Podcasts about Devanagari

Javed Akhtar joins Saif Mahmood for a thoughtful and deeply relevant conversation on Urdu, secularism, language politics, and the cultural history of India. In this live session, they unpack how Hindi and Urdu grew from the same soil, sharing the same streets, emotions, and literary traditions long before politics tried to divide them.Javed Akhtar speaks candidly about why languages should never be tied to religion, and why Urdu belongs as much to India's cultural identity as Hindi does. He reflects on how younger audiences are rediscovering Urdu poetry through Devanagari script, even while traditional Urdu writing slowly declines.One of the most powerful moments of the discussion comes when he explains secularism in the simplest possible way. Not as a slogan, not as performance, but as something natural and essential, “like oxygen.” The conversation moves through literature, identity, public discourse, coexistence, and the emotional connection people still carry with language across generations.

In this live talk at Jashn-e-Rekhta, Swami Oma The Akk speaks of Urdu not as a language alone, but as a maashooq. Something intimate, fragrant, elusive, and deeply felt. Through the poetry of Meer, Ghalib, and Iqbal, he opens three ways of seeing life. Meer becomes the voice of loss, surrender, memory, and the pain that softens the soul. Iqbal stands for courage, becoming, and the pull of the future.Ghalib lives in the present. Restless, witty, rebellious, and brave enough to argue with the divine.The talk moves beautifully between ishq, fanaa, tajalli, sukoon, grief, hope, and inner fire, while the Yamuna becomes a powerful metaphor for damaged beauty that still flows with meaning. Swami Oma The Akk also reflects on how Rekhta has opened Urdu to wider audiences through Devanagari, Roman script, and digital access.

This episode we close out discussion of this reign with a bit of a grab bag.  There is the minting of new coins, new letters to write Japanese, board games, and more. For more, check out our blogpost:  https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-146 Rough Transcript Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  My name is Joshua, and this is episode 146: Coins, Letters, Games, and More   The large audience hall was filled with nobles, sitting in pairs across from each other.  Throughout the hall, the roof and walls reverberated with the sounds of numerous stone markers being placed on painted wooden tables—or more appropriately, game boards.   It was accompanied by the sound of dice clattering.  At the far end of the hall was the royal presence, where his majesty could likewise join in the entertainment—with someone of sufficient standing, of course. Throughout the day there were bursts of joy and frustration throughout the hall.  In some instances, one could see two players sharing in the joy and love of the game.  In other cases, political rivals stared each other down, neither one willing to give away any strategic advantage.  Any smiles there were merely a mask.  And yet, no matter how hard one tried, there was only so much you could do.  Ultimately, your fate was in the hands of the dice, though you could certainly do your best to nudge it here and there. And so they continued.  As they played, small wagers were made between players.  At the conclusion of their match, each player could find another opponent, and see if their luck held out.  Victory was desired, but at the very least one didn't want to be embarrassed.  As such, losing gracefully was just as important as winning with humility.  Sure, there were  the petty stakes that were gambled here and there, but the real stakes were embedded in the politics of the court.  That was a game  that everyone was playing, except that there was no board, and the rules were often merely suggestions, at best.     This episode we are going to close out the reign of Ohoama, aka Temmu Tenno.  It has been a while getting here—but then again, Ohoama's reign is the best documented so far, almost like the entire Chronicle has built up to this point.  We have spent about a dozen episodes on this reign—not including the four before that discussing the Jinshin no Ran. During that time we've talked about how Ohoama continued the Ritsuryou experiment, while  at the same time shaping it into something that was even more directly under his control.  A lot of this appears to have been done with the mostly willing consent of a good part of the archipelago. That may have been because of a few different things.  For one, all of this was justified through the philosophical underpinnings of the continent.  This is the new knowledge that the court had been devouring for over a century, and so I suspect that none of it seemed particularly surprising or out of place.  Furthermore, it seems that Ohoama's actions may have appealed to some of the more middle-tier elites; those for whom the idea of a government stipend was quite appealing. There was also the external threat of Silla and Tang.  Though in reality, Silla was in conflict with the Tang dynasty, up until the conclusion of the Silla-Tang War, around 676.  In truth, the Tang court wouldn't recognize Sillan sovereignty south of the Taedong river until 736, so there were still tensions.  However, early on in the reign there was at least the thought that hostilities could spill over onto the archipelago. And then there are all of the projects.  The designation of national temples, the beginning of a national history project, the founding of a permanent capital city, and the creation of a formal code—the Asuka Kiyomihara Code. Compared to all of that, the topics of this episode really are some miscellaneous stuff that I didn't have anywhere else to put, but wanted to bring to light anyway.  First, we'll talk about the minting of coins, and what that meant.  Once again, this is really neat because we actually have some coins that appear to be from this time frame, providing what might be a direct relationship between what is written down and what we have in the archaeological record.  Then we'll touch on another project of Ohoama's—this one less successful than some of the others we've discussed.  This was an attempt to create a new writing system specific to the Japanese language.  Remember, at this point literate people in the archipelago were using kanji to write everything down, and for the most part they were using kanbun—so Sinitic characters and grammar, with occasional use of characters purely for their phonetic qualities when they absolutely had to spell something out.  Eventually this would evolve into the syllabaries of katakana and hiragana, but there were several false starts before that, and we'll talk about what was being attempted during Ohoama's reign. Beyond those court projects we'll talk about some of the kami and Buddhist related rituals, especially as they related to growing merit and attempting to protect the state and its people from disasters—natural or otherwise.  And then there are various omens, and just a few edicts that were more geared towards the court but are still fun, like when Ohoama forced the entire court to join him for a day of… board games.  