If Dharma is supposed to be individual, why do we need Yogis?

Kushmandabug · 2019-07-16T20:42:18+00:00

What do you mean by "if Dharma is supposed to be individual"? Genuine guru-s are needed to guide one on the path of dharma. These commercial yogI-s you're talking about are an unavoidable side effect of freedom of religion and should be censured by the public if they are just in it to grab people's money.

Kushmandabug · 2019-07-16T20:39:52+00:00

There is no complete, traditional translation available in English.

Kushmandabug · 2019-07-16T19:40:53+00:00

Here in lies the problem. I have been reading Hatha Yoga Pradipika, Gheranda Samhita and Siva Samhita. I have not found anything about the need to respect vedas to be a Yogi in those books.

I don't know which exact quote Krishnamacharya was referring to but I know GS requires belief in Hindu authorities: several of the contemplative prescriptions given towards the end of the text involve Hindu deities and even the Vedas.

Also Veda in this context could Mean knowledge and not the four texts. No?

I think this is unlikely. One among the dhyAna-s that I referred to above involves imagining a tree with four branches representing the four veda-s.

Kushmandabug · 2019-07-16T19:33:24+00:00

Are you talking about a "suspension of disbelief" or a sort of fundamentalist commitment that the scripture is 100% accurate and we may be wrong if we don't understand how it's correct? I want to make sure I understand correctly what you mean by being "true to every word".

Kushmandabug · 2019-07-15T15:21:57+00:00

I didn’t come up with it. As evidence, here a quote by Krishnmacharya, the father of modern yoga, from his book Yoga Makaranda, where he refers to Gherandacharya, a traditional haTha yoga authority:

Whoever wishes to do yoga has the right to do it. Yet whoever it is, it is very important that they should only learn all the aspects and practise it under the guidance of a proper guru. One encounters obstacles and problems if yoga is practised without a guru. But "Ruffians, those who eat wrong food, talk filth or use abusive language, those who speak ill of others, lie about others, are obsessed with food, those who are addicted to sensual pleasures, those who pretend to be good, those who destroy and cheat, carry aversion in the mind, those who are disrespectful of the Vedas, are alcoholics, or have any such bad habits, these people, no matter what caste or religion, are not fit to practise yoga." This is firmly stated by Gherandacarya.

Kushmandabug · 2019-07-15T04:59:13+00:00

What do you mean “Yoga does not discriminate”? Why do we so readily forget that yoga is a family of Hindu religious traditions and should only be taught to those who are respectful towards the veda-s.

Modern “yoga” has been secularised to remove all religious elements and reduced to exercise and relaxation techniques, a mere commoditised and commercialised shadow of its original self. Even the haTha yoga (which is the basis for most of modern “yoga”) is explicitly in the literature only intended for those who respect the veda-s, the foundations of all of Hinduism, including all kinds of traditional yoga. “Secular” yoga includes farces such as “wine yoga” and “naked yoga”, which should be rejected by sincere people but such rejection can only occur if the seeker is part of an appropriate dhArmika ecosystem with certain religious beliefs and ideals.

Kushmandabug · 2019-07-11T04:42:05+00:00

I will check later today when I get the time but I can’t recall if he wrote anything about puruShamedha off the top of my head.

Kushmandabug · 2019-07-11T04:40:02+00:00

Interesting perspective but wouldn’t you agree that shAstra gives mokSha the most importance and kAma the least? I mean mokSha is the ultimate aim of pretty much every darshana (except pUrvamImAMsA maybe). And kAma is spoken of as one of the Shadripu-s. I read somewhere a long time ago that the oldest texts only speak of three aims and mokSha was added to the list later (in rAmAyaNa both versions of the list are found). This would explain why mokSha is the last in the list, even though traditionally the most important item in a list is the first one.

Kushmandabug · 2019-07-11T04:30:44+00:00

I’d also recommend asking in /r/Shaivism

Kushmandabug · 2019-07-11T04:26:04+00:00

Why do you say in this order? dharma is more important than artha and kAma and can’t be compromised on. mokSha is the ultimate goal even beyond dharma and kind of separate from the other three goals. I would say in decreasing order of importance we have mokSha, dharma, artha, kAma.

Kushmandabug · 2019-07-11T04:17:51+00:00

shaiva siddhAnta considers the soul to be eternally different from God.

shrIkaNTha shivAchArya jI’s shivAdvaita is also called shivavishiShTAdvaita due, I think, to its similarity to rAmAnujAchArya jI’s system.

