Some of the intellectual
celebraties in the world of the
West and the East had the following things
to say about Hinduism:
"The Hindu creed is monotheistic and of very high ethical value; and when I look back on my life in India and the thousands of good friends I have left there among all classes of the native community, when I remember those honorable, industrious, orderly, law-abiding, sober, manly men, I look over England and wonder whether there is anything in Christianity which can give a higher ethical creed than that which is now professed by the large majority of the people of India. I do not see it in London society, I do not see it in the slums of the East End, I do not see it on the London Stock Exchange. I think that the morality of India will compare very favorably with the morality of any country in Western Europe."
(source: India in Bondage: Her Right to Freedom - By Rev. Jabez T. Sunderland p. 329 - 330).
324. Dr. Radhakumud Mookerji (1884 -1964) distinguished historian and author of several books including Hindu civilization (from the earliest times up to the establishment of Maurya empire), Ancient Indian education; Brahmanical and Buddhist and Indian shipping: a history of the seaborne trade and maritime activity of the Indians from the earliest times. He writes:
"The first point of distinction is that the Vedas and especially the primordial work known as the Rig Veda, represents not merely the dawn of culture, but also its zenith. Indian thought is seen at its highest in the Rig Veda. ...On the one hand it is the first book of India and also of mankind. At the same time it shows the highest point of human wisdom. We see in it the whole process of evolution from its beginning to the completion."
(source: The Call of the Vedas - By A C Bose p. 16).
"For full thirty centuries India stood out as the very heart of the old world and maintained her position as one of the foremost maritime countries. She had colonies in Pegu, in Cambodia, in Java in Sumatra, in Borneo and even in the countries of the Farther East as far as Japan. She had trading settlements in Southern China, in the Malayan Peninsula, in Arabia and in all the chief cities of Persia and all over the East Coast of Africa. She cultivated trade relations not only with the countries of Asia, but with the whole of the then known world, including the countries under the dominion of the Roman Empire, and both the East and West became the theatre of Indian commercial activity and gave scope of her naval energy and throbbing international life."
"We now know that many ports on both Eastern and Western Coast had navigational and trade links with almost all Continents of the world. There are many natural and technological reasons for this. Apart from Mathematics and Astronomy, India had excellent manufacturing skills in textile, metal works and paints. India had abundant supply of Timber. Indian - built ships were superior as they were built of Teak which resists the effect of salt water and weather for a very long time."
(source: Indian Shipping: A History of the Sea-Borne Trade and Maritime Activity of the Indians From the Earliest Times - By R. K. Mookerjee p. 4). For more refer to chapters Seafaring in Ancient India)
325. Diana L. Eck ( ? ) Professor of Comparative Religion and Indian Studies in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and Member of the Faculty of Divinity, Harvard University. Her work on India includes the books Banaras, City of Light and Darsan: Seeing the Divine Image in India.
"Hinduism is an imaginative, an "image-making, religious tradition in which the sacred is seen as present in the visible world – the world we see in multiple images and deities, in sacred places, and in people. The notion of darsan call attention as students of Hinduism, to the fact that India is a visual and visionary culture, one in which the eyes have a prominent role in the apprehension of the sacred. For most ordinary Hindus, the notion of the divine as "invisible" would be foreign indeed. God is eminently visible, although human beings have not always had the refinement of sight to see. Furthermore, the divine is visible not only in temple and shrine, but also in the whole continuum of life – in nature, in people, in birth and growth and death. Although some Hindus, both philosophers and radical reformers, have always used the terms "nirguna"(qualityless) and nirakara (formless) to speak of the One Brahman. Yet the same tradition has simultaneously affirmed that Brahman is also saguna (with qualities) and that the multitude of "names and forms" of this world are the exuberant transformations of the One Brahman."
"India presents to the visitor an overwhelmingly visual impression. It is beautiful, colorful, sensuous. It is captivating and intriguing, repugnant and puzzling. It combines the intimacy and familiarity of English four o’clock tea with the dazzling foreignness of carpisoned elephants or vast crowds bathing in the Ganga during an eclipse. India’s displays of multi-armed images, its processions and its pilgrimages, its beggars and its kings, its street life and markets, its diversity of people – all appear to the eye in a kaleidoscope of images. Whatever Hindus affirm of the meaning of life, death, and suffering, they affirm with their eyes wide open. Many westerners, for example, upon seeing Hindu rituals observances for the first time, are impressed with how sensuous Hindu worship is. It is sensuous in that it makes full use of the senses – seeing, touching, smelling, tasting and hearing. One "sees" the image of the deity (darsan). One "touches" it with one’s hands (sparsa), and one also "touches" the limbs of one’s own body to establish the presence of various deities (nyasa). One "hears" the sacred sound of the mantras (sravana). The ringing of bells, the offering of oil lamps, the presentation of flowers, the pouring of water and milk, the sipping of sanctified liquid offerings, the eating of consecrated foods- prasad – these are the basic constituents of Hindu worship, Puja." For all its famous otherworldliness, India is a culture that has also celebrated the life of this world and the realms of the senses.
(source: Darsan - Seeing the Divine Image in India - By Diana L Eck Anima Books. Page 10 - 12).
She has written about the city of Banaras:
"It was an awesome city - captivating, challenging, and endlessly fascinating - Banaras raised some of the questions about the Hindu tradition which have interested me ever since - its complex mythological imagination, its prodigious display of divine images, its elaborate ritual traditions, and its understanding of the relation of life and death. It was Banaras that turned me to the study of India and the Hindu religious tradition."
"For over 2,500 years this city, also called Varanasi, has attracted pilgrims and seekers from all over India. Sages, such as the Buddha, Mahavira, and Shankara, have come here to teach. Young men have come to study the Vedas with the city's great pandits. Banaras is one of the oldest living cities of the world....It occupied its high bank overlooking the Ganga in the cradle days of Western civilization. It antiquity has caught the imagination of many, including Mark Twain. There are few great cities in the world which have converted the energy of an entire civilization into culture and have come to symbolize and embody that whole civilization in microcosm." "It sits above the earth as a "crossing place" (tirtha) between this world and the "far shore" of the transcendent Brahman."
(source: Banaras: City of Light - By Diana L Eck p. 3 - 5)
326. Ramana Maharishi of Arunachala (1870 -1950). A great sage, Kavyakanta Ganapathi Muni, called him Bhagavan or God for he regarded him as the incarnation of Skanda or Subramania, and named him Ramana, the sweet one, and Maharshi, the great sage. At the age of sixteen Ramana Maharshi left his home, his family, and all he knew. He felt drawn to Arunachula - a small mountain in Southern India. Here he lived for the rest of his life. His only possessions were a piece of cloth to cover himself, and a walking stick.
In his famous discussion of "The Holy Men of India, Carl Jung described Ramana Maharishi as "the whitest spot on a white surface," less a unique phenomenon than the perfect "embodiment of spiritual India. In Ramana Maharishi Jung finds "purest India, the breadth of eternity, scorning and scorned by the world. Jung correctly recognized that Ramana Maharishi typifies the holy men of India who for centuries have drowned "the world of multiplicity in the All and All-Oness of Universal Being."
F. H. Humphreys, a British Officer of the Indian Police Service, who was an earnest student of religion, once visited Ramana Maharishi in 1911 in his Ashrama, when he was curious to learn about siddhis from the saint. Ramana said:
"Do not think too much of psychical phenomena...The phenomena we see are curious and surprising, but the most marvelous of all we do not realize, namely, the one illimitable force alone is responsible for all the phenomena we see and for the act of seeing them. Do not fix your attention on the changing things of life, death and phenomena. Do not think of even the actual act of seeing or perceiving them, but only of that which sees all these things - That which is responsible for it all. It is inside yourself."
In a letter to a leading friend in London, which was subsequently published in a leading journal in London, Mr. Humphreys wrote about Ramana: "On reaching the cave, we sat before him at his feet and said nothing. We sat thus for a long time and I felt lifted out of myself. For half an hour I looked into Maharishi's eyes, which never changed their expression of deep contemplation. I began to realize somewhat that the body is the temple of the Holy Ghost."
Ramana Maharishi's grace and compassion touched man and animal alike; his eloquent silence made a tremendous impact. But his silence was more eloquent than a thousand words spoken. F. H. Humphreys, the first European visitor to the Ramanashram penned his experience, of seeing Ramana Maharishi, to a friend in London. "For half an hour I looked into the Maharishi's eyes, which never changed their expression of deep contemplation. I could feel only that his body was not the man: it was the instrument of God." But Humphreys was neither the first nor the last to experience God in the form of Ramana Maharishi. Paul Brunton, who arrived at Tiruvannamalai more a sceptic than a believer records the impact of the eloquent silence of Maharishi: "Before those (eyes) of the Maharishi, I hesitate, puzzled and baffled ... I cannot turn my gaze away from him. I know only that a steady river of quietness seems to be flowing near me ... "
Ramana Maharishi believed in the philosophy of self-realization based on Advaita Vedanta. Sri Ramana's entire system is based on his own realization of Self. He wrote:
"When I came to realize who I am
What else is this identity of mine.
