Religions of India – Fall Semester,Lecture 4:The Indo-European Issue

Course entitled Religions of India given by HH Hridayananda Das Goswami  at Religious Studies Department at the University of Florida in Gainesville 2008-2009.

Fall Semester Lecture 4: The Indo-European Issue.

Today should be fun; we’re going to speak about the Indo-European thing.

As a short preface, until the Europeans came to India, they came first as traders of course and the whole Age of Exploration. And for some centuries, were merely trading. In fact, England had a policy; that missionaries were not allowed on their trading ships. The East Indian Trading Company, because they thought religion would kind of like mess up their relations with their clients. And, later when there were religious revivals in England, then things changed, and England got more power in India, they started proselytizing.

In any case, until the Europeans came, for thousands of years people in India assumed that, “This is our country, we’ve always lived here. We have this very ancient literature, and this is our scared tradition. This is a divine revelation which tells about the universe, about ourselves as souls; it tells about God.” and so on, and life went on. So, if you’ve ever been to India… In India practically everything has some scared significance; I mean, the rivers, the mountains, the lakes, the deserts. If you know the Mahabharata, we’ll be talking about that later, one of the great historical epics of India. So, in the Mahabharata, it goes on all over North India, and even a little but in South India. So, practically everywhere in India is directly connected to an avatar, some incarnation of God, some scared thing that happened. And so, the sensation for people who have, for most people in India, especially the Hindu tradition; what it feels like to be born there, and grow up there; I wasn’t born there, but projecting; but, at least, I’ve been there many times. What it feels like is you’re just living in this scared space. Everything around you has some spiritual significance; and it’s really the way people’s minds work…. read full story

Course entitled Religions of India given by HH Hridayananda Das Goswami  at Religious Studies Department at the University of Florida in Gainesville 2008-2009.

Fall Semester, Lecture 3: 

Today we are going to discuss some of the most basic central notions and terms in Indian religions in general. These are ideas or concepts which really cut across many different sectarian boundaries. You’ll find that practically all of the religions in India that stayed around for a while sort of took on these notions; they organize life. So let’s jump right into it.
The first thing is, that was mentioned in the book, was life goals; Sanskrit purusartha or paramartha. The idea is that as humans beings down here in what George Harrison called the material world… As human begins down here, we engage in different activities, we have different projects, different goals in life, different purposes. And these were conceptualized in four, which are called dharma, artha, kama, and moksa. So I’ll explain these.
Dharma, as its explained in the book, comes from a Sanskrit root which means to sustain. Dharma is often translated as law; law or duty. And in fact in the modern age because India didn’t really have a word for sectarian religion, sometimes dharma was used to mean a sectarian religion like Hindu dharma or Christian dharma or Buddhist dharma and so on. But the most basic meaning is simply the law or principle.
Because this whole civilization traces its authority back to god, as we’ll discuss, therefore when we say law, it means a sacred law. And therefore dharma also means justice, because if human beings make a law, the law may be just or unjust, but if a law is coming from sacred authority, there is no question of an unjust sacred law. And so in that sense dharma means law, and when we discuss the so-called caste system over here, you will see that all the duties of the different members of society are also called dharma. They are sacred duties… read full story

Course entitled Religions of India given by HH Hridayananda Das Goswami  at Religious Studies Department at the University of Florida in Gainesville 2008-2009.

Fall Semester, Class 2: Karma, Cosmology, & Theodicy

You were supposed to read this chapter, chapter two. So, since you bought the book, hopefully, I thought you’d get your money’s worth and actually go over what’s in the book. Very briefly there are some important points.

I spoke yesterday about, different points of view. That we have a certain… we have certain physical objects, namely we have texts, scriptures, we have religious communities, real things in the world. And then there is different interpretations. On one side there is a scholarly interpretation which tends to be guided by prevailing Western notions because academia also goes through many different fads and different periods. And then on the other side there is a traditional interpretation. And I indicated last time that I am trying to be neutral and fair and of course we are hearing the voice of the Western academic approach but we also have to hear the voice of the traditional interpretations, among other reasons because they are often very intelligent and coherent, and uh, and its their culture. It doesn’t mean their interpretation is automatically right but I think we should be at least be fair and balanced, and then you can all make up your own mind.

