Ramanisblog

Tag: Vedas

  • Why Buddhism Did not Flourish in India?

    I read an interesting article on the subject.

    I am providing excerpts and my views on it.

    Trite messages like follow-the-path-of-ahimsa, life-is-full-of-misery, respect-life, could not have gained Buddha so may followers. Esoteric ideas like Nirvana, dukkha, et al, could not have been the reason. People don’t change so much for so little! Or resist change so much when confronted by the sword!

    This was obviously not because Buddha’s statues were prettier than the statues of previous deities. Or because Buddhist chants sounded better. If that, anyway, was the reason, the statues of previous divinities could have been prettified….

    Buddhism for long disappeared from the Indian scene, but the fundamentals of its philosophy were formulated as part of Indian philosophical thought with its traditional polemics and constant exchange of ideas between different schools. This deep familial link of Buddhism with the Indian philosophical soil that engendered it is being missed by both Buddhist and Hindu philosophy studies. Buddhists study six Hindu darshans, but in a rather formal way as if these were dogmatic systems. Specialists on darshanas also formally study Buddhism. In my opinion, the important aspect missing is the mutual enrichment of both traditions, their constructive impact on each other. (via ‘Branches of Indology like religion flourishing in Russia’ – The Times of India….

    So, what made Buddhism so attractive?

    The axis of Confucian-Platonic authoritarian, ‘wise’ rulers, who were not accountable, was (and remains) the overwhelming model for the world. Property rights remained with less than o.1% of the people. Under the CRER principle, (cuius regio, eius religio, meaning whose land, his religion; CRER) even the most personal religious beliefs of the individual were subject to State approval, as per law….

    Is it any surprise that the common Chinese loves and venerates the Buddha – and the Chinese Government lays so much emphasis on Confucianism?…

    Indian religion and culture shapes half the world even today. China (Buddhism), Indonesia (considering that Mahabharata is their national epic and their use of Sanskritic names), entire South East Asia (except Philippines) and of course, India. What makes the Indian success remarkable is that this status has been acquired without significant military cost or economic expenditure.

    After the destruction of Takshashila, in 499 AD(?), without access to the ‘Indian thought factory’, Buddhism soon became a religion outside India. Buddha in India, was another, in a long line of teachers. Not so in the rest of the world.

      Cut off from Indian philosophy, Buddhism soon stopped growing.

    Remember all this without the sword! 2000 years later, other religions have not been able to match this spread!.

    http://quicktake.wordpress.com/2010/07/25/the-enigma-of-buddhism/#comment-3156

    My comments:

    Main reason for Buddhism being sidelined is that Hinduism absorbed Buddhism.
    Hinduism is flexible. personal and a way of life. You need not renounce the world to attain Godhood.
    Vedic system has Polytheism,Henotheism,Monotheism, Dualism and Monism.
    Host of Gods were worshipped, each symbolizing an aspect of Nature.As people evolved they began to understand the real meaning of the Vedas in its entirety and graduated into Henotheism,Monotheism. Still later as human thought evolved further, they have found Monism- Advaita-Non-dualism as the core.
    Buddhism came into being when Karmakanda or Ritualistic approach to religion had become intolerable with no attention paid to Gnana -Kanda-Path of knowledge.
    There was confusion galore in the method of worship and internecine feuds were not uncommon based on Religious beliefs.
    Gnana kanda was completely forgotten and Mimamsa which speaks of only karma with out Eswara aggravated the situation further.
    People lost hope in Hinduism.
    Then came the Buddha.
    His philosophy of Nihilism brought in a whiff of fresh air to people who were suffocating under the burden of numerous Gods and Religious sacrifices.
    His total negation of Vedas brought in many a convert and his system was simple to understand.
    Adi Shankaracharya diagnosed the problem correctly and immediately organized the Shanmathas-Six Deity Worship Ganapathya,-Saurya,Kaumaara,Saiva,Saaktha and Vaishnava.
    He preached the Vedic thoughts in a simple language that could be understood by all thus removing the shackles of the Scholarly approach to the Vedas.
    He denounced sacrifices ;at the same time he spread the message that the sacrifices were symbolic and the Real Godhood can be obtained by Discipline,Love,Prayer,Knowledge.
    He gave the Karma Kanda a secondary place to Gnana Kanda.
    He laid emphasis on Bhakti,Devotion.
    Theory of karma of Buddha was nothing new.It is nothing but what has been stated in the Vedas.Shankaracharya brought this fact into the fore.
    He won over Kumarila Bhatta and Mandana Misra from their Mimamsic ways.
    People were fed up with many Gods,so they switched over to Nihilism of the Buddha.
    To win those back Shankarachaya explained the Monism-Non-Dualism of Vedanta.
    To believe in a Reality that is ‘Nothing’ is difficult to grasp as it is difficult to grasp too many Realities.
    Shankara’s Advaita struck a middle path and he was able to win back the converts.
    The main reasons for Buddhism not flourishing in India are-
    -Believing Nil as a Reality is difficult for the Mind.
    -Though Buddha’s preaching was simple in Theory,it became very difficult for the followers to follow(because of incorrect interpretation)
    Buddhism negated idol worship-His followers worship his statues. This move by Buddhists was seen as double standards /hypocrisy
    Buddhism,over a period of time, developed rituals(which it vehemently condemned in the Vedas) .
    -Though Buddhism started as one school of thought,it branched of into Mahayana,Hinayana and various other Sects. This ate away its strength.
    As people started coming back into Hinduism,Rulers started promoting Hinduism.