But then,
Oh Thou who standest as the towering Aruna Hill?"
(source: The Sage of Arunachala - By Lakshmi Devnath and Great Indian Saints - By Pranab Bandyopadhyaya p. 328 - 327 and The Spirit of Modern India - Edited by Robert A McDermont and V. S. Naravane p. 197).
327. Robert Blackwill ( ? ) lecturer on international security at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, former ambassador to India. Blackwill is the author and co-editor of numerous books and articles on U.S. foreign policy, including: America’s Asian Alliances. Although he returned this summer, part of Blackwill's heart is clearly still in India. A huge map of "Mother India" adorns the cream-colored walls of his fastidious office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. The only item on his vast desktop -- besides precisely arranged wooden "in" and "out" boxes -- is a tiny figurine of Ganesh, the Hindu elephant-headed god of wisdom and success. In What India means to me, he says:
"......
India's innumerable and
distinctive dances, beginning with the classical. The Vedas and the Upanishads.They mean so much more when I read them here: "It is the ear of the ear, the mind of the mind, the speech of speech, the breath of breath, and the eye of the eye. When freed (from the senses) the wise, on departing from this world, become immortal."
And, despite my continuing contemplations, I am not always able to follow Krishna's wise words, "Be thou of even mind."
But, my friends, these terrorist outrages against my country and against yours will not continue indefinitely. We know this from the Ramayana, and many other holy books. Good does triumph over evil, although it sometimes takes more time than we would like. Someone once said, "the most sublime purpose of religion is to teach how to know God." India has been working on that challenge from a variety of perspectives for several millennia. It has been my immense privilege during these two years to experience, and to profit from, these profound wellsprings of Indian spirituality.
I will return to India. How could it be otherwise? Mother India has changed my life -- forever."
(source: What India Means to Me - By Ambassador Robert Blackwill - usembassy.state.gov and washingtonpost.com).
328. J A B Van Buitenen (1928- 1979) says that the Bhagavad Gita is:
"The most important text for Hindu religion and a recent survey of that religion says that during the last thousand years the Gita's "popularity and authority" have been "unrivalled."
(source: The Mahabharata - By J A B Van Buitenen p. xxviii 1973)
329. Shashi Tharoor (1956 - ) Under-Secretary-General for Public Information at the UN, author of six novels and two non-fiction books. Educated in India and London, describes himself as a `believing Hindu'. He has written:
" Every other religion lays down certain fixed dogmas and tries to force society to adopt them. It places before society only one coat which must fit Jack and John and Henry, all alike. If it does not fit John or Henry, he must go without a coat to cover his body. "
"The Hindus have discovered that the absolute can only be realized, or thought of, or stated through the relative, and the images, crosses, and crescents are simply so many symbols — so many pegs to hang spiritual ideas on. It is not that this help is necessary for everyone, but those that do not need it have no right to say that it is wrong. Nor is it compulsory in Hinduism .... The Hindus have their faults, but mark this, they are always for punishing their own bodies, and never for cutting the throats of their neighbors. If the Hindu fanatic burns himself on the pyre, he never lights the fire of Inquisition. "
The wonderful doctrine preached in the Bhagavad Gita says: "Whosoever comes to Me, through whatsoever form, I reach him; all men are struggling through paths which in the end lead to me."
(source: ShashiTharoor.com).
"The Rig Veda asserted that gravitation held the universe together 24 centuries before the apple fell on Newton's head. The Vedic civilization subscribed to the idea of a spherical earth at a time when everyone else, even the Greeks, assumed the earth was flat. By the Fifth Century A.D. Indians had calculated that the age of the earth was 4.3 billion years; as late as the 19th Century, English scientists believed the earth was a hundred million years old, and it is only in the late 20th Century that Western scientists have come to estimate the earth to be about 4.6 billion years old. It was an Indian who first conceived of the zero, shunya; the concept of nothingness, shunyata, integral to Hindu and Buddhist thinking, simply did not exist in the West. The Vedanga Jyotisha, written around 500 B.C., declares: "Like the crest of a peacock, like the gem on the head of a snake, so is mathematics at the head of all knowledge." Our mathematicians were poets too!
(source: Why Indian science scores - The Hindu - Sunday June 8 2003).
"I am proud to claim adherence to a religion without an established church or priestly papacy, a religion whose rituals and customs I am free to reject, a religion that does not oblige me to demonstrate my faith by any visible sign, by subsuming my identity in any collectivity, not even by a specific day or time or frequency of worship. (There is no Hindu Pope, no Hindu Vatican, no Hindu catechism, not even a Hindu Sunday.) As a Hindu I am proud to subscribe to a creed that is free of the restrictive dogmas of holy writ that refuses to be shackled to the limitations of a single holy book."
(source: ShashiTharoor.com).
330. Alfred B. Ford ( ) aka Ambarish Das grandson of Henry Ford (founder of the Ford Motor), and Trustee member of Ford Motor Company. He is involved in Ford's corporate charity work.
Throwing light on his personal association with India, Ford said he was attracted to Indian civilization after he studied Hinduism during his college days 30 years ago.
Soon after, he converted to Hinduism and has traveled to India dozens of times. He even married an Indian girl, Sharmila Bhattacharya, a doctor, who hails from Jaipur.
He joined Iskcon in 1975. He traveled to India for the first time that same year with Srila Prabhupada. He was instrumental in the establishment of the first Hindu temple in Hawaii. He also helped establish the Bhaktivedanta Cultural Center, which is a highly regarded tourist destination in Detroit. Alfred has made significant donations to Iskcon over the years which have assisted many ongoing projects and helped to build the Pushpa Samadhi Mandir of Srila Prabhupada. He is the founding chairman of the Iskcon Foundation, and campaign chairman of the Sri Mayapur Temple of Vedic Planetarium.
The love for Hinduism brought a great grandson of US automobile legend Henry Ford to the Russian capital to lobby for a Vedic cultural centre.
"If Moscow wants to be a world class capital, it has to open up to other cultures, particularly ancient cultures like Vedic culture."
Ford, during a visit to Moscow last week, said: "For me the most important thing is to spread the Hindu knowledge about the soul. This is more important than any other knowledge and is my main priority".
Russia has an estimated 90,000 Russian Hindus, sources at International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) here claim. Addressing representatives of the Indian community in Russia, Ford lauded their efforts to build the cultural centre complex that would be named "Glory of India".
He has said: "My main activity is connected with propagandizing Indian culture throughout the world.' The Alfred Ford Foundation and the Indian community are financing construction of the center."
(source: Alfred Ford lobbies for Vedic centre in Moscow - siliconindia.com and Indian Cultural Centre to be built in Moscow - russsiajournal.com and hindu.com and hindunet.com)
331. Arthur William Ryder (1877-1938) Professor at Berkeley. J Robert Oppenheimer the nuclear physicist had studied Sanskrit with him at Berkeley in 1933. He has translated several books including, Dandin's Dasha-kumara-charita : The ten princes.
He wrote in his introduction to the Bhagavad Gita:
"Uncounted millions have drawn from it comfort and joy. In it they have found an end to perplexity, a clear, if difficult, road to salvation."
(source: The Bhagavad Gita - translation by Arthur W Ryder p. viii).
One of Kalidasa's long poems is the Meghduta, or the Cloud Messenger. A lover, made captive and separated from his beloved, asks a cloud, during the rainy season, to carry his message of desperate longing to her. To this poem and to Kalidasa, the American scholar, Ryder, has paid a splendid tribute. He refers to the two parts of the poem and says:
" The former half is a description of external nature, yet interwoven with human feelings; the latter half is a picture of human heart, yet the picture is framed in natural beauty. So exquisitely is the thing done that none can say which half is superior. Of those who read this perfect poem in the original text, some are moved by the one, some by the other."
(source: The Discovery of India - by Jawaharlal Nehru pg 159)
332.Takeo Kamiya ( ) Japanese architect has spent about 20 years and all his savings traveling across India documenting the country's heritage buildings to enlighten Japan and the world about the "wonders of real India". He is a member of the Japan Architects Academy. Kamiya first visited India about 27 years ago and travelled across the country, like Hieun Tsang during the Golden Age of Guptas. When he was young, Japan was oriented only to the West and America. But he had a feeling that the world did not end there.
He says:
"The first place
I visited was the Konark
Sun Temple.
I was shocked...awestruck at the site of the marvelous man-made wonder,
"all my worries and complaints vanished then and there."
