Philosophy
Technology
Science
Culture
Science and Technology
Dharma
Decolonisation
Moksha
Artha
Kama
Sharing some lines on the themes of Decolonisation - Artha-Kama-Dharma-Moksha and Science and Technology apropos this conversation.
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I shamelessly copy paste such content. I don't believe in originality in these matters.
Don't know if that makes me anti-innovation.
Here goes.
Long 🧵 alert
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Don't know if that makes me anti-innovation.
Here goes.
Long 🧵 alert
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In accordance with the authoritative maxim "Dharma is the support of this entire universe" ('धर्मो विश्वस्य जगतः प्रतिष्ठा'), the condition of the universe depends on Dharma.
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Even so, Manu has said that this sacred land of ours India, since time immemorial simply due to her dependence on Dharma has stood as a preceptor to the whole world.
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Imagining our country as a great palace, we may observe the following. It is a common knowledge that bricks, sand, cement and whitewash are necessary for constructing a proper house.
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Just as the construction crew make two kinds of cement mixture, a special one for joining the bricks and an ordinary one for stuccoing the walls, so also our ancients, who led simple lives, took Käma and Artha as bricks and put Dharma as the cement, both special and ordinary.
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They joined the bricks with special cement and made the walls very high, put a hard stone roof over them, applied ordinary cement to the walls to make them hard and decorated the walls with whitewash in the form of Moksa (the ultimate liberation).
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In this way they erected a beautiful house and it may easily be seen that we live happily in it. This description, I believe, I have made without exaggeration.
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Because India's primary goals are Kama and Artha as controlled by Dharma, this feature is quite distinct from other nations whose primary goals are Käma and Artha.
(Very important line)
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(Very important line)
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In this palace Dharma alone is the cementing force that joins together the bricks, walls and thus supports the roof.
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The source of this Dharma, which figures as cement in the above metaphor, is the Veda. This is manifest in the smrti quotation, "The entire Veda is the source of Dharma" (वेदोऽखिलो धर्ममूलं)
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If we look at India deprived of this source of Dharma i.e., the Vedas and provedic smrtis, puranas, itihasa and darśana, what will be the difference between India and the other countries?
(Very important lines again)
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(Very important lines again)
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Every man born in India must bear this in mind. The Vedas are the life breath of Mother India, without which she will merely be like a corpse.
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Granted there may be scientists capable of providing India with atomic weapons capable of destroying the entire world instantly, and manufacturing super sonic rockets,
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but all this will not make a special feature for India since other nations may have greater scientists to beat all our inventions and material discoveries.
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There is a threefold division in human knowledge, namely worldly knowledge, science and transcendent wisdom.
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Our ancients, considering that knowledge and science are ever evolving and changing but this alone is changeless, they strove hard towards this unsurpassable transcendent wisdom.
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Even after a man obtains the things obtained by everchanging material knowledge and science, they will be of little use to him. They will not contribute to his peace of mind.
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The result would be that men would become constantly greedy for obtaining more and more through material knowledge and science.
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In accordance with the saying "Realizing oneself through yoga is the highest Dharma (duty)" ('अयं तु परमो धर्मो यद्योगेनात्मदर्शनम्') the ancient sages determined that the self-realization is within the orbit of Dharma
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and thus decided that Dharma is of still greater importance even than mokṣa (salvation) and thus have regularly strived to preserve the Veda as its original source.
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These lines are from the Preface/Foreword to Swami Karpatriji's Vedartha Parijata by Shri Pattabhirama Sastry, a famous vedic scholar. Foreword is in Sanskrit and Hindi and English.
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I don't know if this falls under Decoloniality discourse or it is out of syllabus . But this is one worldview of our ancients and I see meaning in it. So if I don't indulge in shaming my culture just because we didn't invent Steam Engine and resist it, I do it from this lens.
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Beyond a point without the Dharmic anchor this S&T simping (and guilt tripping) is futile.
One can think of this as some flavour of Hindu Dharmic exceptionalism I'd think.
/End
One can think of this as some flavour of Hindu Dharmic exceptionalism I'd think.
/End
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