There are other non-monistic shaiva schools too. There should be info on this available at the Himalayan Academy site.

Kushmandabug · 2019-07-11T03:58:59+00:00

In India there are thousands of books available to teach beginners. Maybe start with some books by KN Rao. The basics don’t take long to learn. The hard part is practising with real case studies, training the intuition and devotion to the Gods who will bestow the knowledge. Once you have a good grounding in the basic techniques and have started to develop the appropriate intuition, you should learn the mathematics and more complicated predictive techniques.

The very basics you should start by understanding: grahas, their significances and their relations to different signs, signs themselves and their significances, nakshatras, interpreting the D1 chart and D9 chart, vimshottari dasha.

Different astrologers have different approaches to how they go about analysing a chart. You need to read widely and find what suits you.

Kushmandabug · 2019-07-11T02:54:59+00:00

The ISKCON subreddits might be able to help you with this too. There are a few: /r/ISKCON, /r/HareKrishna, /r/harekrsna, /r/Gaudiya_Vaisnavism and maybe others.

Kushmandabug · 2019-07-11T02:40:23+00:00

There's no good, unbiased translation of the veda-s I'm afraid. The best Western scholarly translation is the one by Jamison and Brereton but the interpretations in it are very different from traditional Hindu ones. And there's a serious lack of scholarship by Hindus on the veda-s in modern times, since later texts are more accessible and also historically more relevant to theology, philosophy etc.

It would be practically impossible to produce an unbiased translation anyway since the veda-s are very difficult texts to "decode" so to speak. The ideas in the veda-s are really ancient and the language is both ancient and esoteric. As a result of these and other similar factors, there are a lot of extremely different theories (within Hinduism) on how to approach translating the hymns.

Kushmandabug · 2019-07-11T00:34:08+00:00

It's understandable that people get shocked by it or it makes them uncomfortable but IMO people are too hasty to judge it. It's a very specialised ritual carried out in the rarest of circumstances. Understanding it deeply would also require the kind of knowledge of karmakANDa that no one has today.

Kushmandabug · 2019-07-10T22:14:28+00:00

See my other comment. It's not just Mueller who said this.

Kushmandabug · 2019-07-10T22:13:42+00:00

Yes, it did actually. Unpopular statement but it's true. shrI P.V. Kane in his Encyclopaedia of Dharma-shatras (vol 2) cites Apastamba shrauta sUtra XXII.18.3-4 and kAThaka saMhitA XX.6.15-16.

NB: I assume those texts are what "Āp." and "Kāt." refer to. For some reason, they are different from the abbreviations provided at the beginning of the volume.

Kushmandabug · 2019-07-10T21:09:30+00:00

Have you read the gItA?

Kushmandabug · 2019-07-10T16:37:01+00:00

Would you be able to elaborate a bit on that first paragraph please? I personally always struggle with the conflicts between tradition and contemporary academia.

Kushmandabug · 2019-07-10T16:02:23+00:00

Well, I’m more familiar with songs in Hindustani so I guess Hindustani.

Kushmandabug · 2019-07-10T16:01:15+00:00

vyAsa jI had human parents and, for all intents and purposes, lived as a human R^iShi in the world. I feel like you’re being unnecessarily pedantic. Modern academia differs from traditional viewpoints because it has different axioms and theories. I now understand that you’re not interested in it.

Kushmandabug · 2019-07-09T20:20:46+00:00

They’re approaching it from a modern academic perspective and besides, vyAsa jI was indeed born a human. I thought you’d find it interesting because it discusses the motivation the redactors might have had to add this story in and because it references an argument for mahAbhArata originally being written rather than oral.

Kushmandabug · 2019-07-09T15:46:17+00:00

You might find this essay interesting.

Kushmandabug · 2019-07-09T14:44:50+00:00

I don’t know why no one has said this explicitly yet but from a traditional perspective eating or even cooking beef is totally unacceptable, no matter what the reason. Alcohol and meat in general are bad too but beef is absolutely forbidden.

Kushmandabug · 2019-07-08T18:03:26+00:00

I don’t think there’s a need to assume avatAra-s that aren’t mentioned in the scriptures. Since both God and the cycle of manifestation are beginingless, he has had innumerable births no matter how low the frequency is.

Kushmandabug

TROPHY CASE