"That intense emotional experience made me come back again
and again. It gave me the urge to travel and see as much as I could. It is
after this that I concretized the idea of documenting my experiences in a book
form,"
The result: The Guide to the Architecture of the Indian Subcontinent,
a comprehensive classification and introduction of Indian architecture from
north to the south. A complete guide, which has been a revelation for even
several leading Indian architects. "India had always fascinated me, though I had only little knowledge about the country where Buddha was born. There was hardly any literature available on Indian architecture while I was studying in the Tokyo Geijutsu Daigaku (Fine Arts faculty in Architecture). So I decided to travel to India to study about the country, its culture and heritage,"
(source: Japanese guide to Indian wonders - timesofindia.com). For
more refer to chapter on Hindu Art)
333. Bulent Ecevit
(1925 - ) the then Turkish prime minister, was asked what had given him the
courage to send Turkish troops to Cyprus (where they still remain).
His answer: he was fortified by the Bhagavad Gita which taught that if
one were morally right, one need not hesitate to fight injustice. Besides the
Gita, Ecevit was also influenced by Nehru’s Glimpses of World History.
Ecevit first learnt Sanskrit
at the Ankara University. Later his love for poetry
and philosophy led him to Rabindranath Tagore. He learnt Bengali to appreciate
and later translate Tagore’s writings, including some poems from Geetanjali.
During his visit to India
in early 2000, Ecevit fulfilled his dream of visiting Shantiniketan. After
the 1971 military crackdown by the left, the Upanishads, Gita, and Geetanjali
were banned in Turkey.
Turkish prime minister
Bulent Ecevit's passage to India
has far greater significance than that of an Indophile scholar-statesman
realising his long cherished dream. Mr Ecevit, had translated Tagore's
Gitanjali and the Bhagavad Gita into Turkish. Together with Delhi and Agra,
he has included a visit to Shantniketan in his itinerary.
(source: The Turk who loves the Gita - telegraphindia.com).
334. Leonard
Bloomfield (1887-1949) American linguist and author of Language, published in 1933) characterization of Panini's
Astadhyayi (The Eight Books) writes: "as one of the greatest monuments of human intelligence is by no means an exaggeration; no one who has had even a small acquaintance with that most remarkable book could fail to agree. In some four thousand sutras or aphorisms - some of them no more than a single syllable in length - Panini sums up the grammar not only of his own spoken language, but of that of the Vedic period as well. The work is the more remarkable when we consider that the author did not write it down but rather worked it all out of his head, as it were. Panini's disciples committed the work to memory and in turn passed it on in the same manner to their disciples; and though the Astadhayayi has long since been committed to writing, rote memorization of the work, with several of the more important commentaries, is still the approved method of studying grammar in India today, as indeed is true of most learning of the traditional culture."
While in the classical world scholars were dealing with language in a somewhat metaphysical way, the Indians were telling us what their language actually was, how it worked, and how it was put together. The methods and techniques for describing the structure of Sanskrit which we find in Panini have not been substantially bettered to this day in modern linguistic theory and practice. We today employ many devices in describing languages that were already known to Panini's first two commentators. The concept of "zero" which in mathematics is attributed to India, finds its place also in linguistics.
"It was in India, however, that there rose a body of knowledge which was destined to revolutionize European ideas about language. The Hindu grammar taught Europeans to analyze speech forms; when one compared the constituent parts, the resemblances, which hitherto had been vaguely recognized, could be set forth with certainty and precision."
(source: Traditional India - edited by O. L. Chavarria-Aguilar refer to chapter on Grammar - By Leonard Bloomfield Hall - Place of Publication: Englewood Cliffs, NJ Date of Publication: 1964 p. 109-113)
335. Colonel Frank Smythe aka Francis Sydney Smythe (1900-1949) military leader, explorer, mountaineer, writer, photographer. He describes experiencing the same feeling of loneliness and revelation in the Bhyunder Ganga Valley. Chronicle of the author's four months in the remote, difficult to reach Bhyundar Valley in the Himalayas, the spectacular Valley of Flowers. The credit for the popularising the Valley of Flowers generally goes to Frank S. Smythe and R.L. Holdsworth who incidentally reached this valley after a successful expedition of Mount Kamet in 1931.
"In my mountaineering wandering I have not seen a more beautiful valley than this ... this valley of peace and perfect beauty where the human spirit may find repose." Originally called the Bhiundhar Valley (after a village located in south-east Badrinath) it was renamed “The Valley of Flowers” by Frank Smythe.
He writes in his book Valley of Flowers:
“For the first time in
my life I was able to think. I do not mean to think objectively or
analytically, but rather to surrender thought to my surroundings. This is a
power of which we know little in the West but which is a basic of abstract
thought in the East. It is allowing the mind to receive rather than to seek
impressions, and it is gained by expurgating extraneous thought. It is then
that the Eternal speaks; that the mutations of the universe are apparent; the
very atmosphere is filled with life and song; the hills are resolved from mere
masses of snow, ice and rock into something living. When this happens the
human mind escapes from the bondage of its own feeble imaginings and becomes as
one with its Creator.”
(source: Sacred Waters: A Pilgrimage up the Ganges River to the Source of Hindu Culture
– Stephen Alter p. 356).
336. Abu’l Hasan
al-Qifti ( ? ) Arab scholar and author of Chronology of the
Scholars, speaks of Arab admiration for Indian place-value system and
methods of calculation.
“Among those parts of
their sciences which came to us, the numerical calculation….it is the swiftest
and most complete method of calculation, the easiest to understand and the
simplest to learn; it bears witness to the Indians’ piercing intellect, fine
creativity and their superior understanding and inventive genius.”
(source: The Universal History of Numbers - By Georges Ifrah
p. 530 - 531).
337. Christian Fabre
aka Swami Pranavananda Brahmendra Avadhuta (1942 - ) was born
in the south of France.
He grew up in a family with ties to the garment industry. Author of Swami : PDG et Moine hindou He is a Hindu holy man, who has renounced the material world - yet he is also a business tycoon who employs thousands of people. He became a Hindu holy man, or sadhu, some years ago. Now he runs an ashram, or a hermitage for holy men, in the south-western state of Tamil Nadu, roughly 400 kilometres from Madras, the state capital.
He came to work in India in the 1970s, and fell in love with the place. "I was so powerfully attracted to India's culture, faith and its people that I cannot bear the thought of going back to France," he says.
At the time, his house was opposite that of a Brahmin family. His first exposure to Hinduism came at their hands. A woman from that house introduced him to a Hindu sage, or swami.
Today, his company, Fashion International, has 35 factories which employ 60,000 people. The clothes they make are exported to Europe and beyond. And as his business boomed, Mr Fabre's faith grew stronger. He did not stop taking instruction from his teacher, or guru, and continued searching for answers to his questions. His guru eventually invited him to take up the sanyas - renounce all worldly attachments such as family and money, and focus on their search for enlightenment. Mr Fabre now lives in the ashram in the manner of the other sadhus in his holy order.
He also wears the sadhu's saffron robes to his business meetings.
For Mr Fabre, there is no opposition between his business interests and his life as a Hindu holy man. This industrialist holy man has been truly industrious - for the villagers living near his ashram, he has provided running water and improved public hygiene facilities.
(source: The French Hindu Holy businessman - BBC news.com)
338. Edward Gibbon (1734 - 1794) English historian and scholar, the supreme historian of the Enlightenment, who is best-known as the author of the monumental author of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
He admiringly describes the religious freedom in Hinduism:
"Thus the Hindus have an extraordinary wide selection of beliefs and practices to choose from: they can be monotheists, pantheists, polytheists, agnostics or even atheists. They may follow a strict or a loose standard of moral conduct, or they may choose instead an amoral emotionalism or mysticism. They may worship regularly at a temple or may not go there at all."
The ancient Romans also had a similar form of worship like the Hindus - "The policy of the emperors and the senate, as far as it concerned religion, was happily seconded by the enlightened, and by the habits of the superstitious, part of their subjects. The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful. And thus toleration produced not only mutual indulgence, but even religious concord. "
(source: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - By Edward Gibbon p. )
339. Justice Manadagadde Rama Jois (1931 - ) Former Chief Justice of Punjab and Haryana High Court. A distinguished writer and historian, Justice M. Rama Jois has produced several authoritative books on Service Law, Habeas Corpus Law, Constitutional Law, etc., which are popular among the Law fraternity of India including students of Law. His most appreciated two-volume book Legal and Constitutional History of India is a textbook for Law Degree course. His another book Seeds of Modem Public Law in Ancient Indian Jurisprudence is also a much-valued contribution. A book authored by him Eternal Values in Manu Smriti, was released by former Chief Justice of India A.S. Anand. In this book valuable verses from "Manu Smriti" has been selected, which are still relevant to the society.
