Showing posts with label HINDUISM. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 18, 2017

Samadhi- "Maya, the Illusion of the Self" (R)

SOURCE:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bw9zSMsKcwk

Samadhi- "Maya, the Illusion of the Self"

[ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bw9zSMsKcwk ]

What is the significance of Jeeva Samadhi? Sadhguru

Published on Mar 10, 2017

We have new films, retreats and awakening initiatives coming available periodically and we would love to share with you. If you would like to receive occasional emails from us please subscribe to our newsletter at http://www.samadhi.ca.

Samadhi Part 1 (Maya the Illusion of the Self) is the first installment of a series of films exploring Samadhi. You can purchase a high definition copy of the film for download to your computer here: http://www.innerworldsmovie.com/index...

Samadhi Part 2 "It's Not What You Think" will be coming soon. Check out the trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_W4jO...

This Youtube video has "community translations" turned on. Click "more" and "add translation" if you would like to contribute a translation. If you have any questions you can contact us at info@innerworldsmovie.com.

Many other parts of the Samadhi series are in various stages of completion and will follow. It is quite possible that the film is actually endless.

There are aspects in this film that rely on your understanding of concepts such as the primordial spiral, the logos, akasha, kundalini which can be found in the film "Inner Worlds Outer Worlds". The film can be watched for free at www.innerworldsmovie.com.

Please support future films (which will always be released for free to the world) by donating at http://www.innerworldsmovie.com/index...
Every small donation helps to keep production flowing.

While we greatly encourage you to freely share the links to the film, embed them and spread them freely, please do not steal the film, claim it as your own and/or monetize it on your own Youtube channel. Thank you.

Many people have sent us messages asking where they can practice meditation. Here are some resources:

1) Our own center, the Samadhi Center in Canada provides ongoing meditation retreats: http://www.samadhi.ca

2) Vipassana Meditation: www.dhamma.org

3) Zen Meditation: https://zmm.mro.org

4) Shinzen Young provides retreats which draw from many traditions: http://www.shinzen.org/

Monday, April 17, 2017

THE GREAT HINDU REVOLUTION OF NARENDRA MODI (R)

SOURCE:

http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/author/francoisgautier/

THE GREAT HINDU REVOLUTION

NARENDRA MODI

By 

Francois Gautier

March 21, 2017.

All these clever journalists got it wrong: true UP voted for Narendra Modi – but more than anything, they voted for a man who works 17 hours a day, who puts the country before himself, who is bold enough to take a huge gamble- demonetisation- because he believes it is necessary for India. A man who fights against corruption without fear and is the Prime Minister of all Indians, though once more, it is the Hindu vote which elected his party the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

This election may also have signalled the beginning of the end of caste politics, another cancer that gnaws at India’s entrails – and Mrs Mayawati had become a champion at it, taking a leaf from the Indian National Congress, who for 70 years, mostly got elected on the Dalit & Muslim vote.

Many newspapers and television channels blazed across the headline: “Saffron wave in Uttar Pradesh”. This is another ill-advised coin word, that wants to sensationalize and demean, but which falls flat. What does ‘saffron’ mean? First saffron is mainly cultivated in Kashmir – and that by Muslims – so it’s a wrong comparison. Secondly, in Hinduism, saffron is the color of renunciation, a beautiful and noble tradition, that has been followed all over the world, by Buddhists, Jews, or Sufi saints. Mr. Modi and many of his ministers, such as Manohar Parrikar, have renounced many of the worldly pleasures to work for their party and their country. When will Indian journalism stop being small, petty, untruthful, without any depth or vision? The mastery of English does not make an Indian better than a simple country folk of UP or Tamil Nadu, who lives more in his or her heart than these arrogant journalist and intellectuals. I was most of the day, when the election results came, on the WION TV studio, with different panels of journalists. Most of them were of the old Nehruvian-Marxist mold, dinosaurs, who do not realize that they are out of sync with reality and are clinging to an obscure and anti-evolutionary path. One of them, from the Hindu newspaper, even said that demonetization was ‘communal’! Can you imagine how biased the guy can be?

All right, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) got four out of five states. Nothing wrong with that: Chanakya would have approved and the Indian National Congress, who cries foul about Goa and Manipur, did much worse than that. One doesn’t need a deep political insight to predict that the BJP is soon going to rule the whole of India – both at the Centre and in the states – exactly the way Congress had done during the Nehru-Indira Gandhi era. And that the writing for Congress has been on the wall ever since. Will the sycophancy of the Indian National Congress ever stop? It’s a remnant of colonialism, a legacy of Macaulay, who wanted to have brown sahibs as tools. On top of that, Rahul Gandhi has no dignity: he should immediately have taken responsibility for his party’s thrashing and resigned. There are plenty of talented people in the Congress ranks who can take his place.

