Trinity and the Yogas.

In Vedanta philosophy (uttara mimamsa), Sri Adi Sankara, Sri Ramanuja and Sri Madhvacharya can be identified with the philosophies of Advita (pure monoism), Visishtadvita (qualified-monoism) and Dwaita (dualism) resp. In broad terms, the philosopher's approach to the Truth can be stated as follows :

Adi Sankara : Knowing the Supreme by overcoming the ignorance (or the veil of maya), cause I am HE.
Ramanuja : Loving the Supreme, cause I am a part of HIS existence, just like how body is a part of our existence and we all love our bodies.
Madvacharya : Serving the Supreme, cause we are related to HIM just like how a servant is related to his master.

Vedanta also talks about three ways we can know the Truth. They are Jnana Yoga, Bakthi Yoga and Karma Yoga. Broadly, these ways can be stated as follows :

Jnana Yoga : Way to the Truth through constant discrimination.
Bakthi Yoga : Way to the Truth through constant Love.
Karma Yoga : Way to the Truth through constant selfless action.

We can now see how these yogas closely correspond with the approach of the philosophers (discrimination, love and selfless action correspond with the acts of knowing, loving and serving respectively). We can also find these pattern in day to day life. Madhvas closely stick on to rituals, Vishnavites to Bakthi (adhering intensely to divya prabandam) and Shivites focus on learning Vedas. Since all these approaches lead to the Truth as Vedanta says, theoretically there shoudn't be any notion of superiority at least among these creeds. But, I hardly meet such balanced people.

Kids and Crazy Equations.

Imagine a school kid who is made to learn multiplication tables by heart, imagine a scientist analyzing crazy equations to come up with something. In both these acts, the subjects are undergoing the process of gaining knowledge - the former uses only the mind and the latter uses the intellect as well. Can we assign the superiority of the scientist (who uses both intellect and the mind) over the kid (which uses the mind) ? I would on the other hand say, learning multiplication tables, by heart, greatly helps in doing equations. Superiority of the intelligence over the mind cannot be argued in general. Similarly, in any religion, there are rituals and philosophy behind the religion. It will greatly help a student (in life) to understand the philosophy, if he performs the rituals, just as learning tables helps us to do the equations. Here too, the notion of superiority cannot be assigned to a person who is questioning some aspects in religion and a person performing a ritual. Well, the student can be bright enough to understand the existence of a calculator and avoid learning tables by heart. Its the same case with religion, the calculator is just invisible !

Quote for the Day

Death - An award posthumously offered by God irrespective of qualifications.

P.S : Do tell me if you have seen this before, I am thinking this is original.

The Dual Logic.

I hope the last post didn't drive away fellow bloggers whom I managed to maintain for a while :-). I always believe things can be better described and I am just learning to do that. Anyways, I guess in the last post the illogic/ambiguity behind the Escher's art would have been easy to spot out. As far as the duality in logic is concerned, consider the following two statements instead of the one on the sets.

Statement 1 : The following statement if true.
Statement 2 : The preceeding statement is false.

Now are both statements true (or false) at the same time ? There is a clear sense ambiguty here similar to Escher's painting (Statement 1 is like water coming down and the Statement 2 is like water going up-both cannot happen at the same time). As far as the third analogy (Sri Krishna from Gita) is concerened, it rests on the fact that, on the surface everyone operates from the plane of Ego.

Sets and Sri Krishna

Claimer : This post is a fusion of art, logic and Vedanta. You may want to call this - a confusion :-). So, take your own time in going through.

Some days back, I had written rave reviews about Godel, Escher, Bach: The Eternal Golden Braid. The author of this book Hofstatder claims that even though the book explicitly deals with meta-mathematics, art and music, the major theme is about discovering the self, or the soul. I agree with the author that the book is about soul searching. It is my feeling that the book would have been more complete with the philosophy of Vedanta incorporated. But that would have made it even more specialized and highly technical. It may also be that, the author is not aware of this profound philosophy. Anyway, what I am about to write is the result of some of the things that I was able to appreciate in GEB along the lines of Vedanta.

Let's first consider the following M.C.Escher's painting.

It should be no doubt that the painting is beautiful although it is highly illogical (water defying gravity ?!). There is a clear sense of ambiguity in the painting. A cyclic waterfall is absurd without external energy. The presence of water cycle without external energy is the cause of ambiguity here. Let's see how does this relate to the last post.

