My Journey into Sanatana Dharma

A friend of mine asked me this question on Facebook recently: So why did Krishna create this universe? Is it for fun or is there a purpose/goal to achieve something..? Good question. Glad someone is even pondering. That I think is the first thing that makes us human. Consciousness. First of all I do want to replace the word "Krishna" (proper noun) with the word "God" (common noun) to attempt an answer. Its an interesting loaded question though. To answer that question, you have to first understand what/who "God" really is. And what "creation" really is. Its an important point to clarify before we attempt to answer the main question. My answer is based on my understanding of Advaita, mixed with the more common more popular notion of God. The Vedas are very clear: Where your thought and language cease to being able to imagine or explain, the Almighty (God), is 10's of hundreds of times larger than that. i.e. God is inf...

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...

I would like to present a case for astrology from life's experiences, from veritable books and a scientific study I came across recently. Why am I making a case for it? Well, recently I've embarked on understanding what Darwin really said about Evolution and how he came about these conclusions. I've been watching the documentary (The Genius of Darwin) by the foremost proponent of evolution in the contemporary world, Sir Richard Dawkins, below is the link on youtube to the same: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSYREfaZP1U Now here is what I said recently on my Facebook post: If Darwin's theory of Evolution is accepted in the scientific community although there is no empirical evidence, only based on observations and derivation of possibilities, then Astrology, planetary influence on the human mind/ character/psych, SHLD be accepted by the scientific community as a fact. If not this is pure bigotry by the scientific community to call evolution a science and as...

Robert Oppenheimer ( father of the atomic bomb ), Carl Sagan ( worlds foremost cosmologist ), Nikolas Tesla ( arguably the most prolific inventor of modern times ), Heisenberg ( one of the key founders of quantum mechanics that has made modern life even possible ), the list can go on, to understand how these highly intelligent ppl of the world were drawn to the wisdom found in Vedanta and related schools of thoughts by themselves with no need for prostelizying , with no need for someone promising a heaven with 72 virgins or with the fear of an eternal Hell. Any decent man should be able to see through the grandeur of Sanatana Dharma and it's mind boggling sanity that every great mind that comes in touch with it is influenced by it. And history is proof that all great minds have been at odds with other religions, starting with Galileo. Here is a list of quotes on Hinduism by various ppl around the world. Http ://www.hinduwisdom.info/quotes1_20.htm One excerpt by Voltaire: ...