'I signed this in good faith".. damn..does this work in today's world? I wish it did but I know it not to be true, in most cases..
My prayers are with you..

If the contract didn't specify your directing the movie, you are probably left with nothing. But if you own the rights to the idea/work, then you can sue them for producing it without your consent.

Good luck

That's awful Shekhar. I don't understand though - has the Asimov estate relinquished their rights to the story? Otherwise if the contract allows the studio to walk off, I think you may not have a case.

Shekhar,

I wish I was doing what you were doing. I would also be very unhappy if I was pushed aside.

One would assume that this other director is not going to have the deep understanding that you would bring to the production, and be able to help the actors understand and manifest these characters. Who is going to really understand the divine intent that seeks to manifest itself through all the characters?

I think we could a agree there is a divine reason for your situation. The question is how should you play it, what decisions should you make.

One question is do you want to waste a lot of energy in this pursuit? Is it worth it. Would the Studio have warped it anyway and it would somehow not have been what you intended?

Or what if you applied this energy in some other way.

What if you took your intention and manifested it with someone else? Leave them to their own ends, and take the magic that comes from within you somewhere else. That would mean they would loose the magic and if wronged you it will taint the whole production.

It also sounds like they are playing a game saying "They say that the contract they have allows them to walk away from me with all the rights."

You could just say okay, later. Walk out the door with your positive energy.

And let go.

Quite often this turns the table and puts you in the position of power, especilly when everything is going wrong and they call you to come back.

The actors don't understand their characters or the events, or the deeper meaning.

Don't take my advice, I don't know what you have invested, or the particulars.

The legal area is for sure grey you will really need to study the contract.

Just food for thought.

Oh and if you let go of the desire to direct and your attachment, the probablity is that circumstances will prevail you will end up directing.

You know how it works you are there, there is uncertainty, but you seem to be certain about things, people realize that you should really be directing, I mean it really might as well be you.

And so it comes to be.

I refuse to believe this could be happening in 2005 in Hollywood. There must be something either you haven't clarified or something you don't know yourself. Do they sign contract in good faith without having attorneys around? I very much doubt.

No I doubt you could be sued and I certainly could not. You are simply stating the situation which would become a matter of public record if you took them to court. You probably have some time of non disclosure but that I expect does not cover your life events, or the material that you may own. There is some legal precedence regarding this and I just read it 2 months ago I need to remember where, let me find the link, it might be in your favor.

Is a battle worth the effort or is your ego leading you away from a better path? Do you want to create negative energy when this problem could simply dissipate if you simply wait?

I would bet that their contract has holes in it as well because they may not have expected this situation either.

here's my 2 cts,
it depends...(gee..what a surprise..;)

Do you wish to continue the relationship with the studio?

Does your name get on the 'persona non grata' list of 'organisation(s)' of studios?
it's a small world where ever you go,
better that it's a Walt Disney picture on your side ;)

higher first, deal with the main source of grievences, the other director? or a studio
exec? is there a 'deal' possible? do we have
'leverage'? what are the stakes long term?
are there any other projects in the pipeline?

seccond, cover your ass, no matter what the outcome of the negotiations, have a backup plan,
an a backup to that,

For intelectual properties, ask Matt..;)

I don't do Las Vegas ;)

Gentleman's agreement or 'ADR',

Love, Passion, and good luck,

Shekhar,

Found it I think.

Here is a link that will give you insight on the legal aspect of studios and copyright.
http://www.marklitwak.com/articles/general/protecting_stories.html

This guy is a pretty good entertainment attorney.

He has a great blog on the industry here

http://marklitwak.blogspot.com/

Let me know if you found this of use.

Oh and yes they could try to sue us for anything but it doesn't mean they could win.

Dear Shekhar,

I am sorry that you are such a plight. I guess ultimately it depends on whose side the Asimov estate is and how the contract is worded. If the estate is on your side, you can always make the pitch to another Hollywood Studio. It is a tough situation. Many times it is best to just let it be and move on, with a reminder to read contracts more carefully.

My prayers are with you.

Regards,

Ravi Kulkarni

i dont this will be a legal battle. For I developed the film in India. I read the books years ago in India. Even though I signed the contract in the US under US law, the Indian Copyright law and the US copyright law is at odds with the rights to a creative work. So I do believe the battle will be fought on the negotiating table or on the internet !

shekhar

'So I do believe the battle will be fought on the negotiating table or on the internet !'

Know your opponent well, before thy enters the
battlefield, and then the battlefield,

and I'm not taking 'bout international private law, jurisprudence, the 'other' 'director' or the judge,

A battle is won, before it is fought,

Reputation damages outweigh any business,

and business is done over a bottle of wodka,

instead of with a knife, (unless you are dealing with, for instance, british..;) it's a Polish thing..;) the higher you get, the childisher people get, it's an Ego thing,

Love, Passion, and Spirits! ;)

but for a good dilligent approach, always good,
to forsee the most properable legal outcome(s),

to 'tease' a bit, for 'leverage' sakes ;),
over the sake ;)

Love, Passion!
Ps. whatcha think Matt?

It is very important to read the fine print of any document and have all details pertaining to an agreement/negotiation in writing before laying out all your cards on the table ie the script in this case. A sneak preview with tons of suspense would have held their interests captive. But because they have extracted the essence of the entire story from you they don't feel bound to hold good faith promises anymore. There are no laws safeguarding verbal contracts or agreements. A verbal understanding is often misconstrued as heresay or passed off as friendly advice/input. An ugly legal battle could prove detrimental to a foreign director in his future releases in the long run. My sympathies are with you. If I were you I would make a film on the same story that you originally conceived with another studio and release it ahead of theirs. Let the audiences decide.

first you escalate the situation,
then you de-escalate, with an already ready solution, for the problem,

and as the story goes everybody lives ever after,
and no legal expenses ;),

Love, Passion, and show your muscles, Shekhar!
don't know the other guy, but I bet the if the fellow would know what he up against, he would withdraw ;)

Hi Shekhar,

Good luck, to say the least.

Though how [fill in your own term] can they be to think of taking this film away from a director has the proven ability to create and direct films with scenes of such lyrical beauty and power as yours, I don't know.

If you are meant to do this film, you will. Hopefully, your reward for all the hard work you've done so far will be to be able to film this script.

You're able to fly the winds and surf desert dunes, pump real blood into Elizabeth I and English history alike, and teach men about women, and women about themselves. Don't forget who you are, let them feel the power of your creativity, insight, energy and logistical skills so they start to doubt themselves and turn back to you.

Best wishes, Heather

Good luck, Shekhar.

I was reading today about detachment. The teacher said that when Krishna told Arjuna to let go of attachment to the outcome that he was saying - be fully present right now instead of projecting into the future, thus taking yourself out of the moment and making your actions less likely to succeed.

I thought that was interesting. He was saying, of course you want a particular outcome and so you work passionately for it. But you don't waste time and energy becoming emotionally attached to future or past scenarios.

I can see how in this situation it would be easy to fall into becoming attached because it would be easy to focus on the unfairness you perceive in this situation. Are you feeling attached - or ready for a good pillow fight?

Love, Kristin

kristin, what Krishna also said to Arjun was that to step away from action was cowardice, but to not be addicted to result of the action. I am nto addicted to the outcome of this, but merely intend to stand and act for what I believe is right. Love Shekhar

Yes, exactly, Shekhar.
Reminds me of a poem I wrote some years ago (while trying to avoid the couragous route) that was inspired by Lord Krisha and Hafiz...

"Get Up!"

Silly child
What are you doing?
Laying down
Your eyes squeezed shut tight

You’re not sleeping
Not even tired
Only trying to hide

Get up!
Laugh and play
Don’t hang on to worries from the past

Dance!
Nothing can harm you now

You are already Mine
---

I am happy you are standing up for what you believe in and yet not addicted to the result.

Love, Kristin

'..but merely intend to stand and act for what I believe is right. Love Shekhar..'

It is in your moments of decisions,
that your destiny is shapen,
-Anthony Robbins

Good luck, my friend,
Love, Passion,

Aloha Shekhar

I look forward to seeing your film. love patty

There are really two separate legal issues related to the same incident. . . breach of contract and copyright infringment.

1. The breach of contract by the studio for not making Shekhar director really depends on the wording of the contract whether there was a breach. Lawyers like phrases like "good faith" because they are so vague and ambiguous so they make lots of money debating the nature of what "good faith" actually means.

However, even if there is not an official contract breach, Shekhar still has a claim for promissory estoppel which basically means that Shekhar relied on the studio's promise to make him director because their objective actions revealed their subjective intent to keep him as director even though there might not have been an official breach of any contract.

2. The copyright laws are intended to protect people just like Shekhar. They are designed to give people incentives to create new ideas, protect those ideas, and to prevent other people from copying those ideas without permission or without giving credit to the person who had the original idea. I'm pretty sure that as long as Shekhar has proof, which is sounds like he does, that his idea is being copied without giving him credit or asking for his permission that it is clearly a copyright infringment.

Good luck Shekhar. I'm sorry to hear about your unfortunate situation. May justice prevail . . .

Several legal cases illustrate the difficulty courts have encountered in determining how much of an author’s work is protected under copyright law. In Sheldon v. Metro-Goldwyn Pictures Corp., MGM attempted to secure the movie rights to Edward Sheldon’s copyrighted play “Dishonored Lady.” The play was based, in part, on a true historical incident in the public domain. When MGM was unsuccessful in negotiating to obtain the rights to the play, the studio produced a movie of its own, “Letty Lynton,” based on the same historical incidents that were the basis for Sheldon’s play. Although much of this movie was original, certain details and sequences of events were identical to those expressed in Sheldon’s play. The lower court held for MGM on the grounds that the material borrowed only involved general themes or ideas.

The appellate court disagreed concluding that there was an infringement. The court found that MGM’s work was identical in details and sequence of events to Sheldon’s work in matters unrelated to the underlying true story. The court reasoned that this borrowing was more than merely appropriating an idea or a theme. Some of the details and sequences of events in Sheldon’s play that were not historical facts in the public domain were also present in MGM’s movie. The court concluded that it didn’t matter that the plagiarized material comprised only a small portion of the film because it is not acceptable to steal a little bit.

While MGM had every right to create a movie based on the historical incident, it did not have a right to borrow copyrightable elements from Sheldon’s play. What MGM should have done was hire a writer who had not read Sheldon’s play, and have him create a script based on historical facts and his own imagination. Before beginning work, MGM should have instructed the screenwriter not to read Sheldon’s play so as to avoid any unintentional copying.

Compare the facts of the Sheldon case with Musto v. Meyer. Here the plaintiff wrote an article in a medical journal titled “A Study in Cocaine: Sherlock Holmes and Sigmund Freud.” It concerned the history of cocaine use in Europe in the 1800s. In a flight of fancy, the author speculated that Holmes was a heavy cocaine user, which led him to believe that Professor Moriarty was after him. The author also imagined that Holmes’ famous disappearance was due to his going to see Freud for treatment of his cocaine addiction.

Nicholas Myer subsequently wrote a book titled The Seven Percent Solution. It had Watson tricking Holmes into seeing Freud for treatment of cocaine addiction, Freud curing Holmes, and both of them embarking on a Holmesian adventure. Universal Pictures made a movie based on the book. Plaintiff sued, claiming the book and movie infringed on his copyrighted article. Nicholas Meyer had read Plaintiff’s article. Indeed, Meyer gave the plaintiff a credit in his book.

Sherlock Holmes is a fictional character, a creation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, whose copyright to the work expired long ago. Therefore, the Sherlock Holmes character, as well as all the other material in the Arthur Conan Doyle books–including Holmes’ use of Cocaine–are in the public domain and freely available for use. Since Holmes was a fictional character, the meeting between Holmes and Freud could never have taken place. It was the product of the plaintiff’s imagination.

The court in this case found that neither the book nor the movie infringed plaintiff’s copyrighted article. Meyer prevailed because the court reasoned that Meyer had only borrowed an idea, and it is permissible to borrow ideas. If the court had characterized what was taken as more than an idea, then Meyer would have infringed the plaintiff’s copyright.

So much for copyright law. So how can a writer protect his ideas? Even if ideas are not protected by copyright, they are a form of intellectual property, and the recipient of an idea can agree to pay the provider for it. This can be an enforceable contract.

In order to understand how a writer’s idea can be protected by contract, let us first review some of the principles of contract law. There are different kinds of contracts. Some are written, others are oral. Contrary to popular belief, oral contracts may be valid and binding. However, most states have a law, known as the Statute of Frauds (e.g., California Civil Code sec. 1624), requiring that certain kinds of agreements be in writing in order to be valid. The purpose of this law is to deter fraud by encouraging parties to put their agreements in writing if they expect a court to enforce them. For example, one cannot transfer real estate orally. However, except for the types of agreements listed in the statute of frauds, oral agreements are generally valid. The problem with oral agreements is that their terms may be difficult to prove.

For example, let’s assume that you made an oral agreement to sell your car for $3,000. You shake hands with the buyer but never sign a written agreement. One month later there is a dispute and you end up in court. The buyer tells the judge that you agreed to sell him your car for $3,000. You agree. The buyer then claims that you promised to fix a broken window before delivery. You disagree. There are no documents or witnesses or evidence which a judge can look to determine what the parties agreed to. In this situation, who should the judge believe? The judge will likely throw up her hands and refuse to enforce a contract if she cannot ascertain its terms.

So while the law does not require that all contracts be in writing, it is usually advantageous to have a written agreement, if only because a written document is evidence as to what the parties agreed to.

Another way to classify contracts is as express or implied contracts. When parties make an express contract, it is explicit that they are entering into an agreement. Typically, they sign a piece of paper or shake hands. In other words, the parties to an express contract state its terms in words.

An implied contract is a contract implied from conduct. It is implied wholly or partly from the behavior of the parties. Let's suppose that you enter a store and pick up a candy bar. Without saying a word to anyone, you remove the wrapper and begin eating it. Then you head for the door. The proprietor says, "Hey, wait a minute, you didn't pay for the candy bar." You reply, "I never said I would buy it." Under these circumstances, a court might rule that there was an implied agreement based on your conduct. It is understood that when a person consumes merchandise in a store, he has agreed to buy it.

Sometimes implied contracts are not based on behavior but are implied by law for reasons of equity and fairness, and to prevent the unjust enrichment of one party at the expense of another. These are called "quasi-contracts." Unlike true contracts, they are not based on any intention of the parties to enter into an agreement. The obligation arises from the law.

An interesting case to read is Desny v. Wilder. In 1949 a writer (plaintiff) telephoned director Billy Wilder’s office on the Paramount lot and spoke to Wilder’s secretary. The writer asked to speak to Wilder but the secretary insisted that he explain his purpose. The writer told her about a story based on the life of a boy, Floyd Collins, who had been trapped in a cave. The incident had been the subject of widespread news coverage for several weeks back in the 1920s.

The secretary liked the story, but when she learned that it was 65 pages long, she said that the material would have to be sent to the script department to be put in synopsis form. The writer said that he preferred to condense it himself, did so, and called her back two days later and read her a three page outline. She took the story down shorthand and said she would discuss it with Wilder. The writer told the secretary that he expected to be paid for the story if Wilder used it.

The writer later discovers that Paramount had made a movie about the boy, including a fictionalized incident created by the writer. The writer brought suit. The court was faced with several issues: Could the writer sue for theft of a story based on a true story in the public domain? Did it matter that the writer never directly spoke or met with Wilder or any Paramount executives? Could there have been an implied contract between the parties?

In analyzing the facts of the case, the appellate court found for the writer. The court stated that literary property can be created out of historical events in the public domain. Paramount had the right to go back to the historical record and prepare its own story. The writer had no hold over public domain material or the idea of doing a screenplay on this subject. But if Paramount used the writer’s research and work, there may have been an implied agreement between the parties to compensate to writer.

matt, thank you so much. This blog is feeling more and more like a family ! shekhar

And Richard, love u all for caring. Shekhar

good points, matt, justice..,
..and, justice,
one thing, work, and 'workable',-ity, an other, it's an goodwill thing,

Love, Passion and a damn good picture,

Shekhar,

No problem, but I may not have given completely accurate legal information. I'm sure you will have fantastic lawyers and don't need my legal insights, but if you are interested I doubled checked some things

1. A contract is formed when there is mutual assent (agreement). Mutual assent can be inferred when there is an objective manifestation of a party's subjective intent as judged by a reasonable person.

Thus, it would be reasonable to assume that the Studio agreed to make you director as judged by their objective actions.

2. Even if they argued that no contract was formed, you could make a claim for promissory estoppel which states:

a promise can be enforced if the promisor should have reasonably expected the promisee to rely on the promise and if the promisee did actually rely on the promise to his or her detriment.

Thus, it was reasonable for Shekhar to rely on the promise, he did rely on the promise, and he suffered a detriment (time, money, and energy) and therefore should be compensated

3. A promise can be enforced through Quasi Contract or Unjust Enrichment which states
If another party knowingly confers a benefit from someone else and is unjustly benefited.

Thus, the studio knew they were conferring a benefit from you and they would be unjustly benefited by your time and energy if they do not pay you for your efforts.

As far as the copyright issue, I may not have given the technical black letter law, but I am familiar with the spirit of the law and the studio definately violated the spirit of of the law.

Good luck

Hi Shekhar, I wish you luck with this.

on the functional side, do what you have to do...since there is so much talk of krishna and arjuna, if you feel inclined , mebbe you can explore/accept karmic linkages to the present situation...could enable faster resolutions in a "healing" context....
all the best...

In the harsh, real world what matters is what is written in the contract. Good faith and all that does not stand a chance! Creative peope have often been fooled like this in this world. Accept that you have been fooled and move on. And take care in the future.

For all those that have sent me their views, thank you so much. I feel protected ! If you have the inclination then this is as much as I know :

I do have a contract. Under the contract I am the director of the film,but almost every possibility is taken care of in the fine print. However according to my Agents, the studio will claim that I am not available to make the film as I am making another film (Golden Age)

But the Sudio needs to green light the film. Which means that they have to give me official notice that they intend to make the film and put me on notice. Thay have not done that.

But there is another thing I am thinking about. Since all my creative work on the the script was done in India, even though the contract was signed in the US, I was wondering I should rely on Indian law which says that the copyright that is not used in one year, goes back to the original creator.

Maybe, right now I feel that the last thing I should do is feel helpless. Which is what my agent is telling me. "there is nothing you can do".

I don't believe that. There is always something you can do. I must. Lets see what happens, but thank u all in any case. Shekhar

the above should read "almost every possibility has been taken care of to protect the studio in the fine print". shekhar

Shekhar,

No matter how and what the realities of this world are, this hits the deepest core of a creative person. I wish you nothing but all the best in seeing your vision and dream for this film come true.

Susan

mebbe u could take the issue into consciousness realms by scripting a movie around it!!!!

Shekhar,

Since this spans the law in two sovereign countries - and the co-productions are on the rise - perhaps there is validity in looking at the laws. Recently the Producers Guild of India met with the US lawmakers on a wide variety of issues in Washington DC, focusing mainly on the piracy issue. It was organized by a lobby group in cooperation with MPAA. Perhaps, this is something that should be looked at. Just my thought.

Don't give up.

Susan

Shekhar dont give up-as you know barbara bradford Taylor sued the makers of a karishma kapur series in India and won.
I'm not well versed in the legal system, but may be there is a loophole. You may want to consult an Indian lawyer..siddarth shankar Ray would be perfect. He has lived here as well as ambassador.

Shekar,

Kudos to you, to have the nerve to stand up and not buckle down the pressure of muscle and money of Hollywood. I guess legally your options might be limited, but many battles have been lost in the courts and won in the hearts and streets of America. It would be a shame to lose a battle without lifting a sword!

I think people who value ethics and don't like to be bullied by big companies will stand behind you in this protest. The government of India should stand by you, the citizens of the world who believe in a just cause should stand behind you. We can never forget that Gandhiji helped us win our independence without lifting a weapon, which people then didn't beleive it can be done, until Gandhi came.

Intentblog is a good start, maybe a e-petition, maybe a advt in NYT,maybe a letter to all senators in US or whatever it takes to make people sit up and realize what is happening. Maybe there are more Shekar's out there, who have been treated unfairly.

Shekar,

The legal question is a matter of personal jurisdiction. If you can establish that the Studio is subject to personal jurisdiction in India, then you can apply India's copyright law.

The relevant laws about establishing personal jurisdiction are . . .

"Personal jurisdiction can be asserted over a nonresident corporate defendant that has certain minimum contacts with the forum such that maintenance of the suit does not offend traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice"

International Show Co. V. Washington

"Individuals must have fair warning that a particular activity may subject them to the jurisdiction of a foreign soveirgn.
Shaffer. v. Heitner

"fair warning requirement is satisfied if the D had purposefully directed his activities at residents of the forum and the litigation results from alleged injuries that arise out of or relate to those activities.

"Contacts with the forum State must be such that it is foreseealbe that the D should reasonably anticipate being haled into ct there."
World Wide Volkswagen.

There are other cases that state that minimum contacts can be established if the D has availed himself to the benefits of the foreign state's laws.

So . . .

If you can prove that the US Studio purposefully directed their activities towards India then you may be able to use India law. Or, if the Studio established any minimum contacts with India, you may be able to use India law. Or if the Studio availed themself to the benefits of India, then you can use India law.

You may have an argument if you state that the Studio availed themself to the benefits of Indian Law because Indian law gave you incentives to work on the script.

Did the Studio in America make any contacts with you while you were in India? If you were working for an Indian corporation or in Indian studio while you were doing all your creative work and the Studio made contacts with you then the Studio may have availed themself to the benefits of Indian law or made minimum contacts with India.

The main key will be to create a legal argument that the US studio either established minimum contacts with a resident of India (resident may be a person or corporation) or establish that the US studio availed themself to the benefits of India (ie working with you who had incentive to create bc of India) law, if the Studio purposefully directed their activities to India.

Some of these arguments may be a long shot, but you may find some creative lawyers to help you out. Good luck.

You certainly should get the rights to the adaptation of the script that you made. I hope you can get the rights and produce the film.

I'm a big fan of Asimov's novels - Foundation series is nearly the best - and I'll be very interested to see if a film can do the books justice.

Good luck!

...creativity goes in all directions.

Shekharji, I trust that this will work out for the "good"

Love and prayers,
Cinda

Well you know Shekhar technology can allow you to be in two places at once when you needed to be.

We can stream the shots back to you and you can direct remotely, we will pipe your audio back and project you up on a screen. Or we can use We will set it up so you can chat personally with the actors etc. Your AD if he is good can be your physical presence. Only your mind needs to be present.

Okay it's a stretch and would be a challenge, but it is technically feasible. Just imagine you could be directing films in three locations at once, from anywhere, that would be a first.

I bet the contract doesn't specify that you must are physically there, you just need a presence and the ability to direct.

I hate when people lie. I am happy that you are going after these people but remember that lawyers will drain your bank account. Don’t give up. Shekhar wish you all the best.
Esther.

At various junctures in my life I have had to deal with similar events. In a world where paucity of thought and rarity of original ideas is rampant, such occurrences are bound to make an appearance at regular intervals. Success at any cost is the new mantra for 99.99% of the populace today. The frustration is no one seems to care how you got there as long as you have and even less willing to take up cudgels on your behalf.

