The Upanishapds, Vedanta, etc. [was Re: Dharma]

[Vaska Tumir]

A very quick reply to Sanjay, as I'm really in a rush:

>>>Re the caste system, it is unobvious that Hinduism is a "repressive
>>>system."  
>>
>>Depends which caste you happen to belong to, no? 
>
>Not at all!  Please check out the paragraph I wrote again and I'll clarify
>if it's not there. [Aside: just for purposes of revealing biases I am
>Brahmin and read Sanksrit extensively].

Won't quarrel over this, but let's just say we do disagree on this point
completely: perhaps it's a matter of perspective.  I'm talking about the
living reality of India, while you're talking about scholarly glosses on it.
Another and less charitable word for "glosses" here would be
"rationalizations." 

>>>	[SNIP] Difficult to summarize but the idea is,
>>>yes, you can attain salvation through meditation, listening to the priests,
>>>ritual.
>>
>I don't like where you clipped this!  

I did take the rest into consideration -- it wasn't a write-off of what you
were saying.  Simply a good place where to bring up a yet *earlier* part of
the Hindu tradition that seems to me to do the same thing much, much better.

>>The best bits of demystification I've come across in the Hindu tradition are
>>in certain of the "Upanishads" actually, *way* before the "Mahabharata" epic
>>[and what a tour de force that is] and the "BhagavadGita" section thereof --
>
>No, no, no!  Because the Mahabharata is _very much_ an epic that was
>reworked and reworked to effect political/cultural agendas -- a great epic
>nontehless but very programmatically edited.  In some ways it amazes me
>that the Bhagvadgita section survived.   Be warned also -- mistranslations
>of all these things abound; Sanskrit is impossibly tricky.

Why no?  I agree entirely on your take on the _Mahabharata_ -- no
reservations at all.  But to try and make myself clear: as you know, the
Upanishads contain a lot of miscellanious and often self-contradictory
material.  They are pre-Vedic themselves.  And in one of the sections, which
I'll try to unearth for you when I get back from Cornell next week [two
actually, but never mind], there is a completely demystified approach to
spirituality.  I've never seen anything like it anywhere else -- not even in
the best of Daoism.  

>>no listening to the priests, no rituals, no Krishna-whorship, no bhakti-yoga
>>[frequently associated with Krishna, but not exclusive to his cult] -- or
>>any other type of worship either.  
>
>This is not my interpretation, nor my teachers'.  Not to question you --
>there are many many schools of vedanta and they get where they're going a
>lot of ways.  

Sanjay, I'm not talking about the Vedas: or the Vedanta.  And of course, the
Upanishads themselves, including the parts I have in mind, can be absorbed
into all sorts of traditions that may have little to do with the actual
spirit of those texts -- hence some of the interpretations I believe can't
really be pinned on these bits.  But this happens in every religion, right?

>I am really interested in where you are getting this idea and
>would be grateful if you could send me some particular passages/refs you
>are following. Hinduism just _isn't_ Stoicism. 

Of course it's not!  And, as promised, I'll find the texts in question as
soon as I ferret out some spare time for it next week.

>Again, do be careful --
>Sanskrit is very subtle and mistranslations abound becuase it is can be
>insanely hard to translate, and if the translator "thinks he knows" what
>the passage intends to say, then, well, he shortcuts.  

Again, I agree wholeheartedly.  Fortunately, one of my uncles is an Orthodox
theologian [saddled with an atheist niece: nice, eh?] whose grasp of
Sanskrit is particularly good; he's devoted the last 40-odd years of his
life to it and has always urged me to take up and learn Sanskrit myself [a
project for my old age, perhaps?].  So, I may not be too far off in the bits
I've quoted in English. Still, in general, your warning about Sanskrit
translations into English [or any other language for that matter] is fully
justified.  More often than not they express the particular bias or even the
degree of ignorance of the translator in question.  

To be followed up next week, most probably privately.
Vaska <enjoying these little conversations to no end>