Religion

The Soul is Moving and the Body is Not Moving

The first important thing we learn from Bhagavad-Gita 2.13 is that “just as the soul passes from childhood, to youth, to old age, in the same way, the soul passes to a new body at the time of death”. Most people take this to mean that after death there will be another life, which is true. But that is not all...

Is Hinduism Just a Way of Life?

There is a popular but false dogma about Hinduism, that it is not a religion, but only a way of life. This dogma is misleading and toxic at many levels, and this post tries to uncover and examine the many flaws of this idea.

Who Can Be Guru?

Much discussion occurs on the internet about “guru-tattva”. I have watched these discussions for years but refrained from participation because I find these discussions don’t understand or appreciate the true nature of hierarchy; most of these discussions think of a guru system as a linear succession of gurus. This post discusses the differences between linear progression and hierarchical expansion and then...

Understanding Satkāryavāda: Correlation vs. Causation

If you put your hand in the fire, it will be burnt. Science will say: Fire is energy; when you bring your hand in contact with fire, then energy is transferred to your hand, and that causes the burn. Likewise, if you jump off a cliff, you will die. Science will say: The body on top of the cliff has gravitational...

Why Religion is Incompatible with Modern Science

There are many common characterizations of science and religion that claim an incompatibility between the two, but upon closer examination, all these characterizations can be shown to be false. That doesn’t mean that science and religion are similar or identical; they are indeed incompatible, just not in the way their incongruence is presented frequently. After describing many false distinctions between science...

Voidism and Oneness in the Philosophy of Sri Chaitanya

In Indian philosophy, the voidism of Buddhist philosophy is seen as the opposition to the materialism of demigod worship and rituals. Then, classical impersonalism or Advaita is seen as the opposition to voidism in Buddhist philosophy. Finally, classical personalism or Vaishnavism is seen as the opposition to the impersonalism of Advaita. However, Sri Chaitanya’s philosophy reconciles the reality of the material...

The Problem of Evil

The problem of evil refers to the question of how to reconcile the existence of evil in this world with an omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent God. The argument for the problem of evil goes as follows: We can see that evil exists in this world—cheating, misery and suffering, poverty, disease, etc. Why would God create a world in which this evil...

The Philosophy of Contracts

Modern society is constructed on the idea of contracts. This idea can be traced back to Judaism which instituted a “covenant” with God in which God will do certain things for Abraham if Abraham did some things for God. The first covenant of Judaism for instance says: “You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be...

Krishna is Jealous and Nonchalant

Many people say that the God of Abrahamic religions is a “jealous” God. However, they don’t ask: If we can be jealous, then why can God also not be jealous? Similarly, if we can be non-jealous, therefore, God must also be non-jealous. This contradiction makes it very hard to understand God’s nature.

The Knot in the Heart

In the Śrīmad Bhagavatam, two verses—nearly identical in the text—are present in two places. They talk about the destruction of the knot in the heart, and the realization of mastery.

Creation as Conscious Creativity

Beginning with my first book, “Six Causes”, I have been describing a paradigm of creation that stems from conscious creativity. In this paradigm, the self goes missing in the self, and when this “absence” is created, then creativity occurs to overcome this absence by expanding the self into works of creativity. E.g. in human creativity, the person who desires to know...

Technical Issues in Bhagavad-Gita Translations

Recently, while preparing for a presentation, I started looking up Bhagavad-Gita translations and found some curious discrepancies, which make the translations scientifically inaccurate. On finding these in the select verses that I was looking up (i.e., not an exhaustive study), I went back to the original translations and found that these scientific inaccuracies do not exist in the original translations. This...