kaisersose

A piece of trash - to sum it up. Our patriots were so damn sure that the Babri Masjid was built on a Rama temple - until they were not able to prove it archaeologically. If you are unaware of the story, please find some time to read it and educate yourself on how jingoistic thinking runs in India. Cheers

There is no ceremony to become a generic Hindu, though some initiation procedures exist in some sections of Hindu beliefs. I don't see a need to "become" a Hindu. From what you write, you may be more in tune with the Ramakrishna Math. Their beliefs are modeled after Advaita and hence they are not sectarian - i.e., they are not bound to Shiva supremacy, Vishnu supremacy...any of those. Cheers

What kind of evidence or answer will convince you (either way)? Can you answer that? For most atheists, theists and agnosts, no proof exists than can convince them to change their view. Cheers

Melukote, a Sri Vaishnava center in Karnataka used to have a full set of publications at one time. Perhaps they still do. Cheers

And I can say the same thing - My post was logical; yours was shallow and incorrect. This is what will happen when you make unfounded statements. In future, hopefully, you will avoid sweeping statements about the glory of your own brand of religion with no evidence to back it up. You have given zero material, till date. You deride direct and simple messages from the Gita with your own "personal" concoctions. You assume you know Advaita without reading a single line of it. And as you are the one picking faults with Advaita, the burden of proof is on you to find evidence to support your allegations. It is simple logic. There are some idiots here who have been repeating the same nonsense about Advaita over and over again for years without evidence. They cannot keep their noses out of the topic and it appears you just joined that bandwagon. Nothing in that quote says I = you = God, which was your thesis. Hence the dismissal stands. Ironically, you have quoted a Bhakti verse from an Advaitin and yet you laughed at the relation between Advaita and Bhakti in your previous post. Just one example of how confused your understanding of Advaita is. The rest of your post is trash, as usual. I would expect much better from someone who claims to have a "direct relation with Krishna, unlike the rest of the people on this forum". If you intend to criticize Advaita and get away with it, you will have to do a lot better than this. Or of course, you can stay out of topics that you know nothing about - the sensible option. Cheers

OMG! here we go again... Means nothing. One can just as easily say, You are wrong. Only Pure Shaivism has the right to the word Bhakti. The above claim is spurious, no better than some iskcon folks in Australia trying to copyright the Hare Krishna mantra. And not just me, ISKCON, the Dvaita school, the Vishishtadvaita school and just about every one in the world would reject your concept as absurd. Or perhaps they don't understand because it is pure nonsense? This makes a lot more sense to me. You can, if you spend sometime to know what Advaita is, which you clearly haven't, as will be evident shortly. Correct. This may well be the only correct piece of information you have ever posted on this forum till date. Wrong, of course. Clearly shows you do not know the first thing about Advaita. The usual challenge of "produce a quote by Shankara to back your statement up or else it is dismissed as Hare Krishna/Prabhupada nonsense" applies. As the rest of your post is based on this false premise, it is dismissed as junk as well. Again, produce a valid quote from Shankara and you will be taken seriously. Though you mock ISKCON a lot, you are no better than the stereotype iskconite in anyway. The same shortcomings found in the narrow minded, ignorant Hare Krishna are seen in you too. You display the same levels of ignorance (and arrogance) as they do. So you would be better off admitting you are no different from them, instead of mocking them and pretending to be somehow better. And please spare us your drivel on Advaita. We have heard the same nonsense from Hare Krishnas here for far too long. Be creative and find something new - especially as you claim to be "better" than them. Cheers

Sorry, I disagree. The Advaitin is capable of the highest level of Bhakti possible. The Shaiva or Vaishnava has no special "one-up" over the Advaitin wrt., Bhakti. One who takes the above position either does not understand Bhakti or Advaita or possibly both. But if you are referring to some kind of Bhakti which ignores the concept of Moksha, then you are in violation of Krishna's diect message in the Gita. Such a concept is also peculiar to Gaudiya Vaishnavism and is rejected by mainstream Vaishnava groups. In which case, the thread should actually be renamed more appropriately as "Dvaita, V-Dvaita Advaita, etc., have no understanding of Gaudiya Vaishnavism". But they do! Everyone knows the Gaudiya position and reject it as false because Gaudiya Vaishnavism is not based on mainstream scripture. ISKCON here means Gaudiya Vaishnavism. http://www.dvaita.org/shaastra/iskcon.shtml Cheers

