Shankara's Introduction to his Commentary on Gita

On Gita Jayanthi, by some strange coincidence, I happened to start the English translation of the Srimad Bhagavad Gita by Swami Nikhilananda. The learned Swami -- from an institution which I immensely respect -- has done an excellent English translation of the commentary of Shankara. Shankara, when he wanted to start, some can say reinstate, the philosophy of Advaita in the pavithra bhoomi (sacred land) of India, wrote a commentary on the Bhagavad Gita. This was a part of his commentary on each of the text of prasthana-traya, the other two being The Upanishads and The Brahmasutras. The Bhagavad Gita is a part of Mahabharata and technically should be considered a smriti (remembered) text. It is however considered a sruti (revelatory) text due to its source (Lord Krishna, an avatar) and the influence upon Indians of generations.

The Bhagavad Gita, being such a great source of daily-inspiration for millons of Indians spanning across centuries, has been called by some scholars as a book that is (1) not amenable to Advaitic interpretation and (2) has many inconsistent thoughts. The scholars -- including the great Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan himself -- had to go through great pains in writing translations of Gita. They had to use classifications like (1) the first six chapters (called karma-shatkam) talk about the concept of renunciation of the deeds of karma as a method of liberation, (2) the next six chapters (called bhakti-shatkam) talk about the love of the personal God as a method of liberation and (3) the last six chapters (called gyana-shatkam) talk about the way of knowledge as a method of liberation.

Another great scholar, Eliot Deutsch, the learned scholar who has written the books exposing the philosophical content on Advaita and source books on Advaita, himself had to use the terms "progressive teaching of Gita" for explaining the "inconsistency" of the Gita.

All this may confuse a spiritual-student -- including the author of this post -- to mistakenly conclude about the message of the Gita. This is particularly true when: (1) if the student is mature enough to search for message in the Gita, but not mature enough -- as the author of the post was -- to understand the message that was clear (hind sight is always 20/20). (2) Also, in students who have a reasonable amount of maturity and thirst for knowledge, the words "The gita is not considered an Advaitic Text" can lead one away from Gita, when it is known that Advaita is the crux of indian philosophical systems. If such a student searches for a message in Upanishads, he is bound to be more confused, as the Upanishads are too experiences of seers. The Upanishads themselves being experiences of different seers in different times and situations would surely confuse any such student.

The way out of that confusion is, as it always should have been, the well known axiom: "go to the source". Shankara, being a brilliant philosopher himself does not have an inch of confusion and dispels all confusions from any such students hearts. The commentary of Shankara on Gita, nay Shankara's introduction itself to the Gita itself, is enough to dispel any such doubts on any spiritual practitioner. Before beginning such a reading, let us begin an old prayer that explains the significance of each Gita in the context of Upanishads:

The Upanishads are as a herd of cows; Krishna the Son of a cowherd, is their Milker. Arjuna is the calf, the supreme ambrosia of the Gita the milk, and the wise man the drinker.

Here is the introduction:

Of the two kinds of dharma dealt with in the Vedas: the one characterized by activity and the other by renunciation. This twofold Dharma, the cause of the stability of the world order and also the direct means by which men attain prosperity and the Highest Good [Liberation], was followed by members of the different castes -- the brahmin, kshatriya, and the rest -- and of the different dharmas, desirous to secure their welfare.

People parctised the Vedic dharma for a long time. Then lust arose among them; discrimination and wisdom declined. Unrigheousnedd began to outweigh righteousness. Thus, when unrighteousness prevailed ine world, Vishnu [the all pervading one], the First Creator, also known as Narayana, wishing to ensure the continuance of the universe, incarnated Himself, in part, as Krishna. He was born to Devaki and Vasudeva for the protection of the brahmins on earth and their spiritual ideal. By the protection of the brahmin ideal, the dharma of the Vedas is preserved, since all different castes and ashramas are under its control.