I hope some of you might have given a thought about it. (If not, I would strongly encourage you to give it a shot before proceeding). The last post asks "Is the set of all sets, a set ?". At first, it would seem like "it is a set" since it is the "set of all sets", but on the other hand we'll see that "it is not a set" because "a set of things is not that particular thing any more" as shown in some examples in the post and "thing" can be replaced by a set. This ambiguity is due to the cyclic nature of our logic that we many times think, if something is true then the negation of that is also true. If 'A' exists then 'Not A' also exists. I'll call this as duality in logic. Thus, the presence of duality in logic without any singularity is the cause of ambiguity. Again, how does this relate to the painting ? Notice that the duality is a cycle, we think something as true and after some time as non-true, again after some time as true,...so it is a cycle of assigning truth which causes ambiguity. Okay let's see what Sri Krishna says.

Everyone in this world does something or the other at any given point of time. It can be classified into two things : thinking and acting. Here I am considering sleeping as an activity too. Thus, we are constantly engaged in the cycle of thoughts and actions. In the Escher's painting the presence of water cycle can be attributed to our vision, in logic the presence of duality can be assigned to the existence of our intellect. Similarly, the presence of the cycle of thoughts-actions can be attributed to the existence of our Ego (remember, even in deep sleep, our Ego is constantly working whereas the intellectual faculty remains dormant, and that's why we say we had a good sleep). Thus, the cycle of thought and actions (caused by Ego) without realizing the Self is the cause of ambiguity in life.

So, what is the point ?

Realize the beauty in the painting by raising above the ambiguity (attributed to vision) caused by the water cycle.

Realize the beauty in the logic by raising above the ambiguity (attributed to Intellect) caused by the duality in logic.

Realize the beauty in the life by raising above the ambiguity (attributed to Ego) caused by the cycle of thoughts-actions.

Set of All Sets.

We would have studied "A Set is a collection of well defined objects". This is one of the primitive definitions in high school mathematics. Thus, we can speak of "set of cats", "set of books" etc. Once we define a set we can notice that, a set of objects is not that object anymore. For instance, a set of cats is no more a cat, a set of books is no more a book. Thus, a set of things is no more that particular thing.

Is the set of all sets, a set ? Why ? Why Not ?

Darwin and Vedanta.

As many people know, Hinduism and Science are not really opposed. More than that, they go together. I think this is one of the major reasons why we were indifferent to Science, unlike the church upheavals that happened during the period of the Renaissance (and it is still happening). While "The origin of species" by Darwin is receiving several controversies from the west even now, we hardly raise an issue on this theory. This is because of the following reason.
The Upanishads speak of five layers that things are made up of, and the difference in the objective world is just the difference in the degree of manifestation of these layers. These layers are called koshas and they are anna-maya kosha, prana-maya kosha, manon-maya kosha, vijnana-maya kosha and ananda-maya kosha. These sheaths correspond with domains of matter, energy, mind, intellect and bliss. And the evolution proceeds from annamaya kosha to anandamaya kosha. These koshas can also be considered as the levels of consciousness present in the things. For instance, gross matter (like atom) is annamaya kosha by itself, plant life has both annamaya kosha and pranamaya kosha (matter and energy), animal's have annamaya kosha, pranamaya kosha and manonmaya kosha (matter, energy and mind), man's consciousness is made up of all that of animals plus the intellect (vijnanamaya kosha) and saints are blessed with anandamaya kosha as well. Our ancient seers (read scientists) unlike modern day scientists were able to comprehend the wide spectrum of nature. Present day Science is an analysis through division while Vedanta is an analysis through unification. Its high time we realize that we already posses the Grand Oneness Doctrine (GOD), which Science is eagerly pursuing now in the name of grand unification theory.
Coming back to Darwin, rephrasing in the language of Upanishads, he proposed the evolution from manonmaya kosha to vijnanamaya kosha (in other words, from monkeys to man). Did he study Vedanta before ? May be, may be not.

