Tattva-viveka
getting clear on the nature of the jiva
Jason - October 29, 2010 3:36 pm
It is becoming apparent to me, via my studies in philosophy at school, that I'm not as clear as I should be about some of the basics in GV philosophy.
There are a LOT of parallels between Ancient Greek and Indian philosophy, and in a recent lecture on Plato, I started thinking about another one. Plato gives the infamous account in the Republic about the structure of the soul and how it is a microcosm of the structure of the "ideal" city. His tripartite soul is composed of three parts (think of a pyramid): the appetitive portion on the bottom, the passionate in the middle, and the rational at the top. Plato says that there needs to be harmony between these three portions FIRST, before one can cross the Divided Line from the Realm of Becoming (the temporal world of physical things), to the Realm of Being (the world of intelligibles that are perceived by the mind) where we begin to access the Forms. Plato's "Goloka Vrindavan" would be his notion of the Form of the Good.
I started to think, "Oh, this tripartite soul is similar to the idea of sattva, rajas, and tamas." Then I thought, "Wait. Those are the modes of material nature that influence things here in the 'Realm of Becoming', but since the soul is part and parcel of Godhead; similar in quality but not quantity, then the soul isn't the type of thing to be divided up like Plato did." If the Bhagavad-Gita states that the soul can't altered, divided, cut...then the Platonic and Vaishnava ideas of the soul are quite different.
Could I please get a refresher on this from someone?
Thanks,
Jason
Jason - October 29, 2010 3:46 pm
I also started thinking about in Plato's model, one that believes in reincarnation, the "jiva" has to work so hard through philosophical dialectic to harness his reason so that reason can control the other portions of the soul. This all has to happen to reach that balance BEFORE one can have access to The Form of the Good (the highest destination of the soul for Plato).
In the GV model, Bhakti is much more generous. It is the path and the goal. One need not worry about all the efforts of "balancing" because by engaging in bhakti, all those bases get covered. As Swami is fond of saying, "Bhakti has its own knowing", it has a reason/rationality that goes above and beyond the reasoning that Plato feels one needs to achieve prior to the soul's return to its constitutional position. Bhakti is like this amazing, all-encompassing short-cut that sort of instantiates a balance from day one!
Amazing.
Swami - October 29, 2010 5:00 pm
I also started thinking about in Plato's model, one that believes in reincarnation, the "jiva" has to work so hard through philosophical dialectic to harness his reason so that reason can control the other portions of the soul. This all has to happen to reach that balance BEFORE one can have access to The Form of the Good (the highest destination of the soul for Plato).
In the GV model, Bhakti is much more generous. It is the path and the goal. One need not worry about all the efforts of "balancing" because by engaging in bhakti, all those bases get covered. As Swami is fond of saying, "Bhakti has its own knowing", it has a reason/rationality that goes above and beyond the reasoning that Plato feels one needs to achieve prior to the soul's return to its constitutional position. Bhakti is like this amazing, all-encompassing short-cut that sort of instantiates a balance from day one!
Amazing.
It's either karma, jnana, or bhakti. These are the paths. Action, knowledge, love. Action implies absence of knowledge and knowledge implies absence of action, while the presence of either or both at once does not necessitate love. However, in love there is action and knowledge. Love automatically includes the other two.
Jason - October 29, 2010 5:14 pm
It's either karma, jnana, or bhakti. These are the paths. Action, knowledge, love. Action implies absence of knowledge and knowledge implies absence of action, while the presence of either or both at once does not necessitate love. However, in love there is action and knowledge. Love automatically includes the other two.
So the GV tradition says that bhakti IS the balance that Plato advocates (albeit in a different way). Engaging in bhakti would be the surest way to establish harmonia in the soul.
Jason - October 29, 2010 5:21 pm
I still wonder about his idea that the soul needs balancing in the first place. If it originally resided in the Realm of Being with the Form of the Good, then it would not have been lacking in any way. In that condition the soul would have been in its perfected state. A soul that is divided into three portions does not seem to be a soul that is perfect. When the soul (a perfected unit of consciousness) enters the material world, GV says it then comes under the sway of the modes of material nature, and those influences may give the perception that the soul is somehow imperfect. In the Greek model, it seems that when the soul enters the Realm of Becoming, it becomes fractured somehow and philosophy is the preferred method of fixing that problem.
Plato - The soul needs to be fixed.
GV - The soul needs to be reoriented--not repaired.
Is this correct?