I guess when you are the sovereign and trying to set up a game day, scheduling is suddenly not so big of a problem. So that's what we are going to cover.  We are skipping around throughout the reign, and so while I'll mention dates here and there, I'll try not to get too bogged down with the exact dates unless it really matters. First off: coins.  We are going to start somewhere in the middle, on the 15th day of the 4th month of 683.  It is here that we see a note that Ohoama decreed that copper coins would be used, and not silver.  Remember that a silver mine had been discovered in Tsushima back in 674.  At that time we know that there were silver coins being made, but in 683 it looks like they were changing from silver to copper.  But three days later, they reversed the decision to completely cancel the silver coins, so they presumably had both silver and copper coins. Coins are interesting for several reasons.  For one, coins often help us to date various collections—if they are distinctive enough.  They can be quite helpful in telling us that a particular archaeological assemblage is almost certainly from sometime after the coins had begun to be circulated.  After all, if you unearth a stratum of an archeological dig and you find a penny dated to 1912, you can be reasonably confident that that layer was last exposed on or after 1912, unless time travel was at play. There are some exceptions where animals or tree roots or other forces can disturb the layering, but that's why archeologists carefully pay attention to soil features.  That isn't to say that all coins of the time had clear dates on them.  In fact, the oldest coins we have in the archipelago are something called "Mumon Ginsen"—literally unmarked silver coins.  They are found in various assemblages and thought to have originated under Naka no Oe, aka Tenji Tennou.  The silver from Tsushima would have likely been used for this.  For many reasons it is unclear if these were minted by the state or if they were privately minted and circulated. The copper coin mentioned in Ohoama's record in the Nihon Shoki would appear to be what is known as a Fuhonsen coin, which we also have extant examples of.  These are round copper coins with a square hole in the middle, as was common on the continent.  The previous unmarked silver coins were just small circles of solid silver.  In contrast, the Fuhonsen bear the characters "FU-HON":  FU, or "Tomi", means wealth, and HON, or "moto", means something like base or basis.  "SEN" just refers to the fact that it is a coin.  So the coin represents the basis of wealth. They are just under an inch in diameter, and 1.5 millimeters thick.  While primarily copper, they do have traces of antimony, silver, and bismuth.  The use of copper was likely because of its lower melting point, which would have been easier to cast with. So it seems that these were the new copper coins mentioned in the Chronicles, and the intent was originally to completely replace any silver currency.  I suspect that they quickly realized that they could not easily replace all of the silver, and so the older silver coins were probably still in circulation—though I don't know if any new ones were being minted. We don't exactly know how the coins were used.  They weren't being used to pay taxes or similar things—that was still all being handled in rice, silk, cloth, and labor.  They might have been used by the government to pay individuals, who would then exchange them for goods, but they were probably not used very often between individuals.  There is even some suggestion that they had a more ritual meaning.  Coins of a similar shape—round with a square hole in the center—go back to at least 350 BCE on the continent, and were quite common by the  time of the Han dynasty.  The round hole allowed them to be placed on strings—you'll often see references to strings of cash.  In the Qin dynasty, a string was meant to be a superunit, made up of 1000 coins.  Merchants and others operating at some scale could then just pay in "strings" of cash rather than counting out each and every coin.  It also provided a way of transporting them.  Anyone doing business in east Asia would have encountered coinage from one of the dynasties on the mainland, and we certainly see various coins making their way over to the archipelago, though how exactly they were used and valued isn't certain.  It may have been more important to just have them on hand for trips to the continent so that an embassy or trading vessel could participate in the economy, there. The next coin to be minted in the archipelago itself wasn't until 708, and that was the Wadokaichin, or Wado coins, named for the four characters around the square hole, which included the era name that they were created, "Wado".  This seems to have kicked off an actual national currency that would only last for a couple hundred years before it was debased and lost its value.  For centuries after that, rice was once again the primary currency, and would continue to be so, even though the Tokugawa shogunate would begin to mint and issue coins again through much of their rule.  Still, coins were often outside the grasp of most of the common people. While coins may not have fully caught on, they did better than our next project.  This was a task that was given to Sakahibe no Muraji no Iwashiki who compiled, by royal command, a new set of characters, which were recorded in a book of 44 volumes.  Though this book  is no longer extant, we do have later sources that claim it was once in the royal library.  It describes the characters as similar to Sanskrit characters.  This appears to be an attempt to create an alphabet, or syllabary, for the Japanese language. While Yamato had adopted the Sinitic systems of logographic writing, it wasn't exactly up to the task of directly writing in Japanese.  For one thing, the languages had different sounds that they used, and in different combinations.  Furthermore, grammatically, the two were quite different.  Many Sinitic languages are Subject, Verb, Object, similar to English, while Japanese is Subject, Object, Verb, meaning the verb goes at the end.  But beyond that, Japanese relies extensively on conjugation of verbs, with verbs and adjectives changing to express tense and other such things that Sinitic languages, such as modern Putonghua and languages such as Middle Chinese handle in other ways.  To give an English speaking person a similar experience, imagine writing sentences as "The bird in the tree sat"  or "the man the bread at the store bought".  Now remove many of the articles and prepositions, so you get things like "bird tree sit" and "man bread store buy".  You can imagine how that can really get unwieldy if you want to convey more nuanced concepts. Japanese would either need to add a phonetic writing system—which it did—or it would need to come up with new characters to use in place of the special qualities of the language.  Or they would need to continue to write in Sinitic grammatical order and  continue to do the translation to Japanese on the fly.   