I have always opted "to go the whole hog alone". After reflecting deeply, reviewing the facts of the situation objectively,if I am convinced that this is an unfair and arbitrary sequence of events, then nothing and no one can stop me. Over the years,however, I have added a strong bottom line to my adventure or mis-adventure,which is 'unattached to the results thereof'.

We have to acknowledge that Krishna knew what he was talking about. Truly, Shekhar, to my mind this is the only way to deal with it. As Vivekanada said, those who tolerate injustice are as much to blame as those who perpetrate it.

"karmanyu va adhikar aste
maa phaleshu kadaa channa"
You have the right to perform your karma but not to the fruits thereof.

Shekhar in this age of patenting and intellectual property rights , things of this sort do happen , it only goes to prove that laws are no cure to what happened with you or for any malpractise for that matter ,its the conscious of a human being and if it is not there what is the cure for that?
I am in software industry , time and again I have seen that people are removed from a project when it is 90% complete and the credit of someone else's sweat and sleepless nights goes to someone, who maynot even be able to tell the nitty -gritty about that project.
Some say that is life , but I beg to differ this pure dishonesty and social isolation of such people is the only cure perhaps, or I may be wrong.
Ispita

Shekhar,

Go ahead if you feel like.

I advised aginst it simply because I spoke from my own position where I neither have the kind of money nor support which will be required for such a fight but you have both so you must go ahead. I know it is not easy to let go. Khoon ke ghoot bharne parte hein. You feel your very soul being crushed.

But sometimes, the anger contained and thus the energy saved helps you quantum jump to a higher level of your being. Then you begin to see the world from an other, higher angle.

I also like Sunder's suggestion. Redirct your anger to make a movie on this topic. It too may turn out to be a way of fighting.

Of course, best wishes, we are with you.

Harb

PS: In fact I too am undergoing a similar dilmma. The publihser of my book does not seem to tell me the correct figures of its sale. And then he delivers me the royalty statement in a language which I just cannot understand. And on top of that he has got published a new adition of my book from an other publisher at US (he himself was at UK) to be released in March 2006 without telling anything to me about it. All I am hoping now is that at least my name will make the mark.

Shekher,

Good luck to you and I shall certainly watch this space with interest. Actually liked San's suggestion the best though I have no idea of the legal aspects.

Pity this can't be fought out in India. If nothing else they wouldn't get away with it easily. What with 27 million cases pending already, this movie would never see the light of day under their banner and serve them right.

Shekhar,

A soft concept like an idea never responds well to a definite concept like ownership. Many a creative people have been taken on a magnificent ride on the issue.

Creative industries in India - bollywood, music, publishing, advertising - score rotten in this regard. Creative hijacking is something that happens every evening. But I thought Hollywood was better.

I know how you feel. But I doubt if you can really do some harm to the gang. In any case, don't just sleep - pursue the matter legally. It could just set a precedent.

Go for it.

Spot on Kavita! Good faith? What does that mean?lol. The world doesn't understand that language, nor does it care. The name of the game is Money!! And if someone is so naive to overlook that... then one is in trouble. Tumein achee tarah se patha hai duniya kaise chalthi hai. Especially the suing part in the west....it's bread and better for some and they will do anything to get that.

I'm sure Shekhar must have seen and gone thru' lot of that, being an international film maker such things happen every now and then.

Kaveetaa....Enjoyed reading your take on that. Why are you copying my thoughts Kaveetaa?:))) nah! My thoughts just happen to resonate with yours. Am I allowed to express that to you? Have a Good Afternoon!

Love..Sachin

Thomas, great link!

What was the name of the SOB, again, that
screwed Shekar over?

and the studio exec, that made the deal under the table?

what a crappy karma this poor fellow has,
ah, but than again, what goes around, comes around,
;)
Love, Passion,

To quote this guy from the Movie Blog

"The prospect of Kapur directing, though, has me strangely excited and I'm not sure why."

http://www.themovieblog.com/archives/2004/06/asimovs_foundation_being_adapted_for_film.html

http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/art-main.html?2004-06/01/12.00.film

Hey Shekhar, you could direct my film Infinite Play The Movie.

It's based on the reality that the film itself helps to create. It is a self fulfilling prophecy.

The audience comes to the realization that they are watching a film, which is about the audience (our collective experience) who are in reality themselves in a film, sort of the advanced full immersion TV of the future.

Have you ever pointed a camera at a mirror and seen the infinity? That is what this movie is like. I did this in the 5th and 6th grade which I guess was like 30 years ago (I was the kid that ran the projectors and cameras at school) and it kind of opened up my mind. Oddly enough it was George Clooney’s dad Nick Clooney that gave me my first lessons about videography along with small group of students in this special program they were promoting “news” production as a career.

I know it will work almost every short story concept I posted on Compuserves Entertainment Forum 10 years ago became a major motion picture but I never got any credit of course. I remember they were talking about Deepak on the Spiritual forums back then, I think Deepak was doing a promotional thing, like a chat with Deepak.

That's because I intended it that way, an aspect of memetic engineering, which by the way is part of the plot in Infinite Play. Since then I have been feeding ideas to an assortment of Hollywood writers many times as the anonymous One. Which is part of the plot in the Infinite Play.

I always felt like my life was movie.

Shekhar,
Very unfair...very wrong....I think i can guess the director with major BO hit...
I pray to GOD that you get what you truly desrve(what is truly yours...This is very unfair..nothing more nothing less.

one more thing...i forgot to add..I liked Elizabeth a lot..OSCARS lost credibility for me when they didnot nominate you in the best director category....I have not watched any oscar ceremony after that.

Geees..people, is there nobody with..expertise,
experience..?,

the customs, in the film industy, I am oblivious, though,

what you could do, is put the fine prints,
on-line, sure it has some dispute clausules,
and, look into seize further 'development' activities, or: stall,

Love, Passion,

but I do think an experienced laywer, should take
the case over,

Good luck,
Love, Passion!

Kristin, very wise post.

Shekhar, Mallika will post an open healing thread soon. If you want, you can post a request for help with your situation, so that people here can back you up with prayers, Reiki and other methods. It can work wonders, if the "wonders" are in your highest interest.

Dear Shekhar, my goodness, what a huge betrayal to you this has become!

Not knowing particulars; I would be in agreement with YOU Shekhar; there must be room/print somewhere in the contract; stating YOU were director, b/c it is your adaptation of the story.

However; I would take great care in publicly denouncing this action by the exec's, find the world's best copyright lawyer!

In the meanwhile Shekhar; if I were in your place; I would make every critical effort; in keeping emotions out of business in this case. It may provide them with an unconstitutional weapon against you; know what I mean?

Remain calm. The exec's with no doubt; are aware of how to push your buttons. You are passionate man; and passion, can turn against us, when used in angst.

Much love to you Shekhar; I admire your courage, to not cower away; and let them win; I admire your strength, to pursue the only course of action now; and that is to regain your vision; perhaps the studio would agree to a co-directing scenario, if all else fails; and a court-case becomes lengthened in process?

In my prayers Shekhar, is where you will be; for the stript to remain in your hands and good name, accredited it's due!

Namaste,

North

Dear Shekhar, in reflection; I would urge you to remove this blog without hesitation, as it could be compromising the case indeed; and be viewed in a court of law; as a breach of confidentiality.

I would see to this at once; and request NO further communique on blog about it, be mentioned.

Further, make a copy of the blog FIRST: in case it was seen by someone you didn't want, to see it; and brought up later, this way; you will have the proper reference.

But, first - make a public appology on the blog; mentioning you posted it in an anxious spur of the moment and have second thoughts on sharing it here.

I am no lawyer, but, just trying to use common sense, logic and I have a fondness for your movies; also, I admire you and your thoughts, and have come to care about this atrocious action by the studio's against you, and your co-scriptor's, is all.

North

Shekhar,

Jesus said:

"And why do you not judge for yourselves what is right?

Thus, when you go with your accuser before a magistrate, on the way make an effort to settle the case, or you may be dragged before the judge, and the judge hand you over to the officer, and the officer throw you in prison.

I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the very last penny." (Luke 12: 57-59)

Kind Regards
Tanzan Senzaki

****

PS: Please Don't sue me For Quoting This!

Tanzan
you need to get a life and move on. You should have apologized to Kavita for insinuating things that weren't true. But you wrote some self righteous tripe on Deepak's post, and now your sarcasm is wasted here.
Read what soul trip wrote on the truth behind trash talk about you. It sums up every thing.
If you had the guts you would not hide behind an alias. Since you continue to do so, have the decency to show some class and dignity.
You obviously have neither.
Every one has moved on here, and many people have learnt a lesson. Maybe you should too..
Otherwise every one will lose respect for you.

Aditi narayanan/kavita chhibber.You'r a cunning and conniving woman who has made a bigger fool of urself than Tansen snezaki.Are you suffering from split personality?Aditi is given the task of namecalling others and praising kavita.All of us are fools here that we can't see who's who and who is using different names to promote herself?She is buttering up other members by taking there name in her posts and abusing Tansen and Divya.Kavita is getting in a deeper mess by using different ids. tch tch.
Regards to everyone.

Cybercop write to me at aditi114@hotmail.com
and let me know who you are..your name is an alaias too

oh sorry cybercop/tanzan/whitewings/rk/assk and may be some other aliases..
Please do email me .

Hehehe.In your haste to retailiate and in your desperation of having bieng exposed u even forget the spelling of ur own name?In ur second last post u spelt ur surname as NARAYAN instead of NARAYANAN.No real south indian will make a spelling mistake such as this,no real person would.Kavita you are disgraced beyond repair.

I will sign it as narania now there-email me

Guys, inspite of my repeatedly asking Cybercop/Tanzan to email me , he hasnt done it.
I'm not going to sabotage Shekhar's blog as he didn the last time. I'm utterly disgusted at where this blog is headed and am outta here. All of you form your opinion on who this person is and what he is trying to do.
I'm outta here-please continue with your meaningful discussions

Aditi; you are following into the trap being set for you it seems?

A golden rule: silence is more golden and powerful force; it gives you the one-up, from the element of --> suprise, much later(wink.)

Aditi; think, strategicly; "the best offense, is defense; think not human-emotionally; know what I mean? A chess-game is ensnaring some of you; and you are the pawns...see that, as they move ya's around the board of emotional-chess; and you will become free'd from the projecting, luring path you are caught in.

I seen this happen a lot from the projects--divide and conquer! So, do not walk into the trap set before you; but instead turn, and find another path; there are too many wonderful roads, to stay on this one much longer.

As we say here in the north country; do not walk deep into a forest, unknown to you; or else ye may become lost; can you now see the forest, beyond the tree's I point out to you?

North

you are a knight, Shekhar,
you did the right thing,
respect,
Love, Courage and Passion,

Dear Aditi,

I hear you!

Quoting you:

"Tanzan
you need to get a life and move on. You should have apologized to Kavita for insinuating things that weren't true. But you wrote some self righteous tripe on Deepak's post, and now your sarcasm is wasted here."

I agree, I an apology by Tanzan to Kavita was in order. As a police officer, I have to deal with cowards regularly. Since it is impractical to prosecute every sitation, sometimes an apology is the right thing to do, especially when older kids try to bully little kids.

I think that Tanzan still should apologise to Kavita. But this woman? seems to have a larger-than-life ego. She was probably a tomboy in school and while growing up.

If she does not apologise, it just shows who she is...a coward.

Spence.

PS: When you are small fish (minion), it seems natural to pick on bigger fish.

Actually that wasn't a mirror it was a monitor that displayed what the camera saw, and the camera saw itself displaying itself displaying itself displaying itself until it bacem nothing.

Shekhar,

Regarding your earlier comment on the teachings of Bhagavad Gita, here are some verses that might be of interest to you. The translations are mine.

TS

***

karmendriyani samyamya
ya aste manasa smaran
indriyarthan vimudhatma
mithyacarah sa ucyate

Controlling actions and senses
Yet thinking things of senses,
Fooling himself thus,
A pretender he becomes.

Bhagavad Gita 3:6

***

niyatam kuru karma tvam
karma jyayo hy akarmanah
sarira-yatrapi ca te
na prasiddhyed akarmanah

Do that you must do,
Better to do than do nothing,
Even to keep yourself going,
You have to do something.

Bhagavad Gita 3:8

***

tasmad asaktah satatam
karyam karma samacara
asakto hy acaran karma
param apnoti purusah

Without concern for the fruits of actions
But always doing his duty by actions,
Working thus without attachment,
He achieves the supreme things.

Bhagavad gita 3:19

***

mukta-sango 'naham-vadi
dhrty-utsaha-samanvitah
siddhy-asiddhyor nirvikarah
karta sattvika ucyate

Not attached to material things,
Without ego, courageous and resolute,
Unmoved by success or failure,
He's of moral aptitude.

Bhagavad Gita 18:26

That doesn't seem right at all. I wish you the best, and regardless of the outcome this will be another lesson learned when dealing with Hollywood.

:)~ Maybe we should have eagle eyes look over that contract the next time. Right Kate?

Namaste~

That doesn't seem right at all. I wish you the best, and regardless of the outcome this will be another lesson learned when dealing with Hollywood.

:)~ Maybe we should have eagle eyes look over that contract the next time. Right Kate?

Namaste~

Dear Adontai,
You are wise to know how important careful scrutiny of the words contained in artist contract is. Many clauses allow for an 'out' for the artist to be released from their obligation, i.e.: if a better job comes along, A recording project, a live-concert performance, an illness, etc.

It's amazing what a set of eagles eyes can do in overseeing the process. I highly recommend hiring someome with superb Hawk eyes. They will be sure to catch mistakes.

Good day to you, Adontai!

~ Kate

Shekhar,

Regarding your earlier comment on the teachings of Bhagavad Gita, here are some verses that might be of interest to you. The translations are mine.

TS
***

karmendriyani samyamya
ya aste manasa smaran
indriyarthan vimudhatma
mithyacarah sa ucyate

Controlling actions and senses
Yet thinking things of senses,
Fooling himself thus,
A pretender he becomes.

Bhagavad Gita 3:6

***

niyatam kuru karma tvam
karma jyayo hy akarmanah
sarira-yatrapi ca te
na prasiddhyed akarmanah

Do that you must do,
Better to do than do nothing,
Even to keep yourself going,
You have to do something.

Bhagavad Gita 3:8

***

tasmad asaktah satatam
karyam karma samacara
asakto hy acaran karma
param apnoti purusah

Without concern for the fruits of actions
But always doing his duty by actions,
Working thus without attachment,
He achieves the supreme things.

Bhagavad Gita 3:19

***

mukta-sango 'naham-vadi
dhrty-utsaha-samanvitah
siddhy-asiddhyor nirvikarah
karta sattvika ucyate

Not attached to material things,
Ego-less, courageous and resolute,
Unmoved by success or failure,
He is of moral aptitude.

Bhagavad Gita 18:26

Tanzan,
thanks for posting the verses. They are familiar to me and for some reason I felt happy seeing them. And I enjoyed reading your translations and feel inspired to read some more.

Love, Kristin

thank you, Tanzan od reminding us in actual vesre, what most of know what Bhagwat Geeta says, but needs affirmation on a day to day basis, for in the chos of life, it easy to forget. Thank you. Shekhar

Shekhar, you are welcome.

Kristin Masterton, thanks. Here are some inspirational verses for you. Again, the translations are mine.

sva-dharmam api caveksya
na vikampitum arhasi
dharmyad dhi yuddhac chreyo 'nyat
ksatriyasya na vidyate

Considering your moral beliefs
Do not hesitate for rights you deserve,
For nothing is better for a warrior
Than to fight a righteous war.

Bhagavad Gita 2:31

***
yadrcchaya copapannam
svarga-dvaram apavrtam
sukhinah ksatriyah partha
labhante yuddham idrsam

O Partha! happy are the warriors
Fighting such unsought wars,
Opening for them the doors
To the planets in the heaven.

Bhagavad Gita 2:32

***
atha cet tvam imam dharmyam
sangramam na karisyasi
tatah sva-dharmam kirtim ca
hitva papam avapsyasi

Not fighting this righteous war,
Not carrying out religious duties,
You will incur sin indeed,
Losing your warrior's repute.

Bhagavad Gita 2:33

***
akirtim capi bhutani
kathayisyanti te 'vyayam
sambhavitasya cakirtir
maranad atiricyate

Speaking forever ill of you
People will disgrace you,
For a man of honor
Dishonor is worse than death.

Bhagavad Gita 2:34

Tanzan,
those verses make me think about duty and how it is dishonorable to walk away from our responsibilities and obligations. They make me think about being brave enough to act out my roles without shame or holding back.

yet, verses 2:34 to 36 have always confused me somewhat, because I don't understand the focus on what others will think of you. Why is others speaking ill of you worse than death?

I can see as you said, "dishonor is worse than death"... because there is a way in which when we dishonor ourselves we waste our lives. We have this great gift and we have to potential to do great good with our unique gifts. Wasting it on foolishness is a tragedy.
But we are all tempted. And afraid sometimes. Afraid like Arjuna.

I don't interpret these verses as supporting war or violence. Do you Tanzan? I'm not saying it's black and white and that there is never a reason to fight physically. But I do think we need to evolve beyond violence and that there are many of us here for that reason.

Love, Kristin

Dang!... It's a dog eats dog world! That is "totally unfair"! Amazing how "stealing" got so crafty! I say take'em legally, but you would have more fun doing another film and watching it succeed... :) I wish you the best, Shekhar!

Kristin Masterton,

Fighting over your
Neighbour's wife,
Is not right.

But when your neighbour
Has your wife in sight,
Fight, fight. That is right.

TS

PS: Please Google Bhagavad Gita. There are a myriad
commentaries there to dispel doubts.

"I don't interpret these verses as supporting war or violence."

Kristen - That's because you're looking at them out of context. These verses were uttered in the middle of a battlefield, precisely to urge Arjun to fight. There is no scope of interpreting them in any other way. They are perfectly unambiguous in every way.

I agree many of us would like to see an end to violence. But if there are others who don't feel the same way there comes a time when you have to fight back. There were many longdrawn peace negotiations prior to the Mahabharata war. The good guys were willing to settle for 5 small villages in lieu of the entire kingdom which was rightfully theirs but the bad guys did not want to give them even one needlepoint of territory. Thus this war became essential - not just for the land but because the bad guys were unjust in the way they ruled the kingdom too.

These are called dharma yuddhas - or righteous wars. They are meant to be faught. It is infinitely worse to shrink back and not fight because of some egoistical principles which one feels good about holding - or out of sentiments which Arjun was caught up in.

You show 'em Shekhar!

Reading about Mahabharatha, I recently read some where that South Indian film maker Maniratnam (Shekar's Friend) is going to make it into a 3 part movie with Amir khan as Karna and Shahrukh Khan as Arjuna.

May be Shekar or somebody can give some updates about that project

Hi Divya,
I disagree that you cannot interpret the verses any other way. For instance that is not the way Mahatma Gandhi interpreted them. There are infinite ways to interpret any words. Your interpretation is valid. And yet, I believe that there are times when nonviolence is the couragous route and violence the way of the coward. Times change. There are no absolutes. Every situation is different.

Hi Tanzan,
I was not doubting. I was just curious what your point of view was. Thanks again for posting the verses with your translations. So do you know Sanskrit? That's awesome. I love Sanskrit. Chanting in Sanskrit has a transformational affect upon me.

Love, Kristin

Kristen - I doubt Gandhi could have wiggled around these particular verses but I'll take your word for it. In any case, his philosophy was a total failure. He did not get what he wanted. There were infinitely more deaths because of his non-violence policy than there would have been if there was a show of strength and resistance. On top of that India was partitioned - against his will. So even if he tried to contort the verses to suit his selfish ideals, where's the proof that his interpretation worked?

Besides, the Gita is trying to convey a message that is pretty clear. It's a battlefield. Because of sentiments Arjun does not want to fight and Krishna tells him that it is his duty to. On what basis can you or anyone else bring in any other interpretation to this text? If you have your own personal philosophy of non-violence that's up to you but that's not what the Indian traditions were about. This type of interpretation only serves our enemies, i.e., the western world and since Indians are busy kissing western ass this interpretation has taken hold. There is no logical basis for this philosophy otherwise. If you can prove this on logical grounds, I'm all ears.

Kristin Masterton,

I am not fluent in Sanskrit. I have to use a dictionary. Gita is not hard to understand. But many so called scholars and famous people have screwed up its interpretations. I hardly read any commentary on Gita by anyone. I translated the whole text in English free verse. Most of my translations were lost when my PC crashed. Now I translate verses on a whim.

I suggest you go to http://www.asitis.com/ and see the definitions of Sanskrit words into English, and make your own translation. You can then compare your translation with the prose translation given there and my translations that I posted here. I would like to know how it changes your understanding of Bhagavad Gita.

My views on Gita and Gandhi run parallel to Divya.

TS

God plays with himSelf.

Dear Divya,

I wanted to discuss some of the points you've consistently raised across threads. I hope this ain't too bad a place, it merits a response, and I don't drown in my verbosity. I also trust that this is not an abuse of Shekhar's blog space - given the history of intent, I am sure it won't be construed as such.

A few disclaimers - much as I will try, for me, describing some points is mighty hard. I hope you will overlook syntactic errors and address the gist - which I hope permeates through! Secondly, I believe that Hindu philosophy is the most exalted among the philosophies we have, and there is no agenda behind my questioning. I am asking you these questions because I value your insights. Finally, if the questions are meaningful, I appreciate the answers may not be easy to provide in such a forum.

1. Elsewhere, you have indicated that studying Indian philosophy and 'consciousness', even one branch of it, can scarcely be absorbed in one lifetime. This is a widely held view.

I have two problems with this: one of wiggle room. Because of the large and often repetitive/redundant works, antithetical viewpoints can be handed for most lines of thought. While this breathes inclusiveness, it causes ambiguities and indicates a lack of cohesiveness and a consistent direction.

I am not contending that consistency is a must for any rigorous or formal philosophical system. What I'm driving towards is the ability to casually include singularities under the umbrella of 'already being covered and expounded' in Hindu philosophy. To borrow Michael Shermer's lingo - science is cautiously conservative. Hindu philosophy seems boundless, fluid, and hence morphable to subsume conflicting viewpoints.

Viewed another way, if I ask "What is outright rejected by Hindu philosophy as invalid?" I don't get much!

Again, one could say this is the beauty of it. But it also means it is a superset of everything perhaps weak in providing definitive insight into why all should be grouped.

The second problem is one of "complete full-time immersion" to understand it. It reminds me a touch of "totally surrender yourself to the Koran". I think complete immersion into anything that is a non-arbitrary compilation of material will make one convinced of "it"! I perceive the lack of some simple principles that distill out as indicative of incompleteness. If I can provide an analogy, it takes a brilliant physicist involved with total immersion and then some to really understand relativity completely. Yet the point that the speed of light is constant can be grasped by even those far from experts in Physics. Why can't there be similar pivots emerging from Hindu philosophy? To steal from Martin Gardner, "It is like Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky. As Alice remarked, they seem to mean something, but it's hard to pin down just what".

