older, & more knowledgable & wiser, have come to understand that Yoga IS A FORM OF HINDU WORSHIP. It is the process of preparing the body, the consciousness & the Atma of a Hindu to move on to the path of Nirvan/Moksh/or returning to Parabrahm. How can anyone do the yoga without the Sanskrit chants? each chant of the Yog is designed to generate the vibes & sounds that The chanting of the word jesus or mohammad or yaweh or allah does not produce the same effect. The chants practiced in Yoga are different from those that are used in the pooja
pranali & practice. The vibrations & the effects of the different sounds is a "scientifically measurable" entity. The moden day scientists are committing piracy by not testing it & then cutting it off from the roots.

Rajiv comment: Please read in BD my critique of Baba Ramdev for his stand that Aum can be replaced by Allah, Amen, etc. BD has a lot on the non-translatability
of mantras as vibrations, each with a distinct effect beyond its mental/conceptual meaning.

Virender: Instead of complaining that others are taking over YOGA, How many of us have taken concrete steps to claim that YOGA is Hindu spiritual and physical practice ? How many of us educated our Kids, friends or made public efforts to let world know YOGA is ours. It remind me of my mother who used to say it's the weak who complain not the strong ones. Let's be "Khstryias" and
start campaigns worldwide [ Does't matter how small or where] to educate the world of Hindu assets including Yoga. Otherwise lets thanks west/Muslim for making Yoga popular on world platform.

Krishna: Asanas can be considered as exercises. yoga can be taken as breathing exercise. As long as  physically,emotionally and mentally if yoga
helps one irrespective of religion can freely practice it. When Muslims have so much of resistance to use Sanskrit words,I don't know how so many Hindus and
particularly Bollywood people use the word Inshallah so frequently. Is it for fashion or they mean God or Bhagwan in general or do they actually mean Allah.

bluecupid shares:
Originally from Mumbai, this Muslim-Canadian yoga teacher writes her perspective on Yoga, Islam and identity;

April 11

Digestion of Vedic mantras
Gross misappropriation and digestion of vedic mantras http://www.churchofindia.org/maniiyer.htm...


April 11
The Intolerance of Tolerance
Surya posts: In his article on Huffington post titled "Tolerance Isn't Good Enough: The Need for Mutual Respect In Interfaith Relations", Rajivji wrote: Begin Quote: .....
In BD, Rajivji explains how the notion of tolerance is not free of intolerance and why it should  pave way for mutual respect.  

There are others who say the same thing with the opposite intent.  There are cases where some come out and admit that they cannot even stand tolerance.  Their intolerance is so steeped that they find tolerance itself intolerable.  

See the video below: (would like to see good responses to this video)

April 12
Arjunshakti responds:
"...These indians still live in the british raj even if they are getting knighted in some cheap beach in malta"

Rajiv comment: I know other Indians in New Jersey who are bloating over being "knighted by Malta" or some other Church subsidiary with a dark history. The new "knights" now are a bunch of brown dunces who want to buy (with newly made money) a seat at the white man's table. Its that simple, an inferiority complex. The Indian media, pop culture and elite circles in the metros are glamorizing
this. Thats the trend."

Surya: The West has for long mastered the value of soft power. The East has for long fallen for it. The use of gun salute to indicate relative power and respect during the colonial rule in India is a well known tactic. Rulers competed with each by offering favors and ceding powers to get more guns to salute them.  Difference anxiety from below (explained in BD, pages 25-36) is formalized and
entrenched in the society with this tactic; all rulers tacitly conceded that the 101 gun salute to the British Emperor makes the Emperor far superior to them since they were entitled to the 21 or fewer gun salute.

Knighthood conferred is similar. Similarity is that the one conferring the "status" is offering a valueless trinket or token in return for taking something valuable at the expense of the one conferred with the "status"..."


Karthik adds:
"The thing to recognize is that Western soft power is completely dependent on the global acceptance of Western universalism as a foundation. This is why Rajiv (and the rest of us) will face massive opposition in our task of challenging Western universalism: the effect is to knock over the pedestal and undermine the entire edifice of Western soft power. This represents a much deeper threat to Western hegemony, at all levels, than simply opposing missionary activity etc...."

April 13
UTurn prevention: Is there a Hindu equivalent of baptism?
Saxena asks: 
Just finished watching the Pondy event vids.

It would be interesting to find out from the German U-turner (and others) what their course of action would have been if the Aurobindo Ashram (and other dharmic traditional schools) required their equivalent of baptism in order to allow her to participate in their social life the way the church does.....

Rajiv comment: The strategy in BD is to use difference to create the desired effect. Example: Negate things like Nicene Creed without which they cannot be Christian - the German lady confirms when I ask her whether she believes in Nicene Creed. Using difference, undermine that which allows the DNA of the predator to function. For yoga based organizations like Sri Aurobindo, this
means explaining that history centrism is a grand nama-rupa which blocks progress in yoga. So Nicene Creed as nama-rupa runs counter to the teachings of
Sri A. This would achieve your goal to renounce "everything that goes contrary". Use chapter 2 to show that history centrism runs counter to Sri A's Integral
Yoga. Then show that Nicene Creed is the worst kind of history centrism. This forces the choice between mutually contradictory ideological positions. Gurus must learn this when teaching westerners.
 

