Hindu Ethics

Book Information Hindu Ethics. By Roy Perrett. University of Hawaii Press. Honolulu. 1998. Pp. xi + 105. Paperback, US$28.00.     

“Survival Is Now Our Politics”: Kashmiri Hindu Community Identity and the Politics of Homeland

International Journal of Hindu Studies -     

Ayodhya and the Hindu resurgence

It is usually accepted that although cosmological references in the early Pali Buddhist texts refer metaphorically to meditative states of mind, they should at the same time be understood as referring in literal terms to an externally existent cosmos. Because the ontological status of the cosmos appears to be tangential to what the Buddha taught, however, it is not clear that this literal interpretation is appropriate. From a study of the early textual material, this paper suggests that an alternative understanding of the cosmos is more compatible with the Buddha's teachings.     

Hindu Counselling in the Netherlands

Increasing participation of Muslims and Hindus in church-state relations in the Netherlands is bringing about a slow change in the different cultural and historical backgrounds of non-indigenous religious traditions and in their self-esteem and religious attitudes. We may call this participation, and especially the changes it causes, a good example of Systemzwang, the systematic power of the dominant but historically grown social and cultural order in which newcomers are expected to fit. This process of external influence will be demonstrated by the example of the development of the traditional Hindu priest, the pandit, to a modern professional pastoral or Hindu-spiritual counsellor and by the mutual-learning process of the religiously different pastoral professionals in the semi-governmental service organizations.     

Hindu Women,Destiny and Stridharma

Ideas about destiny —about how and why things occur and what they promise for the future —have rarely been discussed in relation to gender. By discussing the sociological and anthropological literature on karma and other sources of misfortune, andstridharma, I provide a context for examining the views of Hindu women on destiny, particularly those living in Britain. In addition to examining their references to a variety of spiritual forces which influence events and to their duties as daughters, wives and mothers, I consider the issues of resistance, intervention, agency and autonomy. It is my contention that when contemporary Hindu women speak about fate, karma, divine agency and freewill what they say can only be understood with reference to their dharma as women.     

Instrumentalist Interpretations of Hindu Environmental Ethics

Many environmental ethicists believe that any adequate environmental ethic should attribute ‘direct moral standing’ (often glossed in terms of intrinsic value) to plants, animals, and the rest of nature. But certain interpretations of Hindu environmental ethics apparently attribute only instrumental value to nature. This places them in direct conflict with the purported adequacy condition on an environmental ethic. So, is such a Hindu ethical view really inadequate? In his recent book Hinduism and Environmental Ethics, Christopher Framarin claims that it is because Hindu instrumentalism about nature is either viciously circular or unacceptably arbitrary. I argue, however, that Framarin’s claim founders in virtue of his misconstruing the logical structure of instrumental value.     

Rethinking Emancipation,Rethinking Education

In this paper I discuss the possibility of the idea of emancipation within an educational philosophy that does not accept schooling as its first premise. The first part of the paper will take Sweden as an example of an educational state defined through educational policies such as life long learning, accountability and evidence-based research, and argue that these words are only meaningful within the myth of schooling and not in a language of education/emancipation. The second part of the paper discusses different but related conceptions of emancipation by exploring its ambiguous nature. In the third part of the paper I specify the role and place of emancipation within a philosophy of education that seeks to articulate its social value.     

Hindu Perspectives on the Thirst for Transcendence

Abstract. Definitions of nature and transcendence are given, and the framework of Hindu thought is presented. The levels of reality as discovered by physics are then discussed, which leads us to revise our notions of reality and objectivity. Transcendence is defined as something beyond matter‐energy in space‐time and is explored in several contexts of modern science, as in pre‐Big‐Bang state, negative entropy, information, complexity, and others. Finally, a philosophical reflection on consciousness is presented.