Friday, February 16, 2024

Concepts of the Gita : A Starter Kit for College Students

Bhagavad Gita is a book that has been deeply transformative for hundreds and thousands of people around the world. However, almost all of the amazing commentaries on the Gita are quite cumbersome to read and understand for most students. Even the sheer size of these commentaries can be quite intimidating for most students!

I have always wondered if it’s possible to write a short introduction to the Gita especially for college students that’s intuitively clear and can connect with them at a practical level. This short introduction to the Gita is my attempt in this direction.

Monday, September 11, 2023

Bird's-Eye View on the Gita as per Sadhak Sanjeevani [Gita Press]

Text Source : Sadhak Sanjeevani, Gita Press


The eighteenth chapter of the Gita, is the gist of the whole Gita, and all the topics discussed in the previous seventeen chapters have been summed up here. In this chapter, there are three important points which need attention - (I) A topic, which has been touched upon in brief in other chapters; has been discussed in detail, in this chapter, (2) a topic, which has been examined in detail in other chapters, has been concluded here, briefly and (3) topics dealt with in other chapters, have been elucidated in a different manner in this chapter.

Wednesday, July 19, 2023

Q&A on पुरुष, प्रकृति and ईश्वर with Swami Chidananda

Swami Chidananda has been a speaker, writer, and teacher of spiritual topics for nearly four decades. He is the founder, trustee and chief resource person of FOWAI FORUM, a non-government organisation (NGO) engaged in dialogues on human values, promotion of spiritual studies, and serving all life forms. Born in 1957 in Kundapura (Udupi District, Karnataka), he received B.E. from Mysore University in 1980) and M.Tech. from IIT Madras in 1982. He served at Hindustan Computers (HCL) in hardware R&D for two years and also taught at Bangalore Institute of Technology for three years. He knows English, Kannada, Hindi, and Sanskrit. At the young age of 23, he was inspired by the uplifting discourses of his mentor Swami Chinmayananda. He served at Chinmaya Mission for 18 years (1984-2002) and later was at Krishnamurti Foundation India, Varanasi for 10 years (2003 – 2013). His thought evolved through coming in contact with the works of several great thinkers, notable among them being Ramana Maharshi and Jiddu Krishnamurti.


I got in touch with Swami Chidananda many years ago at IIT Delhi when I was the coordinator of the Vivekananda Study Circle there, and have had many very interesting and inspiring discussions with him on many topics related to Indian philosophy. This blog is an edited transcript of one such online discussion held with him on July 07, 2023.

Tuesday, June 27, 2023

Undecidable Questions in Indian Philosophy

In the 19th century, when mathematicians tried to consolidate and deeply analyse the scattered mathematical concepts haphazardly developed over the last few centuries, they ran into various paradoxes and inconsistencies. German mathematician David Hilbert developed Hilbert's program in the early 20th century as an approach to resolve this foundational crisis in mathematics. Hilbert proposed a solution by establishing a finite and comprehensive set of axioms to serve as the basis for all existing theories. He aimed to demonstrate the consistency of these axioms through a proof. However, in 1931, mathematician Kurt Gödel published his incompleteness theorems, which revealed that Hilbert's program was unachievable for crucial areas of mathematics. As a result, it became shockingly evident to mathematicians that certain statements can never be proven or disproven, rendering them undecidable! This concept of undecidability is not restricted to mathematics and applies to any logical framework, but of course, in different ways depending on how the particular logical framework has been constructed. And if we look at Indian philosophy from a logical perspective, it is applicable there too! What this means is that there are certain concepts in Indian philosophy that are also undecidable from a logical perspective and trying to answer these undecidable questions leads to a lot of unnecessary confusion. Lets try to analyse and understand some of these undecidable questions in Indian philosophy.

Friday, March 17, 2023

Is killing animals for food a good idea?

I have eaten non-vegetarian food in the past and still eat egg regularly. And I don't regret having eaten animals in the past. So I am definitely not a fanatic vegetarian! Then why did I stop eating non-vegetarian food? Because somewhere deep within I feel killing animals for food is not right. But then a lot of religious Hindus also eat non-vegetarian food. Even some of the most respected Hindu saints like Vivekananda and Ramakrishna also used to eat non-vegetarian food (mainly fish). So then what's wrong with eating non-vegetarian food?

Monday, February 13, 2023

Is India's secularism under threat?

I generally avoid writing blogs on political topics but its getting more and more difficult to ignore the fast changing socio-political situation in India. A major red alert for me recently was when a very good school friend of mine asked me if I automatically form a negative opinion of a person if s/he has a Muslim name! In the 20+ years I have known him, we have never mentioned anything remotely close to religion in our discussions, but now something had surely changed quite dramatically. He too stays away from such controversial topics, but was now quite frustrated due to being turned away by many apartment owners in Bangalore. I can understand vegetarian flat owners turning away non-vegetarian tenants, but my friend's experience had nothing to do with food preferences. It was primarily driven by religious biases.

Tuesday, November 15, 2022

The Law of Karma

"As you sow, so shall you reap", is a popular English proverb, and is also commonly believed to be the essence of the law of Karma. If you do good Karma, good will happen to you. If you do bad Karma, bad will happen to you. But given how paradoxical life is, there is another Hindi proverb that says, "Neki kar, dariya mein daal", which means that you should not expect anything in return for the good you do to others. Its again a common belief that even if the person you helped does not give you anything in return, your good actions are being documented by some universal record keeper, and you will be adequately compensated for it in the long run. However, the paradox does not end here. There is also a concept of detachment in the Gita, which says that you have right to perform Karma, but have no right over the results generated by your Karma. So then, will I really reap as I sow?

Concepts of the Gita : A Starter Kit for College Students

Bhagavad Gita is a book that has been deeply transformative for hundreds and thousands of people around the world. However, almost all of th...