Philosophers From India

"Work with a feeling that, there is none lower than me; There is none greater than society of Sharanas."

"Basava (twelfth century AD), a Saivite saint of South India was a religious teacher, social reformer, and revolutionary who opposed image worship, rejected the Vedas, and the authority of the priests and instituted complete equality among his followers, even equality for women. He was the founder of the Lingayat sect."

"Earn wealth through honest and truthful work."

"Have faith in creator of this universe believe that he is omnipresent and Supreme power."

"Consume according to your requirements and contribute the rest to the society through Dasoha."

"The rich Will make temples for Siva what shall I, a poor man, do? My legs are pillars, the body the shrine, the head the cupola of gold, Listen, O! Lord: Standing things shall fall, that which moves shall stay"

"Though shall not steal nor kill; Not speak a lie; Be angry with no one, Nor scorn another man; Nor glory in thyself; Nor others hold you to blame This is your inward purity; This is your outward purity; This is the way to win our Lord: Kudalasangama"

"Live morally, do not aspire for other's Wealth, Women and God."

"Make your body the temple of God."

"Listen, O lord of the meeting rivers, things standing shall fall, but the moving ever shall stay."

"In a brahmin house where they feed the fire as a god when the fire goes wild and burns the house they splash on it the water of the gutter and the dust of the street, beat their breasts and call the crowd. These men then forget their worship and scold their fire, O lord of the meeting rivers!”"

"Never act in breach of trust."

"It is not possible to speak with too much applause of so excellent a work."

"There is no Metaphysics superior to that of Shankara."

"In his short life of thirty-two years Shankara achieved that union of sage and saint, of wisdom and kindliness, which characterizes the loftiest type of man produced in India... There is much metaphysical wind in these discourses, and arid deserts of textual exposition; but they may be forgiven in a man who at the age of thirty could be at once the Aquinas and the Kant of India... Shankara establishes the source of his philosophy at a remote and subtle point never quite clearly visioned again until, a thousand years later, Immanuel Kant wrote his Critique of Pure Reason... We do not know how much Parmenides’ insistence that the Many are unreal, and that only the One exists, owed to the Upanishads, or contributed to Shankara; nor can we establish any connection, of cause or suggestion, between Shankara and the astonishingly similar philosophy of Immanuel Kant."

"Among Hindus, the date of Shankara is controversial; some date him to c. 500 BC. In this case, I wholeheartedly support the conventional date established by Indologists, among other reasons because his choice of Dwarka for his Western matha, and not Hinglaj (west of the Indus) as intended, fits neatly with the fact that the latter area had passed under Muslim control in the early eighth century."

"Deities like Brahma and others taste only a particle, of the unlimited Bliss of Brahman and enjoy in proportion their share of that particle."

"Though he lives in the conditionings (Upadhis), he, the contemplative one, remains ever unconcerned with anything or he may move about like the wind, perfectly unattached. On the destruction of the Upadhis, the contemplative one is totally absorbed in "Vishnu", the All-pervading Spirit, like water into water, space into space and light into light. Realise That to be Brahman, the attainment of which leaves nothing more to be attained, the blessedness of which leaves no other blessing to be desired and the knowledge of which leaves nothing more to be known."

"All objects are pervaded by Brahman. All actions are possible because of Brahman: therefore Brahman permeates everything as butter permeates milk."

"All the manifested world of things and beings are projected by imagination upon the substratum which is the Eternal All-pervading Vishnu, whose nature is Existence-Intelligence; just as the different ornaments are all made out of the same gold."

"Atman is an ever-present Reality. Yet, because of ignorance it is not realised. On the destruction of ignorance Atman is realised."

"The Atman, the Sun of Knowledge that rises in the sky of the heart, destroys the darkness of the ignorance, pervades and sustains all and shines and makes everything to shine."

"Like bubbles in the water, the worlds rise, exist and dissolve in the Supreme Self, which is the material cause and the prop of everything."

"One should become aware of oneself, indivisible, and perfect; free from identification with all things transient, such as one’s body, functions, mind, and the sense of being the doer, for all these are the product of ignorance."

"When the force of desire for the Truth blossoms, selfish desires wither away, just like darkness vanishes before the radiance of the light of dawn."

"Action cannot destroy ignorance, for it is not in conflict with or opposed to ignorance. Knowledge does verily destroy ignorance as light destroys deep darkness."

"Ramanuja is first and last a Master of Vedic personality that is the vital breath of Indian Society from its every birth."

"Brahma satyam jagat mithyam, jivo brahmaiva naparah"

"He who renouncing all activities, who is free of all the limitations of time, space and direction, worships his own Atman which is present everywhere, which is the destroyer of heat and cold, which is Bliss-Eternal and stainless, becomes All-knowing and All-pervading and attains thereafter Immortality."