One can imagine that this was hardly efficient—in order to learn how to write you would basically have to learn a whole new language. That these new symbols were similar to characters associated with Sanskrit also makes sense, and we even see similar attempts on the continent, though they had other writing systems to compare to as well.  For example, we see the Persian Sogdian, written with a variation of Syriac script, and the Ghandari language written with its own Ghandari or Kharosthi script, but the influence of Buddhism likely explains why scripts associated with Sanskrit likely had a greater influence than other languages.  I should note here that Sanskrit itself does not have a single script—today, people probably think of the Devanagari script, commonly used in India, but that doesn't seem to have been developed until the 8th century.  The work of Iwashiki was likely based on something like the Siddham, or Kutila, script.  This is an abudgida, where consonants and vowels are connected together when written.  This would have worked well for the Japanese language as phonemes are often grouped together as consonant-vowel clusters known as morae.  Siddham evolved in the late 6th century and many Buddhist scripts that were making their way along the Silk Road would have used it.  However, it is said that Siddham proper—or at least as we know it today—was introduced to Japan by the famous monk Kuukai in the early 9th century.  If that is the case, then what script was Iwashiki using as his inspiration? Regardless of the details, this new script doesn't seem to have taken off.  It may have just been too much to ask someone to learn the various kanji AND another system on top of that.  Instead, the Japanese would adopt certain kanji over time, and simplify them into what we know, today, as kana.  Our earliest example is what we know of as Man'yogana, named for the Man'yoshu, an 8th century collection of poems attributed to various contemporary and historical figures.  Because the poetic structure of Japanese required specific counts of syllables or, more specifically, morae, it was important to capture the actual pronunciation of the language.  Certain characters were chosen and used over and over again purely for their phonetic value, rather than any other inherent meaning.  Over time, those characters were simplified and standardized, developing into the katakana and hiragana still used today.  While it was these organically-evolving systems that would eventually be most popular and fill the gap, but it is still incredible to see someone deliberately tackling the problem at this early date. Moving on from money and writing, let's turn now to matters of the kami and the Buddha.   Yamato existed in a world that saw itself as being caught between forces both seen and unseen.  Besides the natural world there was the spiritual world, and to many it was just as real as anything else. We've talked all along about the interplay between the court, the kami and the Buddha, and some of the evidence we see is relatively simple.  For instance, in 675, the Ohokami, the great god, of Tosa presented a divine sword to the sovereign.  I doubt that a kami was showing up in person to the court—this would have been priests from the shrine.   Aston suggests that the kami in question was probably either Hitokotonushi no Mikoto or Misukitakahikone no Mikoto, quoting "authorities" which he does not otherwise name.  We get more serious, though, when it comes to major events.  And the drought and famine of 676 seems to fit that description.  As you may recall from episode 144, the governor of Shimotsukeno reported a bad harvest in the 5th month, and by the 6th month we see more reports coming in of a great drought.  Clothing was collected for the Buddhist temples to help build merit.  Later, there was a comet in the sky, and then, in the 8th month, we see that the court compelled the Kuni no Miyatsuko and the governors to all contribute to an Ohoharae, or Great Purification.  Eventually, the Ohoharae would become a regular ceremony held on the 30th day of the 6th and 12th months of the year, with royal princes down to the high ministers gathering at the southern gate—the Suzaku-mon. Members of the Urabe, the Diviners, would read the various norito, the ritual prayers, to disperse evil influences.  It was, and is,also used when there is a royal visit to the Ise or Kamo shrines, as well as at the Dajosai festival at the start of a new reign.  It can also be done if there is thought to have been some kind of offense that was committed. "Harae", or "purification", is a common part of Shinto ritual today.  From the simple washing of the hands and mouth before entering the shrine grounds to pray to spiritual purification performed by a priest who waves a large stick with paper streamers—the ohonusa or haraegushi—while chanting prayers to ward off evil influences, purification is a key component in Shinto, which often concerns itself with aspects of spiritual pollution.  And so the Oho-harae, the Great Purification, is that, but turned up to eleven. The litany used for the Ohoharae, today, is also known as the Nakatomi no Ohoharae, indicating the importance of the Nakatomi in the ritual.  This Ohoharae, however, was taking place in the 8th month, and may not have had all of the traditions of the later rituals we know today.  Rather, we are told what was required:  The Kuni no Miyatsuko of the provinces were instructed to send one horse and a piece of cloth to specific shrines of purification.  In addition, the governors of the various districts were each told to supply one sword, one deerskin, one mattock, one smaller sword, one sickle, one set of arrows, and one sheaf of rice.  In addition, each household had to supply a bundle of hemp cloth.  These may not have been used in the ritual as much as they were offerings to the kami and their shrine. We'll see this in various cases where the State places rather onerous financial requirements on the population in order to perform rituals.  Of course, by the logic of the time, whatever was donated would make the ritual more effective—it would be more pleasing to the kami.  Still this seems remarkably costly in a year where we are told that the peasants were starving just a few months prior. I'll also take this moment to point out a link here to something that anyone who has been to a shrine may be familiar with, and that is the donation of horses. Horses were common enough a donation—if people of status rode horses, then how much more so the kami themselves?  Sacred or votive horses could be used to carry the kami, and even today some shrines keep sacred horses for the kami.  However, not everyone has horses to donate, and I suspect that the shrine probably didn't need an entire herd of horses.  And so some would pay money for an image of a horse, instead, to be hung in the shrine, likely indicating the donor.  Of course, this wasn't just a picture, but an official record of some kind of donation, which could theoretically go to purchase horses and other such things that the shrine might need.  These pictures of horses were known as "e-ma", literally "picture horse", and we still see them today: The most common type of e-ma will be small wooden placards sold at the shrine, and people will write their desires on the back, with their name and information.  