Swami - October 29, 2010 6:53 pm
I still wonder about his idea that the soul needs balancing in the first place. If it originally resided in the Realm of Being with the Form of the Good, then it would not have been lacking in any way. In that condition the soul would have been in its perfected state. A soul that is divided into three portions does not seem to be a soul that is perfect. When the soul (a perfected unit of consciousness) enters the material world, GV says it then comes under the sway of the modes of material nature, and those influences may give the perception that the soul is somehow imperfect. In the Greek model, it seems that when the soul enters the Realm of Becoming, it becomes fractured somehow and philosophy is the preferred method of fixing that problem.
Plato - The soul needs to be fixed.
GV - The soul needs to be reoriented--not repaired.
Is this correct?
Yes.
Gaura-Vijaya Das - October 29, 2010 6:54 pm
I still wonder about his idea that the soul needs balancing in the first place. If it originally resided in the Realm of Being with the Form of the Good, then it would not have been lacking in any way. In that condition the soul would have been in its perfected state. A soul that is divided into three portions does not seem to be a soul that is perfect. When the soul (a perfected unit of consciousness) enters the material world, GV says it then comes under the sway of the modes of material nature, and those influences may give the perception that the soul is somehow imperfect. In the Greek model, it seems that when the soul enters the Realm of Becoming, it becomes fractured somehow and philosophy is the preferred method of fixing that problem.
Plato - The soul needs to be fixed.
GV - The soul needs to be reoriented--not repaired.
Is this correct?
Plato's idea where the unrestrained senses are like horses etc is very similar to Krsna's instructions to Uddava. The point is to first use intelligence to restrain the senses and then transcend the intelligence to access the ideal world of forms directly. That is his idea. Certainly, some similarities with vedic thought. Allegory of the cave and the inverted banyan tree in the B.G is another similarity.
Gaura-Vijaya Das - October 29, 2010 7:01 pm
I still wonder about his idea that the soul needs balancing in the first place. If it originally resided in the Realm of Being with the Form of the Good, then it would not have been lacking in any way. In that condition the soul would have been in its perfected state. A soul that is divided into three portions does not seem to be a soul that is perfect. When the soul (a perfected unit of consciousness) enters the material world, GV says it then comes under the sway of the modes of material nature, and those influences may give the perception that the soul is somehow imperfect. In the Greek model, it seems that when the soul enters the Realm of Becoming, it becomes fractured somehow and philosophy is the preferred method of fixing that problem.
Plato - The soul needs to be fixed.
GV - The soul needs to be reoriented--not repaired.
Is this correct?
Another thing it is very difficult to know what exactly Plato meant by the soul. Greek to English translation loses it. These are just plays of words, soul needs to be fixed or corrected. We need to be corrected by "reorientation" in bhakti, but correction of the material predicatement with which the soul identifies itself is there even in eastern thought. His method of fixing the problem is different (more jnana yoga) from bhakti, but I don't see it as distinctly at odds with Eastern thought.
Jason - October 29, 2010 8:06 pm
Swami, Gaura Vijaya...much appreciated. The paper I'm working on recognizes the east/west similarities, but goes on to show how objections made against the Platonic "soul" and its tripartation, can be resolved by looking at the Vaishnava model.
Gopala Dasa - October 29, 2010 8:32 pm
Swami, Gaura Vijaya...much appreciated. The paper I'm working on recognizes the east/west similarities, but goes on to show how objections made against the Platonic "soul" and its tripartation, can be resolved by looking at the Vaishnava model.
Translation issues aside, the quality and depth of the ideas of the soul and selfhood in the Greek tradition never matched those of the Indic. It can be popular nowadays (and it isn’t wrong) to draw attention to the similarities, but the extent to which Plato has been enshrined in the western canon is truly a testament to the tunnel vision and conservatism of academics and aesthetics. As GM mentioned, when it comes down to it any system of thought or theology can be understood in terms of karma, jnana, and bhakti. One of these things is not like the others.
Gaura-Vijaya Das - October 29, 2010 9:31 pm
Translation issues aside, the quality and depth of the ideas of the soul and selfhood in the Greek tradition never matched those of the Indic. It can be popular nowadays (and it isn’t wrong) to draw attention to the similarities, but the extent to which Plato has been enshrined in the western canon is truly a testament to the tunnel vision and conservatism of academics and aesthetics. As GM mentioned, when it comes down to it any system of thought or theology can be understood in terms of karma, jnana, and bhakti. One of these things is not like the others.