The Lord, the eternal Possessor of Knowledge, Soveignty, Power, Strength, Energy, and Vigour, brings under His control maya -- belonging to Him as Vishnu -- the primordial Nature, characterized by the three gunas. And then, through the maya, He is seen as though born, as though endowded with a body, and as though showing compassion for men; for He is, in reality, unborn, unchanging, the Lord of all created beings, and by nature eternal, pure, illuminated, and free.

Though the Lord had nor purpose of His own to serve, yet, with the sole desire of bestowing favour on men, He taught this twofold Vedic dharma to Arjuna, who was deeply sunk in the ocean of grief and delusion; for a dharma spreads and grows when accepted by high-minded persons.

It is this dharma taught by the Lord that the omniscient and venerable Vyasa, the compiler of Vedas, embodied in seven hundred verses under the name of the Gita.

This scripture, the Gita, is a compendium of the essential teachings of the whole of the Vedas; its meaning is extremely difficult to grasp. Many commentators desiring to present a clear idea of that meaning, have explained the words, and the meaning of the words of the sentenses, and also the arguments. But, I find that, to the people of ordinary understanding, these explanations convey diverse and contradictory meanings. Therefore, I intend to write a brief commentary on the Gita, with a view to determining precisely what it signifies.

The ultimate aim of the Gita is, in a word, the attainment of the Highest Good, characterized by the complete cessation of relative existence and its cause. This is realized by means of that dharma whose essence is devotion to Self-knowledge attained through the renunciation of all action. With reference to this dharma laid down in the Gita, the Lord says in the Anugita:

"That dharma is quite sufficient for the attainment of Brahman." (Mahabharatha Chapter on Ahsvamedha, xvi 12)
In the same treatise it is said:
"He who is righetousness and without unrighteousness -- he who is absorbed in one Goal, silent and without thinking."
"Knowledge is characterized by renunciation."

In the concluding chapter of the Bhagavad Gita, Sri Krishna says to Arjuna: "Abandon all dharmas and come to Me alone for shelter." (XVIII 66)

The dharma characterized by activity and prescribed for the different castes and ashramas is, no doubt, a means of securing worldly welfare and also of attaining the regions of the gods; but when it is practised in a spirit of self-surrender to the Lord, and without desire for fruit, it leads to the purification of the mind. A man of pure mind becomes fit to acquire devotion to the path of knowledge and attains Knowledge. Thus by means of the dharma of activity, one ultmately realizes the Highest Good. With this view in mind the Lord says in the Gita: "He who works without attachment, resigning his actions to Brahman." (V. 10) "The yogis act, without attachment, for the purification of the heart." (V. 11)

The purpose of the two fold dharma described in the Gita is the attainment of the Highest Good. The subject-matter is the Supreme-Reality known as Vasudeva, the Ultimate Brahman. It expounds both in a specific manner. Thus the Gita treats of a specific subject, with a specific end in view, and there is a specific relation between the subject-matter and the object.

Knowledge of the Gita enables one to attain the goal of all human aspiration. Hence my attempt to explain its teachings.

May we all mature enough to understand the real message in Gita.
Om Tat Sat! Read the rest of this entry >>

Link to FAQ in Polyhedral Computation by Fukuda

Here is a link to the extremely useful and well written FAQ in polyhedral computation by Fukuda. Here is a PDF version.


See the sections on face-lattice, polarity aka. duality and Minkowski-Weyl. The number of facets of a d-dimensional, n-vertex polytope grows linearly with n. However, its slope is so high that it grows intractable within no time (fascinating!).

Note: See the sub-sections where many problems, simple and hard, are discussed.

11/25: Probably the polylib-page on Polyhedra , with material taken from Schrijver's book is useful for definitions. Read the rest of this entry >>

LibraryThing: fun stuff with books

I recently became a member of LibraryThing, which allows people to keep an online catalogue of books. It has a simple interface to add books (with a search engine backed up my Amazon power!) and allows one to see some fun stats. Here are some: My author gallery, my author cloud and my tag cloud. Read the rest of this entry >>

Matrix Cook Book and parody of P = / != NP.

