p a r a d a t x

My Indian Connection

So an Indian friend asked, "How did you even get to know about the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad... and what is your Indian connection?" There is a whole story to that answer complete with background and figures and illustrations and a full description of the cultural context explaining the why and how... but the short answer is: "The Ten Principal Upanishads: Put into English by Shree Purohit Swami and W. B. Yeats" (1937) that I purchased at the Vedanta Hindu Temple Bookstore in Montecito, CA in th...

Welcome Back

Welcome back (my first entry with Quick Blogcast). One really should avoid blogging in one's sleep. The dog has long since given up on me and headed off to his bed. What can I possibly hope to accomplish pecking away at this keyboard that could possibly compare with getting under the covers and falling asleep? I'm grinning ear to ear just at the thought of it. It reminds me of that Hindu AUM symbol that represents the connection between wakefulness, dreams and sleep. Sleep, like Om Parvat...

Exactly 30 years ago this date…

Do not let us grow crooked, we that kneel and pray again and again. What a wonderful prayer that is!  They are praying that the act of praying does not cause them to be spiritually deformed.  They are after all, already perfect in God's image; they just have not realized it!  That is such a delightful passage. Well, this is good.  Salvation, realization, atonement, whatever you choose to call it, it is good. After years of sorrow, self doubt, and self-alienation I found my salvation, an...

Regarding Thessalonians 2

Regarding Thessalonians 2 - I'm not convinced Paul actually knows what he is talking about - the whole second coming thing seems misled to me. Anyway - the Jerusalem Bible is easier to read and is closer to the original than KJV. Also, please remember that these are not the words of Jesus, but are Paul's words that he wrote in a letter to the churches. Also remember Paul never even met Jesus and had some serious issues regarding his guilt over his previous mistreatment of Christians (he was R...

Response to Ravi re. salvation and enlightenment or moksha

Salvation (salvage, save) and enlightenment (to bring into light) are two separate and quite different things. As Cosmic points out, they are in a sense very much in opposition. Salvation, is a key idea in Christianity, and is related to the Jewish view of god in which humanity exists manifestly separate from and is subservient to God. This god has His own set of rules that are not clearly understood, simply because God is so far removed from and above His people that they are incapable of co...