Nalanda, religion and US

You may wonder what is the point in comparing Nalanda with USA; you may in any case like to read on http://www.nalanda.nitc.ac.in/about/NalandaHeritage.html about Naland Univ.. well it is like this .. Nalanda was known all over the world as a great university- people across the world used to visit Nalanda, join the univ and learn. Guess where does this happen now? in US
India used to be and to a large extent accept all paths (not "religion") as the way for liberation; it was the home of many religions and Parsi came to India when they were persecuted.. Guess where else does this happen? you guessed it US - California is the bed of Zen Buddhism, Oprah presents different spiritual masters - there are others that propogate Vedanta
India used to be a rich country and people all over the world used to come to India for trade and coveting gold - where does this happen now - even in the midst of all the negative publicity about the subprime - well i do admit people are rushing to India too which is good news - but interestingly people still want to use US Dollar as the currency
Makes you think ! right ! and what do we spend most of our time on? yes you guessed it TV and who are our icons? SRK !!
Can we all shift our way our thinking and think of an India as dreamt by Rabindranath Tagore in where the mind is without fear? can we think about having every Indian educated (not literate) , think on their own not blindly copy; we have been so brainwashed by English "education" that we are not even aware! to give one example there is no word for "religion" in India and we fight about religion - the sanskrit closest word is "Marga" ... We have to hear from Alan Watts about goodness of India (our tradition of saying Namaste with our palms touching each other) unlike the " " (dont want to write) method of shaking hands; many people in the villages hopefully think with their hearts - not head- we in city think with our heads not heart (and heart is not defined as emotion)..

Comments

Anonymous said…
Please define heart if it is not seat of emotion in your terms
5:46 pm
Shreekanth said…
The context in which i wrote is - humans have mostly thinking with their heads i.e. we think that we are equal to your heads or what we think is what we are; another way of thinking is with our feelings i.e. we act impulsively and there we are equal to your emotions.. a good way is think from the seat of the heart as Ramana Mahrishi would say - the spiritual hear and that the context in which i wrote
6:32 pm
VRM said…
The reason why people flock to the US and other Western countries to study is for two reasons; 1) The choice that is offered to a student to pick and choose his / her subjects and 2) The way in which subjects are taught.

Having a daughter who is in her final year of University, specializing in Psychology and Anthropology, I see that most of her courses are researched based, with very little of mugging. In her first three years, every exam that she appeared had multiple choice questions, which forced her to understand things before she could answer such questions. For students to stay in India, to complete their higher education, we definitely need to change the way students learn.

Shreekanth, while there is a lot of hype about the promotion (and I am specifically using this word) of religion in the US, these are just fads. If you remember, in the 1960's you had the late Maharishi Mahesh Yogi who had a horde of followers, just because he was the Guru to the Beatles. The 1970 and 1980, was the time when Rajneesh was the popular Godman. The 1990's saw the growth of the Hare Rama and Hare Krishna movement. Presently, it is Yoga fever that has caught on, at least here in Canada.

For the West, these things are like changing fashion. Once something new comes out, the old clothes are discarded and thrown out. Oparah Winfrey and others seize such opportunities, not to promote religion, but to promote themselves.

We Indians have taken religion to the other extreme. Unfortunately today, anything goes in the name of religion. While rituals are important, Indians need to be more spiritual.

Talking about my own religion, and mind you, we Parsees are supposed to be a so called enlightened community, you should have followed the recently concluded Parsi Punchayat elections where instead of addressing the issues facing the community, people fought and unfortunately won, in the name of religion.
9:03 pm
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