You have already lost my interest in your posts. But still I will keep it simple without going into details.
Oh how sad, my ignorance has driven you to boredom, however I shall also keep things simple.
I live in a world where religion or any of these "isms" have no meaning. I can hold Gita, Upanishads, Zend Avesta, Paulo Coelho, the works of scientists, Tao of Physics, Chess books, Guitar tutorials, Ragas, Mathematics etc without finding connection to what "religion" that have been tagged to by the illiterates.
Absolutely the same for me. I just don't hate people for believing differently. I might yell at an adult making a mess in my home, but I wouldn't do the same with a 3-year old child. Instead I would have a healthy discussion and find better ways to express myself, rather than just say all children are idiots and there is no hope for them. Or worse, "Kill all the children, banish people from having kids." There's an appropriate way of making a point and that's all I have ever asked you to do on this forum.
I can randomly listen to music and put a song to my collection list without trying to find out what genre it belongs to and then falling a trap to the lowly discussion on whether Pop is better or Rock. Someone has already notified you the difference between Abrahamic religions and Indian science which you have ignored as usual. For me life is not about finding the best for that is subjective to everyone, but rather how to make best of everything that is available.
If you, yourself say "the best" is "subjective" then who are you to say that what you believe is the "best". Or even more importantly, what others believe is evil. I don't agree with any religion the way it is being preached now, but I only say that. "I" don't believe in it. If someone asks me why, I tell them why, but there is a way to do so. I believe that the vedas were collective knowledge, and are good in many ways, and irrelevant in some ways too, given the world we live in.
So there you have your answer => I don't believe in any religion. Hinduism is religion by the acts of people attached to superstition and busy making deals with the so called gods. Similarly atheism is a religion for me, where atheists usually have condescending attitude towards theists and busy worshipping money, booze, scientists and fancying with science instead of understanding it in detail to achieve a level which can enable it to question that very science.
I disagree, yes we Atheists may hate the killing and rubbish that people do in the name of religion, but I for one am attached to other people, and not money, I don't drink, and yes I question science, all the time, and it's the only "belief" I have come across that actually encourages questioning and improvement with Nobel prizes and the like. Perhaps in the Vedas they got everything right in the first time and explained the whole universe in one shot, or perhaps they didn't. I question even that. Is Yoga good? Of course, and I don't know about around India, but for example a church near my home has Yoga classes, taught by a priest, explaining the names in Sankrit, and what the poses mean, and how they help, and then also using the modern names of the muscles and organs, etc. to make it easier to understand for everyone. I have nothing against the "sciences" of ancient times, I think they should be followed and then evaluated - even medical studies done. I am against blindly following rituals, and nothing more.
Also, I cannot speak for all atheists, since the very definition is basically non-believer, and who knows what people believe or don't believe in, but I certainly do not subscribe to the idea of an all powerful god, or millions of them. I do not think it prudent to find the spiritual in everything. I will respect a rock, because it might hurt my toe, or be used to bash my head in, but I also think sitting about wondering if a rock has consciousness or a soul is a waste of my time, and perhaps over romanticising everything. though I have nothing against people wanting to sit around for the rest of their lives doing so. If they're not a problem to the world, why restrict that, so be it.
In that perspective, astik is one who after some serious digging, questioning the Veda itself, understanding its concepts and the higher science through his own understanding authorizes the Veda to be absolute science. Here a shruti (the heard) has been affirmed. Same goes for Upanishads and Gita etc. Veda as you might know comes from the root word Vid (to know), bhagvad-gita from bhagvad-geet (divine song), brahma from (bhr) to grow and hence most of the Vedic symbology is not just a name but an experience of the higher unlike names in English which provide a bland and conrete mugging! Similarly, with that experience the one beyond time and space is called "Mahakaal" who is at the top of the heirarchy of the devas (agni/will, Indra/mind-intellect, Vayu/different-breaths etc) and hence called Mahadev as well. Our own body here is seen as a mountain and at the top of that the highest level consciousness is sitting. Hence Mahadev can be found only at Kailash (science of consciousness explained through a story). Perhaps, you are conditioned to "believe" that drinking, bozzing, earning is the only aim of life and perhaps reading some quotes and behave well. You have no idea what your mind and body are capable of! You are attached to technology, but what if your mind can enable you of something that is even better than technology? Again, before you assume, I'm not trying to put technology down!