April 14
Virginia Tech & Oikos University Massacres: Difference Anxiety the Root Cause?
Subra shares a blog post:
"An examination of the April 2007 Virginia Tech massacre and the April 2012 Oikos university shootings shows disturbing commonalities that suggest a probable root
cause of 'Difference Anxiety' ...

... Chapter 1: "Difference: Anxiety or Mutual Respect" that among other things, notes that rather than ignoring or trying to erase differences, they must be recognized and
respected.

The above two examples indicate that failing to respect differences can result in DA that may not be effectively manageable via prescription medication or "just praying", and can in the worst case, lead to violent problems in the
society."
 

April 14
Western digestion of ideas and philosophy.
Chocka asks: Is this one form of 'digestion'?
 
Rajiv comment: I would say so. He translates and maps many nontranslatables into common words in english. This means we no longer need to refer to Brahma, Vishnu, Maya, etc as these are replaced by simple ideas in popular culture. This type of writing and speaking is fashionable now and the trend is getting worse.

If you critique this, they will come back with arguments like: truth is one; ultimate reality is one; etc. This is false logic I have critiqued many times - I call it Moron Smriti. It is an App that has been downloaded to nearly all Indians.

RMF Summary: Week of January 2 - 8, 2012

January 2
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:
Even within the Abrahamic religions, there is one voice who says to one specific prophet "I am Yahweh, the only one, and here are my covenants..." Another voice at a different time says to a different prophet, "I am Theo... and here is my command..." Nobody has proven that based on this evidence Yahwek = Theo. The list of such voices with distinct names speaking to their corresponding prophets is very long. This gets more complex when supposedly the "same" God re-appears as Allah and that too not directly but via the archangel Gabriel who speaks to Mohammed. It is humans who CONSTRUCTED ideas like monotheism because for control over large numbers of peoples it was effective to impose One Book by One God and all others had to be demonized.
If you assume that all the invisible speakers calling themselves by various names were indeed the same fellow, a clinical analysis of what he said over time would show him to be schizophrenic. He is full of contradictions. Among his various personalities he is also sexist, racist, jealous, angry, and advocates genocide...."
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" 
 

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











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
From Prof. Shiv Bajpai -on my response to Indian academic at Vedanta
NamaskarRajiva ji: Your response to an Indian academic is the correct one. [I.e. response when the academician asked what "methodology" of social sciences is ...

January 2
Difference Anxiety in Indian youth
Ramanathan posts:
An example of Difference Anxiety can be seen within the Indian context itself, when we see how the (westernized) younger generation distances itself from the customs and traditions of their parents. It is important to them that they find their chosen deviations as being normal, and they do not recognize/admit the “difference anxiety from below” that is in fact compelling them; and in order to achieve this, they resort naturally to the strategy of “difference from above”, typically in the form of isolation and inculturation....

Kundan's response:
Due to the lack of inner sciences and suppression of mysticism (first by Church and then by western science, as explained in BD) the western world has never really transcended thought and perspectives that operate in strict dualities or dichotomies. BD explains why one encounters various dualistic conflicts in the west like faith/reason (during the supremacy of the Church) or reason/faith, emotion/reason, etc.

If one critically inquires, then saying that or holding that REASON IS THE PANACEA OF ALL INSIGHTS AND KNOWLEDGE is actually a matter of FAITH. One then is able to see that reason and faith are not two distinct categories but are two sides of the same coin or as the Buddhists will say that it is only avidya which makes us see reason and faith as two independent entities. In reality they are two sides of the same coin and are interdependent--this is the principle of "pratitya samutpada" or dependent co-origination. Once the fallacy of this dichotomy is seen, the proponents of the inner sciences will recommend that the ultimate reality cannot be captured in dual and dichotomous thought--it is something beyond the dual categories which one needs to pursue.

Given the lack of inner sciences, the west has swayed from one extreme to another, which has manifested in various intellectual movements beginning with Church and Renaissance. You had similar conflict between Science and Romanticism, and then later in the United States between the mainstream and the hippies.

One of the other important dichotomous conflicts that has been prevalent in the West is between modernity and tradition--conflict between modernity and tradition is actually an important characteristic of modernism or Enlightenment. Modernism, therefore in the west also has been instrumental in effacing tradition. The westernized Indians, because of their uncritical acceptance of everything coming from the west as superior--as a manifestation of "Difference Anxiety from Below"--have internalized this modernity vs tradition conflict. You will therefore find that more western the Indians in their outlook, the more critical they are of the tradition. The hatred of the westernized Indians towards their "own" tradition actually comes from two sources: the internalization of the inferiority of Indians which the west in explicit and implicit ways has discoursed over a substantial period of time now, and the hatred of tradition that modernity carries within itself. It is a double whammy for the Indian traditions at the hands of their so called own. "

January 2
Re-clarifying what BD is and what it is NOT
1. Each of its 6 chapters is like a mini book with a stand-alone thesis. In fact, there could have been separate books as my publisher first wanted them to be,...