2. Hindu Philosophy, as collated, is a few thousand years old. Written additions have not occurred over the last two thousand years, even though there have been important interpretations of original works by greats such as Sankaracharya and Ramanujacharya. A part of me questions the assumption that man two thousand years ago figured it all out; and we are left piecing the whole picture together because we neglected that monumental effort, since. As science has shown, our knowledge and capabilities increase manyfold, almost exponentially with every century. So why shouldn't philosophical insight follow a similar trajectory? Should we not actively consider rejection of limited thought, poor concepts and addition of fresh lines of thought as borne by history and our collective experience since? How could the rishis of yore, without even interacting with all humans on earth at that time - different peoples, races, environments, gain all possible insight into the nature of man. Today, communication and travel have made that more possible. Isn't any of that old thought subject to revision? Is everything there correct - why haven't portions been rejected as irrelevant, insular, incomplete? Could perfection in thought have been achieved two thousand years ago?

3. You have mentioned that language (English perhaps, western languages) are very limiting in understanding these works. I studied Sanskrit in primary school and was lucky to have had a brilliant teacher who turned me on to philosophy and even taught grammar rules straight out of Panini's Ashtadhyayi. So I am not a basket case with Sanskrit verses. For example, I can understand 30% of the original Gita verses Tanzan translates. Yet all my reading about Hindu philosophy has been in English, based on translations. While the poetic beauty may often be lost in translation (even though the English translation is often superb and poetic - like Tanzan's efforts :-)), why does the meaning always go? I agree if your point is using words like "secularism" etc. based on the works, but those are amateur interpretations for the common media. What do you find objectionable in quality westernized / English translation ? - and there are multiple authors, not always one. What can one really grasp only if read in the original language?

4. Sanskrit (and Pali) died as spoken languages, much like Latin. Weren't these occurrences indiginous events, not influenced at all by the West?

Similarly, can't major aspects of our daily strife be ascribed to indigenous causes (common to all man) than heaping a majority of the blame at the door of either Abrahamic religions or the West?

Thanks.

kristin,

I think yoyu have raised a very valid point.

Before I go further, I would however like to clarify that per se I am against getting into verbal pirouettes of any kind with reference to religion, religiosity, spirituality, spiritualism,beliefs, values et al. For the simple reason that just as we do not discuss our daily routine of say cleansing, bathing etc, spiritualism is to that extent a personal choice in purification of ones inner life. How one chooses to go about it is therfore unarguably , subjective and for that matter, private.

About the interpretations of the Gita. There have been myriad, and will continue to be, since each view is filtered from the standpoint of the individuals progress , at that juncture in his cycle of evolution. For this reason , The gita is unique and timeless in its relevance.

You musthave seen the image of Krishna,as charioteer, holding with one hand the reins of five horses effortlessly and under his control. I think it was Swami Vivekananda who interpreted it such. The five horses were symbolic of our Five senses, sight, smell, sound, speech and sensation. Krishna is the higher consciousness present in all of us and Arjuna is symbolic of man. Krishna is therefore urging us to live life as a charioteer in control of himself. He is leading the horses and not vice versa. It takes power, forttude, courage and determnation to control your senses and live within the ambit of a virtuous life, rather than giving your senses a free reign. Also implying the disaster if each of the five, decide to run in different directions as per their will. How would the charioteer ever hope to reach his destination ? This interpretation has stayed with me all these years and the Image Of an upright, smiling, confident, krishna, exhibiting immense strength in just using a single hand to subjugate the horses, has left an indelible impression on my mind.

The story of the pandavas and kauravas is the story of the 100 desires inherent in a human being and his senses as in five Pandavas. The kurukshetra is the battlefield of the mind, and the never ending conflict is between giving in to our desires or fighting them, as our sacred duty. Reading the Gita with this analogy opens doors of another kind, with equally blissful realisations.

To each his own.One has to keep questioning as Questions are the engines of reason. Reason can distiguish deep truth from a petty one. Having said that it is also true that the relentless pursuit of wisdom actually postpones it. We have to practise self sufficiency and be our souls own doctor. After all, religiuos texts are only the training weights of the mind.

Hi A.K. - Good to hear from you. The caveats weren't necessary, by the way - least of all for me :)

I doubt I could have said that Hindu philosophy is not translatable. In fact I usually roll my eyes when I hear people say that. What I repeatedly have said, if not in these very words, is that Hindu philosophy has been hijacked by the west and is falsely interpreted. The fault here is with the Indians for going along with it and not with the west. Remember the western brain has been subjected to Christianity for 2000 years. When such a brain encounters any other culture it can only interpret it in the only way it knows how, i.e through a christian lens. When the first bunch of westerners landed in India they saw religion everywhere, precisely because they were coming from a land which had religion. Prior to that the Greeks had come to India in 300 B.C. They left behind many accounts of their encounters with the Indians. Nowhere do they mention religion. The Greeks called the pundits "gymnosophists" - like a certain sect of their own philosophers. The Chinese came to India also in B.C. and then in early A.D. Nowhere do they mention religion. Religion revolves around a belief system and hindu philosophy is not a belief system just as the theory of gravity is not a belief system. When the basic premise by the Christians regarding Hindu philosophy is completely wrong, how can anything else they have to say about it be right? There are no equivalent concepts such as god, priest, worship, salvation, caste, heresy, apocalypse, soteriology, teleology etc. in Hinduism. Yet these terms are constantly applied to our traditions. Since the past 200 years this has taken root in Indian consciousness and we repeat this as if it is perfectly normal without trying to understand the actual phenomenon that is hindu philosophy. This is not a translation problem. It relates to the basic cognitive structure that lies behind these terms.

Whether people could have figured out the nature of reality 5000 years ago? Since the knowledge that they describe is basically experiential in nature we will have to start with the assumption that they did figure out the nature of reality. Since neither you nor me claim to be enlightened and hence have not had the experience, if we want to have any sort of a dialog we will have to presuppose the truth of this claim. Let's say the nature of reality is one big blue ecstatic dot and this was figured out by sages 5000 years ago. Now, throughout the history of India there has been a continuity in this experience. And the line of continuity is unbroken. Of course there are some who will say it is actually 2 blue dots, and others who will say it is actually violet, so we do have many different schools of thought on this, not just within the Vedic and tantric traditions but also among the Sufis and Buddhists. The more important thing however is that there is, and there always has been, an enormous amount of freedom in what path you choose to find the blue dot. There have been extremely intelligent and educated people who have found the blue dot and there have been illiterate and uncultured people who have found the same blue dot. They have described the experience, they have taught it to others, they have talked about certain markers and milestones along the way and there is general agreement about this. It is entirely possible that someone will come along in the future and say that that's not what it is at all and that reality is actually a turkey sandwich. Until such time this is the best we have and in 5000 years no-one who has seriously studied and practiced the tradition has said anything to the contrary. Moreover, there is nothing else in the marketplace that comes even close to offering this kind of knowledge. Also, your point that the hindu philosophy was written 5000 years ago is not valid. It is being continually written. The works of Ramana Maharishi, Aurobindo, Ramakrishna are all modern works and I would say something or the other is added to the scriptures every 20 years!

About ambiguities - there really isn't much room for this in the Indian traditions because of their very sophisticated system of logic. No-one can simply make a claim without proving it logically. It isn't a matter of interpreting like Kristen just did. That has nothing to do with the nature of reality but is rather a personal viewpoint on how one wants to live one's life. By the way, you can note the deep Christian influence in the non-violence stance she took without applying it to any context. Gandhi was deeply influenced by Christianity too and is very normative in some of his thinking.

As for grasping the philosophy without immersion - this ties in to whether this is a religion question and maybe we'll have a chance to discuss this some other time as this has already gotten too long. Basically, if there is no religion what is the "it" you are trying to get. But if it is philosopy you are after, then it very much is a lifelong quest even for a Socrates. And if you want moksha, see ya in your next life.

Hi Divya,

I think it's fascinating to be able to use our power of discrimination. I see validity in your viewpoint and yet I think that there are many ways to interpret any scripture. Not only are there different levels of meaning, but the meaning shifts with the context. As A.K. suggested, life evolves. Why wouldn’t our interpretations of scripture evolve along with it? You said that Gandhi's non-violent philosophy was a total failure and yet the British did leave. Besides where has violence, war and the use of brute force gotten us? A friend of mine visited Japan and came back with a book from Hiroshima. The Japanese are naturally very concerned about nuclear proliferation. I've heard the argument that killing those innocent men, women and children ended the war and saved many more lives. But it falls flat when you look into your own heart. And it certainly falls flat now that many more countries (each with their own version of who is the "enemy") have nuclear weapons and the same potential for destruction on a massive scale. I'm not saying that everyone should roll over and become victims or that we shouldn't defend ourselves or protect those who are vulnerable, but I am suggesting that we may not survive as a species if we are unable to transcend our warring tendencies. And there are times when it takes much more courage to be willing to die for what you know in your heart to be true rather than to kill for it.

Kaveeta, I find the image of Krishna holding the reins of the senses (as in the Katha Upanishad) very meaningful and I appreciate your mentioning it. I understand what you are saying about your spirituality being private and subjective. Why is it that we have a tendency to make personal matters a point of public debate? That's an interesting question, I think.

I haven't read the bible much yet, but I recall reading my father-in-laws bible and finding meaning in reading the Sermon on the Mount. And then, scrolling down to see the "official" interpretation and finding that it didn't even come close to the meaning I took from those words of Jesus. At the time I was confused. But now I'm not at all confused. I realize that the value in the scripture is in finding the truth and validating it within and for myself. I don't need someone else to interpret what is real and what is unreal for me. I don't need someone else – with an obvious agenda – to tell me what is right and what is wrong. God blessed us with the power to discriminate. I imagine that the idea is to use it.

Love, Kristin

fascinating shares here..would add my two-bits...i was a very avid reader and collector of information from various sources for a large part of my life.personally, at a certain stage , information without personal authentication became very burdensome.To me, truth is not truth until it becomes "our truth".We discover more in the throes of our darkness than in other's light when it comes to inner world paradigms.Reading a map can never substitute teh act of actually visiting a place.
I believe there have been great spiritual insights shared time and again in the world and they constitute our legacy.Conflicts and paradoxes are symptomatic in mind realms ; purely contextual to frames of reference; north south, east and west dissolve as we move away from earth consciousness levels.As Vivekananda is said to have exclaimed, "The steps disappear below you as you keep climbing".

Whichever way a river turns, it finally wends its way to the ocean...

1) "The good guys were willing to settle for 5 small villages in lieu of the entire kingdom which was rightfully theirs”

The kingdom was never rightfully theirs. Pandavas were fathered by different persons, and not by their mother's husband, as he could not touch his wife. Thus legally speaking, Pandavas did not have any claim on the property at all. They should have gone to their mother's kingdom or to their respective father's for a livelihood and not fighting a 'rightful' war for something which is not theirs. Kauravas were right to deny even a “needlepoint of territory”

What should we call a person who urges others to engage in such wars, even by engaging philosophy? How is that different from the propaganda campaign, carried out by Bush and his gang?

2) ".....not just for the land but because the bad guys were unjust in the way they ruled the kingdom too"

It seems Bush is not alone in history in the quest for regime change! What were the unjust ways exactly, and where is it mentioned? Was it WMD? (According to some, ancient Indians had even nuclear weapons!) Torture rooms? Terrorism? Did the good guys proove that the robbery, rape, unemployment, crime are so rampant in the kingdom that a regime change is the only remedy? After capturing the power, how did the good guys rule? What were the actions they took to rectify the unjust ways?

3) "The good guys were willing to settle for 5 small villages...... "

".....not just for the land but because the bad guys were unjust in the way they ruled the kingdom too"

Is there a contradiction here? if the 'good guys' got 5 villages, would there be a war? No! because they 'were willing to settle for 5 small villages.' Doesn't that mean the good guys will forget the 'unjust way' by which the bad guys ruled the kingdom, if they can get an opportunity to enjoy power?

It is hard to understand how we can call a guy good if he pledges his wife just for the fun of gambling. And the rest of her husbands just stand by there. It is hard to understand how we can call a guy good if he is ready to shout 'Ashwathama hata' but murmurs 'it is an elephant'.

Oh, yes, nobody is 100% good or 100% bad. Then how do you call a guy, as good? Analysing the good? If that is the case, in the context of Kurukshetra war, how can we call a person who is willing to make war for a kingdom by making bogus claims, good?

Some claim that it is only a symbolic story. If so, why could not we come out with ‘good guys’ who are really good, at least in the context of war?

Pls read the third sentence in the second last para as "Analysing the context" instead of "Analysing the good"

Dear Kristen,

As long as you are using concrete examples, the world war etc., I'm with you. I too feel the Japan bombings were unjustified, since the war was almost over and they were just quibbling over the terms of the surrender. However, I do not agree with bald statements like Peace Is The Way whether they are made by the likes of Gandhi or Deepak (or you?). Everything has a context and that was the only thing I was attempting to point out in saying that Krishna's advice can only be interpreted one way. In any case, at the end of the Gita, Krishna says to Arjun "Now I have given you this discourse, do what you think best", or words to that effect. This gives the leeway for dense interpretations like Gandhi adopted in his non-violence policies even in face of the fact that they were producing adverse results.

Anyway, it's not necessary to have this discussion only at the level of bloodshed and bombs. It could be something as basic as just asserting oneself. Here in this blog we have a concrete situation . I cannot possibly know Shekhar's circumstances, but assuming I was in such a situation, I sure as hell would get ready to fight. This does not mean that I have adopted this stance as a belief or a way of life. I would find out what my chances of winning this thing are and I would proceed accordingly. The truth is one thing and proving it is another. It may well turn out that I stood no chance of winning in which case I may not pursue this. But what I most definitely would not do is just sit back on the basis of some pacifist beliefs.

I do agree with the different levels of interpretation. As Kaveeta took it to a higher level of abstraction, one could go even further to where there were no senses but just a consciousness. Or one could be more concrete and talk about the actual war on the battlefield. In any case, there is a message, or a theory, or a resonance of a specific sort. I do not agree that one can go any which way one wants with it. As people often do on blogs, you hear of what God means to different people. Now, if everyone has their own idea of God, then God is a meaningless term. I'm not into this type of stuff, as it just seems superfluous and does not seem to contribute to knowledge or understanding in anyway.

"I think that there are many ways to interpret any scripture."

~ Kristin Masterton

***

Kristin,

Here is an interpretation of a scripture by a mullah. Any disagreements? I wrote this poem about a year ago after a news item in Malaysia.

***

A Mullah and His Holy Koran

A mullah stands on the pulpit
Of his holy mosque and preaches
After the Friday namaaz:
“You know why
You got tsunami?
It’s the wrath of Allah
Upon the infidels
And upon all those
Who worship Him not.
You have forgotten
Allah’s words.
Go and open your Koran:
There is only one Allah,
Mohammad is His messenger,
Give alms to the poor,
And before you die
Go at least once to Mecca.
This is all Islam.
Rest is all nonsense
Held by non-believers.

And too, do not forget:
Lay in ambush, kill them,
Bring them to their knees,
Ask for ransom if you free them.
It's all in the name of Allah
It's all in the holy Koran.”

Tanzan Senzaki

"I think that there are many ways to interpret any scripture."

~ Kristin Masterton

***

Kristin,

Here is an interpretation of a scripture by a mullah. Any disagreements? I wrote this poem about a year ago after a news item in Malaysia.

***

A Mullah and His Holy Koran

A mullah stands on the pulpit
Of his holy mosque and preaches
After the Friday namaaz:
“You know why
You got tsunami?
It’s the wrath of Allah
Upon the infidels
And upon all those
Who worship Him not.
You have forgotten
Allah’s words.
Go and open your Koran:
There is only one Allah,
Mohammad is His messenger,
Give alms to the poor,
And before you die
Go at least once to Mecca.
This is all Islam.
Rest is all nonsense
Held by non-believers.

And too, do not forget:
Lay in ambush, kill them,
Bring them to their knees,
Ask for ransom if you free them.
It's all in the name of Allah
It's all in the holy Koran.”

Tanzan Senzaki

Hi Divya,
Perhaps sticking to concrete examples is the way to go? I do think it's important to take our ideals to a practical level. If we cannot implement them in daily life then there is not much point.

Sundar,
I agree completely with your statement that "truth is not truth until it becomes "our truth". We discover more in the throes of our darkness than in other's light when it comes to inner world paradigms."

Sometimes I want to be able to find someone or something else, a scripture or a great teacher perhaps, that can give me truth. But that is not possible. Sure, others can help to shed light and point the way, but truth can only be discovered within. I've got to keep rowing my small boat into the ocean.

Love, Kristin

Tanzan,
yes, there are many ways to interpret scripture. So much depends upon the filter we use, which is based upon our past experiences and conditioning... and agenda. That's why I think it's important to come to our own conclusions. Become leaders by standing in the light of our own truth instead of followers.

Divya,
you said that if everyone has their own idea of God then it is a meaningless term. 'God' is just a word. How could the meaning we give it not be intensely personal and unique to us? The finite cannot express the infinite. But we do try. That's why we have people like Tanzan to write poetry.

Love, Kristin

Tanzan,
yes, there are many ways to interpret scripture. So much depends upon the filter we use, which is based upon our past experiences and conditioning... and agenda. That's why I think it's important to come to our own conclusions. Become leaders by standing in the light of our own truth instead of followers.

Divya,
you said that if everyone has their own idea of God then it is a meaningless term. 'God' is just a word. How could the meaning we give it not be intensely personal and unique to us? The finite cannot express the infinite. But we do try. That's why we have people like Tanzan to write poetry.

Love, Kristin

Najeeb,

Good post laying
Bare sex facts,
Promiscuity? Sex acts
Okayed by spirituality?

Who were the bad guys?
Who were the good guys?
Where was the morality?

And philosophy of Krishana,
Exhorting Arjuna to war!
What a statesman!
What a lover of women!

What would Jesus say?
What would Hindus say?
Any taker here
To what you say?

Tanzan Senzaki

Hi Tanzan,

When the pain becomes too great
Things start to explode

Shattering dreams
Illusions
Lives

Can you call it life when we dwell on superficial nonsense?
Obsessed with fashion
And petty desires
Worrying about what others might be thinking

I wonder what they will be wearing tonight?
Should I go with the red dress?
Or a more conservative look?

25,000 children died of starvation today

I like my hair better highlighted
Blonde with a hint of brown

There are 36 wars happening right now

Mothers and daughters and sons murdered
Or worse
All long ago left behind by fathers gone to war

My sister and I giggle while trying on makeup
And short skirts
Pretending to be 16 again
Showing off our legs

Tramps
Girls who dress like that are asking for it

It?
What is "it"?

Whatever girls get when they dress like sluts

Weapons made in my city were used to kill innocent children in Africa today
Sweet girls and playful boys forever lost

And I'm admiring my new hair color
While trying on lipstick

What?
You think I'm preoccupied with sex?
---

I'm not so sure why I wanted to share that with you Tanzan, but then I thought, why not?

Love, Kristin

Hi Tanzan,

When the pain becomes too great
Things start to explode

Shattering dreams
Illusions
Lives

Can you call it life when we dwell on superficial nonsense?
Obsessed with fashion
And petty desires
Worrying about what others might be thinking

I wonder what they will be wearing tonight?
Should I go with the red dress?
Or a more conservative look?

25,000 children died of starvation today

I like my hair better highlighted
Blonde with a hint of brown

There are 36 wars happening right now

Mothers and daughters and sons murdered
Or worse
All long ago left behind by fathers gone to war

My sister and I giggle while trying on makeup
And short skirts
Pretending to be 16 again
Showing off our legs

Tramps
Girls who dress like that are asking for it

It?
What is "it"?

Whatever girls get when they dress like sluts

Weapons made in my city were used to kill innocent children in Africa today
Sweet girls and playful boys forever lost

And I'm admiring my new hair color
While trying on lipstick

What?
You think I'm preoccupied with sex?
---

I'm not so sure why I wanted to share that with you Tanzan, but then I thought, why not?

Love, Kristin

Hi Kristin - words are not just words. They refer to something in particular. When I say cat, I expect people to understand approximately what I am talking about. God is no different a word than that. The fact that we try and make it so does not add anything to anyone's comprehension of the phenomenon and has zero value as far as I am concerned. I find that it is mostly for sentimental reasons that people play along with this.

HI Divya,
so what's the matter with being sentimental?
Love, Kristin

It?
What is "it"?

~Kristin Masterton

***

Whatever you can hit
Get it. It is 'It'
Whatever you can't
Forget it

It is then an illusion
Of losers, laden
With lame excuses,
Causing all time confusion

Sour grapes!

And it becomes THAT
That of a holy Hindu,
Not living in now
But talking of this and THAT

That losing one's self
Merging with consciousness
Becoming one with oneness
All confusing vagueness!

Tanzan Senzaki

PS: I am not sure either. Is it 'all time confusion'?

Kristin - I think where there is a lack of real feeling, there are sentiments. There's something phony about sentiments, imo. They certainly have a place in life, but in a very "there, there, this will fix your booboo" kind of a way. Similarly, if you say God means X to me and Y to him, we are just making each other feel good without really trying to understand what god really means. For those into "feel good" this is fine. For others this is just a waste of time. I'm just going to look at the dictioary, but I'm pretty sure that this word is officially meant to have negative connotations.

Whatever you can hit
"Get it. It is 'It'
Whatever you can't
Forget it

It is then an illusion
Of losers, laden
With lame excuses,
Causing all time confusion"

Tanzan Senzaki

Forgive my intrusion
You hit
An illusion, because
Of this mental confusion.

You touch and say "is"
Point to trees
What are these if not
Something your touch makes of
Something.
Ask a bee, ask a flea and they might disagree
What for you is a tree is
A something you can’t even see
For a flea...

Who is looking behind
you and bee?
What’s a tree
Can you look at yourself
Being branches?
Leave the "me"
Be the tree and you’ll see
This is that
You are that
I am that so
Let's hit and get
What?

Divya, thanks for your response. I both agree with some and question some of the points you made.

The one I will like to touch on is "We will have to start with the assumption that they did figure out the nature of reality. Since neither you nor me claim to be enlightened and hence have not had the experience, if we want to have any sort of a dialog, we will have to presuppose the truth of this claim."

I may drop off the deep-end, you are forewarned :) ....

I reject the claim and the assumption.

There is no doubt that they went some major distance in figuring out and logically trying to work out the nature of reality, way more than us. But with all my limitations, I think I have a valid point that they were *far* from completely *enlightened* - this includes Buddha and all the great people, when it comes to really comprehending nature. They had phenomenal insight into the nature of man, able to realize absolute mental peace in their life, and stimulate, help, and motivate others and leave a leagacy for the ages. But there are so many fundamentals in the nature of the cosmos (time, light, absolute constants, parallelism, singularities, subatomicity) that they simply did not dwell on. Anything 'material' is invariably neglected for its impermanence, with superficial insight into the energy equation. And time is regarded as circular at its highest abstraction in Hindu philosophy with no further insight into its interplay with other abstractions (e.g., light). The philosophical description might be mostly true, or may be misleading over-simplifications. We don't know yet. But there is a very good chance we will know conclusively some day. Aided by scientific progress that has increased exponentially since!

This *may or may not* call for revisions and updates to philosophy. What really gets to me is the presupposition that all this scientific progress can be subsumed under an existent philosophy presumed to be based on an (often complete) understanding of reality.

My personal belief is in inadequacies. Starting with me :-) Great philosophical works follow a frequency lifecycle that is much lower than groundbreaking scientific paradigms. If we do not exterminate ourselves with the enormous destructive power currently under our control, I believe there will be philosophical works in the distant future that redefine most of what we think is peerless today. If one is committed to that thought, it behooves us to proactively look beyond what's already there so we can infinitesimally contribute towards that next step. Yet, all we see even from the brilliant, are re-affirmations.

