Love

Dear Whey, Try this site out: http://members.tripod.com/lkisslay I have got works of one of the greatest Indian philosophers, Mr. Nirmal Kumar (just a couple of chapters) that may be of help. He has written more than 25 books on Hindu philosophy and culture. If you will be interested you could try locating his books. Some of his books that I know of are: The Tao of Psychology Philosophy of Being Human Sikh Religion and Philosophy among many others. Cheers Love

I have been trying hard to get hold of "Buddha and the Gospel of Buddhism" by Ananda Coomaraswamy. It is supposed to be the most authoritative work on Buddhism in modern times. Besides, I am sure an intellectual like Ananda Coomaraswamy would have written nothing less. Does anyone know how to get hold of this book?

I have been trying hard to get hold of "Buddha and the Gospel of Buddhism" by Ananda Coomaraswamy. It is supposed to be the most authoritative work on Buddhism in modern times. Besides, I am sure an intellectual like Ananda Coomaraswamy would have written nothing less. Does anyone know how to get hold of this book?

It is quite amusing to see so many ekightened people fighting over who is superior of Vishnu and Shiva. We forget that they both are powers (one the power that sustains and the other which destroys. Besides, when it is time for Shiva to play Vishnu bows down to Shiva and when it is time for Vishnu, Shiva disappears. Both are the Supreme. The only importance is knowing which of the two is active at any time. When Lord Krishna says that He is the Supreme, it only means in context of the fact that it was the time when Vishnu had to take vataar to protect earth and so Vishnu is active. Brahman, Vishnu, Mahesh are perfect examples of absolute rebirth and self-sacrifice. Each of them considers the other two as the Supreme One, when they all are Supreme. It is not out of any modesty but the only way of keeping various powers in harmony and out of confusion.

All, Check this site out. http://members.tripod.com/lkisslay I have got a couple of chapters from one of the latest books by Mr. Nirmal Kumar, one of the profound thinkers in India today. I have been given permission to post these chapters by him. I think they may be of interest to all of us trying to find answers to problems in modern India and personal lives. Cheers

Did we ever consider that the simple message in all these stories, where even Ram is shown to have done a deed that belies our beliefs or appears to be so is that man is not infallible and he will commit sins since he is not absolute/ perfect. However, it is the level of consciousness to which he grows that commands respect for him. So, we cannot point on failure in character of Ram/ Yudhistra and compare to to the acts of any otehr human being. Perhaps, what they did was wrong, but surely one cannot discount the innumerable good acts on their behalf or their strife to stand by dharma in adverse circumstances. How many people do we know who have been able to achieve this level of clarity of mind?

Hello Animesh, ------------ No, none of us is blaming Hinduism as such but some of us are blaming many vice in society that are being done in the name of religion. ------------ If we think about this, is there any point in blaming vice/ religion? When we try and blame such concepts, we are really dealing with non-entities. This means that no matter how hard we will try and raise an outcry about these issues, we will be heading nowhere. The reason is that we are only going to look at the problem and not the cause of it. Unless we make ourselves aware of the origin of these vices we cannot root out the problem. And that is all I have been trying to say all this while about the various problems we Hindus are facing today. Once we are able to narrow down on the cause for these vices, problems/ uncultured behaviour in our society we are one step ahead in rooting them out. And the way will be to understand the defferent levels of existence within our personality and learning the art of making active the one that need be at any point of time. This will slowly remove confusions of centuries from Hindu psyche and make ourselves a more cultured race again - one that could easily discriminate between dharma and adharma, even dharma and religion, etc. ------------ One more thing. You have mentioned that many vice became prevalent in India due to Islam invasion. I accept that. But were not Hindus also responsible for this to some extent? Now also some people are trying to spread bad deeds and it is not that they are all Muslisms; most of them are Hindus. As a simple example, now also you will find some people who claim that Sati system is good and that it is sanctioned by our shastras. ------------ Hindus are definitely to blame for failing to evolve out of the archetypes at that time. When Hindus were busy trying to create a culture of becoming human (not super-humans, or Gods, but simply humans who had as a race taken rebirth from their inner conflicts), Muslims invaded. Muslims were only part of the equatin that Hinudus were trying to solve to become better humans. We failed at that time to come out of that archetype adn that is where we have been since then. All Hindu militancy that you are seeing today is a result of all the opression over years. I remember when I used to live in Bareilly (a town in UP) where we used to have frequent communal riots between Hindus and muslims. Earlier, it was Hindus who would be killed in large numbers by the Muslims and Congress, a pro-Muslim party, would do littel to acknowledge this fact. Eventually, some Hindus somewhere found out the only way to become fanatic themselves about their faith in order to fight away the fanaticism of the Muslims. I am not condoning Hindu fundametalism. However, to keep quiet about injustice is just as well adharma. In that light certain fundametalism will not be bad for Hinduism as long as we remember to remain human beings and within our culture. Then it will be a fight against adharma and not blind following. I am only trying to put up a point to say that we need to solve these problems within ourselves, Sati or whatever else as a issue bothers us, as it may be a part of our collective consciousness and take rebirth from it at that level. Gradually, I ma certain we will then find that these vices will disappear from India to be replaced by goodness and humane attitude. If we do not remove them from our psyche they are here to stay for eternity in one form or another. We have Sati in India. America has cults. America has gun culture. What is the difference. I am trying to say that education has not done for America what it promised to do. Why? Because, education does not culture your nerves, or cure them of the archetypes. It only teaches them to become subtle by suppressing unsocial behavior. Suppression only makes them stronger and one day they erupt in another horrendous form. So, I say that the way is neither what the West teaches nor the way is what we think it is - educating every Indian will cure us of this. The path to solution lies within each of us and when we as individuals start making that change within ourselves, we will see the change happening in India, slowly but surely. May God give us strength to know the way.

