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Re: Re : Erwin Schroedinger and Hinduism
Sankar Jayanarayanan (kartik@Eng.Auburn.EDU) wrote:
:
: 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-
I am sorry that I was not able to respond to this thread before
though it was a follow up of my posting, the previous postings
on this did not appear at my site. Sorry about that.
But the Vedas says "Go beyond Vedas", does it mean that "A Hindu
will not be a Hindu if he/she follows Vedas"?
In my opinion, the word "Hindu" could be defined in two ways,
one in its original form, the one from Hindustan following
Sanatana Dharma. In this way, it goes beyond the ethnical
defenition of religion and goes to a nationality. Next, if
you take the ethnical dimension of the religion like Christanity
or any other religion which is based on a dogma/personalised
God, then you need to consider Hinduism as a collection of
religions, we have over a million idols, each one will form
a religion if you add the ethnical dimension to it, in addition
we have different paths, like the path of Gyan which does not
necessarily need any idol, then the path of yoga, and so on. If you
accept the latter defenition, you can conclude that "A christian
is a Hindu", he is after all in the path of Bhakthi, only
difference is the image of Jesus Christ is identified with
Christanity (pl., I do not intend to offend Christians!),
but remember Hinduism does not mind about your idol ( image
of God ) as long as it leads you to realising the Athman ( Self )
and Bhakthi is one of the paths it proposed.
:
: > 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.
:
It is matter of how you define the word HINDU. Anybody could follow
santana dharma and benefit from it, be a Christian, Muslim, or Sikh,
does not matter. If a non-american follows american customs, will
he become american.
: >
: I don't believe that the Vedanta philosophy is universal. Buddha, for example,
: rejected the Vedas completely.
:
Budha did not reject Vedanta philosophy. We think that Budha rejected
Vedanta because we accept the social setup at the time
of Budha as Hinduism. There are two different aspects in the indian
society, Smriti and Sruti. What Budha rejected was the Smriti,
the social setup (Smruti) at that time, and not the Vedas or
Advaita philosophy. After all, Lord Budha in his search for truth
was realising His Athman (self) under the Bodhi tree in deep meditation.
So, Budha was following Vedas, and was not rejecting it. Budhists,
especially the ones who would like it to be distinguished from
Hinduism would tell it as "enlightenment", does the terminolgy
really matter?
:
: > 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
: --
regards,
Santhosh
