Re: The Royal Path


Subject: Re: The Royal Path
From: Sundeep Dougal (holden@giasdl01.vsnl.net.in)
Date: Tue Feb 01 2000 - 16:09:50 EST


Cecelia,

Needless to say, far from being offended, I was just
being not very solemn, though I do bristle some when
I see the blanket term "Hindu" used in its religious
connotation that it has come to acquire; just as Vedantic
philosophy gets characterised as 'theology'.

Covered under such blanket terms are all sorts of
people & thought systems - from atheists, to agnostics,
to monotheists, to monists, to polytheists, pantheists,
& so on.

That the word "Hindu" itself is a much later development
etc. is a different debate altogether, and my problem in any
case is more with the word "faith". There are theist Hindus
and presumably they have "faith" but then there are a whole
lot who are agnostic or atheist, or who just think it does not
matter, that it is an absurd question. Strains of Buddhism,
perhaps.

>From the days of the Rig Veda, there is an earnest enquiry
and questioning, of seeking to understand things instead of
accepting facts as they are given. Even the Nasadiya hymn,
the "hymn of creation", while pondering over the origins
of creation, of being and nothingness, leaves it at "ko veda"
- who knows?, and it is this mystery which has led the later
thinkers to call it Maya, loosely translated as Illusion.

In addition to the explanation on the list, the Advaitas, after
the Buddhists have quite a well-developed concept of Maya,
but that perhaps is unnecessary here.

I was of course kidding about the Maya allusion, though of
course it works very well here. My only point was that with
all those falsehoods, it's kind of disingenuous to see Buddy
as a spiritually advanced person, but then with him it is difficult
not to think of _I am the Walrus_ - "I am he as you are he,
and we are all together," and as John later clarified, he had
actually meant "Carpenter" (which should make Cynthia happy
too) and that the Walrus was Paul.

(The Elementary Penguin was, of course, Hare Krishna!)

BTW, while the Yoga System of Patanjali is almost independent
of the Vedas, in the context of how the whole thread started, it
might be interesting to note that there is a Yoga of Music too
(nada-brahma-yoga) or the yoga of the Brahma as Sound.

Lastly, I am no expert on any of this either, and whatever little I
do know is also based on reading up some books or the other.

Sonny

PS
I also wished to add my me-too to Bruce's post in appreciation
of Matt's on RHTRB. I enjoyed it a lot and wished to send a
blank message as a token, but didn't thinking that the 'unsubscribe
instructions' would just be an unwelcome presence in such a
message.

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