Religion and Beyond By: Ramesh Bijlani on
Feb 14, 2013 7
Responses Every religion has four basic components…
Religion is good as a gateway to spirituality, but no religion is good
enough as the ultimate anchor. That is why, religion has been called the
kindergarten of spirituality. Or, as Swami Vivekananda said, any religion
is good enough to be born in; no religion is good enough to die in.
Having said that, the overall effect of religions on mankind, however, has been
positive, in spite of the divisions and even violence that they have
occasionally triggered. Acknowledgement: I am happy to acknowledge the insight
into the four aspects of religions that I gained from Prof. V.G. Bhide.
Sri Aurobindo: A
Forward-Looking Traditionalist by Peter Heehs - Talk delivered by Peter
Heehs at a National Conference sponsored by the Rashtriya Sanskrit Samsthan, New Delhi , and the Sri
Aurobindo Institute of Indian Culture, Shillong, February 2012 - Free download Choose a format to download
It was not until a decade after his return from England that
the focus of Sri Aurobindo’s attention shifted from literary to spiritual
works. Around 1902 he began his long engagement with the Upanishads, striving
to bring out the majesty of Upanishadic language in English translations, …
Sri Aurobindo never gave a final form to his philological investigations, because
his research into the origins of language led him to the Rig Veda, and he soon became
deeply absorbed in the study of this most ancient of Indian texts…
Sri Aurobindo was convinced of the greatness of the Indian tradition,
but his appreciation of the Indian past looked forward to an even greater
future… The old as well as the new had to be creatively appropriated, becoming
transformed into something that was stronger and richer than the constituent
materials. It is in the light of this assimilative appropriation that we have
to view Sri Aurobindo’s approach to efforts of “the Indian spiritual mind” to
recover its past and move towards its future. On the one hand he encouraged the
study of India ’s
past achievements in religion, literature, art, polity, and so forth. On the
other hand he discouraged the “revival of orthodox conservatism” as being
superficial, sentimental and out of “touch with the great facts and forces of
life.” Modern Indians, he wrote, had to “look upon all that our past contains
with new eyes” in order “to recover something of their ancient sense” but
at the same time “bring out of them a new light which gives to the old truths
fresh aspects and therefore novel potentialities of creation and
evolution.”
Pride in the accomplishments of the Indian soul should not take the
form of what he called an “unthinking cultural Chauvinism which holds that whatever
we have is good for us because it is Indian or even that whatever is in India is best,
because it is the creation of the Rishis.” What India needed was not a lonely self-glorification,
but “a unity with the rest of mankind, in which we shall maintain our spiritual
and our outer independence.” The East-West dichotomy had to be transcended, he
said, for “from the view of the evolutionary future, European and Indian civilisation
at their best have only been half achievements, infant dawns pointing to
the mature sunlight that is to come.”
Meghalaya
Guardian ePaper Inspired by Sri
Aurobindo's philosophy, he made India his home. GUARDIAN NEWS
BUREAU SHILLONG, Feb 14:
Peter Heehs, an American historian living in Puducherry who writes on
modern Indian history, Indian spirituality and religion was in town recently to
attend the national seminar on “interrelation between Sanskrit and Indian
culture with special reference to Sri Aurobindo” organized by Rashtriya
Sanskrit Sansthan, New Delhi and city based Sri Aurobindo Institute of Indian
Culture at its campus. On Wednesday, he addressed a select audience at the
city- based Asian Confluence – an initiative to promote an open space for
creating a better understanding of the North Eastern region of India . It is a
space for cultural and intellectual exchange that can act as a hub for civil
society initiatives and the brainchild of former Shillong parliamentarian Dr BB
Dutta’s son, Sabyasachi Dutta.
In his interaction with the specially invited guests, Heehs said that
he came to India at the age
of 22 and made Pondicherry
his home for over 40 years now. He has authored several books and is being
acclaimed as an outstanding authority of Sri Aurobindo and Divine Mother’s
vision, thought etc. “Having coming here 40 years ago, India has become a place where I live and work
whereas my family ( his brothers) is cantered in USA ,” he said. He was born in Illinois , Chicago and grew
up in Philadelphia and also spent most of his
boyhood in Pennsylvania , New
York and New Jersey
before coming here. His father was from St Louis
and mother from California .