Woah! I missed out on quite a bit as lots of words have been said since I last checked this discussion out. So, please accept my apologies for trying to inundate everyone with my reply. From all that I have read under this thread of discussion, I once again feel that we are all very good at blaming Hinduism for everything that is going wrong in India. I don’t know if that way it makes all this impersonal to us in some way or not and provides a level of comfort. However, I do know that plain criticism cannot lead anyone anywhere. What is required is an effort to find the basic questions related to the malaise, analyze them and find some answers or cure for them. So, I will try and start some questions here and provide my understanding for them. I am sure quite a few of you guys will be able to provide your own thoughts and with His blessings may we reach the Truth in this matter. Q. Why do/ did Hindus have quite a handful of social-ills – sati, casteism, corruption, etc? A. Sati system can be explained away quite easily. It started at times when Muslims, who found immense pleasure in ravaging the women of the conquered after vanquishing them, were invading Hindus. So, Rajputanis (Rajput females) initiated this system whereby they preferred to sacrifice themselves into pyre rather than fall in the hands of the enemy. It even continued during the British Raj for similar reasons. Ideally, this practice should have been discontinued once the reason to have initiated was no longer existent. Unfortunately it did not. WHY? Casteism also was a totally different concept to what it is in modern times. It so became, as it was another way Muslims found out to break us into sections easily and we like fools got divided and easier to conquer. The reason was not simply to conquer us. After all, early Muslim invaders like Khalji, Tughlaq, etc did not attempt this. They simply came to plunder wealth from India and would return after their mission would be over. However, later on Muslims, who tried to settle here came here not just for the wealth but to spread Islam. If any one of you may have read Koran (the Holy Book and the only book in Islam), you will understand very easily that Muslims would not have been able to spread Islam amongst the Hindus as they were spiritually much more provided for, while they themselves were absolutely denuded. So, how could they sell desert in place of a forest? Easy way to accomplish this was to start creating these divisions between us. Mind you, the divisions were always there but in the form of social structure functionally. They managed to use this division to divide us physically. All they simply required to do was provide importance to certain sections of the society – respect the brahmins, fight the kshatriyas, plunder the vaishyas, and outcast the shudras. That way, brahmins easily developed superiority complex and thought they were superior to other castes. However, since they could not have done without the kshatriyas for their protection, they continued to be at their side. Vaishyas, meanwhile were left out getting plundered. Shudras, neglected and treated a pariahs became disenchanted with their beliefs naturally. And the maulvis used this disenchantment to convert them to Islam. Innumerable Hindus, who would not convert, were killed. So some more Hindus converted to Islam out of fear or thinking that this would be their outer form to survive while in their hearts they would continue to believe in their dharma. Such families over the years forgot that some ancestor of theirs became Muslim out of fear or with something in mind and so those families eventually became true converts. Muslims had won the war. Not the one in which they conquered India as a state, but in the way of spreading Islam – their ulterior motive in their later invasions. The proof that casteism did not exist in India in its present form comes from a story in Mahabharata. After the war, Pandavas had to do a yagna. For this purpose Kunti asked for a specific rishi and sent Bhim to request him to come and perform the rituals on the auspicious occasions. I do not remember the rishi’s name. For this I apologize and request if someone else who is also familiar with the story may enlighten me. Anyway, Bhim went and managed to make the rishi to agree on accompanying him back to their kingdom for the yagna. On the way back, they passed through a certain tribal village (shudras colony) and as it was night, he asked Bhim that they will stay there for the night. Bhim exactly knew about the people who inhabited the place and thought that the rishi was not a man of the world and so may not know about the place. However, since he dared not to say this openly to him, he requested the rishi that if he may not mind Bhim would carry him while he could sleep. Rishi did not relent to his request. So, with a heavy heart and to fulfill his mother’s wish, Bhim went on to stay with him in the village of the shudras. He was astonished to find that this rishi was enjoying his night stay with the shudras. He drank to his fill and then even went on to eat meat and other things that the shudras had made to celebrate his presence there. Bhim wondered what sort of a rishi mother had asked for? However, he kept quiet, as it was not his wont to question his mother’s authority. The next day on the way rishi asked him to speak up what troubled him the whole night. After much persuasion Bhim went on to speak that which was on his mind and had troubled him after the stay at the village. Rishi smiled and told him that he did this to make Bhim evolve out of the superiority complex that he had grown in ignorance that his caste, kshatriya was a higher class, or because of his education he was in any way superior to other people. And the act of drinking, merry-making and eating meat, etc did not affect him as he was ‘nishkarma’, so that his karmas did not bind him with their results. He had to do this to teach Bhim the lesson of equality among castes. Now, Mahabharata may be just a story, but it does tell us one thing about the social circumstances in those times that there was a message that there was no one superior caste or group of people. Why is it then we forgot this message? A more comprehensive answer to the ills that plague the Indian society is: - First of all, we need to understand that Sati, castes, etc are customs or traditions of a civilization. Customs/ traditions generally are born of collective experiences of any civilization over several generations in response to some incidents in the distant past. Over time, they also form a part of our ancestral force. Ancestral force is something acting in all of us and is the way the experiences, traditions, knowledge is passed down from the father to the son and then to his sons. It is the way for the continuity of the family. This ancestral force did not let us stop the custom of Sati when it was no longer required. It continued to command Satis out of the society in one form or another. In the ancient times, people who were not have been fortunate to be enlightened by someone, like the rishi enlightened Bhim, passed down their parochial views about the superiority of their castes to their progeny and regrettably, out of ignorance, we sons have not been able to do the duty unto our fore-fathers so far and have continued to be commanded by this ancestral force. There is a saying that the sons of the father visit the son. Well, it is a part of the truth that our forefathers exist within us in their entirety – experiences, traditions, ignorance, and everything else. And it manifests itself in the form of this ancestral force. Now, this ancestral force is generated in our brains (Not minds. Brain is the plain organ within our cranium and is just the nervous system. Impulses, instincts are what form the brain. Mind is another level of the brain, which is active at the intellectual level in our existence) as it is a collection of impulses, instincts, (good and bad) etc of our forefathers. Now, even though this is accumulated over generations it is considered to be a dead entity by Hindu philosophy as it is a force that has parts that were active in some of our forefathers and should have not visited us. None-the-less it does. Our duty to our forefathers is to take rebirth from this force so that it may disappear from our brains (where it is considered to be adharma) and reappear in our hearts where it will establish itself in the form of dharma. The act of Hindus (tarpan) where they collect water in their palms in the river and pray is a symbolic form of the actual rebirth that we are supposed to take from this ancestral force and thereby help our forefathers also. Since, we forgot this art of rebirth and got confused over centuries of bad treatment at the hands of the rulers, we have seen the social conditions in India deteriorate. Q. What is faith? (Before we classify it as blind or discuss its repercussion) Several of you have given very good definitons for faith. Yet I feel it is just a defintion that could have been picked up from a dictionary and then shredded to provide different experiences about it. However, we are not counting the fact that our existence is laid out at different levels – somatic (physical), intellectual, scientific (factual), psychological, and spiritual. At different levels faith within us is different things. At the physical level faith is simply trying to believe someone and is easily broken down by our bad experiences in the material world into doubt and worldliness in our personality. At the intellectual level, faith is simply a trust in one’s own abilities correctly to follow a dream and create/ discover what we believe in. At the scientific level faith is very transient and changes with changing facts and data that is presented to us. At this level faith should not be blind also as it is only a transient faith, that need to accommodate the incompleteness of facts and transform into faith in things based on new found facts. At the psychological level faith is simply love. At the spiritual level of our existence, it is utter faith in what we are looking for. This faith is however not transient, and so you can classify it as blind-faith. It is not transient, as it is faith in the eternal Truth to the level where it does not need to question the existence of the eternal truth. It just knows that the truth is out there for those who strive to find it.