I don't think Plato is enshrined anymore. Aristotle took over long before since the time of Aquinas and only Aristotle's empirical spirit remains, and a lot of Aristotle's other ideas (teleology etc) have been abandoned. Plato has been criticized severely, especially by empiricists and then by Bertrand Russell (he detested Plato's idealism), Heidegger and Wittgenstein. Science has long abandoned platonist views in their philosophy of materialism. I just think Plato is closer to the East than any other philosopher I have seen. This fact is also acknowledged by Schopenhauer.
I agree that quality and depth of the ideas of the soul in Greek tradition don't match the indic, but west finally reached a tighter logical system (compared to Nyaya or anything available in the east) and it is not matched by the East. Perhaps because west abandoned revelation and tried very hard to use logic and empirical science together to get comprehensive knowledge, the limitations of logic (final culmination in Godel's incompleteness theorem) were exposed more clearly by the West. Vedanta sutra though does talk about the limitation of logic qualitatively tarkopratisthanat. This after applying logic to the best of human ability to prove Vedanta to be a better system than other schools of prevailing thought. No record of strongly systematic and segregated schools of philosophy exists until the advent of sankara. After that the schools became more and more segregated and institutionalized with strongly regimented and different ritualistic details etc. There was very soft institutionalization prior to Sankara (at least records indicate so). For instance, Sankara mentions that jnana without yoga (meditation) does not lead to liberation, yoga without jnana does not lead to liberation. Here again when people argue against Patanjali's yoga school, it is not an argument against yoga. Krsna uses yoga in conjunction with bhakti (bhakti-yoga) to indicated the yoga of devotion. Tight compartmentalization (yoga, jnana and karma) is very helpful for a sadhaka to get a handle on things, but ancient texts certainly have much more fluidity in the use of terms like yoga and brahman than the way moderns understand it. Brahman can also mean bhagavan sometimes and yoga can also mean bhakti sometimes.
Gaura-Vijaya Das - October 29, 2010 9:54 pm
Swami, Gaura Vijaya...much appreciated. The paper I'm working on recognizes the east/west similarities, but goes on to show how objections made against the Platonic "soul" and its tripartation, can be resolved by looking at the Vaishnava model.
I guess resolving everything is something is challenging!! It will be resolved if somebody trusts the axioms of the Vedic texts on this matter. Even Madhava (strong logician) acknowledges that if you are skeptic, it is easy to find fault with his system and spiritual experience is the only thing which will confirm his system. Still it is a good idea to make an attempt in this direction as many people can be influenced by these ideas and become sympathetic to vaisnavism.
Jason - October 30, 2010 4:20 am
Translation issues aside, the quality and depth of the ideas of the soul and selfhood in the Greek tradition never matched those of the Indic. It can be popular nowadays (and it isn’t wrong) to draw attention to the similarities, but the extent to which Plato has been enshrined in the western canon is truly a testament to the tunnel vision and conservatism of academics and aesthetics. As GM mentioned, when it comes down to it any system of thought or theology can be understood in terms of karma, jnana, and bhakti. One of these things is not like the others.
I don't think Plato is revered as much as he once was. People love to hate him, and while I certainly don't think his metaphysics is as rich as other traditions, I still appreciate him. I agree that nothing in western philosophy comes close to the depth and nuance we find in the Vaishnava tradition, but I would argue that's because western academia has a weighted fascination with and advaita-vedanta. India is still largely viewed as synonymous with just that one tradition.
Jason - October 30, 2010 4:22 am
Still it is a good idea to make an attempt in this direction as many people can be influenced by these ideas and become sympathetic to vaisnavism.
Agreed.
Gaura-Vijaya Das - October 30, 2010 5:05 am
I don't think Plato is revered as much as he once was. People love to hate him, and while I certainly don't think his metaphysics is as rich as other traditions, I still appreciate him. I agree that nothing in western philosophy comes close to the depth and nuance we find in the Vaishnava tradition, but I would argue that's because western academia has a weighted fascination with and advaita-vedanta. India is still largely viewed as synonymous with just that one tradition.
Agree with that. Plato is not revered much at all. I like him compared to many other people in the western people. At least there is some feeling in his writings, not just dry logic. His metaphysics is not as rich as other traditions? Which other traditions apart from the Vedic are deeper than Plato in metaphysics? Christain tradition has heavily borrowed from Plato and Aristotle and other traditions like Chinese, Mayan or Nativer american are more experiential (shamaniac) and do not have a sophisticated metaphysics either. And what do you expect one person in Greece to do. Plato is just the beginning of formal western philosophy. It was a good start I thought.