When his father was transferred to Philadelphia
region that was when he developed first sort of interests about India and came
across Indian spiritual gurus besides Ravi Shankar and his music. He was in
college then when a thought about what is the purpose of this life, the ideal
of Vedanta and general spiritual thinking caught his thinking. He came to know
about the Indian Cultural Centre in New York and got associated with it where
the in- charge, a French lady came to India and met Morarji Desai and dedicated
herself as India’s ambassador as she was more influenced by Sri Aurobindo and
Raman Maharshi. “I ended up with this organization and got interested in
reading about Sri Aurobindo and thought why not go that place and went straight
to Pondicherry and then got kind of fit in and was given a work in a literary activity
to set up the archive of Sri Aurobindo’s works,” he said.
Working at this archive was a learning process for him as he was
involved in identifying and sequencing the personal manuscripts of Sri
Aurobindo from which he had got the opportunity to have a close look into the
life of this great Yogi. “We made sequence of the books and his personal
manuscripts and discovered that like Bhabani Bharati, which was talked upon
largely in the seminar, there were many other works that were lying
unpublished,” he said. The quality of Sri Aurobindo that took this historian by
surprise was that he (Aurobindo) started a monthly journal Arya of which all
the 64 pages he used to write in immaculate texts as he had greater fluency in
writing English besides he was simultaneously working on various other
disciplines, such as, The Life Divine, The Future Poetry, Translation of Vedas,
The Ideal of Human Unity and more as all these are different subject works in
addition to the 64 page monthly journal. “He was incredible,” said Heehs.
Heehs also replied questions put up by the visiting guests, such as,
why institutions tend to drift away after the departure of the founding fathers
besides whether Sri Aurobindo and Swami Vivekananda had any inspirational
relationship between them. There was also questions regarding his book “The
Lives of Sri Aurobindo” which created a controversy and furore in the country
as there was a demand that the historian should leave the country with protests
in Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry ,
too.
Heehs also shared his experience meeting with the Divine Mother for a
couple of times as meeting with the mother was very restricted. “I would
exaggerate if I say that there was a huge feeling or change in me thereafter
but certainly there was something as I dedicated my life to that of Sri
Aurobindo and Mother,” he said.
India , therefore, does not
belong to Hindus alone; it belongs equally to Muslims, Sikhs, Christians,
Parsees, Jains etc. Also, it is not only Hindus who can live in India as
first-rate citizens while others have to live as second or third rate citizens.
All are first-rate citizens here. The killing of thousands of Muslims and other
atrocities on them in Gujarat in 2002 can
never be forgotten or forgiven. All the perfumes in Arabia
cannot wash away the stain on Mr. Modi in this connection.
The Hindu : Opinion Op-Ed : All the perfumes of Arabia February 15, 2013 MARKANDEY
KATJU
To call the killings of Muslims in 2002 a spontaneous reaction reminds
one of Kristallnacht in Germany
in November 1938, when the entire Jewish community in Germany was attacked, many killed, their
synagogues burnt, shops vandalised after a German diplomat in Paris was shot dead by a Jewish youth whose
family had been persecuted by the Nazis. It was claimed by the Nazi government
that this was only a ‘spontaneous’ reaction, but in fact it was planned and
executed by the Nazi authorities using fanatic mobs.
In terms of historical evolution, India is broadly a country of
immigrants and consequently, it is a land of tremendous diversity. Hence, the
only policy which can hold it together and put it on the path of progress is
secularism — equal respect and treatment to all communities and sects. This was
the policy of the great Emperor Akbar, which was followed by our founding
fathers (Pandit Nehru and his colleagues) who gave us a secular Constitution.
Unless we follow this policy, our country cannot survive for one day, because
it has so much diversity, so many religions, castes, languages, ethnic groups.
It is said by his supporters that Mr. Modi had no hand in the
killings, and it is also said that he had not been found guilty by any court of
law. I do not want to comment on our judiciary, but I certainly do not buy the
story that Mr. Modi had no hand in the events of 2002. He was the Chief
Minister of Gujarat at the time when horrible
events happened on such a large scale. Can it be believed that he had no hand
in them? At least I find this impossible to believe… I appeal to the people of India to
consider all this if they are really concerned about the nation’s future.
Otherwise they may make the same mistake which the Germans made in 1933. (Markandey
Katju, a former judge of the Supreme Court, is Chairman of the Press Council of
India
By Ronald Dworkin (pdf). Every economist (and many others) should read
this article. And his classic two-part article on “What is Equality?” is here and here.
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