Reaching There

A painting depicting Tarkavidya (the science of reasoning and logic) in action. Picture:  The famous debate between Adi Shankaracharya and Mandana Mishra, in which Shankaracharya emerged victorious. https://twitter.com/mimansaka/status/1411535285444247556?lang=b g) Can Science & Religion be reconciled? I've often wondered if there is a reconciliation of science and religion. In past, I've written about misinterpreting faith , the  importance of spiritual philosophies , and spiritualism in the Hindu (or Indian) context . I've also read the likes of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, who are the pioneers of the atheistic movement opposing the Abrahamic philosophy, to not limit my view to just my Indic background. In the western world,  more people are identifying as atheists, agnostics, or otherwise nonreligious . Pew Research shows the same trend in the western world when it comes to religion. The same Pew Research also shows the importance of religion in...

There is a chasm of fundamental difference between atheism and religion as defined by the humankind.  When I say atheists I refer to all the men of science who need a mathematical or logical proof of life beyond our life. These are the self-proclaimed men of proof that believe that factual evidence leads to lesser evils; evidence leads to intelligent human beings behaving rationally and morality is an outcome of human evolution, from hunters to builders, rather than a faculty that draws power from a moral code of conduct defined by greater consciousness. The supernaturalistic beliefs lead to irrationality and religious zeal ultimately ending in bigotry. That's their problem with religion and hence the atheistic call for freedom from such beliefs that are non-scientific. Religion in today's (since recorded human history) world has been reduced to belief in miracles and pestering requests for materialism from a supernatural being. The fundamental philosophy points th...

Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear. Thomas Jefferson Sraddha   is commonly translated as faith, but it means the adoption of truth. It is a process of accepting and grasping what truth is. Our intellect must be able to catch the truth, then seek the truth and realize it on our own. From Samkhya Karika (Karika VI) The God Question  Too many people are radicalized by this simple phrase. It produces reactions that range from emotion of disgust to emotion of bliss. I don't think there is any other question that brings so much stubbornness to even slightly delve from the current state of belief. If you ask a theist why does he believe in God? The answer is seemingly simple that the religion is a safe haven that provides a much needed relief from the atrocities of world and seems to point to some kind of abstract joy.  On the other en...

On a recent visit to The Daily Show by Jon Stewart, evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins, described faith as belief without evidence (and not positive). It's easy to label religion or spiritualism with a tag word of fanaticism due to the current events the world is embroiled in. It is also very easy to assign the tag of stubbornness because of the so called conservatives who would misinterpret every scripture to spread spiteful propaganda. Unfortunately this is the state of world we live in the modern society.  However, I find these arguments thrown in various forms of media all too easily; almost readily available like a No Income/No Asset mortgages in the world prior to economic crisis of 2008. A rather extended analogy but that's how easy it is to blame religion or spiritualism in today's world. Moving from one to another; the elephant of mulishness is real (in reality elephants are quite smart animals and have been here before the biped mammals learnt to hunt) ...

A Potpourri of Spiritualism, Religion and Faith A Simple Life Chitrakoot is a small town located in the northern Vindhyas in the state of Madhya Pradesh. A small town bustling with pilgrims crisscrossing through the narrow roads into the various holy places that are scattered all across it. The new Chitrakoot shares it's holy land with the state of Uttar Pradesh as well. For a city dweller like me being in Chitrakoot felt like rewinding the clock about twenty years back, before the modern technology overwhelmed the human beings. I went to Chitrakoot on my father's behest but the next two days were a religious reunion of sorts. If ever there was a competition for "Holy of Holies" in India, the small town of Chitrakoot would win it hands down (it is described as the teerth of all teerths, you can read the history behind this  here ). "Teerth" is a Sanskrit word meaning a holy place next to a water body. And the holy river running through Chitrakoot is M...

A little bit about Swami Sarvapriyananda I've listened to Swami Sarvapriyananda of the Vedanta Society of New York for the last couple of years. His talks on Vedanta, Katha Upanishad, Yoga, and various other topics are a very important source to not only introductions to Hindu spiritual philosophy but help one to dive deep into this sea of knowledge with an anchor to guide as one unravels the knowledge. He talks about universal acceptance as well as how the Hindu mind accepts other religions as several paths leading to the 'one' truth. He is rooted in his philosophy of Advaita Vedanta (non-dualism). He rarely talks about politics in his lectures and frequently talks about the acceptance of various spiritual paths leading to the same truth. A westerner's myopic view of Hindu nationalism In a recent speech, a question was asked from the audience; "how the current "Hindu nationalism" can be reconciled with the message of universal acceptance that Swami Ji...