A Note on Conjecture 2

After going through the comments on conjecture 2, I believe I should do a little clarification here. First, I should define what is an idea. An idea is a subset in the world of thoughts. An idea can be an emotion or just a bunch of plain thoughts. Conjecture 2 states that "Ideas are limits of languages" in the mathematical sense, which essentially means, given any idea we can express it as close as possible using words. I don't mean any idea can be made felt by words - no, that can never be done and I am not saying that, but they can be made felt as close as possible using words taken from languages. There is more optimism in the conjecture.

To be even more precise, languages form an incomplete subspace whose closure is the power set of the space of thoughts.

Agree to Disagree ?

Why do we agree/disagree ?

Agreement/disagreement happens during mutual exchange of "generalization of experiences". By this I mean, if I say "all people are mad" by seeing a mad fellow, you are sure to disagree. But if I say "man is a mortal", you'll agree. In the first case, your generalization does not match with mine while in the second, it does. If we observe, one cannot generalize things based on his experience alone while he "has to" do it only based on his experience. There's no choice. This serious limitation of the human mind causes such agreement/disagreement.

Death - An End of Existence ?

Now that several thoughts are going around in blogs about cultural identity, caste system, discrimination et al., I thought this would be the best time to raise this question. When we go through them, we see that they all point towards coming up with questions like "which is good ?", "what is the best thing to do ?". That is, the notion of relativeness is inherent among all the thoughts. Is this relativeness a part and parcel of our existence ? At any given moment, we never question our non-existence, which shows that there is something absolute and not relative. But, we 'artificially force' ourself to think that we cease to exist after we die. So, the notion of relativeness (or life-death) is just a superficial thought. Why we have to force such a contradiction that creates disharmony ? Why should we create a relative world for ourself that makes us to see only the difference ? Why such a negative outlook in life ? Why can't we think we'll live forever and its only that our body perishes ? Why can't we see everything from a higher perspective which will make us all better citizens ?

Research Life ...

It is a real pity to observe my intelligence when I realized only today what my advisor had been talking about for more than 2 years ! Is this what is meant by being a student ?

Kasthuri's Conjecture 2

Conjecture 2 : Ideas are limits of languages.

That's given an idea, there exists a sequence of words in language(s) that convey (or converge to) the idea. For example, the idea of love can be conveyed through words like kaadhal, pyar or love. What I mean is, there may be some ideas which cannot be represented by words alone, like for instance Aatman or the idea of being in a blissful state, but they can be described as close as possible.

Any proofs ?

Self Reference and Work.

I am able to relate self-reference and work. First let me tell what I mean by self-reference. We can think of self-reference as a paradox. For example, the statement S : This statement is true, is a self-reference because if we think of S as false, it will be true and if we think of it as true then S is false. So, we are referring the notion of truth and falsehood by a cycle. Pictorially,

True ------> False
True <------ False

Similarly, everyone is doing some thing or other with regard to the outside world and in turn gets some feedback from the world. And this feedback again propels us to do some act and which in turn gets some feedback. So this cycle goes on and on. This is kind of self-reference. Pictorially,

Work ------> Feedback
Work <------ Feedback

This notion of self-reference caused several problems in the development of modern day mathematics where people were unable to determine the validity of some mathematical statements. Similarly, one can think of being caught in the 'vicious' cycle of "work and feedback". To 'break' this self-reference mathematicians finally decided to stick on to the fact that we cannot break the cycle per se, so why don't we just ignore the question. After all, the development of mathematics does not depend on the validity of some statements. Similarly, doesn't it seem logical to think, only if we think that we are working and receiving feedback, we'll never be able to come out from the working world. But, from a wider perspective the development in this world doesn't depend upon our working and receiving feedbacks. But, this shouldn't stop us from working and receiving feedbacks, just as we shouldn't stop asking the validity of the statement S. I guess this is similar to the principle given in Bhagavad Gita, which says don't worry about the work and feedback, just do it without expectations.

Good and Bad.

I got a comment asking 'what is the whole point that I am trying to convey ?' So, I have made a little addendum.