He has observed that: "In India, religious leaders have never exercised any control over the political authority. The ancient Indian constitutional law, the Rajadharma, did not recognise the authority of religious leaders to interfere with the political power of the king. Religious leaders had a purely advisory role, tendering opinion when it was sought or suo motu on matters of public interest. There used to be a process of consultation, not of confrontation.
"This is why no Hindu king has ever persecuted anyone on the ground of religion. Thus, it is Clear that in the Indian context, secularism meant respect for all religions as distinct from mere tolerance of other religions. This respect is part and parcel of Hinduism, to which theocracy is unknown. In fact, they cannot co-exist any more than light and darkness."
(source: Conversion, fruit of intolerance - By Justice Manadagadde Rama Jois - indianexpress.com).
340 Beatrice Pitney Lamb (1904 - ) Author of several books including India: A World in Transition. She was Editor of the United Nations News for several years and has written and lectured extensively on Indian affairs. Beatrice Lamb first visited India in 1949 on an assignment for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Mrs. Lamb saw the many-hued soul of India revealed through its people, living, working and worshipping
She has noted:
"In addition to the still visible past glories of art and architecture, the wonderful ancient literature, and other cultural achievements of which educated Indians are justly proud, the Indian past includes another type of glory most tantalizing to the Indians of today - prolonged material prosperity. For well over a millennium and a half, the Indian subcontinent may have been the richest area in the world. As early as the first century A.D. a statesman in ancient Rome wrote in worried vein about the squandering of Roman wealth on Indian luxuries.....Although direct relations between Europe and India were cut off by the Arabs in the Middle Ages, the legend of the wealth of the "Indies" continued to grip Western minds. The power of this legend caused Columbus in 1492 to take his dangerous journey westward across the Atlantic, seeking to re-establish direct contact with India. As late as the 18th century, British observers were repeatedly struck by the material prosperity of the land they were beginning to conquer."
(source: India: A World in Transition - By Beatrice Pitney Lamb p. 19 and 358).
"In India I have found great beauty of a kind far too rare in the United States. Instead of the hard, taut, anxious faces, so common in America, I have seen many there that were calm, open, untroubled, serene. I have seen dignity and grace of movement derived not from training but from inner peace and wholeness."
(source: Why India? - By Beatrice Pitney Lamb)
"Recently,
increasing numbers of Westerners in revolt against what they have found to be
the shallow, gadget-dominated, spiritually empty civilization of the West have
turned to "Hinduism" in search of greater meaning or purpose in life.
There is no doubt that the great Hindu tradition offers profound spiritual
insights, as well as techniques for attaining self-realization, detachment, and
even ecstasy."
Recently,
increasing numbers of Westerners in revolt against what they have found to be
the shallow, gadget-dominated, spiritually empty civilization of the West
have turned to "Hinduism" in search of greater meaning or purpose
in life. There is no doubt that the great Hindu tradition offers
profound spiritual insights, as well as techniques for attaining
self-realization, detachment, and even ecstasy." (source: India: A World in Transition - By Beatrice Pitney Lamb p. 19 and 358).
341. Alexander M. Kadakin ( ? ) Former Russian Ambassador in India. In his column Passage to India: The Coexistence of Multiple Realities, he has written:
"How more profound is India 's traditional world, where each stone is a hierophant, a sign of the presence of the sacred in our world. Every sunrise here becomes a cosmogenic drama, every woman an embodiment of the tantric principle of Shakti. Behind the exterior forms specific only of India hides the sublime universal paradigm of the traditional conscience totally opposite to the modernistic one, also far more vibrant and wholesome. The craving of human soul for sacral archetypes is unquenchable, and archetypes are easily juxtaposed with new age constructs. The sacral and the profane coexist. "
It took me time to realize that my India is similar to the human body with its seats of power and intellect and various indriyas. At times the body is guided by reason, and at other times by mere emotion. It might feel rigid in the morning, elastic by day time, overexcited by evening, and frustrated by night. It fights its ups and downs, tides and ebbs, low and high spirits. It looks different if observed from various angles: familiar yet mysterious, gorgeous yet shabby, pure yet impure. I have visited many other countries, but I reserve this complex metaphor of the body for India .
India seems to be specially designed by the Vidhata to defy all prognoses and
theories. My heart remains here but all my Indias will travel back along with
me, needing no extra space in the plane. And new ones will appear when I
return.
Once I heard you weeping.../ Timidly.
The scent of salty sands/ Was strumming the sitar./
Your laments made me love and treasure you,/ I India./
And when you were leaving,/ A soft sirocco burned my lips./ It was your kiss, I India!
(source:
Passage to India: The Coexistence of Multiple
Realities - timesofindia.com). Once I heard you weeping.../ Timidly.
The scent of salty sands/ Was strumming the sitar./
Your laments made me love and treasure you,/ I India./
And when you were leaving,/ A soft sirocco burned my lips./ It was your kiss, I India!
342. Sandhya Jain ( ? ) author of Adi Deo Arya Devata. A Panoramic View of Tribal-Hindu Cultural Interface and Evangelical Intrusions as well as eminent columnist in the mainstream English Media of India, she has written eloquently about Hinduism:
"India has existed for several millennia; it is rooted in history and enshrined and encompassed by a civilisational ethos based on the attainment of Consciousness (self-realisation). India's ancient religion, Hinduism, is not a codified creed in the manner of other world religions. Properly known as the Sanatan Dharma or the Eternal Tradition, it is simultaneously a religion and a living civilisation or way of life, and is inspired by the ideal of universal welfare of all beings, both human and other creatures. Dharma is natural (cosmic) law. As Hinduism, it takes on a formal structure, creed and ritual; yet it is never the captive of absolutism.
"The sanatan dharma recognises even the atheist as morally valid, and does not deny him space in the religious-spiritual spectrum. This is because sanatan dharma is all-embracing: it is righteousness, duty, and the eternal law that is not fixed (in time or space) but eternally renews itself in response to changing times and provides for as many paths to salvation as there are individual souls who seek it."
"Dharma demands that all faiths be treated with respect and courtesy, as they are all attempts to attain Godhead. Its quintessential argument is that each soul must chart its own evolutionary course, and that it is not given to any human agency to arbitrate a final truth for all mankind. Hindus do believe that the Vedas are the revealed truth that was heard by the Vedic rishis (Sruti). But that is no reason that they should be imposed upon the world by human regents who claim to be sole prophets of the only true revelation. This is the reason why, despite the belief in One Supreme Being, non-monotheism has been the hallmark of all Indic religions. Our polity and innate secularism has flowed naturally from these values; it is not for nothing that Aristotle observed that the Hindus were the only people to have successfully made dharma the basis of their public life (Politics)."
"Being a living civilization, Hinduism is by definition multi-dimensional, multi-layered. It is inherently distrustful of the one-dimensional approach towards religion, and does not perceive other faiths as alien, threatening or unacceptable."
"Hinduism is a subtle, complex, multi-dimensional spiritual cosmos. Although it spawned a great and powerful religion with profound philosophies and daring intellectual constructs, it never ceased to be a 'way of life.' It never wholly identified with the religious forms it gave birth to (Shaivism, Vaishnavism, et al), nor was it subsumed by them. This is how it remains a living civilization: the individual seeker is accommodated theoretically and actually. Even today a seeker may reject the world of man and the world of formal religion, and pursue a solitary salvation on the banks of the Ganga or in the Himalayan mists. None may chastise him for deviance (for there is none), nor catechize him about the path to take (for there are as many paths as there are seekers). "
(source: The manacles of monotheism - By Sandhya Jain and The Indic tradition is catholic - By Sandhya Jain). For more thoughts by Sandhya Jain, refer to chapter on Articles).
"Hinduism is a
subtle, complex, multi-dimensional spiritual cosmos. Although it spawned a
great and powerful religion with profound philosophies and daring intellectual
constructs, it never ceased to be a 'way of life.'
343. Ram Dass
(1931- ) was born Richard Alpert, the bright and
personable scion of a wealthy, influential Jewish family. His father, George
Alpert, a prominent Boston lawyer, helped found Brandeis University and was president of the New York, New Haven
& Hartford Railroad. Alpert taught at Harvard in the '60s, joining
his colleague Timothy Leary in "consciousness-raising"
experimentsAlpert has been studying the nature of consciousness for more than 50 years, and began his studies with psychology, specializing in human motivation and personality development. While at Harvard in 1961, Alpert's explorations of human consciousness led him to collaborate with Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner, Aldous Huxley, Allen Ginsberg.
Unsatisfied by that research Alpert then traveled to India where he met a man, Neem Karoli Baba, who would become his Hindu guru. Alpert stayed on to study Hinduism with this master, was renamed Ram Dass, and subsequently came back to the States to spread word of new techniques for spiritual practice based on yoga and transcendental meditation using a repeated mantra, such as "Om.