I assume nothing, however you assume that I live and breathe technology and have no other interests in life. I also love music, play guitar, the arts, and have read a little of all religions and texts. I will admit that they bore me, and I haven't made it my life's passion to read the Vedas or any or all ancient texts of various faiths, but then who says I need to in order to learn and experience life? There was nothing special about the people who wrote the Bible, and neither was there anything special about the people who wrote the Vedas, it was a collective wisdom, brought forth via thinking and pondering, and I can do the same, as can anyone else here, if they really want to. This discussion forum could theoretically be used to come up with collective wisdom as well, but I certainly don't want people deifying TDF!
Isn't variety needed? New ideas, new ways of thinking, and does that ever come from blindly following what someone else said? Regardless of whether it was said 12,000 years ago or 12 minutes ago. I absorb what I can, ponder and arrive at my own decision, and then maybe share the logic of why I did that and let the world decide to call me ignorant or wise or just an average individual. For example, you may think me idiotic, or vice versa, but it doesn't make either of us idiots, just different. I still believe that its the recognition of differences of opinions that really helps us evolve, but then again, maybe I'm just ignorant to you.
Collective knowledge is best suited for sciences of course, and 2 + 2 = 4, no matter what language, and 2 x 2 also = 4, and thus we arrive at mathematics, the other language after music that everyone can appreciate. However, yes, some people are best suited towards thinking of possibilities where 2 + 2 does not = 4, and thus the variety of thought, and more power to them.
Of course you may assume that evolution is nonsense (though I don't know your reasons), and it may or may not be, I certainly will not just disregard it, especially since fossil findings and carbon dating show how humanoids evolved over millions of years, or how mammoths were cousins of today's elephants, or a billion more examples that a little Googling will get anyone.
Assuming that the evolution theory is sound - didn't the cave men, a million years ago realise that their bodies were capable of more and more? Didn't they improve and become better hunters and more successful? Archaeology certainly suggests it, and they outdate the vedas and written word and all known history itself.
Now of course there are stories about ancient aliens, and how Krishna was actually an extra terrestrial, and the logic they put forth is pretty sound (even if there are chinks in the armour, as any theory has), but until some sort of proof is found I am forever sceptical. Listen to everything, try and understand it all, but just "believe" nothing unless scientifically and logically provable. Thus the bettering of ones thinking is evolution, in a sense, but it requires openness, sadly not something the world is ready for yet. However, even physically, mankind has changed - we've grown taller, have less body hair, live longer (age slower actually, because of less physical stresses - and yes modern medicine). This is an evolution of sorts. Some say that actually we've devolved, into a weaker species, etc. But for me that's proof enough that evolution (forwards or backwards) occurs, and thus hopefully we can evolve forwards to the next step, using whatever path that is.
If you understand anything from the above, then you'd also understand how astik is contrary to the word theism. Regarding temples, they used to be places of science research and research on consciousness. Google for dhruv STambh, Konark temple, history of Jantar Mantar. Just like how you'd find quotes regarding teeth and gums in a dentist's lab, similarly you'd find quotes from veda and Upanisads etc in temples as well. It is quite natural. I have linked more of my replies to you which you have ignored though which explain on Shiva-Shakti, Vishnu and his snake etc. If you goto the places like Hampi, the guide alone would tell what these riddles are on the walls where two snakes are trying to eat a rabit. I guess you have never visited these "communal" places or places of "belief" that you happily state as.
You assume I ignored everything, just because I asked you to control your attacks on religions. I hadn't reacted to everything else, and honestly don't really have the time to do so now even, but just because I reacted to one aspect doesn't mean that's all I read. I am sure I am not the only one here who finds that you jump from one topic to another too often and easily, and it confuses the matter. Perhaps people who know what you "believe" or "stand for" know you better and are able to understand, but as a lot of other people have told you, they have trouble understanding your point at times. Perhaps one of the reasons is quoting the vedas without putting them into context and explaining why you think it fits well in this scenario. But hey, that's not a requirement, and teaching or sharing your thoughts isn't a requirement either, it's just sensible to be clear, but certainly not mandatory. To each his own.
