Sita

Sita Sings the Blues originally uploaded by litherland

Sita (Skt: furrow).

Sita is depicted in the Hindu Veda as an agricultural deity.

In the puranic epic, the Ramayana, she is the daughter of King Janaka and Rama’s wife. Abducted by the demon Ravana to an island in the south (which some believe is Sri Lanka), Sita maintains her fidelity to Rama while he and his half brother, Lakshmana, embark on a journey to liberate her.

Once this is accomplished, Rama is crowned as King yet bends to popular opinion at home, which wrongly supposes that Sita slept with Ravana.

As a result, Rama doesn’t accept Sita since a ruler’s wife must be above suspicion.

As with most myths, there are at least two different endings to the epic. And both of these alternate endings asserting Sita’s fidelity.

In one variant Sita is banished to the forest for 15 years to raise her two children and is recalled once public opinion at home cools down.

Declaring her innocence, Sita invokes the Earth Mother as witness. The Earth Mother affirms Sita’s loyalty but swallows her whole, much to the distress of the doubting Rama.

In the other variant, Lakshmana kindles a fire (on the request of Rama) and Sita is ordered into the flames. The fire-god Agni arises from the flames and adorns Sita with a crown, proclaiming her innocence. Rama then enters the fire and he and Sita are suddenly transported to a heavenly realm where they’ll remain for 14 years, after which time they’ll return to rule the Earth.

According to a Jain version of the tale, Sita is the daughter of Ravana. Not unlike the twist of fate found in the story of Oedipus, Sita is abandoned at birth because it has been foretold that she’ll destroy her father’s kingdom.

In contemporary India, Sita is widely regarded as exemplifying the honorable wife and mother. Meanwhile, Bollywood actor Shilpa Shetty is set to play Sita in her next film, Hanuman.

» Abyss, Hero, Jainism, Mahabharata, Puranas, Rama, Ramayana

On the Web:

• Modern adaptation under CC license:
  

• Sita Sings the Blues (2008): Full feature can be downloaded in high res from archive.org.

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Samkhya

gunas by Gustavo Peres

Samkhya

One of the six main schools of Hindu philosophy with conceptual roots in the Rig Veda but normally attributed to the sage Kapila (6^th-century BCE).

Kapila postulated a fundamental distinction between spirit (purusha) and nature or matter (prakrti) as well as innumerable sub-categories.

He believed in the existence of individual souls and postulated the three gunas of Sattva, Rajas and Tamas.

The gunas are qualities that constitute material nature and a corresponding consciousness within living beings.

• Sattva is the highest of the three gunas, refering to calm, light and peace.
• Rajas is neither the highest nor the lowest guna, translating to excitement, action, passion and force.
• Tamas is the lowest of the three gunas, indicating darkness, grief, fear and laziness.

Originally the three gunas existed in equilibrium but the workings of the spirit threw them out of balance. The inevitable tensions, conflicts, attractions and affiliations arising from their disequilibrium caused a process of cosmic and spiritual evolution, which for Hindus is much larger than the Darwinian take on evolution.

As with the theory of reincarnation, this is an imaginative, admirable but arguably limited human attempt to understand the godhead, the miracle of creation and the interaction of time and eternity. » Rajas, Sattva, Tamas

On the Web:

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Vivekananda, Swami

Statue of Swami Vivekananda
(Gateway of India)

Originally uploaded by anappaiah

Vivekananda, Swami (1863-1902)

Hindu holy man – originally Narendranath Datta – who advocated worldly action to overcome the severe poverty of India.

He was the favored disciple of the Hindu saint Ramakrishna.

Vivekananda complained about the “emaciated” populace in India, a nation which he believed had become falsely proud and hypocritical.

As such, he downplayed parapsychology and siddhis (spiritual powers) in favor of what he regarded as practical development, emphasizing the basic building blocks of food, uncontaminated water and personal hygiene.

He founded the Ramakrishna Mission and was the first Hindu to be received by major audiences in the West.

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Visistadvaita

Vishnu

Originally uploaded by 7E55E-BRN

Visistadvaita

Visistadvaita is a school of Indian philosophy founded by the Indian sage and philosopher Ramanuja (1017-1137 CE).

Ramanuja challenged Sankara’s claim that only the Brahman is real and individuality is illusory (maya).

For Ramanuja the Brahman is real and beyond pain and suffering but individual souls (jivas) emerging from and ultimately resting within the Brahman are also real.