  • Yoga is not Hinduism.Yes and NO.

    This Statue of Shiva is Approximately 65 feet ...
    Image via Wikipedia

     

    Hinduism is for every one.

    It is away of Living.

    It applies to every one.

    Very term Hindu is an invention of the West to indicate people living by river Sindhu,the Indus.

    Real name of so-called Hinduism is Sanatana Dharma,that is ancient, that which is without a beginning.

    Systems were developed to uplift mankind by Seers who found certain paths that were useful and they have been conveyed to us through the Ages.

    Vedas are self-evident and have no beginning and end.

    They are Eternal Truths.

    Those that follow the authority of the Vedas are called Astikas(Orthodox); those that don’t are Nastikas(heterodox).

    Of the Astikas there are six systems

    Nyaya,Vyseshika,Samkya,Yoga,Poorva mimamsa,and Uttara Mimamsa or Vedanta.

    Of this the path of Action is enunciated in Yoga for with Active disposition(Rajas)

    Theoretical aspect is enunciated in Samkya and practical is Yoga.

    Yoga is defined by Patanjali as ‘Cessation of the modification of the Mind (Chitta‘)

    _Yogah; Chitta vritti norodhithha.

    Yoga has eight steps

    Yama,Niyama,Aasana,Pranayaama,Prathyaahara,Dhyana,Dharana and Samadhi.

    All these eight steps are be followed in that order.

    Important point is that is You should have a personal God(Iswara);it might be anything.

    Without that Yoga will do more harm than Good.

    Yoga is not a physical exercise , but a Spiritual Discipline.

    Unless these these eight steps are followed in order and you have a personal God Yoga will not be effective.

    What is now being taught by so called Gurus is nothing but a fraud on Yoga.

    Read Patnjali’s Yoga Sastra.

    Yoga in this sense belongs both to Hindus and non Hindus if they follow it correctly.

    Hinduism does not need labels;it does not need some one’s certification.

    It is for your benefit.

    Take it as it is.

    Forward Received by me..

    Sheetal Shah, an official with the Hindu American Foundation, hears a lot about the physical practice of yoga these days – but not much about its religious roots.

    So her group, which seeks to provide what it calls “a progressive voice for American Hindus,” recently mounted a “take back yoga” campaign, including appearances at conferences and attempts to raise media awareness of the practice’s Hindu origins.

    For Shah, who is the Hindu American Foundation’s senior director, yoga is primarily a moral and spiritual philosophy, a fact she says has been lost as the popularity of physical yoga has boomed in the West. “There has been a conscious De-linking between Hinduism and yoga,” in the United States and elsewhere, she says.

    Yoga is mentioned in many of the ancient Indian texts that form the basis of the religion now known as Hinduism, which claims to be the world’s oldest religion – and which is the third most-practiced faith on the planet.

    One main source of yoga philosophy is the sage Patanjali, who lived in the 2nd century B.C. and whose Yoga Sutras describe a philosophy comprising 8 limbs, one of which is the physical poses, or asanas, which are commonly referred to as yoga in the West.

    Other elements of Patanjali’s yogic philosophy are concepts like the yamas, moral vows that include chastity and nonviolence.