I would have to disagree with your interpretation. Bhakti means one of these - devotion, faith, worship. 1) Anyone who accepts Krishna or any God as a superior is already placing faith in the existence and superior nature of a God and hence has Bhakti. 2) Anyone who worships a God in anyway is a Bhakta and has Bhakti - it may be as simple as visiting a nearby temple, singing Bhajans on weekends to chanting a mantra on a daily basis, full-blown complex forms of worship. 3) Fervent devotion as displayed by people like Gora, Meera, Chaitanya, et al., is Bhakti too. It is possible that in some cases, Bhakti may be relatively more intense and purer in form, but it is completely illogical to pick out one of these sets and discard everything else as not Bhakti. Anyone who is a theist is a Bhakta at some level. It would be bigotry and arrogant to say his faith and/or devotion has to reach a certain level for it to qualify as Bhakti. No one has the authority to make up such discriminatory rules not to mention the ability to evaluate one'e level of devotion. It is not something that can be measured. Cheers

I asked "how do you know that very few people understand Bhakti" and here is the response. Here are the problems with this logic. 1. Whatever just came to you on its own, does not give you any idea on someone else's understanding of Bhakti. You can only speak for yourself. A statement like "very few people understand bhakti" cannot follow from a personal experience. 2. If you did not endeavor for anything, then why did you surrender? There was no reason to do so. If people decided to drop everything they are doing and turn towards Hari to provide them with their needs, then the whole concept of "perform your duty" as painstakingly laid out in the Gita goes for a toss. So in effect, you are disagreeing with the entire chapter 3 of the Gita. Any interpretation of a text that requires rejecting part of the text, is to be dismissed as an invalid interpretation. Since you dismiss chapter 3 as incorrect, it follows that your interpretation of the entire Gita is incorrect. Again, you are in no position to say or know how others relate to Krishna. You have not met and studied all the others to make such a statement. Bhakti itself is a word; But as you claim that it is "beyond words", how do you know whatever was revealed to you is Bhakti? It is impossible to relate your experience to a word when the experience is beyond words (your own claim). Do you see the flaw in your logic? I can explain in more detail if necessary. To put things in perspective, if Bhakti was beyond words as you put it, there would be no chapter 12 (Bhakti Yoga) in the Gita. Or the author should have written "Sorry folks; Bhakti is beyond words, so nothing to write here. Moving onto chapter 13... " But the author did not do that. He believed Bhakti can be understood through words and wrote 20 verses in that chapter, which shows you are disagreeing with him (again). Cheers

And you know this, how? If the meaning cannot be conveyed by words, how did you understand the meaning? Yes, I know, unlike yourself, most of us here are fools for trying to communicate through words, but please indulge us nonetheless and answer our simple questions. Cheers

The second statement is correct, yes. But how is the first statement to be understood (or accepted) by anyone, when no evidence is presented? There is also a simple common sense approach that all accepted scriptures have to assert such a claim in unison. In this case, the Veda, the Mahabharata and all the nice (Vaishnava) Puranas should say the same thing - that Vishnu came from Krishna. But that is not the case. Not *one* of them say what you claim. Rather it is very clear that Vishnu is the root of all avatars including the Krishna avatar. Vishnu is not an avatar at all, for he was never born on earth as Vishnu for a specific cause, unlike Krishna. All avatar lists of Vishnu say Krishna was one of his avatars while there exist no avatar lists for Krishna. My point is, if you think somehow the Gita and a single verse from the Bhagavatam (interpeted in isolation, out of context) is sufficient to prove your case, then it should be clear that it is not. There is no common evidence among Vaishnava groups for the Krishna origin concept. But there is plenty of evidence for the Vishnu origin concept. As I said earlier, stop pretending that it is some foregone conclusion that applies to all Vaishnavas. The Krishna origin story is specific to Gaudiya Vaishnavas and they should stop pretending that they have evidence acceptable to non-Gaudiyas. Thy don't. This does not mean it is incorrect, but it should be clear that the source of this story is not from mainstream literature, but from Gaudiya-specific literature. Cheers

