More on this book
Kindle Notes & Highlights
'I am simply using the dharmic perspective to reverse the analytical gaze which normally goes from West to East and unconsciously privileges the former.
I want all the cultures of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any.
Young people are especially quick to embrace new kinds of global identities, often at the expense of native traditions.
Indian spiritual capital enjoys a special place in the global quest for greater well-being, as evidenced by the popularity of yoga, meditation and Ayurvedic medicine in various forms and by the influence wielded by certain self-help gurus in popular culture. In fact, Americans invest enormous amounts of money in alternative health and spiritual practices of Indian origin.
What is misleading about the 'flat world' assumption is that, while superficial cultural elements from around the world do seem to have coalesced into a common global culture, the deeper structures that support the power and privilege of certain groups are stronger
than ever before.
When all collective identities are discarded and all boundaries challenged – whether under the rubric of postmodern critique or as a result of a vague and undefined sense that 'all is one' and 'we're all fundamentally the same' – the result is not a world free from dominance but one in which the strongest identities along with their versions of history and values prevail.
Modern China offers a good counter-example to the claim that globalization necessarily means westernization, as it has asserted its distinctiveness while engaging with the world on its own terms.
Religious 'tolerance' was advocated in Europe after centuries of religious wars between adherents of the different denominations of Christianity. In many European countries, Churches functioned as religious monopolies according to which the mere practice of the 'wrong' religion was a criminal offence. 'Tolerance' was a positive attempt to quell the violence that had plagued Christianity for centuries in Europe, but it did not provide a genuine basis for real unity and cooperation, and so it often broke down. 5
Prof. Law herself supported my proposal but was unsure about how the religious groups would feel; so she set about calling them to gauge their reactions. Some weeks later, she told me that merely raising my suggestion with certain religious heads (whom she did not name) had elicited considerable anger. They could not 'tolerate' the idea of outsiders meddling with their religious texts. These texts, after all, could never be altered nor declared invalid in any manner as they contained the words of God.
After all, if religions deemed 'heathen' were to start getting officially respected, there would be no justification for evangelizing and converting their adherents to Christianity. This would undermine the exclusive claims of Christianity which form the justification for the Church's large-scale proselytizing campaigns.
Mutual respect merely means that I am respected for my faith, with no compulsion for others to adopt or practise it.
These formal teachings of her church would seem to make it impossible for the dean to respect Hinduism. It amazed me how easily the friendly dean could smile away and evade the Christian posture of exclusivity, one of the chief causes of disharmony among religions, while presenting herself as a champion of religious harmony.
There is today an entire movement built on the notion of sameness – fuelled by political correctness, ignorance and, in many cases, sheer dishonesty. We must tease out the real issues that lie beneath the mask of hypocrisy pervading most interfaith dialogues. Sameness cannot be one-sided: If X is the same as Y, Y must also be the same as X. But how many churches are willing to worship Krishna or Shiva as the same universal God described in the Bible? This gives us a pragmatic method for empirically testing the sameness claim in any instance.
In response to the increasing number of conflict-ridden situations emerging around the globe (especially among the Abrahamic religions themselves), Christians are recognizing the need for harmony and tolerance among religious traditions – if only to demonstrate their bona fides in promoting universal welfare. However, this attitude goes hand-in-hand with the conversion goals of most major denominations, especially once the targeted population has been disarmed by friendly intentions.
I call this resistance 'difference anxiety'. The term refers to the mental uneasiness caused by the perception of difference combined with a desire to diminish, conceal or
eradicate it. Difference anxiety occurs in cultural and religious contexts frequently.
Such an anxiety seeks the relative comfort of homogeneous ideas, beliefs and identity. It runs counter to the natural world, where differences are inherent in the immense variety of animals, plants, flowers, ...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
As a way of resolving difference, Western civilization is given to isolating the elements of other civilizations and placing them in its own conceptual categories – categories formulated by the 'white', 'Christian', and 'progressive' race. This categorization privileges the Western gaze and enables it to declare itself as the universal norm for others to emulate. It is a system for gaining control.