I think western philosophy has played with reason and logic at least as much if not more than East. East is strong on details of spiritual experience and aesthetics.
Gopala Dasa - October 30, 2010 2:30 pm
Agree with that. Plato is not revered much at all. I like him compared to many other people in the western people. At least there is some feeling in his writings, not just dry logic. His metaphysics is not as rich as other traditions? Which other traditions apart from the Vedic are deeper than Plato in metaphysics? Christain tradition has heavily borrowed from Plato and Aristotle and other traditions like Chinese, Mayan or Nativer american are more experiential (shamaniac) and do not have a sophisticated metaphysics either. And what do you expect one person in Greece to do. Plato is just the beginning of formal western philosophy. It was a good start I thought.I think western philosophy has played with reason and logic at least as much if not more than East. East is strong on details of spiritual experience and aesthetics.
Reverence or not, however, even my wife has to teach a bit of Platonism (allegory of the cave) to high school students. On some level the image of a Greek guy in robes (as depicted in the School of Athens painting) is continually reinforced as the zenith of philosophy, despite all that has transpired intellectually and historically since then. Of course, things are different in academia proper.
Jason - October 30, 2010 2:44 pm
Reverence or not, however, even my wife has to teach a bit of Platonism (allegory of the cave) to high school students. On some level the image of a Greek guy in robes (as depicted in the School of Athens painting) is continually reinforced as the zenith of philosophy, despite all that has transpired intellectually and historically since then. Of course, things are different in academia proper.
Plato to high school students, in my opinion, is awesome! I wish I had access to more of it. It set the ball rolling for me to ask more questions. Had I never heard about the allegory of the cave (and punk rock), I'm not sure I would have ever inquired into philosophy. I think it's a trickle down thing. Academia certainly respects Plato but has largely moved on, but that may not be the same in public high schools. Your wife has a great opportunity to find some time in her lesson plans to explore a few alternatives with her students. That's so awesome! I hope to be able to do that one day.
Actually, I'm laughing now as I think about the philosophy lounge where I spend a lot of time at school. All around the room are these small-ish, black & white prints of many of the faces of philosophy: Russell, Frege, Descartes, Spinoza, Hume, Hegel.....BUT, there is that one HUGE, full color, detailed picture of Plato and Aristotle. Hahaha!
Jason - October 30, 2010 3:04 pm
I like him compared to many other people in the western people. At least there is some feeling in his writings, not just dry logic...And what do you expect one person in Greece to do. Plato is just the beginning of formal western philosophy. It was a good start I thought.
I appreciate this. I agree. It's easy to look back and be critical, but the principle of charity will get one much further in philosophy. I think given time, place, and circumstance, many of the Greeks had a lot to say. I appreciated Socrates idea that philosophy should be more than just some intellectual dialectic. He, and perhaps to a lesser extent, Plato really advocated the notion of philosophy as askesis, or a spiritual exercise. In Pierre Hadot's book Philosophy as a Way of Life, he really draws this out and encourages a new approach to reading the Greeks.
I've had some great professors for classes like Philosophy of Religion, Ethics, and Islamic Philosophy who all begin there classes by working through readings by the Greeks, Hadot, Foucault and others to clearly set the tone that philosophy is about the "care of self" and a discipline of cultivation. I like this approach and have grown to appreciate the Greek tradition. I guess that is because it has been presented to me in a different way. None of my professors say anything like, "This is the pinnacle of philosophical thought".
On a side note, in a recent class, one professor went on a tangent (regarding CERN and the Higgs particle) and was talking about how some modern physicists are beginning to (re)look at some Presocratic writings as well as Hindu and Buddhist cosmological accounts for new insights into their fields. I guess you really do have to go back to go forward.
Swami - October 30, 2010 3:20 pm
And there is the "All of Western philosophy is but a footnote to Plato." Whitehead I believe.
Jason - October 30, 2010 4:07 pm
That's funny!
Gaura-Vijaya Das - October 30, 2010 5:29 pm
And there is the "All of Western philosophy is but a footnote to Plato." Whitehead I believe.
Yes , this quote is by Whitehead who wrote a book on Mathematic formalism with Russell said that. Russell was a logical positivist, a complete opposite of anything Plato stood for. In his philosophy book, he bitterly criticizes Plato and praises Aristotle and Hume. Again many coomon people strongly criticize this quote http://science.jrank.org/pages/21744/footnotes-Plato.html
I think with whatever he had access to, Plato was able to do very well to come up with his ideas ( He does believe in revelation or inspiration at least partially) and he was able to live with those ideas unlike many of his other counterparts in the west who were just armchair philosophers. Also moving is his reverence for Socrates, like a disciple has for his guru. I like the picture of him looking up the sky and Aristotle looking at the world.