So, the beginning of the chapter that I’m sure you all carefully studied….read full story

Course entitled Religions of India given by HH Hridayananda Das Goswami  at Religious Studies Department at the University of Florida in Gainesville 2008-2009.

Fall Semester, Lecture 1: Introduction

One of my main goals in this class is to go beyond your short term memory.  And rather than just staff a bunch of data in your short term memory, really try to… Try to communicate things that are actually of value to you, after you leave the class you may actually even remember.  Because it is a fantastic topic.  So what I’ve done is I’ve… we have certain books we are using.  And of course we’ll be having class discussions and lectures, and also papers to write.  And so all three of them really focus on the same thing.  Rather than just like throw out a bunch of data, I am trying to really structure this and focus on certain important fundamental aspects of this topic, so that it should be very very clear.  So when I go over now what we are going to be doing in the class… Again, don’t at all panic if you are not completely… If you don’t know exactly where you are.  Because the things I am going to mention here briefly, we are going to talk about a lot, over and over and over again… It will be extremely clear.  Another goal I have in this class is to reduce as far as possible your stress level.  In other words, there is not going to be any trying to figure out what’s going to be on the test or what you have to know. I am going to try to be extremely clear, so you can focus all of your energy just on learning.  And so basically I am going to give you today everything, all the requirements for the class.  There will be no requirements or tests or anything that you don’t know about today.  And all the questions, and so on.  And there will be no in class tests actually.  Just will be two papers… read full story

Vedic Leadership seminar given by HH. Bhaktividya Purna Swami at ISKCON Sydney in 2010

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So now this next section we’ll discuss It’s chatuh shloki.  The chatuh shloki are the essential four shlokis of the Vedas.  When Krishna taught the Vedas to Brahma then having studied them then he asked Krishna what is the essence.  So Krishna gave these four verses to Lord Brahma. later Brahma gave those to Narada and then Narada gave them to Vyasa.  So it has been written the Mahabharata with the idea of creating the conclusion of the Vedic literature.  Then, Narada Muni was not so impressed.  He felt that it felt short because it may have given all the basic and such knowledge of the Vedas but it didn’t actually give the essential understanding of the Vedas.  So Vyasadeva was then given these four verses and from that he expanded the Srimad Bhagavatam.  So the Srimad Bhagavatam  is the conclusion of all the Vedic literatures, and we see Prabhupada always mentions that, he wrote it in his maturity.    So in his maturity then that he put this together.  So the Bhagavatam is the essence of the Vedic literatures.  The four shlokis are the basis on which the Bhagavatam is written…read full story

“Progressing in Spiritual Life” seminar given by HH. Bhaktividya Purna Swami at ISKCON Brisbane in 2011

Yesterday we were discussing the concept that the material world is a reflection of the spiritual world.  That reflection is based on our material desire which we hear all the time, it’s fine.  But the important element is in applying that knowledge, and this is where things become confusing.  We talk about the spiritual world and Krishna and the cowherd boys and the gopis and everything’s fine. We talk about how the material world is a place of misery and this and that nonsense and it’s fine.  But when we talk about the material world actually functioning on the same principles as the spiritual world, but that you don’t get the spiritual results unless you think of Krishna (only get the material results)if you follow the principles as laid down in the spiritual world then we have a serious problem.  Because in our mind, there’s spiritual and there’s material and it’s a matter of an activity.  This doesn’t mean that whatever activity we’re doing, as long as we think of Krishna it’s spiritual and if we don’t think of Krishna it’s material; there’s a big difference, and this one point makes the whole difference between whether your life progresses or not. Read full story..