Assumptions, Warrants, Hypotheses and Heuristics
You say: “there seems to be an underlying assumption that all participants in the thread seem to be making. The assumption being that all these texts have the same end goal in…
Read moreNirvana Shatkam
If you want to use Nirvana Shatkam, it might be more productive to choose translations which do the job that the text can. Because of that, a ‘faithful’ translation of…
Read moreOn the Indian Notion of Enlightenment: Reflections Based on Experience
Balagangadhara’s recent article on Enlightenment (Gyanodaya); this is based on his enlightenment. If you got questions on this paper, participate on The Heathen in His Blindness Yahoo group. Check the…
Read moreVibrancy of Indian traditions
The discussion about re-accessing the vibrancy of the Indian culture and the question whether or not to legislate against conversion, are best treated separately. An answer to the latter does…
Read moreThe loss of the vibrancy of Indian Traditions
I would like to address a very basic issue that many of us have confronted. In its simplest form, the question is this: What should we, a small slice of the…
Read moreHow to speak for the Indian traditions: an agenda for the future–SN Balagangadhara
Editor’s note: This article appeared in the Journal of American Academy of Religion Abstract The paper attempts a contrast between the process and the structure of the Christian and the…
Read moreIndian heathens’ misunderstanding of meaning(purpose) of life
I 1. The Sanskrit word (that I know) that comes closest to the Greek ‘telos’ is ‘Sankalpa’. It means ‘to mentally determine’, ‘formulation of an end’ ‘desirous of (an end)’,…
Read moreIntelligibility of Advaita
The problem with the advaita tradition today is its lack of intelligibility. ‘Maya’, for instance, does a tremendous lot of explanatory work, but it is hardly clear what it is;…
Read moreHow to access Indian traditions?
1. As I have often said, the most intriguing aspect of the Indian culture is the kind of knowledge it produced and encouraged people to produce: experiential knowledge which emerges…
Read morePrinciple of Charity
Before deciding about whether or not Vivekananda was ethnocentric, jingoistic or even plain intolerant, one has to understand what Vivekananda was saying. In doing so, the interpretative “principle of charity” requires…
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