Hello Venky, I was much delighted to read your dissection of the two words - jnaana and vijnaana. It is quite rational and correct. There is no doubt that if vijnaana used correctly will eventually lead to truths that may have a different perspective from spiritual point of view but the same conclusion. The reason is I feel any quest for truth, transitory or eternal, have the presence of God within and so will lead to similar conclusions. However, we need to understand that in ancient India vijnaana meant application of knowledge to find the empirical truth. Jnaana was what was required to find the spiritual truth – love. Simply put, there is only one spiritual truth – God, who is only realized when we reconcile our inner selves – somatic, psychological, scientific, intellectual, and spiritual – and produce that inner brook which springs forth love in a continuous flow and produces joy for ever. I believe that it is a wrong approach to mix up different selves within us. For instance mixing up scientific/ rational selves. Indian thought does not condone that for it can only produce confusion. All Indian stories, time and again, remind us of this. Why is it that Brahman, Vishnu, Shiva do not work together? Whenever it is time for Shiva to save dharma, Brahman and Vishnu are bowing down to Shiva. Whenever, Vishnu is requested to take reincarnation to save earth, Shiva and Brahman are bowing down to Vishnu. Whenever, Brahman is in the act of creation, Vishnu and Shiva are not interfering. It is because each of them are complete in themselves, but they know which time is appropriate for whom to work and so the other two powers hibernate at that moment. The same way, there is no gain that may come out of mixing up science and spirituality. When our scientific self is invoked it is time for our other selves to hibernate and let only the scientific light command the quest. Each of our inner selves has complete knowledge encoded within it for it to function correctly and only then it functions properly as well. Any other light is darkness for it and can only create confusion. Later Love

