Philosophers From India

"Non-violence and kindness to living beings is kindness to oneself. For thereby one's own self is saved from various kinds of sins and resultant sufferings and is able to secure his own welfare."

"Desistance from sin makes one entirely happy."

"All breathing, existing, living, sentient creatures should not be slain, nor treated with violence, nor abused, nor tormented, nor driven away."

"Māhavīra proclaimed a profound truth for all times to come when he said: "One who neglects or disregards the existence of earth, air, fire, water and vegetation disregards his own existence which is entwined with them." Jain cosmology recognizes the fundamental natural phenomenon of symbiosis or mutual dependence, which forms the basis of the modern day science of ecology. It is relevant to recall that the term "ecology" was coined in the latter half of the nineteenth century from the Greek word oikos, meaning "home", a place to which one returns. Ecology is the branch of biology which deals with the relations of organisms to their surroundings and to other organisms. The ancient Jain scriptural aphorism Parasparopagraho Jīvānām (All life is bound together by mutual support and interdependence) is refreshingly contemporary in its premise and perspective. It defines the scope of modern ecology while extending it further to a more spacious "home". It means that all aspects of nature belong together and are bound in a physical as well as a metaphysical relationship. Life is viewed as a gift of togetherness, accommodation and assistance in a universe teeming with interdependent constituents."

"Mahavira, the Jain patriarch, surpassed the morality of the Bible with a single sentence: "Do not injure, abuse, oppress, enslave, insult, torment, torture, or kill any creature or living being." Imagine how different our world might be if the Bible contained this as its central precept."

"A living body is not merely an integration of limbs and flesh but it is the abode of the soul which potentially has perfect perception (Anant-darshana), perfect knowledge (Anant-jnana), perfect power (Anant-virya), and perfect bliss (Anant-sukha)."

"Kill not, cause no pain. Nonviolence is the greatest religion."

"Since language is linear, whereas the unfolding of the universe takes place in a multitude of dimensions, language is limited in its ability to describe reality."

"The idea of consciousness requires not only an awareness of things, but also the awareness that one is aware."

"If social media can bring the sense of freedom, it can also bind people into delusional cults."

"If chess is about decisive victory by vanquishing the enemy by taking the fight to the place where the king is located, weiqi is about consolidation of territory."

"One is not a single self, although there is some common thread holding together disparate incarnations."

"The clash of civilizations is nothing but a clash of different myths."

"The dance of the peacock attracts not only the peahen but also the human."

"Europe has resurrected its pagan gods."

"If the heart sorrows over physical loss, the spirit rejoices over hope of understanding."

"Modern life alienates us from Nature, even our own."

"Ritual is intimately connected with the mask, either in the wearing that hides the true face, or in the adoption of a public face."

"History is scraps of evidence joined by the glue of imagination."

"When the mind grasps the universe, the senses retreat."

"The body is like the wife to the spirit. The two must cohabit to create new forms, but their pleasures rarely coincide."

"Gods have many faces."

"Man is a mimic animal, happiest acting a part, needing a mask to tell the truth."

"People embrace false magical theories in the hope something good will come out of them. In the most extreme of these, good comes out of them only at the end of this life, in paradise."

"I have so much of desire that desire itself is my fulfillment."

"The world is a game of information and paradox."

"What is the chance that one can roll up the sky like a hide?"

"The best paradise is the paradise we are exiled from."

"Indian Anglosphere indifference to #KashmiriPandit genocide & expulsion is a shameful episode of recent history. Look at the Yazidis; their genocide and sex-slavery is not rationalized. The Indian Anglosphere lives in a cocoon of self-hate, self-deception and brazen mendacity."

"Beauty takes us to a space that is ineffable, a place of secrets."

"The essence of the Vedas is a narrative on who the experiencing self is. Ordinary science informs us of the relationships between objects and also their transformations. But the Vedas say that this ordinary science leaves out the self who observes these objects."