Of course I haven't visited all places of "belief" who has? I have been to a few, and I have made sure to sit and listen to all faiths preach. OK, most common faiths - I have been to temples, mosques, gurudwaras and churches. Not to fire temples, or the church of scientology, or many others. But if I get the opportunity to, I would love to.
Let me ask a simple question. If you try to meditate, there is a state where the experience of body itself dilutes. What remains is "I", but after sometime that "I" also dilutes and you remain in an experience where there is no "I" or disconnection from "that". Just like if you put a drop in teh ocean, then you cannot say that the drop is here or there. The drop has become the entire ocean! If your physical body is killed in that state of yog, what is the guarantee that the "Experience" will also vanish? Remember, you have already transcended the experience of the body!
Similarly, many times it happens during dreaming that one loses a sense of his body or whether he is breathing at all. If someone shoots you in the head in the midst of that dream what is the guarantee that your dream will be broken?
I have never "meditated" in the traditional sense. Sure I have been lost in music, enjoyed my work and forgotten the time, sat around for hours just thinking about things and trying to understand the world around me, especially people, but no I have never "meditated". I have tried several times when I was younger but failed. Again, maybe I'm ignorant, or maybe people just like to believe that they have a spirit and a higher plane of consciousness, because heck, if this is it, then life is kind of horrible without meaning. It's why I think religions exist in the first place, because since the dawn of thinking, people have wondered, is this all there is? What I don't understand scares me, so lets come up with an explanation. Will I just die? Is there nothing more to my life? I am special, I must have a higher purpose. I cannot be just another fragile biological machine who is and then just isn't.
I find that there is so much more wrong with "us" than "I". Yes, I know most will say you cannot understand us before understanding I, something like you cannot understand physics without mathematics, or whatever. However personally, I have found that the problem with the world is the problem of "I", or perhaps the obsession with "Me, myself and I(rene?)". People are so selfishly obsessed with "I" that no one gives a damn about us. And when they do, then it's usually the wrong "us". The us in most cases is an extension of "I" - my family, my party, my religion, etc. I will make an exception for "my country", even though it is still selfish, since it is better than most other selfish thoughts. Our earth, or our human race, would be interesting, our solar system and our universe is what I would like to be a part of, and I only find science doing that at the moment. And yes, I know how many "I"s were in that sentence. It's interesting that no matter what, our frame of reference is always "I", no matter what. What can I do? What do I feel? Thus my inability to be a drop in the ocean, lost in humanity. Unless at, say Kurla station during rush hour in Bombay. That's one way of losing sense of "I", where the crowds become and ocean and you have no clue where you're headed sometimes, you just go with the flow.
Jokes aside, every time I have heard someone speak of their meditation enlightenments, it's always something totally personal, or something completely weird and irrelevant. Perhaps you are different, and can share your meditation experience with us, however I have yet to meet someone who came up with anything helpful or relevant from meditation personally. The abstract, as far as experience has taught me, may be fun, but it's also totally pointless. Many people get high on drugs just to get exactly that feeling, and we call them addicts and try and fix them.
Now try to understand what a Samadhi means.
I would request you to empathise of what I say before you start making random conclusions. The science of consciousness briefed by Upanishands, Gita, Buddhist Sutras, the chakras and the science based on it e.g vaisheshika, Ayurveda etc are too broad and scientific to be narrowed to an umbrella term with an "ism". Did Buddha create Buddhism and Mahavira Jainism? Have you ever read the texts of GuruGranth sahib? If you are still conditioned and attached to the meaning of religion to be seeing all these isms as some religion, then you cannot say I'm pro-Hindu. I can be Pro-Buddh, Pro-Jainism, Pro-Sikhism as well. FYI, yog is integral to all these sciences which you because of your conditionings reduced to a "ism" and hence religion. For that matter I'm pro Zend-Avestan science as well. Now will you call me pro-Iran and Iranian culture?
I know you have not read any of these and hence I requested you to read and give it some 5 years or the same amount of time you give to technology or the field of knowledge you adore, before making the next statement. You would have saved a lot of time of yours alone in understanding instead of playing "You Vs Me".
