Saturday, May 30, 2009

sampradAya, jIvanmukas and abhrahamic religions

The basic promise of a tradition (sampradAya) is by the measurable results that it provides, under different times and places, some of them even testing the tradition to its limit.

All the sampradAyas of sanAtana-dharma excel in such a test. On the whole, it has produced a great lineage of aacharyas and gurus who have not only shown their jIvanmuktitva, but also answered the questions their particular times have raised.

In this test, the notable failures are the abrahamic religions. One of them says that a particular prophet is the son of god with rest of the followers being sinners. The sinners can never reach to the level of son of God. Implicitly, the highest status as defined by the religion itself is inachievable by the religion itself. The other religion even goes on to define this more precisely. It says that there can be no more prophets. Even after stopping to laugh at the preposition, when one understand it, it means that an individual, who is a follower of that cult can never ever raise to the highest level of prophethood, as offered by the religion itself!

These kind of religions, if were kept in a religion-market would be aptly dismissed as a snake-oil-salesmen, as neither can one verify whether a bygone individual is a true son of god, or whether he has actually seen god, which confirms his prophethood. Oh wait, these are abrahmic religions, which means you could never reach to the level of brahman in them!

What kind of bogus!



Read the rest of this entry >>

Sunday, May 24, 2009

Effective Communication: individual and organization

What are the basic premises that an organization or an individual has to satisfy to get his message to the listeners? Is it just charm or substance?

At individual level, the substance is improved by "communication skills", which are in turn improved by a yogic system (yama-niyama and so on).

What helps an organization? Can yama-niyama help an organization like BJP? How can it tackle the hostile media?

In general, what is the yoga that helps the collective intellect to of a country like India, so that it can effectively keep in "control" the media, so that it does not lead the collective intellect astray. This "control" has to be done while giving it freedom.




Read the rest of this entry >>

Saturday, May 02, 2009

Gita Quiz

In the past, I had linked to a Gita Quiz posted on advaitin list by Prof. VK. Here is a link to a Gita Quiz from Chinmaya Mission.


Read the rest of this entry >>