Gaura-Vijaya Das - October 30, 2010 5:33 pm
Reverence or not, however, even my wife has to teach a bit of Platonism (allegory of the cave) to high school students. On some level the image of a Greek guy in robes (as depicted in the School of Athens painting) is continually reinforced as the zenith of philosophy, despite all that has transpired intellectually and historically since then. Of course, things are different in academia proper.
I am sorry Gopala. I guess you don't like Plato much and I like him. 
I saw no problem in teaching allegory of the cave. I always think of the inverted banyan tree along with it. Anyway everybody has their taste and biases and we have different tastes. That is good as we as a community can see things from different angles of vision.
Gopala Dasa - October 30, 2010 6:15 pm
I am sorry Gopala. I guess you don't like Plato much and I like him.
No no, don't apologize. I am afraid that my tone has been misunderstood. I guess my point is that despite all that has ensued in philosophy since ancient times, Plato remains something of a touchstone in academia (even if in a negative way), and a figure of note in culture more generally. Of course, one has to start somewhere, and chronology is always important when tracing out the genealogy of ideas.
It is interesting that Indian philosophy is typically presented in the context of religious studies/theology courses whereas "real philosophy" has remained a separate discipline (despite sometimes remarkable similarities, such as the banyan tree analogy). This was at least true when and where I went to school. I think it is definitely possible that the two will re-converge in the future. The further one pushes physics too, the closer it will resemble philosophy. So I feel that there is an opening for a paradigmatic shift, to which the philosopher mystics of the east could contribute (both in terms of catalyzing the shift and providing grounds for a tenable worldview). I have been influenced a great deal by Huston Smith in this regard.
Gaura-Vijaya Das - October 30, 2010 6:36 pm
No no, don't apologize. I am afraid that my tone has been misunderstood. I guess my point is that despite all that has ensued in philosophy since ancient times, Plato remains something of a touchstone in academia (even if in a negative way), and a figure of note in culture more generally. Of course, one has to start somewhere, and chronology is always important when tracing out the genealogy of ideas.
It is interesting that Indian philosophy is typically presented in the context of religious studies/theology courses whereas "real philosophy" has remained a separate discipline (despite sometimes remarkable similarities, such as the banyan tree analogy). This was at least true when and where I went to school. I think it is definitely possible that the two will re-converge in the future. The further one pushes physics too, the closer it will resemble philosophy. So I feel that there is an opening for a paradigmatic shift, to which the philosopher mystics of the east could contribute (both in terms of catalyzing the shift and providing grounds for a tenable worldview). I have been influenced a great deal by Huston Smith in this regard.
I love Huston smith also. I was disappointed with Hawkin's latest book. He says that gravity can explain why something came from nothing and there is no need for God. It is just ridiculous. Some of the physicists don't really know what they are concluding when they go outside their domain.
Jason - October 30, 2010 8:37 pm
It is interesting that Indian philosophy is typically presented in the context of religious studies/theology courses whereas "real philosophy" has remained a separate discipline (despite sometimes remarkable similarities, such as the banyan tree analogy). This was at least true when and where I went to school. I think it is definitely possible that the two will re-converge in the future....So I feel that there is an opening for a paradigmatic shift, to which the philosopher mystics of the east could contribute (both in terms of catalyzing the shift and providing grounds for a tenable worldview). I have been influenced a great deal by Huston Smith in this regard.
Gopala--You are definitely right in this regard. SFSU's department has a good mix of analytic and continental scholars and course offerings. What's interesting to me is that among students, there are those interested in Philosophies of Science, Language, Mind, Logic, and then a distinctly different breed who are more drawn to Philosophy of Religion, Virtue Ethics, Buddhist/Chinese, Islamic, etc. Among the students, there's not much mixing, but the many of the instructors, as I said before, bring the two sides together. One professor in particular, I've taken his Islamic Philosophy course and been blown away by his very, very spiritual approach even though that tradition was heavily influenced by Aristotelian metaphysics. That same professor teaches seminars on Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and next semster "Analytic Hegelians" and manages to really bring out the spiritual aspects of all of them! He's often said to me, "If you want to really do Philosophy of Religion and do it well, you'll have to do battle with people like these who seem quite removed from what interests you. Nevertheless, they had much to say on the matter."