The Matrix Cook Book looks very useful and has ben added to the quick links. It was a quick link in Suresh's Geomblog. The Geomblog also has a parody of a typical P=/!=P conversaton in comp.theory. Thanks for both Suresh! Read the rest of this entry >>

Ramakrishna Mission and TTD

Being an admirer of expositions of Vedanta by great men, many of whom happen to be from Ramakrishna Mission, it fills up by heart with immense joy when I see the following on the backcover of a translation of Upanishads book:



The words say "Tirumala Tirupathi Devasthanam is supporting Ramakrishna Mission in bringing these books at low prices." Tirupathi Venkateshwara supporting Ramakrishna Mission is the manifestation of the statement from Bhagavad Gita: "Dharma Samsthapanarthaya Sambhavaami Yuge Yuge", where Naarayana supports Dharma and the Vedic truths in many forms.

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Some of the books on Vedanta I have read by people of the great order:

1. Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita by Swami Prabhavananda
   
2. Self-Knowledge etc. Swami Nikhilananda
   
3. Upanishads by Swami Sarvananda (both English and Telugu)
   
4. Lectures on Mandukya by Swami Ranganathananda
   
5. The Upanishads by Swami Gambhirananda
   

I have an intuitive feeling that, in the last century, Ramakrishna Mission has atleast matched the peethams set up by Shri Adi Shankara in propagating Vedanta. Read the rest of this entry >>

Convex Polytopes and notes from Develin's works

Mike Develin is a Mathematician who has written a compendium (PDF link) to accompany Ziegler's wonderful book. Also, the first two chapters of his thesis (PDF link) are a great read for anyone interested in convex polyhedra. Some notes:

On homogenization and equivalence:

Given a polytope P\subset \mathbb{R}^d, we can form a cone associated to it by considering the cone of all points {(1,v)} where v \in V. Two crucial points: (1) The shape of the polytope can be recovered by intersecting this cone with the hyperplane x = 1. (2) You might notice that the shape of the polytope we obtain is dependent on the orientation of the polyhedral cone in R^d. This leads to the very important concept of projective equivalence. Two polytopes are defined to be projectively equivalent if they can be obtained as cross-sections of the same polyhedral cone one dimension higher; this notion of equivalance is stronger than the notion of combinatorial equivalence, where two polytopes are equivalent if their faces have same combinatorial structure, and weaker than the notion of affine equivalence, which relates polytopes which are affinely isomorphic to each other.

On polarity:

the face-lattice L(P) is just a partially ordered set, or poset with elements being the faces of the polytope and F < G if F \subseteq G.
...
One key property of polytopes is that the intersection of any two faces is itself a face, which corresponds to the fact that any two elements of the poset have a unique maximal lower bound. The aforementioned notion of combinatorial equivalence corresponds to two polytopes having the same face lattice.

With face lattice, it is easy to give a combinatorial description of the polar polytope P^\Delta. The polar polytope realizes the full power of the duality between the two formulations of polytopes, in terms of vertices and in terms of inequalities. Assuming that P is full-dimensional (embedded in R^d, where d is the dimension of P), P^\Delta is the object in the dual space V^* consisting of those linear functionals f for which f(x) \le 1 holds everywhere on P. To do this, we need to pick the position of the origin inside P, but once we have done this, the entire combinatorial and indeed projective type of P^\Delta is determined. Furthermore, the face-lattice of P^\Delta is precisely the opposite poset of L(P).
...

... the Farkas lemma implies that the polar polytope is the convex hull of the facet-defining functionals, which provides a natural correspondence between the vertices of P^\Delta and the facets of P. In fact, the lattices are isomorphic under this correspondence; the face lattice is completely determined by which subsets of {1,2,...,n} are facets, so this, along with the fact that the vertices of P correspond to the facets of P (as constraint f(x) <= 1 on P is equivalent to the intersection of half-spaces f(v) <= 1 for v \in V) exhibits explicit correspondence.

