Wednesday, October 19, 2016

The Ashram hails Sri Aurobindo as the highest manifestation of the Divine in human history

The Mahatma And The Gita

Swarajya-01-Oct-2016
Sri Aurobindo 'supported the Cripps' offer because by its acceptance India and Britain could stand united against the Asuric forces [of Nazism] and the solution ...

Sri Aurobindo on Gandhian Ahimsa One big news coming from the Indian sub-continent these days is the ongoing tension between India and Pakistan. India since her independence from the Briti... This post is directed to such sleeping ignoramuses. It is time they wake up from their tamasic, dark slumber and instead of merely mouthing soul-less slogans of non-violence and peace learn a bit of the history, particularly about the history of wars between India and Pakistan. It is time they start learning about India and what she stands for. And it is time they also start learning about some deeper truths about Ahimsa, non-violence as well as the necessity of war, the morality of peace as well as the morality of war.
Sri Aurobindo didn’t have as kind a view of Gandhian methods of Satyagraha as many other thinkers/leaders have🙂 But then he was seeing things from a very high and deep yogic stance, not all of which can be easily discernible by rational/logical mind.
His view on partition and Pakistan are also quite strong, and not many people would accept it that easily. But in any case that is beyond the scope of this post🙂 Here I merely wanted to show that Ahimsa when understood very simplistically and applied stubbornly to a mass movement doesn’t always work. And that we need to have a much broader and deeper vision to understand when kshatriya dharma is needed to protect and defend a nation. I am with you on destroying the terror factories. May Ma Durga destroy those who are hell bent on destroying humanity and peace.
Thanks for reading and for sharing your perspective.

Contemporary challenges facing Hindu society | IndiaFactsIndiaFacts

indiafacts.org › contemporary-challenges...
Oct 5, 2016 - Dr. Gautam Sen is President, World Association of Hindu Academicians and Co-director of the Dharmic Ideas and Policy Foundation. He taught international political economy at the London School ...

The Sage and his idea of India

Daily Pioneer-12-Apr-2016
Sri Aurobindo's vision of India had no place for pseudo-secularism, vote-bank politics and repudiation of Bharatiya civilisation. The Sage was also the ...

An 'Indo-Anglian' legacy

The Hindu-20-Jul-2013
Travelling widely across the country, Cousins taught the importance of what SriAurobindo called 'the National Value of Art'. He deserves to be recognized ...

How the Sangh Parivar transformed Bharat Mata into a militant ...

Scroll.in-07-Mar-2016
... of Tagore, artist Nandalal Bose, Sanskrit scholar Kshiti Mohan Sen and Hindi novelist .... There is also a statue of Sri Aurobindo, but none for his spiritual collaborator, ... better known as the Mother of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Puducherry.

Sree Narayana Guru: In The Lineage Of Buddha And Adi Sankara

Swarajya-21-Sep-2016
But it is also a fact that the Guru was a great religious scholar and writer, a commentator on the dharma on par with Swami Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo.

Why Does The Left Ignore India's Indigenous Intellectual Traditions?

Swarajya-04-Oct-2016
Sri Aurobindo unfolded the idea of a higher evolution of consciousness in humanity and produced Savitri, the longest blank verse poem in the English language, ...

Students are always the greatest victim of ill conceived and patchy courses; the Sanskrit Centre owes it to them to engage seriously with the suggestions the Academic Council made.

Acharya Kripalani shows that the Congress’s presidentship has given the nation a tradition of individuality and dissent, not prescriptiveness and consent.

Is Mata associated with particular cultures and religions or is Mata a secular conception, making it possible for people of diverse religions, who call themselves Indian, to pay obeisance to the nation as motherland?

Excerpts from a speech given by Trinamool Congress MP Sugata Bose, a noted historian and the grand-nephew of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose.

The meaning of politics for Gandhi is the battleground itself, while truth is the reason we battle without arms, for truth is the possibility of an end to enmity.

What is the RSS’s idea of “Indian culture” and when did Hinduism and its diverse and fluid iterations fructify into “Hindutva”? Akshaya Mukul’s book on the Gita Press provides some important answers.

