Welcome Back
Advaita talks of one virtue – titik?? – the ability to be a witness to pleasure and pain, to be a witness to adversities. The contributors and the readers have displayed this virtue for about five months while the website went into some sort of suspended animation due to some unexpected problems.
I have been a blogger hitherto, and I will continue to write blogs and articles. I will also be attending to the editorial work. I should confess that I am taking it up with all humility.
The readers are, as we see, are from different continents, reflecting the Indian diaspora. They are the seekers, trying to know their cultural and intellectual heritage. The fact that there are as many readers in America as in India shows that a good percentage of the tiny group of Indians is keen about their tradition. There are, of course, lovers of Indian thought who are keen students of an alien tradition.
This website has, by and large, been traditional in the sense that it has stuck to the basic texts of Advaita Vedanta, and to exposition of the texts by scholars or those trained in that fashion. Our approach will continue to be the same. The content will be traditional advaita in form, to avoid the likelihood of getting bogged down or distracted by modern theories. The idea is to preserve and strengthen our understanding before we embark on comparisions.
I have an agenda for Sanskrit, the language in which all the advaita texts have been composed, as every vedantic term is loaded with special connotation.
Sanskrit might be a bit of a handicap for some readers, we have to admit. However, some scholars have used technology and made the problem rather simple. Today a student can learn Sanskrit more easily than a student a few years ago, because of several online tutorials which have arrived. I would advise the readers to look at the website www.samskritabharati.in and follow the links. They have been doing a fantastic job in spreading knowledge of Sanskrit all over the world.
Surely, the knowledge of Atman is not denied to one who does not know Sanskrit, but some knowledge of the language will help you in two ways. Firstly, we know the concepts better. This is required for the spiritual exercises of ?rava?am (knowing the text), mananam (logically mulling over the text), and nididhy?sanam (internalizing and living the text) which are necessary steps in self-realization.
Secondly, some acquaintance with Sanskrit enables us to know whether we are following a real master or an unreliable one.
I often tell my friends to test a teacher before listening to him. It is simple. We can presume that anyone trying to teach Vedanta ought to have read Gita thoroughly, and so we can give him a text of Gita with any Sanskrit commentary. If the teacher can tolerably explain some passages, then listen to him; be it an advaita exposition or dwaita or of any other school. If the master is totally relying on the secondary sources like the discourses of a Swami, then it is for us to follow the old rule – ‘buyer beware’. We should know who the Swami, and then lend our ears to the master. I am personally circumspect in this, as I know that the study of texts is fast declining even in the traditional centres of learning.
Decline of Sanskrit learning is alarming. If the trend continues for a few more years, we may be left with the digitized texts and with very few teachers to interpret them. May be, we have to do something to strengthen ??stra scholarship, so that the teaching tradition which has been kept alive till today will continue to be so to guide our children.
I may add one more word about Sanskrit. It was the link language in India for three to four millennia. One may recall that Shankara, who was born in Kerala went round the country up to Srinagar to spread his message and set up his p??ham-s, or centers of learning. Buddhist writers who initially wrote in Pali, later switched over to Sanskrit when they wanted to address a larger audience across the sub-continent. All scholars in the country wrote in Sanskrit whenever they addressed the whole of bharata varsha, and wrote in their native language when they wanted to address their local readers.
Key for Sanskrit transliteration.
This website has been using ITRANS which is freely downloadable (for transliteration of Sanskrit words or verses). It employs a phonetic key board and does not expect any prior skill in Sanskrit typing. The complaint, however, is that it is jarring to the eye, as we have to shift between the lower case and the upper case of the key board. A word like Dhritarashtra (father of the Kauravas in Mahabharat), has to be typed as dhRRitarAShTra to be phonetically correct. The other way is dh?tar???ra which is what is found in all the books.
Besides, we do not find any text of any Swamiji in ITRANS. All standard publishers like Ramakrishna Mission, Chinmaya, Arsha vidya gurukulam, use the unicode which has now become universally popular. Most of the visitors to our website are obviously readers of available books on Vedanta, where ITRANS is never found.
The viewers of this website are welcome to contribute in either ITRANS or in the widely used IAST (International Alphabet for Sanskrit Transliteration). Conversion from ITRANS to IAST is very easy on the website http://learnsanskrit.org/tools/sanscript , which has been suggested by our web designers. One may type in ITRANS and ask for conversion into Sanskrit or into IAST.