They will often be found hanging in groups on specially designated racks meant for that purpose.  Today, e-ma might have horses on them, but more often have other pictures, associated with the particular shrine and kami.  Speaking of horses, we have a couple more references to them this year.  At some point, Ohoama had issued an edict seeking horses, not just for riding, but other good horses so that the givernment would have them when needed, distributed to the various post-stations.  So when he was returning from a banquet by the Todoroki pool in Hatsuse—modern Hase--Ohoama made a diversion to the post-station of Tomi and had the horses demonstrate their speed.  Presumably this was just a horse race, which seems to be popular around the world, in any place with horses. We see something similar when we are told that Ohoama went to Asatsuma to inspect the horses of the officials there.  At his request, the officials organized a competition of horseback archery.  This appears to reference the famous art of Yabusame—though it may not have been recognized as such just yet, there is some thought that the idea of a horsed archer shooting at three targets while galloping past may have originated in the 6th century, with ties to Usa Jingu.  Still, horseback archery would remain important, and later it would become the primary art of the warrior class from about the 12th to the 13th century or so—and arguably even up until the Sengoku period, with its spear formations and foreign guns. Later, in the 10th lunar month of 681, Ohoama and the court were prepared to go hunting on the Hirose plain.  A temporary palace was prepared and all of the bags were packed, but ultimately, Ohoama didn't go.  Instead, those from the rank of Prince to high ministers stayed at Karunoichi—a market at a cross-roads in the Nara basin that likely was the location of a government stable.  There, they inspected the horses and saddle equipment.  Those from the rank of Shokin up sat under the trees while those of Daisen and below mounted up and passed along from south to north.  Not quite as exciting as horse racing or horsed archery, but who doesn't like a parade. One wonders what happened to call off the hunt.  Perhaps Ohoama, while not bedridden, was not in the best of health.  If he was having some kind of recurring problems then that could explain some of the merit-making as well.  You may recall we discussed how much merit the state seemed to be trying to make in support of the sovereign's health, which we discussed in episode 142. Getting back to the Ohoharae—the great purification.  That was followed up by a general amnesty, which we talked about last episode, as well as a command to let loose living things.  This is a Buddhist practice that one still sees today in various places, usually in the form of letting loose animals like fish and birds that were kept by individuals.  I don't think they were just opening up the paddocks and letting the horses, cattle, and other animals go.  As fascinating as that might be to contemplate, with horses just running wild and cattle trampling the rice fields, I doubt they took it that far.  Still, this practice was clearly an attempt to make more merit for the State.   This edict was repeated only a few months later, in the 11th lunar month, but then it was confined to those provinces that were considered to be "near" to the capital, so a little more focused.  The day after that second release of animals, men were dispatched to all parts to expound the Konkwoumyou and Ninou sutras.  This was the Sutra of Golden Light and the Sutra of the Benevolent King—both sutras focused on concepts of good rulership and protection of the State.  In fact, together with the Lotus Sutra, they would come to be considered the Gokoku Sanbukyou—the Three sutras for Protection of the State.  They were read for the purpose of averting disaster, but they also helped to prop up the image of a righteous and benevolent ruler—what might be termed a golden-wheel turning sovereign, or Chakravarti. So all of this would seem to simultaneously reflect an intention to protect the State while also demonstrating performative regnal righteousness.  It was, after all, what a good ruler was supposed to do, which also conveniently told people what a good ruler was supposed to do. It is unclear whether or not the court actually felt this did anything.  I would note that a month later they were asking Princes and Ministers to gather up weapons, so it is possible that they were concerned about more than just natural disasters— such as a concern that the people were getting restless.  A few days later, we see more largess, as the court made presents to public functionaries and men of the frontier states.  It is unclear to me if this is a reward of some sort or perhaps an attempt to boost their morale and support. Later in that month we see preparations for the upcoming Feast of First Fruits, or Niinamesai, two months later.  We are told that the Jingikan, the Office of Kami Matters, had made the divination that the Yuki, the ceremonially pure rice for the ritual would come from the District of Yamada, in Owari.  For the Sugi, the "next" lower quality of rice, that would come from the district of Kasa, in Tamba.  The feast went off as usual in the 11th month, pre-empting the normal announcement of the first of the month. Later in the record we see that preparations were started for another Ohoharae, or Great Purification, and a general amnesty was issued.  This time, instead of sending horses for the kami, the Miyatsuko of each province were to supply one male and one female servant to the shrines, instead.  Fifteen days later, in the intercalary 7th lunar month—an extra month inserted to keep the lunar and solar calendars in synch—we see the queen, Uno, hosting a feast after ritual fasting.  She then had sutras expounded throughout the capital.  I find it particularly interesting that this was apparently instigated by the queen, but along with the Ohoharae, this all speaks towards the feeling that the State needed to be purified and supplied with good merit. The Ohoharae was not the only way to curry favor with the kami.  For example, in one record we see Ohoama designating sacred rice-tax for the shrines of Heaven and Earth—shrines for the Amatsu kami and Kunitsu kami.  One third of the rice was to go to the kami directly, while two thirds of the rice was to go to the priests who kept the shrines going. This same year, 677, we aren't told where the rice for the Niiname-sai came from, but we are told that those who donated as well as members of the Jingikan, who were involved in the divination and ritual more generally, were all compensated for their troubles with various presents. The Jingikan is one of those aspects of the new, bureaucratic state, that feels extremely tied to the archipelago.  It literally is the Bureau of Kami Matters, or the Bureau of Kami Affairs—the Kami no Tsukasa.  It would even come to be ranked above the Council of State in the official org chart of the government.  