To Anna re: orthodoxy

[Guest guest]

Dear Anna,

 

I was very glad to receive your letter. Especially that

themes, touched by you are constant items of my thoughts.

 

At first sorry for delay with an answer: our line was

disconnected during a few days. Any way I usually visit

our internet center on tuesdays and fridays to work with

letters.

 

Of course I can send you mantras and many different books and

articles on vedic philosophy and astrology. But at first Anna,

tell me please: 1). Do you prefer to have this materials in

russian or in english? 2). In the case of russian language do

you use Windows or MS DOS cyrillic encoding. 3). May be you know

LaTeX publishing system? If this is true, I can send you mantras

with diacritical signs, made in LaTeX format. Also you can find

a great amount of vedic (and not only) philosophy materials

(FREE!) on cite: www.philosophy.ru I.e. Bhagavad Gita, Srimad

Bhagavatam, Visnu Purana, Upanishads, Jaimini sutra, Brihat

Parashara Hora Sastra as like as Hegel and russian religious

philosophy, and so on.

 

You have touched serious, profound and delicate theme of

connection and interference between our orthodoxy and vedic

philosophy. I will try to answer you according to my

understanding and only briefly, because a good answer must have

a volume of a big book and would be no less than Ph.D. degree

dissertation.

 

1. I myself tend to be a devotee of Lord Sri Krishna Caitanya

Mahaprabhu. My favourite books are: Sri Caitanya Caritamrita,

Sri Caitanya Bhagavata and Sri Caitanya Mangala. Nevertheless

orthodoxy is also dear to me. Somewhen in 1990 one devotee

in Moscow ISKCON temple, who had extrasensory perception

said that in my previous life I was an orthodoxy monk in Russia

at a time of saint Sergiy Radonejskiy. My personal guesses

only confirm this information. I don't know yet how one can

exactly test it by Vedic Astrology methods, so if one of

the list Vedic Astrology experts could do it, I would be

very grateful. My birth details are: March 22, 1965, 06:12 AM,

Vladivostok, long. 131e54, lat. 43n08, Gri += 10h.

You can see that my Lagna is Aquarius with Saturn in it.

As I know Aquarius is a sign of Russia and orthodoxy,

as well as sign of Kanada. Our dear Goravani Prabhu in a some

sense is also russian, because his moon is in Aquarius.

Regarding this I think that can deeply understand orthodoxy

philosophy and make some bold statements about it and it's

parallels with other religious traditions.

 

2. All Russian and of course Serbian culture is strongly

saturated with orthodoxy inherited from Vizantia, so that

any person via this culture be he/she externally atheist,

buddhist or someone else, internally will be made of

such cultural archetypes: patterns of thinking, encoded in

language, child stories, anecdotes etc. Russian vaisnava

will inevitably have a hue of orthodoxy, as American

vaisnava will have a hue of pragmatism. More correctly

such differences can be analysed by K.G. Jung typology.

 

3. One can see at least two main patterns of cultural

interaction. When one culture intrudes into other culture in a

form of religious sect, such sect can either oppose to aboriginal

culture or seek coinciding elements in both cultures to enrich

each other. In the first case sect exists in a form of little

islands of fanatics (with a monopoly on Absolute truth),

surrounded by an ocean of so called "demons", "materialists",

"karmis", "nonbelievers" and so on. Such sect either disappears

in a course of time, or in a worst case can as a cancer kill

healthy social organism. In the second case sect incorporates

into society, it's philosophy makes to sound in resonance

different "strings of culture" and as a result such injection

becomes a remedy to a sick socium.

 

4. Such resonating "strings of culture" I will try to count

for an orthodoxy and vedic cultures:

 

a). Sanskrit and russian languages are very near to each other.

So many common words, names of many russian rivers, mountains

etc. have sanskrit origin. English: one, two, three, four;

sanskrit: eka, dva, tray, chatur; russian: odin, dva, tri,

chatyre. Name of Lord Krishna can be compared with russian word

"krasny" - attractive, "krasna" girl - attractive, beautiful

girl. Name of Christ is closely connected with name Krishna.

 

b). In an orthodox tradition as in vedic one there is also a

practice of chanting God's holy names in a form of Jesus prayer:

'Jesus Christ, son of God, be merciful to me'. This prayer was

chanted on beads during hours a day, and results of this were

very similar to chanting of Hare Krishna mantra by vaisnavas.

There is a book "Sincere talks of wanderer to his spiritual

father" concerning all this, written by an unknown monk in 19-th

century.

 

c). Russian religious philosophy is almost identical with

vaisnavas philosophy. It was a set: Kant - Hegel - Shelling -

Solov'ev - Berdyaev, Florenskiy, Frank, Losev. A.F. Losev had

a work "Philosophy of a name" (1923) where he grounded practice

of chanting holy names. Here orthodox term 'imyaslaviye' is used

which is 'glorification of a holy name'. In his work "Dialectic

of a myth" (1930) for which he was imprisoned by Stalin, Losev

formulates main features of an ideal philosophy: existence of

God, immortality and reincarnation of a soul and so on. Other

philosophies are only aberrations of this ideal philosophy.

 

d). There are pre-christian russian scriptures, known as

"russian vedas". In it are deities named 'kryshen' and 'vyshen'

and stories, connected with them are alike stories of Bhagavata

Purana.

 

There are many other items, but I feel that no one can reach

infinity.

 

Dear Anna, please excuse me for so long letter, concocted by

famous 'satabhish' intellect (in my case). Briefly I regard

vedic philosophy as congenial extension of orthodoxy.

It is a great and very valuable thing.

 

With best regards to you and all list members,

 

Sergey (Saunaka Rsi das). skozi