Examining Hindu Ethics: The Three Yogas in Bhāgavata Purāṇa Commentaries

The object of this article is pre-colonial Hindu ways of distinguishing “the path of devotion” (bhakti-yoga) from “the path of knowledge” (jñāna-yoga) and “the path of work” (karma-yoga). It highlights how a developing religious group in early modern India explained and justified its path—its ethics, its ritual, its theology—while in conversation with the larger Brahminical tradition out of which it was emerging. I argue that early authors in the Chaitanya Vaishnava tradition such as Sanātana (c.1475–1554), Rūpa (c.1480–1554), Jīva (c.1510–1606), and Viśvanātha (fl. c.1650–1712) used the authority of the Bhāgavata-Purāṇa to elevate devotion to an ethical imperative by including and excluding the behaviors and the motives of the older and well-established paths like knowledge, works, and Patañjali’s yoga. Their ethics is connected to an ontology of god’s being in which the path of devotion is uniquely effective in revealing god’s being and uniquely salvific the among paths. I argue this discourse on the three paths is a type of Hindu ethics, but it is unclear how it might be reconstructed in rational terms to deal with contemporary issues and that its primary innovation for the time was the uncoupling of ethics from the caste system.     

‘Aloneness’ and the problem of realism in classical Sākhya and yoga

The concept of kaivalya (literally, ‘aloneness’) is of crucial importance to the systems of classical Indian philosophy known as Sākhya and Yoga. Indeed, kaivalya is the supreme soteriological goal to which these systems are directed. Various statements concerning this final goal appear in the classical texts—namely, the Sākhyakārikā and Yogasūtra—and yet there is no consensus within modern scholarship about how the concept is to be interpreted. More specifically, there appears to be a great deal of confusion over the implications of kaivalya for the existence of the empirical world. In this article I discuss the principal difficulties encountered by existing interpretations of kaivalya, and propose that these difficulties result from an unwarranted assumption that Sākhya and Yoga take a realist view with regard to the empirical world. I further propose that these difficulties can, in large part, be overcome when the assumption of realism is set aside.     

Rādhātantram: Rādhā as Guru in the Service of the Great Goddess

International Journal of Hindu Studies - The Rādhātantram can serve as a tool with which to examine textual and doctrinal appropriations that took place between Vai??avas and...     

Kāma,Preman, and Bhakti in Śrīdhara’s Commentary on Kṛṣṇa and the Gopīs in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa

International Journal of Hindu Studies - Although the Bhāgavata Purāṇa presents an innovative soteriology of emotion that explicitly identifies kāma as the gopīs’...     

The Forgotten Consort: The Goddess and Kāmadeva in the Early Worship of Tripurasundarī

International Journal of Hindu Studies - This article examines continuities between the Hindu Tantric tradition of Tripurasundarī, which later came to be known as ?rīvidyā, and...     

The Subtlety of Subtales: Subaltern Voices of Sūkṣma Dharma in the Mahābhārata

International Journal of Hindu Studies - Many scholars have identified sūkṣma dharma (subtle dharma) as a central theme of the Mahābhārata. However, beyond recognizing it as an...     

Anthropocentric Obsession: The Perfuming Effects of vāsanā (Habit-energy) in ālayavijñāna in the Lan˙kāvatāra Sūtra

Many traditional Western ethical perspectives are anthropocentric or human-centred in that they assign intrinsic value to human beings alone. It is often said that anthropocentrism is responsible for the destruction of the environment. I intend to explain how Western anthropocentrism can be seen as a form of obsession deriving from the working function of vāsanā (habit-energy) in ālayavijñāna, based on the teachings in the Lan˙kāvatāra Sūtra. All of one's karmic bījas (seeds), stored in the ālayavijñāna, are preserved in a form of energy called vāsanā with the power of perfuming or causing habitual tendency in the lives of sentient beings. This perfuming of energy is known as sowing seeds of karma and seeds of language. Since beginningless time, sentient beings have created habitual energy through inappropriate dualistic discrimination. The habitual power of vāsanā is of great importance to understanding how anthropocentrism works. What we should be worried about is our habitual thinking patterns, which might be harmful to our relationship with the natural environment.     

Being in two minds: The divided mind in the Nyāyasūtras

In this paper I suggest that the division between manas and atman in Nyaya philosophy can be interpreted in the light of Western discussions about irrationality. In Western philosophy irrationality has been explained by postulating a divided mind. This helps to account for a generally rational mind that is nevertheless sometimes prone to irrationality. I argue that the division of the mind bears similarities to the division between manas and ātman. Looking at the arguments of the Naiyāyikas Gautama and Vātsyāyana for the existence of a permanent self, I do not find any of them convincing in the light of Buddhist criticism. However, by arguing for the division between manas and ātman, the Naiyāyikas have inadvertently provided their strongest argument for the existence of a self because they have managed to account for irrationality.     

Tracing Well-Being: The Rise of Kalyāṇ in the Hindi-Hindu Public Sphere

International Journal of Hindu Studies - The pursuit of kalyāṇ is pivotal for many Hindus. The Hindi kalyāṇ is close, yet not equivalent, to the English term...     

Compassion as a matter of fact: The argument from no‐self to selflessness in Sāntideva's Siksāsamuccaya

Due to the extended time frame over which they occur, human-induced environmental changes are out of sync with human lives lived in an age characterized by nano-second attention spans. As a result, the violence exacted by such changes poses representational and motivational challenges to human abilities to address them. I tackle the question, as a scholar from outside the discipline of religious studies, how might Buddhist thought provide valuable tools for people interested in working progressively at the intersection of violence and human-induced environmental degradation? Like other non-specialist Westerners, I have cobbled together an eclectic Buddhist perspective. I aim to explore affinities between certain Buddhist themes and my own professional orientation and expertise in earth science. To that end, I describe concepts of time derived from geological science and Asian mythical traditions; probe ideas about violence in relation to global environmental degradation; and, consider implications of the Noble Eightfold Path, the way to deliverance from suffering taught by the Buddha, for adjusting systemically to environmental change over time. By expanding, scientifically and spiritually, what the present moment can be, an instant of infinite duration, I hope to connect my journey towards taking a long view of a moment with the long view of change that human beings require to awaken to violence that is at once potentially catastrophic and so slow, that it's difficult to discern and therefore counter.     

The Simon effect for vertical S–R relations: changing the mechanism by randomly varying the S–R mapping rule?

Recent findings indicate that the shape of the effect function of the Simon effect--derived by analysing the response time distribution for corresponding and non-corresponding trials--differs depending on the task. Specifically, decreasing effect functions have been reported for horizontal and stable rather increasing effect functions have been obtained for vertical stimulus-response (S-R) relations. Furthermore, it has been assumed that these differences reflect distinct mechanisms underlying the Simon effect. However, in two studies decreasing effect functions were reported for the vertical dimension. In order to investigate these contradictory findings four experiments were conducted. Since both studies--in which a decreasing effect function was obtained--used a modified version of the Simon task, that is, randomly varying S-R mapping rules, the Simon effect for fixed and random S-R mapping rules was investigated using vertical (Experiments 1, 2, and 4) and horizontal (Experiment 3) S-R relations. The results indicate that randomly varying S-R mapping rules affect the shape of the effect function for vertical but not for horizontal S-R relations. It was concluded that these findings indicate that the alternation of S-R mapping rules changes the information processing for the vertical dimension in a way, that the same mechanism as for horizontal S-R relations occurs.