May be only in the ultimate point of time, one would see "science and sprituality becoming one and the same". Perhaps that point defines the end of life or the cosmos itself.

When I see people absorbing the Bible, Torah, or Koran today and taking its words too seriously and casting it with a parsing-spin to our current times, I am amused. Hindu works are so expansive and inclusive of different non-cohesive thoughts, that a "belief" is in itself questionable! A big step beyond the Abrahamic legacy, but wanting nonetheless.

May be it is time to resume being a lurker :)

This is that
You are that
I am that so

~Aurora Carlson

***

Are you a tree
A flea or a bee?

The tree lives
Not knowing it lives
How wonderful!

You too are not
A bat, a cat or a rat

They do not need
This and THAT

Or do they?

Do they ask why
they live and die?

But you do
Does He make you do?

Accepting Him
Questioning nothing

Using no reason
Life becomes easy, no?

Hanging on to 'Skyhook-theory'
Everything is made from the Top

He the creator of all
The master of super design

He, He, yes, He, He
Everybody at His mercy!

Many confine their brains
To this oneness of His

***

Others don't confuse themselves
With perceptual this and THAT

Whatever they propose, they test
They learn more of the universe

They learn more of themselves
Our progress is there to attest

To them you look to
For your easy living

So that you can ask
More often than not

What is THAT?

Dear A.K.,

Most of the factual statements in your post about hindu philosophy are incorrect, i.e., the points you make about its notions of time and materiality. But that's beside the point. I used to have the same stance as you several years ago in my cynical phase but now I think it is a cop-out. The philosophy makes certain claims that are empirically verifiable. There is a sound theory behind it as well as a sophisticated system of logic that proves its claims. So, on what basis can you simply declare that you find it inadequate? At best you can say you don't understand it, otherwise the burden is on you to demonstrate its shortcomings or at least to say what they are. Precisely because you appeal to science you have to acknowledge the empirical validity of its claims. We have yogis today and we have had them in the past. They are living proof of its theories.

Besides, on what basis can you assert that science is capable of resolving the matters addressed by hindu philosophy? Everyday we can see the sun rise in the east and sail across the sky and set in the west. Along comes a Galileo and tells us that that is not actually what is happening. It's actually the earth that is going around the sun. Now our senses are of no use to us and we have to shut our eyes and use our intellect to infer through reasoning that it is actually the earth that is going around the sun. The Indian traditions go one step further than this. They claim that even that is an illusion. You have to transcend even the intellect to understand what is really the case. So you see science gets left behind in step two and it is of no use to cling to science which in any case cannot come up with a challenge. But you could still be of the opinion that none of this is of earth-shattering importance anyway and I can grant you that.

Divya,
Can't we have deep, sincere feelings and experiences about God that may be different from that of others and not be merely indulging in some sort of superficial sentiment? I really don't understand how we can quantify the experience of God. To me it is intensely personal. Not superficial or phony, but a deep experience, that is beyond words.

Love, Kristin

Court Closed. Go Home

The Indian traditions claim this
The Indian traditions claim that
The Indian traditions claim all THAT
That there is no REALITY. All is ILLUSION.

There is no case of REALITY
There is a case of ILLUSION
There is no SOLUTION
So no further thought CONVOLUTION

So no case for RESOLUTION
If there ever were a case
It is now for DISSOLUTION

Court closed
Go home

Tanzan,
you said you are not sure either...

Reminds me of this poem:

"Dancing with the Divine"

When I knew for certain I knew nothing at all
That is when the fun really began

Before that life was just pretend
A divine tea party
With fake animals and all my favorite dolls

Now I’m alive
And dancing with the Divine
---

It is pretty damn confusing around here. But when I surrender to the confusion and I'm okay with not knowing for certain. No big deal. It ends up being fun. Even the painful parts and sentiments (yes, even the phony bull shit) have their place.

Love, Kristin

Tanzan,
you said you are not sure either...

Reminds me of this poem:

"Dancing with the Divine"

When I knew for certain I knew nothing at all
That is when the fun really began

Before that life was just pretend
A divine tea party
With fake animals and all my favorite dolls

Now I’m alive
And dancing with the Divine
---

It is pretty damn confusing around here. But when I surrender to the confusion and I'm okay with not knowing for certain. No big deal. It ends up being fun. Even the painful parts and sentiments (yes, even the phony bull shit) have their place.

Love, Kristin

"the phony bull shit"

~Kristin Masterton

***

Yes, even the phony bullshit!
This is it. You said it
I hope the pundits look into it
And admit: it's nothing but all bullshit

"the phony bull shit"

~Kristin Masterton

***

Yes, even the phony bullshit!
This is it. You said it
I hope the pundits look into it
And admit: it's nothing but all bullshit

PS: Please read the last post by Divya about the claims of Indian traditions and illusion.

we discuss strategies , contents , paths etc in addressing a primal inner world need to some of us.Intelligence and knowledge systems themselves manifest in myriad ways.To me, the intelligencve which creates a chair or a software programme is a very different manifest from the intelligence which addresses inner world paradigms.a critical target of most spiritual explores is the mind and its domain.It cannot be addressed from within its confines.At the most , it would be some intellectual cross-talk, re-inforcing our ego-centric positionalities.
Kristin was on the dot for me when she said spirituality is an intensely personal explore.
Some of us do feel a "need" to arrive at our personal truths away from the world of concepts.This is not about proving or disproving philosophies.To each his own.
Self-actualization and God-realization( irrespective of the content of personal discoveries)hold the key.Our questions keep changing as we visit fresh locations in consciousness.Some questions dissolve.Others get resolved.
Knowing is different from believing.
Perceptions emerge from contextual platforms. Freedom , to me, involves an ability to move personally beyond realms of concepts into realms of facts, an ability to see things just as they are and the "process" is more dependant on our abilities/capacities to see than the actual content.It is no coincidence that "seekers" have become "seers", the 'k' has dropped.

Kristin - I think there is a misunderstanding. Of course everyone will have a different, personal experience of God or anything. I'm just trying to say that as a matter of general consensus words refer to something. Sometimes however, as is the case with a word like God this is not the case. If you are talking about God when you say God and I am talking about the ocean when I say God there is a problem. The problem is worse when we all think we can refer to anything when we say God. So what are we all talking about? If we are all talking about different things the dialog (to me) is superfluous - purely from a perspective of trying to understand things.

In any case we need to address each level of abstraction with a position from the same level of abstraction. Experience and theory are two different things and each has a place. One level of reality does not negate another level of reality. The earth still goes around the sun and we can discuss that. I don't know if I have been able to make my point come through. I guess it's not that easy to express oneself unless without the freedom to go more frequently back and forth as in a real conversation.

Hi all!

Been missing interacting with you for some time know. Been dropping in from time to time and as I feel a bit of growth through not getting into this blog so fanatically a certain serenity has led me to interact today.

I fear putting my foot into my mouth and being pointed out a simpleton. With that said let me insert my foot in my mouth.

A.K., Divya, Aurora, Kaveetaa and Kristin:

It is refreshing to be reading your dialogues. Such diverse points of view and yet such respect in your diverse opinions. I think I have come on a good day. The world must be loving today. Anyway.

A.K.:

I am in no way a physicist. It was my favourite subject in University and the one I scored highest in. Now I only marvel at where the theorists and the particle physicists are going.

Also although I "believe" the Buddha was fully enlightened I must say that this is only my belief. As I used to tell people here in Switzerland when asked if I though O.J. killed his wife, "How would I know. I was not there."

I am wondering. I have been reading these very dry and boring writings of Buddhism. They are not western interpretations but eastern (Indian, Thai, Burmese)Buddhist scholarly translations of the original Pali text.

One is called the Abidhamma. It claims that the Buddha was actually scientific in his "studies".

He broke down all matter and phenomenon (which includes light and time) into what "I" consider subatomic particles. Kalapas. Units smaller then any existing accelerator can hope to find.

As I read about string hypothesise and holographic mind/universe ideas I am reminded of the work of Buddha and these most fundamental units of mind and matter, kalapas.

Divya:

The best way I can describe my "belief" in the idea that "god" can be one thing to one person and another to some other person is to go back and use something you said earlier in this post. I am probably out of context here but I will try anyway. Forgive me in advance if I am way off the mark.

"Since the knowledge that they describe is basically experiential in nature we will have to start with the assumption that they did figure out the nature of reality."

~Divya

I will just substitute "reality" with "god".

"Since neither you nor me claim to be enlightened and hence have not had the experience, if we want to have any sort of a dialog we will have to presuppose the truth of this claim."

~Divya

I will just substitute "enlightened" with "knowing god".

"Let's say the nature of reality is one big blue ecstatic dot..."

"Of course there are some who will say it is actually 2 blue dots, and others who will say it is actually violet, so we do have many different schools of thought on this, not just within the Vedic and tantric traditions but also among the Sufis and Buddhists."

~Divya

I will just substitute "dot" with "god".

Shekar:

Damn dude. The only thing I keep thinking is anyone that has directed a film like "Elisabeth" must already have a slue of high powered Hollywood attorneys at his disposal.

If for some reason beyond my knowledge this is just not true, I have a young entertainment attorney that loves to go after the big boys.

Last year he negotiated deals for my company and a screen writer and a director. Both of their lawyers were Arnold Schwarzenegger's lawyer and although they tried to rail us into a deal that was not good for us, our lawyer just would not budge. He is very good. If you need his info I can get it for you.

Also I know a young black attorney that represents Snoop Doggy Dog and other rap artists as well as very heavy Hollywood players. The Hollywood studios cringe eveytime he walks into negotiate for his clients. Let me know if you need their contact information.

Good luck in which ever way you decide to take this. You build it bro. I know they come.

Laurence Peter Brown

Dear Divya,

Thanks again for the response.

First off, I will acknowledge that I do not understand Hindu philosophy. One could reject/ignore everything I say consequently :)

I hope for the essence of it to be easily conveyed, than embarking on a lifetime of study, and I can never get a 10 or even 50 point answer that is unanimous. It is like it includes everything and nothing. Woody Allen had a light-hearted satire on it, and I can't find his words at the moment, that were so very apt.

You have consistently said 'empirically verifiable theories ... sophisticated system of logic'. In my (very limited) readings, I can honestly state that I have abosorbed none of that which captures your description clearly. If possible, can you provide just one salient empirically verifiable theory and its backing sophisticated logic? A reference will more than suffice.

Also, does Hindu Philosophy state that it does not know about something and significant work remains? How could everything be known - may be it was but may be it isn't. I find the former to be the hallmark of a very arrogant system that purports to be complete.

Yet, I have not found anything salient to disagree with in my limited readings of Hindu philosophy. I will quote something I really, really like - "All systems of Hindu Philosophy are in complete agreement that the purpose of philosophy is the extinction of sorrow and suffering and that the method is by the acquisition of knowledge of the true nature of things which aims to free man from the bondage of ignorance which all teachers agree is the cause of human suffering".

I am not at all saying it is inadequate to appreciate and grasp the nature of man (today) and our minds (today). But it provides me with limited insight, hence my saying 'inadequate', on approaching the nature of the universe. Which I believe to be well beyond a simple construction of our minds.

I put 'today' in parens above for a reason. Since this is after all a thread that started off with a reference to Asimov, I will clarify my intent: I think that with the amazing growth curve ahead of us in conventional medicine (transplants, genetics, yada yada) we are going to redefine a lot of what we today accept as true. I believe that in spite of the most rigid bioethics oversight, we will engineer both a mind and a person some day that is according to a blueprint, with the ability to negate chosen emotions and chosen lines of thought. If this is possible (as I believe it to be), what of the "nature of man" and "sorrow" and "enlightenment" for this engineered man and his ilk? We will have new philosophies consistent with the knowledge and experience of those times. And we can't even imagine what shape they take.

Cheers.

Hi all!

Been missing interacting with you for some time know. Been dropping in from time to time and as I feel a bit of growth through not getting into this blog so fanatically a certain serenity has led me to interact today.

I fear putting my foot into my mouth and being pointed out a simpleton. With that said let me insert my foot in my mouth.

A.K., Divya, Aurora, Kaveetaa and Kristin:

It is refreshing to be reading your dialogues. Such diverse points of view and yet such respect in your diverse opinions. I think I have come on a good day. The world must be loving today. Anyway.

A.K.:

I am in no way a physicist. It was my favourite subject in University and the one I scored highest in. Now I only marvel at where the theorists and the particle physicists are going.

Also although I "believe" the Buddha was fully enlightened I must say that this is only my belief. As I used to tell people here in Switzerland when asked if I though O.J. killed his wife, "How would I know. I was not there."

I am wondering. I have been reading these very dry and boring writings of Buddhism. They are not western interpretations but eastern (Indian, Thai, Burmese)Buddhist scholarly translations of the original Pali text.

One is called the Abidhamma. It claims that the Buddha was actually scientific in his "studies".

He broke down all matter and phenomenon (which includes light and time) into what "I" consider subatomic particles. Kalapas. Units smaller then any existing accelerator can hope to find.

As I read about string hypothesise and holographic mind/universe ideas I am reminded of the work of Buddha and these most fundamental units of mind and matter, kalapas.

Divya:

The best way I can describe my "belief" in the idea that "god" can be one thing to one person and another to some other person is to go back and use something you said earlier in this post. I am probably out of context here but I will try anyway. Forgive me in advance if I am way off the mark.

"Since the knowledge that they describe is basically experiential in nature we will have to start with the assumption that they did figure out the nature of reality."

~Divya

I will just substitute "reality" with "god".

"Since neither you nor me claim to be enlightened and hence have not had the experience, if we want to have any sort of a dialog we will have to presuppose the truth of this claim."

~Divya

I will just substitute "enlightened" with "knowing god".

"Let's say the nature of reality is one big blue ecstatic dot..."

"Of course there are some who will say it is actually 2 blue dots, and others who will say it is actually violet, so we do have many different schools of thought on this, not just within the Vedic and tantric traditions but also among the Sufis and Buddhists."

~Divya

I will just substitute "dot" with "god".

Shekar:

Damn dude. The only thing I keep thinking is anyone that has directed a film like "Elisabeth" must already have a slue of high powered Hollywood attorneys at his disposal.

If for some reason beyond my knowledge this is just not true, I have a young entertainment attorney that loves to go after the big boys.

Last year he negotiated deals for my company and a screen writer and a director. Both of their lawyers were Arnold Schwarzenegger's lawyer and although they tried to rail us into a deal that was not good for us, our lawyer just would not budge. He is very good. If you need his info I can get it for you.

Also I know a young black attorney that represents Snoop Doggy Dog and other rap artists as well as very heavy Hollywood players. The Hollywood studios cringe eveytime he walks into negotiate for his clients. Let me know if you need their contact information.

Good luck in which ever way you decide to take this. You build it bro. I know they come.

Laurence Peter Brown

For the sake of clarity I repost the above.

Hi all!

Been missing interacting with you for some time know. Been dropping in from time to time and as I feel a bit of growth through not getting into this blog so fanatically a certain serenity has led me to interact today.

I fear putting my foot into my mouth and being pointed out a simpleton. With that said let me insert my foot in my mouth.

A.K., Divya, Aurora, Kaveetaa and Kristin:

It is refreshing to be reading your dialogues. Such diverse points of view and yet such respect in your diverse opinions. I think I have come on a good day. The world must be loving today. Anyway.

A.K.:

I am in no way a physicist. It was my favourite subject in University and the one I scored highest in. Now I only marvel at where the theorists and the particle physicists are going.

Also although I "believe" the Buddha was fully enlightened I must say that this is only my belief. As I used to tell people here in Switzerland when asked if I though O.J. killed his wife, "How would I know. I was not there."

I am wondering. I have been reading these very dry and boring writings of Buddhism. They are not western interpretations but eastern (Indian, Thai, Burmese)Buddhist scholarly translations of the original Pali text.

One is called the Abidhamma. It claims that the Buddha was actually scientific in his "studies".

He broke down all matter and phenomenon (which includes light and time) into what "I" consider subatomic particles. Kalapas. Units smaller then any existing accelerator can hope to find.

As I read about string hypothesise and holographic mind/universe ideas I am reminded of the work of Buddha and these most fundamental units of mind and matter, kalapas.

Divya:

The best way I can describe my "belief" in the idea that "god" can be one thing to one person and another to some other person is to go back and use something you refered to earlier in this thread. I am probably out of context here but I will try anyway. Forgive me in advance if I am way off the mark.

"Since the knowledge that they describe is basically experiential in nature we will have to start with the assumption that they did figure out the nature of reality."

~Divya

I will just substitute "reality" with "god".

~LPB

"Since neither you nor me claim to be enlightened and hence have not had the experience, if we want to have any sort of a dialog we will have to presuppose the truth of this claim."

~Divya

I will just substitute "enlightened" with "knowing god".

~LPB

"Let's say the nature of reality is one big blue ecstatic dot..."

"Of course there are some who will say it is actually 2 blue dots, and others who will say it is actually violet, so we do have many different schools of thought on this, not just within the Vedic and tantric traditions but also among the Sufis and Buddhists."

~Divya

I will just substitute "nature of reality" with "god".

~LPB

Shekar:

Damn dude. The only thing I keep thinking is anyone that has directed a film like "Elisabeth" must already have a slue of high powered Hollywood attorneys at his disposal.

If for some reason beyond my knowledge this is just not true, I have a young entertainment attorney that loves to go after the big boys.

Last year he negotiated deals for my company and a screen writer and a director. Both of their lawyers were Arnold Schwarzenegger's lawyer and although they tried to rail us into a deal that was not good for us, our lawyer just would not budge. He is very good. If you need his info I can get it for you.

Also I know a young black attorney that represents Snoop Doggy Dog and other rap artists as well as very heavy Hollywood players. The Hollywood studios cringe eveytime he walks into negotiate for his clients. Let me know if you need their contact information.

Good luck in which ever way you decide to take this. You build it bro. I know they come.

Laurence Peter Brown

Kristin, You should be knowing this. But still I will jump into the discussion.

Gandhi's non violence is not a failure. This is the interpretation given by people who want to diminish the authority of Gandhi. There are many such people in India and in this blog too. If anyone says Gandhism is a failure, it just shows their ignorance or vested interests. If violence happened in India, in spite of Gandhi, it is due to the INHERENT FUNDAMENTALISTIC NATURE of the Indian society. If part of the population gets into violence, it is not Gandhi's fault. It is the fault of violent fundamentalist people. In fact, Gandhi's non violent principle did change a big section of society. Of course, he couldn't imbibe these values into everyone and the result is the violence we saw in India. This doesn't mean that Gandhism has failed. It just means that the basic fundamentalism in one section of the society was much stronger than even Gandhism and that particular section was responsible for violence. However, if Gandhi was not there, you wouldn't be seeing the current day India which might challenge US' superpower status one day. if Gandhi was not there, India would have been Hindustan (Hindu here referring to Hindu religion) and it would have been in the same level of Pakistan or even worse. The current day success can only be attributed to the power of Gandhism which ensured that India is a SECULAR, DEMOCRATIC AND FREE country. If Indians are considered more tolerant, it is due to Gandhism. If the violence we saw before independence and just after it reduced totally, it is only due to Gandhism. This can also be seen from the fact that violence and cannibalism is back into the society as the society started forgetting Gandhi. Gandhism is a definite success. People who claim that it is a failure is just ignorant or having vested interests.

Krish:

You go girl. Or guy?

As you say it's all a matter of opinions.

I just happen to vancy your opinion

Tanzan,

You see...
You see what you see :)

I'm both bee and a tree and this me
I'm the bat and the rat
Because this is still that
If you know it or not.

Part of me that is tree
knows itself little
others, some more
at the core
This is that,
The same light
In men and mice scattered
When you see it, your logic is shattered
All difference that mattered is splattered.

Sure, do question, as long as you please
It's a tease
Cause the mind won't take you beyond it.
Try it out, it's not hard
It's the mind that insists
I am this, God is that
You know what
Ask inside, in your heart there's a chart.
Bring it out, test it now
Your old pain will show how
Just remove the old hurt
All the times you closed court
See the sacred in dirt
And you have IT.

Hi Laurence, nice to see you back!

Thanks Aurrora. I feel a bit more balanced. It was nice to get back into my own life. Painyed the flat. Went out and met a bunch of new people. Spent some real quality time with the princess.

Really nice to conect with you all again.

I'd love to stay but I got a date with the Hamam (north African bath).

Catch you all maybe later tonight. Euro time.

Aurora

I just realized that was your poetry to Tanzan. I really thought it was Tanzan.

You got the gift girl.

Thanks Laurence. Good to hear you're doing so well, you and your princess. She's a lucky girl. Enjoy your Hamam!

["If possible, can you provide just one salient empirically verifiable theory and its backing sophisticated logic? A reference will more than suffice."]

Dear A.K.,
Read some of the Upanishads - the Katha and Brihadaranyaka are my favorites. Isa is nice and compact. For logic see the Nyaaya Shastras. All available on the net. Of course the Upanishads do not resonate well unless you have a practice along with it. As they say, an ounce of practice is worth a pound of theory.

["Also, does Hindu Philosophy state that it does not know about something and significant work remains? How could everything be known - may be it was but may be it isn't. I find the former to be the hallmark of a very arrogant system that purports to be complete."]

I don't know what to make of this but if you are suggesting that Hindu philosophy tells you whether we will have a better model of a toaster in the future, no that's not what it is about. It is an attempt to understand the nature of matter and mind and it looks here and there and derives an answer to the question "Who am I?" and in the process ties in various phenomenon. Since you keep bringing in science, so for example when Newton claims that the atom is the smallest thing, this applies to the atoms in the toaster as well. But you do not bring in this fact to explain why you feel like eating ice-cream today. This illustrates my point about how mangled the Indian traditions have become at the hands of Indologists. All sorts of ridiculous interpretations are passed around in mockery, specially with regard to the illusion phenomenon. No - everything does not mean everything. If you do not link unrelated facts in your normal daily life, why do you leave all reason behind and do so with the claims of hindu philosophy?

As for the rest of your post, it is obviously true but irrelevant to me. We live in the present time and need to work with the tools we have.

"I hope the pundits look into it
And admit: it's nothing but all bullshit"

~Tanzan Senzaki
----

You made me laugh, Tanzan.
But then, why bother with the pundits... it can be our secret. ;)

Love, Kristin

ps. although I wasn't saying before that "everything" was bullshit... just that the bullshit has it's place too.

Divya,
you said, "I guess it's not that easy to express oneself unless without the freedom to go more frequently back and forth as in a real conversation."
Yes, that might be helpful.
What I hear you saying is that you have a need to take abstract concepts and apply them on a practical day to day level.
Is that correct?

Laurence,
Nice to see you back! I enjoyed reading your post.

Krish,
I'm an admirer of Gandhi too. And believe that ultimately nonviolence will have to be the path we choose. Unless we no longer want to hang out here together.

Sundar,
in thinking about how "intensely personal" spirituality is for me, there is also a deep desire to share that intensely personal "space"... kind of interesting

Aurora and A.K,
nice to see you too!

Love, Kristin

ps. sorry for multiple posts again... I swear I don't touch anything and it happens all on it's own!