Whoever says Indian science is a religion is mocking his own intelligence!
I never called you pro anything, but I did say you were "anti" other beliefs. That's also fine, and there's no harm in being anti-anything, but there's just a civilised and accepted social way to communicate it, that's all.
Am I to understand that you also do not comment about anything you haven't "studied" for 5 years? I certainly haven't spent as much time on some of these as you have, but that doesn't mean I should not have an opinion on them. Who sets these rules? If a Sadhu who has spent all his life pondering the vedas comes here and says spend 45 years and then comment, would you go away only to return after 40 years?
I don't agree with you on the basis of the world you live in. Just quoting the vedas and ridiculing everything else in a world that has forgotten them isn't going to solve anything. It will make you happier, as will Islam make a Muslim happy, and a Church sermon make a christian happy, ad infinitum, ad nauseum. If the purpose of this is just that selfish goal of keeping oneself happy and not about suggestions to improve the world around us, then perhaps that's why you think me ignorant. I didn't come here to make myself happy or to talk about what makes everyone happy individually. If that were the case, then why comment about anything, right, so I assume you also want the world to be happier, and if not that, at least the country.
The problem is not "I" being happy, it's "us". My way is right and your way is wrong is the very problem. The reason I prefer new science to the old is because the old science has been hijacked by too many people. From self styled godmen to political parties, to the local pundit, everyone else claims that there is a Hindu "religion" even if you don't. Thus it makes it a fight between religions, in which no one can win except by wiping the other off the face of the earth - which is what tends to happen. If the new sciences are "inspired" by the old, why stick to calling them old? Why is it that I don't see the venom from you about the people who have hijacked the vedas and gita, and turned it into superstitions that you say you don't follow?
I would be with you 100% if you had said, what difference does it make if some Mughal broke a temple or not, there was no need to stoop to their level. There was no need to gain political mileage from that, or to try and incite riots, or to hold any value for a piece of land anyway. Someone suggested a hospital on the site, I suggest a museum of science, religion and artifacts for all faiths. Like you, I also would like all kids to be taught all faiths, and science, and then let them choose their own path, instead of trying to breed one another out as all beliefs have attempted for thousands of years.
Also, since I agreed to post some links here...
Why generalising is bad:
Ahmadiyya - Invitation Towards Allah (God) -- like you, they too ridicule the videos of clerics such as Zakir Naik.
Before clicking the links below, please understand, I have no love lost for the congress, or any party. If I could, I would vote only none of the above for every election until I found someone who actually cared.
Did Narendra Modi make Gujarat Vibrant? | Business Standard
Not So Vibrant
The man who would rule India - The Hindu
My only grouse with Modi is his arrogance and his false advertising PR machinery. Maybe he's a wonderful person, maybe he will spew venom if he wins. I should also add that I also think that in all likely-hood he will be the next PM, because congress has scammed for too long and has no face left. Maybe a third front can surprise everyone, but I still feel it is really going to go back to square 1. New people will make money, old scamsters will go to jail, and media will have sting operations and breaking news, ridiculous statements will be made, no one will talk tough to Pakistan or China, and life will get worse. I so very badly hope I am proven wrong, regardless of who wins the elections... but alas experience, rational thinking and logic doesn't give me the bliss of being happy with any outcome.
Hey Anorion, long time no see
What fiendishly freakish things have you been up to these days?
Ps, wanted to post this much earlier, hilarious
Narendra Modi Doing Things
Also:
Rahul Gandhi Doing Things
I burst into laughter after reading this first line...
If mediator can translate and dispel doubts, that's a good thing. Even in my limited knowledge of the vedas I know that "Teaching" is honourable, and helps people on the path to enlightenment. What's funny about that? It should neither be funny, nor feel like a chore. However, seeking knowledge is also important, and there's never a shortage of learning. Today a teacher, tomorrow a student...
Off Topic: Ico what happened to our auto-merge plugin?
Also, Mediator. Since I barely passed Sanskrit in school, my only interaction with the Vedas was an old copy of Griffith's translation of the Rig Veda, which, again being honest, bored me pretty quick. Again, it could be my ignorance, or was it because the translation was off?
*www.sacred-texts.com/hin/index.htm
Are those acceptable translations?
