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Re : Erwin Schroedinger and Hinduism
Rajan Parikar wrote :
>
> In article <4dnfue$q6c@babbage.ece.uc.edu>,
> Sankar Jayanarayanan <kartik@eng.auburn.edu> wrote:
>
> >late 1920s or early 1930s ). Schroedinger ALWAYS considered himself a Hindu.
>
> I don't think so but I'll have to check. His recent biography has been
> on my list of books to read for a while now.
>
> Nevertheless, Schroedinger (and a host of other German/Austrian
> intellectuals of the time) was influenced by Vedanta (he learnt about
> it mostly from the writings of Schoepenhauer) and even devoted a couple
> of chapters in his book "Meine Weltansicht" to its exposition. He
> also went on to extend the Upanishadic ideas and formulate his own
> independent version of the "truth".
>
Do you consider Adi Sankara to be a Hindu? If so, why?
This, of course, brings the question of who a Hindu is. I,personally,
go by the definition that a person is a hindu if he believes in the
Vedas/Upanishads. In many of the writings by Schroedinger, you find that
his belief in the Vedanta was extraordinary. Moreover, you left out
something from my previous posting-
> Also, my professor in India has stated that when Schroedinger was staying
> for a few days in India, he scrupulously followed the Indian customs,
> including applying Tilak to his fore-head, wearing a Dhoti,etc....
So let's consider Schroedinger's case-
1) He had belief in the Vedanta, or rather, the Advaita philosophy.
2) He seems to have had some liking towards the Hindu customs, too.
>From the above two points, I must confess that it was me and not
Schroedinger who "considered" Schroedinger a Hindu.
BUT though you may not really come across something in Schroedinger's
biography that he did consider himself a Hindu, I don't know of ANY
biography of Adi Sankara (the Sankara Dig-vijayam for instance) where
he is proclaimed to be a "Hindu".
> As an aside, other than the demonstration of the universality of Vedantic
> ideas, I don't attach much importance to merely the fact that some Westerner
> (however accomplished or well-known) gave them his or her stamp of
> approval.
>
I don't believe that the Vedanta philosophy is universal. Buddha, for example,
rejected the Vedas completely.
The reason why I inserted the views of Schroedinger and Nikola Tesla
was because, if you had read my posting well---
> santhosh@iss.nus.sg (Santhosh Kumar) wrote:
> > I would like to clarify Caitanya that you cannot be a Hindu
> > because you are born in Canada, a Hindu is the one who is
> > born in Hindustan ( INDIA ) and follows Sanatana Dharma.
> There are people who've NEVER been to India, but who consider themselves to
> be Hindus. For Instance, Erwin Scroedinger, ...
That's why- the real reason for citing those examples was that I don't believe
that a person has to be born in India to be a Hindu.
>
>
> Rajan Parrikar
> ==============
> email: parrikar@spot.colorado.edu
>
-Kartik
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