Hiya, I was trying to imply something by the story of the Jain munis. Jain munis were perhaps justified in taking ‘jal-samadhi’, as the ruler of the land could not protect the people and they by their dharma could not prevent it. However, it was my personal view, which believes that the Jain munis should have rather given their lives fighting the barbaric act. None-the-less, if we look at this story, we find there was a time when Indians knew when they had to pick up weapons and even lay down their lives to protect dharma. Mahabharata is all about this. Yet, we reached a stage of confusion when we did not know what needed to be done in order to live in this world. I am not implying that we should have learnt to be cunning to survive. In fact, Indians were in a stage of great experimentation where they were trying to build a just society (as opposed to the rest of the world still being comparatively barbaric) and had gone deep onto the spiritual path when the Muslims invaded. And then, they did acts that were unheard of at that time – killing the children, destroying places of worship, ravaging women, etc – and this was what just made the Indians reach a sort of somatic-coma. They could not believe their eyes that man could be so cruel. This is where we faltered. Why is it that we faltered here and since then, have been stuck at this stage of somatic-growth? And so, my question is that why have we not been able to root out the problems that plague our physical existence – our somatic-selves even though we have striven for centuries to search for Truth? Does it not suggest that we had taken a wrong approach somewhere in the past? It is also not true that Indians are generally weak. Yes, if we look at modern India, we seem to be much less endowed physically as opposed to Westerners. However, I don’t believe this was the case always. After all, people from Mahabharata fought with courage, had even characters like Karna who could give up their ultimate weapon even when they knew it would mean death for them. The fact is that in our every walk of life we had a certain dharma, which governed us. If you would not take Mahabharata as a true depiction of those times but as a story, then allow me to tell you of a king called Kharvela. He lived in the times when Greeks were invading India. He was born after Alexander had died and there used to be a Greek ambassador, I think called Seleucus (or something like that). He drove the Greek army out of India three times while he ruled! And every time he went as far out as Afghanistan to drive them away from India. It is after this time that we do not find Greeks invading India. So, as far as courage goes, I am sure we had plenty of that in the older times. And by the way, Kharvela was a Jain king. Thanks to Western influence, we are learning to become pragmatic and forgetting that living life by a certain dharma resulted in the automatic walk on the path that lead to Truth. We have become more like the shifting sands of the desert who will not stop at anything. We are a stunted race today, as our nervic personality has been confused and all mangled up by centuries of slavery. And that is why most of the Indians think that we have a great thanks we owe to the Westerners for teaching us culture. One thing that we should be grateful for though is that the British helped India out of the slavery under Muslims where their art and culture was being destroyed outright. One cannot even count the number of temples that were destroyed under the Mughal rule. If you would believe me then know it that culture has not touched greater heights than it did in ancient India. The simple example would be if you look at the ancient science, where by Aryabhatta, Varahimira, and many others had already known that Earth revolved round the Sun and were not prosecuted for it. In the West, however, in the early 14 or 15 century when this fact became evident that Earth revolved round the Sun, Copernicus was executed for it and killed for his discovery. The reason was that in the West life was controlled by religion and whatever was written in Bible was the only correct picture of the world. No wonder that they eventually had a revolution to break away science from the clutches of religion. However, we do not know of such stories in India. The reason was that life was governed by culture and there was no code-of-conduct book that governed our lives. Culture had been developed in a manner where democracy flourished in a manner so that people had a right to say anything as long as they said it for the protection or upholding of the Truth. It was not like a democracy of modern times where everyone has a right to say anything they please just because it is their basic right! Lastly, if we have a fatalistic attitude today it is because we are confused. We were not so in the past. We were very much a race that was alive and kicking – brimming with art, dance, culture. We have reached this stage today because we went on the purely spiritual path forgetting that we still live in this world and we need to develop our somatic faculties in order to make this world a better place. By devaluing our body and ascribing highest value to spirituality only we confused our inner levels of existence where the somatic light that was so carefully planted in our nerves by the ancient sages and developed over years has been forgotten. That is also the reason you find that Indians are much weaker compared to any other race in the world. We have to learn to respect our bodily existence as much as we love our spirituality and then you will find Indians growing in the somatic level also. But in order to do that we will need to command our spiritual-self, the psychological-self, the intellectual-self and the scientific-self to stop imposing their knowledge on our body and let somatic-light govern the bodily realms. Then we will find our bodies as a race being invigorated and fortified in a way we have never felt for centuries. That is the only way for India to become anything, if at all and also show a path to the world that will herald a cultural-revolution. West never had this somatic knowledge and so they grew their civilization in a fashion where their scientific-selves have been imposed on the body. I lament for India because we had the privilege of knowing this path and some misfortune made us forget it.

Hello Animesh, As far as I understand shastras are a very late addition. We as Hindus were existent much before them and Hinduism as a concept was defined for many thousand years ago when the puranas and vedas were passed on from generation to generation verbally - memorised and passed down to the next generation. Somewhere along the line, maharishi Ved Vyasa compiled them and Ganeshji wrote them as Vyasa dictated. The same is for Mahabharata also. So, these Puranas do not teach casteism. It is only the brahmins (not the sages) who confused the Indian civilsation and confounded it to the downfall that we are experiencing today. They were the ones who created shastras and casteism. Even then it would have been a nobel idea if executed as it was supposed to be. The story goes that there were four brotehrs in the house. One of them decided that he wanted to fight for the country and became a kshatriya. Another said that he wanted to gain knowledge and became a brahmin. ANotehr deceded that he wanted to earn money and he became vaishya. WHile the last one thought that all of my brothers are gone. Whi will take czare of the fields and our parents. So, he became shudra. This presents an idea that the society was divided into different castes as per the job anyone performed. Valmiki was a thief who realised the folly behind his karmas and became one of the greatest sages India has known. He could become a brahmin once he had realised the higher purpose in his life. So, one cannot say that the caste system was as it is today. It is the parochial and greed-commanded motives of the brahmins (people who knew the various texts in Sanskrit by heart and could help common man perform various tasks required in worldly life - like marriage, cremation, yagya, etc). They colluded with the kings and in order to become the supreme of all the castes proclaimed shudra as lowly people. Indeed, they were lowly people but no great man in india ever taught that lowly people were to be looked down upon or even segregated from society. It taught that our duty was to help them come out of their confusions in life and evolve. It was really the samskaras of a person that told what caste he was. Karna, in Mahabharata, was portrayed as sood-putra, but who became one of the greatest kshatriyas depicted in mahabharata. There must have been a very good reason that Ved Vyasa showed him to be brought up in a different environment and yet become a kshatriya by actions. Lastly, I did not say that some of these sages taught hatred. It was Mohammed, from Arab, whose teachins are in Koran and he taught that hatred. Please remember that Muslims invaded India (that is another story of a great betrayal of a race in experimentation - the invasion of Muslims to India) and they had originally belonged here. Koran is their Holy Book and it only so teaches. THere is not a single indian text that preaches hatred for it will be against the dharma. Also, if the shastra said that if a shudra recited shlokas from Vedas his tongue should be cut off, it has come from the belief that Vedas could be very wrong weapon in the hands of the ignorant or someone who had not the samskaras (or cultured himself). That is why, it was a socila duty to ensure that the vedas did not fall into the hands of everyone but were part of the conscious of elite few. People who had proved that they were capable of learning from Vedas and yet not be affected enough to turn to unnatural acts. That is also why any one who came to be a student at a gurukul was tested for being worthy of the techings of teh vedas before he would be given the knowledge.