Bhakti and Advaita and not mutually exclusive as some morons (not you, of course) here assume. Most Advaitins follow the Bhakti route. The Upanishad approach of introspection also known as the Jnana-Marga is hard for most people. As for falling down, we have seen a number of high profile Bhaktas "fall down" in the recent years. Some went to prison and some have ongoing cases against them for abusing women in their Ashrams, etc. So the danger of falling down is not reduced just because one chooses the Bhakti approach. Cheers

Prabhupada's tolerance policy is modeled after semitic religions and not based on Hindu beliefs. The former consists of accepting a single belief and destroying everything else, as we have seen in history. The latter, though still consisting of a single belief is much more accomodating and receptive about co-existing with other beliefs. This is a fundamental difference and explains why you see Prabhupada followers - especially westerners - spending a lot of their time & energy mocking and criticizing other beliefs, mainly Advaita, Shaivism, Sai Baba, etc. Due to their Christian backgrounds, a number of them are very sympathetic towards Jesus and find it very important to include Jesus in their own custom brand of Vaishnavism. Other than this, they are ever willing to put down everyone else. Thankfully, their lack of depth of knowledge is self-obvious and no one takes them seriously. In the history of this forum, in spite of their constant proselytization and non-stop criticism of Advaita and Shaivism, no one was impressed enough to change over to their camp, though the reverse happened in some cases. Perhaps, they may have had better luck if they had refrained from putting down others and focused only on their positive points. But the damage has been done and the clock cannot be turned back. At this time, it is more critical for them to stop their own people from moving away Cheers

That indicates you have been blabbering on about something you know nothing about. The usage of "merging" and "bodily effulgence" is a complete giveaway. Hard to stay silent when I see such nonsense being posted. Wrong. If that were true, you would not have used the word "merging" and "bodily effulgence" or said Brahma Nirvana is temporary. Honesty has become a rare commodity here... Perfect answers by people who know what they are talking about. Certainly not by high school drop-out Hare Krishnas who think they know everything about Advaita without reading a single line of the doctrine. Right? Oh...And I still see no quote by Shankara in support of your previous allegations. So the dismissal stands. Cheers

Ah...The blind attempting to lead the blind. And yet, it is a complete hoax. Not a partial hoax, but a complete one. "Merging into Brahman" is incorrect "emminating from the Supreme Personailty of Godhead's Body" is incorrect It follows, the entire statement is incorrect. Incorrect again. Brahma-Nirvana is permanent, the highest and irreversible. Here it is, straight from the horse's mouth. The exact words "Brahma Nirvana" appear in the Gita (multiple times) if you want to check. O Partha, this is the state of being established in Brahman. One does not become deluded after attaining this. One attains Nirvana in Brahman by being established in this state even in the closing years of one's life - Gita 2.72 Incorrect again. There is no such thing as "void to void". In short, too many mistakes in one post. Of course, all is forgiven and taken back, if a *single* quote by Shankara can be provided in support of these allegations; that is evidence to show he says one or more of the following "merging into Brahman" "effulgence from supreme personality of godhead" "temporary Brahma-Nirvana" "void to void" Else, the dismissal will stand and you will ( I trust) either stop posting material on Advaita forever or else pick up a book written by Shankara and read it before posting on Advaita again. Either option will prevent future blunders from your side, which is good for you. Cheers

I think at this point, Ranjeet has proved beyond doubt that Advaita is a complete hoax. And he he did it 1) Without quoting a single verse written by Shankara to show the Advaita position. 2) Without quoting a single Veda to show the real truth That is a marvellous feat only possible through the grace of Jagadguru Sri Kripaluji Maharaj - the scholar who defeated hundreds of Mayavadi pundits in Kashi (all at the same time). The only difference between Ranjeet's victory and Jagadguru Sri Kripaluji Maharaj's victory is Ranjeet managed the entire proof without providing a single quote as evidence. Kudos Bro, the world is a better place today because of your efforts. Just as the pundits of Kashi bestowed a title on Jagadguru Sri Kripaluji Maharaj for his scholarship, I think it would be apt for us here to confer a title on you for exposing the grand (and complete) hoax perpetrated by Shankara. Cheers