Divya,
you said, "I guess it's not that easy to express oneself unless without the freedom to go more frequently back and forth as in a real conversation."
Yes, that might be helpful.
What I hear you saying is that you have a need to take abstract concepts and apply them on a practical day to day level.
Is that correct?

Laurence,
Nice to see you back! I enjoyed reading your post.

Krish,
I'm an admirer of Gandhi too. And believe that ultimately nonviolence will have to be the path we choose. Unless we no longer want to hang out here together.

Sundar,
in thinking about how "intensely personal" spirituality is for me, there is also a deep desire to share that intensely personal "space"... kind of interesting

Aurora and A.K,
nice to see you too!

Love, Kristin

ps. sorry for multiple posts again... I swear I don't touch anything and it happens all on it's own!

Kristin, "it happens all on its own"... Oh no, there must be a deeper meaning...

Just teasing :D:P

Glad to see you too! Have you packed the presents for your children? I haven't yet:)

You made me laugh, Tanzan.
~Kristin Masterton
***

And now Aurora is making me believe that the Earth is round and not flat! How blasphemous! How sacreligious! Please see her in the "Thanks" thread and my response to her.

Tanzan Senzaki

PS: Everybody knows our secret now ! Can't you keep one? We have to invent another and tell none.

["What I hear you saying is that you have a need to take abstract concepts and apply them on a practical day to day level. Is that correct?"}

No Kristin, that wasn't what I was trying to say. I just went back and re-read my post and it sounded completely garbled and incoherent. I'm thankful that people have the patience to put up with me anyway. I'm sure we'll come back to this topic some time or the other so I'm just going to take a break for now.

Dear Divya,
Well, at least we're clear that we're not clear! That's a first step. I look forward to talking with you again some other time.

Love and Blessings,
Kristin

Hi Tanzan,
It's been fun talking with you too Tanzan...

It's interesting the way we can all talk and yet not quite understand what the other person is saying....

sometimes my friend, Aurora, really puzzles me...
and you and Divya puzzle me sometimes too...

But now that I think of it, I puzzzle myself quite often! So how can I expect anyone else to understand me!

Here's a secret about me: I'm pretty simple. A lot of things go completely over my head.

Love,
Kristin

(((Kristin))) that's what friends are for :):):) Good night, sweet soul.

Isa Upanishad

I

Do not covet any man’s wealth.
Everyone moving on this earth
Is hidden in it’s Self,
Whosoever surrenders oneself
Enjoys the utmost, the best.

II

A man might wish to live
For a hundred years,
Doing his deeds to the best.
Only in surrender he’d be happy
No other way, nonetheless --
His work would not cling to him.

III

There are the worlds there
All full of blind darkness.
Those who work not realizing
Their own inherent Self,
Go to these worlds of darkness
After their deaths.

IV

The Self though never stirring
Is swift. Faster than you might think.
Senses could not reach it,
Even dancing before it.
Self stands still and overtakes
Anyone running before it.
The wind and the moving spirit
Give all powers to it.

V

It stirs and yet it does not,
It is far and yet it is near,
It is inside of all of this, and yet,
It is outside of all of this.

VI

Seeing all beings in Self,
Seeing Self in all beings,
Man can never run
Away from it.

VII

A man who knows all this,
Self becomes all things to him.
Once seeing that oneness,
What sorrow, what trouble
Can ever touch him!

VIII

When Self embraces all this:
The bright, the bodiless, the pristine
The pure, the one without muscles
The ones untouched by the evil
The seer, the wise
The self-existent, the omnipresent,
Man casts away all other things,
Forever and forever.

IX

Not worshipping real knowledge,
He enters into blind darkness.
Delighting in real knowledge,
He enters far greater darkness.

X

You know one thing from real knowledge
And another from what’s not real knowledge,
We have heard from the wise all this,
The wise have taught all this.

XI

Knowing both:
The knowledge and not-knowledge,
Man defeats death through not-knowledge
And lives forever through knowledge.

XII

Not worshipping true cause,
Man enters into blind darkness.
Delighting in true cause,
He enters far greater darkness.

XIII

You know one thing knowing cause
And another knowing what’s not cause,
We have heard from the wise all this
The wise have taught all this.

XIV

Knowing creation and destruction,
He conquers death after destruction,
And lives for ever knowing
The true cause of creation.

XV

With a golden disc is covered
The door leading to Truth,
O Pushan, open that door,
Let’s see in what is Truth.

XVI

O Pushan! the only seer
O Yama! the judge
O Sun! the son of Pragapati
Spread your light and gather it!
It is your fairest form. I see it.
I am what THAT in sun is.

XVII

Breath out the air at death!
Breath out the soul immortal!
Om! Mind, remember
Remember all your deeds!
Mind, remember
Remember all your deeds!

XVIII

Fire, lead me to the beauty
On a good path!
O God! You know all things,
Keep the devil off me,
I’ll offer the fullest praise to thee!

Tanzan Senzaki

This is my free verse rendering from a literal translation at http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/sbe01/sbe01243.htm

PS: Divya, I think you are fluent in Sanskrit. Would you please be kind enough to check the accuracy of the verses above. Thanks.

Hi Tanzan - The Isa is particularly difficult to translate. And parts of it are difficult to comprehend even for those fluent in Sanskrit (I'm not). If one is trying to make sense out of the upanishads and cannot read Sanskrit the best thing is to read them in prose form.

Have you studied Sanskrit at all, just curious?

Divya,

Thanks for the response. I studied Sanskrit years ago. I have not retained much. But with the help of a dictionary, I do understand it well. I did not have access to the original text of Isa Upanishad in Sanskrit. So I took recourse to the English literal translation.

Did my rendering make any sense to you? Thanks once again.

Tanzan Senzaki

Hi Tanzan,
I have a friend in town who is fluent in Sanskrit, who is teaching me some things. If there are some particular verses that you want a translation of I could ask him next week and give you his translation. Also... a woman who he has been teaching for years now translated something for me not too long ago and I may be able to ask her to write out her translation... and she may be willing to do the whole Isa as an exercise and then her teacher could check it.

Just let me know... depending upon how important it is to you.

Love, Kristin

LPB, I am a guy. My name is same as the mythical character these guys quote (in Gita) to justify their violence. I don't believe in physical violence and I am sure Krishna (should I call him Lord Krishna) is too (going by the events preceding the Bhagwat Gita).

JABBERWOCKY OR SOMETHING SENSICAL

***

Kristin Masterton,

Thank you. You are so kind to find help for me. It is not of any urgent need. You know the interesting dialogue going here between A.K. and Divya. I am enjoying every bit of it. My views on these ancient Indian texts are more closer to the thinking of A.K. So I did not jump into the discussion. I do not think there is any great insight in any of the Upanishads regrading the reality of the universe. I have at random perused some of the texts and found nothing of any importance except repetition of the their theological concepts and mythology.

A.K. asked Diya to cite some references to support what she says. Divya referred to upanishadas including Isa upanishad. I put the entire upanishad into free verse. Now Divya says it is difficult to understand even by the scholars of Sanskrit language. I do not buy it. I was told the same thing about Bhagavad Gita by a learned friend of mine who studied Gita for years - read the whole text 3 times with commentaries by 3 different scholars. I took the challenge to translate the whole of Bhagavad Gita into English free verse from which he understood more of Krishna's philosophy than his life long devotion to reading other texts and listening to countless Hindu preachers in temples. And he holds a doctorate degree in science!

In the West, the knowledge has always been shared. In the East (India), it has been kept in secret. I was amused recently to read something similar to it when a reader here discussing Astrology admitted that it was a secret knowledge! (No offense to him).

So I would very much like the dialogue of A.K. and Divya to continue to get to the bottom of it. To see if Divya has any insight to what she professes. I am willing to do any research and provide whatever material I can, in prose or poetry, for Divya to authenticate her statements. Otherwise, as AK cited earlier, it is all jabberwocky.

Kristin, if you too are interested in the continuing debate, please have your friends translate Isa upanishad. It has only 19 verses. I put it into free verse in a couple of hours. I think it is not much to ask them to translate it for us. Maybe for the sake of Dharma, if for no other reason. And if they have time, I would like them to point to the inaccuracies in my verse renderings.

I do not believe what an ancient man of 5000 years could understand about the universe, a 21st century man cannot understand. Language should not be a barrier here. We need the literal translation that should not be impossible to get. I think the problem is with the screwed up interpretations of scholars, and this causes all confusion.

Thanks once again.

PS: AK and Divya, if you read this post, please let me know what you think of this, as you two are the brains behind the debate. Without you two, we would not learn much.

Hi Tanzan - I'm not selling anything. Please do not think it makes any difference to me that you "buy" anything or not. Thanks for your comments though.

Whenever one reads a difficult book - say a Faulkner for example - one wonders if one really gets what the author is trying to say. Similarly, I have questions about some verses of the Isa. I first read the Isa about 10 years ago in English. I have since studied it in a word-for-word translation from Sanskrit, and I have it on CD and listen to it all the time. I have also read various commentaries on it. None of them have satisfied me. Some of the commentaries say that these verses are difficult to understand and leave it at that. They are the verses beginning at your IX. In Sanskrit they start with "andham tamah pravishyanti" right through to the second such example about the "manifest" and "unmaninest" (which in your translation you refer to as "true cause" in XII). Do give me your take on them. The Isa is available in the original Devanagari all over the net.

Tanzan, sir
You do have a way of presenting yourself, that is arrogant. Perhaps this is a cultivated trait. It comes shining through in your discourses.
Alas,
'to thine ownself be true'.

Great literature, like poetry can be enjoyed, sensical or 'non-sensical' - and it's appeal is different for each reader. As is what is considered 'great'.

Accuracy of meaning, again - is different for each.

Experience is the 'great' teacher. Words can only approximate. Even those contained in scriptures revered by many. And, Clear Awareness, transcends All.
~ Kate

Kate writes:

"Tanzan, sir

You do have a way of presenting yourself, that is arrogant. Perhaps this is a cultivated trait. It comes shining through in your discourses."

Tanzan, sir? All along I thought that Tanzan was a woman! And now this arrogant man? Well, hello there!

Well, what do you know?

Hi Tanzan,
Thank you for explaining more clearly where you are coming from. :)
I'll ask my Sanskrit scholar friend to give me a word by word translation. (I think I have one in a book around here somewhere too... but I can't find it.) It may take a bit more time than you think, but I'm not certain. He normally just translates as we go verse by verse, but I'm not sure how it will go for him. Something interesting about Sanskrit though is that there isn't just one meaning for each word. There are quite a few different meanings. And so when you read the Sankrit text there are layers of meaning and as with translating all languages, the translator naturally brings themselves into the translation. Thus the confusion.

Tanzan, you said, "I do not believe what an ancient man of 5000 years could understand about the universe, a 21st century man cannot understand." I agree. That's the beauty of it. It's not about blinding believing someone else - past or present. It's about allowing the words to transform your awareness and then experiencing the truth for yourself. I heard that the Buddha said something about not believing anything anyone else says unless it rings true for you. That makes sense to me.

I want to share that I fell in love with the Upanishads about 6 years ago. The copy I read most is probably not the most scholarly, but it works for me right now. (Eknath Easwaran's translation "for the modern reader"). When I first read the book I remember telling my husband that if I died now it would be okay and to bury my body with the Upanishads. Sounds far out, but there was a part of me that had been looking for something my entire life and somehow it was there for me. And believe me, I barely understood any of it. Still, it spoke to me in a way that nothing else did.

Okay, so that's my sappy sentimental story for you, Tanzan! I'll get back to you sometime next week with whatever information I can get regarding the translation.

Love, Kristin

Divya,
those verses in the Isha stand out for me too. I'm really interested in looking at them more closely. Who knows, perhaps something my friend has to say will be of interest to you, too?

Have you ever read the Vijnanabhairava tantra?

Love, Kristin

"I'm not selling anything. Please do not think it makes any difference to me that you "buy" anything or not."

~Divya

****

Divya,

Thanks for taking time to post your comment. Reading above what you said, I now have come to appreciate what you wrote earlier about fully grasping something only when read in the original language (and possibly by someone whose first language is the same language). Perhaps the syntax and the idioms do defy many who read something not witten in their mother tongue. And then the interpretations add further confusion.

Kristin has kindly offered the help of getting the Isa Upanishada translated by one of her friends. So I might post the translation again. Your convictions do shine through your discussions.

Thanks once again.

Tanzan Senzaki

Kristin,

I read your latest comment. Thanks.

My main interest was to give this material to Divya so that she could support her arguments in discussions with A.K. and we could understand what this Hindu philosophy is.

Anyway, your friend's input will help me in verifying the accuracy of my verse renderings - though this is not a big deal.

Thanks once again.

Kind Regards
Tanzan Senzaki

Tanzan,
if i may make a suggest of something that helped me...
we do have a tendency to address everything from realms of the mind...the nature of the mind and its basic composition is in itself a subject of explores.i have found this explore to be very fundamental to the "process" of explore.
veering away from a focus on "content", it has moved to a building of "fundamental capacities" to "see"...as in raising of awareness/witnessing levels...
when it comes to knowledge and written text paradigms,contextual metaphors come into play as also interpretations."Words" are an observer dependant phenomena more often than not and expecially in a language such as sanskrit where the basic syntax allows for "levels" of usage.a very highly developed language in that context.Sanskrit also intrinsically allows "bhav artha", the language of feelings...you do have the rasas, emotional.feeling flavours in expressional syntax...
plus, there is the whole possibility of text - corruptions.
i maybe wrong, but I have not seen contemporary paradigms in knowledge/expression systems to have such depth.
we sometimes do not arrive at answers/solutions for ourselves because we use the wrong tools, the wrong faculties with which we address them.
this sharing is purely in our space as fellow humans...of something that has been beneficial to me...maybe it can strike a chord somewhere....

Sundar,

Thanks for making a comment here. It is interesting to note how you interpret things going through the intricacies of languages.

Tanzan Senzaki

Kristin, Sundar, Kate, Aurora, Laurence and others - thanks for your comments and participating in the diversion. Shekar and others, thanks for tolerating us thus far.

Tanzan - "AK and Divya, if you read this post, please let me know what you think of this, as you two are the brains behind the debate. Without you two, we would not learn much."

Tanzan, I am flattered by your approval of some of my thoughts, and was touched by your excessively kind words to me on a certain thread (which were honestly, not deserved). I am simply glad that I was able to spark an interest in you to read and absorb more. Hardly any of my points have been original. I admire your polyglot talents (even if armed with Google and a dictionary!), energy to translate, and speak boldly, which will cause accusations and cause irritation. You are enviably hyper-energetic to translate the whole Bhagavath Gita in free verse! I am at times curious who you really are - as Rahul Pandita quite powerfully asked. But am fully content to never know. I go by my initials, and consciously keep most personal stuff out, myself.

I don't view the discussion between Divya and me as a debate as much as a healthy discussion because I respect many of her views, her enthusiasm, and forthrightness a lot. Divya is obviously very intelligent and has a rare talent in expressing herself so effectively. I am far from a representative of the so-called 'skeptics' clan (a label I hate). I hope this is not turning off many, because I hog space and spin in circles.

I also sincerely believe we (she and I) share a common belief that somewhat contradicts our stated positions, than either of us will readily admit to :-) I'll suggest why: I felt zero suprise when she said that she thought like me at a younger age, but then felt the stance was a cop out. I've seen my feelings fully expressed in many many people who are younger (sub 40). And then it most often melts away. I think this could be seen as a consequence of maturity in life, intellect and the interpretation of knowledge. Or, due to a (typically subconscious) increasing realization of the inevitable. As human longevity increases, the shift is slowly delayed.

Anyways, my stated position is that I feel written Hindu philosophical works are abstruse, and so difficult to hone in to absorb the gist. I gather this from cursory perusal and reading comments and synopses from people who themselves may be no experts. So my input may itself be defective. I am frustrated that most of the more learned in the space talk about the value of experience, and reading the works with intense concentration and wholly. May be that is just the way it is and they are correct. Or may be its an excuse. I think it is impossible to really know either way at present.

As I stated before, we are so much closer to the beginning than even the mid point on the cosmic scale. Hindu Phil. is so awesome in its ambitious scope and imagination and poetry and beauty - but I think it will not be eternal and will pull short even before the midpoint. We are still such a young people: 2500 years is something that is coarse and seems for ever. Now if you consider 35 generations ahead our ancestors were peers of Mohammad, 45 generations were peers of Jesus, and 55 generations were peers of Gautama Buddha, it seems way too recent on a cosmological scale. So I reject the idea that newbies have figured out the crux of life and and touched on something that is either eternal or fundamental. When Divya says they are the best tools for the moment -- as psychological tools, I agree 100%. But as intellectual aids, I can't say yes. I believe that scientific milestones and precepts are trivial cobblestones (subject to revision) as we excruciatingly, inevitably, serendipitously piece together the larger picture. Philosophical works don't breed that humility and attempt to provide an over-arching view as a basic goal, and suggest shortcuts to get to the end ("realization"); though substantial parts of it could be immensely motivational in the quest.

I plan to read up on the Brihadranyaka Upanishad for sure. Tanzan, I recommend reading a book by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj called "I am That". It will drive you nuts like it has me, and still you will cherish it as you try to introspect whether it is all jabberwocky! Thanks, all.

tx to u too, AK and divya...

Hi A.K.
You make me smile! You do not hog space and spin in circles! NO. :)

I appreciate your willingness to elaborate. I see your distinction morely clearly, this holding up of Indian scripture to the validity of philosophy v.s. 'intellectual aids.'

You mention that you do not think hindu philosophy is 'eternal' - and I agree with you. No written word is. I don't agree with you, if I understand correctly, about your point that experience doesn't matter, in achieving the 'ultimate' - seeing the larger picture. Just imagine the immense sky above you. Understanding can be as clear and unfettered as that kind of sky. And makes commentary and interpretations unnecessary :)

In the realm of growing consciously, experience is vitally important. Beliefs, conditioning, rituals, etc. - are necessary, in my opinion, up to a certain point. Our ability to evolve as a species reflects taking experience and building on it through trial and error. And now, we are in the midst of a global information explosion, where ideas and products can be exchanged almost instantaneously.

Have we evolved beyond just taking care of our body, our immediate needs, and of our family, to embrace the care of our community, our place of living, nations, the earth and beyond? To live with intent, in peace and good will?

Forgive me if I have strayed from the topic. I know for sure I have, and hope I won't be sued for it :) :)

Love,
~ Kate

Kate,
you said, "Have we evolved beyond just taking care of our body, our immediate needs, and of our family, to embrace the care of our community, our place of living, nations, the earth and beyond? To live with intent, in peace and good will?"

I think that's the point. If we can't move from a place of "what's in it for me?" to "how can I help?" then it doesn't really matter what we believe.

Love, Kristin

Hi AK - Again I didn't relate to most of what you said but I think this thread is reaching its end now so I won't go into it in detail. I'll just make one point though. If the best you can come up with is that there is going to be something better in the future then that is pretty lame. Is that your general response when you study science which also talks about natural laws? Moreover, I do not give you the benefit of the doubt of this claim.

Hindu philosophy may be of no interest to you, and that's fine and perfectly normal for most people including hindus. But it boggles my mind when people like you and Tanzan spend all this time discussing something only to declare that you don't really "buy" it. Then what exactly are you spending time on it for? You will never buy it and it is ridiculous to spend time studying something that does not resonate with you. It is the equivalent of studying about sex from a manual without ever experiencing the pleasure or desire but just learning about the mechanics. This is precisely what you will be doing when you read the B.U. so you may as well save yourself the bother. Anyway, you are the only person on the planet who I don't agree with most of the time but enjoy talking to anyway. Others seem to have also enjoyed our conversation too so thank you for having this quality.

Kristen - I look forward to your friend's input on the Isa Upanishad. Yes, I've read the Vignyaana Bhairav but a long, long time ago. My introduction to hindu philosophy was through the tantras. I'm so glad to hear you appreciate these texts.

Tanzan - You wrote: "I now have come to appreciate what you wrote earlier about fully grasping something only when read in the original language (and possibly by someone whose first language is the same language)"

I did not say any such thing. The problem is not with the translation but in generally trying to understand the verses. Aesthetically the verses do sound better in Sanskrit though.

"If the best you can come up with is that there is going to be something better in the future then that is pretty lame. Is that your general response when you study science which also talks about natural laws?"

As a criticism of Hindu Phil. I totally agree - it is lame. As an approach to increase our collective knowledge, looking at limitations and future possibilities, whether it should be accepted in totality, I don't believe it is a lame thought.

Regarding science, that is why there is active research and the existing culture in Ph.D.s. That is why the more prestigous of the bunch make fundamental leaps, than minor extensions of an existing line of thought. As a whole it extends knowledge sizeably, rejecting the old and enshrining the new, with the cycle continuing as long as there is increasing experimental validation of a better theory. I am far from an expert, and existing Hindu philosophical study to me always seems mostly a re-affirmation. (As I have acknowledged, (a)there is simply no comparison with the Abrahamic legacy. (b) Hindu philosophy also seems to have its cycles but on a dramatically lower scale of frequency).

"Hindu philosophy may be of no interest to you, and that's fine"

Actually it has been, is, and will be of tremendous interest. But with some 'detachment' if I can use that word. Irrespective of what the learned teach, I can't read anything without attemtping some detachment, realizing the time and place it was written in, the lack of overall scientific knowledge compared to today's age that those brilliant authors had, even if they did have more insight into the nature of man than most have today. All humans are flawed and make errors, so it behooves me not to take every conclusion as valid. And I really don't know which are valid and which aren't, so I guard myself by remembering and appreciating what it says but not blindly accepting what seem to be some important lessons - e.g., "righteous war", "destruction of evil": "righteous" and "evil" are temporal and subjective and can never be absolutes. Yet, I know that some will also claim that is exactly what the Hindu philosophers say about righteousness and evil!

"But it boggles my mind when people like you and Tanzan spend all this time discussing something only to declare that you don't really "buy" it. Then what exactly are you spending time on it for? You will never buy it and it is ridiculous to spend time studying something that does not resonate with you."

I think it is often highly inspirational, an awesome product of our history to admire, I will always learn from it (including discussions like this), and it will greatly mould my views. So I don't consider it a waste of my time.

"Ridiculous to spend time studying something that does not resonate with you"

Didn't you mention the ancient Hindu culture of purva-paksha? ("There was also an important concept of purva-paksha or studying your opponents viewpoint thoroughly before engaging in debate and thus the level of debates"). I am not one of those greats, and I am not thorough in the study, and I don't view you as an opponent, and this is not a serious debate. Yet doesn't that indicate that spending time on a viewpoint that does not resonate can be valuable?

Anyways, I thank you for your responses, insights, and candor, and I look forward to reading more of your thoughts.

Thanks for your comment, Kate.

"I don't agree with you, if I understand correctly, about your point that experience doesn't matter, in achieving the 'ultimate' - seeing the larger picture."

I did not intend to say that experience does not matter. I used the word experience thrice, I believe. In two cases, I said our experience matters. The third seems contradictory:

- "Should we not actively consider rejection of limited thought, poor concepts and addition of fresh lines of thought as borne by history and our collective experience since?"

- "We will have new philosophies consistent with the knowledge and experience of those times."

- "I am frustrated that most of the more learned in the space talk about the value of experience, and reading the works with intense concentration and wholly."

