Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 22, 2025
If for instance the Mahânirvâṇa Tantra which is a good specimen of these works be compared with Śaṅkara's commentary on the Vedânta Sûtras, or the poems of Tulsi Das, it will be seen that it is woefully deficient in the excellences of either.
Those also, we reply, who do not study Veda and Vedanta may acquire the requisite knowledge by hearing Itihasas and Puranas; and there are texts which allow Sudras to become acquainted with texts of that kind; cp. e.g.
Vols. i. and xv. Upanishads. Vols. ii. and xiv. Sacred Laws of the Aryas. Vol. vii. The Institutes of Vishnu. Vols. xii., xxvi., and xli. Vol. xxv. Manu. Vols. xxix., and xxx. Vol. xxxiv. Vedic Hymns. xlvi. Hymns to Agni. Vols. xlii.-xliv. Hymns of the Atharva-Veda. Vols. xxxiv., xxxviii., xlviii. Vedanta Sutras. Muir's Sanscrit Texts. Weber, Indische Skizzen. Haug, Aitareya Brahmana.
There is still some chance, however, that Ṣufism may be a record of its activity; in fact, this great religious upgrowth may be of Indian rather than of Neoplatonic origin, so that the only question is whether Ṣufism developed out of the Vedanta or out of the religious philosophy of Buddhism. That, however, is too complex a question to be discussed here.
Wherever the soul is encased in the physical body or in the astral body or in the causal body, there the eagles of desires-which prey on human sense weaknesses, or on astral and causal attachments-will also gather to keep the soul a prisoner. VEDANTA points out that God is the only Reality; all creation or separate existence is MAYA or illusion.
The legend says that when summoned to his mother's deathbed, he spoke to her first of the Vedânta philosophy. But she bade him give her some consolation which she could understand. So he recited a hymn to Śiva, but when the attendants of that god appeared she was frightened.
The only works prerequisite for meditation are those works which are incumbent on a man as a member of a caste or asrama, and these consist, in the Sudra's case, in obedience to the higher castes. But how can meditation on Brahman be undertaken by a man who has not studied the Vedas, inclusive of the Vedanta, and hence knows nothing about the nature of Brahman and the proper modes of meditation?
IGNORANCE. But when you saw the rope as a rope, you laughed out in amusement. Cause? KNOWLEDGE. All your fear is due to your ignorance of your real nature. All the fear at the last is fear of death. You have to realise through knowledge of the Vedanta that you are birthless, deathless. You have to unfold by meditation a consciousness of your Real Self.
The philosophy of the Upanishads, like all religious thought in India, is avowedly a quest of happiness and this happiness is found in some form of union with Brahman. He is perfect bliss, and whatever is distinct from him is full of suffering. But this sense of the suffering inherent in existence is less marked in the older Upanishads and in the Vedânta than in Buddhism and the Sâṅkhya.
For Asia, and perhaps for the world at large, Buddhism is more important but on Indian soil it has been vanquished by the Vedânta, especially that form of it known as the Advaita. In all ages the main idea of this philosophy has been the same and may be summed up in the formula that the soul is God and that God is everything.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking