Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Why the Histories of Great Souls of Bharat are not available ?



Why the Histories of Great Souls of Bharat are not available ?


I often face this question. This question has been hurled at me in many discussion groups, emails, personal discussions and even from my own curious self. This history dimension took a huge proportion in the Rama Sethu episode when a bunch of mercenary like politicians challenged the entire Hindu community to prove the historicity of Lord Ram.


One of my friends says that we Hindus lack the art of history writing. But this is wrong. We have the Eighteen Puranas and their countless upa puranas which deal with histories of many great sons of Bharat. Now, what is missing ?


The single most glaring miss in our Puranas are the specific time of birth, year and millennia of our Avatars like Rama and Krishna and also our Rishis. This has made our Puranas an object of ridicule in the eyes of so called ‘indologists’.


The title ‘indologist’ is available to anyone who belongs to the anti Indian, anti Hindu, pro Christian, pro communist, and pro atheist groups. Curiously, a patriotic Indian is just a ‘historian’ whereas all the above persons are ‘indologists’. In short, anyone who wants to dishonour India will easily qualify for that title.


Dr Narahari Achar, recently declared that the Mahabharata war indeed took place and it happened in the year 3067 BCE . Read this link


This he did with the help of a software which could generate the almanacs for ten thousand successive years! He went back in time to calculate the astronomical data as provided by Sage Vyasa in ‘Mahabharatam’.

We also hear Buddha’s history is also in such darkness. Even the fixing of Kaladi, as the birthplace of Adi Sankara, was done in 1910 only.


On reading all this, we cry out ,why ? Why indeed our ancestors hid their histories to us ? In finding the answers I was struck by the beauty of an explanation. Please read on.


Osho, in his “Krishna, the man and his philosophy” says keeping time and recording it is the job of unenlightened people. To keep records of illuminated masters who have transcended time is an insult. May be this is why Krishna’s historical indications were allowed to fade away from memory. But, his life and teachings are told and retold in Bharat with such freshness, devotion and joy. Does it not sound paradoxical ?


Enlightenment happens when time ceases to be. Time is a product of the mind. When mind ceases in Samadhi, time does not exist. Krishna cannot be predicted in Samadhi , where there is no time.


In Bharatiya philosophy , the Atman (or the soul) has no beginning or end whereas in Islamic and Christian teachings, the soul has only one birth. This is the reason why immaculate records have been kept on their teachers. Once they know and realize that the soul goes on taking reincarnations in so many life forms, they would have realized the futility of keeping such records.


Rinzai, an illumined Zen master, once remarked to the amazement of his pupils , “: Buddha never happened”. They knew he was a fervent Buddha devotee. Rinzai explained, “ May be his shadow walked up on earth, but Buddha ? never !” . He asked, “ Can someone without beginning can be bracketed into a single life ?”


We know the Krishna, the mischievous boy, the naughty teenager, the enthralling flautist, the wrestler , the sweetheart of the Gopikas, the King, the husband of eight wives, the strategist, and finally the preacher who sang the eternal Bhagavad Gita. We even know he lived and ruled Dwaraka . But what we do not know is ‘when’. In the entire Srimad Bhagavatham, this piece of information is not clear.

Here is Osho again:


Therefore it is not a failing on the part of this country if it does not have a sense of history. It is so not for lack of an awareness of history, but because of a still higher awareness that we have, an awareness of the eternal. A higher awareness, by its very nature, denies the lower.


We don’t attach so much value to an event as to the spirit running through the event, to the soul of the event. So we did not care to notice what Krishna ate and drank, but we did take every care to notice the witness inside Krishna who was simply aware when Krishna ate and drank.


We did not care to remember when Krishna was born, but we certainly remembered the spirit, the soul that came with his birth and departed with his death. We were much more concerned with the innermost spirit, with the soul, than with its material frame.”

14 comments:

Inquiring Mind said...

Good points venkat.. in my understanding, the sense of history is one of the key factors of racism..
When that history combines with religion, the result was terrible, as happened in the past..

Also in india, we have retained the message than the story.. the puranas exemplify this.. puranas only imply the moral rather than the story..

vedprakash said...

Quite an enlightening blog,providing very useful contents on Hindu Dharma and on Swani Vivekananda. With my best wishes for contining effort on this endeavour.

Ved Prakash
www.ethicalvaluesinvedas.blogspot.com

vedprakash said...

Quite an enlightening blog, providing very useful material on Hinduism and on Vivekannda. With my best wishes for your continuing efforts towards this illuminating endeavour,

Ved Prakash
www.ethicalvaluesinvedas.blogspot.com

Nagarajan said...

You are right. Consciousness is beyond time. It can not be measured. In fact it cannot be measured by any of the known measurable units.

Nagarajan

rnaga_rajan@yahoo.co.in

Thimmappa’s said...

Great Observation. Fixing the Great to a time negates their eternalness. Sometimes it is applicable to authorship too. What all written on Masters Philosophy the disciple wish to submitt at the master's feet and put master's name as author as a mark of respect and love to the guru which is unthinkable and "immoral" to the westerner! For instance, it is said that some of the writings attributed to Bhagawan Shankaracharya were in fact written by his disciples and in some cases after the masters demise under the name of Sri Shankaracharya!

G. Singh said...

Absolutely beautiful explanation. May god bless you with continued knowledge as to pass it onto others.

Unknown said...

It is the enlightened souls like Krishna, Buddha etc who have transcended time and space who doesn't need history. But not rest of the population. Even Jesus Christ doesn't talk about history or timeline.Neverthless, Christians (who created the religion after Christ) kept the history live through recorded timeline and that is one important criteria for Christianity to have spread across 2/3 the planet in such short time-span of 2000 years. Hindu way of life, all its incarnations, and its history dates back to more than 15000 years B.C. (using Gregarion calendar for common basis), yet due to lack of sense of history, all our scriptures are now mere epics and mythology. The development of human life through advancements of science and technology at exponential rate has depleted the Indians of their spiritual consicousness due to lack of historical proof which depletes faith and belief. Not all are born with faith & belief in God naturally. Even if so, the up-bringing in this fast materialistic world, it fades away. Everyone is now thinking logically and looking for rationale and reasoning behind happenings. Without solid recorded proof future generation will not carry forward the belief. Osho's (who is not a good reference anyway due to his failure as a spiritual master)justification is simply a demonstration of his inability to be dhoor dhristi. Our ancestors couldn't keep the future generations in mind. But I am glad that research based on astronomy (which are luckily recorded as star, planetory and constellation positions in our age-old scriptures) is now ready to reveal the historical basis. It is our moral duty to keep the record for the benefit of future generations. Trying to justifying the mistakes and inabilities of our ancestors simply portrays the repetition of mistakes.

Venkatasubramanian said...

Welcome Vedprakash ji, Nagaraj ji and Senthil. Thanks for your comments. Please keep coming. Your kind words are such an encouragement.
venkat

Venkatasubramanian said...

Thimmappa ji,
You are right. Timelessness was treated right by our forefathers as such.

Thanks for your good words.

Venkat

Venkatasubramanian said...

Welcome Anil ji, Supply chain guru ji

Thanks for visiting. Thanks for your comments. Anil ji, your encouragement will go a long way in more contributions as this.

SCG ji, I will keep your comments in my mind. Your view is another angle.

Venkat

Anonymous said...

Well, I think that your deep explanation is fruit of your natural wisdom for you being from India. I would explain saying that your ancestors hoped that people believed without "historical prove", just seeing the logical and beauty of their teaching. This belief would be the first condition to attain new degrees of spiritual knowledge.

Vineet Bhatia said...

Dear Sri Venkat ji,
Interesting writeup. Though I cannot claim to be even a % of as learned you are, I would just put in a few thoughts on the subject
1. We do have birth dates of all avtaars. The only possible discussion is on the time period. However even for that there are some indications in scriptures, probably that is how the time was recorded in those days
2. As many other people visiting your site state - it is the message that is more important rather than who delivered the message. I read somewhere - Ramayana is more valuable than Ram
3. There are people who will always ridicule but that is not because something is missing somwhere. It is because there own mind is so narrow that they are unable to understand these scriptures....God bless them

Vineet

Ganesh said...

Shri Venkatasubramanian,

I was put with an interesting question by a collegue as to what is the universe contained in, my natural answer was space? What is then space inside in? I asked Google, got all BigBabg, Energy, Changing, Ever expanding universe etc. very confusing.
What do our Vedas say? Please if you can enlighten us on this question?
My email id is nayakga@gmail.com

Namaskar,
ganesh

Venkatasubramanian said...

Mr Ganesh Nayak
Space contains matter. Matter occupies space. You may note that space (akasa ) is also one of the five elements of prakriti and hence subject to destruction/creation/ replacement. Akasa is the source of other elements as per our our philosophy. Whatever is contained in space is subject to change. That is why when the Christian tends to say his God is in Heaven, we are prompted to ask, where is it ? When he says, it is in the space , we smile. That God, if He is in space, will be subject to change and must be subject to birth and death.

Our position is that elements are part of prakriti, which is nothing but a mixture of three gunas. The prakriti is conjoined by the purusha, then we see all types of moving and stationary lives. This concept is variously taught as Siva sakthi in PuraNas, prakriti - purusha in Gita.