A Vision of Hinduism: Beyond Hindu Nationalism challenges the widespread notion, prevalent among both Hindus and non-Hindus, that Hindu equals Indian. It also advocates and re-articulates, the Hindu vision of religious pluralism that was embodied in the lives and teachings of Sri Ramakrishna and Mahatma Gandhi.

According to Jeffery D. Long, the broader hope is:

“…to redefine Hinduism as a world religion in the true sense of the term, by which I mean a tradition with a universal message available, at least in principle, to all who wish to accept it, rather than a national or parochial tradition, open to only a few.”

 .

A Vision for Hinduism: Beyond Hindu Nationalism
Jeffery D. Long

A powerful vision of Hinduism is presented — a vision of a tradition capable of pointing the way towards a future in which all the world’s religions manifest complementary visions of a larger reality. And, in which all the traditions, in various ways, participate. This radical religious agenda puts a new and exciting perspective on Hindu and South Asian studies alike.

---

Jeffery D. Long
born 1969

. Wikipedia
. Elizabethtown College articles
. Google Scholar articles

.
Jeffery D. Long is Professor of Religion and Asian Studies at Elizabethtown College, in Pennsylvania. His graduate degrees are from the University of Chicago Divinity School and his undergraduate degree is from the University of Notre Dame. He also studied for two years at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, India.

Long is the author of three books and a wide array of articles on Hinduism, Indian philosophy, and religious pluralism (available on the Elizabethtown website). He is also a Consulting Editor for Sutra Journal. He is associated with the Vedanta Society, DĀNAM (the Dharma Academy of North America) and the Hindu American Foundation.

A major theme of Long’s work is religious pluralism, a topic he approaches from a perspective informed by the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead and which he refers to as a “Hindu process theology.”

Book by Jeffery D. Long include:

• A Vision for Hinduism: Beyond Hindu Nationalism
• Jainism: An Introduction 
• The Historical Dictionary of Hinduism 
• Indian Philosophy: An Introduction (coming August 2016)

 

 

Demanding That Reality is Knowable Only by Perception & Inference is Too Restricting

If something “beyond” exists, there should be an approximate means of knowledge for it. This is the function of words as knowledge as postulated by many of the Indian philosophical systems.

The very statement that common experience exhausts reality implies, by placing a limit on it, that the mind has traveled beyond that limit.
…..Essentials of Indian Philosophy — M. Hiriyanna

India’s Philosophical Systems and Their Metaphysical Relation to Reality

• Nyaya and Vaisesika schools posit a total correspondence between language and reality. Whatever is real, is knowable, and as well, describable in words.
• Early Buddhists say that language distorts reality.
• Grammarians hold that not only does language reveal reality but it is reality.
• Carvaka goes to the extreme of saying that religious discourse is mere prattle, invented by deceptive priests to hoodwink and subjugate the masses.
• Advaita Vedanta calls language a “methodological device” by which a seeker after truth will be assisted in unveiling the ever-present, immediate reality.

From Realism to Idealism, from Pluralism to Absolutism, and from Empiricism to Transcendentalism, most of the possible philosophic positions have been presented by the various Indian philosophic systems.

---

Problems and Perspectives in Religious Discourse: Advaita Vedanta Implications
John Grimes

.
.
.

John Grimes

. Amazon’s John Grimes Page
. Spirituality makes him Indian (article from The Hindu)

John Grimes received his BA in Religious Studies from UC Santa Barbara, and his MA and PhD in Indian Philosophy from the University of Madras.

Grimes has taught at Universities in the United States, Canada, Singapore and India. He spends his time writing and traveling between California and Chennai.

Books written by John Grimes include:

• A Concise Dictionary of Indian Philosophy
• Ganapati: Song of the Self (Suny Series, Religious Studies)
• Problems and Perspectives in Religious Discourse: Advaita Vedanta Implications
• Ramana Maharshi: The Crown Jewel of Advaita
• Sankara and Heidegger: Being, Truth, Freedom
• The Vivekacudamani: Sankara’s Crown Jewel of Discrimination

---

Essentials of Indian Philosophy
M. Hiriyanna
.
.
.
.

M. Hiriyanna
1871-1950

. Wikipedia
. Indian Memory Project

Mysore Hiriyanna was one of the foremost writers of the 20th century on Indian philosophy. He was a professor of Sanskrit and Philosophy at Mysore University. His writings are known for their clarity, precision, and brevity.

Books written by M. Hiriyanna include:

• Art Experience (Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts)
• Essentials of Indian Philosphy
• Outlines of Indian Philosophy
• Vedanta-Sara of Sadananda: A Work on Vedanta Philosophy

Most people, as they grow up now, secretly believe that kindness is a virtue of losers. But agreeing to talk about winners and losers is part and parcel of the phobic avoidance, the contemporary terror of kindness. Because one of the things the enemies of kindness never ask themselves — and this is now an enemy within all of us — is why we feel it at all. Why are we ever, in any way, moved to be kind to other people, not to mention to ourselves? Why does kindness matter to us?

It is, perhaps one of the distinctive things about kindness — unlike an abstract moral ideal, such as justice — that in the end we know exactly what it is, in most everyday situations; and yet our knowing what it is makes it easier to avoid. We usually know what the kind thing to do is — and when kindness is done to us, and register its absence when it is not. We usually have the wherewithal to do it (kindness is not an expert skill); and it gives us pleasure. And yet we are extremely disturbed by it.

We are never as kind as we want to be, but nothing outrages us more than people being unkind to us. There is nothing we feel more consistently deprived of than kindness; the unkindness of others has become our contemporary complaint. Kindness consistently preoccupies us, and yet most of us are unable to live a life guided by it.

On Kindness
Adam Phillips and Barbara Taylor
.
.
.
.

---

Background on Adam Phillips and Barbara Taylor.