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

[Quick links] [Pause]   The Buddhists have a fantastic theory of existence which neither needs the concept of soul nor the God. They say that there is no one who experiences anything. But still they say that you need to toil all your life to free yourself from all the suffering! That is the focal point of Buddhism. The Brahma supporters ridicule this theory of Buddhists not only as illogical but something that contradicts our day-to-day experience. This is how they pull down the Buddhist theory –

[Quick links] [Pause]    In the previous episode we noted that the Buddhists rejected the concept of soul as well as God. These two were central to the philosophy of the Brahma supporters. Definitely there is a serious difference. Before we sort out the differences, let us first listen to what the Buddhists have to say.

[Quick links] [Pause]           Continuing our discussion on the debates on Brahma or God, in this episode let us see how the Brahma supporters face the criticisms by the Vaisheshikas or the ancient Indian atomic theorists.

[Quick links] [Pause] Did you know that there existed atomic theorists in India more than 2000 years before Dalton and others developed our modern atomic theory?  You may not find their theories as elaborate as the atomic theories of today. But the fact is that they did come up with such a theory thousands of years ago! And without any sophisticated gadgets that we have today. They did not even have an ordinary microscope for that matter. Isn’t that amazing?

[Quick links] [Pause] We human beings get bored sometimes. And we end up doing all kinds of silly things. But does God also get bored sometimes? Does he also do silly things?

[Quick links] [Pause] In the previous episode we saw how the ancient Samkhya philosophers put forward their claims. In one stroke they make the idea of Brahma or God totally irrelevant.  Apparently, they can explain ‘everything’ without taking recourse to any mystical entity called God! How does the Brahma supporters take on this onslaught of the opponent?

[Quick links] [Pause] We were talking about the debates between rival Indian groups about their ideas on Brahma or God. While we discuss these things, we should keep in mind that we are talking about a time period when many of the major world religions of today did not even exist. When even the concept of God was not a matter of mere faith but something that had to pass through the rigors of logic and reasoning. The people in those times too had their scriptures, but they did not accept anything with closed eyes. They questioned everything, even the God!

[Quick links] [Pause] Once there were 5 blind men. They wanted to ‘see’ how an elephant looks like. Being blind they obviously cannot ‘see’ the elephant. But they were inquisitive and they went on their expedition. After ‘seeing’ the elephant one by one, they gathered in a place to exchange notes on their elephantine experience.

[Quick links] [Pause] In many faith-based religions, this question does not arise at all. It could even be a forbidden question to ask. It is sacrilegious to question the existence of God.  Acceptance of God is the most basic prerequisite. There is no religion if there is no God. But not so in ancient India. India had a completely open system where anyone was free to question anything including God.

[Quick links] [Pause] Several years ago, I was part of a large institution. This institution used to organize frequent lectures by eminent scholars in various fields.  The Head of this institution used to invite me to attend to all these lectures. The funny thing was that the topics of most of these talks were not directly connected with my field of expertise nor something that was of my interest. That used to puzzle me.