I just thought of combining previous two posts (one about sporting a naamam/kudumi and other about a secular person saying "one should be good more than being religious"). If we thoroughly analyze the posts, they both convey the same thing - about an average person in our society evaluating the other based on the person's culture/religion etc. Before asking why should we do such an evaluation, lemme tell you one thing. I am first of all not speaking relatively at all. By this I mean, I believe in some being which is apart from good and bad, virtue and vice. From the stand point of such a being the act of murder and the act of generous help mean all the same. It doesn't have any double standards that we mortals have. And also I am addressing to only those people who believe in such a being (for example, a theist secularist). You may call such a being as God, Christ, Perfection Absolute, Goodness Absolute or anything one wants to call. From the stand point of such a thing, nothing is relative and everything will be clear in its own terms. So, if we try to view from a higher pedestal, there should be no relativeness and everything should appeal the same thing. Being religious will be same as being secular. Sporting a naamam will be same as not sporting a naamam. No differences. If everyone tries to view or atleast attempts to view then harmony naturally sets in. No differences will be there. I know this is an old wine, but it'll be good to drink as long as IT EXISTS.
So why should we evaluate a person on his outlooks/culture if we believe in such a being ? Doesn't this contradict with our own notion of having an absolute. I have observed that in the US people never evaluate a person by what he/she sports.

"Being Good"

Most often I have come across people (secularists, in particular) saying that "ultimately one has to be good" and that's what that matters more than being religious or anything. While the notion of being good is such a highly relative term, how can one have this as a basis to defend secularism and cultural unity ?

Naamam Implies Cultural Identity?

Srivatsan Murali had raised a good question and we have myriad of responses to that. I am wondering why wearing a naamam or having a kudumi should be seen from the point of view of cultural identity ? When I went through some of the comments I could see some disagreements coming only when it was considered as representing the culture. I mean, having naamam/kudumi might have some scientific reasons behind it. For example, naamam could give a good cooling effect to the forehead. More than that it could make the person to remember about God, when looking at the mirrors. So having a naamam could be for one's own self rather than representing a culture. Of course, when many people do this, it becomes a cultural identity but it need not have arisen for that purpose at all. So, if one wears naamam, it may be that he is trying to find his own identity rather than indentifying him with his culture/society. I don't see any logical disagreement with this view.

Kasthuri's Conjecture 1

Conjecture 1 : Any sufficiently rich article which is consistent is bound to be incomplete.

A Little Overexcitement.

Overexcited by my new found conjecture that "any sufficiently rich article which is consistent is bound to be incomplete" I thought about defining precisely what is meant by 'sufficiently rich' and 'exaggerations'. I'll also give some examples of what I exactly mean by the conjecture.

I had mentioned 'rich' can be associated with 'pondering'. By pondering I didn't mean just thinking but there is an element of feeling associated with it. While we have to exert some amount of thinking over any article, I didn't mean that. That is just 'mechanical' thinking. A rich article should have much more to it. It should evoke some kind of emotional response. It should generate some sort of feeling inside us. One may look here for a precise definition of a feeling. A typical example would be the songs of Barathiyar or lectures of Swami Vivekananda.

'Exaggerations' are meaningful sentences which are within the context of an article, but they need not correspond to the real world scenario or the message given by the article. For instance, the line "Yindhu thalai pambu enbaar, Appan aaru thalai endru magan sollivittal" in "Nenju Porukudhilaye" poem by Barathiyar.

So essentially what my conjecture states is that "For any article, that has some amount of emotional appeal to it, we cannot expect all the sentences to make sense in the real world". Here, an article can also be a poem. After all, this conjecture should not be a surprise because in most cases emotional appeal is caused by emotional words. Finally, I would like to call upon this article to stress my point. Here the message (as I construe) is, an educational system that places its emphasis more on logic and reasoning is not a complete education as it doesn't deal with all aspects of man. But, the sentence "The child is taken to school, and the first thing he learns is that his father is a fool, ..." is an exaggeration that it may or may not correspond with the real world.

Godel and Exaggerations.

Well, I hit upon another beauty in Godel's theorem. I am wondering whether I should name this blog as 'Mind and Matter' or "The beauty of Godel's theorem'. Anyway, here it goes.

Any article (that people write) can be looked as a formal system having a content (sequence of sentences, each of which has meanings) and a message (the meaning of the whole article). Now, I define the following:

Definition 1 : An article is consistent as long as it conveys a message.
Definition 2 : An article is complete as long as each sentence in the article has some meaning associated with it.