In the third case, I should have said "total immersive experience after reading the large works with intense concentration and wholly". Thanks.

The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad: (I believe the translation is by Swami Nikhilananda):

http://sanatan.intnet.mu/upanishads/brihadaranyaka.htm

I spent a good while reading through this. And simply loved this part in Chapter IV, verse I

(which is not the gist if there exists one, and is provided below without context if there exists one):

Then Gargi, the daughter of Vachaknu, questioned him.
"Yajnavalkya ," said she, "if all this is pervaded by water, by what, pray, is water pervaded?"
"By air, O Gargi."
"By what, pray, is air pervaded?"
"By the sky, O Gargi."
"By what is the sky pervaded?"
"By the world of the gandharvas, O Gargi."
"By what is the world of the gandharvas pervaded?"
"By the world of the sun, O Gargi.
"By what is the world of the sun pervaded?"
"By the world of the moon, O Gargi."
"By what is the world of the moon pervaded?"
"By the world of the stars, O Gargi."
"By what is the world of the stars pervaded?"
"By the world of the gods, O Gargi."
"By what is the world of the gods pervaded?"
"By the world of Indra, O Gargi.
"By what is the world of Indra pervaded?"
"By the World of Virij, O Gargi.
"By what is the World of Virij pervaded?"
"By the World of Hiranyagarbha, O Gargi."
"By what, pray, is the World of Hiranyagarbha pervaded?"
"Do not, O Gargi," said he, "question too much, lest your head should fall off. You are questioning too much about a deity about whom we should not ask too much. Do not ask too much, O Gargi."
Thereupon Gargi, the daughter of Vachaknu, held her peace.

Hi Divya,
I'm excited about that particular tantric text. I first got Osho's, The Book of Secrets and then I found a text with the sanskrit, transliteration and translation. I have a desire to learn to chant the text. Well, it started as a desire to learn the first verses where Devi is asking Shiva about the nature of reality. But I have a friend who wants to keep learning with me so I think we'll keep going. It's my preference to learn to chant the text first. And then look more deeply into the meaning later.

I'm looking forward to exploring the Isha Upanishad more now too.

Love, Kristin

"Do not, O Gargi," said he, "question too much, lest your head should fall off. You are questioning too much about a deity about whom we should not ask too much. Do not ask too much, O Gargi."
Thereupon Gargi, the daughter of Vachaknu, held her peace."

~Brihadaranyaka Upanishad

****

A.K.

Thanks for your further posts. It seems Divya does not want you to ask her further questions I am afraid she seems to be acting perhaps a little like Yajnavalkya. Perhaps that is how the discussion on all inclusive Hindu philosophy goes!
I recall when I told my friend that it was Lord Krishna who in Bhagavad Gita claimed to have created the four caste Hindu system, and it was he who had perhaps said that women were not equal to men. My friend became were angry and told me not to talk anything more about Bhagavad Gita and his beloved Lord Krishna.

I hope the translation you posted is understood - beyond language difficulties - by the modern day scholars of Hindu philosophy!

It is shame Divya wants to cop out of this discussion. I was really enjoying it - including your recent dialogue with her.

What I see here is the scientists have open minds and the religious minds are already closed with preconceived notions and blind beliefs. I think the rishis who put Vedas together were really scientists - mostly theoreticians - of that time. Their brain were fertile. They studied nature. They studied the stars and the moon in the sky. They came up with some plausible answers using invented stories (mythology). People bought all that for centuries.

The shame is people continue to buy all that till this day - shedding of course the most apparent nonsense proved wrong by the advancement of science. I wonder if those rishis were alive today and had learned all the present day science, they would have laughed and made fools of their present day followers who still read and believe what the rishis had originally thought of the universe, say 5000 years ago! The rishis would have failed their present day students in every exam they gave them to test their knowledge because the students continued to read the same old books and never cared to learn/understand the present day scientific achievements, notwithstanding the mystery of some great great - many many times - grand daddy, God. Remember, Jesus was the son of God and he looked like Him!

Kind Regards
Tanzan Senzaki

Dear Tanzan,

If you happen to include me in this dialogue at all, you probably have me in the category "religious minds"... to my sincere amuzement. Religion and devotion are two very different things, and devotion is as certain a path to "it" as is scientific inquiry.

I do not deny the validity of your path, you depend on science and the power of intellect to solve the riddles of existence. Your efforts are important and you will make progress, because you are sincere in your quest. My humble suggestion is, however, that there comes a time, there has to come a time, when you realize that whatever your mind "knows" is a construct. You cannot come into direct contact with true reality- with Being- using any tool of the mind. The mind puts together reality step by step, but it is always a fragmentary reality that, hopefully, evolves in every one of us. Still, wholeness, Being, is a sacred experience beyond both mind and science, leaving you... speechless, breathless, devoid of concepts. No matter if your mind at this stage calls everything it doesn't understand "nonsense", existence is, in you and everything else alike, and there are many, many worlds with as many rules existing right here, right now, all as true and valid. I don't ask you to believe me, lol... but if you'd ever ask me how, I'd say- try to not blindly believe your mind :)

Merry Christmas and all the best to you and everyone else on this thread!

Dear A.K. - First of all, I want to assure you that I believe your interest is genuine and you are not doing this just to fling mud like Tanzan. Also, if it sounded like I wanted to withdraw from the conversation, it was only a sort of a reflection of your own earlier statement many posts back to reassure you that that option is still open and we don't have to beat this thing to death unless there is genuinely something to be gained by it.

As far as I remember Gargi asks Yagnavalkya only 2 questions and these are not them. Are you sure you haven't been visiting some Hindu hate groups to get your material? Christian missionaries and the commies have a lot of stuff floating on the net to discredit and ridicule Hinduism. Did you hear of the recent case in India where the missionaries circulated a new Quran in Arabic which looked exactly like the Quran but was actually missionary propoganda? It has now been banned. Anyway, if you are interested, I recommend "The Upanishads - Breath of the Eternal" by Swami Prabhavananda and Frederick Manchester. I do not know what to recommend on the net (since I have the Upanishads in book form) but if you yourself find something, I can tell you how I feel about the site. I do not get into discussions about the substance of the philosophy, i.e., what is brahma etc., so what I say is related to the source and quality of the material and nothing more. If you prefer your own sources that's fine but don't expect me to respond to any nonsense that you find on the net.

Another important point to note. We use certain words just because we want to be understood in everyday life. So we go along with terms like hindu and god and philosophy and what not, otherwise conversation will become very cumbersome. But if you want to build your entire case around such words then we need to clarify the meanings because otherwise it defeats the purpose of the conversation. There is no such word as "philosophy" in the Indian languages. The word we use is darshan which literally means seeing (experiencing). So we have 6 different vedic darshans, we have the Buddhist darshan, Jain darshan and numerous tantric darshans. These darshans address the matters we have been talking about thus far - ie, the nature of matter, consciousness etc. Now there is a whole other realm of philosophy that deals with ethics. When you drag in words like "righteous" etc. , you are crossing over into the realm of ethics. This has nothing to do with the nature of consciousness and you cannot apply your arguments here (that society changes so ethics change etc.) This aspect of the philosophy in Hinduism is covered under dharma and does not address the issues we are talking about. I would suggest let's keep dharma out of the equation otherwise we'll be all over the place.

About purva-paksha. This is a tool used within the various indigenous darshans. While I seriously recommend that all hindus try and understand the nature of xtianity and islam, I also hold that no argument or debate is possible between the indic traditions and the abrahamic traditions since they are faith-based. How can you possibly argue with a claim that God made the world and this is true because the Bible says so and the Bible is the word of God? So I'm delighted that you remembered the point about purva-paksha, but it is applicable only within the indic traditions since a dialog with faith-based traditions is sterile from the indic point of view. The other point about purva-paksha to note is that this tool was employed with the purpose of winning a debate. If you are interested in purva-paksha it will only serve your purpose if you tackle the solid points of the philosophy and not just go looking around for stuff to ridicule.

I am dumbfounded that you keep dragging in science. Let me repeat again. Just as your eyes are of no use in discerning that the earth revolves around the sun, similarly your intellect is of no use in discerning the nature of consciousness. You have to transcend the intellect to figure this out. Does science transcend the intellect or does it rely wholeheartedly on it? So do be careful in how you invoke science to counter indic thought. It is helpful in some respects but not in the manner in which you keep bringing it up.

Hi Kristin - I too would like to re-visit that text. It was one of the first things I ever read. What Sanskrit text are you using? You said you're learning to chant it. Is it available in audio form or are you learning it from someone?

Yes, after this conversation I too feel I need to read the B.U. again and will do so over these holidays.

Quote: "I recall when I told my friend that it was Lord Krishna who in Bhagavad Gita claimed to have created the four caste Hindu system, and it was he who had perhaps said that women were not equal to men. My friend became were angry and told me not to talk anything more about Bhagavad Gita and his beloved Lord Krishna."Unquote.

TZ

Krishna did not CREATE caste system but just explained that every wheel-within-wheel of every system and hence of the Human race as a whole and within that of the Hindu society as a whole is divisible or rather actually divided into four layers. It basically depends upon four basic forces based four basic interactions which every wheel of system in its life - and here the Hindu society as a whole - has to go through and nothing else.

Even we individuals are likewise divided into our physical, emotional, intellectual and intelligent bodies or layers. In our childhood our physical layer is in the foreground, in youth it is the emotional layer, in middle age it is the intellectual layer and in old age it is the intelligent or spiritual layer. Now, were one to be a cell in my body and could look and talk from within he would also have divided me from inside into four like layers or 'castes' according to the work each caste or layer is to perform, namely, my physical body is to take care of my physical structure, my merely physical works/needs, my emotional layer is to take care of my emotional interactions, of loves, wars, hates, travels and so on, similarly my intelletual layer is to take care of my rational/conceptual knolwedge and my intelligence layer or 'caste' is to take care of my spiritual knolwedge. It is all for the best of me and on society's scale for the best of the soceity as a whole.

In other words, it is just as my muscle cells take care of my physical structure, blood cells take care of emotional structure, nerve cells take care of my intellectual structure etc. There are further details in my book how these cells relate to my physical body, emotional body and intellectual body but not given here for the sake of keeping the post handy.

What Krishana is supposed to have said above is true and my book will settle this question within the next few years.

Quote
"The shame is people continue to buy all that till this day - shedding of course the most apparent nonsense proved wrong by the advancement of science. I wonder if those rishis were alive today and had learned all the present day science, they would have laughed and made fools of their present day followers who still read and believe what the rishis had originally thought of the universe, say 5000 years ago!"Unquote.

Rishsi are true yet we can, and can only, add more details to what they wrote. Our evolution moves in cycles. Comparatively recently or on a smaller scale one such cycle ended with the end of BC era. The next cycle began with the beginning of AD era and is likewise near its end now.

Now greek philosophy and 'science' flourished fully - up to the extent it could flourish given the limitations of that time - during the last phase of the BS era cycle. And came to know that everything is made up of atoms.

Then that cycle came to an end, things went into hibernation, till sometime afterwards when the next the AD era cycle began and things again began to look up once again.

Now even though we were an advance on the Greeks -like we are to Rishis on a far greater scale - we could not come to our scientific era and thence to the further study of an atom till we came to the identical phase on our present, AD era cycle.

Now we have come on the identical period to that on our cycle and we have further explored the atom, yet Greeks were not wrong that everything is made up of atoms. All we have done is discover more details of the atom.

Same is true of the Rishis of yore on a comparatively greater cyclical scale (on a greater wheel scale of Wheels-within Wheels). What the Rishis said is true but we will now know much more details than them, that is all.

Harb

If I may:

1) "Just as your eyes are of no use in discerning that the earth revolves around the sun, similarly your intellect is of no use in discerning the nature of consciousness. You have to transcend the intellect to figure this out."

It seems to me that the analogy is not logical at all. If our eyes betray us on the reality of the revolution of earth around, how does that fact prove our intellect is of no use in understanding the nature of consciousness? Until and unless it is proved beyond doubt that our intellect is incapable - as happened in the case of revolution of earth-, we can’t say that intellect is incapable. Of course unless there is some prejudice, or a need to proove something else, which of course is not much different from blind faith.

2) 'empirically verifiable theories ... sophisticated system of logic'

If the philosophies or darshans are verifiable empirically or established by a sophisticated system of logic, how can it be beyond the realm of intellect? What is the name of the faculty that we will reach once we transcend the intellect? What are the ways or methodology used to reach that realm? Are these ways logical or empirically verifiable? What are the tools used there? Is it logic? Are the theories or ‘experiences’ one can have at that realm, verifiable empirically? If it can’t, then how do we say that it is verifiable or a sophisticated system of logic is applied?

3) “ Read some of the Upanishads - the Katha and Brihadaranyaka are my favorites. Isa is nice and compact. For logic see the Nyaaya Shastras.” This quote was the reply to a request made to provide some proof on the claim of empirically verifiable and sophisticated system of logic.

As per my understanding of the shad darshans, nyaaya shatra is that part which deals with logic. I could be wrong but I believe that the question was intended to discover how the theories or experience as described in other shastras or Upanishads are proved logically or empirically. If that is the case, does the above quote answer anything? It just provides the name of the shastra that deals with logic. Does it prove that the system of logic is really applied in the Upanishads? It does not. The translation of Tanzan and the conversation between Yanjavalkya and Gagi as quoted by A.K also prove that it is not quite based on logic or empiricism!

4) “Since the knowledge that they describe is basically experiential in nature we will have to start with the assumption that they did figure out the nature of reality. Since neither you nor me claim to be enlightened and hence have not had the experience, if we want to have any sort of a dialog we will have to presuppose the truth of this claim.”

How is this presupposition and assumption different from the blind faith found in Semitic religions? Semitic religions also claim that certain experiences are possible in this world. Precisely, how is it different?

Hi Divya,
the text I have that includes the Sanskrit is by Jaideve Singh. The spelling he used for the title is Vijnanabhairava. It took me awhile to find the book because I kept searching using a different spelling. When I first received the book I was totally freaked out. It seemed so far above my ability to comprehend. (You'd love it, I'm sure.) But once I learned to chant the first part and Swamiji started translating it, I was fine. It's even more beautiful than I initially thought. Encompassing much more than the basic translation, although the spirit of it is in both.

Something interesting I realized this morning is that those verses from the Isha you want to understand more deeply are very closely related to what Devi is asking Shiva about the nature of reality at the beginning of the vijnanabhairava.

I have not been able to find the text on tape, but if you do, please let me know. Swamiji, my sanskrit scholar friend, is teaching me. He wasn't very familiar with the text either, but he was able to help us with the chant, translation, etc. I'm taping the chant as we go along to help me memorize it and if you become very interested I could try and copy it for you.

Love, Kristin

HI A.K., Tanzan, Harb, najeeb, and Divya,

I wish I had the time to read your recent comments today. I'm sure I'd enjoy hearing your various viewpoints and I'll look forward to "catching up" when I have the time.

Love, Kristin

[It seems to me that the analogy is not logical at all. If our eyes betray us on the reality of the revolution of earth around, how does that fact prove our intellect is of no use in understanding the nature of consciousness?]

Najeeb - Our eyes do not betray us. Given the beings we are, with limited sense perception, we are *compelled* to see things the way we do. That is the nature of the phenomenon. What did Galileo's theory do? It did not change our perception so we suddenly started seeing the earth move around the sun. What does a good theory do? It explains certain phenomenon. It ties in various facts and explains certain pheonmenon by linking various facts. So for example Galileo ties in the motion of the earth to the stars, to the tides and what not. What else does a good theory do? It is able to predict the way things will behave. The indic traditions meet all of these (scientific) requirements. They tie in certain phenomenon, explain it, predict what will happen given certain practices, and also explain why we are compelled to see things the way we do.

There is no question of blind faith because the empirical evidence is in front of your eyes in the form of yogis who have actually had this experience. The methodology is described in many, many, texts including the Upanishads and the Nyaaya shastras. I mentioned the upanishads because they are easier to read but the nyaaya shastras expound on the same philosophy. If the Upanishads sound like rubbish or illogical to you then that is your problem.

And as I have said repeatedly to AK, hindu philosophy relates to a practice. The methodology involves yoga, meditation, or whatever -take your pick. If you do not have a practice you cannot challenge the theory since you have no clue what you're talking about. The only reason we do talk about it intellectally is because we love our traditions and want to understand them, pass them along, preserve them, and it also helps with the practice. Being a yogi is a full time job and not everyone's cup of tea. Most people are satisfied going through life without wondering about the earth and the tides, with just a little ritual here and there and without bothering with the upanishads. However, if you insist on talking about the upanishads you better know what you're talking about or get a practice of some sort or else just admit you're in this just because you're into mudslinging.

Hi Kristin - Thanks for the info. I would be very interested in the tape after it is completed and if it comes out nicely (flows well).

As for those verses, actually everything sounds alike so that's what you're probably thinking :). Remember it's a 5000 year old tradition where numerous people had the same insights and wrote them down in poetry form so it's basically all the same Q&A.

Merry Christmas to you and Scott!

love,
Divya

Divya: "Dear A.K. - First of all, I want to assure you that I believe your interest is genuine"

Thanks much for appreciating that, Divya. If I ever acquire a sudden urge to rankle you, I will never resort to subterfuge. It surprised me some when you said earlier that you "disagree" with me on "everything". On the role and position of the Upanishads, we seem to have divergent views. On the equally deleterious effect the missionaries and conquering savages have had on India and its people, we have remarkable concurrence. On the plunder of Kashmir and the constant rape of India by the Islamic hordes, we stand equally appalled. On the sad fact that India does not have a common civil code for her citizens 58 years after independence, we shed the same tears. On the machinations of successive Congress governments that fostered communalism for their own ends, we are in total agreement. Other than that, from our various contributions, I notice I am an 'aggressive' vegeterian and am anti-Bush from his Texas governor days. You implied the former is an extreme position, and you voted for Bush (albeit for very different reasons than the mainstream as you explained, and you were let down). So we do differ, but we have good correlation on many important points. I therefore felt the characterization that you 'always disagree' was not accurate. But all that is tangential ...

-------------

Divya: "Also, if it sounded like I wanted to withdraw from the conversation, it was only a sort of a reflection"

I have never felt you want to withdraw from this conversation at all. I wouldn't have held it against you one bit, even if you didn't take me up on my first request to clarify. These are not our full-time jobs (believe that? :-)) and I appreciate any responses. Also, as we have independently observed, given the frequency of our postings and that they are made between other tasks, undue emphasis often comes to be placed on something that is not central to the point we are trying to make.

-------------

"As far as I remember Gargi asks Yagnavalkya only 2 questions and these are not them. Are you sure you haven't been visiting some Hindu hate groups to get your material?"

No, my quote is 100% accurate.

Before I posted it here, I did verify. I provided the link on sanatan.intnet.mu which shows up as the first link on Google. Understanding their ranking algorithm criteria, it means a whole lot of people refer to this, so it can't be totally off. I also read the translation of Max Mueller (please see hinduism.about.com/library/ weekly/extra/bl-maxupanishads.htm). Finally, last night I spent several hours reading Swami Krishnananda's interpretation. I have to say among the three, I found Krihnananda's the most befitting for further enquiry within my small sample set. Krishnananda's interpretation is available at: http://www.swami-krishnananda.org/brhad_00.html Krishnanada also translates this conversation with Gargi in a better manner, although my extract from 'sanatan' is not shallow and does a fairly good, mildly poetic job.

I have not visited any Hindu hate group sites for a long while. I would gladly visit critique sites, if these were run with respect to the works, and any of these were authored by folks who don't have a vested interest in promoting their bigoted religion. I am a little startled you bring that up here with me - but I am being presumptuous. You must have just wanted to make sure, given the nature of net conversations on religion. So I won't read any further into it.

I should clarify: my original attribution Chapter IV verse 1 was misleading. It was from Part III, Sixth Brahmana, Verse 1. I should also add that there are a few extracts in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad that seem way out there, on the fringe, and would be very shady to explain if at all. I desist from quoting it here on this thread at this time. When you do have the time, please keep this in mind when you scan through the B.U. translation that you like.

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Divya: "circulated a new Quran in Arabic which looked exactly like the Quran but was actually missionary propoganda?"

Amusing. No I didn't know. In 1992, I attended a conclave at Emory University in Atlanta, that went by the title "Christians and Muslims for Peace". I was impressed that they wanted to sort out their grievous differences (East Timor was not independent until 10 years later). I was flabbergasted that the aim of this group was only to highlight the "struggle" in Kashmir, and then Palestine and they had a grisly slide show. I had one of my many "epiphanies" then :-)

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Divya: "Anyway, if you are interested, I recommend "The Upanishads - Breath of the Eternal" by Swami Prabhavananda and Frederick Manchester".

Will keep that in mind. There is enough to scour on the net meanwhile. I was meaning to cotinue to read up on the Upanishads independently, and this has just brought it a little to the fore for me. It will be a multi-year task. 10 years ago, I helped proof read a manuscript of a book that talked about the various schools of Hindu philosophy, published and distributed by a non-profit organization. My contribution was eye-balling the language to catch typos and outright grammatic errors. Even then, I remember that the content was extremely abstruse: it was a compilation of other's views and interpretations.

-------------

Divya: ".... I would suggest let's keep dharma out of the equation otherwise we'll be all over the place".

I agree, we need to set some ground rules and an accepted glossary if we are to seriously debate this. And I would need to study this in that light for at least a few days, full time. I'll simply have to take a rain check on that.

-------------

Divya: "About purva-paksha. This is a tool used within the various indigenous darshans .."

Thanks for the context, Divya. I brought up purva-paksha only to contest your point that if I/we don't believe in it, then why spend a lot of time reading it. With all respect, I find this point of yours more lame than my "future invalidity" hypothesis for the Upanishads because it is an ad hominem argument that does not belong here.

While I appreciate your point that experience is very vital, I don't believe that you sincerely think it should not be questioned without your point of due diligence. Questioning it sensibly takes time to read up on it, yes. And I'll let that slide. Yes, I do see your consistent point (reiterated again to Najeeb) that practice is needed to understand the theory. But this neatly dovetails into the total immersion point that I've been trying to articulate -- total immersion (dedicated practice: meditation, coupled with reading the texts) is needed before meaningfully questioning the body of work (the "it" in a previous post). While I've acknowledged that this may simply be the way it is, I will also maintain that this is a tad reminiscent of the mullahs exhorting "total surrender" into some misguided work to "see the ...". I'd like to say "light" but that would be more befitting for the Gayatri Mantra, so I wll instead say "virgins" :-)

-------------

Finally, the real crux of the discussion:

Divya: "I am dumbfounded that you keep dragging in science. Let me repeat again. Just as your eyes are of no use in discerning that the earth revolves around the sun, similarly your intellect is of no use in discerning the nature of consciousness. You have to transcend the intellect to figure this out. Does science transcend the intellect or does it rely wholeheartedly on it? So do be careful in how you invoke science to counter indic thought. It is helpful in some respects but not in the manner in which you keep bringing it up."

Divya, I am not a science over spirituality person. I am not a scientist in the strict sense of the term. If I were to go back to school (which I will in the very near future), it will be in a school of philosophy or divinity. I have a passion for science, and admire its bright beacons as much as giants of men like Sankaracharya. I cherish books like "I am That" by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, as much as Martin Gardner's and Hofstadter's.

