Articles by Sri Acharyaji
Accepting Pakistan as a Failed Nation-State
On November 3, 2007 Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf declared a state emergency across Pakistan, imposed martial law, and suspended that nation's Constitution. In the capital of Islamabad, soldiers forcibly entered the Supreme Court, surrounded judges' homes, put opposition leaders under house arrest, and began rounding up thousands of peaceful political activists and politicians. On Monday, November 5th, thousands of lawyers took to the streets to protest the illegal imposition of martial law in their country. Musharraf's response was to have hundreds of these peaceful lawyers violently dragged through the streets and arrested. In the last two days alone, an estimated minimum of 3,500 people have been forcibly incarcerated as political prisoners.
Bhakti as a social force
The very heart of Sanatana Dharma consists of experiencing a direct and intimate realization of God in devotion (bhakti). Without such an experience, Sanatana Dharma is rendered devoid of all meaning and purpose. To love God is to embrace Dharma. And to embrace Dharma thoroughly and without reservation is what it means to be a Hindu.
Who is Your Best Friend?
Do you have friends? Of course you do! Who doesn’t have friends? To even pose such a question would seem silly to many of us. As human beings, most of us are social by nature, and we need to express our need for relationship in the form of our many friends and loved ones. Most of us even have one or two people who we would call our very best friends – people whom we trust completely, and who we know are always there for us in times of trouble.
the difference between devotion and emotion
The central message of the Bhagavad Gita, the most important scripture in all of Sanatana Dharma, is that bhakti, or devotion to the Absolute, constitutes the most effective and highly recommended path in all of the Yoga tradition. It is truly unfortunate, however, that despite the almost universally held importance of bhakti in the history of Yoga, there seems to have always been a good deal of misunderstanding on the part of many about what the terms "bhakti" and "Bhakti Yoga" actually mean. I've read even many supposedly knowledgeable authors write that bhakti is the Yoga of "emotion", or that it somehow precludes any involvement with jnana (knowledge, or intellectualism), philosophy, or serious Yogic sadhana (practice). Nothing could be further from the truth.
More Articles
- Embracing the Meaning of Our Human Existence
- Sama Darshana: The Nature of True Equality in Sanatana Dharma
- Radical Universalism
- The Eight Limbs of Yoga
- Mythology as Weapon
- Triguna: The Metaphysical Grounding of Physical Reality
- The Post Secular Age
- The Nature of Person: A Comparative Analysis of the Thomist and Vedantic Perspectives on the Ontology of Self
- Yoga's Contributions to the New Age Movement
- Vegetarianism
- Meditation
- Resolution on the Preservation of the Vedic People
- Word As Weapon: The Misuse of Terminology in the Study of Hinduism
- The Concept of Shakti: Hinduism as a Liberating Force for Women
- The Ontology of Self in Three Systems of Indian Philosophy: A Comparative and Veridical Analysis
- Shat-darshana: The Philosophical Schools of Sanatana Dharma
- The Hindu Concept of Vegetarianism: A Philosophical Defense
- Prasada
- The Spiritual Purpose of Yoga