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R10-A SIMPLE STORY OF HINDU PHILOSOPHY

 By  Pragyansharma  Polavarapu  

A SIMPLE STORY OF HINDU PHILOSOPHY

3000 years ago ancient Vedic Aryan philosophers meditating in the beautiful forests of Himalayan foot hills concluded that human life is most holy, that a soul equivalent to god almighty himself exists in every creature and that man after a cycle of hundreds of thousands of births gets a permanent place in god’s high heaven made of 100% divinity. It was a picture of happiness and high morality treating earthly life as unreal and treating only the god’s heaven as real.

India is a vast multiracial society  boxed  between seas and icy high mountains. Since 3000 years the philosophy of high spirituality and otherworldliness was preached by Ramayana and Mahabharatha.Lord Buddha(5th century BC) a mighty royal prince renounced his kingdom and power and worked for 50 years among the poor and downtrodden  people along with his great disciples and worked tirelessly for uplift of socially backward people. The philosophers recognized that he was the incarnation of god almighty himself . His philosophy of love and morality inspired every intellectual  in India even upto the present times.As if to test philosophers he declared that the soul may not be a real thing but only the creation of thinkers and poets  as a dreamy mass of goodness, kindness and love. Lord Buddha’s  theory of non-existence  of soul was greatly objected by the  philosophers

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The three great philosophers ---revered Sri Shankara, Sri Ramanuja and Sri Madhwa ---in centuries that followed gave strong foundation to ancient theory of divine soul, each in his own way, and established great self confidence in the traditional masses of india  during a period of  1500 years when Indian society  was in  turmoil. The three philosophers proposed philosophies setting   great moral aims  to society. There is nothing wrong in saying that Mahatma Gandhi’s world-renowned philosophy of Non-violence is based on these sublime moral ideas.

Sri Shankara( 8th century AD  ) declared that not only the soul is a most real thing but a reminder that god almighty is contained in every living being. He highlighted Vedic theory that god and divine soul in every being are not different but he also declared that god can be without a form . However he wrote most beautiful and joyous poetry about forms of the holy  gods and goddesses of heaven. He declared about equality of all human beings.

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Sri  Ramanuja(1077-1157 AD   ) generally agreed about “Advatha” theory that god and  soul in living beings are same. but he qualified and  “edited”the theory and proposed “Vishishta Advaitha”(Special  Advaitha).He declared that god is a most handsome warrior prince (called by Hindus as Lord Vishnu) and rules the universe of billion galaxies.It is said he devised all the rituals, festivals ,procedures in temples which are followed to this day throughout India. Like Lord Buddha he also felt greatly about poor and downtrodden people. 

But Sri Madhwa( 1238-1317 AD   )entirely disagreed with some basic concepts of Sri Shankara and Sri Ramanuja  about Advaitha theory. He declared that man is a weak-minded being  and commits mistakes every minute every day and that man can never be compared with god who has  mountain-like strength. Man can only by acts of goodness move a little nearer to god. He likened man to a small child. He felt that worshipping god as a Divine Child ( child form of Lord Krishna) greatly helps. He established great  temples  and monasteries  for Lord Krishna as a child god and worshipped there morning to night. He also strongly advocated equality of all human beings.  The three south Indian philosophers gave extremely useful clarifications in Hindu philosophy and modernized it.


 

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