Thanks Mike!

Postscript (11/05): The chapter "Basic Properties of Convex Polytopes" is available via the following link: ftp://ftp.math.tu-berlin.de/pub/combi/ziegler/WWW/archiv/049polychap2.ps.gz(with thanks to Prof. Ziegler). The chapter is from the book: Handbook of Discrete and Computational Geometry with the following table of contents. Read the rest of this entry >>

Happy Deepavali!

The souls were drenched in the darkness of unreality,
tied up by the demon of duality,
to the chains of karma and samskaras.

The blue one in his infinite compassion was coming to rescue,
"I too would come", said his shakti.
"That is a battleground and the souls are in a pity state,
you would be sorry to see them" said the lord.
"more the reason", said his shakti,
"further, victory is not possible without me".
"Ok", said the Lord.

Battle ensured. It was bloody.
The hordes of the souls,
that had no time to wait for emancipation,
had already become trophies in the other side.
The darkness of unreality, was so immense,
that even the lord thought to himself,
"I am the manifestation of brahman,
why is this darkness taking so long?"
He sat meditating.

His shakti thought,
"This is no ordinary battleground,
the oppressed souls are refusing,
to see the true light within them."
"The demon does not have the power
to stand before even one of them."
"The chains are rusty and the
demon is unreal, to tie these souls."
"What is needed is self-realization."
"Let me help them by revealing myself".

She said to them,
"I am satya, the truth and reality. See me!"
"You oppressed souls! know that
this darkness of unreality does not exist,
this demon of duality does not
have power over you."
"Know thyself!
Know that your inner self,
is as infinite, and as potent,
as that which drives the lord here."
"tat tvam asi. tat tvam asi".

The souls realized the illusory nature of the demon,
it was Brahman everywhere.
The lord wokeup and smiled,
it was Brahman everywhere.
Filled everywhere was,
the radiance of a thousand suns,
it was Brahman everywhere.
Not that there was a time when it was not,
it was Brahman everywhere.
Truth, peace and joy prevailed.
Om Shanthi Shanthi Shanthi. Read the rest of this entry >>

Audio renditions of Sri Dakshinamurthy Stotram

Here are two audio renditions of Sri Dakshinamurthy Stotam:

1. From Kamakoti.org, thanks to this post on advaitin.


2. By unknown artists in fusion style, thanks to this post on advaitin.

Postscript: Please see this link for more details. Read the rest of this entry >>

tera teeyaga raada ...

It is said that when Thyagaraja, went to Tirupathi, a curtain was drawn -- as it usually done, so that seva, or alankar can be done -- between him and his lord. He waited long, and when he -- the life long devotee of Rama, the absolute in the form of prince of Ayodhya -- could not wait any longer to see his lord, he sang:

tera teeyaga raada naaloni
tera teeyaga raada
tirupathi venkata ramana matsaramagu tera teeyaga raada

which roughly means

Oh lord, please remove the curtain of ignorance which separates us.

He of course was referring to his saguna-brahman as Sita-pati. What difference does it make when the devotee is longing for uniting with his lord, whether it be nirguna or saguna? What difference does it make, when all he wants is, to be removed of his ignorance or EGO. The ego, which is the final obstruction between a devotee and his God, the jiva and his Ishvara, the Vishistadvaitic-atman and its qualified-with-attributes-brahman, the soul attaining its Nirvana, the Advaitic-eternal-atman with the eternal-brahman?

Not surprisingly, the curtain fell off and Thyagaraja is said to have finally merged with Rama-brahma?

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What use is of feelings if they do not come into practise in daily life? What use is the ability to remove the ego when with oneself, when in any kind of communication, nay even presence of others does it manifest itself? Is this the way of the world? Probably not. The key may be to pray to the Goddess Maya herself, to Ma Kali, Ma Lalitha Tripurasundari to reveal herself.


... Dakshinamurthy ruupini
Sanakadi Samaradhya Siva Gyana Pradayini ...

