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Re: Hindu scholarship and Vivekananda
dran@panini.cs.albany.edu (Paliath Narendran) writes:
> "This book brought answers to puzzles which had been in my mind
> for years: why do Hindus not show much serious scholarly interest
> in dialogue?;
Maybe they didn't have the time :-)
>way. The reason given by Rambachan, and enthusiastically
>endorsed by Coward, is that
> "Whereas Sankara gave top priority to Sruti as the only (?) valid
> way to obtain knowledge of brahman and release (moksha),
> Vivekananda ... superimposes direct personal experience
> (anubhava, samAdhi) of brahman above scripture as its ultimate
> validation."
While Shankara did give priority to Shruti, he never remarked,
to my knowledge, that reading shruti alone or debating the finer
points of it among your fellow (wo)men would lead to salvation. If so,
then all the vedic puNDits in India are liberated :-)
Vivekananda, to my knowledge, never said that direct personal
experience is above Shruti. He would have probably said that direct personal
experience should support Shruti and is better than reading Shruti alone
without any experience.
>In conclusion, Coward says
> "Vivekananda's downgrading of scriptural scholarship to mere
> intellectual theory, requiring supplementation by the samaadhi of
> raajayoga, has led to the glossing over of differences of
> doctrine as unimportant (e.g., differences between Sankhya and
You remark here that Vvekananda downgraded mere intellectual theory.
Do you really think that mere intellectual theory on Advaita, Dvaita
etc is better than love for the Divine or actual personal experience
of the Brahman ?
If this is true, than persons like Mirabai etc are inferior
to somone who can recite some upanishhads and debate on it, for example.
> take _difference_ seriously, something Sankara always did. It has
> led to a lack of rigor in scholarship (since intellectual
> differences do not really matter) and to a failure to take the
> differences between religions seriously"
Concentrating on the differences of the religions alone without
a basic understanding, love for the divine or any personal experience
would lead to the state of fighting and killing among various
religions.
>and that Vivekananda's legacy is "flawed."
It is easy to point out flaws among anyone's teachings, if that
is what is intended rather than learn from it. For example, Vivekananda
in the book 'thoughts on gita' says
'When I was a young boy I read Milton's 'Paradise Lost'. The only
character I liked was Satan'.
To quote this out of context may make a layman think that
Vivekananda was a satan worshipper.
Giri
--
{I don't speak for anyone, much less myself}
http://www.geopages.com/RodeoDrive/1415 <---> Yoga and Spirituality page
'I want to know God's thoughts, the rest are details' -- Albert Einstein