While the government had national temples and appointed members of the clergy who were responsible for keeping the Buddhist institutions in line with the State, the Jingikan was that entity for court ritual, and even for interfacing with various shrines around the country.   In the 10th century, all of the official shrines across the archipelago would be catalogued and assessed a rank and position, with Ise Shrine and the royal court at the top of the list. Speaking of the national temples, the fourth month of 680 was when Ohoama designated the national temples—which we also covered in Episode 142.  On the first day of month after that, we are told that he bestowed gifts of silk and cloth to 24 temples around the capital; and if there really were 24 temples just around the capital itself, one can imagine why they had to put a stop to publicly funding all of them.  That must have been quite the upkeep.  That same day, the Golden Light Sutra was expounded in the palace and at select temples as well.  As we've seen, the court relied just as heavily—or more—on Buddhism for certain rituals and providing spiritual power. While both Kami-based rituals and Buddhism were revered for their ability to affect the supernatural, Buddhist priests seem to have had a particularly revered place in—or perhaps more rightly outside—of society.  One is more likely to hear about someone who was a Buddhist priest or a novice being revered than a kannushi, or shrine priest.  For example, in the 7th month of 680, the priest Kouchou, of Asukadera, passed away. The royal princes Ohotsu and Takechi were sent to express royal condolence.  Later that same year we would see something similar, with Royal—later Crown—Prince Kusakabe visiting the eminent priest (Y)emyou on his death bed.  Yemyou died the next day, and three royal princes were sent to offer the condolences on behalf of the royal family. Towards the end of 680, Ohoama fell ill. One hundred individuals were made to take holy orders on his behalf, after which he appears to have recovered—or at least recovered enough for the time.  Earlier in the month his queen, Uno no Sarara, had taken ill, for which Ohoama had pledged to build Yakushiji, a temple of the Medicine Buddha, as we talked about in Episode 142. Although Ohoama temporarily recovered, we have mentioned how there are plenty of suggestions that he may not have been entirely better.  It could just be that time and numerous diseases were taking a toll, or perhaps he had an ailment that came and went.  I get that impression from things like in the 10th month of 685, as autumn changed to winter,  several nobles were sent to Shinano to build a temporary palace in preparation for a royal progress.  It seems that Ohoama wanted to visit the hot springs at Tsukama.  Tsukama may have been located on the outskirts of modern Matsumoto city, in Nagano, which is known for its hot springs, today.  Bentley implies  that the court was not entirely thrilled with Ohoama taking this journey.  I have to wonder whether or not this was all about Ohoama's health—hot springs were often seen as restorative.  At the same time, this sounds like a fairly long journey into the mountains as the weather was growing colder.  That also may have been part of the draw, however, allowing them to travel and see the changing leaves, a very common pastime in successive centuries, and even today. I can't help but imagine that Ohoama was seeking the restorative properties, while his court may have been apprehensive about the journey there and back as the days were getting colder.  Compare this to his actions at the start of the Jinshin no Ran, when he made that incredible dash from Yoshino, through the mountains, over to Owari.  But that was well over a decade ago, at this point, and he seems not quite so spry as he once had been. Another popular record that we find in this reign were various oddities and omens.  We've covered quite a few, but I did want to cover a few more before we pull the curtain closed on this era. First off, early in the reign, we see a record in the 10th month of 675 for a woman in the district of Takakura, in the province of Sagami, giving birth to triplets.  A quick Internet search suggests that natural triplets occur in about 1 in every 8000 or 10,000 births.  However, there is another thing to consider at this time:  giving birth to a single child was already a risky business, and death during or just after childbirth was a constant threat.  So now consider the issues with giving birth to twins or even triplets.  The odds that there is a complication just go up at that point.  So I suspect this was a very rare occurrence.  The fact that it was three sons was probably also seen as particularly auspicious, at least for any who were studying traditional Confucian scholarship. Moving on to the 4th day of the 4th lunar month of that same year, we get an omen for the court.  First is a cock sent to the court by Wanitsumi no Yogoto, from the Lower Sofu district in Yamato province.  This cock is said to have had a comb like a camelia flower, which was apparently quite auspicious.  On the other hand, a report came in from Akunami, also in Yamato province, about a hen that had turned into a cock.  Aston, of course, considers that this would have been an ominous sign—a disruption of the natural order.  To be honest, I don't see any particular judgment placed on it one way or the other.  It is just listed as a wondrous or miraculous occurrence. The year 678 has remarkably few events, in total, with nothing recorded between the 4th and 9th months.  And the 9th month was just a note about the death of one, Prince Wakasa, of the third princely rank.  The month after that we have another one of those strange occurrences.  This time it is a report of something falling from the sky like silk floss, except that it was 5 or 6 feet long and 7 or 8 inches wide.  It supposedly floated on the wind and waved from the fir woods and the reed plains.  People who saw it called it kanro, or "sweet nectar". This is really just a crazy entry.  I've wracked my brains to think of a natural event that could cause something like this, but this seems like something that was more like a rumor that got written down.  "Kanro" is thought to be something that Buddhist texts refer to as "Amrita", an exlixir of immortality.  In continental lore, it is said to be a sweet nectar that forms when yin and yang are in harmony—such as during a benevolent reign.  So whatever the truth of any natural event, to the Chroniclers the entry is clearly a chance to hype up Ohoama's reign. And then, towards the end of the 8th month, we see Katsura no Miyatsuko no Oshikatsu presenting auspicious stalks of grain.  Reportedly they all came from different plots and yet had very similar ears of grain.  Auspicious stalks of rice weren't uncommon, but Aston suggests that this was possibly an allegory for all of the royal princes who were brought together in Yoshino to swear to support each other.  The 8th month may have been when the grain was harvested—because it wasn't until the final month of the year that we see the court reacting.  At that point presents were made to the Royal and non-Royal Princes, the Ministers, and the public functionaries, all according to rank, in consequence of the auspicious stalks of grain.  