    Sheetal Shah of the Hindu American Foundationpractices yoga asanas in her home. She tries to incorporate yogic concepts like nonviolence into her life.

    In a yoga class offered by the Hindu Temple Society of North America in a New York temple, yoga is taught as a spiritual practice in which the physical asanas are an essential component. But the practice is supposed to lead to meditation.

    “Yoga is really a spiritual discipline,” says Uma Mysorekar, the Hindu Temple Society of North America’s president. “From its origin in Hinduism, yoga really originated from a Sanskrit word yuj, which means union.”

    That union is supposed to happen, she said, “between individual being or the soul with Paramatman,” or cosmic being.

    According to a 2008 study commissioned by Yoga Journal, there are roughly 16 million yoga practitioners in the United States. Those people spend $5.7 billion dollars a year on yoga classes and gear.

    Most of that yoga is marketed as physical exercise as a health practice. Some Sanskrit terminology is usually used, and many practitioners in a non-religious context say they sense a vaguely spiritual aspect in the activity.

    But most American practitioners wouldn’t go nearly so far as to label yoga as a religious act or even to relate it to a specific religious tradition.

    “Yoga is a great thing, no matter what style you do, how you come about it, why you come about it, what you end up with spiritually from it,” says Donna Rubin, the founder of Bikram Yoga NYC, a New York chain of yoga studios offering yoga in the style of Bikram Choudhury, a contemporary Indian yogi who now lives in Los Angeles. “So to start nitpicking or criticizing this type of yoga or that type of yoga or what it’s not doing or what it should be doing, I don’t really see the point of that.”

    Bikram yoga involves a set series of postures performed in a heated room.

    “Bikram has developed this specific series so that it’s more accessible,” said Christopher Totaro, a Bikram Yoga NYC instructor. “It’s more palatable to a wider demographic of people by pulling that religious part or separating that religious part from it.”

    Yoga students exercise at an Atlanta Hot Yoga class in Atlanta, Georgia. Classes are conducted in a room heated to around 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

    Among those that have taken up yoga in the United States are devout followers of Western religions.

    Atlanta, Georgia’s Northside Drive Baptist Church holds a weekly yoga class.

    Amanda Gregg, who instructs the class, says that she is respectful of Hinduism but argues that yoga didn’t “come from” Hinduism as much as it developed alongside the religious tradition.

    “Although Hinduism and yoga grew out at the same time of the Indian subcontinent and there are references to yoga in the Upanishads and in the Bhagavad Gita, that doesn’t mean that Hinduism has the exclusive hold on yoga,” she said, referring to sacred Hindu texts. “Sort of like Jews don’t have the exclusive hold on prayer.”

    Some churches attempt to “Christianize” yoga by adding Bible verses to the practice, but Northside Drive Baptist Church does not.

    Related.

    Is Yoga a Form of Hinduism?
    Is Hinduism a Form of Yoga?

    – Wendy Doniger

     