PLease correct me if I am wrong. I thought all sages, Buddha, Mahavira, and many others (the concept of vanaprastha) renounced worldly life when they went on the spiritual path as worldly ties were considered a hinderance to the journey on the spiritual path. I am quite sure spirituality was not recommended for people who wished to live the mudane life. It was culture that kept them from straying in the world of physical desires and senses. When I said that we deviated from the path of spirituality I meant just arounf 2000 years. If we go back to the times when Mahabharata is written, it is quite explicit that worldy life was not looked down upon. In fact, Pandavas fought for their kingdom because it was not dharma to stand up to injustice being meted out to them. Besides, Krishna also all his life devoted to the worldy matters (as that was what the re-incarnation was about - cleaning up the adharma from earth). It is only sometime before the onslaught of the Muslim invaders that we started turning towards spiritual life as opposed to worldy life and even started condemning the worldly life. I even go further to say that it is nature that filled the vacuum which was created in India by the removal of energies in us that desired to be a part of the worldly life, that such despicable enegies filled India in the form of Muslims and took over the worldy life from the Hindus. We must have been confused only as there were around 70000 Jain munis, who in the name of their dharma of ahimsa, took jal samadhi when one of the early Muslim invaders captured 70000 women from Brahmnabad and took them to Arab. Why did these Jain munis forget that their duty was to follow ahimsa but at the same time bearing suffering at the hand of injustice is also adharma and not ahimsa. Lastly, if we were always the same, does it imply we have not got better. I mean where is the point of a civilisation if it does not improve upon itself not only in scientific manners but also as a culture and individuals. Why have we not been able to control our bodies better? The question remains the same. Cheers

I would like to get different views as to why the body does not seem to be in our control even though for hundreds of years Indians have followed the path of spirituality by giving up the worldly life in favour of the spiritual one? If spirituality would have cured us we would not have seen the manu social evils that we see in India in its present form. Also, why have we then deviated all of a sudden from the path of spirituality that we were so devotedly following?

If science yields some spiritual truth, then why was it that ancient Indians called wisdom or Truth as "Gyaan" and science as "Vigyaan". I think the reson is that science attempt to gain insights into the temporal truth (or fact as a better word to use) while the seekers of knowledge strive to find the eternal Truth. Any ideas?

Hello Animesh, By the way ... Only a Holy Book that discusses how to live life in terms of some sort of fixed principles, ignoring the state of flux in which life is lived, may contradict each other. If written by someone smart would also tell in this case as to what takes precedence when they contradict. Hindu texts have been written as philosophies whcih do not exactly tell you what to do as they believed each had its own light and best suited to his development. They believed one could not carry far with borrowed light. Besides, dharma was something intrinsic to each individual and waiting upon being discovered within oneself and was so subtle that it could not be describes in any language. You can only make faint attempts at trying to describe it. None of the Hindu texts contradict each other as they all talk of the Truth and Truth does not contradict itself. It is only Koran, I don;t think even Bible has many ocntradictinos in this manner, perhaps has contradictions in it. I understand from one of my friends who has read Koran that it cleary says that as a Muslim it is your duty to kill the Kaafirs and you will be rewarded with heaven in afterlife where there are many beautiful nymphs and good food. However, if you do no do your duity ti Islam you will be sent eternally to dozakh (hell). Now can you compare Hindu texts and Koran on an equal scale any day? Cheers Love