The terms 'conveys a message' and 'meaning associated' can differ from person to person but they cannot be radically different. Naturally, we may raise the question whether, in an article we'll have both completeness and consistency. Godel's theorem asserts that - No, we cannot have both completeness and consistency for an article, provided the article is 'rich' enough. One may question, what is 'rich' enough. I would say 'rich enough' here is that the article makes someone 'ponder'.

One must understand that Godel's theorem doesn't say we cannot have any axiomatic system which is both complete and consistent. For example, a mathematical system that allows addition on two numbers and just that alone, but doesn't have any other rules, is both complete and consistent. Similarly, an article that has for instance, "Man is a human being. And humans have life", is both complete and consistent, because one doesn't 'ponder' much over these facts.

So, my claim is that "any sufficiently rich article which is consistent is bound to be incomplete". That is, we cannot search for meanings for all the statements if we are looking for a message in the article. In other words, a rich article should allow some exaggerations if we want to convey some message through the article. Well we can have a bland article without any exaggerations, for after all it is our choice to be either inconsistent or incomplete. But, it is a fact that the world prefers incompleteness over inconsistency !

Can all thoughts be 'reasoned' out ?

I could draw another interesting parallel between Godel's theorem and the world of thoughts. Assuming there is a world of thoughts and a world of reasons, we can ask the question whether are they the same. In other words, can all thoughts be 'reasoned' out. Godel's theorem says no ! Not all thoughts can be reasons. And again if we think of some thoughts having reasons, we'll have inconsistency. So, it is better to leave the world of reason as incomplete than being inconsistent. We can then define those thoughts which doesn't have any reason as 'feelings'. One can also think of the world of thoughts as the real number system and the world of reasons as the set of rationals (which is incomplete). So, thoughts are allowed be irrational as well !

Death.

Now, for some time the blast in London killing around 40 people is going to have its effects on media. While, there are going to be some noises and commotion, I feel a similar event in India (with similar toll) will be having comparatively lesser response from the Indian media. Is it because of the general attitude of the people towards the society or is it because of the running philosophy behind our culture that "death is just another state of existence" ? !

Exaggeration - A Weakness ?

While seeing a comment for a post, I was really taken into a thought about 'exaggeration' and 'weakness'. Why should 'exaggeration' be thought of as 'weakness' ? Can't it be the greatest expression of the spirit that God has given us. Can't it be an inspiration that came out of a deep thought ? Can't it make our hair stand erect and we feel like moving a mountain ? Did anyone find the songs of Barathi 'weak' ? Did he not show the strength in exaggeration ?

Truth and Theoremhood.

A line from GEB says, "... it seems that Godel has unearthed a hitherto unknown, but deeply significant, difference between human reasoning and mechanical reasoning. This mysterious discrepancy in the power of living and nonliving systems is mirrored in the discrepancy between the notion of truth, and that of theoremhood..." Does this mean "the more we study math more we are moving away from truth" ? Hmm...point to ponder.

Godel a Vedantin ?

Russell Said: If there is a man, he is sure to have his life of Ego (that he is the doer of all actions).

God(el) Said: Stating from the highest viewpoint, a man has his Self (or Aatman) different from his Ego, and if he thinks of his Self as his Ego (i.e, if he confuses his Aatman with his Ego), he'll destruct himself.

In more logical terms,

Russell Said: If there is an axiomatic system (man), it (he) is sure to have statements (life) with contradictions (Ego).

God(el) Said: If you consider a higher system (highest system), the contradicting statements (life with Ego) are no more contradictions but mere statements (mere life or Aatman or Self) and if we say those statements are theorems in the axiomatic system (identifying Ego with Self, identifying contradiction with the non-contradiction), the system will go inconsistent (self-destruction).

Is Godel a Vedantin ?

Primes and Positivity.

Here is a classic that I liked from GEB. In math, composite numbers and prime numbers can be defined as follows.

Definition 1: A number is composite if it is a product of two numbers other than 1 and itself.
Definition 2: A number is prime if it is not composite.
Thus prime numbers are defined in terms of negation. Philosophically, I can attribute a negation to something negative. Thus primes are negatively defined. They are in the 'background' of composites. Can primes be positively defined ? It turns out that primes can also be positively defined. And it appeals to our logic that anything that can be negatively defined can also be positively defined.

As another example consider the following Figure 1.

