ANCIENT INDIAN PHILOSOPHIES & SCIENTIFIC BELIEFS # 5

NON-ABSOLUTISM

Anekanta Vada

Some body asked a Jain Seer, " Which religion is true? Which path should I follow?"

Seer replied," Have you seen cows?"

He said, " Yes, I have"

Seer asked," What are the different colours of the cows which you have seen?"

He answered," They are of many colours- white, brown, yellow, spotted, black, etc."

Seer further asked," Are they giving different colours of milk or the same?"

He thought seer must have gone mad. He annoyingly replied," What rubbish !!! Cows give only one colour of milk -white, whatever may be the colour of their skin. It doesn't matter. "

Seer smiled. And said," Then you must have known, from this analogy, that religions may have different names, but the essence is same."

This is the principle of anekant vada or non-absolutism or "truth-depends-on-stand-points" philosophy. I will elucidate it further.

Bring the picture of your family into your mind. A person is a father, is a son, is a husband, is a brother, is a uncle, etc. His wife is 100% correct in saying that Mr. X is my husband. His mother is also 100% correct in saying that Mr. X is my son. Both of them are correct when seen from their point of view. But they are not absolute. They are stating the relationship of Mr. X with respect to (w.r.t.) to thenselves. This is an-ekant i.e. absence of absolutism.

We must have studied the coordinate system in our school mathematics. A point is defined as (x,y,z). Einstein further added fourth dimesnion 't' for time. Thus, a point in space becomes (x,y,z,t). If a point A is (2,5,7) then his position is 2 w.r.t. x, 5 wrt y & 7 wrt z. All three propositions are correct but they dont give complete position of A. When all of them are put together we get A.

Thats what Mahavira explained 2500 years ago. He said that Truth is not absolute, it is relative. It was a revolutionary statement. It contained in itself the seeds of conflict resolution. Albert Eintein put this into the "Theory of Relativity".

The topic of anekanant would take more than one articles and I am sure you will read all of them and grasp the depth of teachings of one of the greatest religious figures of this world.

Keep reading !!!!!!

ANCIENT INDIAN PHILOSOPHIES & SCIENTIFIC BELIEFS #4

JAINISM

Jainism is perhaps the most scientific way of life/philosophy prevelant during ancient Indian civilization. Basically a nontheistic (see first article on Blog) tradition, it has put forward radical principles like non-absolutism, syadvada, classification of living beings, etc. in a very logical & scientific way. Jainism provides a great insight into atomic and matter physics as well. Atomic Science & classification of matter is explained in great details in Jain Agamas. The Tattvarthadhigam Sutra (Insight Into the Meaning of Matter) has several shlokas on the topic of matter (dravyas). Some salient features of Tattvarthadhigam Sutra are:

• The 1st ever written complete text book of science.


• Written by: Arya Umasvati in 1st Century A.D.


• It describes atom & sub-atomic particles 5/25


• Explains fission and fusion 5/26


• Gives a detail account of Origin, Cessation & Persistence 5/28


• It says: “Matter is eternal, but it changes”

The chart of matter, thus, derived from Tattvartha Sutra & other Jain Agamas can be drawn as below:

Thus, we see that how definitely matter has been classified at that time. What is most surprising is that without any scientific laboratory or any other reference material, it has been explained. It shows the height of mental ability of Jain philosophers. It has been already stated that matter is indestructible but it flows from one form to another. Thus, we can deduce from this chart that solids/liquids or for that any matter is convertible to light or other form of energy (E=mc2 !!!). Mass & light are interconvertible is proved by Einstein. Who knows in future that such interconvertibilty is proven in case of sound energy as well !!!

Thus,
->Matter and Energy: one and the same and thus INTERCONVERTIBLE
->Energy is neither generated nor destroyed
->Einstein in 20th century: Mahavira 25 centuries ago.

So, more research must be taken in this field. Mankind's many hidden principles can be extracted from Jain Agamas.

In next article, we will discuss the unique principle of non-absolutism or Anekantavada.

ANCIENT INDIAN PHILOSOPHIES & SCIENTIFIC BELIEFS #3

CONCEPT OF LIGHT SPECTRUM & BIG BANG IN VEDAS

Hi !!!

As discussed in the last article, vedas contain various concepts of science, matter, space, life, etc. but all in very symbolic form & deified (i.e. every phenomenon has a deity "devta" attached to it) Today, we will take concepts of light spectrum & big bang.

1) Light Spectrum

"Seven horses draw the chariot of the sun, tied by snakes". Rig Veda 5. 45. 9

What do these seven horses signify?

What do the snakes signify?