As they believe Krishna is the source of everything, if there is a Vishnu, Krishna would be the source of this Vishnu too, QED. Gaudiya Vaishnavism has Krishna, Radha and Goloka as its core beliefs. So far so good; the problem comes when they tried to tie in their belief system with traditional Vaishnavism which introduces the Vedas, Mahabharata and the Puranas. Since their beliefs are not to be found in these texts, they enter an inconsistent mode. I think it was necessary for them to be part of mainstream Vaishnavism at some point for political reasons and to improve crediblity. But that has opened a whole other series of problems. In my opinion, it would be simpler and cleaner if they disoociated themselves from the Vedas, use the the Mahabharata and the Bhagavatam as sources of knowledge of Krishna and honestly admit that Radha and Goloka come from a completely different source (Brahma Samhita, etc). Different does not necessarily mean bogus. But as long as they try to hold on to both, they will have a hard time convincing others and sometimes themselves. If they take this approach, they no longer have to answer questions about, 1. Listing of Krishna as an avatar of Vishnu is every avatar list. But never the reverse (not even once). 2. Absence of Krishna in the Vedas and the clear presence of Vishnu in the Vedas. 3. Absense of Radha in scripture 4. Absence of Goloka in scripture 5. Absence of the "we do not care for Moksha" concept in scripture By scripture, I mean mainstream scriptures common to all Vaishnavas. Cheers

What?? Dude, Get a grip on yourself. I am counting on you to prove to the world that Advaita is a complete hoax. Did you post your wisdom on the Advaita forum yet? If not, please do so immediately. Once in several millenia, we have a wise person such as yourself come along and I hate to let this opportunity go by without using it to expose a grand hoax. Cheers

FYI All (especially the pro-Advaitins) , It is OK for us to have our personal views on spirituality. Nothing wrong there. But if we want to name our views, then we should not use names that already exist and clearly mean something specific. Advaita for instance - is by default the doctrine of Shankara as laid down in his Sutra Bhashya, Updesha Sahasri, etc. If we are not taking the time to read and know Shankara's Advaita, then we are not in a position to label our personal views as Advaita in discussions as it is possible that we will say things that do not align with Shankara's view. Though free-thinking monistic views may largely resemble Shankara's doctrine, they are still not exactly the same and therefore it is better to avoid using the label Advaita for just any set of views that appear monistic in nature. I have given the same reasoning for Hare Krishnas to avoid using time old names like Vaishnava to mean something else, though they never got the point. Cheers

I agree. Thanks for the clarification. Your posts are always a pleasure to read. Cheers

You may not be aware of this. Jagadguru Sri Kripaluji Maharaj, when he was very young, defeated hundreds of Mayavadin pundits in Kasi (all at the same time) by quoting profusely from scripture. That is when he was recognized as an outstanding scholar. Ranjeet is a follower of Jagadguru Sri Kripaluji Maharaj and can backup his case for proving "Advaita as a complete hoax" with scriptural evidence as necessary. I have also humbly requested him to post his case in the Advaita forums so that more Mayavadins may find out their system is a complete hoax and turn towards the completely genuine Gaudiya Vaishnava beliefs taught by Jagadguru Sri Kripaluji Maharaj. That will be a blessed day and I have complete faith in Ranjeet's ability to make it happen. Cheers

