Dr.King - Author of books on Yoga, Spirituality and Indology

[Quick links] [Pause]            For people who love to listen to audio books, here is some good news.

[Quick links] [Pause]    In the previous episode we saw how Badarayana defines God. Most religions should have no problems accepting that definition.  That definition does not talk about a person or an entity, but a cause. It is more of a way of explaining the origination of the world.

[Quick links] [Pause]    Since our entire discussion revolves around God or Brahma, probably we should first define what this God is. Many people who claim to be believers have tough time defining God.  They may describe God as some person in the heaven, or some deity in a temple, and so on. But they probably cannot ‘define’ God.

[Quick links] [Pause]      All of us love our mother. So, there is nothing wrong if one declares that his or her mother is beautiful even if she is horrible looking 😉 May be to some extent it is acceptable if we say that “my mother is the most beautiful!”. But the problem starts when we say that “your mother is ugly as compared to mine”.

[Quick links] [Pause]    If you ever were a mother – well, no gender bias, it could as well apply to a father - you probably would better appreciate whatever I am going to discuss now. As a child grows, it goes through stages of gradual building up of its vocabulary. Most of what it says initially is gibberish and makes no sense at all. But does a mother ever complain? On the contrary she takes that with pride – her kid is at least attempting to say something. She finds meaning in those unintelligible words!

[Quick links] [Pause]    Have you ever seen a rotten corpse? Just the thought of it may be repulsing to you. The nauseating stench, decomposed flesh, wriggling maggots, the hungry vultures tearing apart the rotten stuff… Can you picturize that? Horrible isn’t it?

[Quick links] [Pause]   I am sorry to use such harsh words. But they are not my words, nor they are addressed to you. That is how the Brahma supporters admonish their Jain opponents.  Let us continue our debate between the Brahma supporters and the Jain philosophers that we started in the previous episode.  The Jain philosophers have a totally non violent approach even when they debate. They use their AnEkaantha Vaada to accept even the opponent’s view as one of the possible views. They don’t disagree with anyone. That is nice. But the Brahma supporters have problem even with that approach. This is how they refute the Jain views.

[Quick links] [Pause]   How do you like it when someone says that to you? Is it meant to be a compliment or criticism? Many a times, even very nice ideas fall apart when it comes to practical application.  Jainism, one of the very ancient Indian schools of philosophy, has many such puzzling things. With all high respect for the great masters of this school, I often see many contradictions in their way of thinking, however much they were well intended.

[Quick links] [Pause]       Many of us often make the mistake of jumping to conclude identity, based on similarity between two things. If two things are similar, that does not mean that they are identical. A cow has 4 legs and so also a dog. That does not make cow and dog same!  The Vijnyaana Vadi Buddhists see the similarity between the dream world and our wakeful world and jump to the conclusion that since dream world is nonexistent, our wakeful world also does not exist! The brahma supporters reject this reasoning. Let us see how.

[Quick links] [Pause]             There was another sect of Buddhists who denied the existence of the material world. They said that “all that exists is only the minds. What we think as something existing outside is actually inside our mind!”