WRITERS ON NATIONALISM
Why Indian literature holds the key to the vexatious nationalism debate
Shubhrastha · Aug 15, 2016 · 08:30 am

CULTURAL POLITICS
'Authentic' Vande Mataram Library aims to challenge Sheldon Pollock's 'foreign' one
Mridula Chari · Mar 08, 2016 · 09:15 am

HISTORICAL FIGURES
Spiritual violence and the divine revolution of Aurobindo Ghosh
University of Cambridge · Nov 02, 2015 · 06:30 pm

OBITUARY
Director Veenapani Chawla found new expressions for lines actors had said countless times before
Satya Saran · Nov 30, 2014 · 10:25 pm

May 15, 2016 by Editor 3 Comments
Dr. S. Srinivas The Vedas contain the divine wisdom and knowledge of things directly seen by the Rishis or seers of hoary antiquity by intuition and are called Shrutis, i.e. what is directly heard or experienced by intuition. Hence Vedas are called Apaurusheya, i.e., not composed by any human beings.1 The Vedas are the earliest […]

January 28, 2011 by Editor 11 Comments
By Tina Sadhwani In the Rig Veda there are 5 hymns constituting an important dialogue between Lord Indra and Sage Agastya that reflects the significance of traversing the evolutionary path of consciousness, that seems to serve as a crucial pre-requisite to understanding the true nature of the Supreme Absolute Reality (God). The verses exemplify how […]

February 8, 2011 by Editor 3 Comments
Lord Shiva By Tina Sadhwani “As rivers lose name and form when they disappear into the sea, the sage leaves behind all traces when he disappears into the light. Perceiving the truth, he becomes truth; he passes beyond all suffering, beyond death and all the knots of his heart are loosened” – Upanishads When one looks […]

February 17, 2011 by Editor 4 Comments
By Gurushankar Swaminathan The sections of the Vedas that deal with the various facets of the Supreme Consciousness is an articulation of the entire experience that the Vedic seers underwent, in their quest to realize that one supreme reality. What we are going to see below (in the Vedic hymns) is a symbolic and mystical […]

March 8, 2011 by Editor 1 Comment
By Sita Ram Goel and Ram Swarup Hinduism – OM The dialogue which Raja Ram Mohun Roy had started in the third decade of the nineteenth century stopped abruptly with the passing away of Mahatma Gandhi in January 1948. The Hindu leadership or what passed for it in post-independence India was neither equipped for nor interested […]

April 6, 2011 by Editor 4 Comments
By Prashant Saxena Monotheism as the world knows from the west means belief in one God. The one God in the western faiths is isolated from the nature, created the world, judges the mankind from their behavior the directions for which are given in the western holy books with a set of DO-s and DONT-s. […]

June 20, 2011 by Editor 13 Comments
By Tina Sadhwani Mother India Stripping of Draupadi & the Rise of Adharma In one world-defining moment of the Mahabharata that bred cosmic repercussions, it is well known that the most venerated icon of grace and purity, Draupadi, was publicly disgraced, brutally violated and stripped of her honour while everyone at the mahasabha watched in […]

August 25, 2011 by Editor 1 Comment
Hinduism has traditionally regarded four basic aims of life. These are called “Purusharthas”, and are as follows: 1. Kama (pleasure and desire) 2. Artha (material wellbeing and wealth acquisition) 3. Dharma (righteousness, duty and order) 4. Moksha (spiritual liberation, union with the Supreme) This article gives an overview and further insight into the Four Purusharthas. Fulfilling […]

August 1, 2011 by Editor 33 Comments
By Sameer Thakkar Today, we can find many people who are quick to christen famous Hindu gurus as “dhongis” and “pakhandi”. Such people generally hold the view that to become a guru all one needs is to chant a few mantras and promote the superstitions. These people think that the millions who follow the advice […]

June 25, 2011 by Editor 169 Comments
By Sameer Thakkar (Guest Contributor) Max Muller American Indologist and scholar of Hinduism Wendy Doniger commented on the Gita, “The Bhagavad Gîtâ is not as nice a book as some Americans think. Throughout the Mahâbhârata … Krishna goads human beings into all sorts of murderous and self-destructive behaviours such as war…. The Gîtâ is a […]

February 18, 2012 by Editor 1 Comment
By Sarvesh K Tiwari (CHAKRA) On Pata~njali And His Works || namaH bhagavate pata~njalaye || “…we know little about the yoga author Patanjali. We know of Patanjali the grammarian and have good reason to date him to the 2nd century BC. Apart from the name, we have no solid reason for assuming that he was […]

Monday, October 3, 2016

Individual growth in connection to human society and nature

Swarajya-01-Oct-2016
In April 1907, a year before Gandhi wrote his Hind Swaraj in South Africa, Sri Aurobindo expounded in a series of seven brilliant articles in Bande Mataram his ...