"The Soul appears to be finite because of ignorance. When ignorance is destroyed the Self which does not admit of any multiplicity truly reveals itself by itself: like the Sun when the clouds pass away."

"Just as the fire is the direct cause for cooking, so without Knowledge no emancipation can be had. Compared with all other forms of discipline Knowledge of the Self is the one direct means for liberation."

"It may perhaps help us to realize the human side of our Masters if we remember that many of Them in comparatively recent times have been known as historical characters... In these researches into the remote past we have frequently found the disciple Jesus, who in Palestine had the privilege of yielding up His body to the Christ. As a result of that act He received the incarnation of Apollonius of Tyana, and in the eleventh century He appeared in India as the teacher Ramanuja, who revived the devotional element in Hinduism, and raised it to so high a level."

"Ramanuja wrote nine works in Sanskrit on the philosophy of . Of these, the Vedartha-Sangraha occupies a unique place in as much as this work takes the place of a commentary on the , though not in a conventional sense or form. The work mirrors a total vision of the Upanishads, discussing all the controversial texts in a relevant, coherent manner."

"Rāmānuja (ācārya), the eleventh century South Indian philosopher, is the chief proponent of Vishishtādvaita, which is one of the three main forms of the Orthodox Hindu philosophical school, Vedānta. As the prime philosopher of the Vishishtādvaita tradition, Rāmānuja is one of the Indian philosophical tradition’s most important and influential figures. He was the first Indian philosopher to provide a systematic theistic interpretation of the philosophy of the Vedas, and is famous for arguing for the epistemic and soteriological significance of bhakti, or devotion to a personal God."

"Men, unacquainted with Vedanta, do not see that all things and all individual selves have Brahman as their self. They think that all terms exhaust their significance by signifying the various objects by themselves, which objects are in reality a part and not the whole of the meaning of terms. Now by the study of Vedanta, they understand that all such objects are the effects of Brahman, that Brahman is the inner ruler of them all and that they are animated by Brahman as their very soul. Therefore they come to understand that all terms signify Brahman itself having as its modes the entities, to which latter alone the terms are applied in common usage."

"The individual self is subject to beginningless nescience, which has brought about an accumulation of karma, of the nature of both merit and demerit. The flood of such karma causes his entry into four kinds of bodies — heavenly, human, animal and plant beginning with that of Brahma downwards. This ingression into bodies produces the delusion of identity with those respective bodies (and the consequent attachments and aversions). This delusion inevitably brings about all the fears inherent in the state of worldly existence. The entire body of Vedanta aims at the annihilation of these fears. To accomplish their annihilation they teach the following:"

"Great leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and Ambedkar and saints like Ramanuja Acharya have stressed on need for social unity"

"Entities other than Brahman can be objects of such cognitions of the nature of joy only to a finite extent and for limited duration. But Brahman is such that cognizing of him is an infinite and abiding joy. It is for this reason that the shruti [scripture] says, `Brahman is bliss’ ( II.6.) Since the form of cognition as joy is determined by its object, Brahman itself is joy."

"When the food is pure the Sattva element gets purified, the memory becomes unwavering."

"Ancient or pre-Buddhistic Hinduism sought Him both in the world and outside it; it took its stand on the strength and beauty and joy of the Veda, unlike modern or post-Buddhistic Hinduism which is oppressed with Buddha's sense of universal sorrow and Shankara's sense of universal illusion,-Shankara who was the better able to destroy Buddhism because he was himself half a Buddhist."

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"What an individual pursues as a desirable end depends upon what he conceives himself to be."

"I find that Shankara had grasped much of Vedantic truth, but that much was dark to him. I am bound to admit what he realised; I am not bound to exclude what he failed to realise."

"Even the street-sweeper is frequently more profoundly versed in subtle metaphysics and divine wisdom than the missionary sent to convert him."

"Christians well know that the much-decorated statue of the Church, as it now stands, is not of pure chiseled marble, but of clay, cemented together by blood and tears and hardened in the fires of hatred and persecution."

"All religions worthy of the name are now making great efforts to purify their doctrines and return to their original standpoint, all except Christianity! You surely know that the nineteenth century Christianity is not the religion taught by Christ. Christ's religion has been changed and corrupted."

"The central ideas of Christianity, an angry God and vicarious atonement, are contrary to every fact in nature, as also to the better aspirations of the human heart; they are, in our present stage of enlightenment, absurd, preposterous, and blasphemous propositions."

"We all understand that the debasement of a nation's coinage is very pernicious and must prove disastrous to its commerce. How much more dangerous is the debasement of the spiritual coinage!"

"Europe is today only nominally Christian. It is really worshiping Mammon."

"Religious intuition is a unique form of experience. Religious intuition is more than simply the confluence of the cognitive, aesthetic, and ethical sides of life. However vital and significant these sides of life may be, they are but partial and fragmented constituents of a greater whole, a whole which is experienced in its fullness and immediacy in religious intuition."