Figure 1

There is moon and the background space. When I look at the moon, I say it is positively defined (as it looks like moon is the major theme of Figure 1) and the background space gets characterized. But one can reverse the roles and say the space is positively defined (by looking at the space) and the moon gets negatively characterized. It perfectly appeals to our logic that we can look the picture either way. So, it seems logic (hence mathematics) and arts are 'natural systems' in which one can define things in one way and the 'background' gets characterized. But, life is not that simple. Even within the realm of logic not all the 'background' things gets characterized if we positively define something. In other words, there are things that can be positively defined but the negative space cannot be characterized in anyway. An analogy in arts is given by this picture.















Figure 2

Can you distinguish the background in the above figure?

I could appreciate much more beauty in this. I am sure the second pic will appeal special to almost all the people as the reason being 'foreground and the background are the same'. In other words, it appeals special to us because it is both positively and negatively defined 'equally'. While our logic naturally proposes that something that can be positively defined can also be negatively defined, this picture should not have something 'special' in it. Or to put it in a different way, if the special appeal comes because of our natural logical perception, Figure 1 should be even 'more special' because it defies our logic. So take your stand, which is more 'special' - Figure 1 or Figure 2 ? ! Doesn't this draw a line between thought and reason ?

Godel, Escher, Bach : an Eternal Golden Braid

Oh my God, Oh my God ! How am I going to describe the joy, rather ecstasy that I am going through when reading Pulitzer Prize Winner Godel, Escher, Bach : an Eternal Golden Braid (a metaphorical fugue on minds and machines in the sprit of Lewis Carroll) by Douglas R. Hofstadter. I just finished about 75 pages (it has about 700 and odd pages) and each page is worth million thoughts ! Hofstadter sharply draws the line between the realm of reason and the realm of thought. It is definitely a MUST READ for people interested in Philosophy, Meta-mathematics, Logic, Art and Music. Never again you will admire Escher after reading this book. Never again you'll praise Godel for his works. You'll adore them. I don't know anything about Bach but this book doesn't require the reader to know much about him (so far). I particularly like the author's view of this book. It goes like this. "But finally I realized that to me, Godel, Escher and Bach were only shadows cast in different directions by some central solid essence. I tried to reconstruct the central object, and came up with this book". This book is worth reading several times and I am sure one can never exhaust it. As John.L.Casti, Nature puts it, "In some ways, GEB, is an entire humanistic education between the covers of a single book. So, for my next visit to a desert island, give me sun, sand, water and GEB, and I'll live happily ever after". Its kinda a bliss that I am going through when reading this book. Though I should warn you that it is a pretty heavy dose of Philosophy and Logic. Finally, I would like to put Martin Gardner views on this book.
"Every few decades an unknown author brings out a book of such depth, clarity, range, wit, beauty and originality that it is recognized at once as a major literary event. [This] is such a work."

Triumph of Truth Over Provability !

Wow ! Just now understood something about the incompleteness theorem. I am really amazed by the keen insight of Kurt Godel. While Principia Mathematica (PM) by Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell needed the necessity of having self-contradicting statements for the existence of a mathematical system, Godel proved the unnecessity of having such statements. Let me try to explain. Consider the following statement, S.

S : This statement is false.

If asked whether 'S' is true or false, we'll get into a paradox. These types of paradox is fundamental in any logical system we build. Although, we feel 'S' is a genuine statement we are not able to ascertain any truth to it. So Whitehead and Russel admitted these statements as an integral part of a logical system. Here is where the genius of Godel lies. He made a 'coding machine' which would transform 'S' (or any other statement) to a statement in Number Theory. He then showed the impossibility of existence of a proof for the transformed statement within the framework of PM. Thus, 'S' is 'true' but we cannot prove or disprove it within the system of PM. Hence, the present mathematical system is 'incomplete' as it is not possible to verify the truth. Moreover, the greatness about Godel is that he showed that this 'incompleteness' is just not restricted to the system of PM but to any system that tries to achieve the aims of PM.

The genius Godel differentiated the genuine 'feeling' about 'S' from examining its truth. He showed the triumph of Truth over Provability. He showed the triumph of Self-awareness over Self-contradiction. He showed the triumph of God over Man !

