Question: What is the real purpose of karma? Is it to hold jivas accountable and responsible for their actions? Or is it reform the jiva and help it return to the spiritual world? Answer: The immediate purpose of karma is to make the jiva responsible for his/her actions. The ultimate purpose is to help the
India has a tradition that any great acarya, in particular a founder of a particular sampradaya, had to write commentaries on Vedanta Sutra, the principle Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita, and Vishnu Sahasra Nama. They had to show that their philosophy was based on these four pillars ...
The word yoga has two somewhat different meanings. One meaning is to unite, the other meaning is to be distinct from everything else, thus to disunite. Patanjali, the famous author of the “Yoga Sutras”, uses the second meaning when he speaks of “yogas citta-vritti-nirodha“. Here yoga means to terminate all of one’s thoughts, which means
The Upanishads are part of the Vedas, the oldest scriptures of the world. There are four Vedas, namely the Rig, Sama, Yajur and Atharva Veda. Each Veda is further divided into four parts which are called Samhita, Brahmana, Aranyaka and Upanishad. The first three parts of each Veda mainly deal with rituals. The Samhita part
One of the very important verses of Srimad Bhagavatam (4.3.23) speaks about the manifestation of the Lord: sattvam visuddham vasudeva-sabditam yad iyate tatra puman apavrtah sattve ca tasmin bhagavan vasudevo hy adhoksajo me namasa vidhiyate Translation: The state of unalloyed being, vishuddha-sattva, is called vasudeva because the Personal God is unveiled therein. Pure sattva or
Priti is translated as love, but people have many different concepts of it. Priti and prema are synonyms, but specifically what we mean by priti or prema is hardly understood by anybody. If we want to achieve spiritual love or priti, we must know what it means so we don’t try for something we do
Psychology in Greek means the science of the soul. Vedic psychology is also related to the soul. The soul makes matter function. Vedic psychology deals with the question how the soul perceives this world. God has two types of energies manifest in this world. Ksetra and ksetrajana – the field and the knower of the