I'm not a Physicist. However the wondrous nature of the universe entices me rather than the complexity and uncertainty of the mathematics that is used to describe the rules that govern the universe we live in. Apologies to my mathematician friends but I don't "feel" the equations yet. Christian Huygens attributed certain characteristics of light, like change of speed in different medium and refraction, to the wave-like behaviour of light. Sir Issac Newton firmly believed in the particle-like nature of light based on his observations on the phenomenon of reflection & refraction. Maxwell, Planck and Einstein later provided sufficient mathematical, empirical and theoretical evidence to convince the scientific to sing the song of wave-particle duality. It's a strange behaviour to say the least, something that behaves in two different ways simultaneously; kinda like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde of R. L. Stevenson. It's a cumbersome process to come up...

The days of 'Chacha' Nehru are long gone. He is one of the tall and prominent figure of Indian history which impacted (and still impacts) the destiny of over a billion Indians. His beliefs and decisions changed the course of history that impacts the modern political discourse to this day. He will always be scrutinized by ifs and buts not only by political parties but equally so by the common masses.  In an interview with Republic TV , Home Minister Shri Amit Shah, said, “I don't have a problem with Nehru, I have a problem with what Nehru did.” This is not a critique of Nehru as a human being either. Nehru's ideas and actions should be dissected and debated. His ideas formed the vision of India after partition of India & Pakistan in 1947. His visionary decisions still have a ripple effect in form of IIT, IIM, NID, ISRO that have been pillars of modern India as well as his "other" decisions on Kashmir in 1947, Balochistan in 1947 , with China in 1962 , conti...

A while back I wrote about so many books  ( so little time ) on my list. Another point of view - so many revelations waiting to be revealed to the ignorant me, lying on my desk gathering dust. So here are the two books I've on my March 2013 list: Crisis Economics - A Crash Course in the Future of Finance by Nouriel Roubini I'm still reading it! I was curious about the financial crisis of 2008. It is perhaps the biggest event of my life. It has affected millions of my generation in a way no other single event has. Subprime, derivatives, CDOs and whole other "soup of alphabets" came into the life of ordinary men and women.  It was interesting to read how regularization and de-regularization throughout this century has brought us into this mess. Is there a single right way? Why did some of the best minds in economics screwed up (maybe the greed overcame everything else)? I hope I've an answer when I'm able to finish going through this crisis. It...

I started delving with the ideas of atheism and spiritualism lately. It all started with a comment that religious faith is blind with ignorance towards scientific methodology of evidence or mathematical proof. You can read more about the post here .  Which lead to further contemplation on the topic, which seemed to have permanently ingrained itself in my mind. However I realized there was a fundamental difference between Western atheism,   Abrahamic   religions and   Vedic   spiritualism. I'll only go into atheism and my spiritualism. Western atheism arises from the debate between creation versus evolution. Modern scientists refuted the claims such as Earth was at the center of the universe or the universe is a few thousand years old. Over the course of Western history it was proven the infinite magnitude of universe (even multiverse). Thus evolved the modern science, which included stalwarts like Sir Issac Newton, Nicolaus Copernicus  and other open m...

I recently read an article by Sadanand Dhume in WSJ titled ' Hindu Supremacism Turns Deadly in Delhi '. I was not surprised by the blatant one-sidedness of the so-called opinion as well as the lack of the likes of WSF, NY Times, Washington Post, etc. to even include any disclaimer or even reach out to discuss the other aspect of the debate. After all, if the opinion of an individual is published in a news media the audience should be entitled to balanced information filled with detailed facts, not personal interpretations. Here are examples from the article which is an unashamed manner promoting the entire episode of violence as Hindu Supremacism.  Example 1: The article states that in the Delhi riots most of the killed are Muslim. It shamelessly tries to portray this as an anti-Muslim or a pogrom as Pakistani prime minister likes to call it. Yet it fails to mention that it was, in fact, a riot where both Muslim and Hindu community lost civilians. It fails to mentio...