Tag Archives: Hinduism

Is Atheist Sam Harris Sexy? Nagarjuna’s Opinion–And Thomas Aquinas’

Posted on May 19, 2015 by Santi Tafarella

Sam Harris is sexy, right? Perhaps you agree. But think again. How you answer this question says a lot about your orientation. Not your sexual orientation. Or at least not just your sexual orientation. It reveals something about how you … Continue reading →

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Practicing Angry

Posted on January 18, 2015 by Santi Tafarella

Hmm.

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Penguin Withdraws and Destroys Scholarly Work on Hinduism

Posted on February 14, 2014 by Santi Tafarella

A pretty disturbing incident of censorship is taking place right now in India. A retired school teacher has been campaigning for the banning of a book, and Penguin is relenting, pulping its remaining copies. You can read the whole sorry … Continue reading →

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The Religion Tree: A Poem

Posted on September 20, 2013 by Santi Tafarella

THE RELIGION TREE I. The leaf doesn’t fall far from the tree, and we are all leaves on the same tree, and will take our leave from here. II. The yellow leaf signals fall, the green leaf, pride before the fall. … Continue reading →

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An Incarnation of Shiva

Posted on June 2, 2013 by Santi Tafarella

_________

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The New Hitler Youth of India

Posted on November 30, 2012 by Santi Tafarella

With India’s rise on the global stage, it would seem valuable to know the attitudes of its most elite educated teenagers, and Dilip D’Sousa at the Daily Beast reports that a not inconsiderable number of them harbor fascist sentiments: My … Continue reading →

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The Saintly Ramana Maharshi

Posted on February 2, 2012 by Santi Tafarella

The real deal (mostly): _____ And: _____ And here is the book containing Ramana Maharshi’s talks that you might find interesting.

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Are You the Crab Eye of God Turned Back to Gaze on Your Own Creation?

Posted on December 13, 2011 by Santi Tafarella

A striking quote from John Jeremiah Sullivan (paraphrasing botanist Constantine Samuel Rafinesque): If we are conscious, as our species seems to have become, then nature is conscious. Nature became conscious in us, perhaps in order to observe itself. It may … Continue reading →

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Baloney Detector

Posted on October 6, 2011 by Santi Tafarella

How well does a belief that you currently subscribe to hold up under these 10 questions? Do I have any actual evidence for the thing I say I believe, and what is the extent and quality of that evidence? If … Continue reading →

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The Religion Tree

Posted on September 21, 2011 by Santi Tafarella

Using the metaphor of a tree, in the following poem I try to boil down the essence of the human predicament (which I take to be suffering, change, and death) and the response of each major religion to it (including the atheist … Continue reading →

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If You’re Angry, And Words Fail

Posted on August 12, 2011 by Santi Tafarella

Don’t shoot! Try gesture:                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          . Or, how about this? (Buddhist equanimity.)                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       . The above painting is from a Laotian monastery. It’s an image of the Buddha leading monks through a treacherous path. He is silent and calm, walking through … Continue reading →

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Neurons That Fire Together Wire Together: The New York Times Says 8 Weeks of Meditation, 30 Minutes a Day, May Change the Brain

Posted on January 30, 2011 by Santi Tafarella

More study is needed (obviously), but the New York Times, in its Health section, has a startling article on meditation’s apparent ability to literally change how the brain wires itself up, and that after only 8 weeks of very modest (30 minutes a day) meditation … Continue reading →

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The Internet: Where Religions Come to Die?

Posted on December 21, 2010 by Santi Tafarella
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Talking about Love Some More

Posted on October 3, 2010 by Santi Tafarella

It seems to me that George Harrison’s song, “Within You, Without You,” says a lot of true things in a short space. Here are the lyrics: We were talking about the space between us all, and the people who hide … Continue reading →

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A Swami for a Sunday

Posted on September 26, 2010 by Santi Tafarella

Swami Satchidananda is my all-time favorite Hindu guru. His name consists of a combination of three terms that, taken together, sum up rather nicely the Hindu spiritual quest:  that which is (sat); that which is consciousness (chid); that which is bliss (ananda). … Continue reading →

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Saudi Woman Links to International Have a Meal with a Muslim Day (Sept 17, 2010)

Posted on September 11, 2010 by Santi Tafarella

At her Twitter feed, the brave Saudi feminist, Eman Al Nafjan, who blogs at SaudiWoman, linked to International Have a Meal with a Muslim Day, which I take as an endorsement. And I’ve also been informed that an imam in Baltimore … Continue reading →

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Herderian Religious Cleansing, 1930s style, in Malaysia and the United States

Posted on August 31, 2010 by Santi Tafarella

Here’s an image of a book burning in Berlin, May 10, 1933: And here’s an image of a burned out synagogue after Krisallnacht (November, 1938): These two images are what anti-Enlightenment Herderian political action so readily devolves into. And now here … Continue reading →

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Maybe God Wants to Be Left Alone

Posted on August 10, 2010 by Santi Tafarella

Here’s a little double bind to contemplate: if we do not know the will of God, or whether he exists, and yet we nevertheless seek to discover answers to these questions, we might be annoying God. Why? Because God may not like people … Continue reading →

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Why We Should Build Human Solidarity on Reason, Not Race, Faith, or Nation

Posted on July 22, 2010 by Santi Tafarella

Reason, to my mind, is a human universal (though some do it far better than others). In other words, barring intellectual disability or brain injury, human beings have a universal capacity for reasoning with others: we can deduct, induct, experiment, … Continue reading →

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The Tortoise Shell, the Umbrella, and Hindu Meditation

Posted on June 30, 2010 by Santi Tafarella

In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says to Arjuna (Barbara Miller’s translation, pt. 2 stanzas 55-58): When he [the yogi] gives up desires in his mind, is content with the self within himself, then he is said to be a man whose insight … Continue reading →

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