On the joys of the Vedas

Wisdom of the Ancient Seers:

Mantras of the Rig Veda

David Frawley

Lotus Press, 1992 - Philosophy - 280 pages

"The Rig Veda is not only one of the oldest sacred scriptures of the world, but also one of the most misunderstood. Past scholarship has dismissed the hymns of the Rig Veda as being expressions of a primitive animistic mentality that only rarely rose to true spiritual and philosophical heights. David Frawley's book demonstrates that this judgmental view is ill-founded. His fine renderings of select Vedic hymns bear witness to the fact that their composers were sages and seers--powerful poets who knew the art of symbolic and metaphoric communication. The Vedic hymns give us a unique glimpse not into a primitive mentality but a mentality and culture that revolved around the highest spirtual values and visions. This is an important and riveting book, ushering in a new and sounder tradition of Vedic interpretation and scholarship." Georg Feuerstein

A good book to begin the exploration of the Rig Veda vs the usual 'Freudian' , 'judeo-christian' junk translations. For those of you suffering through disgusting english translations, this is a joy at $10 from amazon.com. This man is one of the few from the West who delved into the Vedas without funded special interests and with great sincerity of purpose.

Compare it with this book which is a one-dimensional read.

Veda from a Judeo-Christian Perspective, December 18, 2008

By	Benjamin Freedman

This review is from: Rig Veda (Paperback)

The supposed author is not the author at all. He just waited for the copyrights to expire on others' work. Also, he is not a hindu and does not revere the vedas, he is a right-wing "hebrew-roots" christian convert. Not recommended.
I highly recommend The Vedic Experience; The Secret of the Veda; Wisdom of the Ancient Seers; Gods, Sages and Kings; The Secret Teachings of the Vedas. For a translation of the Rig Veda, look up R.L. Kashyap. Most importantly, I recommend you look up David Frawley. He is the gateway to vedic knowledge.

A Freudian animistic color

The Rig Veda: An Anthology of One Hundred Eight Hymns (Classic) [Paperback]

Anonymous (Author), Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty (Translator)

By	David Marshall (Nagasaki, Japan)

author, Jesus and the Religions of Man

d.marshall@sun.ac.jp

As a Christian interested in comparative religion, I find the Rig Veda very interesting. J. N. Farqurhar argues, in The Crown of Hinduism, that the Veda is actually closer to Christianity than to modern Hinduism in some ways, in that 1) The early idea of Varuna, as Creator, Sustainer, Ruler, and identified with the Law, is more like Yahweh than the conception of Brahman that appears in the Upanishads. 2) The theme of sacrifice. 3) The Vedic idea of heaven. 4) The unambiguous assumption that the world is a good place. 5) More social and family freedom than was allowed in the more rigid caste system that followed. Some modern Indian Christians have said that the Vedic sacrificial ceremonies bare an uncanny resemblance to the death of Jesus on the cross. I found partial confirmation of some of these ideas here, though of course O'Flaherty did not select her poems to illustrate them!

Don't pay any attention to the person below who thinks O'Flaherty should have translated the Rig Veda according to its "spiritual" meaning.

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Now this man argues for his Christian leanings out of context, the author argues for her Freudian leanings out of context, yet the natives are barred from their cultural context to keep it "literal" reading!!! And all tell you what you should think :-) . eg. "Dont pay any attention to the person below".

An enriching journey for Dean Brown, a physicist and translator of Upanishads

Inventing a 'Hindu Mythology'

This blog is a small effort at stating the obvious as obvious, and therefore it will be a small effort.

Destroying hindu scriptures phrase by phrase

The agenda of western 'values' (euphemism for racist assumptions and disrespect for living oral traditions) was enforced for over 150 years on almost all the sacred Hindu texts to misinterpret, reinterpret and denigrate the native culture from inside in favour of "English education".

Western Educators Today

It is important to note that western educators today in keeping with their tradition, call everyone who disagrees with their view as "Hindu nationalists". Over 150 years they have succeeded in distorting and destroying the sutras phrase by phrase. How could they have done this? It is simply by having no regard other people's eternal exploration of God. If ancient libraries were destroyed by fire through violent madmen, these modern men have chosen to destroy it by the nasty fire of misintrepretation sutra by sutra and book by book. It is important to note that most of these educators are poorly educated in sanskrit, have very little inner understanding of India or its many cultures, have unknowingly adopted colonialist and myopic views of her history promoting inbuilt agendas of yesteryears, and often have NO oral training in any of the classics to form coherent inner meanings of the classics. In their haste to make a living due to their educational systems, they don't study the vast world of the classics and their commentaries other than what is sufficient for their salary. So for most of them it is not a quest for understanding, but a childish form of entertainment towards a living. Through them you attain no inner understanding but a childlike incoherent entertainment. So those who seek meaning in their life, please keep your minds safe from their destructive fires. Oftentimes, within a single class, they can destroy whole passages and along with it your comprehension. What a complete waste of time and life!

Geopolitics, sanskritists and the natives

First off, lets start off with the sanskritists - who are these people? Why do they portray themselves as colonial masters and civilizers?

Geopolitics and Sanskrit Phobia

http://rajivmalhotra.sulekha.com/blog/post/2005/07/geopolitics-and-sanskrit-phobia.htm

this scholarly paper was presented at an International conference in Bangkok. I will pull out some points for beginning students of sanskrit or 'hindu mythology' in a seperate post.

For those of you who like to seek the pleasure of meaning and not juvenile caricature, I will post thoughts from great Western and Eastern men alike, who have enjoyed them and been fulfilled in the next few posts.

The conversion of Facts to Fiction aka. White Christian Supremacist Theories

The conversion of facts to fiction was to soothe Western egos in the past, to initially justify the plundering of India by postulating an inferior race theory; at a later stage, to extract all her cultural wealth and appropriate and misuse it without even a mere acknowledgement so the intellectual egoes can make their money; and the current trend of West building a "self-made" personae when their industrial revolution was suckled on India's wealth and blood, and their many cultural refinements in thought attributed to ancient Indian thought... The recent trend is worthy of elaboration as it very amusing to observe. The western 'intellectual' postures with a smiling face and conducts a socio-political-literary dialogue of attack on India while non-reciprocating natives are slighted to 'show' the 'degeneration' of their culture and the 'broken links' they have come to discover. These 'unbiased' academicians as you can imagine will ignore anything more subtle than romance and the living traditions preferring to be in search of the dead carcasses of text they wont understand and will dissect in their departments for profit. If you have the occasion to meet these insensitive, arrogant 'unbiased academicians', just let them be for they like it that way. It is their only salve.