January 2
Interfaith Dialogue: why "Don't want any. Go Away" won't work
Below is response (on Rajiv's HuffPost blog for the BD book) to the typical reflexive Hindu posture on interfaith dialogues, i.e. "Don't want any. Go Away". ...

January 4
Anglosphere (the west's other stomach) and the Digestion of Indian C
Rajiv posts:
People tend to limit their thinking about the West to Christianity. But the West has multiple stomachs for digestion - I go into details in my forthcoming book. One such digestive mechanism of the west is known as Anglosphere. ...
 The wiki page for anglosphere defines the term as follows:

Anglosphere is a neologism which refers to those nations with English as the most common language. The term can be used more specifically to refer to those nations which share certain characteristics within their cultures based on a linguistic heritage, through being former British colonies. In particular this includes the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada (except Quebec), Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Ireland. [i.e. the white English speakers come at the top of the hierarchy...]
The U.S. businessman James C. Bennett, a proponent of the idea that there is something special about the cultural and legal traditions of English-speaking nations, writes in his 2004 book The Anglosphere Challenge:
"The Anglosphere, as a network civilization without a corresponding political form, has necessarily imprecise boundaries. Geographically, the densest nodes of the Anglosphere are found in the United States and the United Kingdom. English-speaking Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and English-speaking South Africa (who constitute a very small minority in that country) are also significant populations. The English-speaking Caribbean, English-speaking Oceania, and the English-speaking educated populations in Africa and India constitute other important nodes."
Andrew Roberts (http://www.andrew-roberts.net/) contends that anglophone unity is necessary for the defeat of Islamism.
The arrival of this syndrome into India is the topic of a book titled, "Masks of Conquest" by the Marxist/ feminist /subalternist Gauri Vishwanathan. I had some interaction with her at Columbia U in the 1990s....
The irony is that these very postcolonialists are proud citizens of the Anglosphere, unable to accept my thesis that it is just another stomach of the very same eurocentrism they criticize. This stomach includes many secular transformations such as literary works, fashions, aesthetics, international awards as legitimizers, white skin creams, white body language, etc."

Viswa responds:
"Differences per se are not a virtue. Understanding the differences and defending those that are virtuous are worthwhile goals. After all, death of what is
virtuous is a loss to all - both to those that know & understand them and also to those that don't know and/or understand."

Rajiv: 
"Agreed. We need more books that argue whats "virtuous" and what's "bad" about a given item of difference. Thats a value judgment and an assessment. I hope people will write their assessments. For example: Indians' comfort with "chaos" (the subject of chapter 4) is not always good, as it leads to laziness, sloppiness, "anything goes" mindset, irresponsibility. In BD I take a stand in chapter 2 about history centrism as a point of difference - showing my strong preference for the embodied knowing alternative..." 
 

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
Database helped thwart UK digestion of Indian medical know how
Database helped thwart UK patent bid. TNN | Jan 4, 2012, 05.28AM IST NEW DELHI: Countering the patent claims of British pharmaceutical company on using ginger...

January 5
Non-translatables
The German word used for science "Wissenschaften", is richer than the English word science; and is closer to the Indian "shastra". Quote: "The German...

January 5

Announcing: Hindu Good News
HINDU GOOD NEWS™ The world is in a time of transition. Globalization, increasing movement of people across national boundaries,...


January 6

Breaking India - Book Function in Chennai
http://newstodaynet.com/newsindex.php?id=27979%20&%20section=15...

January 6

Interesting compilation of many of my writngs
Thanks to Sunthar for compiling so many of my writings over the years, incl some I had lost...

January 7
Some thoughts on where things stand as I depart to India...
1) Egroup: I might not be able to actively manage this egroup for the next 5 weeks but will try to do my best from time to time when I get a chance. There are...
 

RMF Summary: Week of December 16 - 22, 2012

This first thread is quite an important one with lots of insightful discussions where contributors debate Rajiv ji, and in turn, respond to his followups. Please read the original thread in its entirety, given the nuances in this delicate debate. The thread starts of a video discussion of Hindu identity in the west (USA), where the students ask some frank questions that has resulted in some deep Q&A in this post.
 
December 16 (New Thread)
Important video: My debate/panel with Hindu American youth on identi

This is an important video to watch. I am glad the lady representing Brahma Kumaris preached the standard "sameness" ....

Thakare responds:
"...  1.) The concepts of Brahmakumari are the core of "vyashti sadhana". Sadhana done for personal spiritual upliftment.
2.) Mr. Malhotra's form of sadhana currently is "samashti sadhana". Sadhana done for society at large.
3.) One cannot do samashti sadhana if one is weak in vyashti sadhana. ...

Even Mr. Malhotra explains to the BK lady that what she is talking about is general vyashti sadhana (who am I, peace etc) but the need of the hour is to fight adharma through samashti sadhana. Hindus are ignorant about their own identity thus are confused about the term sadhana itself. Do NOT be egoistic but be firm."


Rajiv comment: 
"I have no problem with such organizations that pursue self-realization of the individual through strictly the inner journey, what I call adhyatma-vidya. In fact I have great respect for the true sannyasi.

