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Post by subaldas on Oct 1, 2007 10:11:04 GMT -6
Thanks for posting that madanmohandasji. He makes some very good points. Much of all scripture is poetical/metaphorical--speaking in poetic language of that which cannot be spoken of. Meditating on the universe as the form of God-dess is panentheism. By seeing God-dess in everything, everything becomes sacralized, spiritualized and seeing things dualistically is eliminated. One can be one with life, and different at the same time. God-dess is the ground of all being who does not exist but is existence itself.
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Post by Nitaidas on Oct 2, 2007 9:29:57 GMT -6
Ahh! The apologists. You got to love them. They are a good source of our own prahasanniva. If it is true that the purpose of the 5th book passages was
would it not have been even better if they had gotten it right? That is, isn't the real immensity of the universe and its real nature more impressive than an imaginary one? How can one call the universe described in book five as "most real and concrete to us?" The saddest thing for me is that there were, as others have pointed out in this forum, great astronomers and mathematicians in India alive at the time when the puranas were being composed, but the authors of the puranas ignored them in favor the unreal and silly landscapes and cosmologies of the older puranic "tradition." Furthermore, if meditation on the real and concrete universe as the body of Bhagavan is what is important in those passages why not meditate on the universe as revealed by science as that body, instead of the one given in the Bhagavata?
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Post by subaldas on Oct 2, 2007 10:36:25 GMT -6
Why not meditate on the universe we see around us everyday as a revelation of the divine?
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Post by Nitaidas on Oct 2, 2007 22:47:18 GMT -6
That's is why he said you might do well to skip those passages. They did not have radio telescopes when the Puranas were being compiled, and as someone said, 'Why has man not a microscopic eye? For simple reason that man is not a fly. The imagery portrayed in the 5th Skandha is mind blowing, google earth is not. What might be helpful in reading the 5th Skandha would be to imbibe some ganja to open the mind up to what the sage is saying.  You find the imagery of the 5th Book mind-blowing, but peering out into the vast and beautiful universe around us is not? Strange. The vastness of interstellar space is what I call mind-blowing. |
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Post by Nitaidas on Oct 2, 2007 23:05:13 GMT -6
Why not meditate on the universe we see around us everyday as a revelation of the divine? I'm fine with this. There is a doctrine in CV that teaches that the universe is a manifestation of the guru. In other words, we are to learn from it as we would from our guru, show it the respect we would show our guru. |
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Post by service to Radha's feet on Feb 20, 2008 11:53:39 GMT -6
The trouble I have with all this is that I was led into thinking for many years that every word in the Bhagavata is the absolute truth, including the discription of the universe. It is obvious to me now that these descriptions do not correspond to the reality which is prevalent, made available through technological innovations and extraordinary math calculations. The trouble is a blow of faith in the Bhagavata or what I thought was the consitition of the Bhagavata--perfect knowledge from the realized souls. How to deal with that and while still having faith in the spiritual teachings of the Bhagavata?
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Post by Ekantin on Feb 21, 2008 9:10:47 GMT -6
The trouble I have with all this is that I was led into thinking for many years that every word in the Bhagavata is the absolute truth, including the discription of the universe. It is obvious to me now that these descriptions do not correspond to the reality which is prevalent, made available through technological innovations and extraordinary math calculations. The trouble is a blow of faith in the Bhagavata or what I thought was the consitition of the Bhagavata--perfect knowledge from the realized souls. How to deal with that and while still having faith in the spiritual teachings of the Bhagavata? I remember an explanation given by Madhava on his Gaudiya Discussions board. Basically it refers to the fact that the 5th Skandha is not meant to be a literal description of the universe in the first place, but is rather an answer to Pariksit's request to comprehend the universe as the "form of God". In that sense, the description of the universe is "true" for the sadhaka and at the same time at odds with modern science, which wasn't supposed to be in consonance with modern science anyway. See SB 5.16.1-3 for example. |
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Post by cuckoo4cocopuffs on Jan 15, 2012 18:32:02 GMT -6
The tortoise upon which the 4 elephants are perched is actually very swift. He's not your average tortoise, not only is he HUGE, he traverses a spiral around the galactic center at mind numbing speeds.
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Post by Nitaidas on Jan 16, 2012 13:00:18 GMT -6
The tortoise upon which the 4 elephants are perched is actually very swift. He's not your average tortoise, not only is he HUGE, he traverses a spiral around the galactic center at mind numbing speeds. Well, we are not really sure about the sex of the tortoise. He could be a she. Much scientific endeavor has been spent on trying to discover the sex of said tortoise by some of the finest minds on Discworld. Many a scientific expedition has fallen off the edge of the world, carried by the waters of the outer ocean pouring over that edge, never to be heard from again. It is hoped that one such expedition will get a good view of the tortoise as it passes by in its fall into endless space and will have time to radio back its findings, but so far there has been no such luck. |
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Post by cuckoo4cocopuffs on Jan 17, 2012 16:41:21 GMT -6
Oh, come on now.. everyone knows the Tortoise is a true hermaphrodite!
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Post by Nitaidas on Jan 17, 2012 21:35:27 GMT -6
Oh, come on now.. everyone knows the Tortoise is a true hermaphrodite! How does everyone know this? Where is your scriptural evidence, baba? Should we consult the Turtleman? |
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