Who is a Hindu? I don't know if I can answer this very well as it will take much to write by someone as ignoratn as me. However, I will try and make an attempt at it. If we go to ancient times, from whatever we know, India was not a nation based on geographical boundaries as much as the strength of the culture. No wonder, many invaders came but could not root out this culture even though they ravaged the entire land known as India. India never had any religion. All we had was dharma. One followed his dharma to do karma. When one did this, he invoked purushartha in himself. It is at this point that you became your own destiny. Culture developed in India to pass on the philosophical truths to the common man. Culture means nothing more than a disciplining of ones nerves ( I mean all indriya, sensations, etc) to free them of the various archetypes. As you continued to do this, your actions became more and more humane and better prepared for spiritual life, if one so desired. Culture was the way to live a worldly life. This culture was actually samskaras that one's parents inculcated in their children. Anyone, who did not discipline his nerves to becom3e humane was a rakshasa. So, it is not that there wa a separate race of demons in India. They were the same people who chose not to follow sharma but were totally hedonistic people who lived their lives in total negation of what their dharma told them. Why is it that Prahalad, a son to a demon-king could free himself of the samskaras that were passed to him as a demon and become a human. He chose to. It was this culture that none-the-less bound the people of 'rakshasa pravarti' also. Why is it that Ravana never outraged Sita by forcing her to marry him? He always asked her in different ways - fear, greed, etc. The reason was that people in ancient India believed that tow sould can only help one another when they truly unite and foricng someone to marry was not going to help them in furthering their lives. So, it is not that Hindus always had the girls married at an early age. These are the social-evils of more modern times. Draupadi, Sita were not very young in age when they got married, and got married to people of their choice. So, this is naother way we have forgotten what it meant to be a Hindu. I could go on but it is senseless harping on the past. We need to see where we are today and how to come out of these problems that we face as a race and individuals. Some ways to start becoming a Hindu could be: 1). Stop letting mediocrity flower. We may not be able to make mcuh dents as media is the strongest medium today and perhaps has more impact than us and they are guided in providing their columns in return for favours, or as guided by coterie of people - unions, conferences, etc. If this were not true why is it that we can never get to recognise the geniuses among us? We could never appreciate Tagore, Ramanujam, Bose, etc until they were recognised by the international community. 2). Learn a way of making ourselves a channel for any hatred as that is the surest way to lose one's culture. Instead, we need to learn to take re-birth from the negative energies that surround us and we will find that they get transformed magically into positivity in us. I will take an example here: Let's say that you are having a debate on somehting with someone. The debate tunrs into an argument and then almost a fight. Why did it happen this way? If at this juncture, you search within yourself for the negative enrgies in yourself you will find that you perhaps had following : extreme anger, reluctance to look for the truth and bilnd-will to proving your own point as right, irritation, ill-will and maybe many more. However, these negative energies come usually in sets of four, seven or eight and then further as multiples of 4. I don't know why but that is what I have been taught from eperience. So, if at that point you just suggest your somatic-self that it should do a self-sacrifice of itself unto these negative energies as terrible mothers who have come to help it in getting a rebirth from them so that the world may not harm you in any way and also suggets that your somatic-self respects them as equal to the Truth being your mothers, they will be forced to provide you re-birth ( which was called dwija (twice-born) in Sanskrit) and retransform into your original will to seek truth in any debate instead of trying to prove your upper hand. 3). Our entire existence has been confused and we have managed to mix up the various levels of existence within us. One very clear symtom of this is that we talk of becoming spiritual in the worldly life. None of the ancient textx suggest that you may lead a worldly life and yet be spiritual. Spiritual itself meant to be beyond this world. So, the way the system worked in the ancient times was that anyone who was interested in the spiritual path, would renounce this world (in fact they were not permitted culturally to be in the cities, etc) and go to the solitude of forests, etc to achieve their aim spiritually. If anyone was interested in their knowledge, they would go to them in the forests. These sages never came to cities to teach. They only came at rare circumstances when they had to come to do their duty in upholding truth. We have various level of existence in us - somatic (physical), scientific, psychological, intellectual and spiritual. However, each level has its own knowledge with which it should be guided to find its dharma. Over years of abuse, the somatic light worldwide has been crushed as humans have forced either spiritual, intellectual or scientific lights on their body. Why is it that we have been developing scientifucally, etc but have yet remained a very ancient man physically interms of out reactions, sensations, etc. It is becasue we have never let our somatic light speak for itself. This is another point that we forgot as Hindus, even though once this was the culture that flourished in ancient India. We have to learn to grow separately in each of these levels without forming a collusino between any of these level or imprinting one level on another. Only then we will be able to find the voice of dharma in us which can then lead us in our journey further. Remeber without dharma even truth does not support. Dharma is that pillar which has the three faces of Satya, Shiv and Sundar. Everytime we are forcing one level upon another we are doing adahrma and consigning ourselves to a miserable or meaningless life. 4). Maya was a goddes. We seem to have forgotten that Maya was to be respected as no one could escape Her. Maya is also a form of that great Shakti that everyone finds a fashion to pray to now. Maya comes to us to involve us in this worldly life. It is so because if she does not provide us the environment that she does, we will be nowhere in terms of reconciling our negative energies. Just as you cannot destroy anything in Universe (this is something of a scientific truth - matter turns into energy and vice-versa), philosophically realised this states that you cannot destroy any energy in yourself. Try and suppress any negative enrgy in you - say greed and it will take naother form including that of matter and provide you with a large fat belly. We need to learn to take re-birtjh from these enrgies. Only then they will not be bale to affect us. I could perhaps go on for some more time but I am in office right now and so, I have to get back to work. I will try and compile a document in my gree time and put up my vies on the forum so that we may interact on the issues that I raise. I know that the only way to truth is by interaction whereby we all interact strviing always to find the truth.

