Advaita and the history of Bharata

[Guest guest]

Dear AdiMa,

 

advaitin, "adi_shakthi16" <adi_shakthi16>

wrote:

>

> Chitta:

>

> Tears started flowing down my cheeks when i read your post this

> morning during Brahmamuhurtha time .

>

> But it is not that only the moghuls who have raped the women of

> bharata - it is the Bharatiyas themselves, a land where the

> GODDESS IS WORSHIPPED , men have for centuries have abused the

> women in countless ways

> But , let me ask you this! IT IS WORSE IF FOREIGNERS COME AND

> RAPE OUR WOMEN AND LOOT OUR COUNTRY BUT it is even worse when

> our own corrupt politicians instead of 'ruling' the country

> or 'ruining' the very moral fabric of Bharata varsha , the land

> of Sitas, Draupadis and Kannagis ?

> Chitta : here is the million dollar question - A country which

> sends ITS own religious head ( the present Sankaracharya of

> kanchi mutt) that too from the great ADI SHANKARA LINEAGE to

> the Jail on a false pretext . cannot blame the British and

> moghuls for all its current problems ... The british only sent

> freedom fighters to jail not religious heads ?

>

> sorry !

 

 

Don't be sorry, AdiMa, I agree fully with you. Let me reproduce here

an extract from my article 'The Sword of Kali' to reinforce my

agreement with you:

 

 

"What then is the problem with Hinduism today? What is it that ails

the Hindu? Why has the Hindu now become a caricature of his old self?

Why does the Hindu today take the lesser truths of the sciences to

justify the higher truths of his religion? Why does the modern Hindu

mask the great revelations of his religion under silly and infantile

clichés? Why has the Hindu become a shadow of those foreigners

without whose support he cannot even pronounce the truths of his own

religion? And above all, why has the Hindu lost the vitality and the

supreme courage with which he once laughed at the chimera of the

world and even faced death as a mere bubble in the sea of life? Is

this the Hindu that is descended from the race of Harishchandra and

Yajnavalkya?"

 

"The answer to all these questions is rooted in one simple fact – the

fact that we Hindus have forsaken our dharma. We are caught today in

the gale of a storm and it tosses us about in all directions. The

whirl of the storm is not outside us; it is within us, created by the

vacuum that we have ourselves allowed to birth within our souls. The

malady that plagues Hinduism today is not due to the conquering

Moghuls that came down from the North-West, nor is it due to the

colonial British that came sailing across the seas, nor is it due to

the glitter and kaleidoscope of the modern West; it is due to our own

debilitating weakness and inadequacy. This weakness has created such

an intense vacuum within us that it pulls in all manner of alien

things into our souls. We do not go out to ape the West or to fall

prey to consumerism; it comes pouring into the vacuum within us

because we have stripped ourselves of our wholeness and now the

emptiness in us lets in whatever lies in the vicinity, be they gems

or be they garbage."

 

 

Warm regards,

Chittaranjan

[Guest guest]

Namaste Chittaranjanji, Hershji, Adiji, Ramji and all readers of this

thread,

 

I was not disputing whether there was any basis for recrimination

concerning the historical record or any other of the colonial

depredations. That is a given. Tony and I could keep you going for a

rainy season about Penal Laws, extirpation of the Irish Language,

evictions, famine etc.

 

As to the idea that Indians have no sense of history, that sounds like one

of the enabling myths generated by colonialism itself which Edward Said

has written about in 'Orientalism'. A great people constantly reinvent

and reimagine themselves throughout history.

 

Am I right in thinking that Max Muller was never in India. Those

Indologists were full of bizarre theories that come out of the same box as

Atlantis and Mu (sorry Tony) and the lost tribe of Israel.

 

Best Wishes,

Michael.

[Guest guest]

Namaste Ramesh Krishnamurthyji, Krishna Prasadji, Ram Chandranji,

Michaelji,

 

The discussion on this topic has been interesting. Ramesh

Krishnamurthy-ji has very succintly pointed out the injustice that is

happening even today in our country. And Michaelji has pointed out

how the wounds caused by history, and especially our perceptions of

these wounds, can easily lead to things like fascist agendas. There

is truth in it, for Hitler is its proof. I would say that when past

wounds are opened up they have the potential to cause serious

derailments in the human psyche - we have merely to look at the

incidents of terrorism that are taking place in the name of religion

to see the havoc it is causing. So, what is the way out?

 

I believe the way out is given by dharma. A wound is not healed by

hate. Hate is itself a wound. To act according to dharma is not to

act with hate, but to act rightly. It is to love the Moghuls and the

British and the members of the Church even as we refuse to bow down

to anything that goes against our dharma. Dharma is rightful action

alone, disassociated from all emotions, and it has no conflict with

the love that one bears towards all people. Harishchandra loved his

wife and yet he beheaded her for the sake of rightful action. Dharma

forbids us to rob our neighbours. It also forbids us to be passive

when the neighbour comes to sack our house and wife and children.

