The Philosophy And Religion Of R Caitanya

In the sixteenth century, the saint and scholar Sri Caitanya set in motion a wave of devotion to Krishna that began in eastern India and has now found its way around the world. Caitanya taught that the highest aim of life is to develop selfless love for God Krishna, the blue-hued cowherd boy who spoke the Bhagavad Gita. Although only a handful of poetry is attributed to Caitanya, his devotional theology was expounded and systematized by his followers in a vast array of poetical, philosophical, and ritual literature. This book provides a thematic study of Caitanya Vaishnava philosophy, introducing key thinkers and ideas in the early tradition, using Sanskrit and Bengali sources that have seldom been studied in English. The book addresses major areas of the tradition, including epistemology, ontology, aesthetics, ethics, and history, and every chapter includes relevant readings from primary sources.

Vedanta is often equated exclusively to Advaita Vedanta of Sri Sankaracharya, but there are several other acharyas who have expounded the Vedanta in quite a different way and whose status as teachers of Vedanta requires recognition.This book by Swami Tapasyananda, a scholar-monk and former vice-president of the Ramakrishna Order, expounds the life and philosophy of Sri Chaitanya, whose illustrious disciples formed a distinctive set of metaphysics and theology around his teachings that came to be known as Acintya-bhedabheda philosophy. This book will help readers acquaint themselves with his devotional life and the fundamental concepts of Vedanta as formulated by his disciples based on his teachings.

“We desperately need the dynamic revolution in education that this book offers us, reflecting the new ways of thinking and being on this planet that will permit us to live in peace as a global family even through massive climate changes. Read it and put these ideas into practice as quickly as possible in any ways you can!” —Elisabet Sahtouris, Evolutionary biologist and futurist, author of EarthDance: Living Systems in Evolution

The General Session of the Philosophy Section at the 12th World Sanskrit Conference, Helsinki, comprised altogether twenty-two papers, covering Nyaya and Vaisesika, Samkhya and Yoga, as well as Mimamsa and Vedanta with its sub-traditions. Furthermore, there were contributions on the philosophy of the Saiva Siddhanta tradition, on Carvaka and Buddhist philosophy, and on the grammatical philosophy of Bhartrhari. The first part of the book Studies in Indian Philosophy contains nine studies on individual topics and concepts in Indian philosophy from various perspectives, viz., historical-philolo-gical, philosophical and comparative. They are inter alia concerned with such fundamental issues as the characteristic signs of the Self, the concept of Vijnapti-matrata in Vasuban-dhu's Yogacara, the notion of unchanging cognition in the writings of the Kashmirian author Ramakantha, the definition of existence according to the late Buddhist philosopher Jnanasrimitra, and the significance of the sadhanacatustaya in Vedanta. In the second part of the book Studies in the Textual History of Indian Philosophy two papers contribute to the study of the textual history of Indian philosophy, with a focus on the Patanjala-yogasastra and Candrananda's commentary on the Vaisesikasutra.

Naked holy men denying sexuality and feeling; elderly people basking in the warmth and security provided by devoted and attentive family members; fastidious priests concerned solely with rules of purity and the minutiae of ritual practice; puritanical moralists concealing women and sexuality behind purdah's veils—these are familiar Western stereotypes of India. The essays in Divine Passions, however, paint other, more colorful and emotionally alive pictures of India: ecstatic religious devotees rolling in temple dust; gray-haired elders worrying about neglect and mistreatment by family members; priests pursuing a lusty, carefree ideal of the good life; and jokers reviling one another with bawdy, sexual insults at marriages. Drawing on rich ethnographic data from emotion-charged scenarios, these essays question Western academic theories of emotion, particularly those that reduce emotions to physiological sensations or to an individual's private feelings. Presenting an alternative view of emotions as culturally constructed and morally evaluative concepts grounded in the bodily self, the contributors to Divine Passions help dispel some of the West's persistent misconceptions of Indian emotional experience. Moreover, the edition as a whole argues for a new and different understanding of India based on field research and an understanding of the devotional (bhakti) tradition. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1990.

What role do pre-modern religious traditions play in the formation of modern secular identities? In Unforgetting Chaitanya, Varuni Bhatia examines late-nineteenth-century transformations of Bengali Vaishnavism-a vibrant and multifaceted religious tradition that traces its origins to the fifteenth century Krishna devotee Chaitanya (1486-1533). Drawing on an extensive body of hitherto unexamined archival material, Bhatia finds that both religious modernizers and secular voices among the Bengali middle-class invoked Chaitanya, portraying him simultaneously as a local hero, a Hindu reformer, and as God almighty. She argues that these claims should be understood in relation to the recovery of a "pure" Bengali culture and history in a period of nascent, but rising, anti-colonialism in the region. Who is a true Vaishnava? In the late nineteenth century, this question assumed urgency as debates around questions of authenticity appeared prominently in the Bengali public sphere. These debates went on for years, even decades, causing unbridgeable rifts in personal friendships and tarnishing reputations of established scholars. Underlying these debates was the question of authoritative Bengali Vaishnavism and its role in the long-term constitution of Bengali culture and society. At stake, argues Bhatia, was the very nature and composition of an indigenously-derived modernity inscribed through the politics of authenticity, which allowed an influential section of Hindu, upper-caste Bengalis to excavate their own explicitly Hindu pasts in order to find a people's history, a religious reformer, a casteless Hindu sect, the richest examples of Bengali literature, and a sophisticated expression of monotheistic religion.