Yet, I am simply questioning the presumption that "similarly your intellect is of no use in discerning the nature of consciousness". I just cannot accept this, and it has nothing to do with science at all. As you earlier alluded to in reference to words like 'God' and 'Philosophy', my use of intellect is rather broad. Science places absolutely no limits on where "intellect" starts and ends. It asks for replicability and empirical verifiability as its base minimum. Using these "metrics", if I may, for accepting anything is the only way I can operate.

My limited reading of the Upanishads indicates some presumed hierarchy (see the latter part of the Taittiriya Upanishad for a discussion of the extent of happiness for example, that in many ways mirrors this hierarchy given to Gargi, also indicating a degree of flippancy in appreciating large numbers: 10 to the power 14 if I am not mistaken). There is lot of emphasis placed on souls of ancestors, devas, sidereal interpretations of a short-sighted nature because of the lack of further tools then: (telescopes, frequency shifts, electromagnetism yada yada), rituals, mantras and a misleading interpretation of extremely large numbers to quote a few. Once again, you can say meditate on them, read completely, and then comment. It is a HUGE investment, for something that I am skeptical of at the outset because it seems greatly poetic, sophisticated, but with no semblance to unambiguous logic as I understand the term.

I'll tell you this much: if there were strains of sophisticated logic in these works, someone with the energy of a Tanzan and knowedge into formal logic representations would have sketched out all the points formally to appreciate the logic, in the way the term "logic" has a mathematical connotation with associativity, transitivity yada yada. I can take a very good guess why it hasn't happened.

By the way, I just checked the Merriam-Webster definition of logic. One of its meanings, provided first: "a science that deals with the principles and criteria of validity of inference and demonstration : the science of the formal principles of reasoning".

So you have "demonstration" there but you also have "science" here. If you don't like the use of "God" and "Philosophy" without clarifying their meaning, I think you should also be consistent and define what is meant by "logic" when calling these great thought-works logical. It would be remiss of me not to mention a niggling doubt regarding how much of all this discussion between us is "verbal pirouetting" to borrow a nice term of Kaveetaa's. And how much of it is substance?

As me move forward (?), I hope to find the energy to post further comments about details in the Upanishads, that in my world view show a poor tackling of "singularities".

I am also a little intrigued at how you categorically stated that my characterization of a few things was factually incorrect. You may recall I said 3 things:
(a) "But there are so many fundamentals in the nature of the cosmos (time, light, absolute constants, parallelism, singularities, subatomicity) that they simply did not dwell on.
(b) "Anything 'material' is invariably neglected for its impermanence, with superficial insight into the energy equation."
(c) "And time is regarded as circular at its highest abstraction in Hindu philosophy with no further insight into its interplay with other abstractions (e.g., light)."
I stand by each and every one of the assertions.

-------------

I didn't want to end on that tone, so here goes: happy holidays and looking forward to further interactions with you.

1) "The indic traditions meet all of these (scientific) requirements. They tie in certain phenomenon, explain it, predict what will happen given certain practices, and also explain why we are compelled to see things the way we do."

In science, there were many such theories that met all this and yet later discarded or improved. Meeting these requirement does not automatically prove that it is true.

ii)"There is no question of blind faith because the empirical evidence is in front of your eyes in the form of yogis who have actually had this experience."

But in science, it is not just the scientist who goes thru the experience. It is everybody. Oh yes, the proactice. If it can be logically explained as it is claimed, why must I practice? In science, a scientist goes thru pbservation, experimentation (practice) and brings out a theory and explains it logically. If I need to understand the theory, i do not essentially need to go thru the experimentation (practice)again. That is why we say it is logically explained. Similarly, can a yogi logically explain the experience he is having? If not, can't it be some kind of hallucinations, which an advanced science wopuld prove so in future?

3)" And as I have said repeatedly to AK, hindu philosophy relates to a practice."

All religions claim so. They too say that with certains belifs (aka assumptions or presuppositions!!) and certain practices, one can have certain experiences here.

4) "However, if you insist on talking about the upanishads you better know what you're talking about or get a practice of some sort or else just admit you're in this just because you're into mudslinging."

Irrelevant. Also shows the inability to stay calm when there are no answers.

------

questions that remain unanswered.

1) If the philosophies or darshans are verifiable empirically or established by a sophisticated system of logic, how can it be beyond the realm of intellect?

2) How is this presupposition and assumption different from the blind faith found in Semitic religions? Semitic religions also claim that certain experiences are possible in this world. Precisely, how is it different?

Hi A.K. - I tend to keep forgetting that what one writes on a blog does not always come out exactly the way one intended it to. When I said I disagree with you on everything, it was in reference to this particular conversation and that too I used the phrase *only* as a figure of speech. Had I known it would sound unfair to you I would not have said it as it is definitely not true.

In any case, now that we are on the subject of figurative speech, please do bear this in mind while reading the Upanishads. Remember these were used as a method of teaching mainly *young* students. They use all kinds of wild metaphors and they are only meant by way of an illustration. Basically they are talking about cause and effect, and the elements. These elements and the Cause as well as the Effect are personified by giving them various names - Purush, Prakiti, Brishapati, Indra etc. These are not literally meant to be gods or animals or demons or any other thing that they name.

I just checked out the link you gave me and I am actually familiar with that site and love it. I checked out the particular passage and find nothing wrong with it - which is not what I felt with the verse you quoted earlier which definitely sounded ridiculous. Basically they are discussing the chicken and egg question and Yagnavalka is telling Gargi that there can be no cause for an ultimate cause. Therefore Y tells her that her question is not a valid one or is "improper" This is the only point that the punch line of this verse is about. Do you find this illogical?

You said: "[I brought up purva-paksha only to contest your point that if I/we don't believe in it, then why spend a lot of time reading it. With all respect, I find this point of yours more lame than my "future invalidity" hypothesis for the Upanishads because it is an ad hominem argument that does not belong here."]

This is not an ad hominem. It is meant to clarify where you can or cannot use purva paksha and what its uses are. If you don't have a position of your own (other than doubt) then you are merely looking for information and not doing any purva paksha.

Regarding your point about immersion and how it reminds you of the mullahs - Where Islam is concerned, they propagate a religion for *all* muslims. Hinduism is not a religion. This knowledge is not for everyone. In fact as someone pointed out earlier (as an attack on Hinduism) that this knowledge was considered secret. There are many reasons for this. One of them is that you need to have a certain bent for it. Those who are inclined towards these matters spend their entire lives dedicated to this. Those who are not will never appreciate it. Please stop for a second and consider the hindu population of India and tell me exactly how many people you think have even heard of the Upanishads let alone bothered to read them? So where's the immersion, other than in alcohol and bollywood? As I said earlier, it was the idiot missionaries who came along and declared that Hinduism is the religion of India and it is based on the Vedas and all the rest of us have never stopped parroting this line. Please give me one good reason why the Vedic study of matter should not be called physics or why the Vedic study of mind should not be called psychology? What is religious about it? How many people study physics and psychology? How much time do they spend on these subjects before they learn anything? Please do not take this literally and start defining physics for me now, but I do mean to make the point that this is not religion but a serious study and you have no choice but to immerse yourself if you want to get anywhere.

You say: ["I am simply questioning the presumption that "similarly your intellect is of no use in discerning the nature of consciousness". I just cannot accept this, and it has nothing to do with science at all."]

Did I say it has anything to do with science? I just told you what the theory was. If you don't accept it that's fine. The only proof of this is the actual experience for which you don't have the time or the inclination so drop it.

You say "Science places absolutely no limits on where "intellect" starts and ends." It asks for replicability and empirical verifiability as its base minimum."]

And the Indian traditions absolutely provide empirical verifiability and replicablity and they have been doing so for 5,000 years. If you don't want to get off your couch to go and meditate does not mean others haven't been doing it and verifying it and replicating it.

Next you go on to essentially claim how the Upanishads are interspersed with senseless stuff and how no-one has formulated this in terms of logic. But they absolutely have. There are hundreds of logical treatises to be found which do not use words like god and demons and sound like pure math when you read them. These are mainly for scholars or whoever is inclined towards such stuff and make the same points as the scriptures but do so in an academic manner. They are as dry, dull and boring as you're looking for and I'm sure you'll be satisfied. I personally prefer to go the gods and demons route and I guess I made a big mistake recommending the Upanishads where you definitely have to sift the style from the substance.

Next you say: [(a) "But there are so many fundamentals in the nature of the cosmos (time, light, absolute constants, parallelism, singularities, subatomicity) that they simply did not dwell on. (b) "Anything 'material' is invariably neglected for its impermanence, with superficial insight into the energy equation." (c) "And time is regarded as circular at its highest abstraction in Hindu philosophy with no further insight into its interplay with other abstractions (e.g., light)." ]

I have no idea what most of the terms you use here are. But time is not *simply* regarded as circular. That's the easiest way of expressing it and it also distinguishes it from the linear conception of time. And they absolutely do deal with its evolution in relation with other elements such as light. The energy equation is definitely dealt with (and how). Tell me, would you be able to gain knowledge about time, space and light by flipping through a few books? Would it not take you your whole life to understand what Einstein had to say? Do you realize how presumptuous it is to imagine one can easily gain insight into these matters merely through a half-baked interest and a slavery to science.

Having said all of this, and just like your precious science, the Indian traditions also leave things open-ended (How scientific is that?). They do not say this is the way it is and this is the way it shall be. You are definitely invited to challenge them. Also consider why so many scientists are into hindu philosophy. Do you think they've been sitting with a magnifying glass looking at all the ridiculous stuff in the Upanishads? You can merely take away one single line from them and reach insights which a 100 science books cannot provide and yet you insist on taking every word seriously and questioning them on the basis of the chaff.

Najeeb - short answer. The indian traditions are not science. I did answer both your other questions I think or else you may find the answer in my response to AK a short while ago.

1) "Please give me one good reason why the Vedic study of matter should not be called physics or why the Vedic study of mind should not be called psychology? What is religious about it?"

2)"The indian traditions are not science"

Contradictory! Physics and psychology are pretty very much science!! And I am equally sure that vedic study of mind and matter are very much a part of Indian traditions!!!

You got it Najeeb. As always, Hindus are damned if they do and damned if they don't. Hope I made your day.

Hi Divya,

Thanks! Happy Christmas!!

Najeeb, see everybody
Is connected with somebody
Here at this site:
Some through Reiki,
Some through Astrology,
Some through pleasantries,
Others through mere jabberwocky.

Brother, we too are connected,
By slinging mud at others!
I thought we were nice guys,
Alas! turned out to be mudslingers.

PS: I read your excellent dialogue with Divya. Words, words! Where has the logic gone? I will get back to it later. Now, Happy Whatever!

Dear Divya,

A few thoughts:

Divya: "Do you realize how presumptuous it is to imagine one can easily gain insight into these matters merely through a half-baked interest and a slavery to science."

Excellent point, though you fritter away its impact some by saying "slavery" to science. I think Tanzan enunciated it well when he said the rishis, if alive today, would have mocked the disciples for taking the work as a whole and neglecting the new insights from science. Why is this a slavery? It is a treat to exploit, that constantly replenishes, and invariably demands deeper introspection and higher standards.

Conversely, I believe it is presumptuous to accept these works as the be-all-and-end-all with a half-baked knowledge of science and math.

Divya: "I have no idea what most of the terms you use here are" - fair enough, so please don't strongly conclude that I am factually incorrect.

Divya: "But time is not *simply* regarded as circular. That's the easiest way of expressing it and it also distinguishes it from the linear conception of time"

which is consistent with what I said "And time is regarded as circular at its highest abstraction in Hindu philosophy with no further insight into its interplay with other abstractions (e.g., light)". The precise interplay I alluded to is the "time dilation" effect. First touched on by Joseph Larmor and immortalized by Einstein, it means that when an object (or person) is accelerated toward the speed of light, time slows down for it (him). It has been experimentally validated by flying highly accurate clocks on supersonic aircraft and comparing drifts. Ditto for the influence of gravitational fields on clocks.

As you may know, this came to the fore in the early part of last century. If the concept of time is of some basic importance in Vedic philosophy, did anyone at exalted spiritual hubs like the Ramakrishna Mission, follow or take notice? Can't they learn the gist of it by inviting some of the established physicists to come and summarize the concepts and findings for them so they can see how they view the great works after having that knowledge and present a commentary either on its irrelevance, or providing some new insight into previosuly heavy words that were parley to misinterpretation? After all, many of them are masters of a life-long practise of meditation and dedication, and there are brilliant people among them too. Have you ever heard of them doing this?

On the other hand as you have pointed out, many good scientists find an interest in Hindu Phil. Most, if not all of the reputed scientists do not go into it headlong with complete immersion as you describe. So what are they going to get out of it that I can't feebly attempt?

And essentially as you ask, why do they gravitate towards it? Because no other phil. provides the openness and expansive framework for them to go to when their active minds naturally question the imponderables. They seek it and find beauty in its history, words, subtelty and implications. Its very fuzziness allows different scientists to take different angles of interest. And the literary and poetic beauty is a jewel for all to behold. I believe that is exactly why the reputed scientists take to it, not because they believe it is a provably self-consistent system or a 'sophisticated' system of logic by current standards.

You end by saying "and yet you insist on taking every word seriously and questioning them on the basis of the chaff".

I concede I often do. Can you direct me to any written work of credibility that directedly points out what is chaff and what should be ignored? That is a clear step towards a "gist" that I've been asking for. Take for example even this Gargi translation. The poetic quote which you first doubted the existence of, and then felt was a ridiculous translation, was provided by Swami Nikhilananda (Ramakrishna Mission, who founded the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center in NY in 1933). His credentials are impeccable.

Now take my time dilation example. If you have the inclination, do some searches and you will find so many referents that dumb it down for easier consumption. This just does not happen unambiguously with Hindu Phil.

I do hear you loud and clear when you stress the distinctions and the essence of practise.

Divya, I just spent some time carefully reviewing all your comments in this thread. In spite of the differences I maintain, I sincerely think they are superb, and this take has nothing to do with politeness.

By the way, in continuing to read about B.U., I just learnt that the famous lines:

From the unreal lead me to the real
From darkness lead me to light
From death lead me to immortality

are from the B.U.

Hope you have a relaxing long weekend.

A.K. - I didn't even bother reading your long post and just saw the last one. I wish you hadn't mentioned politeness because I've just about had it with you.

What is your freaking point? That the indian traditions are not scientifically proven? Haven't I said that this is not science? Haven't I said that science has some catching up to do and not the other way round. Please go back and read my post of Decebmer 21 the last para. It's been 4 days and I've repeated it again and again and you keep coming back to it. Are you in this to show off your knowledge in whatever pathetic unrelated way you can drag it in? Sorry, I'm not in that game. You need a strong dose of Aurora right now and that will set you right.

And I do not need any condescending appreciation of our scriptures from you you either.

An afterthought. From the first few lines of your ramblings that I did read in your second to last post you mention that the rishis of 5000 years ago would heed the scientists of today or some such crap. Haven't I also said that there has been a line of continuity since the last 5000 years? Who were Ramana Maharishi or Ramakrishna? Did they not live in the present time? Did it even make a dent on your brain when I told you that this knowledge is not just 5000 years old but is also of the present and that the works are continually being added on to by modern day rishis? So are you blind and cannot read, or are you so dense that you cannot understand or is it simply that you are so dishonest that you do not want to acknowledge the yogis who you know existed in the present time and continue to pretend that this knowledge is 5000 years old? Ultimately, the knowledge transcends time and space so it doesn't even matter what time and space are about. Next you'll be complaining that the rishis did not know how to make chocolate fudge. Gimme a break.

I wish you could hear ...

Divya sounds like a brilliant impatient volcano, A.K is mellow, sweet, intelligent, flowing in a clear and inquiring way like water in a forest, Najeeb has a metallic sound, with tidy square edges and a smile shining every time the pieces fit, Tanzan, a stormy sea, with big dramatic waves at the shore, but such a soft horizon, Kristin... is the eyes and heart of a deer :)

Quoting Divya:

"A.K. - I didn't even bother reading your long post and just saw the last one. I wish you hadn't mentioned politeness because I've just about had it with you.

What is your freaking point? That the indian traditions are not scientifically proven? Haven't I said that this is not science?" Whoa!

I can see you two are really into the Holiday Spirit!

Cheers!

And a further afterthought A.K. In my first response to you I clearly stated:

"Since the knowledge that they describe is basically experiential in nature we will have to start with the assumption that they did figure out the nature of reality. Since neither you nor me claim to be enlightened and hence have not had the experience, if we want to have any sort of a dialog we will have to presuppose the truth of this claim"

Have you not been abusing the basic terms of the dialog in your constant rejection of this along with the expectation that your questions deserve an answer? If I accomodated you in this for 5 long days this does not mean you can continue to abuse the basic foundation on which such a dialog can proceed. Or is this point beyond your grasp?

As a first-timer to this site I have to say that the conversation between Divya and A.K. makes for fascinating reading. Hope you keep it up. Merry Christmas to all. :o)

Aurora,
A deer? I want to be an Eagle.
A vegetarian eagle.

Merry Christmas!

Love, Kristin

LOL, Kristin... how about a flying deer? Vegetarian, of course :D:D
I should have said... sometimes, you're a deer. There are plenty of other times to be anything you wish. Much love to you, too.

Okay, a flying deer. :)

A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is .......

Dear A.K., Najeeb and other friends,

Divya, our resident intellectual, in my opinion has lost credibility by her few statements listed below. There are so many of them to list here. I was so tired reading her illogical statements, I am just quoting a few of them.

I think she is cracking up.

She has nothing to say that supports anything she says. In early parts of the discussion, she cited some Upanishads that would enlighten us and support her claims.

I tried to put Isa Upanishad in free verse. She said it was too too difficult to understand even by scholars.

A.K. then brought to her attention some passages in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. First she doubted that the text could have come from an Upanishad. She was surprised by A.K.'s findings! Later she verified its validity and came with some illogical explanation - perhaps that the intellect of man should remain limited or some such thing.

Najeeb brought to her attention there was no logic in her thinking and she was contradicting herself.

More strongly from that point on she has been cracking up. And says: "Give me a break".

I believe she needs a permanent break as she appears no longer credible to me. It is all up to you what you want to do with all the intellectual insight of Hinduism - not religion but the way of life - she has offered to us or can offer us.

It all reminds me of jabberwocky of Alice in the Wonderland.

***
Here are just a few of statements made by Divya. The first 4 gems of enlightenment she showed are in response to my post. Enjoy them and be enlightened!

***
'...you mention that the rishis of 5000 years ago would heed the scientists of today or some such crap." ~Divya
***
"Did it even make a dent on your brain when I told you...." ~Divya

***
So are you blind and cannot read, or are you so dense that you cannot understand or is it simply that you are so dishonest that you do not want to acknowledge the yogis who you know existed in the present time and continue to pretend that this knowledge is 5000 years old? ~Divya

***
"Next you'll be complaining that the rishis did not know how to make chocolate fudge.Gimme a break." ~Divya

***
"If I accomodated you in this for 5 long days this does not mean you can continue to abuse the basic foundation on which such a dialog can proceed. Or is this point beyond your grasp?" ~Divya

***
""A.K. - I didn't even bother reading your long post and just saw the last one. I wish you hadn't mentioned politeness because I've just about had it with you.

What is your freaking point? " ~Divya

***
"And I do not need any condescending appreciation of our scriptures from you you either." ~Divya

***
" You got it Najeeb. As always, Hindus are damned if they do and damned if they don't. Hope I made your day." ~Divya

***
"Tell me, would you be able to gain knowledge about time, space and light by flipping through a few books? Would it not take you your whole life to understand what Einstein had to say? Do you realize how presumptuous it is to imagine one can easily gain insight into these matters merely through a half-baked interest and a slavery to science." ~Divya

***
"What did Galileo's theory do? It did not change our perception ..." ~Divya

***

And so on and on ...

***
PS: Happy holidays to all of you. I might continue to post here free verse renderings of portions of Upnishadas from time to time in case some other scholar could be kind enough to give some insight into the writings of ancient holy texts revered by Hindus.

"Dear Tanzan,

If you happen to include me in this dialogue at all, you probably have me in the category "religious minds"... to my sincere amuzement." ~Aurora Carlson

***
Dear Aurora,

I do not label or categorize people with any "minds". I might, on the other hand, have intense thoughts on what they profess or claim.

People are what they are. I try to learn from them if something they say makes sense to me. But if their senses are out of this world, I leave them alone, I pray for them and wish them all the revelry they relish in their beliefs.

Happy holidays.

Kind regards
Tanzan Senzaki

Oh, come on, Tanzan, I'm not going to quote you to show you :):D Thank you for your wishes and for all the beautiful poetry and interesting debates, I very much enjoy them. All the best to you, too!

Dear A.K. - Now I'm worried. I hope I didn't make you cry. You saved me from the sharks a few months ago and I feel bad to go all sharkey on you myself. I hope you're just out on a lark over the holidays but in any case I don't want you to come back here only to receive a hard punch.

Now that I've calmed down, let me address the couple of points we differ on. It is perfectly normal for most people to say Vedanta is rubbish. That was my first response too. But there comes a point in some peoples' lives where they begin to think it may not be rubbish after all. Because of the nature of the subject matter, and because the only proof of Vedanta is the experience, it is fruitless to discuss it with people who are not like-minded. This was my reason for saying that if you want to discuss it you will have to agree with the basic premise otherwise the conversation will not go anywhere. And that is precisely what happened. You instantly produced some verses to illustrate how illogical Vedanta is. The only way out of this is that I explain all of Vedanta to you which I am incapable of doing or else you immerse yourself which you are not interested in doing.

The second point is your insistence on bringing in science. Does your knowledge of time teach you who you are? If not, it does not have a place in this discussion. It is true that the rishis considered all of these matters. It is also true that they ultimately discarded all of this knowledge as being irrelevant to their central question. So before you fling any more of your scientific theories at me, please first stop and consider: Do they carry a response to the question who am I? If not, there is no reason to talk about them. If you are looking for a recipe for cookies, you do not embark on a study of heat and energy. It is helpful to a certain extent but ultimately it's the cookie recipe you want. If your cookies turn out good nothing else matters. If you master the theory of heat but your cookies are inedible it defeats the purpose. Remember the purpose here is deriving an answer to a specific question. Along the way you may make many discoveries, but when you say you want to discuss hindu philosophy then you need to stick to the central theme and not bring in theories of architecture, sex, phonetics, grammar, time, space, logic, agriculture, animal husbandry, astronomy, astrology, and whatever else the rishis discussed. It is clearly stated in the vedas and upanishads that none of this knowledge is relavant to the central question they are trying to answer. And there have been numerous yogis who are perfectly illiterate. Ramakrishna was one such as a matter of fact.

If you are going to reply to this, I would like to request you to stick to one or two points and keep the posts short. As many have noted, I am a borderline lunatic and your posts are too long-winded and cover too many points that I fear I will end up with terminal schizophrenia.

Divya and A.K.,

For the record, you too need to get a life. Do you realize that you boring and annoying?

Not the borderline lunatic... not the hard punching, not the worried, not the considerate, not the knowledgeable... not the rude, nor the kind... who?

AJ - This is my life. Nobody's asking you to be a part of it.

Aurora - let's change that from borderline to fullblown!

Najeeb - Merry xmas to you too :)

Richard - Thanks for the feedback.

