Lately
a few people have been linking to 2006 posts on the vices of various political
philosophies. If you are curious, here is my post on the libertarian vice. Here is my post on the liberal vice. Here is my post on the conservative vice. I still like these
posts. Since I have written these posts, several additional acts of vice have
been committed.
An Introduction to Sri Aurobindo's Metaphysical Cosmology: Part I ... - ericweiss.com 9 Jun 2006 June
9, 2006 I. Introduction A. It is my intention in this paper to give a brief
introduction to my interpretation of Sri Aurobindo’s metaphysical system. The
ideas presented here are very close to those of Sri Aurobindo, but they are not
identical. In particular, my treatment of the category of Being is very
influenced by my studies of Alfred North Whitehead…
As
Sri Aurobindo would
say, on one side there is the “materialist denial,” (nothing but Matter) and on the other side there is “ascetic denial” (nothing but Spirit).
Sri Aurobindo, both for the sake
of philosophical depth, and for the ...
Notes on The Life Divine: The Refusal of the Ascetic - 6 Jun 2010 by rs
Kownslar
The
Refusal of the Ascetic. For
Sri Aurobindo, the second
of the “Two Negations”, the refusal of the ascetic, is based on a powerful spiritual experience: the
awareness of the Transcendent Spirit that exceeds this entire universe of name
and form, mind and matter, living beings, and everything else we encounter in
normal human experience. ...Interestingly,
both the materialist and the ascetic end
up denying any real
significance or value for human life. Either we are all ...
How to eat like a Yogi - Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo & The Mother 19
Jul 2009 by Sandeep
Way
of the Ascetic: The ascetic suppresses desire for
food and rejects flavour and taste as part of a harsh discipline. This just
defers the ... Sri Aurobindo & the Mother
advised another way of food consumption which is neither of the above; it may
be called the Way of Equality (Samata) where one eats consciously without
surrendering or repressing the desire for food. This is aligned ... The teeth have a mechanical
habit of gnashing when food is denied.
This is because ... Life Divine Online commentaries
- Roy Posner’s summary
- Kireet
Joshi’s talks on the Life Divine
- Mother’s
Service Society : Introduction to the Life Divine
- Karmayogi’s Discussion on the Aspects of the Life Divine
- David Hutchinson’s guide
- Talks
by Debashish Banerji
- Commentary
by Soumitra Basu at Institute for Integral Yoga Psychology
Books on the Life Divine
The
book The Life Divine is available online at the Ashram website
- M.P. Pandit. Legends
in the Life Divine (SABDA link)
- M.P. Pandit. Introducing
the Life Divine (SABDA link)
- Ananda Reddy. Deliberations
on the Life Divine (SABDA link)
- Ram Shankar Misra. Integral Advaitism of Sri Aurobindo (amazon link) (SABDA link) (google books). (I recommend this book as an introduction to The Life Divine.)
Meditations on the Isha Upanishad: The Third Movement Debashish ... - sciy.org 2 Sep 2012 by
debbanerji
In
his interpretation, Sri Aurobindo analyses
this assertion. This analysis also forms his exploration in two of the earliest
chapters of The Life Divine: The Materialist Denial, and The Refusal of the Ascetic. The Materialist Denial ...
The Vison and Work of Indian Culture Past and the Future–M.S. ... 9 Apr 2012 by integral musings
Sri Aurobindo explains with a
luminous and crystal-clear precision the meaning of spirituality contrasting it
with what it is not: “… it must therefore be emphasised that .... The satisfaction of the natural
needs and propensities of his physical, vital and mental being and the
fulfillment of his duties and responsibilities are not denied in an ascetic spirit; they are accepted as
indispensable parts of his evolutionary growth and development. But Indian
culture insists that there ...
Distortion Of
Vedanta « Truth is, What we say by experience - ujalaa.wordpress.com 23
Nov 2011 by Sunder Dinesh
Ramesh
Bijlani: Sri Aurobindo makes
a powerful case for restoring the life-affirming and life enriching element of
spirituality that had receded over the past 1000 years. His Savitri... Of these three lines, the
first is the 'denial of the
materialist'; the second is the 'refusal of the ascetic'; and the third is the flaw in the 'refusal of the ascetic' who, therefore, loses sight
of the identity he has with the rest of the creation and also misses the joy of
seeing “the body of God”. How we ...
Why
Has Asceticism Led To The Weakening Of Bharat By Sanjeev Nayyar, April 2001
[esamskriti@suryaconsulting.net]
I
was reading a book on Sri Aurobindo where in response to a message “about an
Aurobindo Matt” from Shri Motilal Roy of Chandranagore who ran a Pravartak
Sangh under the inspiration of Aurobindo, he said, “You must understand that my
mission is not to create Matts, ascetics and Sannyasis, but to call back the
souls of the strong to the Lila of Krishna and Kali. That is my teaching as you
can see from the Review, and my name must never be connected with monastic
norms or the monastic ideal. Every
ascetic movement since the time of the Buddha has left India weaker
and for a obvious reason. Renunciation of life is one thing, to make
life itself national, individual, world-life greater and divine is another. You
cannot enforce one ideal on the country without weakening of the other. You
cannot take away the best souls from life and yet leave life stronger and
greater. Renunciation of ego, acceptance of God in life is the Yoga I teach –
no other renunciation”.
The
essay attempts to understand Sri Aurobindo’s mind… We can work harder to create
a Bharat that produces high quality goods at a reasonable price, export them,
capture markets, create brands, make our enemies completely dependant on us.
Secondly, we can develop a strong Defence Industry, export arms. Thirdly we can
send our share our pearls of wisdom with the rest of the world. Vedanta,
Ayurveda, Yoga, Vedic Mathematics, Reikhi, Meditation, Music, Movies, Food to
name a few. And lastly, have Armed Forces that act as a strong deterrent to our
adversaries, current and future.