On carefully thinking, we will find that this is just a poetic verse describing the nature of light as being composed of 7 rays and the snake symbolizes it's curved path. Now, its meaning is clarified for us in the Atharva Veda, where it tells us there are seven rays of the sun. Now, these colors are actually described as red, orange, yellow, green, blue, Indigo and violet in the Ramayana, the yoga sutras and the Vedic Upanishads. So it becomes quite clear that this is indeed referring to the 7 colors of light. This was not discovered in western science till Newton split light into it's 7 colors by a prism.

2) Bigbang

Vedas say: All emanated from HIM

“Mahavishnu is lying in Causal Ocean. Millions of Universes are created while he exhales”

It further states that Millions of Universe go away from Mahavishnu till he exhales and come back again to Mahavishnu when he inhales. His one cycle of breath (i.e. exhale+inhale) is very very long almost around billions of years.

Does it sound similar to the Big Bang?

All matter is concentrated in a whole. An explosion and millions of galaxies/ universes are created & they are receding apart. Prof. Stephen Hawking states in his book "A Brief History of Time" states that life cycle of universe when plotted against time, will take a parabolic shape. It will expand till a point of time (the inflexion point) & then it will be reversed i.e. Universe will start contracting and again get concentrated in a dense form of matter.

Thus, we can say that Vedas may have tried to explain this phenomenon by drawing an analogy with a superficial entity called Mahavishnu or Para-Brahm.

ANCIENT INDIAN PHILOSOPHIES & SCIENTIFIC BELIEFS #2

In this article, we would peep through the mysteries of Vedic Philosohpy. Vedas are considered to be the oldest compilation work of Aryans & Indus Valley Civilization. The language is very obscure & uses personification extensively. Like the idea of Trinity. Brahma- the creator, Vishnu- the preserver & Shiva- the destroy. Now the idea behind this is that any form of matter (dravya) passes through three states- it originates, it persists & it ceases (or extincts) . It is same as the tripadi (Uppaneyi Va, Vigameyi Va , Dhuveyi Va) given by Jina to his Ganadharas. Thus, we can say that Vedas emphasized the cycle of matter in a symbolic form which was later deified.
Of all the great ancient religions, only Hinduism gives an age of the universe with numbers resembling those obtained by modern science. According to the Bhagavad Gita, one kalpa or (12-hour) day of Brahma lasts for 4.32 billion years. The Brahma lasts for 311.04 trillion (3.1104x10^14) years overall, after which the universe is destroyed. Hindu texts are very specific and precise in their description of the relevant time intervals. They are also unique in their description of the creation process and of forces of nature in often inanimate terms or, at most, personified in a highly sophisticated symbolic representation of inanimate forces. The means by which the Hindus arrived at this information is equally mysterious. The Hindu monks would purify their minds by depriving themselves of food, and then meditate in silence, in effect inducing a form of sensory deprivation. The belief was that in so doing, sensory input from the outside world would be eliminated, and information from the Universe would then become accessible. Unfortunately, finding the original sources for these beliefs is difficult because of the large amount of original material. Also, most of these ancient writings are quite difficult to interpret, as they are written in a poetic, symbolic language in which forces of nature are personified, and they are full of obscure literary allusions. The end result is that to a contemporary Westerner, these works appear as mostly gibberish. Thus is is no surprise that the Rig Veda, Upanishads, and Bhagavad Gita are accompanied by an extensive commentary, and it should also not be surprising that different commentators derive opposite meanings from the same text. For instance, the gunas (three properties of Prakriti or Nature) are described as fundamental forces of matter in The Bhagavad Gita (as translated by S. Nikhilananda), but as personality characteristics in The Principal Upanishads by S. Radhakrishnan. Commentators often try to impose their own views on the text. The editor of The Principal Upanishads, for example, interprets each paragraph in terms of how similar it is to some passage in the Bible or works by Aristotle and other Greek philosophers. The Rig Veda is generally regarded as the most obscure of the Hindu writings, and consequently is the most misunderstood. Compounding this is the fact that the Rig Veda is a little weak in biology. For instance, one verse says that cows descended from horses, and goats and sheep descended from cows. This is not even taught in Kansas. However, even a cursory reading of the Upanishads, which elaborated and explained the Rig Veda, will reveal that the Hindus had a sophisticated concept of space and time. For example, Brahman is not the name of a deity but is a term for the extended space-time continuum which supposedly has attributes resembling a sort of consciousness. The Rig Veda is also full of statements like "emanating from the unmanifest", suggesting that rather than being about cows and sheep as it first appears, it is actually describing the ancient Hindu cosmological beliefs. There is clearly some physics, or something like it, in the Rig Veda. It is therefore reasonable to ask, whether any other beliefs in this work may resemble theories and facts that have been arrived at scientifically. If so, it would have great significance not only for understanding the people of the Indus Valley region but, if the information is as accurate as their chronology of the universe, may even provide ideas of possible use as hypotheses worthy of scientific investigation.

ANCIENT INDIAN PHILOSOPHIES & SCIENTIFIC BELIEFS #2