But then why do many of them send representatives to speak at a panel on youth identity? Why do such gurus and their followers go to educate students and householders in a manner that is inappropriate for those stages of life. Why are they confused in their own minds about the difference between dharma for different varnas and different ashramas. They live (or claim to live) as sannyasins (stage of life) and brahmins (varna). But 99% of those they teach are not in this category. So its medicine meant for themselves as individuals which they are distributing to the general public.

I ask many of them embarrassing questions like: Why are you raising funds for your organization, working so hard to expand more centers and get more followers, etc. if your pursuit is for your own self realization?

My point is that there is massive hypocrisy. What is lived is not what is being taught in most cases. The teaching is like an iPod reciting mechanically the words that create some lofty impression. The harm caused is that this confuses the general public who revere such guru movements as their supreme authority. Notice how confused the students start out in the panel. Their parents and most lay Hindus are likewise. Where did this come from, and who is accountable for this?

The buck stops at the doorstep of the gurus. They need to be re-educated for modern times."


Narendra comments:
"One cannot be both a Dharma guru and a moksha guru. They are incompatible. One requires complete renunciation and the other renunciation of selfishness only. This is probably why Sanyasis were separated from Grahastas. Sanayasis are not meant to talk/advise about  life they have not experienced. As Prof Kundan in Florida discussion mentioned, we need to develop a dharmic ego/identity  (integration of ego/soul) before striving for Moksha or go straight to mountains and not interfere with dharma process. I have two gurus. A 'Mokha Guru' (self- realized?) who initiated me with a 'Moksha mantra" which  I chant only during my meditation. I have a dhrama guru or a mentor. I  chant 'Dharma mantra' such as 'love, courage,patience etc...' most of the free time to create a stable ego and motivate me in dharma. .."

NV responds:
"In my limited experience, I have found that jivanmuktas do not ask one to give up one's dharma in life. In fact they make one stronger to deal with life. It is wrong to think that moksha and dharma are at loggerheads. Nobody is going to attain any moksha by giving up his/her commitments and responsibilities in life. The sadhus do renounce married life among other things. But I have seen them delve into the problems of householders and guide them in their worldly destinies. As Rajivji pointed out very eloquently in one of his videos (the one with the Brahmakumari), most of us are not going to attain moksha in the near future and it is our duty to protect  Hindu dharma so that it exists to help us in our future lives!.."

Ashay has a detailed post that Rajiv notes as important and responds to:
"This debate is interesting because it gets at the core of what is called neo-Hinduism. I am also alluding here to the recent post where Rajiv mentioned that the attacks on BD by Rambachan and so on, parallel the attacks on Vivekananda. I approach this issue with mixed feelings for while I do support Rajiv's cause, I think Vivekananda as the architect of neo-Hinduism is atleast
partially responsible for the confusion caused by the 'guru movements'. Let me explain how.

1. I think the BK lady articulated what has now become the grand narrative of modern Hinduism. Its origin lies in the so-called Schopenhauerian ethic which has influenced many Vedantic scholars, including Vivekananda. In the 'Philosophy
of the Upanisads', Deussen, one of Schopenhauer's disciples, remarks along these lines: "The Bible teaches that we must love our neighbour. But why should we? Because, the Upanisads say, your neighbour is your own self."...

2. This has now become also the position of Vedanta. The Christian critique of Vedanta is that it is too selfish in that one strives for one's own self-realization and does not care about the world. Intellectuals such as Vivekananda used the Schopenhauerian ethic to address this problem. To be Brahman means to realize that everything including oneself is Brahman and thus to serve the world as Brahman. From the former realization proceeds the latter action. What the BK lady said and what thakare_parvata has elaborated is the same thing. This has unfortunately become the modern self-understanding of Hinduism....

3. Based on my reading of Vivekananda's speeches, I think that he not only endorsed but was probably one of the authors of this narrative. Furthermore, he (or his followers) have wrongly claimed this view to be that of Sankara which I
have attempted to differentiate below. I do realize that many people on this forum have the utmost reverence for Vivekananda and so I would like to clarify that my intention is neither to give offence nor to show disrespect. Neither is
my distinction between Vivekananda and Sankara's ideas based on the same reason as Rambachan's who takes issue with Vivekananda's privileging of mystical experience over scriptural authority...

4. I completely agree with and appreciate Rajiv's efforts to formulate a distinctive laukika Hindu identity instead of this warm and fuzzy spiritualism that dominates Hindu thought today. In this endeavour it would be useful to understand how Sankara's views differ from Vivekananda's. In the Adhyasa-bhashya, Sankara has distinguished between pramana-prameya-vyavahara which is the pre-reflective fight-or-flight kind of responses common to all living creatures including humans, and a reflective, identity-based sastriya-vyavahara which is specific to humans...