In addition there was an amnesty for all offences from capital crimes on down. Now on top of all of that, there were a few edicts that touched on various topics that we just haven't gotten to, elsewhere. For instance, in the 8th month of 681, on the 10th day, we see a notification to all of the people in the archipelago who claimed descent from those from the continent—specifically those from the Korean peninsula, or the Samhan.  They were told that the taxes, which had previously been remitted for 10 years, so starting in 671, had come to an end.  However, corvee labor was still remitted for ten years to them and their children and grandchildren who had been with them when they first arrived. There are some questions about this passage, but in general it seems that those refugees who had escaped to the archipelago from Baekje and Goguryeo had previously been given 10 years from the time they arrived during which they did not owe taxes.  This included corvee labor—which also extended to any children that had been with them at the time.  Children that were born after that… well they wouldn't be of age to be used as corvee labor in 10 years so this would only apply to those who were with them at the  time and who would be of age within that 10 year timeframe. This exemption from taxes appears several times in different forms, and appears to be a grace period, during which people were expected to establish themselves, open fields, and begin to thrive.  At the end of 10 years, then they would start paying taxes, with the assumption that they had more than enough time to prepare and work the land. Moving on to one of my favorite entries, on the 18th day of the 9th lunar month in 685, Ohoama declared a game day.  He had the Princes and Ministers gather at the Ohoandono, the Great Audience Hall, and had them play a game called "Pakugi" or "Bakugi".  We aren't quite sure what the rules were—it probably wasn't Settlers of Catan, but you never know.  It was likely a game with dice, possibly a version of backgammon, which is quite old and commonly known as a game for gambling.  That same day, Ohoama gave out gifts of robes and trousers to ten princes and others—perhaps related to the gaming session? The history of games and gaming is particularly fascinating.  For one thing, many of the games that were played in the archipelago had come from the continent, and many had variants that had traversed the entirety of Eurasia.  Backgammon and Chess were both games that had variants that would be known in Japan.  Backgammon was known as sugoroku, and in Japan they played a game similar to chess known as Shogi.  They would also play go—or more appropriately igo—from at least the Nara period, though that game, invented in what is now China, does not seem to have spread quite as much as either backgammon or chess variants.  And while chess was a game that was often highly localized—with different pieces representing different things and often moving in different ways depending on the variant—backgammon seems to have been quite similar everywhere, and could probably be played by two people with wildly different cultural backgrounds with very little interpretation needed. The day after Ohoama had the court join his game day, there were more presents.  This time it was brown bear hides given to the royal and non-royal princes.  In total there were 48 hides given out, which is really pretty incredible.  I have this image in my mind of a very Asuka era wooden mansion, with wood and bronze and silk, and then a large bear hide sprawled out on the floor.  I'm not sure exactly how they were used, but I suspect that they were mostly used as floor coverings for people to sit or lay on, though I could also see them being used as sleeping mats.  It seems they were clearly elite status goods, but hardly what we think about in this period. And that is where we are going to come to a close.  There are only a few more things that we'll get to, but they are all related to what happened with the events surrounding Ohoama's death and the succession that followed, so we'll touch on those when we kick off the next reign. Until then if you like what we are doing, please tell your friends and feel free to rate us wherever you listen to podcasts.  If you feel the need to do more, and want to help us keep this going, we have information about how you can donate on Patreon or through our KoFi site, ko-fi.com/sengokudaimyo, or find the links over at our main website,  SengokuDaimyo.com/Podcast, where we will have some more discussion on topics from this episode. Also, feel free to reach out to our Sengoku Daimyo Facebook page.  You can also email us at the.sengoku.daimyo@gmail.com.  Thank you, also, to Ellen for their work editing the podcast. And that's all for now.  Thank you again, and I'll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  

The music in today's Healing Music Podcast has it's roots based in ancient healing mantras. Here are the lyrics for a beautiful mantra or psalm dedicated to the theme of peace. This composition blends well-known, ancient Vedic Shanti Mantras (peace prayers) to create a powerful chant for universal harmony. It is provided in traditional Devanagari script, phonetic transliteration (so you can chant it), and the English translation. Title: The Universal Psalm of Peace (Vishwa Shanti Mantra) Verse 1: The Invocation for All ॐ सर्वेषां स्वस्तिर्भवतु । Om Sarveṣām Svastir-Bhavatu | (May there be well-being in all) सर्वेषां शान्तिर्भवतु । Sarveṣām Shāntir-Bhavatu | (May there be peace in all) सर्वेषां पूर्णंभवतु । Sarveṣām Pūrṇam-Bhavatu | (May there be fulfillment in all) सर्वेषां मङ्गलंभवतु । Sarveṣām Maṅgalam-Bhavatu | (May there be auspiciousness in all) Verse 2: The Prayer for the World लोकाः समस्ताः सुखिनो भवन्तु । Lokāḥ Samastāḥ Sukhino Bhavantu | (May all beings in all worlds become happy and free) विश्वे शान्तिः सर्वदा अस्तु । Vishve Shāntiḥ Sarvadā Astu | (May there always be peace throughout the universe) Verse 3: The Inner Journey to Peace असतो मा सद्गमय । Asato Mā Sadgamaya | (Lead us from ignorance to truth) तमसो मा ज्योतिर्गमय । Tamaso Mā Jyotir-Gamaya | (Lead us from darkness to light) मृत्य्योर्मा अमृतं गमय । Mṛtyormā Amṛtam Gamaya | (Lead us from the fear of death to the knowledge of immortality) Outro: The Ultimate Seal of Peace ॐ द्यौः शान्तिरन्तरिक्षं शान्तिः Om Dyauḥ Shāntir-Antarikṣam Shāntiḥ (May peace radiate there in the whole sky and in the vast ethereal space) पृथिवी शान्तिरापः शान्तिरोषधयः शान्तिः । Pṛthivī Shāntir-Āpaḥ Shāntir-Oṣadhayaḥ Shāntiḥ | (May peace reign all over this earth, in water, and in all herbs) ॐ शान्तिः शान्तिः शान्तिः ॥ Om Shāntiḥ, Shāntiḥ, Shāntiḥ || (Om Peace, Peace, Peace) How to use these lyrics: Tempo: Ancient Sanskrit chants are traditionally sung at a slow, deliberate, and meditative pace. The Three "Shantihs": The word Shanti (Peace) is always chanted three times at the end of a mantra. In ancient tradition, this represents a prayer for peace on three levels: internal peace (mind/body), environmental peace (the world around us), and divine or cosmic peace. Enjoy the music in today's podcast and don't forget to click subscribe and like! Make today an amazing day!