Hello Animesh, Thanks for welcoming me aboard. Well, I guess I need to introduce myself then. I am an Indian who comes from Dehradun in UP. My first language is Hindi and not English. And my real name is just as well Love. Enough of introduction. When I said that Hinduism had many Holy Books, it is not in the regular meaning fo the word. Hinduism has many ancient texts that we can refer to. But they are all philosophic works that teach us about the Truths of the temporal and infinite. None-the-less, they are as much of personal experiences of some person as they can be. For instance, the personal experience of Rishi Vyasa (the greatest person who ever walke don this earth) manifested themselves in the form of Puranas. However, I believe they have been codified so that everyone does not gain this knowledge easily. If you may know, in ancient India there was a great emphasis on testing a student in the gurukul before giving him any knowledge. It was considered important that the person seeking knowledge had samskaras before he could learn what the great texts said. For the same reason, though Vyasa wished to retain his experiences for posterity, he did not wish for it to become easily accessible. So, purana are full of stories about Gods and so on. However, these are just stories that tell us something that happens within us all the time in the form of archetypes. For instance, there is this story from the time when Brahmanji was starting to create. He is sitting on the lotus that has sprung from the navel of Vishnuji. And there is some sort of fluid everywhere around him. It is called Ashnaya - meaning something that does not exist but wishes to exist. Whatever Brahmanji tries to create is eaten up by this Ashnaya and the demons within it. However, Vishnuji is all unaffected by this and sleeping on SheshNaag. Now this can be interpreted just as a story, or from a scientific perspective or through a philosophic eye. In that context I see a teaching that the power of creation within us is surrounded by this World whcih does not let its beautiful visions to be realised. And God (Vishnu) does not bother at all anyway. Why is it most of the geniuses born worldwide had a great struggle before they could make the world see their vision. It is the same archetype which they had to come out of. There are two ways you can come out of this archetype. One is by pure dedication which takes time but comes in the end, or the other way is by knowledge whereby you know that this happens at the time you feel this power of creativity in yourself. Now, Vishnuji is not taking part in this and helping out Brahmanji. The fact is that it is time for creation and so Brahmanji has to do creation. There is no doubt that Brahmanji is also Vishnuji and vice-versa. But, at creativity only the power of creatino needs to be active in us and the power of sustenance or any other power. So, Vishnuji is asleep in this story. Besides, each power within us is absolute in itself. I hope I was able to give some ideas here. Now carrying on from where I strated in this paragraph - Hinduism does not have any Holy Book in the regular context. It is so because none of our ancient texts teach us how to live. they were the personal experiences of some great rishi. Our expereinces could be different, but if I am also strving to attain Truth my conclusions will come out to be the same. My experience to gain the same Truth though may be different. I guess for lack of any word we could borrow from English, Holy Book was used. Ancient text or Hindu philosophy is a better substitue I guess. If you see Bible is the Holy Book. It is a book that teaches ten commandments to life. Now, I am not condemning Bible in any way, but Bible was a book for people who were in a way much lesser developed that the indians of that age. Indians were a highly developed race at that time and hence, have much developed books and philosophies from that time. Besides, none of the ancient texts tell us how to live life in this fashion - thy shall not lie, etc. For this reason any of the Hindu books are not Holy books. Tajke Koran and you will find it saying same sort of things - i.e. do this, don;t do that, etc. India did not have a concept of religion in the ancient time. It was just dharma. Dharma is what makes a planet go round the sun, makes an apple tree bear apples and not oranges, makes the sun rise and set. It is eternal. It is the dharma of the tiger to kill in order to survive. It is the way we truly are. If you see, animals are born as they are in nature and then tehy live in that way. While humans, once born, cover their initial/ original nature with so many other things out of greed, shyness, or whatever reason. Small babies almost have a smile/ laughter that makes them look foolish. But the fact is that it is our intelligence that has grown up in the ways of the world that may find it a bit simpleton kind of a laugh. I could go on, but so may things come up in mind and I end up swaying from the thing being written. So, being a hindu means following your dharma. IN modern man it has come to be to discover it first and then following it as over centuries of confusions we have become like rubbles of concrete and we have to dig under and under to find that scared entity called dharma somewhere deep inside the rubble. Remeber, world is just a environment provided to us so that we may learn to take rebirth from negative energies constantly and reconstitute positive from them. I may not have written everything you may have epxected but then please let me know what else was it that you expected to see here and I will write it. I will certainly be writing something more on what it means being a hindu sometime today evening or tomorrow. But for now I need to close this writing as I have to get ready. Wish you all a very Happy Holi. Let this be the day when you do not burn away the negative enrgies with yourselves for know it that you cannot destroy anything that was created. You may only transform it. Just as seven colours of the rainbow combine to give the sunlight (white light), you can leaarn the art of self-sacrifice to recombine the negative enrgies within yourself into positive and something more productive. But at the same time remeber negative is not evil. It is Kali ma and we have to learn like Hanuman ji to go into the jaws of Sursa and come back alive (take rebirth). These are terrible mothers, but mothers none-the-less, and so they command respect from us. They come to make us free of various forces in life so that we may reach our eventual destination - The Viraat Purush.