While the Brahman is beyond the law of karma, the individual soul (jiva) is not.

As a result, the jiva experiences the pleasure and pain of earthly life.

Liberation from samsara, the round of rebirth due to karma, is gained through individual effort as well as the grace of God (Vishnu).

» Self, Suffering

Further reading:

• P. D. Devanandan, The Concept of Maya, London: Lutterworth Press, 1950.

On the World Wide Web:

• http://www.jstor.org/pss/1397514 †

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† JSTOR may be accessed from university and many public libraries. It’s also an application at Facebook.

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Vishnu

Vishnu backlit

Originally uploaded by JotoLo02

Vishnu

In Hinduism Vishnu is the second deity of the Hindu Trimurti (i.e. triad) of Brahma, Visnu, and Siva.

He rides the great eagle Garuda with his consort, the goddess of prosperity and good fortune, Lakshmi, at his side.

Hindus believe that the universe passes through endless cycles of creation and destruction.

While Brahma is seen as the creator of the universe, Vishnu is the benevolent preserver and Siva is at times regarded as the cosmic destroyer.

Vishnu is said to have had nine incarnations (avatars) on Earth, including Krishna. The tenth avatar, Kalki, is yet to come and will ride on a white horse.

It is believed that Kalki will reestablish dharma in our present age of alleged moral decline, the Kali-yuga.

On the World Wide Web

• The incarnations of Visnu at http://www.sanatansociety.org/hindu_gods_and_goddesses/vishnu.htm

» AUM , Avatar, Underworld, Visistadvaita, Yuga

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Veda

Rig vedic fire offerings

Originally uploaded by Srevatsan

Veda

These are the first group of ancient Hindu sacred books, for which Max Müller and most subsequent scholars suggest a date of 13th century BCE.

Ten in all, the Veda form a mandala (circle) of knowledge and are believed by some to represent truth and therefore all that is necessary for spiritual liberation.

The more recent Upanisads are known as the Vedanta–that is, the end of the Veda.

As hindu-blog points out, however, both the Veda and the Upanisads are based on a longstanding oral tradition which makes precise dating open to debate:

The Upanishads and Vedas were rendered orally and were passed on for generations before being written. Nobody is sure about the actual dates of these texts. » Source

Recently, the only Sanskrit rock band of the world, “Shanti Shanti” has produced an album called “Veda.”

This CD titled “Veda”, produced by Ganesha Publishing BMI, contains shlokas (hymns) from all four Vedas-Rig-veda, Sama-veda, Atharva-veda, and Yajur-veda, some as old as 1,500 BCE. » Source

» Asrama, Asura, Avatar, Avesta, Brahmacharya, Brahmanas, Brahmin, Caste, Dismemberment, Durga, Hinduism, Kama, Krishna, Kshatriya, Language, Manu, O’Flaherty (Wendy Doniger), Rishis, Samkhya, Sita, Sutra, Upanisads, Zoroastrianism

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Vanaprashta

Vashist Forest 2

Originally uploaded by ElPablo!

Vanaprashta (Skt: ‘home in the forest or woods’)

In traditional Hinduism this is the third asrama (Vedic stage of life) in which the male, having fulfilled his matrimonial dharma as a householder, generally retreats to the forest to study the deeper meaning of sacred texts and become adept at meditation.

A difficult path to follow, especially today, within the changing face of Hinduism its contemporary translation is more a psychosocial rather than geographical withdrawal–that is, the Hindu meditator, whether he be male or female, may withdraw into the deeper aspects of the psyche (and perhaps beyond) without necessarily leaving the household as in former times.

This shift is made evident in Pauline Kolenda’s ethnographic study conducted in Khalapur, where she notes:

Jivan Mal was a Gandhian. Like Gandhi, he tried to live his life according to the four ashramas, and when we knew him, he was in the third ashrama; he was a vanaprashta one who had retired from ordinary life to devote himself to religion. He explained that he and his wife were “like brother and sister”; he had given up sexual activity. Consistent with his religiosity and his Gandhianism was his strict vegetarian diet, but inconsistent with his Gandhianism was his inability to consort with untouchables, to be near them or to take food or drink from them or with them.

Source » Pauline Kolenda, “Micro-Ideology and Micro-Utopia in Khalapur: Changes in the Discourse on Caste over Thirty Years,” Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 24, No. 32 (Aug. 12, 1989: 1831-1838), pp. 1833-1834.