Since 1968, Ram Dass has pursued a variety of spiritual methods and practices from various ancient wisdom traditions, including devotional yoga focused on the Hindu spiritual figure Hanuman. In 1974, Ram Dass created the Hanuman Foundation, which developed the Prison Ashram Project, designed to help prison inmates grow spiritually during their incarceration, and the Dying Project, conceived as a spiritual support structure for conscious and dying. He helped usher in the New Age movement.
Now in his seventies, Ram Dass remains best-known for his 1971 classic bestseller Be Here Now, a book which sparked a generation’s quest for expanded consciousness and meaningful spirituality. Ram Dass is a co-founder and advisory board member of the Seva Foundation, an international service organization.
"one of his messages is that we are both human and divine and that we must hold both simultaneously."
(source: pbs.org and slate.com)
344. T C Galav ( ? ) author of the book Philosophy of Hinduism writes:
"Hindus have given the world a Krishna, a Buddha, a Gandhi, and hundreds of equally great saints, seers and scholars from Valmiki and Ved Vyasa to Samkra, Tulsidasa and Vivekananda, and with them a most logical, scientific and secular philosophy of religion and free worship of God or free contemplation of the supernatural - something different from dogmas and creeds based on miracles, mysteries, and irrational stories."
"Hinduism is freedom, especially the freedom in thinking about God."
"Unlike other religions, Hinduism has no founder. It does not depend for its authority on the personality of any man - a messiah, a savior, a prophet, or a guru. Its authority is eternal Truth which has revealed itself through the minds of great rishis who perfected themselves by long penances and are said to have heard in their hearts eternal truths as Sruti. Thus, it has become a cumulative record of metaphysical experimentation."
Rig Veda is the Veda par excellence, the real Veda that traces the earliest growth of religious ideas in India. It is the earliest book of the Hindus and, indeed of the whole world. It is in poetical form, has one thousand twenty eight poems or hymns called Samhita. It is so much full of thought that at this early period in history no poet in any other nation could have conceived them. "
(source: Philosophy of Hinduism - An Introduction By T. C. Galav Universal Science-Religion. ISBN: 0964237709 p 1 - 38. Note: This book served as an inspiration for the creation of this website)
345. Rajeev Srinivasan ( ? ) works in software sales and is a marketing professional, and writes commentary for Rediff.com. He graduated from IIT Madras and the Stanford Business School.
He writes in his column:
"Hinduism is the most apolitical of religions, with an extremely clear separation of church and state. This has always been the case historically."
(source: Tools of the 'secularist' arsenal - By Rajeev Srinivasan - rediff.com).
Ancient Indians did recognize the importance of their rivers as literally the lifeblood of the nation. Hence the great honour and respect given to them in Hindu scriptures. See, for example, the sloka:
Gange cha! Yamune chiava! Godavari! Sarasvati!
Narmade! Sindhu! Kaveri! Jale asmin sannidhim kuru!
In this water, I invoke the presence of holy waters from The rivers Ganga, Yamuna, Godavari, Sarasvati, Narmada, Sindhu and Cauvery!
The divinity attributed to the sacred rivers such as the Sarasvati, the Ganga, the Cauveri, and the Narmada has perhaps helped us manage and preserve them. The Rg Veda speaks often about the mighty river Sarasvati, as broad as the ocean. In the story of Indra's slaying of the water-demon Vrtra, we see the damming of the river and its subsequent release. Pilgrims even today undertake the arduous trek to Gaumukh, the origin of the Ganga/Bhagirathi, even though the glacier that gives rise to the river has receded eighteen kilometers away from the original temple to Ganga built millennia ago at the then source, Gangotri.
Ancient Indians did
recognize the importance of their rivers as literally the lifeblood of the
nation. Hence the great honour and respect given to them in Hindu scriptures.
The
Sarasvati, along whose banks the bulk of the settlements of the Indus-Sarasvati
(Harappan) civilisation can be found, dried up circa 2000 BCE, after an
earthquake caused its tributaries to be captured by other rivers, the Sutlej by
the Indus, and the Yamuna by the Ganga. The
Indus-Sarasvati civilisation declined precipitously thereafter, and its next
flowering was hundreds of years later, in the Gangetic Plain to the east. The
river died, and so almost did the civilisation; this is a cautionary tale for
us. There are those who still remember the long-lost river. The Gauda Saraswat
Brahmins of the Konkan coast, Sarasvati's children, still recall that immense
river, whose course was eight kilometers wide in parts. (source: The River sutra - By Rajeev Srinivasan - rediff.com).
He writes about
ancient India's
greatest achievement:
"Panini's
grammar, dating back 2500 years, and encapsulating the complete structure of
Sanskrit in four thousand context-free rules, is arguably the greatest
achievement of a single human mind in all of history.
The sheer audacity to
imagine capturing the infinity of language in the finitude of a set of rules is
simply breathtaking: it could only have come from ancient India which
invented the ideas of the infinite and the infinitesimal, and the
correspondence between the two. The concept of context-free languages was
re-invented only in the 1950s by computer scientists, since ambiguity is
unacceptable to computers.
To take mathematics
and astronomy, Madhava, Nilakantha and Parameswara of the Kerala school
invented the ideas of the calculus and infinite series (including the so-called
Taylor series) circa 1500 CE, and these were
most probably transmitted to Europe by Jesuit
missionaries. The so-called Pythagoras theorem was discussed by Baudhayana
about 500 years before Pythagoras. Aryabhata calculated pi to six decimal
places in 499 CE. Saayana appears to have accurately calculated the speed of
light around 1370 CE."
(source: Pax Indica and a multipolar world - By Rajeev Srinivasan -
rediff.com). For more on Rajeev Srinivasan, refer to chapter on Articles)
346. Paul Johnson (
? ) eminent British historian and
author of several books including A History of the American People has observed that to
prosper a nation needs tolerance. He pointed out the economic value of
being tolerant. All societies flourish mightily when tolerance is the norm. And
India
is a good example of this. India's
tradition, particularly the Hindu tradition of tolerance, has been
exalted by Johnson to make his point that whenever a society develops
tolerance, there is prosperity in the society. He says this about India:
" It is the nature of the Hindu religion to be tolerant and, in its own curious way, permissive. Under the socialist regime of Jawaharlal Nehru and his family successors the state was intolerant, restrictive and grotesquely bureaucratic. That has largely changed (though much bureaucracy remains), and the natural tolerance of the Hindu mind-set has replaced quasi-Marxist rigidity."
(source: Forbes.com).
In what appeared to be a thumbs-up to Hindu nationalism espoused by the BJP government, Johnson also took a swipe at the country’s Congress legacy, arguing that “under the socialist regime of Jawaharlal Nehru and his family successors the state was intolerant, restrictive and grotesquely bureaucratic. “That has largely changed (though much bureaucracy remains), he wrote, and the “natural tolerance of the Hindu mind-set has replaced quasi-Marxist rigidity.”
(source: Boontimes for Hindu rate of growth - By Chidanand Rajghatta -economictimes.com and http://www.indianewengland.com/news/702058.html?mkey=1060861)
347. Andrew Krieger ( ? ) President and CEO of NorthBridge Capital Management. A BA in Philosophy (Magna Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa), an MBA in Finance -- and prior to that, an MA in South Asian Studies, most notably Sanskrit. He has studied Sanskrit and Indian philosophy.
He has visited India more than 20 times, studying yoga, traveling, introducing his family to "my love affair with an amazing civilization."
Krieger said he thought he had "ended up in the wrong body," meaning that he is really an Indian in his heart. I have heard this from my wife. India does this to some people.
"I got turned on to Vedanta when I was about 11 years old,"
The India I know has tremendous genetic capabilities; but 700 years of foreign rule has put a dampener on it. I still believe that it is the greatest civilisation ever on this planet, and those strong genetic factors are bound to re-emerge -- if you look at what is happening to the country, the way geniuses are emerging to lead it in every field, it is already happening in a sense, people, leaders with vision, are emerging.
When I talk of genetics, look, sports has been part of India's heritage for 5,000 years or more. Archery, for instance; wrestling; swimming, all these used to be part of Indian sporting tradition.
(source: India has tremendous genetic capabilities - rediff.com and IMG to Open Sports School in India - nytimes.com)
348. Sri Chinmoy (1931 - ) born Chinmoy Kumar Ghose in the small village of Shakpura in East Bengal. In 1944, after both his parents had died, 12 year-old Chinmoy entered the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, a spiritual community near Pondicherry in South India. Here he spent the next 20 years in spiritual practice - including long hours of meditation, practising athletics, writing poetry, essays and spiritual songs. In his early teens, Chinmoy had many profound inner experiences, and in subsequent years achieved very advanced states of meditation. In 1964, he moved to New York City to share his inner wealth with sincere seekers in the West.
