The Process of Creation in Bhāgavata Purāṇa The Three Stages of Material Creation The 3rd Canto of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa describes a process of creation that is almost never discussed and hence it can be said that it is almost never understood. In this post, I will describe this process and then discuss one aspect …
The Problem of the Industrial Revolution Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, every new generation in industrial society has, on average, enjoyed more comfort than the previous one. As people get more comfort, they begin to believe that a comfortable life is just a normal thing. They feel entitled to comforts and demand greater …
Treacherous Translations We can ask anyone walking the street what intelligence is, and he will probably equate it to the result of an IQ test which is measured in various college undergraduate and postgraduate aptitude test examinations. Women do quite well in these tests. Most women do better than men in examinations and in school …
Nearly all great civilizations have a flood story. It is almost always the precursor to a new age or a new civilization. Nearly all big civilizations talk about their advent after a flood. Some of these are stories about floods in rivers. Their cataclysmic effects are not anywhere close to those of global floods. There …
Troubles of the Bhaktivedānta Institute History of the Bhaktivedānta Institute The Bhaktivedānta Institute (BI) was created by His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedānta Swami Prabhupāda to function as the intellectual arm of ISKCON. It had three primary goals—(a) refute the materialism of modern science, (b) refute the blind faith assumptions of other religions, and (c) …
There is a common belief that everyone can know everything. It is false. This false dogma was created at the dawn of modern science to take away the privileged position of Catholic priests and emperors. In Roman times, the emperor was said to be in direct communion with the gods. He was most privileged. The …
This is the second of a three-part series in which I cover sexuality. In the first part, I discussed the nature of perverted sexuality whose hallmark is shame. In the second part, I will discuss various types of sexuality found in the Vedic texts, leading to a perfectional stage whose mark is shyness, rather than …
This is the first of a three-part series in which I cover sexuality. In the first part, I talk about perverted sexuality whose hallmark is shame. The second part discusses various types of sexuality found in the Vedic texts, leading to a perfectional stage whose mark is shyness, rather than shame. The third part will …
The separation of religion and economics, like so many other separations in modern thinking, is the gift of the Western reductionist methodology of drawing arbitrary boundaries within reality and treating them as isolated systems. These separations never occurred in Vedic thinking. Wealth, for instance, is one of the qualities of Lord Viṣṇu, personified as Lakśmi. …
A “realization” is that which takes us closer to God. It can be progress from tamo-guna to rajo-guna, rajo-guna to sattva-guna, or sattva-guna to transcendence. It can include a better understanding of various qualities. It can be something that allows us to reconcile seemingly contradictory claims. It may be a new way to improve our …
There are widespread misconceptions about the various yoga systems: (a) they are mutually exclusive, (b) everyone can choose their yoga, and (c) each yoga system is optional. This misconception can be easily dissipated by reading Bhagavad-Gita, where Kṛṣṇa describes six yoga systems in a hierarchy. In this post, I will discuss this ladder of yoga …