 

Whether the injustices of the past are corrected or not is not left

to us, but to act according to dharma is certainly in our hands. If

we do not act according to dharma, it is not to the detriment of our

country, but to the detriment of ourselves. Our country will take

care of itself. Yesterday I received an interesting mail from a very

dear friend who has been following this discussion from afar, and she

writes that our culture has within it a natural power of resurgence

to come back again and again. What she wrote appealed to my heart,

and I take the liberty of reproducing it here below:

 

 

"True, we have been awfully negligent of our glorious

tradition and are guilty of ignoring it or dismissing

it all away even without first knowing what it is.

However, i strongly feel, that to one who has been

born in the land of Bharath, the heritage of its

wonderful learning and culture can never be totally

lost or destroyed. It remains even if only as

embers, to be up in flame when it is hit by a kindling

splinter. That is the reason why or how you, me, and

scores of others from my time, your generation and the

younger ones too are lapping up all information from

all quarters and trying to understand our dear Land

and its rich traditions and the mechanism by which it

has maintained itself unyielding to the persistent

efforts to destabilizing it. Once you grant what we

have is the veritable Truth itself, Apaurusaia and

Anantha, it throws up people for its defence

automatically, this is also unceasing, All our great

reformers from our Revered Adi Sankhara to Vivekananda

to the Sage of Arunachala and the scores of

innumerable sages unknown and unsung are the evidence

of such a spirit in action. BTW i was surprised to

learn the Hill of Arunachala was the abode of a number

of yogis and sages that the world has not come to know

of yet, so must it be in other parts of our land. This,

I believe is the unfolding of Iccha Shakti, Gnyana

Shakti and Kriya Shakti swaroopa of the Supreme Power

Sri Maha Tripura Sundari. The Truth needs no special

efforts, the efforts are there already. And if there

are such special efforts then they are there because

of the operation of the Shakti. That is how i see the

meeting of the West and the East too. It had to

come about The West governed by the Organized

Religion of the churches and the East by

Religion organized only by the Natural Order of

Dharma, meet sometimes to clash and kill and uproot,

sometimes to mesh and forge a unity. The young

generation of Indians here are a testimony to that.

Unlike me, these young parents are insistent on their

toddlers speaking only in their mother tongue,

Marathi, Gujerathi, and even Tamil, {We the Tamil

brahmins are known for their preferring English to

their own mother tongue.} It was very impressive to

see a big crowd of young couples streaming into the

the Chinmaya Center in Boston to learn the Vedic

Chantings, so is the keen renaissance like fervour in

learning our Carnatic/Hindistani music and dance.

The technology is a great support here. This kind of

spirit is operating in India as well. My own brother,

who was referred to partly in fun as a firangi by his

nephews for his very British habits, and who thought

very poorly of our culture, as a culture that

ill-treats its women and thrives on equivocation, and

to whom, my father stopped teaching Sanskrit because

he could not say what neelum in Sanskrit means. Now

since two years, he has learnt the Gita with Swami

Gambhirananda's book, the book belongs to my late

father, thoroughly, almost by heart, he can read the

Sanskrit text well, he did ofcourse rely on the audio

tapes of the text. His wife was /is his sole disciple, this

is done like religious duty early morning at 6am both

of them sit and listen to a chapter every day, guests

or no guests. If this could happen anything could and

would. For he has never stepped into a kovil. Perhaps

he did when his son was married. No priest has visited

the house so no poojas or homams, nothing... This

is truly an unfoldment of the Spirit, what else. When the

time comes nothing can prevent it from happening.

This is the truth i glean from our puranas, our

puranic sages and characters would not be fazed by any

of the present day phenomenons, it is only we who are

surprised when we read their stories, about Siva and

Brahhma and Vishnu turning into women before being

able to enter Sripura, i have read only two puranic

texts , the Devi Bhagavatham in tamil and the other

Srimad Bhaghavatham in English, there is not a mention

of one period in either of them of any equanimous

peaceful period of a balance, the three Gunas were as

active as in the days of the Maha Bharatha and now,

so we can take heart and take comfort that all is well

and will end well as of yore. You defined Dharma as the

natural sense of justice, and thatwas always hurt in

all the yugas. I wonder if it has to be so just

because a perfect round can only be in heaven and only

the broken chords always on earth. I do not remember

who said this, either Rossetti or Browning. The dual

can never be perfect, and it is anaadhi and anantha

too."

 

 

Warm regards,

Chittaranjan