Here's the latest news from the world of Omniglot. New constructed script: Saramukhi, an alternative script for Indonesian and English created by Reza Sumanda and inspired by the Devanagari and Marchen scripts. New adapted script: Groeg (κροηκ​​), a way to write Welsh with the Greek alphabet devised by Xavier Merica. New language pages: Fwe (Chifwe), […]

The present book contains a facsimile edition of a unique modern Kashmiri translation of five chapters from Cervantes's famous Don Quijote. In this book the Kashmiri translation and the corresponding parts of Jarvis's English version are presented on facing pages. The Kashmiri text is reproduced as a facsimile of the autograph prepared by Pandit Jagaddhar Zadoo, one of the two Kashmiri translators. The Kashmiri text in the present volume was written on modern paper in easily legible Devanagari characters by using only a few more additional diacritic symbols. This publication contains an introduction written by Surindar Nath Pandita, a grandson of Pandit Nityanand Shastri. The book can be regarded as a conjoined twin of the partial Sanskrit translation of Don Quijote published as volume III of the Pune Indological Series in 2019. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

The present book contains a facsimile edition of a unique modern Kashmiri translation of five chapters from Cervantes's famous Don Quijote. In this book the Kashmiri translation and the corresponding parts of Jarvis's English version are presented on facing pages. The Kashmiri text is reproduced as a facsimile of the autograph prepared by Pandit Jagaddhar Zadoo, one of the two Kashmiri translators. The Kashmiri text in the present volume was written on modern paper in easily legible Devanagari characters by using only a few more additional diacritic symbols. This publication contains an introduction written by Surindar Nath Pandita, a grandson of Pandit Nityanand Shastri. The book can be regarded as a conjoined twin of the partial Sanskrit translation of Don Quijote published as volume III of the Pune Indological Series in 2019. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

The present book contains a facsimile edition of a unique modern Kashmiri translation of five chapters from Cervantes's famous Don Quijote. In this book the Kashmiri translation and the corresponding parts of Jarvis's English version are presented on facing pages. The Kashmiri text is reproduced as a facsimile of the autograph prepared by Pandit Jagaddhar Zadoo, one of the two Kashmiri translators. The Kashmiri text in the present volume was written on modern paper in easily legible Devanagari characters by using only a few more additional diacritic symbols. This publication contains an introduction written by Surindar Nath Pandita, a grandson of Pandit Nityanand Shastri. The book can be regarded as a conjoined twin of the partial Sanskrit translation of Don Quijote published as volume III of the Pune Indological Series in 2019. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

In this episode, we'll help you understand the #Bollywoodsong # tujhe yaad kar liya hai तुझे याद कर लिया है , which is sung by Arijit Singh, Mujtaba Aziz Naza, Shadab, Altamash Faridi, Farhan Sabri, its music is composed by # Sanjay Leela Bhansali & its lyrics are written by # Siddharth-Garima  of the movie # Bajirao Mastani.              And we'll help you understand its lyrics. And you will also learn how to translate and use the verb ‘to  Remember someone or something' and ‘to miss someone' along with other vocabulary. In addition, you'll learn how to construct sentences in Hindi such as I often recall those days and ‘Do you still remember our childhood days?' You could download the transcript of the episode and lyrics in Devanagari & Roman with the English translation, after becoming a patron on patreon.com/learnhindionthego or https://www.patreon.com/allaboutindiapodcast  . To take a free trial for online Hindi lessons visit: https://learnhindischool.com links to the song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKDsAB1ccn0 https://www.jiosaavn.com/song/aayat/MSwoaS5,cVE https://music.apple.com/us/song/aayat/1614803367 https://open.spotify.com/track/2bHoU8j2qpnCeIFPb9w82z Find out more at https://learn-hindi-on-the-go.pinecast.co This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

This is the Catchup on 3 Things by The Indian Express and I'm Flora Swain.Today is the 13th of March and here are the headlines.Tamil Nadu Replaces Devanagari Rupee Symbol with Tamil Letter in Budget LogoAhead of its budget presentation on March 14, the Tamil Nadu government has replaced the Devanagari rupee symbol with the Tamil rupee letter in its official logo. The logo, featuring the slogan "Ellorkkum Ellaam" (Everything for Everyone), was unveiled by Chief Minister M K Stalin's office on Thursday. A source from the Chief Minister's Office explained that this change prioritizes Tamil over Devanagari. DMK spokesperson Savaranan Annadurai affirmed the decision, emphasizing the importance of promoting Tamil, especially amid ongoing tensions over the Centre's three-language policy.Karnataka Withdraws CID Inquiry on Bengaluru Airport Protocol MishandlingThe Karnataka government has retracted its order for a CID inquiry into alleged police protocol mishandling at Bengaluru airport involving actress Ranya Rao. Rao, arrested for smuggling 14.2 kg of gold, had her travel monitored by protocol officers. The withdrawal followed a parallel order from the Department of Personnel and Administrative Reforms (DPAR), which tasked senior IAS officer Gaurav Gupta with investigating misuse of protocol services by senior DGP-rank officer K Ramachandra Rao, who is also Rao's stepfather. The investigation had raised significant political and procedural concerns.SBI Chairman: India Needs 8% Growth for Progress Despite SlowdownChalla Sreenivasulu Setty, Chairman of the State Bank of India (SBI), emphasized that India must target an 8% growth rate for sustainable progress. While the current growth rate of around 6% is a concern, Setty argued that it may be a temporary slowdown and not a reason for alarm. In an interview with The Indian Express, Setty explained that the country's long-term growth story remains intact, highlighting the importance of consumption and private capital expenditure to fuel future economic growth, even amid recent challenges.Sunita Williams' Return to Earth Delayed by SpaceX Launch ScrubNASA astronaut Sunita Williams' long-awaited return to Earth has been delayed after SpaceX scrubbed the launch of a replacement crew to the International Space Station (ISS). Williams and fellow astronaut Butch Wilmore have been stuck in space for nine months aboard Boeing's faulty Starliner. NASA had planned a SpaceX rocket launch from Florida to bring a new crew, which would have allowed Williams and Wilmore to return. However, the launch was delayed due to a hydraulic system issue with the Falcon 9 rocket's ground support clamp arm, NASA confirmed.US Officials to Visit Moscow for Ceasefire Talks Amid Escalating Ukraine ConflictSenior US officials are set to visit Moscow for ceasefire negotiations as Russia ramps up its military activities in Ukraine's Kursk region. The visit follows a meeting in Saudi Arabia where Ukraine agreed to a 30-day ceasefire, shifting pressure onto Russia. US President Donald Trump confirmed the upcoming visit, noting that a "positive message means nothing" without Russia's action. While the White House hasn't confirmed which officials will attend, National Security Secretary Mike Waltz and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff are reportedly part of the delegation heading to Moscow.This was the Catch Up on 3 Things by the Indian Express.