One of the big tasks of Mr Modi, now that he has secured more of a majority in the Rajya Sabha, is to reform education. Many have said that his choice of Yogi Adityanath as the UP Chief Minister, shows that he is moving towards a Hindu India, away from secularism. However, as I have explained in a series of articles in this blog, Hindu power will always be compassionate: Hindu men and women are still today the only people in the world who recognise that God may manifest Himself or Herself at different times, using different names, and different scriptures. This is why a Hindu is still capable of worshipping not only in his own temple, but also to enter in a Christian church or a Muslim mosque, and that with respect and devotion. The reverse is not true.

But for that it is important that Hindu children, know their own history, their poets, such as the great Kalidasa, who is on par with Shakespeare or Homer; their warriors, such as Maharana Pratap, Shivaji Maharaj and many others, who are as good, if not more visionary and more spiritual than Napoleon; their heroines, like the Rani of Jhansi, or Ahilyabai of Indore, or Chennama, who easily compare with Joan of Arc; their philosophers, such as Sri Aurobindo, whose depth, height and knowledge is as wide and much greater than Nietzsche or Kant; their artists, whose sculptures, such as the dancing Nataraj, or architects, who built the Meenakshi temple or the Rajasthan palaces, are so beautiful that they even survived the holocaust of repeated savage and bloody Muslim invasions – see the Hampi/Vijaynagar statues, every one of which the noses and ears have been chopped, but which still retain their ethereal beauty…?In this way, they will grow up proud to be Hindus, wile retaining Hinduism’s broad outlook and tolerance, which actually is the knowledge that God is One but manifests Himself or Herself in multiple avatars, men and women.

Instead, what happens? Most of Hindu kids are brought up in schools and universities that mostly teach them western subjects and concepts and even Indian history is viewed through the negative western prism. As a result, not only do not they grow-up as Hindus, which would be a boon both to India and the world, but they become clones, good only for export – indeed Hindus are the biggest brain drain of the world, from India to the West
.
Mr Narendra Modi can succeed in his task only if a new generation of Hindu youth grows up with that knowledge and help him and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to introduce the essential reforms – not only educational, but also, economic, constitutional, judicial, cultural, sports wise, that are needed for India to become a real superpower and spread this great Knowledge that will save the world.

Francois Gautier

Sunday, September 11, 2016

Hinduism and the Clash of Civilizations

SOURCE:
http://voiceofdharma.org/books/civilization/

Hinduism and the Clash of Civilizations

By David Frawley (Vamadeva Shastri)

American Institute of Vedic Studies

PO Box 8357, Santa Fe NM 87504-8357

Foreword

Aidan Rankin, Ph.D.

I first became aware of David Frawley’s work earlier this year when I was at the University bookshop in Bloomsbury, near to my London home. It used to be called Dillon’s and owned by a long-established and worthy firm. Now it is Waterstone’s, a thrusting ‘success story’ of modern entrepreneurship. No longer a traditionally British bookshop, staffed by friendly amateurs, Waterstone’s has all the characteristics of a giant American emporium: glossy, squeaky-clean and staffed by indifferent, overworked students. Like its American counterparts, it is replete with self-help guides for stressed male executives and bitter, miserable career women, both products of a disturbed society. In the basement, a bar serves caffe latte, chocolate muffins and a bewildering variety of fruit juice. Waterstone’s, in other words, is a microcosm of the global monoculture, that spiritual and economic malaise which Frawley so incisively explores. Yet beneath all the gloss, there persist many of the qualities of a fine English bookshop, where rich gems of scholarship of scholarship and wisdom come to unexpected light, just as rich traditions of spiritual insight still withstand the modern Fetich of the market.

Preface

Hinduism and the Clash of Civilizations continues the line of thought introduced in my earlier books. Arise Arjuna: Hinduism and the Modern World (1995) articulated the need for Hindus to stand up and project their tradition in order to face the current cultural and religious challenges assaulting them on every side. My subsequent book, Awaken Bharata: A Call for India’s Rebirth (1998), emphasized the need for a new intelligentsia, an ‘intellectual kshatriya’ or intellectual warrior class to handle these challenges in a systematic way.

Over time it became clear that such an intellectual movement requires a school of thought, a world-view as its proper foundation. Naturally, an intellectual kshatriya should be trained in a Vedic or dharmic school of thought. Therefore, the present volume arose to articulate the greater Hindu world view—the perspective of the Hindu mind on the current civilizational challenge, which is not only a cultural assault on India but a churning within all cultures throughout the world. Today as a species we stand at a critical juncture, before either a new age of global harmony and world spirituality or a possible global catastrophe from a voracious materialistic civilization out of harmony with nature.