5. Of course, Sankara was categorical that jnana is superior to karma and moksa is realized only through jnana. Sastriya-vyavahara, based as it is on worldly identities, is also a form of avidya but that does not mean, as Arjuna found out
in the Gita, that everyone is eligible for jnana. Every living being automatically undertakes the path of karma but only a privileged few can tread the path of jnana. Sankara explains in the Gita-bhasya that the pravrtti-dharma assigned to varnas and asramas is relatively inferior and meant for worldly and
heavenly prosperity only, but when it is selflessly performed, it leads to sattva-shuddhi. This sattva-shuddhi makes one eligible for nivrtti dharma, i.e., the path of jnana leading to moksa. This serial ordering of pravrtti and nivrtti
is relevant even today, only the pravrtti-dharma that addressed varna and asrama identities in the traditional world needs reinterpretation and readjustment to address a Hindu identity for the modern world. I regard the BD as part of the sastric efforts to construct an identity relevant for our times.

6. On the other hand, Vivekananda, and many other modern Hindu intellectuals including the BK lady, see nivritti as the basis for an ethical pravrtti. This is following the Christian model where God's will is seen as the basis of worldly ethics. All that the modern Hindus did was to replace God's will with
nivrtti and claimed, following Deussen and such-like, that it is a more appropriate basis for morality and therefore superior to Western religions. But this has only Christianized us and made us more susceptible to digestion. In Sankara's model this order is reversed. Pravrtti has its basis in the sastras and not in nivrtti. In our case that means we must first have a sastric, i.e., a worldly understanding of a Hindu identity that is reflective and scholarly, and selflessly profess this meaning in everyday life. This way we attain sattva-shuddhi and then, and only then, do we become eligible to make the idealistic claim that Hindu identity is only another form of ignorance and move
beyond it to realize ourselves as the soul or whatever else.

7. Just as colonialism encouraged certain interpretations of varna/jati, so did it encourage an understanding of religion as selfless service to humanity based on a non-denominational, divine self-realization, and a corresponding disregard towards the intellectual interpretation of tradition. Vivekananda was as much a victim of this shift for he dismissed, as did Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, the argumentative aspect of Vedanta as 'intellectual gymnastics'. Such thinking has
caused great harm to the tradition and has produced the current crop of anti-intellectual gurus and matas. But there is nothing hypocritical about them performing the activities Rajiv mentions. When you take their model of religion into consideration, as explained above, it makes perfect sense. So my answer to Rajiv's question regaring the current confusion among Hindus, 'where did this come from, and who is accountable for this?' would be not the gurus but this
anti-intellectual paradigm that they follow....

Rajiv's response: 
First I agree with Ashay that SV co-founded modern Hinduism, which its critics call neo-Hinduism. This had many good and bad things in it. Sameness was one of its curses that we live with today. This was due to SV and others having difference anxiety from below. But it also did many good things - unifying various diverse schools, modernizing it in line with new science and other developments, which is not anything wrong and our tradition calls for this evolution. ...NOTE; BD unifies dharmas without also including Abrahamic religions in the same fold. This is where the pioneers failed last time around. In unifying Hinduism the arguments became too generic and could not differentiate other religions. If you get this point, you will appreciate why the BD project is so challenging to do and why BD can make a big difference if it is understood: HOW TO SHOW UNITY OF DHARMA IN A MANNER SUCH THAT IT SHOWS DIFFERENCE WITH ABRAHAMIC FAITHS. But there is a SECOND truth that I am concerned about. Rambachan is a member of a school of social constructivism that is basically undermining Hinduism in total. Not Rambachan himself is not rejecting Hinduism in total, but those who use the arguments and base established by this school end up claiming that:
Hinduism = Hindu Nationalism = Fascism = Exploitation of minorities, dalits, etc. I am in the middle of writing a short book arguing against this school that was started by western Indologists and now is very popular amongst many Indians.  These two truths correspond to two camps and we must fight both.  

Surya adds:
"By serial ordering, what you are saying is that good dharmic living leads to antah-karan-suddhi.  This in turn facilitates jnana.  You contrasted this to neo-Hindu idea of jnana leading to selfless service and see that as undermining tradition.  You called it Schopenhauerian ethic, suggesting that such ethical thought was alien to Indians.

Some questions to you:  In your view of tradition, are there no benefits to the laukika life of an Advaitin as he aspires for liberation?  Are there no benefits to his society?  Are laukika life and adhyatmika life unrelated to each other?  Do liberated Advaitins have anything more to their life than just be world-renouncing sanyasis?..."


Rajiv's response:
I agree with Surya and have issues with the person he responds to. The theory that "tat tvam asi" as basis for ethics in Hinduism was started by Schopenhauer and taught to Vivekananda by Duessen, was promulgated by Paul Hacker, the German missionary-Indologist, and spread by other western Indolgists. Then Rambachan started adding philosophical depth to it. This and many other attacks on Vivekananda that followed from the same school of anti-Vivekananda...

... welcome others who have something concrete to offer during the next 30 days to contact me offline. In particular I need those well versed in Vedanta literature by Shankara as well as his critics..."
 
Arun shares a link and comments:
"I do not know how much clearer SV has to be, April 8, 1900, San Francisco "

Rajiv's response:
"There is a distinction he makes between Jesus and Christianity. He sees Jesus on par with enlightened masters that we are familiar with, and at the same time criticizes Christianity as an institution that does live up to the true Jesus.

