For the last several centuries, the Western academic discourse on Vedic civilization has been applying Western categories to the Vedic culture, but the Vedic culture hasn’t applied its categories to the West. If we don’t apply our categories to others, we are molded by their categories. If we don’t respond to how others see us, …
2022
Why a Person Falls from a Spiritual Path
Every now and then there are stories about a spiritual leader “falling down”. These are not limited to one religion or religious organization. They are known to occur across all religions and organizations. The reasons are simple—The spiritual journey is long, every successive stage leads to more hardship, and one must be enthusiastic, patient, and …
Politeness and Criticism in the Bhakti Tradition
There is a widespread misconception at present that those who adhere to the Bhakti tradition do not criticize others. This misconception arises because Bhakti is equated to “love”, which is then equated to non-violence and acceptance of others, which is then mixed up in the pseudo-secular woo of tolerance and equality. Many people even argue …
Four Defects of Human Knowledge
Śrila Prabhupāda often talked about the four defects of souls “conditioned” by the material energy—(a) imperfect senses, (b) illusions, (c) committing mistakes, and (d) cheating propensity. He then explained that humans are incapable of acquiring perfect knowledge due to these four defects. Finally, he stated that the Vedic texts are produced by persons free of …
Judging Religions and Religious People
There are many misconceptions about what constitutes a religion and a religious person and how we should evaluate them. In this post, I will discuss two such criteria—(a) the method of judging three symptoms of love of God—morality, knowledge, and bliss, and (b) the method of two negations due to which a person or religion …
Quality vs. Quantity in Spiritual Life
Everything in Vedic philosophy is based on qualities. Since the advent of modern science, everything in modern thinking is based on quantity. The focus on qualities needs the distinction between better and worse. The focus on quantities needs the distinction between more and less. Under the influence of quantity thinking, people stop thinking about quality …
A Vedic Argument for the Existence of God
We can scan the length and breadth of Vedic texts and we will not find anyone asking for proof of God’s existence or someone providing it voluntarily. That doesn’t mean we cannot provide an argument for God’s existence based on what is already present in the Vedic texts. In this post, I will present an …
The “God Has Many Names” Problem
There are many ways to demonstrate the problems of logic, set theory, and Gödel’s incompleteness. They are all different ways to look at the problem, to become convinced that there is a problem. One such way is the statement “God has many names”. These names are not synonymous. By assigning various names to God, we …
Moral Imperatives for Economists
Most people think that macroeconomics is a legitimate subject because its experts are employed by prestigious organizations like central banks, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, treasury departments, investment funds, and universities. They don’t know that macroeconomics is colonialism by another name. In this post, I will describe what macroeconomics is, and how it is used …