Central University of Odisha organised Lecture on Swaraj and the Divided Republic: Sri Aurobindo's Dream of a NewIndiaThursday, August 11, 2016Report by Nishapati Nayak, Koraput: Central University of Odisha organised a Distinguished Lecture on‘Swaraj and the Divided Republic: Sri Aurobindo’s Dream of a NewIndia’ in collaboration with Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, Sunabeda at Bhanjamandap, HAL township... Prof. Sachidananda Mohanty, Vice-Chancellor of the Central University of Orissa delivered the inaugural address while Er. Debasish Dev, Executive Director of HAL Sunabeda presided over the programme.

Prof. Mohanty reflected lights on the life of Sri Aurobindo and briefed about the Swaraj movement from Tilak to Sri Aurobindo’s. While exploring the dream of Sri Aurobindo he said “Sri Aurobindo must has to be credited for the concept of Poorna Swaraj or Complete freedomand it can be achieved with the five dreams of Sri Aurobindo for Freedom like Free and United India, Liberation of the people of Asia, World reunion, Indian’s Spiritual gift to mankind and the Dream of evolution of human spices in to a higher species. Today we are faraway from these dreams”. He also said that “Today’s young generation must know the value of the freedom for them”.

Prof. Makarand R. Paranjape focused on the dream of Sri Aurobindo fora united nation on the ground of the diversity. While delivering his lecture based on the dream of Sri Aurobindo he said “Uniformity is not unity. It’s reducing the individuality and each one has a unique gift and it is only unique for that person and without unity we can’t have progress”. He also said “Swaraj means to control inner self and if you have self mastery you will have mastery on the world”. While advising the student he said “By reading book only people can’t gain knowledge, knowledge comes from experience”.

The Statesman: Diversity and Unity

www.thestatesman.com › news › opinion
Sep 20, 2016 - Leaders of the freedom movement took their philosophical inspiration from the reformist Hindu thinkers starting from Ram Mohan Roy to Swami Vivekananda and culminating in Sri Aurobindo.

End of an ideal | The Indian Express

indianexpress.com › Opinion › Columns
Jul 11, 2016 - The ISIS has declared its delight that Brexit has taken place, which itself has ominous overtones.Sri Aurobindo in a message on August 15, 1947 (also his 75th birthday) outlined five dreams for the ... For my generation, brought up on the history of multiple wars in Europe for several centuries, resulting in havoc and millions of deaths, the emergence of the European Union (EU) was virtually a miracle.
That Sri Aurobindo, once the fiery prophet of Indian nationalism, had come to hope that nationalism would finally give way to a “new spirit of oneness” is striking, but on the ground things seem to be moving in the opposite direction. 

Issue No. 326, September 2016

Brexit and Human Unity


Auroville Today rarely comments on issues outside Auroville. But in this issue we carry an article on Brexit in the light of Sri Aurobindo’s views on human unity.  The causes of the Brexit vote in the U.K. have been analysed exhaustively and exhaustingly. Most commentators agree that the immediate reasons included fear of mass immigration, loss of sovereignty, and a protest vote against a political establishment which was perceived to have abandoned the less well-off. The leave campaign was also widely criticized for being mendacious and fear mongering, led by opportunistic politicians who did not fully believe in the arguments they were advancing. But, in truth, the Prime Minister’s decision to hold a referendum on Europe was also taken for short-term political gain and with very little consideration of the possible consequences. Speculation about those consequences have so far tended to focus upon the possible break-up of the UK and of the EU, and of the pote... 
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Even though the philosophy of Integral Yoga with its focus on individual freedom does not espouse this, voluntary simplicity is an ethos that I and many Aurovilians subscribe to. Not out of a moral stance, but simply out of the realization that “no man [woman] is an island.” Evolution is not so much about individual growth, but about individual growth in connection to human society and nature. And, notwithstanding the futuristic promise of the transformation of matter, our integral connection to and dependence on nature, enjoins us to cultivate a lifestyle that is in harmony with the limits and... 
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