Many modern Christians also say similar things: "We believe in the true Jesus, not the Church." My question remains: How did Swami Vivekananda validate Jesus based on third-person accounts in the Bible?

When pressed philosophically, those who teach whats being called "Christian Vedanta" (and now the "Vedanta" portion is being dropped and its being digested into a Neo-Christianity of sorts), like to say that they re-imagine Jesus in light of Vedanta, and not as taught by the Church. ...

These new Christians go through various stages of digestion: .... So church as institution comes back, reborn with Vedanta digested. Many such movements are starting. In fact, the Vatican is looking the other way...   Somewhere along the way, Hinduism-Buddhism get rejected using various arguments, a combination of:
A) theology (that without the historicity of Jesus such faiths can at best be preparations for Christianity); and
B) social sciences (citing caste and other abuses as reason to reject)...."

Jalan has a detailed response, which we only excerpt below.
"    Any grand commentator on scriptures may appear to some as creating a "new version" of them (neo-vedanta, neo-Hinduism, etc.) Whose interpretation to believe, whose commentary to consider authentic?
    An Apta, on the authority of their first hand experience/realisation, is the only competent interpreter. A scholastic/intellectual analyst of scriptures is not competent to overrule an Apta's interpretation/commentary on the scriptures. The question is if RK/SV qualified as Aptas. Better still, can we think of someone who qualifies as an Apta and who overrules SV/RK version or is it just "intellectuals" who are beating their chests? ....

    [Ashay] writes: "...Deussen, one of Schopenhauer's disciples, remarks along these lines: "The Bible teaches that we must love our neighbour. But why should we? Because, the Upanisads say, your neighbour is your own self." He thus saw the Upanisads as complementing the Bible." This line of argument is wrongly being ascribed to SV...
 ... "The Christian critique of Vedanta is that it is too selfish in that one strives for one's own self-realization and does not care about the world."

I would be very sad to see someone actually buy such a shoddy and meritless critique. (And of all the peoples in the world this coming from the Christian, whose only motive power is seeking an eternal heavenly pleasure garden and avoiding eternal damnation and hell-fire! Irony cannot go farther.) "One's own self realisation at the cost of the world" is perfectly antithetic to SV's message. [Ashay] would do well to research better and come up with EVEN ONE SINGLE QUOTE where SV even alluded at such an idea. On the other hand, try these:
        "May I be born again and again and suffer thousands of miseries, so that I may worship the only God that exists, the only God I believe in, the sum total of all souls - and above all my God the wicked, my God the miserable, my God the poor of all races, and of all species is the special object of my worship."
        "If you seek your own salvation, you will go to hell. It is the salvation of others that you must seek and even if you have to go to hell in working for others, that is worth more than to gain heaven by seeking your own salvation."
   ....

I also disagree with Shri RM that SV proposed sameness in religions out of difference-anxiety from below - there is nothing in the known life - action or words - of SV that shows he suffered from such an inferiority-complex as to generate this anxiety. On the contrary, the sameness that SV professed was to aggressively debunk the very exclusivity and history-centric creed that the Abrahminic religions claim as truth. It was certainly not anxiety-driven. He spoke from a position of strength alone, hardly diluting Hinduism.

After being really impressed with the BD revolution, I had many times wondered whether what SV said in 1893 in Chicago to the American audience, surrounded by the superiority and exclusivity claim of Christianity, was in fact amiss; that it in any way compromised the status or principles of Hinduism. I concluded otherwise....It also deflated the Christian agenda which was prepared only for words of hatred and not for a message of inclusiveness - they ran like headless chicken and in response to this unexpected attack of love, could only mumble and prattle senselessly. Their defeat was clear and conclusive. Is such an aggressive dharma-sangat sameness missing the point? I guess not. ...Just because foolish Hindus could translate anything in a defensive and escapist way, being victims of their own tamasik tendencies, we must not start to denounce the source. It is the self-same Hindus who would quote the Gita in a most twisted fashion to justify the inaction and cowardliness that it clearly tries to demolish.

What we are asking for now is something unreasonable - that what someone says must carry the same message and be interpreted consistently across ALL space-and-time points, all contexts, all audiences and societies. This is unfair.

Just like Shri RM, SV was also engaged in the samashti sadhna serving the cause and purpose of Hinduism - the former used the sameness route while Shri RM is using the BD route, each being appropriate in the respective spatio-temporal environs to which they belong/-ed. Both sameness of SV and BD of RM are attacking/controverting the same exclusivity claims of Abrahminic  - the contradiction is only apparent.

At the same time, I do personally believe that in the inter-religious encounter - and equally/more importantly in the intra-Hinduism forums - our position today must be based on the Being Different principles and not the sameness principles. " 
Rajiv responds to Jalan:
"Abhishek Jalan disagrees that SV proposed sameness in religions out of difference-anxiety from below...

