ONAM (Shravanam = Bali) Symbolism (original) (raw)
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Saguna and Nirguna-Bhakti, Advaita Vedanta and Madhusudana Sarasvati
Journal of Vaishnava Studies, Vol.28.1, 2019
This essay attempts to bring out an important insight, i.e. the devotional dimension in the Advaitic fold of Madhusūdana Sarasvatī (ca. 1540-1647 CE), one of the greatest Advaitins of post-Śaṃkara era in Bengal. Advaita or non-dualism as propounded by Śaṃkarācārya recognized knowledge (jñāna) as the key means to liberation (mokṣa) in the main. The main means of liberation in Hindu thought have always been devotion to a personal God (bhakti), knowledge (jñāna), ritual or action (karma) and meditation (yoga). Śaṃkara in his works was always been very clear to delineate the importance of jñāna in liberation. However, in a major departure from the monk, Madhusūdana also interpreted the Bhagavadgītā to include the means of bhakti in liberation, at the same time maintaining that Kṛṣṇa, his preferred deity was nirguṇa-brahman or the highest essence. The same tone is also echoed in his other works like the Bhaktirasāyana etc.
2011
""Purpose: The present exploratory research aims to develop a counselling framework based on the theory of the Four Noble Truths and its multi-interplay of causality among the four elements. Structure: This paper composes of two main themes. The first part is to delineate the theory of the Four Noble Truths from Āgama. It then displays the processfocused models, and discusses the three-dimensional model. The second part is the introduction of the counselling framework in a multi-interactive cause-and-effect perspective, its concepts, features, implications, and counselling skills and techniques discovered in Āgama. Methodology: This study adopted the discourse on the Four Noble Truths from Āgama, one of the earliest collections of Buddhist scriptures. It is because Āgama keeps abreast of the closer meaning and interpretation of Early Buddhist teachings. In order to maintain the consistency of understanding and interpretation, it used only the Chinese version of Āgama. Meanwhile, employing primary data, this paper indicated the sources of data though it did not exhibit the sources in a form of in-text quotations. Findings and Results: The theory of the Four Noble Truths, one of the core Buddhist teachings, elaborates the nature of suffering, its cause, its cessation and the way of cessation. The conventional process model of the Four Noble Truths was procedural-based and linear relationship. This study analysed the inter-relationship among the components of the Four Noble Truths. Emphasising the causality, it developed a three-dimensional model in which it depicted the cause-and-effect between nature of suffering and causes of suffering, between ways of extinguishing suffering and eradication of suffering, and between the experience world and the ideal world. The three-horizon about their inter-relationship constructed a multi-interplay approach to elaborate the Four Noble Truths for healing industry. In addition, this paper also explored intervention skills and techniques in light of Āgama. It discovered that most of them are being widely used by the current counselling practitioners. Significance: Moving beyond the traditional process mode, this paper adopts the notion of hierarchical causality of the Four Noble Truths which is little noted and discussed in counselling context. In accordance with this concept, a multi-interplay counselling framework is illustrated. This framework provides the research and counselling fields with an alternative means. It may stimulate academia and counselling practitioners to look into the practicality and applicability of the Four Noble Truths from another vision. The peroration is that this cross-disciplinary study refers western counselling theories to explore the counselling components in Buddhist teachings. Positive results support the healing functionalities of Buddhist teachings. It further reveals that helping people liberate from suffering is the major mission of the Buddha. This research attempts to revitalize his original aspiration in a contemporary context. a contemporary context.""
An ideal of a religious life in the Aśrama System and the Bhagavad Gita's philosophy.
An ideal of a religious life constitutes undeniably a broad term and varies depending on the religion, its orthodoxy, performed rituals, a situation of a particular person and the potential opportunities which these certain circumstances create. Each of doctrines advocates different injunctions and praises certain rites. However, a common denominator for a number of different religions is an ascetic path of life as the most elevated one. Max Weber, in his "Economy and Society", distinguishes two types of asceticism, "inside the world" and "outside the world asceticism". The division expresses an eternal dilemma between expectations created by the social responsibility, our role in the society and the virtues praised by the dogma of a religion, since the former term refers to a life concentrated on salvation, but within the worldly, everyday activities and the latter one points to people withdrawing from the society and choosing a path of renunciation. While some doctrines like Protestantism (as claimed by Weber in his "Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus") 1 stress the importance of work within a worldly, material context, religious systems originating from South Asia always emphasized the role of asceticism, understood as resigning from the temporal aspects of life. Both, Kaelber and Stevenson point to the VI century BC as a time of a special interest in the path of renunciation 2 . They stress its character of drastic social and cultural change in India. They consider instability of that time, constant tensions and wars of different small kingdoms, but also a "growing individualism, cosmopolitanism and freedom of motion" 3 a basis for soteriological alternation. Kaelber understands this change as a transgression from the orthodox Brahmanism to the "formative Hinduism" and other religious movements like Buddhism or Jainism challenging the karma-kānda (theology based on the efficacy of the ritual) and centered more in jñāna-kānda 4 .
This paper seeks to examine the ideology and theology of the Ananda Marga (Path of Bliss), a new radical Hindu sect of postcolonial India, by comparing its odyssey with an almost radical Christian sect of Reformation Europe, the Anabaptists. Like the Anabaptists, the Ananda Marga began as a movement of the common man. Both were also millennial movements with lay leadership arising as responses to the social, cultural, and economic crises of their respective historical times. Both sought to recover the pristine and authentic ethos of their respective religious traditions and thus antagonized their respective governments. Consequently, both endured persecution but both survived their ordeal by re-forming their ideology and theology under competent leadership to emerge as peaceful, fruitful, and resourceful members of their societies.