Of course, the British played dirty politics in their goal to take control. They pitted one King upon another and gained in the process. All this was possible, because we were weak and lacked trust among our own. They saw this weakness and exploited it. They were briliant at strategy and ruled the entire world at one time without finding it necessary to meddle with local religion and history anywhere. Therefore, it is not true that they had to resort to distorting scriptures or writing false history. There was no need for any of that as they were already walking all over us - with no effort at all. Just like foreign invaders walked all over us for 600 years before the British ever set foot inside India. There was nothing new about the British ruling India as foreigners rules us for several centuries before that. The only difference was the skin color. It is relatively easier for the Indian to accept a similar skinned Persian ruler than to accept a white ruler. That was the fundamental driving force for Indians to unite for the first time against foreign rule. I did not say the white man is superior. Everyone came from somewhere; no one in India just manifested himself out of nothing. White, dark, etc., everyone moved into the area at different points of time. All Brahmins sects of South India trace their origin as North India. The Madhvas, the Nambudiris, the Iyers, etc., all trace their origin to the North. If you have studied South Indian Brahmins, you will find a number of them are tall with very fair skin, (green eyes sometimes) and look more like Europeans and less like the other dark skinned people of the South. Then we have philological evidence of striiking similarities between ancient greek, ancient latin, persian and sanskrit. And hardly any similarities between ancient tamil and sanskrit. Compare the Sanskrit Rig and the Persian Avesta. One did not come out of the other; but rather both came out of a common source. In the Rig, Dasyus are described as Dark skinned and are the enemies of the Aryans. This difference was not invented by Max Mueller. Later we see how this Vedic religion merged into something else to form Hinduism. Pancharatra, Krishna (dark skinned), Rama (dark skinned), Shiva (dark skinned), Kali (dark skinned), etc., are non-vedic and yet are more pevalent in India than any of the Vedic Gods. Based on this and a lot more, this is my position, 1. Since a very long time ago, Indians were having their own religions made up of Pashupatas, Pancharatras, Shaktas, etc. They worshipped Shiva, Krishna, Rama, Vasudeva, Shakti in various forms and a number of other Gods like Ganapathi, etc. Some other indigenous beliefs are the doctrine of Karma and the core set of Puranas. 2. The Aryans were a branch that moved in either directly from Europe or from the Middle east like Persians. They had their own fire based rituals and Gods like Indra, Mitra, Vishnu etc. 3. Eventually the Aryan religon which had a small following merged into the mainstream. The Brahmin authors mapped existing Dravidian Gods to Vedic Gods ( through the avatar concept) as part of this merger to create Hinduism. The majority of Hindus have no beliefs which are related to the Vedas in anyway. There is no reason to believe this was not the case in the past. I think this is how it was always. Cheers

The above post is a piece of trash culled from ignorant and uninformed sources. If the people of India have to shed ignorance, the first step would to be avoid falling prey for such jingoistic trash articles and the nonsense dished out by Thackereys and such. Btw, your article has left out some of the more entertaining "facts" whch are comonly found on the internet and enthusiastically passed around by many. Here are some of them. 1) Indian religion is the oldest because the Purana authors said so. All archaeologicial evidence, philological evidence and common sense in general should be ignored because they are British propoganda. 2) The British doctored Manu Smriti to include caste divisions. Otherwise Indians were very mature and caste dfferences were zero. What? You saw discrimination in other scriptures as well? Then the answer is, they were doctored by the British too. 3) Max Mueller had a propoganda to downplay the greatness of Indian history and so he wrote up false translations. Apparently, this was a tactic to divide and rule Indians. Otherwise, Indians were very united and were known for never letting foreign invaders inside the country. Hence, it was very important for the British to employ such alternative tactics to defeat them. 4) The British wanted to show all good stuff came from Europe; so they said Aryans came from Europe (Clearly, they were sleeping on the day when scientists wrote man originated in Africa, else they would have changed it to man originated in London). There were some more gems, but I am not able to recollect them now. Cheers

Your dept of knowledge on this subject is very impressive. if only, earlier critics of Mayavada like Madhva, Ramanuja, et al., had written their criticism with the same flair as yours, there would no Mayavadis in the world today. It is never too late anyway. You may also want to consider adding these posts to the Advaita discussion forum. I bet the logic of your posts will make the Mayavadins over there see the error of their ways and convert into Jagadguru Sri Kripalu Maharaj's followers in a week's time. Thank you once again, for taking time to illuminate the world with your wisdom. And to repeat, I am not being sarcastic. Cheers

The traditional date is start of Kaliyuga. When did Kaliyuga start? This is the basis for different dates. The common belief in India is Kaliyuga started 5000 years ago (It is important to note that the 5000 year calculation is not found in scriptures). Academically, the 1500 BC date is generally accepted. I never heard of the 500 BC date before. That places the Gita as post-Buddha and there is no evidence for that. To add to this complexity, the Mahabharata itself says it started out as a small text (Bharata) and then evolved in multiple steps into its final form, the Mahabharata. Many scholars believe the Gita was authored in phases by different people. So this date issue is not something that will ever be solved to everyone's satisfaction. Cheers