He has written:
"Mother India is an aspiring tree. This aspiring tree has the Vedas as its only roots. The root is Truth, the tree is Truth, the experience of the tree is Truth, the realization of the tree is Truth, the realization of the tree is Truth, the revelation of the tree is Truth, the manifestation of the tree is Truth. The Vedic seers saw the Truth with their souls, in their Heavenly visions and in their earthly actions. Satyam eva jayate nanrtam (Mundakopanisad 3.1.6) - Truth alone triumphs, not falsehood.
The Vedas have the eternal wisdom. It is for us. The Vedas are more than willing to illumine us if we dare to listen to their message. Srnvantu visce amrtasya putrah (Rig Veda X 13.3) Hearken, ye sons of Immortality. The Vedas are divinely practical value. They house the earliest poetry and prose literature of the searching, striving and aspiring human soul. He who thinks that the Vedic poetry is primitive and the Vedic literature insignificant is unmistakably wanting in such sublime and enduring wisdom to the world at large?
The body of the Vedic poetry is simplicity
The vital of the Vedic poetry is sincerity.
The mind of the Vedic poetry is clarity.
The heart of the Vedic poetry is purity.
The soul of the Vedic poetry is luminosity.
The Vedic seers accepted the laws of others not only with their hearts' frankness but also with their souls' oneness. The saw the One in the many and the many in the One. To them, the Absolute was not their sole monopoly.
(source: Commentaries on The Vedas, The Upanishads, and The Bhagavad Gita - By Shri Chinmoy p. 1 - 12)
349. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881 - 1955) was a visionary French Jesuit, paleontologist, biologist, and philosopher. Author the book Le Phenomene Humain, or The Human Phenomenon. Teilhard’s evolutionism earned him the distrust of his religious superiors, while his religious mysticism made scientific circles suspicious.
A prominent 20th century scientific Christian theologian, studied Ramanuja’s Vedanta, and then equated Saguna Brahman with “the body of Christ.” However, he was persecuted by the Church, and lived in Asia in exile, while writing many of his works.
(source: Indic Challenges to the Discipline of Science and Religion - By Rajiv Malhotra ).
Teilhard de Chardin's extensive study and commentary on Vedanta during his trip to India, especially Ramanuja's works, are suppressed by his modern followers, even though Teilhard used these ideas to develop what is now 'liberal Christianity'. Mary Baker Eddy, founder of Christian Science quoted Indic thought in the early editions of her books, but these references later got removed as Theosophy and she became competitors - one deploying Indic ideas openly in a perennial way and the other within strictly branded Christianity.
(source: The Ethics of Proselytizing - By Rajiv Malhotra - Hindu Vivek Kendra).
Towards a New Mysticism, Teilhard de Chardin and Eastern Religions - by Ursula King, and in that book King describes how Teilhard went to India and read Vedanta, and how he commented on Ramanuja's interpretation, and remarked that his own ideas were similar. Then he came up with the idea that the cosmos was the body of Christ, which is comparable to saguna Brahman notion.
(source: Infinity Foundation and Indic traditions in Academic System - By Pankaj Jain).
Because Teilhard's ideas are to a great extent plagiarisms from Vedanta and Tantra gummed together with Christian-sounding jargon and heavily painted with evolutionism.
"The world I live in becomes divine. Yet these flames do not consume me, nor do these waters dissolve me; for, unlike the false forms of monism that impel us through passivity towards unconsciousness, the pan-Christianism I am finding places union at the term of an arduous process of differentiation. I shall attain the spirit only by releasing completely and exhaustively all the powers of matter... I recognize that, following the example of the incarnate God revealed to me by the Catholic faith, I can be saved only by becoming one with the universe." This is outright Hinduism. It has a little bit of everything in it — a recognizable verse from an Upanishad and pieces from several of the philosophical systems along with their practices.
A religious concept of "evolution," which was consciously rejected by Christian thought, has been basic to Hindu thought for millenia; every Hindu religious practice assumes it. Teilhard is well on his way towards the impersonal God when he writes: "Christ is becoming more and more indispensable to me... but at the same time the figure of the historical Christ is becoming less and less substantial and distinct to me." "Christianity is still to some extent a refuge, but it does not embrace, or satisfy or even lead the 'modern soul' any longer."
For Teilhard de Chardin it is the Omega Point, which belongs to something that is beyond representation. For Vivekananda it is the Om, the sacred syllable of the Hindus: "All humanity, converging at the foot of that sacred place where is set the symbol that is no symbol, the name that is beyond all sound."
(source: The Goal of Hinduism: The Universal Religion - orthodoxphotos.com).
Kaikhushru Dhunjibhoy Sethna in his book The Spirituality of the Future, is critical not only of Zaehner but of many Catholic expositions of the thought of Teilhard. These Catholic studies attempt to save Teilhard for the church by pointing to his continuity with tradition, especially with the Greek fathers, as if Teilhard's pantheism is Christian. As Teilhard has come to be more and more acceptable within Catholicism, Sethna, from outside Catholicism, seriously challenges his orthodoxy. Sethna argues that the pantheism of Teilhard is truly a pantheism unacceptable within Roman Catholicism. In fact, one of the major limitations in the thought of Teilhard flows from the unfreedom within his church (keep in mind the post-Vatican I, pre-Vatican II period within which he lived) which prevented him from going fully where his spirit was leading him. Teilhard's Catholicism stands in the way of Teilhard's spirituality, which is pantheistic in a sense fully in accord with Indian Vedanta.
The 20th Century, Teilhard de Chardin - most of his followers today would refuse to acknowledge the influence of India on the development of his thoughts. Yes, and he actually, during his exile in China for a few years, went to India. He bought a two-volume book on Vedanta, which covered the four different schools of Vedanta. He wrote notes on it. He commented on the Vedanta. He liked the particular interpretation Ramanuja, who was in the 10th century and has been a major figure in Hinduism. He wrote all that and yet in the mainstream conferences and books about Teilhard de Chardin, you will be hard pressed to find people who will acknowledge that he had any Indian influence upon him whatsoever.
(source: Recent Studies of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin - By Donald Goergen - Spirituality Today - Fall 1982 Vol. 34)
350. Queen Fredricka of Greece (1931- 1981) The wife of King Paul of Greece.
Queen Frederika had come to pay homage to her guru, one of the Shankaracharyas, following his book on non-dualism -i.e., absolute monism, also called Advaita (or Advaita Vendanta). This book was an exposition of the teachings of the ancient Hindu scriptures called the Upanishads, or Vedanta.
While the Paramacharya was in Kalahasthi, Queen Frederica of Greece, who had visited India at that time, came to kalahasthi to have the blessings of the Paramacharya on December 3rd.
Queen Frederika said that it was her advanced research in physics that had started her on a spiritual quest. It culminated in her accepting the non-dualism or absolute monism of Shankara as her philosophy of life and science.
Long before physics discovered it, Shankara had argued that the world of sense experience, that is the world of matter, was a world of appearance (maya), because at the root of each individual existence is the same energy which forms the cosmos. The human self (atman) is ultimately not distinct from the universal self (brahma). Duality is illusion. Reality is not dual, but one. Science, said Frederika, has yet to catch up with what the seers in India had already understood over 2500 years ago. Therefore, she said to the Rajmata,
‘You are fortunate to inherit such knowledge. I envy you. While Greece is the country of my birth, India is the country of my soul.’
(source: A Newsletter of the Kanchi Kamakoti Center of California and From the new physics to Hinduism)
Rajiv Malhotra ( ? ) After studying in Delhi's St. Columba's High School and then St. Stephen's College, Rajiv arrived in the US in 1971 to study Physics and Computer Science. His corporate careers and business entrepreneurship included the computer, software and telecom industries. He now spends full time with The Infinity Foundation, a non-profit organization in Princeton, New Jersey. He is also the author of new book - Breaking India: Western Interventions in Dravidian and Dalit Faultlines
He has written thus:
"In Hinduism, there is no central authority to control people's personal beliefs in Hinduism, which respects many paths. There are many God-Truths, but these are merely representations by different people of a single God-Truth. This has given rise to hundreds of sects and sub sects within Hinduism, which have learned to coexist."