(from Lalitha Sahasranamam)
O southward-facing one (O kind one), who gave the eternal knowledge to Sanaka and others, please do the same to me. Read the rest of this entry >>

Sridakshinamurtistotram at advaitin

Disambiguation (1, 2 and 3) at advaitin between shridakshinamurthy stotram, that begins with "vishwam darpana drishya maana nagari tulyam" and others. It seems that there are three stotras by Shankara on Dakshinamurthy and the convention seems to be to call the most popular one (one that begins with "vishwam") as ShriDakshinamurthy Stotram. It is erroneously called astakam, as it obviously does not have eight shlokas.

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Shri Subramanian continues his exposition of the ShriDakshinamurthy Stotram. In part VIII, he comments on verse 7 of the stotra.

bAlyaadhiShvapi jAgradaadiShu tathA sarvAsvavasthAsvapi
vyAvR^ittaasvanuvartamaanamahamityantaH-sphurantam sadaa |
svAtmaanam prakaTIkaroti bhajatAm yo mudrayaa bhadrayaa
tasmai shrIgurumurtaye nama idam shrIdakShiNAmUrtaye || 7 ||

Here are Part VIII-a, Part VIII-b, Part VIII-c, Part VIII-d, Part VIII-e and Part VIII-f.

There is a mistake in numbering VIII-e as VIII-f. Here is a supplementary comment on the word 'dhira' VIII-d dhira.

Link to previous ones.

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Prof. VK's page on Shri Dakshinamurthy stotram. Read the rest of this entry >>

Freedom

I have read the book Advaita Vedanta by Eliot Deutsch many times. Here is a selection on "Freedom", from chapter eight titled Moksha and Jnana-Yoga.

The distinctive characteristic of most practical and theoretical concerns with freedom is the attempt to discover how one can be free from something: be it one's own passions and appetites, society, laws, or forces of physical nature. Freedom is generally conceived of that state of being or that opportunity which is on the other side of "necessity". Thomas Hobbes sums it up neatly when he writes that "liberty or freedom signifies properly the absence of opposition" [Ref: The Levithanian].

The Advaitic concept of freedom (moksha or mukti) likewise is cast initially in negative terms, as freedom from karma, from actions that bind one to the world, and from the ceaseless round of births and deaths in the world (samsara). But it also recognizes that when freedom is conceived of only in the negative sense of "freedom from," it is not something that human beings ultimately value; and that when taken to its fullest term, freedom is something from which they flee. [emphasis mine]

Whenever one is in a situation of strong constraint, one may indeed earnestly desire freedom from this constraint; one may even indeed become obsessed with the desire to the point when one is rendered impotent to act effectively within the situation; but once all constraints are removed, one finds oneself facing an abyss. One doesn't know what to do, one doesn't know what to make of one's freedom, and rather than face an infinite possibilty, one voluntarily seeks some other kind of constraint. We ceaselessly chain ourselves to things, to ideas and to dreams and illusions. From some inner compulsion, we turn away from the possibility of freedom. We imitate the servitude of others and convince ourselves that we are thereby fulfilling our social responsibility. "Freedom from" is denied by us. In human experience it turns out to be empty of substantial content [Ref. footnote].


This "Freedom from," however, does not denigrate the meaning of freedom: there is another kind of freedom that is a positive goal towards men may strive. The other kind of freedom does not merely lie on the other side of constraint; rather all oppositions between "freedom from" and "necessity" are overcome by it.

The Sanskrit word moksha (or mukti) connotes to the Advaitin "freedom from karma" and also the other kind of spiritual freedom. Moksha, in the positive sense, means the attaining to a state of "at-one-ment" with the depth and quiescence of Reality and with the power of its creative becoming the a Spiritual freedom means the full realization of the potentialities of man as a spiritual being, It means the attaining of insight of oneself; it means self-knowledge and joy of being.

footnote : This denigrating of "freedom from" is not meant, however to deny the validity of the very important distinction between choosing one's constraints and having them imposed upon them by others. The word "liberty" is perhaps more applicable here and is something that is indeed valuable. Because man is unable to endure "freedom from," in the fullest sense of the term, does not imply that he is then subject of whatever constraints may be imposed upon him. Self-chosen constraints are one thing, externally imposed constraints (or involuntary actions) are quite another thing.