We
must increase defence spending to 3 % of GDP till 2010. We must follow the
Sardar Patel secularism model that means equal respect for all religions but no
special privileges to any one. Our beloved country will progress faster
when Sanatan Dharam is given its due. Long live Dharma.
The
money power is one that has been so often the occasion of misuse and abuse that
it has led to illustrative examples and proscriptions throughout the world.
Whether we hear the words of Jesus that it would be easier for someone to pass
through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into heaven, or we
view Shakespeare’s play The Merchant of Venice which
illustrated the extremity of greed overcoming basic humanity, or we read the
writings of Charles Dickens as he explores the plight of the underclasses who
were oppressed by greedy rich businessmen, or we view the spiritual paths that
call for ascetic denial of money or possession of wealth, we find a common
thread or theme running through each of them; namely, that money can easily
corrupt, distract and mislead.
Sri
Aurobindo discusses it thus: “This is indeed one of the three forces–power,
wealth, sex–that have the strongest attraction for the human ego and the Asura
and are most generally misheld and misused by those who retain them. The
seekers or keepers of wealth are more often possessed rather than its
possessors; few escape entirely a certain distorting influence stamped on it by
its long seizure and perversion by the Asura.”
We
are easily reminded of the character of Ebenezer Scrooge in Dickens’ The
Christmas Carol and we can reflect on the way he was consumed by greed
until his providential conversion through what can only be termed “divine
intervention”.
We
also see the famous story of King Midas who requested a boon that everything he
touched would turn into gold; only to learn through hard experience that he
could not eat or drink gold, nor could he engage in any human relationships
when the people he touched became gold–a morality tale that illustrates the
grip of the money power on the human psyche and the suffering that comes in the
wake of this obsession.
How
many times in history have we seen noble causes or ideals distorted through
compromises intended to attract money? In Goethe’s Faust the
development of money was invented by Mephistopheles to mislead and enslave
humanity. Those who control the power of money have time and again used it to
manipulate, enslave, control and suppress others and they have acted to enhance
their wealth at the expense of everyone else and without care or concern for
the balance or harmony of the world, the environment, or the living beings who
share this earth.
Today
especially with the rise of Western material culture, we see the power of money
raised up to a level of ultimate worship and the pursuit of money is considered
to be a noble ideal in its own right, regardless of how it is acquired or the
use to which it is being put. And we are causing untold suffering to the world
and the people and other beings in the world through this one-sided, extreme, obsessive
and compulsive behavior. Clearly
the need for a new understanding and balance in the acquisition and use of
money is required.
Chris Allsobrook is a lecturer in
philosophy at St Augustine [Catholic] College
and a politics research associate with the University of Johannesburg South Africa HERE …
I am pleased to note the disavowal of the existence
of an “invisible hand” by Chris Allsobrook, given the predilections for
theology for notions of the “hand of god” in human events throughout the
Christian era. A Must Read New Book on Friedrich Hayek from Adam Smith's Lost Legacy by Gavin Kennedy
Eamonn Butler:
“Friedrich Hayek: the ideas and
influence of the libertarian economist”
Holding
to his unfashionable convictions for decades led Hayek into intellectual
isolation. He was, albeit, politely tolerated rather than listened to by
faculty in the universities he taught at. Mainstream economics passed him by
during the Keynesian years. Nobody, for example, mentioned him
during my undergraduate years from 1965-69. More is the pity. I
found much in Butler’s book that explained a lot about mid-twentieth-century
controversies between Keynes’s and Friedman’s economics, which I would have
understood better if I had read him at university.
Hayek
contributed original thinking to philosophy and to neuroscience, which brought
him close to Adam Smith’s works in the 18th century, such as
his theories about the emergence of morality from childhood (‘self command’)
and as an adult (the ‘impartial spectator’), the origins of language and how
knowledge evolves, and of course, the origins of the wealth of nations.
Opening Anthropology: An interview with Keith Hart at Savage Minds from The Memory Bank - Dec 21, 2012 Part 1 Ryan
Anderson: Thanks for doing this interview, Keith. Let’s just jump right
in here: What do you think about this whole ‘open access’ conversation going on
in anthropology? …
Keith Hart: The fastest-growing sector of
world trade is in cultural commodities – entertainment, education, media, information
services – increasingly online. The universities are doing at best a flawed job
of providing people with the education they want when they want it and at an
affordable price. Everywhere sclerotic corporate hierarchies are outsourcing to
smaller flexible units or being replaced by them. This is particularly true of
research today. There are massive opportunities out there to address the demand
for lifetime self-learning and anthropology should be admirably suited to that.
With imagination and less dependence on the universities, anthropology could
enter a new golden age…
The
academic seclusion of the discipline, its passive acquiescence to bureaucracy,
is the chief obstacle preventing us from grasping this historical opportunity.
We cling to our revolutionary commitment to joining the people, but have
forgotten what ethnography was for or what else is needed, if humanity is to
succeed in building a universal society. The internet is a wonderful chance to
open up the flow of knowledge and information. Rather than obsessing over how
we can control access to what we write, which means cutting off the mass of
humanity almost completely from our efforts, we need to figure out new
interactive forms of engagement that span the globe and to make the results of
our work available to everyone.
Ever
since the internet went public and the World Wide Web was invented, I have made
online self-publishing and interaction the core of my anthropological practice.
It matters less that an academic guild should retain its monopoly of access to
knowledge than that “anthropology” should be taken up by a broad intellectual
coalition for whom the realization of a new human universal – a world society
fit for humanity as a whole — is a matter of urgent personal concern.
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