This is a basic blog on Srivaishnavism - the concepts behind it and it's eternal relevance to our lives - in simple and easy language!
Friday, December 31, 2010
More on Souls (aka Aatmas)
How does this happen? A disclaimer before I go further: What I am humbly about to present is strictly Vishishtadvaitic interpretation of Vedas. As we go on it will become clearer as to what is this "Vishishtadvatic" philosophy all about and why this interpretation scores.
So, now that I am not my body, what are my characteristics innate to me that I can leverage on apart from this body?
Vedas say that a soul or aatma is ever-constant, unchangeable, has knowledge as its inseparable attribute and is infinitesimally small in nature. There's more, but we'll see it later.
A vedic passage which is quoted by scholars often expresses how small a soul is. It says if you want to find out how small you are, cut the tip of one hair of a cow's tail. Cut that tip into 100 pieces. Take one piece out of that and cut it into 100 more pieces. Go on like this until you can do it physically and then mentally. If you reach a stage where you can't cut it further, then that is the size of a soul or aatma.
The concept is that a soul or aatma is the smallest thing. There is nothing which is smaller than that. Can't believe it? There is a very sound logic behind this whole thing. We saw earlier that a mosquito, a dog or a human - all are essentially souls in different bodies.
If a same constant soul has to take different bodily forms, then it has to be the smallest being so that it can take any form from smallest to largest.
Also, a soul can't be destroyed simply because it is the smallest being. To destroy something, you need something smaller and sharper than that object. When you kill an insect with a stone, the force with which you hit the insect, which is sharper than the insect, is what kills the insect. The same way you can't cut a photon particle with a knife, you can't cut a soul as well with anything.
All this sounds fine in concept, but proof? We see that there are living and non-living things around us. We understand that a mosquito lives a life of its own like we do. Why that, there is world's smallest human being and tallest human being. All of us equal as living beings. How? Only if the ever-constant I, the soul is the same kind for all of us.
We, the ever-constant, ever-present souls are like self illuminated light particles - we are self-illuminated with knowledge (what knowledge? we'll see that later).
But, then how and why is it that one soul is a mosquito and myself a human being? Who decides that and how? What are my boundaries?
Thursday, December 30, 2010
The Concept of Souls
Proof? We know it intuitively, except that we don't pay attention to it. I am able to think of my body, my mind, my thoughts, my feelings everything separately from me. But me as an entity is always a constant, regardless of all the changes that my body, mind and feelings go through.
But is it so important that I am a soul? so what if I am or am not? Because it creates a fundamental shift in our thinking of life. All the man-made miseries in life are mostly because of our wrong perception of ourself. We think ourselves to be things we are not and direct our energies in the wrong direction. If I think I am the body, my efforts will be focussed on maintaining it well. But most realize after a while, no matter how you maintain it, this body finally falls. No matter how pleasuring a pleasure is, it ends.
If I think of myself as a soul, then I would start thinking, so what's important for me, the soul? Now I see body as a tool I have to use. So, how do I use the tool? to do what? why?
Like science says about energy, we are like tiny-bits of ever-present energy, neither created nor destroyed, but get transformed always. Who does this transformation? why?
Vishishtadvaita as a philosophy answers all these fundamental questions and more, culled out of the Vedas of course.
Monday, December 20, 2010
Let's Deep Dive!
In summary, we have seen what vedas are, their unifying and timeless appeal. We also saw some myth busters about certain perceptions regarding vedas. We saw that we are souls and not our bodies. We saw the three realities - chit (soul), achit (non-living stuff) and Iiswara (God). We saw that we have a limited freedom and are bound by our own karmic balance to be born repeatedly in this world. It was also mentioned that there is a way out of this birth-death vicious cycle.
From a layman's standpoint, all this should be a little overwhelming. And there are bound to be questions. As we move on, let's try and understand these clearly, deeply, one at a time, with answers to as many layman's doubts and questions.
Watch out for the next post!
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Few Basics – My Boundaries
Monday, November 15, 2010
Few Basics - "Another Chance" (Ensure to read "Few Basics - Me Who?" below, before you read this).
Few Basics - Me Who?
Friday, October 29, 2010
Vedas – The Great Unifying Guide
Rules, Systems and Us
Monday, September 20, 2010
Introduction - What it is
It’s good to have problems in life – for without them, we don’t get any wiser. It’s like learning cycling - we can’t possibly learn cycling without falling off the cycle at least few times. How many times we fell off isn't important; what is important is how much did we learn.
If only life were as simple as learning cycling!
There are books describing how human body works. But who'll describe to us how to live life effectively? Is there a code or such technology that help us breeze through life? Like a perfect rain gear in times of rain, a perfect vehicle, which helps us in reaching our destination soon, safe and sound?
I believe the Srivaishnavic philosophy helps us do just that. There may be many philosophies in the world which may claim to do the same. This is one “way of life” philosophy that has deeper and yet simpler answers to complex questions of life.
This is a humble attempt by the author to share what he has learnt of this great philosophy by listening to various lectures by scholars for a period of about 2 years and counting. This piece is a humble attempt to communicate the basics of the philosophy in contemporary idiom and phraseology so that all of us appreciate its greatness and its relevance to our lives today. Whether we buy into it or not is rather peripheral, but as a first step, we need to try and understand why we are doing what we are doing.
If we take srivaishnavism today, sections of people think of this as another “caste” or “sub-caste”, with some “rituals” and some “beliefs”.
It would be wrong to term "Srivaishnavism" as a religion, caste or sub-caste; it is actually a philosophy of life based on a true and complete interpretation of the Vedas. But not many of us don't know the philosophical part though. Due to the vagaries of time, we have stuck on to the rituals and lost understanding of their deeper meaning and background. So now, the rituals look empty stuff to us, whereas they were only front-ending a great philosophy of life.
This loss of meaning has led to more conflicts and more problems in our lives today.
This is not a fault of any particular section of people though. This is something that has happened over a large period of time due to various factors. And there are many great elders who are doing quite their bit to educate all of us on the essentials of srivaishnavic philosophy and its relevance in today's life. But for the yeomen service of our elders, ordinary people like me wouldn't have known even this little.
Let's delve into what this philosophy is, what it is not and why it is relevant today!