My Journey into Sanatana Dharma

I found a good blog that compares the three major sub-schools of thoughts of Vedanta school. http://upanishadtattva.blogspot.com/ Caution: To the un-initiated, the information presented in the blog may seem like gibberish, information about these schools are not for the faint-hearted or the casual readers, for them, you might think we are just crazy (am sure u'd say that abt theoretical physicists too when details of what they do emerge and you read). Read at your own risk. If you are interested to further understand these schools, discuss and talk to a guru specialized in these schools. These are schools of thoughts people take life times to understand and internalize. And English as a language might not be able to convey the entire gist/meaning of the concepts as intended by the original: Sanskrit or its derivatives (telugu, kannada). leave me any questions, i can try and answer as much as I can. FYI, I belong to the Advaita school, so I know a little bit only about what t

This is Sanatana Dharma 101. This speech right here started my journey of understand what Sanatana Dharma was all about. I have no words to describe the genius of Swami Vivekananda in his ability to succinctly explain something as complex as Sanatana Dharma to the world. This is step 1 for anyone interested in attempting to understand Sanatana Dharma. I feel unless and until someone completely understands this speech their journey cannot even begin. Paper on Hinduism At The World's Parliament of Religions Chicago, 19th September 1893   --- Swami Vivekananda -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Three religions now stand in the world which have come down to us from time prehistoric - Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, and Judaism. They have all received tremendous shocks, and all of them prove by their survival their internal strength. But while Judaism failed to absorb Christianity and was driven out of its place of birth by its all-conquering

What is freedom? "your" ability to control your mind, no matter what the circumstance, coz circumstances and events in life are not in your hand.  Its a long path that kind of true freedom. Any thing less, you are a slave e to your own desires, will and wishes, taste buds, greed and lust. Think about it. I learn't this from "The Conquest of the Mind" by Eknath Easwaran. The more I think about it, the idea of freedom becomes clearer. The image though, is something I pulled up from the internet, which has no connection with the book, but is deeply connected with the what Mr. Easwaran was trying to convey. The monk is a Mahayana Buddhist Monk. From what I read, Mahayana Buddhism is very very similar./close to Advaita school of thought. In fact many vishishta advaita and dvaita school's of thought proponents have accused  AdiSankaracharya of having borrowed concepts from Mahayana Buddhism, which predates advaita by many centuries (may be even

I am sure the title must seem a very, as some one put it, very "castist" especially coming from a Brahmin. First of all let me make it really clear, casteism in India in the contemporary world has very little to do with Sanatana Dharma. And that casteism is a common concept among Christians, Muslims,Buddhists,Sikhs, Jains and Bahai' in South Asia (At least). (  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_system_in_India ) But I believe there is a real need to define a case for the caste system, although,  definitely NOT in its current form. The current form of caste system in India is pathetic and rotten to its core. So, the first thing I need the readers to grasp is, YES, the current caste system of India is ROTTEN. I am not sure how and where it got to this point over the thousands over thousands of years, but I would have to guess, as we discussed in an earlier post, it is the Law of Entropy working its magic on everything. The word "caste", I am not sure who t