It's all about the particular "spin" your instructors can give it. In one of my classes, we've finished a segment where we were reading Frege, Russell, Kripke, Putnam...all BIG players in Philosophy of Language---and I was DYING! I wanted to kill myself! WHO CARES! Then we read "On What There Is" by Quine and I was in awe! Quine wasn't necessarily interested in religious topics, but he rejected the Logical Positivists who categorically said, "For statements to be cognitively meaningful, they must be analytically true or empirically verifiable." WHAT! I mean, that pretty much says that anyone talking about metaphysics and religion are talking nonsense. Quine argued for a way to reject that notion. Quine totally pulled the rug from under their feet!
It's stuff like that I really like.
Yamuna Dasi - October 31, 2010 8:32 am
Still it is a good idea to make an attempt in this direction as many people can be influenced by these ideas and become sympathetic to vaisnavism.
I also embrace this idea. I think that if we start a line of articles in Harmonist which take as a start some famous idea and show that this idea was actually developed and very profoundly explained in vaisnavism, we can draw people's attention and sympathy to vaisnavism. It is still considered that philosophy is born in ancient Greece and this is what is written in textbooks for philosophy, this is what pupils in schools and students in Universities learn. Maybe an article can be written to prove that it is not so and that everything which is considered as the "dawn of philosophy" was there in vaisnavism much before and much more elaborately presented. I think that the main problem maybe in proving this is the hard-to-prove timing of our Scriptures. Otherwise it would be great if somebody as prepared as Maharaj would start a lecturing tour in the Universities of the US for example proving that the philosophy was not born in ancient Greece but much before. This can draw large attention to vaisnavism and maybe even the philosophy textbooks can be changed. It is about time the philosophy of India to be included properly in the textbooks of philosophy for schools and Universities. I don't know anybody more prepared to start such a great project than Maharaj.
Maybe this line of articles can be like this - taking a famous philosopher who became famous with some great idea and showing how this idea is largely present in vaisnava philosophy much before.
This line of articles can be not only about philosophers, but also about other directions as quantum physics or Einstein's theory of relativity. All these "great modern inventions" were there, present in vaisnava philosophy, just the broad audience does not know it and it would be great to reveal it. This can draw people's attention and sympathy to vaisnavism.
Another article can be about the paradox of hedonism, also called the pleasure paradox. It is the idea in the study of ethics which points out that pleasure and happiness are strange phenomena that do not obey normal principles. The paradox of hedonism points out that pleasure (and happiness) cannot be acquired directly, it can only be acquired indirectly. We fail to attain pleasures if we deliberately seek them.
John Stuart Mill, the utilitarian philosopher, writes in his autobiography:
"Those only are happy... who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness along the way."
Viktor Frankl in his "Man's Search for Meaning" writes:
"Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself."
What was "discovered" only as a theory by the paradox of hedonism is not only explained in vaisnavism but is given also a practical path for achievement of happiness - selfless devotional service to guru and God. It is time this to be known by the modern psychology. Not only the theory (the paradox of hedonism) but also the practice is given by vaisnavism which perfectly resolves the paradox of hedonism and gives the solution for the long searched key to human happiness.
Jason - October 31, 2010 2:37 pm
Another article can be about the paradox of hedonism, also called the pleasure paradox. It is the idea in the study of ethics which points out that pleasure and happiness are strange phenomena that do not obey normal principles. The paradox of hedonism points out that pleasure (and happiness) cannot be acquired directly, it can only be acquired indirectly. We fail to attain pleasures if we deliberately seek them....What was "discovered" only as a theory by the paradox of hedonism is not only explained in vaisnavism but is given also a practical path for achievement of happiness - selfless devotional service to guru and God. It is time this to be known by the modern psychology. Not only the theory (the paradox of hedonism) but also the practice is given by vaisnavism which perfectly resolves the paradox of hedonism and gives the solution for the long searched key to human happiness.
Graham Schweig (I believe his initiated name is Garuda das?) wrote an interesting essay for a Journal on Gaudiya Religious Ethics and talks about this. This idea of hedonism that Yamuna speaks about touches on Religious Ethics, and, for most every other religious tradition Religious Ethics has been explored. I agree wholeheartedly that this is an area where the Gaudiya tradition blows EVERYTHING out of the water. Yet little has been written on it. Now that I think about it, Aesthetic Vedanta does address the concerns that would inevitably be hurled at Gaudiya Vaishnavism by someone who misunderstood the relationship between Radha and Krishna as simple hedonism.
I will locate and upload the essay for those who are interested.