The wisdom of the Hindu tradition, rooted in universal consciousness, can be a great aid in helping us move in the right direction, but it is seldom brought into the picture even in India. Hinduism is now a global force as the third largest religion in the world, the largest non-biblical belief, and the largest of the pagan, native or indigenous religions. Therefore, a Hindu voice not only on spiritual but also on cultural issues is necessary to provide a balanced view on the global situation today.

Hindu or Indic ideas are now present in most countries in the world today, generally in a dynamic way through Yoga, Vedanta or Vedic sciences like Ayurveda. However, there is little recognition of the overall civilizational perspective behind them. Most of the focus is on a spiritual side of these traditions and the broader civilizational concerns are ignored. While Christian, Islamic and western secular points of view are readily available on most issues, the Hindu view is seldom recognized and does not have corresponding spokespersons or information outlets in the world forum. Hence the need of the present volume to encourage the projection of such a Hindu perspective.

The current clash of civilizations is not merely a commercial or religious encounter. It is an encounter between the schools of thought, the way of thinking that each civilization represents. Each civilization has its own language, logic and history of ideas that shape and mold its perceptions and actions. When civilizations clash it is first at this level of ideas and beliefs. In the present world context, the Hindu or Indian (Bharatiya) idea of civilization and culture is overlooked. If Hindus enter into debate, it is in the context of the western school of thought, which is not sympathetic to or even aware of the logic of Hindu ideas or how the Hindu mind works. Like players in a game that has rules they don’t understand, the Hindu cause seldom comes out well.

Therefore, Hinduism must project its entire dharmic view, its unique vision of the universe, God and humanity, rather than simply respond to side issues framed by the western mind. It must articulate its own critique of civilization, including that of western civilization, which modern Hindu thinkers like Aurobindo or Gandhi so eloquently expressed. There is also an older, comprehensive and well-articulated Indian school of thought through the Vedas, Sutras, Puranas, Tantras and Shastras and a related literature on consciousness and dharma through Buddhist and Jain traditions as well. But these are often out of date and don’t consider the changed circumstances of the world today. Hence my emphasis on the need for a ‘New Indic School of Thought’, specifically on the need for new ‘Vedic schools’, developing and articulating the older dharmic traditions of India to meet the new circumstances today.

A new Western dharmic school of thought is also important, taking the insights of the Indic school and applying them in the western context. Ultimately, a new global dharmic school of thought is the goal. Hopefully, the new Indic School of Thought can provide a model and a starting point for it.

While Hinduism and the Clash of Civilizations is a sequel my earlier books, it brings in new themes that neither Awaken Bharata or Arise Arjuna addressed. It has a more futuristic vision and a constructive as well as critical side, outlining a Hindu vision for the entire world. It not only seeks to remove obstacles but also sets forth ideas and models for a new creation—a new age of consciousness on Earth initiated by a revival of Vedic wisdom and culture.

Naturally, I was always asked how I, as someone born in the West, was able to take up this cause or write such books. For this reason, I wrote How I Became a Hindu: My Discovery of Vedic Dharma (2000). That recent book is also relevant to the current title. Hinduism and Clash of Civilizations also supplements my books on ancient India like Gods, Sages and Kings, the Myth of the Aryan Invasion, Vedic Aryans and the Origins of Civilization (with N.S. Rajaram), and the recent the Rigveda and the History of India. However, the present volume focuses on the background philosophical and cultural issues behind the historical concerns examined in detail in these other works.

Besides history, the book examines Vedic Science, including its relationship with modern science, which I have not addressed significantly in previous titles. It touches the subject Vedanta, which was explored in my book Vedantic Meditation: Lighting the Flame of Awareness. Hinduism and the Clash of Civilizations, therefore, has a broad scope and looks to the future as well as to the past, to spiritual as well as cultural issues.

The book is divided into three sections. The first surveys the challenges of India and Hinduism today and its scope for the future. The second examines the clash between western intellectual culture and the spiritual and intellectual culture of India. It highlights why an independent Indic School of Thought is required, not just an Indic perspective in the current world dominant western school.

The third section suggests principles and main lines for a new Indic/Vedic school of thought. I have separately discussed in Vedanta, Yoga, Ayurveda and Vedic astrology in specific books on these topics. The purpose of their discussion here is relative to their place in a new school of thought, not to delineate their approaches in detail.

Some chapters have appeared as articles in various publications in India like the Times of India, Vedanta Kesari, the Advent, the Organizer, Naimisha Journal etc.

I have rewritten these to fit in with the flow of the book and avoid unnecessary repetition. I would like to thank various individuals who have stimulated my thought in the book including Subhash Kak, N.S. Rajaram, Aidan Rankin, Michel Boutet, Ram Swarup, Swami Dayananda, J.C. Kapur, and many young Hindus, both individually and in different groups and organizations.

Jai Durga!

Dr. David Frawley (Pandit Vamadeva Shastri)

July 2001

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