Read the rest of this entry >>

New laptop!

A pleasant surprise, my new laptop was outside my door today. It invited me to blog.

A rendition of Ganapathi Atharva Sirsha Upanishad and a good rendition of Dakshinamurthy Stotram, thanks to this post on Advaitin mailing list. I donot know who the artists who sang the Stotram are, but they have done a great job!

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The Western Taoist: Recently in a Pooh session, I read The World of Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner. I also read a couple of illustrated ones like this. (The sub-title is from the book by Hoff.)

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Atanu feels at home and SJ writes about Reason vs. Faith.

One of these -- to paraphrase a saying about another person I admire -- is an philosopher in the garbs of an economist who I have never met. His philosophical thoughts which are rivalled by not many. Dare I even say, his writings rival some of the writings of the great late Raja Rao.

The other -- who I always respected for his sharp intellect, and power with words -- works in M$ and has been away for nearly eight years, though has been my close friend all the time.

In spite of these, I understand, rather experience, the feelings of each of these. Ah, the powers of Internet! Read the rest of this entry >>

Tao and Lance on problem solving

UCLA column on Terrence Tao (the winner of this year's Field's medal). Link, thanks to a comment on Lance's blog. Lance's post on problem solving in math/TCS is quite useful. Read the rest of this entry >>

Two Jewels of books and others

Om Gam Ganapathaye Namah!: (from Ganapathi Atharva Sirsha Upanishad.)

Two Jewels: (1) Translation of Shankara's Self-Knowledge (Atmabodha) by Swami Nikhilananda. It also has a beautiful introduction to Vedanta philosophy with an appendix that includes English translations of many of Shankara's works. (2) Ramakrishna and His Disciples by Christopher Isherwood about Shri. Ramakrishna, the phenomenon.

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Some belated obituaries: The great indian novelist Raja Rao, the great musician Bismillah Khan (interview and anecdotes [Hat tip: Uma]) and a great entertainer Steve Irwing.

Other books: Zen mind, Beginners mind, Our Kind by Marvin Harris, [Hat tip: Atanu] and Devil's Chaplain by Richard Dawkins [Hat tip: SMS].

Other stuff: In his introduction to Bhagavad-Gita, Prof. Deutsch considers Chapters 12 and 13 to be the pinnacle of Bhagavad-Gita.

Hope everyone is doing fine. More later.

--
Amar Read the rest of this entry >>

Hello

testing

--
Amar Read the rest of this entry >>

moving

One thought that someone can get when she is packing to leave is

"I seem to have come far from where I started. How do I know it is far enough?"

PS: I will be travelling for sometime and then moving to a new place. So, it may be sometime before regular blogging resumes! Read the rest of this entry >>

ideas from the presentation

what if W(C) is irrational.

Talk about the if part first, so that the intuition is conveyed. Otherwise, it may give an idea of where the theorem is going. This is partly true because, we begin with the conditions for computability of S and give a condition of computability of S'

recession cone: give Ax<=b and Ax<=0 in the pictures, by moving the constraints through the origin. construct the recession cone from the generators also????

blackbox on the final slide should say:

yes if S is computable.
maybe otherwise.

suppose we give a definition of FATNESS. does that mean that the blackbox can give NO answer?

Make it clear if the statements are for computability or incomputability.
Are there better terms than if and only-if conditions? How about necessary and sufficient conditions? Is the following idea true: "The if part is weaker than necessary condition." If the if-part is added to FAT SURE's, then do we have a necessary condition?