My response:
  • Please note the following quote from SV: "Truth came to Jesus of Nazareth, and we must all obey him. But the truth came to the Rishis of India - the Mantra-drashtas, the seers of thought - and will come to all Rishis in the future, not to talkers, not to book-swallowers, not to scholars, not to philologists, but to seers of thought." (Complete Works, volume 3, p. 283.)
  • In his Collected Works....
  • In his Collected Works, vol. 7....
First I want to have someone verify these references as I am rushed for time and have not checked lately to make sure. [Dear reader: please contribute here if you can]
But regardless, I can find similar references in SV's writings and much more directly pro-Jesus/Bible teachings by his followers. My issue with such remarks is as follows:
  • How does SV know what "state" Jesus had? Most of the Bible is third-person accounts by various onlookers, making it smriti, which cannot be equated with first-person accounts of rishis...
  • ...
This message opened the door slightly, which others later flung wide open. Swami Prabhavananda who was sent by the RK Mission to lead Vedanta Society in USA in the early 1900s, was a big factor in making this new kind of Vedanta that was de-contextualized...... small sample of whats being propagated in the name of Vedanta by both Hindus and Judeo-Christians alike:
...[more refs snipped for brevity]
... BD does NOT want to find common ground among dharma traditions in a broad/generic way (like we all believe in love for mankind) that includes Abrahamic faiths as part of the dharma family or vide versa. In other words, the differences must be non-digestible into Abrahamic frameworks or the digestion must undermine those frameworks. .."


Jalan responds:
"
I almost entirely agree with Shri RM. I would still like to clarify as below:

  1. None of the quotes or the objections actually show difference anxiety from below, something which I think even Shri RM concedes. SV did believe in what he said and it was not driven by some flawed psychological/social condition.
  2. RK had meditated on JC for a long period .....
  3. SV is not comparing Bible to the Vedas but yes he is indeed comparing JC with Rishis....
  4. I do not think that admiring JC and a few sublime parts in the Bible makes you Christian - and it is hardly anti-dharma. 
At the same time I do completely agree that:

  1. such nuances and subtleties may be lost on normal Hindus that do not invest too much time in understanding their own tradition or others' and coupled with the grand Church machinery that has aggressive designs and the weak status of Dharma, there is a clear danger of digestion if Hindus start to parrot it. Hence it should be avoided by everyone including the Hindu leaders.
  2. digestion as propounded by Shri RM is something phenomenal and needs to be urgently addressed. This is a great service to Dharma, similar to what earlier great Hindu leaders like SV have done.
  3. Shri RM's idea of unifying the Dharma schools/religions/traditions while at the same time maintaining their distinct identity against the Abrahminic religions and their dharma-viruddth principles is a pioneering effort and merits full appreciation and support, from the ordinary Hindu and the leadership. (Someone conversant with statistical analysis could see that this is conceptually similar to the ratio of within-group and between-group variances being the true statistic of difference.) .."
Sandeep responds:
"Later in life, Swami Vivekananda felt that Jesus may have been a fictional character but he continued to believe in him because Ramakrisha, when questioned about the veracity of Krishna-Gopi tales, had told him that the people who created such myths must have had some divine perception (bhava).

His inference about the fictionality of Jesus was based on a dream he had in Dec 1896 while returning from Europe and Asia.  The text that follows is based on Nivedita's account...

Vivekananda : "....On the whole, I think old Rabbi Hillel is responsible for the teachings of Jesus, and an obscure Jewish sect of Nazarenes — a sect of great antiquity — suddenly galvanized by S. Paul, furnished the mythic personality as a centre of worship.

"The resurrection, of course, is simply spring-cremation. ..."

Kaushal comments:
" I am not a scholar in this field. But, after reading text in this blog and our experience(3-4 years back) at Pune Ram Krishna Mission Office, now I realize that how much true this digestion theory is. The Pune based Ram Krishna Mission is under control of Christian Missionary.  It seems that, Christian missionary has planted their own men in charge of the mission. The head of center wearing saffron dress was more aware of Jesus and Bible than Puran and Upnishad, The Library was full of Christian books.."
Rohit adds:
"This is the modern way of destroying a temple and building a church over it.  Apparently, missionaries have realized that buildings and institutions themselves are valuable assets.

A similar incident happened at the Universities in Tirupati - a Christian vice-chancellor decided to secularize the universities by removing anything to do with Hinduism..."  

Mokashi responds to a previous comment:
" "I wonder whether the validity of Rama and Krishna could also fall prey to such a query"

The divinity of Rama and Krishna follows from what are known as pramaana texts and not from meditation or experiences. This concept of pramaana is outside the
scope of discussion, but is followed rigidly by more traditional scholars..."

Rajiv's response: 
The above view represents the Paul Hacker school... I disagree that the role of experience has caused sameness. BD emphasizes experience (adhyatma-vidya) over history-centrism. In fact the abrahamic religions do not allow knowing God bypassing the history centric canon and relying upon a higher state of consciousness. Such a state is not easy and cannot simply be proclaimed arbitrarily. There are processes, tests, pre-requisites. Thats what is missing in Judeo-Christianity, hence the craving to digest this from us."