The inculturation process works in stages. At first, the native tradition is honoured by the missionaries. Some of the natives' practices and symbols are superficially adopted to make them feel proud that their heritage is being appreciated. The short-term intention is to make Christianity seem less alien and hence attractive to the natives. In the long term, however, the indigenous peoples are weaned away from the core of their religious identities. Their
traditional identities eventually become an innocuous husk, their very meaning transformed into a pale reflection of Christianity. Once the new member is firmly placed in this ambiguous or hybrid religion, has burnt bridges with native traditions and become dependent on the church, the proverbial knife is twisted. In the case of Hinduism, the Hindu aspects are downplayed and the Christian aspects emphasized.
A serious problem with Christian inculturation as practised in India is that it seeks to strip Hinduism of what Christians see as baggage, thereby secularizing the culture.
The pride which Indians experience whenever the West directs its gaze at them persists even today. They interpret the attention as appreciation of their broad-mindedness, progressiveness, secularism, and so forth.
A common reaction from intellectually inclined members of dharmic cultures is that 'we should look within and worry about ourselves and our own truth', and therefore, 'why bother with others'? My response is that by remaining introverted and not engaging in purva paksha, dharmic thought stays relegated to an isolated corner.
What would happen to your religious lives if all history became inaccessible or falsified? What would you do if you had to live your lives without the knowledge passed down from God through historical events? By what authority would you be able to live a religious life, if at all? In other words, could you discover the spiritual
truth for yourselves without dependence on historical sources, or would you be lost if these were unavailable?
The term 'myth' conjures up images of magical gods, goddesses, spirits and demons of the sort one would find in an Indiana Jones movie or fantasy. These may be considered interesting or exotic or even beautiful, but they are not reliable accounts of the truth.
The journalism professor then proposed his own course in which he would interpret various Western narratives, including the Bible, as stemming from their own myths. He was advised that such a course would cause the students to be disturbed about their identity and hence would be inappropriate. He dropped the idea and later moved to another university.
Formal education and even family upbringing in the West are fixated on installing a unique historical identity.
The dharma practitioner who studies itihasa explicitly aspires to bring about a change within,
emphasizing the virtues illustrated in the narratives and not the historical facts. Lord Rama and Lord Krishna are embodiments of bhavas (attitudes), and their historical significance is superseded by the values they convey. Sri Aurobindo explains the ever-present nature of the Indian narratives, which should not be seen as events in the past in physical space-time:
The West demands that its myths be historicized so that they may be claimed as true. Indians do not carry the burden of history-centrism and so are under no pressure to present their myths as history.
In both the religious and secular history of the West, major changes have generally involved violence. Every successive stage in evolution has viewed the previous one as threatening and therefore to be either completely consumed or violently eradicated.
The first major discovery to be made as a result of such inner observation is that none of the voices in our heads is intrinsically 'ours'.24
Most dharmic systems came to accept that the entrenched misunderstanding of ourselves and the world is avidya (false knowledge), which gives rise to ruinous views which in turn give rise to destructive and addictive habits ('kleshas') – all of which are the root cause of misery. The superimposition of the mind's prior conditioning and context in order to construct one's perceptions is referred to as 'nama-rupa' (name-form). Nama-rupa is the result of memory traces ('samskaras'), which in turn are the byproducts of past impressions of wilful actions.
One's choices reinforce one's conditioning (samskaras), which in turn serve as a filter for perception. The result is an ...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
The more one reinforces mental concepts and desires, the more one strengthens the habitual mind and increases the obstacles to illumination. Hence, a silent mind is the equivalent of a clean laboratory.
Do not accept anything on the grounds of revelation, tradition or report or because it is a product of mere reasoning or because it is true from a standpoint or because of a superficial assessment of the facts or because it conforms with one's preconceived notions or because it is authoritative or because of the prestige of your teacher.