Thoughts on Indian Culture-Part III

The real appreciation of Indian culture lies in understanding and appreciating the science of Vedanta. The major difference between India and the West is that India has excelled in the study of mental science whereas the West is well versed in the study of material science. As long as the mind is over and above the matter, India will shine in its full glory and radiate the message of Vedanta. The West may have conquered the world in science and technology, but when it comes to studying internal science and questions about man's real nature, no other nation can beat the wisdom of the ancient Indian seers. Ultimately, it's all the difference between growing inwards or growing outwards, studying the mind versus studying the matter.

It requires a philosophical mind to understand the beauty of the Indian culture in its present state of affairs. Here one must take a careful note that something is beautiful doesn't mean it is necessarily superior and this is where I guess some people make a wrong identification. India, at present has several problems. There are two ways to find a solution. One way is to see where the problem lies by comparing it with the good systems and trying to find a solution. This is a good approach but it has a negative aspect of concentrating on the weakness. On the other hand, we can constantly focus on the strength of India to overcome the weakness, if at all it has. This is an extremely positive approach. And I am sure Vedanta is the greatest strength that India possesses.

One may have a thousand criticisms of India, one may find a thousand socio-economic problems in India, but as soon as one is able to appreciate the beauty in this ancient wisdom, every problem that is seen seems to vanish like the ignorance of mistaking a rope for a snake, in the dark !

Change !

Recently, I was going through "India and USA : A comparative study : Part I" in this board. The post was interesting. The last line "Only if we recognize and accept what is wrong, we can bring about a change" caught my attention. I started thinking about change. Does change presuppose recognizing and accepting what is wrong ? I believe change can also come when one is constantly thinking about something. In this context, a positive change in India can also be accomplished if one concentrates on the strong points (of India) alone. This attitude would be entirely optimistic than recognizing and accepting what is wrong which involves comparison and criticism which in turn has some pessimistic stance as well.

Thoughts on Indian Culture-Part II

The message of Vedanta cannot be explained more beautifully than Swami Vivekakanda. Vedanta is more of a science than a philosophy. It is a science with a goal. The goal in Vedanta is to identify unity among the things which we perceive and don't perceive. Modern day science has its foundations in the principles of mathematics. Science never accepts anything that is not mathematically modeled. And mathematics in turn has its foundations on axioms (like the axiom of choice). Thus any scientific theory indirectly presupposes these axioms and hence it is not devoid of any assumption. On the other hand, Vedanta doesn't assume anything other than one's own existence. Of course, one might claim that this is also an assumption, but I guess for a normal person (unless one is really drunk), the reality of one's existence will be more fundamental than a belief in an axiom ! So Vedanta deals with more real things than modern day science.

However, Vedanta has no conflicts with science and technology. Even if we are going to find an extraterrestrial or set up a base in some planet, Vedanta will appeal to mankind. As long as we believe in our existence, Vedanta is going to exist. Moreover, Vedanta is in perfect harmony with science and its findings. Present day views on quantum mechanics suggests this harmony. Erwin Schrodinger claimed to have been inspired by Vedanta in his discovery of quantum theory. The medical community is rediscovering the benefits of yoga and meditation. Vedanta is in perfect accordance with the law of conservation of energy.

Vedanta teaches a systematic way to observe the condition of the mind in order to discover facts about it. Just like any other science which validates the theories through experiments, the truths in Vedanta can be acknowledged through the experiments of Yoga. Yoga is more than a set of bodily exercises. The asanas (bodily exercises) are a set of experiments that are useful in identifying the goal in Vedanta. Just like the modern science which has branches that suits each individual's interests, Vedanta gives us the paths of Jnana Yoga, Raja Yoga, Bakthi Yoga and Karma Yoga to identify the goal-which is unity in life. Asanas come under Raja Yoga. More details on the yoga sutras of Patanjali can be found here. The beauty of Vedanta is that it is not a single person's vision, but it is time tested by the wisdom of hunded's of thousands of induviduals.

Aalavandhaan

Watched the movie Aalavandhan yesterday. It was okay and could be watched once I guess. Kamal as usual has attempted to do something. I couldn't understand the funda behind making some cartoons !

Ethnomathematics

Its almost ten years that I undertook some serious study in mathematics and it is only today I learnt about the existence of a branch of mathematics - ETHNOMATHEMATICS

Will this help to understand the Indian culture better ?