"In Hinduism, there is no concept similar to Christian martyrdom or Islamic jihad. The most important and revered historical figures of Hinduism were not martyrs. Spirituality is not about fighting someone or some religion. There is no discussion of other religions in Hindu scriptures, no campaigns against "false gods." Comparative religion is not of much interest to Hindus, as they do not see religion through competitive or predatory eyes. Comparative religion is not of much interest to Hindus, as they do not see religion through competitive or predatory eyes. Christians, on the other hand, go out of their way to control positions in academics, to research and to teach about Hinduism, as a sort of competitor intelligence gathering which seeks hegemony. "
"Hindus fail to understand the critical history-dependence of the Abrahamic religions and the way their core myths and institutions are built around these frozen smritis. Often what Hindus really mean is that all religions are equal in the respect and rights they deserve, but they confuse this with sameness. Hindu scholars to develop a rigorous approach to purva-paksha (scholarly critiques of other traditions within the framework of the Indian darshanas); to highlight the Hindu history of constructions through its own smriti traditions; and to refute false presuppositions about Hinduism that have spread into many academic disciplines."
(source: An Unholy Business - hinduismtoday.com and Myth of Hindu Sameness - By Rajiv Malhotra. For more on Rajiv Malhotra refer to chapters on Glimpses IX and Glimpses X and Glimpses XI and The Axis of Neocolonialism and Where is India in the Clash of Civlization – By Rajiv Malhotra and Dharma's Good News: You Are Not a Sinner! - huffingtonpost.com
352. Stephen H Ruppenthal ( ? ) Son of a TWA pilot, he could travel across the world but India hooked him during his first visit. Later he would come to know the spiritual master Eknath Easwaran and work with him for about three decades. The author of the recently published The Path of Direct Awakening: Passages for Meditation was barely 14 when he fell in love with India.
" I have a special, soft corner in my heart for Hinduism. It is like a mother to me, and I have always felt so,"
A journalist said not too long ago that my insights into India may have been due to karma. Over the past month, I have thought a lot about that. Maybe I did have some of India in me even before I landed there at age 14. Mine is the India of the spirit. Before that, I was not religious in the least. But I came away from India wanting passionately to find the deepest truth in religion; not hear it from a church pulpit, but experience it in my consciousness.
Any great treasure takes some work to find and gain. When something is easily accessible, often it isn't worth that much, or perhaps the hard work comes later down the road. To me, Indian spirituality is a treasure of the highest order.
India stands for hope in a world full of violence and despair. The fertile spiritual soil of India will bring forth a spiritual figure who will guide the world back into love, into peace, into mutual respect and caring for each other. That is how we will save this planet.
I am more a devotee
than a jnani. Though I love the
wisdom of the Upanishads and such high philosophy and logic as the Nyaya-Vaishesheka and Nagarjuna, I feel most drawn to the life
and example of Sri Krishna. Right now, religion is still concepts up in my
head. I want to have religion flooding my heart.
Sri Krishna offers
this in the Bhagvad Gita. That is why I have memorised all of chapters 2
through 12, plus 15 and parts of 18, for use in my passage meditation. When I
meditate on these passages, I try to repeat these words in my heart, where I
believe Sri Krishna resides in all his glory. In this regard, I have also
memorized all passages with the yin-yang symbol in my book that brings the same
peace and energy directly from nature and the magical world around us.
" I am
captivated also by epics like the Mahabharata and the Ramayana,"(source: Mine is the India of the Spirit - interview with Stephen H Ruppenthal - rediff.com).
353. Professor Robert P Goldman ( ? ) Professor of Sanskrit at Berkeley. His areas of scholarly interest include Sanskrit literature and literary theory, Indian Epic Studies. He is perhaps best known for his work as the Director, General Editor, and a principal translator of a massive and fully annotated translation of the critical edition of the Valmiki Ramayana.
Goldman said he fell in love with Indian culture and history when he was a 20-year-old student at Columbia University, New York. "I was studying chemistry and took up a course on Indian history," he said. "I became fascinated. Indian history and culture was so rich," said Goldman, now 60. He took to studying Sanskrit, which he found "very tough and complicated". But he mastered it.
Delivering a lecture on ‘Ramayana: Medieval Indian Interpretations’, organised by the University of Hyderabad as part of its distinguished lecture series, Goldman rejected the Western view that Ramayana was a mixture of the real and the mythological.
“There’s clear-cut evidence to show that the incidents described in Ramayana took place,” he said here on Friday. Goldman said the experts had calculated the exact period in which the war between Lord Rama and Ravana took place and the time taken by Lord Hanuman to bring the Sanjeevani herb and how long the demon Kumbhakarna used to sleep.
Goldman said he believed that Hanuman flew to Sri Lanka and spoke a human language. “It is something supernatural and something natural,” he said. “It is not myth as is generally claimed by some Westerners. Rama-yana is a reality.”
"Valmiki's Ramayan is the central document of Indian culture. The book and its message express in an aesthetically pleasing and emotionally moving form what must be seen as the most powerfully hegemonic discourse of the brahmanical and kshatriya elites of India's epic age. It continues to be the basic and the founding statement of social and political order in India even today. Greek epics like Homer's Iliad is the book of a lost civilisation for today's Westerners. The Ramayan is unique in continuing unbroken over almost 3000 years as the living document of Indian civilisation. The Doordarshan serial's massive popularity only served to remind people how important it continues to be in shaping basic perceptions and social attitudes in India today."
"Ram's central act is not the destruction of the demon king Ravan, but his cheerful acceptance of his wrongful disinheritance and cruel exile to preserve the honour of his foolish father." "It is no exaggeration to say that in India everyone knows the Ram story. In one sense, one has to know it to be part of Indian culture."
(source: Ramayana was real: American professor - deccanchronicle.com and saag.com and How fast do monkeys fly - in Ramayana?)
354. John Burdon Sanderson Haldane (1892- 1964) the world-renowned geneticist. In 1922, he joined Cambridge University to take up research in biochemistry and in 1925, J.B.S. became interested in genetics-the study of genetics and variations and this subsequently led him to his being elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1932. A year later he joined the University College, London, as Professor of Genetics, a position he held as long as he stayed in Britain. Haldane was the first to use mathematics in genetics. Among his significant contributions is an estimate of the rate of mutation of a human gene. He wrote articles on popular science and gave lectures. Some of his famous books are The Causes of Evolution, New Paths in Genetics and Biochemistry of Genetics.
Haldane was friends with the author Aldous Huxley and was the basis for the biologist Shearwater in Huxley's novel Antic Hay. Ideas from Haldane's Daedalus, such as ectogenesis (the development of fetuses in artificial wombs), also influenced Huxley's Brave New World. He had many students, the most famous of whom, John Maynard Smith was perhaps also the one most like himself.
He left Britain in 1907 and come to live in India, a country he came to love during his several visits here. He was inspired by Hindu philosophy, the Hindu way of life and the principle of non-violence. The Gita impressed him. He even liked the dhoti and kurta attire and used to wear them.
Disillusioned with Marxism in the 1940s and 50s, he eventually moved to India to conduct scientific research.
He came to India with a purpose. He became an Indian citizen, and went native. He knew the country had a variety of animals and plants in large numbers. He wanted to develop research in biology. He was at first appointed professor at the India Statistical Institute, Calcutta and later he became Director, Genetics and Biometry Laboratory in Bhubaneswar, Orissa where he died in 1964.
(source: British geneticist who adopted Hinduism - vidyapatha.com)
355. Nirad C. Chaudhuri (1897-1999) His first book, The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian, was published in 1951 and was followed by many others, including The Continent of Circe, for which he won the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize, and Thy Hand Great Anarch!, a second volume of memoirs. Booker Prize winner. Chaudhuri moved to England in 1970. Sir Naipaul has referred to him a foolish man who wrote one good book, then went into kind of absurd fantasy, he built a whole book around somebody who came with the invaders. His views on British rule were not popular in India. Once an admirer of the British, he now finds them a decadent lot and their country in steep decline. This is the final disillusionment for the man who dedicated The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian to the British Empire!
He writes about the vitality of Hinduism and the lack of organization.
"The faith which the Hindus had in their religion never wavered even in its worst days. It has had waxings and wanings which has kept the balance even." " In judging the vitality of Hinduism the point should be emphasized that it has maintained itself through the ages and enforced obedience to itself without support from any kind of organization, secular or spiritual."
(source: Hinduism: a religion to live by - Nirad C. Chaudhari p. 116-120).
356. Richard Garbe (1857–1927) a professor at the University of Tübingen, had earned his reputation through his scholarship on Indian philosophy, particularly his work on reconstructing the Bhagavad Gita in its original form.
His year-long trip to India in 1885 was financed by the Prussian government through its Ministry of Culture and the Royal Academy of Sciences in Berlin. Garbe kept a detailed record of his experiences in India, which he published in 1889 under the title Indian Travel Sketches. Garbe's travels and reactions to the East are especially interesting because he was one of a handful of nineteenth-century German Indologists (scholars of Indian culture and antiquity) who actually visited India.
