aug 24th, 2009
after that woman wrote in newsweek 'we are all becoming hindus' or something like that, here's the nytimes weighing in on the idea that there's a certain unseen set of laws of nature that exist even before we discover them (no, we do not 'invent' them) -- isn't that precisely what 'dharma' is? interesting, the role of the jealous semitic god (ialdaboath) continues to be downgraded: he's now just someone who started the thing and got out of the way, and 'dharma' took over. a bit of a role-reduction for the 'jealous' one: it turns out he doesn't have to watch everything all the time, dharma will fix everything. the system is the thing: it's self-healing and self-correcting. (which, parenthetically, means periodically the system has to cleanse itself -- thus, sambhavami yuge yuge, and the pralaya).
amazing, the hindu-hating nytimes inadvertently supporting an idea that would make it look like hindus and buddhists actually had a clue all along!
or maybe in an era of shrinking subscriptions, newsweek and the nytimes have figured out that hindus in america actually have money and actually read :-) yeah, newsweek with its oh-so-'secular' farid zakaria would know about hindus and the fact that hindus, toxified and de-racinated, can be easily flattered into parting with their cash :-(
to be less cynical, i can go with some of this article's line of thinking: for instance, game-theoretic ideas can be used as the basis for understanding sales transactions. that is, a long-term selling relationship is basically a repeated prisoner's-dilemma-game. (perhaps a massively repeated prisoners-dilemma game would be a first approximation to many other interactions involving individuals, families or nations, too, i haven't thought about that).prisoners-dilemma games are non-zero-sum, and can well be highly negative or highly positive for both parties, or even zero-sum sometimes. the interesting thing is that it turns out the best -- the very best -- strategy in a repeated prisoner's dilemma game is to reciprocate: ie. the simplest and most 'moral' thing. that is, cooperate if they cooperate, betray if they betray.
more or less the 'golden rule' of 'do unto others' -- except that with this rule you are inducing co-operation in the other party by starting off co-operating with them. in other words, the beginnings of a rough morality: do good a priori, and then do good in return for good, and bad in return for bad. these notions of abstract 'good' and 'bad' are imprinted into us. thus, out of enlightened self-interest, we evolve morality. 'dharma' or the 'natural law' is -- interesting thought -- the impersonal principle of the universe, ie. para-brahma, god.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/opinion/23wright.html?em=&pagewanted=all
6 comments:
Perhaps there are plans to print an Indian edition of the International Herald Tribune (The Global Edition of The New York Times) - aimed at the millions of ELM readers in India?
(International Herald Tribune shares many columnists with The New York Times.)
Western philosophy, psychology and religion are so full of gobbledygook!
comment by a friend:
For Indians who have taken a deracinated, jaundiced view of dharma,
and for the rest of us it is a challenge: dharma is universal and
recognizes no national boundaries. It is perfectly compatible with
dharma that its original recognizers could, in time, become blind to
it, only to have their eyes re-opened by the very bearers of the
transient semitic god-meme to whom they had ceded their knowledge
space. What it could mean is that, pax indica, far from being a
dominion by ethnic Indians over the world, will be a rule of Indic
ideas with a global face. [Recall: the British empire, at its peak,
was actually mostly Indian in manpower; such is the way of Empire]
Satyameva jayate means that if it is true, it will eventually be
(tautologically) proved to be true. If our ideas have been right all
along, either the world will adopt them or it will perish.
Hu Shih, former Ambassador of China to USA: "India conquered and dominated China culturally for 20 centuries without ever having to send a single soldier across her border."
more from the same friend:
Rajeev, I don't know what your experience was, growing up, but I never
had our dharma and its concepts actually taught to me. My mother is
simultaneously a devout believer, at the same time she is needlessly
apologetic about her beliefs. Much later in life I learned what the
Veda and the chanting rituals are actually supposed to be about--the
devatas & rakshasas are various subtle flavors of our own animating
emotional energy, positive and negative, and they are stimulated by
the tonalities of specific mantras much in the same way that music
stimulates the emotions. it makes perfect sense, it actually works,
and makes the rest of the religions seem like the poor infantile
things they are.
Yoddha,
Your friend talks much sense
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