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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 exists in every living being. He highlighted the very ancient Vedic theory that god and the soul in every being are not different( Advaitha=not two seperate things).But Sri Shankara also cautioned that god can be formless.At the same time he also wrote most beautiful,thrilling and joyous poetry about the holy gods and goddesses of heaven. He firmly 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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