We need to clarify a few misconceptions that we all have about Hinduism here. 1). Hinduism is not a religion no matter how hard the pundits have tried to make it that way for their personal gains. Hinduism is a dharma. Dharma is defined as that which is the path leading to the Truth (again no chance to confuse this Truth with facts of life, etc). Your and my Truths can be different superficially but eventually if we both are on the right track our paths will converge. That is the basis on which multiple faiths evolved in India - Buddhism, Jainism, among many others. They are all dharmas. However, as all these dharmas follow the basic philosophy of life as defined by Hinduism, all Jains, Buddhists, etc are as much Hindus as the so-called Hindus. Just to give you a flavour of what dharma is, here goes a story: Buddha after attaining Nirvana (enlightenment) sat down under a tree and the world, even the gods,w ere sitting in His presence, to gain insight into dharma. Just as about Buddha was about to speak, a bird started singing a song (poetic way of saying) and Buddha kept quiet. Once the bird had finished with her song, Buddha said that his sermon was over. He explained that the bird had described what dharma is more beautifully than any words ever could. Basically, what the story is implying is that dharma is that spring of joy in us that does not ever dry out. It was that joy in the bird that made her chirp in such a pure joy. 2).It is correct that Hinduism does classify things as virtuous, or bad or sinful just as any other philosophy in world. But that is a statement borne of something larger. And that is - Hinduism does not grant independent existence to evil/ sinful act as other philosophies do. For other philosophies evil is something separate of good. In Hindu thought, if I may draw an analogy, just as two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen each sacrifice their individualities to integrate and form water, man has the capability to command evil that he faces within himself to combine and re-integrate into the good that was constituted of it. For this reasoning, India has a saying that evil cannot win over good ever. It is because, thoose who know the way of the dharma know the yogic path of neutralising the atomic evil in themselves by the method of self-sacrifice and recombining into their parent compound of goodness. You may not agree with this philosophy, but I think it is a pretty powerful concept and if we can find a way within ourselves to be able to let dharma guide us this way we will be able to define for ourselves what is a broken down matter in us and what is not and then find a way of rebuilding the majestic structure from the rubbles in which the human personality today lies. 3). If you get the idea of dharma, then you will understand that a person who find dharma in himself and then finds the way to recombine his broken matter into the orginal matter, he will attain a personality so integrated that he will not need the support of sentiments to find a partner in life. He will then actually find the life partner made for him based on emotions and very quicly find a way to turn the somatic love into psychological and then spiritual love. So, this may not exactly be dating as per the Western concept, but none-the-less it was freedom to choose your partner. Sita did marry Rama by her choice. Her parents did not force her. It id modern Hindu that is so confused that he has gone down into the area where he has allowed his atavistic force/ the force of the forefathers command him. He has forgotten that this force is rotten and dead when placed inside his mind. He has to find a way to remove this force (if I expand further, this force is the parental force as well that teaches conservative ways or ways that bind you)from his rational self and re-establish it in his heart, where it will become dharma. Today, this force lives in the minds of the Hindus and is adharma. So, you see so many social evils in india today borne of so-called traditions. However, the Western concept would not be approved of for the reason that dating does not strive to flower beyond being somatic love and so it leads to nothing more than a love for the world ONLY. There is nothing wrong with worldly pleasures at all. The problem is when you get lost within them and forget what your dharma screams inside you. Dating in its current form is nothing more than a pleasure-seeking practice whereby you are not strving to yield something higher out of it. In ancient India it would not have been looked down upon but looked at with pity for its ignorance and short-sightedness. But modern Hindus try and prohibit it for the reason they have their parental force living in their brains as adharma and so they have forgotten that they need not react to it. When you react to something in life, it attaches itself to you. However, compassion is one emotion that lets you look and anything in the world and would not affect you. But for that one needs to grow oneself in that direction. PLease bear in mind I am not implying a spiritual path, but a very much somatic path where by you find ways to integrate sentiments into emotions. I apologize for not being able to write in a more neutral gender tone as I was in a hurry to write. It is weekend and I have gotta go and pick my kid up from the nursery. So, please forgive me for any male bias in my sentences.

I think we get side-tracked by the semantics and everything else. The aim is to find "Who is a Hindu?". Languages change over periods of time and words acquire different connotations. So, if we take Hindu to mean what it means today and then take it back to the ancient times when may be some other word was used for this, then a Hindu is one who practises Hinduism. Now, Honduism is not a religion for a religion is something that is bound by a Holy Book of some sort. And Hinduism does not have nay such Holy Book. Indeed, there are innumerable ancient texts to refer to, but yet it is not like the Bible or the Koran. Hinduism is a way of life. It is dharma. And dharma is not something that can be bound to the small confines of a book. Dharma is something ever-flowing, ever-fresh flow of energy within our conscious and unconscious self. It is to culture the nerves and instincts in our body to first make them humane at the somatic level and then, on this solid foundation create the magnificent structure that houses our more stable psychological (manomaya kosh), scientific (vigyaanmaya kosh), intellectual (gyaanmaya kosh), spiritual (aanandmaya kosh) selves. I am not implying that the somatic-self, this transitory body, is in any way inferior to our spiritual self, or psycholigical self, etc but that we need a healthy body to start our jourbey towards final aim in this life. This aim is only to become a better human being to the extent that you merge into the Viraat Purush. So, any person in the world who strives for this aim is then a Hindu. Anyone, who makes it his dharma to become a human being is a Hindu. One does not need to be born a Hindu to be a Hindu. In fact, I am sure there are many Hindus today in this world who had the furtune of being born Hindu, yet they have not realised what it is to be a Hindu and so they are in no way Hindu, even though for sake of statistics they are Hindu, since they are not doing the duty unto themselves by practising their dharma. They have allowed the original dharmic energy in themselves to be submerged in the storm of greed or lust or whatever personal ignorance. I think it is time that we Hindus understood what it meant to be a Hindu. As a Hindu you followed your dharma and when you followed the path of your dharma, constantly struggling to find its way, you naturally followed the dharma of the society and as you could evolve further you find the dharma of the Single Force of this entire creation.