    Debates about these questions have been making headlines lately. Some American Hindus have argued that American yoga is not Hindu enough, that Hindus should “Take Back Yoga” (the label of a campaign by the Hindu American Foundation). Other Americans agree that the Hindus should take back yoga—but because yoga is too Hindu: R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, advises Christians to abandon yoga if they value their (Christian) souls, for “yoga, as a spiritual practice, runs directly counter to the spiritual counsel of the Bible.” The problem should not have been breaking news; a spoof in 2003, “Yoga: A Religion for Sex Addicts,” depicted a Christian minister who was asked, “Should Christians practice Yoga?” He replied, “Are we going to have to bring this whole thing up about Yoga again? I thought our Sunday school curriculum included lessons about the evils of everything Oriental, including Yoga!”
    But the issues involved are not trivial. Is yoga, in fact, “a spiritual practice”? More particularly, is it a Hindu spiritual practice? The word “yoga” originally meant “yoking” horses to chariots or draft animals to plows or wagons (the Sanskrit and English words are cognate). Though many yoga practitioners, particularly but not only Hindus, insist that their practice can be traced back to the Upanishads (c. 600 BCE) and Patanjali (c. 200 CE), the word “yoga” in these texts designates a spiritual praxis of meditation conjoined with breath-control, “yoking” the senses in order to control the spirit, and then “yoking” the mind in order to obtain immortality.
    Buddhist sources in this same period also speak of techniques of disciplining the mind and the body, and the word “yoga,” owing as much to Buddhism as to Hinduism, soon came to mean any mental and physical praxis of this sort. (Similar disciplines arose in ancient Greece and, later, in Christianity, a subject on which Pierre Hadot and Michel Foucault had a great deal to say). This is the general sense in which the word “yoga” is used in the Bhagavad Gita, a few centuries later, to denote each of three different religious paths (the yoga of action, the yoga of meditation, and the yoga of devotion). But these texts say nothing about the physical “positions” or “postures” that distinguish contemporary yoga. The postures developed much later, some from medieval Hatha Yoga and Tantra, but more from nineteenth-century European traditions such as Swedish gymnastics, British body-building, Christian Science, and the YMCA, and still others devised by twentieth-century Hindus such as T. Krishnamacharya and B. K. S. Iyengar, reacting against those non-Indian influences.
    So there is an ancient Indian yoga, but it is not the source of most of what people do in today’s yoga classes. Contemporary yoga traditions are a far cry both from the Upanishads and from Hatha Yoga. Most twenty-first century American yoga practitioners have more in common with a jogger than with a meditating sage; they want to relax after a hard day at the office, tighten up their abs, and reduce their cholesterol and their blood pressure; their yoga of relaxation and stretching may also involve regular enemas, a cure for back pain, a beauty regime, a vegetarian diet with a lot of yogurt (which is not etymologically related to “yoga”)–oh yes, and a route to God.
    Is yoga, then, for the mind or for the body? Is it like going to church or like going to the gym? Is it a spiritual praxis or an exercise routine? To all these questions, the answer is: yes. For some people (both in India and in America) it has been one, for others, the other, and for many, both.

    http://pastorbobcornwall.blogspot.com/2010/12/is-yoga-form-of-hinduism-is-hinduism.html



     

  • The Aryan Dravidian Myth.-Video.


    1.Arya means ‘pure’,’Blemishless’;it has no racial connotation.
    2.Dravida indicates ‘from South’;those from south of Vindhya and Sathpura ranges are called Dravidians.
    3.Great Agasthya who is mentioned in Puranaas is from South.
    3.Evidence in Mahabharata states that a Chera King Perunchotruudiyan Neduncheralaathan fed both the armies of Kauravas and Pandavas during Mahabharata war and he was reported to have performed Srardha or obsequies for those killed in Mahabharata war.In fact his name is a non de plume ;it means on who fed many stomachs.
    4.Vedas mention Dravida in many places, praising their culture.
    5.Many Gods worshiped in India are purported to be Dark/Black.In fact Krishna means ‘Black’

    6.Children of Viswamitra were banished into exile into Dravidan territory, which those, in those times assumed ‘was populated by aborigines without culture.But they found , instead, a culture,if not superior ,that was equal to them.Hence they adopted the best of Dravidian culture , blended it with those of the North and thus came Apasthamba Sutra which is followed by people of South.Wearing of Thaali or Mangal sutra by women on marriage, is a Dravidian Concept.So is ‘Madisar’ a special way of wearing the saree by women.
    7.Of the Gods mentioned in Vedas,Subramanya, Ganesa,Vishnu,Devi(Kotravai),Indra,Varuna were worshiped in South as well.
    8.Sri Adi Sankara praises Gnana Sambandhar as ‘Dravida Sisu’ or son of South in Soundarya Lahari.
    9.Lord Rama worshiped in Rameswaram.
    There are proofs galore about Indian culture being one.Propaganda by vested interests can not change facts.

  • Message for God.

    .”Lead us from Untruth to Truth;Lead us from Darkness to Light;Lead us from Death to Immortality.Lead us to be good human beings.Lead us to be worthy of you.”

  • Environment Concerns in Hinduism

    ‘May the four legged animals be Happy;May the two legged animals(Man) be Happy;May water reach the roots of the plants.May there be Happiness to all living beings.
    -‘May the ruler be Happy; May the citizens be Happy;May the ruler rule righteously;May the Learned,animals be Happy’
    The above two verses are from the Vedas, the Holy Book of Hindus.These chantings are a must at the conclusion of any Prayer or Oblation.
    Every Temple in India has a Pond,a Tree, a Village/Town which is glorified and revered and worshiped.
    The importance given to Earth is to read to be believed;Earth is mother.