"Men and women in their mutual attraction are driven to the very emptiness they are trying to avoid."

"Like other social media platforms, Wikipedia has evolved into an echo chamber where the user is presented with only one type of content instead of being shown a balanced narrative. This disinformation is powerful since the articles are written in an academic style and users do not see other sources that disagree with the article.... Some editors of Wikipedia are failed academics with demonic energy who wish to conquer anonymously what they were unable to do in their normal careers. And spending much of their working life editing Wikipedia articles and by the use of multiple anonymous handles they have obtained administrative status which entitles them to block opposing views. The anonymous persona of the editors and the low stakes have made Wikipedia politics much more vicious than real politics."

"Once scientists and scholars invest parts of their career in support of a paradigm, it becomes a sort of a self-betrayal to abandon it."

"The youth established an organization called Panun Kashmir and they declared as their goal the unrealistic idea of a homeland for the Hindus within the valley. This was more a cry of helplessness than anything else."

"This campaign of terror was nowhere as widespread and sustained as in Kashmir. The Hindus fled their homes and took refuge wherever they could, with their lives shattered forever. As refugees, hundreds of miles away from their homes, they were housed in one-room hovels in Jammu. I was invited to give a speech at a meeting called by young Kashmiris in Jammu in December 1991 to reflect on what should be done. I got an opportunity to see first-hand the condition of the refugees, and it was heartbreaking."

"An evil wind destroyed that old Kashmir. I had a premonition of this disaster on a visit thirty years ago in the averted eyes, in the barely concealed rage in people I knew. It was a rage unlike the one that sprouts from a personal wrong. It was like a fog that hung over the place in heavy layers, covering everyone, even those who would normally be happy in their own world."

"I got to visit the ruins of the Mārtaṇḍa Temple on the Mattan Karewa, built by Emperor Lalitāditya, many times. Built of stone, it is characterized by the simplicity of its conception: it is rectangular in plan, consisting of a maṇḍapa and a shrine. Two other shrines flank the maṇḍapa. It is enclosed by a vast courtyard by a peristyle wall with 84 secondary shrines in it. The columns of the peristyle are fluted. Each of the 84 niches originally contained an image of a form of Sūrya. The number 84, as 21×4, appears to have been derived from the numerical association of 21 with the sun. It must have looked like a jeweled treasure on the plateau over Anantnag."

"A culture is like a lens through which people construct their world."

"There is nothing as uplifting and inspiring as the Upanishads."

"My heart, the bird of the wilderness, has found its sky in your eyes."

"Rabindranath Tagore, like Chaucer's forerunners, writes music for his words, and one understands at every moment that he is so abundant, so spontaneous, so daring in his passion, so full of surprise, because he is doing something which has never seemed strange, unnatural, or in need of defence."

"In “The Religion of the Forest,” Tagore wrote about the influence that the forest dwellers of ancient India had on classical Indian literature. The forests are sources of water and the storehouses of a biodiversity that can teach us the lessons of democracy—of leaving space for others while drawing sustenance from the common web of life. Tagore saw unity with nature as the highest stage of human evolution."

"In Bangladesh, textbooks created after 1971 narrated events through a lens of Bengali cultural nationalism. Bengali cultural nationalism includes Hindus, such at Rabindranath Tagore and Ram Mohan Roy, who contributed to Bengali literature and society prior to the partition of the subcontinent. Rabindranath Tagore is particularly dear to Bangladeshis. His poetry and songs, "Rabindra Sangit", are sung by Bengali speaking school children, additionally he authored the words and music of the national anthem. Sonar Bangla (Golden Bengal). Song is an integral part of Bengali life, and in particular, songs by Rabindranath Tagore are well known. The Muktijuddho soldiers are remembered for their songs of inspiration, many of them authored by Tagore, sung as they trudged along rice paddies. Another reason Tagore is popular is because he was banned in Bangladesh in the late 1960s, when West Pakistan was attempting to put down Bengali cultural nationalism that was gaining ground."