Hello again to everyone who is still hanging around this thread,

For myself the importance of scripture is not so much what it "really" means. The importance is what it means to me... how does it move me? (or not.) In what way does it impact the way I see the world and how I live my daily life? how does it bring me closer to truth, to you, to God?

I've listened to chants that have brought me to tears, filled me with humility and a desire to serve. Whether I understood precisely what the person who initially wrote them was trying to communicate, who is to say? And what does it matter? Pieces of scripture I have heard in Sanskrit and other languages have had that affect upon me without even initially knowing any translation...

I respect scholarly study and sometimes I wish I were more intellectual in my thinking and I do plan to learn more in that regard. But really how can we ever say that "this" is the "one true way" to perceive God and who we really are and our place in this world? It's completely dependent upon whose doing the looking... and thus personal.

It's like reading a poem and saying it means - THIS. Well, if it meant that, why didn't they say it that way? Because then it wouldn't be a poem. Poetry attempts to express what is beyond words and so ends up meaning different things to different people. As far as what the author really meant... that's for the heart to experience. Not the head.

Well, anyway, that's where I'm coming from.

Love, Kristin

ps. Divya,
Scott and I had a wonderful Christmas. Thanks for wishing us well. :)

Divya,

Gee, you are getting cranky in your old age? Whoa, calm down!

I guess to you are entitled to bitch as much I am entitled to let you know about it, huh?

Have a better day.

Aj - No, actually I was always cranky and this is the new and improved version of me. As for bitching, dear AJ it was you who showed up out of the blue to let us know you are one.

Kristin - It's funny, I used to be much more deeply moved by chants when I had no clue what they meant. I think I took the wrong turn. I should have devoted my life to karate or something. I'm sure I'd have been at the ultimate stage of buddhahood by now. Too bad we don't get to live life over.

By the way, is this typekey thing supposed to work? Does anyone use it? I get a registration failed response.

Divya, I wonder... you seem to think you have failed in some way. You're not dead yet, are you? Your striving to know yourself, is it for real? If it is, what difference does it make what you've done or not done until right this moment? And right this moment you said "I'm sorry, AK, I've been rude"... or something like that :) Isn't that one step to where you want to go?

Kristin, I'm also trying to learn more about the Vedas and Indian traditions in general. If you have any good link (or anyone else), please let me know.

Hmm, I learned from an old Chinese family, way back when I was a young child - whom believed that a successful life; was somewhat like wadding through a pond of water, without making a ripple; because every ripple, had an effect(butterfly effec.)

I had an instant fascination with Taoism, not even knowing what it was, I was learning how to obtain a peaceful environment with NO ripples; until one day, childhood vanish's with little trace; and we function as adults; creating ripples upon ripples within our inner environment(s.)

Perhaps, it is only in the quaking of shedding our coccoon, we can become the butterfly; I should think, this would cause a huge ripple-effect, indeed!

As I ripple through this blog - am I your ripple, or my ripple?

because I am not sure, why I am here? does there have to be a reason?

I just waded IN, with the least of effort, on a rippling effect - from some -->where?

North

"Krishna did not CREATE caste system but just explained that every wheel-within-wheel of every system and hence of the Human race as a whole and within that of the Hindu society as a whole is divisible or rather actually divided into four layers. It basically depends upon four basic forces based four basic interactions which every wheel of system in its life - and here the Hindu society as a whole - has to go through and nothing else." ~ Harb

***
Dear Harb,

It appeared your refuted what I said earlier in this thread that Lord Krishna created the four caste system for Hindus. Please see below:

catur-varnyam maya srstam
guna-karma-vibhagasah
tasya kartaram api mam
viddhy akartaram avyayam

Bhagavad Gita 4:13

catuh-varnyam--the four divisions of human society; maya--by Me; srstam--created; guna--quality; karma--work; vibhagasah--in terms of division; tasya--of that; kartaram--the father; api--although; mam--Me; viddhi--you may know; akartaram--as the non-doer; avyayam--being unchangeable.

I created the four caste system,
Based on the quality of work to each.
Though I am the creator of this system,
Know that I never participate in this.

Tanzan Senzaki

PS: The free verse rendering is mine. See the translation of Sanskrit words into English. You empasized' "Krishna did not CREATE caste system .." , putting CREATE in capital letters.

I hope this post will give you further material to find some use of the four physical forces of nature that you so often mention to explain everything in the universe right after the big bang - including spirituality and the flow of Reiki in the spinal cord! Lord Krishna was God according to Hindus. He knew the four forces. I wonder if he had mentioned/explained the four forces while creating the four caste system for Hindus, your book would be deserving additional merit.

My free verse rendering might not be absolutely correct. Thus, for any confusion that I might unintentionally be creating here, I would beg to be excused.

I wish you happy holidays.

Dear Tanzan,

I have read no Veda, Upanishad, Gita or any other holy book for that matter except in bits and pieces from here and there. And because I have felt no need of reading them.

At the core of all these books is an experience of the basic oneness of All There Is which I have had myself. All the rest of the so-called knowledge comes on its own when looked from the point of view of that oneness depending upon in which direction one is destined to look depending upon in which space-time one is. Just as I was destined to look from it in the direction of evolution, that is, to know as to what is the real or fundamental cause of all evolution.

It is as if one has had the experience of sex if you want to have a comparatively concrete example and of love-at-first-sight if you want to have a subtle example and so now would not feel any need of reading books which would describe things concerning such experiences to those who have not had such experiences themselves.

So even if you had not given me any quote in support and even though I myself know that in the Gita it is written that Krishna has created all things, my take on this would have remained the same as before.

Krishna as human-like God who creates things like humans is for the consumption of general population. It is not even for the advanced reader not to talk of the one who has himself had an experience of the basic Oneness.

For me the Game of Life manifests itself at two levels. One level is the level of forms - our usual world of separate individualities and relativity - and the other level is that of substance, of which those forms are made - at which all separations stand dissolved into one indistinguishable whole and which may also be called the world of the One or of the Absolute.

All separate individualities begin from the One and finally end in One. Just as separate waves and other disturbances begin from the one sea and then end in it.

Now Krishna to me is just a human-like representation of that underlying Oneness of all phenomena.

Likewise, things can be said to have begun from him as well.

Now as to how they are said to have been CREATED BY Krishna. There is a Hindu saying: "To know God is to be God." This does not mean that by knowing so-called God one becomes some Super human being himself. It just means that one can know God or One or Oneness of whole nature only by merging one's individual identity in the One, in other words by thus being one with the One, finally by being One. It is just as a drop of water in a sea can realize that it itself is the sea only by forgetting or merging its individual identity in or with the sea, in other words by being sea. It is in this sense that in the process of knowing ‘God’ one BECOMES ‘God.’

Now, according to me we can just as well reverse the above saying for our purposes here without affecting its correctness in any way as: "To begin from God is to be CREATED BY God." Again this is not to mean that some superhuman God actually creates something and, moreover, like us humans. It just means that the things begin from God and that means from One or Oneness.

Now, as Krishna to me only represents that One or Oneness, and as all things begin from that One and that means from Krishna, all things can also be said in the above sense to have been CREATED by Krishna. It is in this sense that it is said in the Gita that all things are created by Krishna. This in no way means that some superhuman God Krishna created those things in the way we human beings create things here on earth.

Any human being at the most can experience only the One or Oneness of all nature and then can only know the scheme of things in whatever aspect or detail he is interested in depending upon in which spacetime he is. So to me either Krishna himself was such a man who had first experienced the One and then known about the division of all things or systems into four basic layers or the writer of the Mahabharata Ved Vyasa himself was one such man. He just put what he wanted to say in the mouth of Krishna by characterizing him as God for he himself may have found some truths difficult to describe.

And in fact I know what was the basis of their dividing the systems into four layers. It was not four basic forces for these were not discovered by then. But instead knowledgeable people of that era had discovered about the four basic elements in nature in the form of earth, fire, water and air and it was probably these that gave them ideas as to those four layers. But for me it is because of forces as I have described them in my book.

Regards and happy holidays and New Year to you too!

"And in fact I know what was the basis of their dividing the systems into four layers. It was not four basic forces for these were not discovered by then. But instead knowledgeable people of that era had discovered about the four basic elements in nature in the form of earth, fire, water and air and it was probably these that gave them ideas as to those four layers. But for me it is because of forces as I have described them in my book."

~Harb

******
Dear Harb,

Your thesis/understanding of everything in the universe is beyond any words!

The nature of the world that exists in your thoughts is the world that can only exist in the minds of guys like Harbs.

There are not many like you out there. So your book is there.

Regards
Tanzan Senzaki

"Tanzan, I recommend reading a book by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj called "I am That". It will drive you nuts like it has me, and still you will cherish it as you try to introspect whether it is all jabberwocky!"

~A.K.

****
Dear A.K.,

I had never heard the name of this Maharaj. Today I tried to find out about him at the Internet. I read some of his dialogues and quotes.

To me he is not saying anything new. It is all Vedanta wrapped in a new shroud. Everywhere, the same old Super Consciousness, Oneness and Self as atman. To the people in the West, these ideas seem strange. They get attracted to such thoughts that come in waves in India. And after some time, when the waves subside, there is always a new Maharaj or a new Bhagawan for the new generation of Westerners.

Intentblog tends to have people here who are followers of Bhagawans and Maharajs. It is to some extent entertainment to me. But on the other hand, I feel pity for those who claim to be self enlightened pundits of religious texts, though their knowledge does not go beyond remembering the titles of the texts and sometimes a smattering of some meaningless verses therein.

Happy Holidays.

Kind regards
Tanzan Senzaki

PS: I feel inclined to post some of his quotes here and tell what they mean to someone who can think and is not gullible. Yet, I wait. As the ones who have lost all the credibilty still think they are credible. As they say, old dogs never learn!

Tanzan,
thanks for pointing this out about the maharajs and the swamis. I see so many of my friends blindly following them unquestioningly and I'm yet to meet one who has made me feel he/she is truly an enlightened being.
I have had to see some of the well known ones being completely at loss for words during a couple of press conferences by international media, who asked some hard hitting questions. Several times I have asked each one..how do you tell an enlightened master from a quack and not once have I received a satisfactory answer. There are times I receive lame answers like" You just know".
I just feel so often the answers are all within us. There are some truly special people who make us think and the answers appear through their guidance-and they aren't necessarily the famous swamis and gurus I've met or heard. At times I give people leeway because their organizations are doing some great humanitarian work. I have learnt more about life from my grandmothers, one of whom was illiterate than through the written or spoken words of many maharajs and Mas!
best for the holidays

Kavita,

Smiles! Finally we come not to disagree to agree on something!

Happy holidays and all The Best Laughter.

Kind Regards
Tanzan Senzaki

Thanks Tanzan.
May be its time to add to the laughter on my blog? Any swami jokes?

Dear Tanzan, it is good that you researched the suggestion a bit. I believe Nisargadatta's most well known book is called "I Am That" (which is his thoughts surrounding "Who am I") and is an ad hoc compilation of his conversations with strangers. He never studied Vedanta, and all the philosophical pundits claim his conclusions align perfectly with Jnana Yoga and Advaita Vedanta. I don't know to comment definitively, although it seems there are some overlaps to a casual reader.

What I liked in him was that even though he was very satisfied with the state he said he had reached, he always claimed it was not superior from whatever states we all are in. Something like, "if you are ultimately really satisfied where you are, that is what matters". Perhaps he was not unique in this approach, but that strand of thought strongly resonated in me. I viewed some of his answers in that light and continue(d) reading. In my limited grasp, there isn't any continuity or central point in the book. So what I absorbed from it may not even be what was intended. I suggested it in part to you because some of the back-and-forths there will make for excellent free verse, that could well make the writing stand out better.

You said, "... though their knowledge does not go beyond remembering the titles of the texts and sometimes a smattering of some meaningless verses therein" - a good description of Nisargadatta's book and me at this point! Though I don't know if what's there is 100% meaningless, while I doubt it is 100% true and accurate either.

Dear Divya,

My point, subject to the constraints of: (1) Brevity (2) Not to involve Dharma or any other possibly ambiguous word (3) Assuming the rishis 5000 years ago with continuity into modern times were realized (4) No mention of science (5) The lack of meditative experience, that could render this meaningless (6) Nothing to do with thermodynamics of the cookie, nor chocolate fudge:

Higher Standards!

Perhaps applying it to netiquette may not be an altogether bad idea :) I readily plead guilty to poor expression. Have a great new year, and as always, thanks for your words of wisdom.

An inquisitve observer and wannabe believer.

"Thanks Tanzan.
May be its time to add to the laughter on my blog? Any swami jokes?"

~kavita chhibber

****

Jokes about sadhus and swamis?
What a joke!
They are the jokes in themselves,
They are the laughing stocks.

Not to all,
Not to their blind followers,
Whose brains are lulled
By spiritual thoughts.

But to those who value
Brain over blind faith,
Those who have open minds,
Not shut in spiritual ruts.

Tanzan Senzaki

Whew! A.K. - I'm just glad you're not mad with me. Higher standards! I'll say cheers to that. Just don't be a wannabe anything. In any case I don't see you as one.

BTW, I just finished reading this article on QP that I'm sure you'll like. Nothing to do with what we've been talking about, just generally.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/27/science/27eins.html

Will only have sporadic computer access after tomorrow so in case I don't check in Happy New Year to all.

A.K.,

One of my passions is to fool with words, to tease them, to court them, to see beauty in them when they dance together to my enjoyment.

I will see how my words would like to play with Sri Sri One-hundred-eight Nisargadatta Maharaj!

Kind Regards
Tanzan Senzaki

Kavita,

When you next come to India come to interview me -an ordinary person and not a swami or anything else - about all those things which you interviewed the so-called swamis for. I bet I will satisfiy you about everything you asked those swamis etc or and yet without the need of invoking any God or religion or whatever...All is rather science now...

It is important to note though that real swamis (only a rarity)themselves do not proclaim to be any special persons, they say repeatedly they are just ordinary people, it is people or media who make them so.

Kavita,

When you next come to India come to interview me -an ordinary person and not a swami or anything else - about all those things which you interviewed the so-called swamis for. I bet I will satisfiy you about everything you asked those swamis etc and yet without the need of invoking any God or religion or whatever...All this is rather science now...

It is important to note though that real swamis (only a rarity)themselves do not proclaim to be any special persons, they say repeatedly they are just ordinary people, it is people or media who make them so. I don't know many though but I knew only one, Ramana Maharshi and he was like this, people just will not leave him alone. I have heard of this Nassargadatta (?) maharaj only a couple of days before and that too only here. But I think even in his case it is people who have thrust upon him that masterhood etc etc. I can understand his experience though and even know that it is true.

A fool does not know
When he's called a fool.
As his wisdom lies
Just being a fool!

Not mad? Still friends?
My dad used to say:
Better to have wise enemy
Than foolish friends.

Tanzan Senzaki

Thanks Tanzan, well written.
Harb, why do you call yourself ordinary? I think every one is born with their own special gifts and you are an extraordinary writer and thinker, just as so many others I find on this blog. I do however try to keep an open mind about every thing-even when I go to listen/interview some of these swamis and gurus and the Mas.Its really interesting that a lot of what they say is old wine in a new bottle! I guess as long as they really understand and appreciate what they speak and preach, that is good enough for me.
We all need strength and hope and compassion in difficult times and at times what we are told resonates better,when spoken by others-it just reinforces what our inner voice is telling us.
A.K. I hope you will not think I was commenting on what you've read. You are one of the most gracious and articulate people among the posters and I always enjoy your posts.So just wanted to make that clear. It was just recently that I saw two of my friends go crazy over this Ma who I just don't think much of. This lady has invited me several times, to her so called ashram asking for publicity..she names drops like crazy and I have noticed quite a few of these so called women who are supposed to be spiritual Mas, are abused women who have been kicked out by their families. My sympathies are with them for what they have suffered but its tough at times to swallow some of the things they speak. Again as Harb said the truly enlightened don't need to tout their credentials. I think some of the best advice I've received strangely is from children!
They are so uncomplicated, so pure and honest..
and ofcourse I agree with Harb, that many of the so called gurus and their powers are created and hyped by the media, and may I add their followers.

I saw more arrogance in some of those attending to the gurus than the gurus themselves. hmm maybe I'll write about these experiences.

Kavita,

By ordinary person I just meant that I am no swami or Maharaj etc.

Happy to see you and TZ becoming friendly with each other. How beautiful!

Harb,
how are you up at this unearthly hour?

I totally agree Kavita. There's something about the guru scene that always ends up turning into a Koolaid cult. And the devotees look at you pathetically like poor thing she doesn't see the light. And the beatific smiles all around, that's about the most annoying thing in the world. And each one thinks their guru is the real deal. There's almost nothing right about the guru scene. Back in the ages past if you went to a guru he'd take one look at you and say just go live your life and come back in 25 years or 50 years or whatever the heck it was you needed to work out your stuff before you could be initiated. Nowadays any tom, dick or harry is welcome - they pay money after all - and sometimes I think the gurus and disciples totally deserve each other.

Kavita,

First, just went to bed a biy early...then there was some noise nearby and I woke up...saw t was 2 something...felt will not be able to slep for a while now...so thought of having a look at the blog...ound you and TZ mushy mushy..got further interested....and that is that....no just gulam jamuns came to mind I dont know why...lol.

well said Divya. I just got inspired to write my next blog on this. without taking names I'm going to share some of the stuff I've seen. Hope all of you will enjoy reading my take in it!

Sorry for the typos I have not lighted the bulb lol

And btw, I am on earth so why it is an unearthy hour lol..

now i will go for a glass of tea...

btw, what is the time at your place now? and TZ at yours if you happen to read it?

ha ha Harb ..I will eat the gulab jamuns in person when I come to Delhi in the summer.
Its the new year spirit..we call it forgive and forget and move on to a happier tomorrow. Now if you say any more naughty things I will call aditi in san francisco and ask her to make you blush!

"...ound you and TZ mushy mushy..got further interested....and that is that....no just gulam jamuns came to mind I dont know why...lol."

~Harb

****

Harb, I do not know what laughter you guys are having on Kavita's thread, but your dreams of garam garam gulab jamuns (hot, hot, fried cheese balls dipped in sugar syrup) made me laugh! If ever I happen to come to India for a visit, I promise you a big dabbaful (boxful) of them.

Regards
Tanzan Senzaki

if aditi comes i will become a swami and enter into moun varta...

Harb,

These are the current times all over the planet.

Change: Sort by Country | Sort by Time Zone
Set your preferred time and date formats - e.g. 12 hour am/pm or 24 hour

Abu Dhabi Wed 2:39 AM Halifax Tue 6:39 PM New Orleans Tue 4:39 PM
Addis Ababa Wed 1:39 AM Hanoi Wed 5:39 AM New York Tue 5:39 PM
Adelaide * Wed 9:09 AM Harare Wed 12:39 AM Odesa Wed 12:39 AM
Aden Wed 1:39 AM Havana * Tue 6:39 PM Oslo Tue 11:39 PM
Aklavik Tue 3:39 PM Helsinki Wed 12:39 AM Ottawa Tue 5:39 PM
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Lol Tanzan,

If anybody comes to us we offer them gulam jamuns not take from them...we play host to them and not vice versa...

If you happen to come to India it will be my pleasure to overload you with gulam jamuns and others sweets of your liking....

And Kavita...yes next summer...I will offer you gulam jamuns and even an interview...lol...perhaps by then my book will become a bit known in USA and you will find it worthwhile.. (my book is releasing in USA on March 28, 2006).

"btw, what is the time at your place now? and TZ at yours if you happen to read it?"

~Harb

****

Harb,

My time changes
As I go places
When my mood swings
Flying on wings

TS

ron,

tons of thanks...

TZ,

Reading your 'time changes....flying on wings' I suddenly felt flying in vast, open space sitting on a round, big ball of earth...

No, Kavita, not at all. Our posts were virtually concurrent, I believe. And thanks for your kind words. I truly wish I can be even one-tenth as mellow as Aurora hears!

If I my state the obvious, it is good to see Divya, you, and Tanzan interacting in good spirits. It was gracious of you to reach out, and they, equally graciously, responded. Maybe Aurora's reiki worked, Tanzan :) A fitting way to end the year. We still need Jasjit back!

Divya, I too will have no internet connectivity through January as I will be in India and hope to avoid the net. Cheers and best wishes for the new year all!

"Reading your 'time changes....flying on wings' I suddenly felt flying ...." ~Harb

***

Flying sitting
On the ball of Earth,
You will be lost in openness,
In the consciousness of divine oneness.

Be careful before you take
this step. It'll be eternal flying --
Not coming back again to Earth,
You'll merge with Him in the openness!

TS

Has anybody here read "an autoboigraphy of a yogi"?

I would appreciate very much if you can put your comments here.

Hi Najeeb,
I have and it remains one of my favorite books. Do get a copy and read it.

Hi Kavita

thanks for the reply. I have read it already and I have a soft copy too. I would like to know your/others comments about it as I am unable to 'digest' it!!

Give me a few days-have guests for the holidays and am running around butI will be happy to get a dialogue started, unless diyva, Tanzan Harb or A.K would like to help out and give their thoughts on it. I know A.K and Divya are also going to be away from the internet.
Najeeb, I won't forget.
we'll talk about it soon hopefully

Hi Najeeb - I too found that book indigestible and actually wasn't able to read the whole thing. For me I think it was mainly a language issue. The book is very badly written and was probably really written by Yogananda. I found the beginning of the book interesting though and was able to relate to his early experiences with his own guru. Substantively, I would say it is a genuine attempt to describe yoga and I found it to be honest and credible. A much better work in this genre is A Search in Secret India by Paul Brunton.

Thatis true. It took me a while to get through the book, but somehow each time I read it the sincerity shines through. will get ahold of Paul Brunton's book. I'm currently beginning to read the translations of the upanishads by F Max Muller, and a book recommended by a friend- meditations and spiritual life by swami yatishwarananda of the ramakrishna math in Bangalore. Has anyone read either?

Kavita - I don't know about the other book you mention but Max Mueller's works are pretty indigestible too. Besides he was a paid employee of the church and his motive in studying and translating sanskrit was to aid the Brits in better understanding the natives. Speaking of which the RK Misson too is totally infilitrated with missionaries and pretty much in their pocket. I do have some of their books though and continue to get them simply because there are not too many options. But this is just a caveat to bear in mind.

The one huge problem with indian texts is that the real knowledgeable swamis do not know english well enough and the westerners invariably let theology creep into their translations. This is not necessarily a deliberate plot, they simply cannot help it and this is a genuine problem. Since the subject matter of vedanta does not concern itself with theology it sort of defeats the purpose. But something's better than nothing I suppose and that's the way I tend to look at it.

My favorite english version of the Upanishads is "The Upanishads - Breath of the Eternal" by Swami Prabhavananda and Frederick Manchester.

Oh no.my poor friend spent a fortune getting this twin set for christmas for me. Thanks Divya. I will try and get the translation by Swami Prabhavananda and Frederick Manchester. She is American and I guess got ahold of whatver she saw available.
I have been asking mom who is a sanskrit scholar to sit down and do some translations for me, but she is so lazy. ..she has won many awards for writing sanskrit plays..She was here and wrote some incredible short stories in hindi, which she insisted I translate and publish in english. I will probably catch her when I go in summer and record the translations.