Showing: 52 RESULTS
History Knowing Truths Religion

The Great Deluge

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 …

Debunking Myths Religion

False Universals in Kṛṣṇa Bhakti

We can scan the length and breadth of Vedic literature, but we won’t find the term “Universal Truth”. Everywhere, we find the term Param-Satyam, which has three meanings—(a) Highest Truth, (b) Original Truth, and (c) Best Truth. The highest truth controls everything. The original truth creates everything. The best truth enjoys everything. Param-Satyam is the …

Debunking Myths Religion

Are We Antipathic to Academics?

Standards For Different Religions My criticisms of other religions are sometimes dismissed not by a counterargument but simply by calling it an outsider’s opinion, different from the believer’s viewpoint. The critic says: Believers have an orthodox view of their religion while academics have a heterodox view of the same religion. The divergence between the orthodox …

Knowing Truths Physics Religion

Jīva Falldown—Understanding Anādi

In Chaitanya Caritāmrita 20.117, Lord Chaitanya instructs Sanātana Goswami as follows: kṛṣṇa bhuli’ sei jīva anādi-bahirmukha ataeva māyā tāre deya saṁsāra-duḥkha. Śrila Prabhupāda translates this verse as “Forgetting Kṛṣṇa, the living entity has been attracted by the external feature from time immemorial. Therefore, the illusory energy [māyā] gives him all kinds of misery in his …

Debunking Myths Religion

Spitting at the Moon

I came across a denigrating portrait of Mahābhārata, written by Audrey Truschke, an associate professor of South Asian history at Rutgers University, Newark. Reading through, I noticed three things—(a) ignorance of Mahābhārata in particular and Vedic philosophy in general, (b) laziness to resolve the obvious contradictions in the article’s narratives, and (c) arrogance to judge …

Knowing Truths Religion

Four Kinds of Sukriti and Duṣkṛti

Lord Kṛṣṇa describes four classes of Duṣkṛti (those who have done bad deeds) and Sukriti (those who have done good deeds) one after another in Bhagavad-Gita. They are defined by a single criterion—surrender to Lord Kṛṣṇa. Four kinds of good people surrender to Kṛṣṇa, and four kinds do not. Since these verses are adjacent to …