"Many of us were educated on the literature of India when we fell in love we read Rabindranath Tagore and when we matured we tried to understand Gandhi."

"Gandhi and Tagore. Two types entirely different from each other, and yet both of them typical of India, both in the long line of India's great men ... It is not so much because of any single virtue but because of the tout ensemble, that I felt that among the world's great men today Gandhi and Tagore were supreme as human beings. What good fortune for me to have come into close contact with them."

"Therefore he has sung lyrics to the end, and all the world except the critics has heard him gladly. India was a little surprised when her poet received the Nobel prize (1913); the Bengal reviewers had seen only his faults, and the Calcutta professors had used his poems as examples of bad Bengali.30 The young Nationalists disliked him because his condemnation of the abuses in India’s moral life was stronger than his cry for political freedom; and when he was knighted it seemed to them a betrayal of India. He did not hold the honor long; for when, by a tragic misunderstanding, British soldiers fired into a religious gathering at Amritsar (1919), Tagore returned his decorations to the Viceroy with a stinging letter of renunciation. Today he is a solitary figure, perhaps the most impressive of all men now on the earth: a reformer who has had the courage to denounce the most basic of India’s institutions—the caste system—and the dearest of her beliefs—transmigration; a Nationalist who longs for India’s liberty, but has dared to protest against the chauvinism and self-seeking that play a part in the Nationalist movement; an educator who has tired of oratory and politics, and has retreated to his ashram and hermitage at Shantiniketan, to teach some of the new generation his gospel of moral self-liberation; a poet broken-hearted by the premature death of his wife, and by the humiliation of his country; a philosopher steeped in the Vedanta, a mystic hesitating, like Chandi Das, between woman and God, and yet shorn of the ancestral faith by the extent of his learning; a lover of Nature facing her messengers of death with no other consolation than his unaging gift of song."

"There are many virtues in these poems—an intense and yet sober patriotism; a femininely subtle understanding of love and woman, nature and man; a passionate penetration into the insight of India’s philosophers; and a Tennysonian delicacy of sentiment and phrase. If there is any fault in them it is that they are too consistently beautiful, too monotonously idealistic and tender. Every woman in them is lovely, and every man in them is infatuated with woman, or death, or God; nature, though sometimes terrible, is always sublime, never bleak, or barren, or hideous. Perhaps the story of Chitra is Tagore’s story: her lover Arjuna tires of her in a year because she is completely and uninterruptedly beautiful; only when she loses her beauty and, becoming strong, takes up the natural labors of life, does the god love her again—a profound symbol of the contented marriage."

"Rabindranath was brought up in an atmosphere of comfort and refinement, in which music, poetry and high discourse were the very air that he breathed. He was a gentle spirit from birth, a Shelley who refused to die young or to grow old; so affectionate that squirrels climbed upon his knees, and birds perched upon his hands. He was observant and receptive, and felt the eddying overtones of experience with a mystic sensitivity. Sometimes he would stand for hours on a balcony, noting with literary instinct the figure and features, the mannerisms and gait of each passer-by in the street; sometimes, on a sofa in an inner room, he would spend half a day silent with his memories and his dreams. He began to compose verses on a slate, happy in the thought that errors could be so easily wiped away. Soon he was writing songs full of tenderness for India—for the beauty of her scenery, the loveliness of her women, and the sufferings of her people; and he composed the music for these songs himself. All India sang them, and the young poet thrilled to hear them on the lips of rough peasants as he traveled, unknown, through distant villages.25 Here is one of them, translated from the Bengali by the author himself; who else has ever expressed with such sympathetic scepticism the divine nonsense of romantic love?"

"In the nineteenth century Bengali replaced Sanskrit as the literary language of Bengal; the novelist Chatterjee was its Boccaccio, the poet Tagore was its Petrarch."