Of course, one may rightly ask how such unsavory snobbishness could be taken as sign of positive spirituality and in keeping with God’s will.

» Asrama, Dharma, Hinduism

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Yuga

Kali Yuga

Originally uploaded by
VuduDada ArtStudio

Yuga

In Hindu Vedic and Puranic cosmology, a yuga is an extremely long time period, especially when measured on the human scale.

The Hindu conception of the yuga suggests that time itself differs for gods and humans.

In the Mahabharata an entire human year translates into a single day for the devas.

Each of the four different Yugas represent four general ages of the devas.

As with the ancient Greek and Hebraic sense of time, these ages progress from an initial, ideal Golden Age (Krita yuga) to increasingly corrupted ages.

The four Yugas and their human equivalents
are:

Yuga	Deva Years	Human Years
Krita	4800	1,728,000
Treta	3600	1,296,000
Dvapara	2400	864,000
Kali	1200	432,000
Mahayuga (Great Yuga)*	12,000	4,320,000

A single day for the god Brahma is 1,000 Mahayugas (4,320,000,000 human years). One year for Brahma is 1,555,200,000,000 human years. Brahma’s life span is 155,520,000,000,000 human years.

All this indicates that Brahma exists in an entirely different time frame than human beings.

An arguably mythical, quasi-scientific scheme like this may seem irrelevant to contemporary thinkers but it points to the notion, worth considering, that the universe contains different yet interacting regions of space-time, each region containing its own unique properties and beings. » Mahabharata, Puranas, Ragnarok, Veda
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*A Mahayuga (Great Yuga) is one complete cycle of the four Yugas.
Table condensed from Keith R. Crim (ed.) The Perennial Dictionary of World Religions. New York: Harper & Row, 1989, pp. 818-819.

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Yogi

Yogi on Meditation.

Originally uploaded by b3ni

Yogi A male practitioner of yoga. The term also connotes a male saint and teacher of spiritual knowledge.

Yogis take many different forms and various complementary and competing schools can be found within ancient, medieval and modern Hinduism.

T. S. Rukmani notes that advanced yogis like Sankara are said to have some degree of perception of past and future, although they are not equal to brahman in this respect.¹

Yogis may also possess unusual spiritual powers called siddhis. However, these are generally downplayed and even discouraged because they are regarded as a distraction to the ultimate goal of liberation through union with the godhead.

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¹”Untitled Review of ‘The Role of Divine Grace in the Soteriology of śaṅkarācārya by Bradley J. Malkovsky’” in Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 124, No. 4, (Oct. – Dec., 2004: 813-816), p. 814.

» James (William), Karma, Karma Transfer, Mythic Eternalization, Rajas, Shakti, Yogini, Watts (Alan)

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Yoni

LINGGA & YONI at CETO Temple

Originally uploaded by *Gabisa Motonia

Yoni In Hinduism this is the female organ of all creation.

In Hindu temple art female genitalia are often emphasized to symbolize the Great Mother’s crucial meta-physical role in giving birth to all that is.

F. A. Marglin notes that, on a more personal scale, the yoni is said to invigorate the male through sexual intercourse.

Popular Hindu Indian folk belief maintains that during intercourse vaginal fluids enter the male generative organ, symbolically known as the linga (roughly parallel to the phallus of the Western mythos). This mingling of bodily fluids is believed to give the male his wife’s spiritual power (shakti).

Ancient Kings thus had several concubines as their divine right–this not only for the gratification of lust but also, so the belief goes, for an increase in spiritual power.¹

As the yoni and especially sexual-erotic scenes appearing on Hindu temple engravings are often interpreted by outsiders as an inferior, crass type of spiritual representation, Hindus (and Jungians) tend to say that those who see it that way are merely projecting their own shadow.

The yoni is sometimes depicted as a triangle with apex facing downwards. V. K. Chari says

These geometrical figures have symbolic meanings: the triangle with the apex turned upwards (called vahni kona or cone of fire) may represent male energy, the one with the apex turned downwards female energy (yoni), the matrix of creation, and so forth-which the adept are to meditate upon.²

» Jung (Carl Gustav), Linga, Siva

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¹F. A. Marglin in The Encyclopedia of Religion. Eliade, Mircea (ed). New York: 1987, Collier Macmillan, Vol. 15, pp. 530-535.

²V. K. Chari, “Representation in India’s Sacred Images: Objective vs. Metaphysical Reference” in Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Vol. 65, No. 1, 2002: 52-73, pp. 65-66.

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