CR responds:
" .. The concept of pramana comes from the principle that the nature of a thing is what the thing itself is, and not something that is dependent on the mind and
intellect that sees it. A pramana is that which reveals the thing in its own intrinsic nature. In the case of Sruti, which speaks about the knowledge that is Self-established (svatah-sidhha), the Sruti reveals the Truth by reflection of the Self-established Truth that exists in one's Self when the obstructions to
seeing it in the form of mental impurities are removed.


> SV and RK popularized that Vedas are notes of "experiences"
> of Rishis which is at odds with what they are viewed in
> tradition before.

This is wrong. Swami Vivekananda never spoke of the the truths mentioned in the Sruti as products of experience. On the contrary, he compared them to the law of gravity which exists whether people discover it or not. The Rishis, said SV, are
like the discoverers of the law of gravity. How does this raise the status of experience over the eternal truths revealed by Sruti? ... In the Christian world, the practice of religion is seen as merely holding on to some articles of faith rather than in obtaining direct communion with the Divine
through 'experiencing here and now'. I think this is what Rajiv-ji is emphasizing with these words below. ."



Vish adds:
"This is the best rendering of the 'Bhagawad Gita' for the 'Kurukshetra' of our times! The clarion call from the original Geeta and from Vyaasa himself, has always been crystal clear - "Rise up when Dharma is under siege". ...There is a huge lack of "Poorva Paksha" in those who box the Geeta into a tool to advance their own ideology, without first inviting all rich thoughts into the theatre and then only allowing the one with the merit to cream to the surface. .... We were always called to provide a "Raksha" for the Dharma by keeping it alive. Dharma was also shown symbolically as a Bull completely strong and rooted when on four legs, but pitiful and tot erring when reduced to a single weak one."
 
December 17 (Continuing Thread)
Hindi Edition of Being Different
As some of you may know,Hindi version of Shri Rajiv Malhotra's pioneering book,'Being Different' will be published in a few months. The English version was a best seller...
[lots of great comments that suggest titles. here is the latest sample, sent by Srinath]:
"Not an extensive title, but closer in translation to the English

"Being Different - an Indian Challenge to Western Universalism"

might be:


Dhaarmik Bhinnataa - Pashchimee Aatyantikataa kaa Bhaarateeya PratikshepaN "

December 17 (New Thread)
The importance of Being Different
Venkat shares a video: 
Dear Friends Please watch this short video (thought provoking and humorous) .of a few generations of Indians in the US and how they lose their identity It...



December 18 (continuing thread)
Rajiv's new blog on FirstPost.


Please read Rajiv's blog on FirstPost (an Indian blog). This is the 3rd blog on FirstPost. This one reiterates Rajiv's demands for rhetorical changes in...

Arun posts:
"> Claim 3: Only Christianity is the true religion.
> Argument: Historical evidence shows that Jesus resurrected after crucifixion. This is proof for his divinity. Christianity is the only religion that can offer proof for its truth claims. Therefore, those claims are true. Therefore, Christianity is a true religion.

Excellent layout of the argument. The American Founding Fathers, who were more deists than Christian, accepted the idea that:

Claim 4: Religious truth-claims cannot be decided.
Moreover toleration has the implication that one side has the upper hand and permits the other side to exist, and this is inconsistent with liberty. And therefore mutual respect was necessary.

PS: Wiki: Deism is the belief that reason and observation of the natural world are sufficient to determine the existence of God, accompanied with the rejection of revelation and authority as a source of religious knowledge. "

Maria adds: 
"Surya, You are right that egalitarian thinking is wasted on Christian 'fundamentalists', who stick to the fundamentals, but less and less people are enamoured by these fundamentals, and that's where Hindus can have influence. The Time article quotes some 'fundamentalists', but also asks "Is Bell's Christianity” less judgmental, more fluid, open to questioning the most ancient of assumptions on an inexorable rise? And ends on a positive note with a quote of Bell: something new is in the air...."

December 19 (continuing post)
Myles Collier of Christian Post
Dear Rajivji: What a wonderful response to the questions from Myles Collier of Christian Post! What you have started is similar to what Adi Shankaracharya did...

Latest comment by Mohan:
".... These conversations really inspire us. I hope we find youngsters dare enough to do such. (In Samskrita Bharati Tamilnadu 11 of us in early 20s 'abandoned'  our homes, lucrative career just for Bharata Mata seva.But we require Quantity too (of course quality also)..." 

December 20 (New Thread)
Discussion at Vidya Bharati Foundation: Youtube audio
Could some one provide me an alternate video/audio link on the talk made by Dr.Rajivji at Vidya Bharati foundation, May 2012 at Canada. I could find that the... 
It works fine if you wear headsets. Most of the talks on Youtube we posted require wearing headsets.


December 21 (New Thread)
People it is my misfortune to inform you that unofficial Christian population of Andhra has reached over 30 percent. I am not exaggerating, this is from... 
 
RD99 responds:
"Conversions are mostly confined to andhra regions and not telengana.It is business strategy to form a NGO and get funds from europe, in the name of conversions,and lead a  comfortable life.  Late YSR  was instrumental in introducing funding for christian piligrims similar to HAJ subsidy.His son Jagan languishing in jail won recent by-elections, because SC converts voted 100% to him deserting traditional congress..."