Religions
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Angry Buddhist Gods
Buddhism has had many schools of thought, many ideas which manifest in different kinds of texts and artworks. They reveal that Buddhism has all kinds of forms, not all pacifist.
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Attack of the Intoxicated Elephant
In India, mada refers to temporin, a tar-like liquid that oozes out of the temples of a bull elephant in a state of ‘musth’ or sexual arousal. Such an elephant is dangerous, unstoppable and violent. It fights and kills rivals,…
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Pleasure, a Brief Indian History
Atharva Veda says, “Desire gives. Desire receives”. Kama, we are told, is what stirs the first being to create the world.
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Why is Holi celebrated more in north India than south India?
Holi is indeed celebrated mostly in north India, not south India. No one knows the reason why.
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Dharmic Leader in Modern Times
Western leadership models are military in nature. Command and control. It’s about tracking tasks and achieving targets. Indian leadership models were about people – reminding them that the purpose of life is not to eat, but to feed. To feed…
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Avalokiteshvara, Saviour of the Sea Merchant
From Ajanta Cave 1 in Aurangabad district, Maharashtra, comes the famous mural of a rather delicate-looking Avalokiteshvara Padmapani, a bodhisattva who holds a lotus flower in his hand and tilts his head to the side, as if trying to hear…
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Property Disputes in the Vedas
Veda is 3,000 years old and is made up of poetry (mantra) and prose (brahmana). Within the prose we find stories (itihasa) about conflicts over resources between humans, between gods and sometimes between humans and gods.
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Glamorising Violence, Gamifying Debate
For the past thirty years, that is what we have been consuming from Hollywood.
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Indian Knowledge Systems
The first list of an educational syllabus in India comes from the Chandogya Upanishad, when the Sanatakumar sages ask Narada what subjects he is proficient in.
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Were Our Hindu Gods Meat-eaters?
Hinduism is a plural religion, an umbrella term for many jatis, sampradayas and paramparas, some of whom may be vegetarian some of the time, or not at all.
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Did Europeans Steal Science from the Vedas?
These are two very different ways of looking at the world and to compare the two is nothing but silliness, stupidity, born of insecurity.
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Ramayana For Atheists
Atheists do not believe in God. They see themselves as scientific and rational, and find God to be a superstition.
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Is Governance a Yagna?
The word yagna is translated even today by eminent scholars as sacrifice, or fire-sacrifice, or fire-ritual.
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How Hindu Temples Evolved
We assume that temples were always part of Hindu culture. But historians present a far more complex story.
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The Lion Goddess and the River God
Nourished by the river Nile, Egyptian culture began with many settlements on its banks and in the delta, each its own god and chieftain.