He had devoted a large part of his life to the study of the Sankhya, consoled himself with the thought that 'in Kapila's doctrine, for the first time in the history of the world, the complete independence and freedom of the human mind, its full confidence in its own powers, were exhibited."
(source: Philosophy of Hinduism - By Galav p. 35).
357. Sir. Henry M. Elliot ( ? ) author of History of India, volume III has written:
"It it is asserted that Paradise is in India,
Be not surprised, because Paradise itself is not comparable to it."
(source: History of India - By Sir. H. M. Elliot vol. II p. 28-29).
358. Girilal Jain ( - 1933) doyen of Indian journalists and editor of The Times of India from 1978-1988, was a passionate crusader of the Hindu cause. Author of The Hindu Phenomenon, he has observed:
"Many Hindu intellectuals are just not able to comprehend the fact that there is no human aspiration or experience which lies outside the range of Hinduism; it provides for even demon-Gods. In contrast, all religions are in the nature of sects, though they cannot be so defined because of their insistence on their separateness and, indeed, hostility to Hinduism."
Hindus fought and lost, they did not throw up prophets of woe and doom; they did not bemoan that their Gods had let them down because they had been disloyal to them. Hindus are perhaps unique in this respect.
"Hindus accept no divisions between the believer and unbeliever. Every path leads to Him (God or Reality); there can be as many paths to Him as the number of human. Indeed, the prophetic tradition is alien to Hinduism. Narrowness of the spirit, peculiar to Semitic faiths, has been alien to India."
The concept of nation itself is, in fact, alien to the Hindu temperament and genius. Such a concept is essentially Semitic in character even if it arose in western Europe in the eighteenth century. The nation concept too emphasizes the exclusion of those who do not belong to the charmed circle (territorial or linguistic or ethnic) as much as it emphasizes the inclusion of those who fall within the circle. By contrast, the essential spirit of Hinduism is 'inclusivist' and not 'exclusivisit' by definition. In that sense the Hindu fight is anxious to renew themselves in the spirit of their civilization and the state and the political and intellectual class trapped in the debris in which the British managed to bury our people before they left."
(source: The Hindu Phenomenon - By Girilal Jain p 5 -135 - South Asia Books - 1998 ISBN 8174760105).
"The Semitic
spirit is intolerant and insistent on the pursuit of a particular course,
whereas the Indian spirits is a broadminded and tolerant one. To say therefore
that Ram and Rahim are the same is, in my opinion, a form of escapism or
make-believe.
There is no concept,
for example, in Hinduism of kafir. You cannot be a kafir in Hinduism. You do not cease to be
a Hindu whatever you do, unless you choose to get converted to another
religion. You can be a Buddhist and a Hindu at the same time, not only in a
social sense but also in religious terms."
(source:
Girilal Jain on
Hindu Rashtra - bharatvani.org). 359. Swami Akhilananda ( ? ) Texas raised Hindu disciple
The first question most people ask the tall, blond, blue-eyed Hindu swami from Texas, almost everywhere he goes on his traveling lectures, is how did he get to be a Hindu swami.
"People always ask me that," said Swami Akhilananda, wearing sandals, beads, a saffron robe and a vertical red streak on his forehead called a tilak during a recent visit to the Hindu Temple and Cultural Center of Birmingham.
"Since I was a young child I was raised as a Hindu," he said. "Hinduism is such that, whatever you can ask, there's always an answer."
His father, a carpenter, was a spiritual seeker who studied Hinduism and helped oversee construction on the Barsana Dham, a Hindu Temple in Austin, Texas. Built on 200 acres near a flowing stream, it's one of the largest Hindu temples in the United States. Steeped in the history and scriptures of Hinduism, but raised in Texas, Swami Akhilananda has emerged as an eloquent spokesman for the appeal of the ancient religion to people who are not of Indian descent.
"Every Hindu knows there's only one god and he manifests himself in many different ways," Swami Akhilananda said.
The representations of gods are to help people understand a
formless reality, he said. "There are a lot of different understandings of
Hinduism," he said. "We don't do idol worship. It's a way to
visualize God."
(source:
Texas-raised Hindu disciple eloquently speaks of ancient religion’s
appeal - Greg Garrison - The Salt Lake Tribune).360. Dr. Frank Gaetano Morales aka Sri Dharma Pravartaka Acharya ( ? ) He earned a Ph.D in Languages and Cultures of Asia from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He specializes in Sanskrit, Hindu Studies, Philosophy of Religion and History of Religion. At the young age of 14, Dr. Morales visited a Hindu temple for the first time. So awed was he with the majestic beauty and spiritual power that he encountered in this temple that, on the spot, he decided to devote his life to the path of Yoga. After living the life of a celibate Yoga monk for six years, Dr. Morales was ordained as a brahmana (a spiritual teacher) in 1986. His Sanskrit name is Sri Dharma Pravartaka Acharya. He is a follower of the ancient Vishishta-Advaita philosophy of Ramanuja. His first book Experiencing Truth: The Vedic Way of Knowing God is scheduled to be published by Motilal Banarsidass Publishers.
He has observed:
"The Sanskrit word "Sanatana" denotes that which always is, that which has neither beginning nor end, that which is eternal. Sanatana Dharma can cautiously be translated as The Eternal Natural Way". Hinduism is a way of life and world-view that is trans-geographical: traces of Sanatana Dharma are to be found in many of the ancient cultures of the world. No one actually knows when Sanatana Dharma was first started. Both practitioners of Hinduism, as well as all academic scholars of Hinduism, agree that there was no one specific time in known history when the religion was founded. Additionally, there was no one individual - a prophet, saint or priest - who can be claimed as the founder of the religion. It is an eternal spiritual culture that is as old as the Earth herself. Moreover, it is the sustainer of the Earth. This is indicated by the meanings of the two words that constitute the very name of this culture: sanatana means “eternal” and dharma means “natural law."
(source: Dharma Central - http://www.dharmacentral.com/faq.htm).
Hinduism is an eternal
spiritual culture that is as old as the Earth herself. Moreover, it is the
sustainer of the Earth.
This is indicated by
the meanings of the two words that constitute the very name of this culture:
Sanatana means “eternal” and Dharma means “natural law."
"The related terms "myth", "mythology", "mythological", etc., have had an interesting history and a very pointed polemic use. That the terms are rife with very negative connotations is doubted by very few. The way the terms are used today both within academia, as well as by the general public, is to denote something which is untrue, false, "primitive" (i.e., not European), a lie. Polemically speaking, one culture's "myth" is another culture's sacred history...and visa versa. The academic field of the study of "mythological" literature was started by 18th century European Classicists who took their misconceptions about their own Greco-Roman pre-Christian religious and cultural heritage and attempted to apply them to all contemporary non-Christian cultures - including that of Bharat. There is the wonderful saying that we have all heard, that "history" is written by the victors. Consequently, the stories of Noah's Ark, Abraham, Moses, the Judges, David, etc. are unquestioningly accepted by most European historians - and sadly by many Hindu historians! - as being incontrovertible and established fact. What these Western scholars and their Westernized Indian counterparts called the "mythical" Sarasvati River, for example, was discovered to be a concrete geological fact in our century by satellite photography; Krishna's "mythical" city of Dvaraka was, likewise, discovered off the coast of Gujarat about two decades ago. Despite these facts, the Puranas, Itihasas and traditional histories of Bharat, unlike the Biblical "myths", are relegated by modern Western scholars to the misty realm of "myth". Bluntly: primitive fables. If you've guessed that what has brought this situation about has been nothing less than European racism and intellectual colonialism, coupled with a strong element of Hindu inferiority complex, you've guessed right! The terms "myth", "mythology", "mythological", etc., have been used as a powerful weapon by anti-Hindu bigots for decades as a way of delegitimizing Hindu beliefs and the Hindu way of life. Such terms should be absolutely anathema to every sincere and self-respecting Hindu when speaking about the sacred stories of Sanatana Dharma. Our stories are not "myths". If we truly respect our religion, our culture, our selves, we must never use these terms again. Rather, we should do what many other formally oppressed non-Christian cultures have recently done (such as many Native American tribes), and call these "Sacred Stories".
(source: Word as Weapon - By Frank Morales - Hindu Renaissance magazine).
Also refer to Does Hinduism Teach That All Religions Are The Same? A Philosophical Critique of Radical Universalism - By Dr. Frank Gaetano Morales.
Refer to A Map of Sacred Stories of the Ancient World - Contributed to this site by Dom Sturiale of Sydney, Australia.
Refer to The World of Myth - By Ramesh N Rao - sulekha.com)
Om Tat Sat
(Continued...)
(My humble salutations to , H H Swamyjis, Hindu Wisdom, great Universal Philosophers, Historians, Professors and Devotees for the discovering collection)
( The Blog is reverently for all the seekers of truth and lovers of wisdom and also purely a non-commercial)
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