Define a URE after the definining SURE. Read the rest of this entry >>

hayagriva and agasthya

Sri Maata Sri MahaRaagni Srimad Simhasaneshwari
Chidagni Kunda Sambhuta Deva Kaarya Samudyata ...

begins Lalitha Sahasranamam, possibly the most beautiful set of verses ever written. I always feel a sense of Bhakti when I recite Vishnu Sahasranamam. Of course, as Sankara says, there is no Advaita without Bhakti. With LS, I feel Bhakti too. I also feel a strange Advaitic feeling, that is unique to LS.

Lalitha Sahasranamam is said to be taught by Hayagriva (who is said to be very tall: maybe means a Sthula-Roopa) to Sri Agasthya (who is sais to be very short: probably means a Sukshma-roopa). Maybe we can interpret the physical structures as metaphorical allegories to ParaBrahma and Atma respectively.

The goddess who is being prayed can be considered to be the YogaMaaya herself. In an Advaitic way, the teaching seems to convey that "if you understand the illusion, you will be Brahma. There is no other way for the Atma to be Brahma than throught understanding the nature of Maya/illusion, that drives the world."

This entirely concurs with chapter 7 verse 14 of Srimad Bhagavad Gita, when Sri Krishna says:

Dive Hyesha Guna Mayi Mama Maaya Duratyata
Maame va prapadyante Maayametam Tarantate


[It is impossible to cross the maaya of this world. Only by my grace can you cross it.]

So, we are praying to the Goddess Tripurambika, Lalita devi to help us cross the illusion that is the world. Read the rest of this entry >>

some links on reservations

Atanu Dey: Imagine no reservations and reservations about reservations.

Nitin Pai of the Acorn: on Manmohan Singh, more on reservations. He is an awesome blogger with a big impact.

Francois Gautier on Brahmins in India today. A very sad state of affairs indeed!

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New links in the side bar: Nitin Pai at the Acorn and Jaffna and Cynical Nerd. Jaffna used to blog at secular-right. That blog has been dissolved (why?).

Postscript: Nitin Pai calls it the Tiananmen of India and gives a link to a poem. I understand the spirit. I think one more characterization would be to call it the Babri Masjid of Congress. In both the situations, the main party (congress/BJP) was led by special interest groups (congress-sycophant/VHP) Also, calling associating congress with the name of Babar gives a evil-satisfaction, as I have scant respect of both.

In disavowing the congress party, I am a follower of the Mahatma, who rejected the membership sometime in 30s and went further in asking the congress to be dismantled after independence. Read the rest of this entry >>

Dreams and Self Realization

In a post on self-realization, subbu gives a good anecdote of guru appearing in Dreams:

Rarely, a person may have a dream in which he receives initiation from God or the Guru into a mantra. In the Mahàbhàrata [in chapters 80 and 81 of the DroNa-Parvan], there is an account of a dream in which Arjuna received instructions from Shiva. Having vowed to slay Jayadratha by sunset the next day, Arjuna was worried about how he could achieve success. When he fell asleep, he had a dream in which Krishna came to him and led him on an aerial journey to the summit of the kailàsa mountain. There, they beheld Shiva and eulogised Him. In response to Arjuna's prayer, the Lord directed them to fetch His bow, pinàka, and His pAshupata-astra from a celestial lake. When they did so, a brahmacàrin emerged from Shiva's side and taught Arjuna how to discharge the pAshupata arrow. The Lord also taught Arjuna the mantra-s for invoking the weapon. Arjuna's memory of the instructions about the use of the pAshupata that he had received much earlier from Shiva was thereby restored. On waking up, he was in a position to invoke with mantra-s and employ the irresistible pAshupata, if needed.

Giiven that there is no difference between dream-state and waking-state, I think that instruction by Guru in dream-state is no different from instruction by Guru in waking-state. This indeed has happened to many great realized souls (Ramana?).

Also subbu gives the wonderful shloka 2-16 from BhagavadGita:

The unreal has no true existence and the Real can never go out of Existence.

The essence of which, was repeated by Shankara when Govindachaya asked him "What is Real?" and also when Shankara was framing the theory of reality. Read the rest of this entry >>