Send us a textIn this episode, Josh Boyles shares his inspiring journey of adapting to life in India as an expat. From learning Devanagari script to translating a Change Anything Plan into Hindi, Josh has seamlessly blended cultural understanding with his expertise in change management. Key Takeaways:• Change Management Through Analogies: Josh explains how cultural analogies, like a rickshaw stuck in a pothole, can simplify complex ideas and make them relatable.• The Power of Language: Josh's efforts to learn Hindi not only bridged communication gaps but also deepened his connection with colleagues and the community.• Volunteering and Family Integration: Josh highlights how engaging in local communities, like Bori village orphanage, enriched his family's experience and promoted global citizenship in his children.• Adapting as an Expat: From cultural training to pre-move evaluations, Josh shares valuable advice for expats navigating the uncertainties of moving abroad. He shares practical advice on exploring activities, finding communities, and integrating into local life, encouraging expats to step out of their comfort zones. This episode is packed with practical tips and inspiring stories. Josh shares how embracing new experiences and connecting through shared passions can transform life beyond the expat bubble.

In this episode, we'll help you understand the #Bollywoodsong # tere hawale kar diya  तेरे हवाले कर दिया, which is sung by Arijit Singh, Shilpa Rao, its music is composed by # Pritam & its lyrics are written by # Amitabh Bhattacharya  of the movie # Lal Singg Chaddha (2022 ).              And we'll help you understand its lyrics. And you will also learn how to translate and use the verb ‘to  hand over someone something' along with other vocabulary. In addition, you'll learn how to construct sentences in Hindi such as ‘I handed him my computer yesterday.' You could download the transcript of the episode and lyrics in Devanagari & Roman with the English translation, after becoming a patron on patreon.com/learnhindionthego or https://www.patreon.com/allaboutindiapodcast  . Kindly join our Hindi Leaners' community on Facebook & give feedbacks, suggest new songs - link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/%20learnhindionthegohindilearnerscommunity or https://www.facebook.com/groups/allaboutindiastoryloverscommunity To take a free trial for online Hindi lessons visit: https://learnhindischool.com links to the song -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CXSw1oPj3I https://music.apple.com/by/song/tere-hawaale-from-laal-singh-chaddha/1637871631 https://open.spotify.com/track/1ByVM9F8HeekD3aGXatRWd Find out more at https://learn-hindi-on-the-go.pinecast.co This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

In this episode, we'll help you understand the #Bollywoodsong # jab deep jale aana जब दीप जले आना, which is sung by Yesudas & Hemlata, it's music is composed & its lyrics are written by # Amit Trivedi # Chitchor (1976 ) .                 And we'll help you understand its lyrics. And through an interactive quiz, you will also learn how to give an instruction or an order, or to make a request which is to be followed sometime later or now. In addition, you'll learn how to construct sentences in Hindi, such as ‘Please, stop the taxi after half an hour!' and ‘Turn to the left at the next red light! '. You could download the transcript of the episode and lyrics in Devanagari & Roman with the English translation, after becoming a patron on patreon.com/learnhindionthego or https://www.patreon.com/allaboutindiapodcast  . Kindly join our Hindi Leaners' community on Facebook & give feedbacks, suggest new songs - link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/%20learnhindionthegohindilearnerscommunity or https://www.facebook.com/groups/allaboutindiastoryloverscommunity To take a free trial for online Hindi lessons visit: https://learnhindischool.com links to the song : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11yh-UCeev4 https://open.spotify.com/track/3HnJnMuhD4KLiKsLZeBba5?autoplay=true https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=OyIiGyOJjjE https://music.apple.com/in/album/jab-deep-jale-aana-chill-trap/1719008110?i=1719008838 https://www.jiosaavn.com/song/jab-deep-jale-aana/NRsGeUBjZHE?autoplay=enabled Find out more at https://learn-hindi-on-the-go.pinecast.co This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

In this episode, we'll help you understand the #Bollywoodsong # sawaar loon सवार लूँ, which is sung by Monali Thakur, it's music is composed by # Amit Trivedi its are written by Amitabh Bhattacharya #Bollywoodmovie # Lootera ( 2013 ). And we'll help you understand its lyrics. And you will also learn how to translate and use the verb ‘to get angry with someone' along with other vocabulary.   In addition, you'll learn how to construct sentences in Hindi, such as 'My girlfriend got angry with me yesterday.' and 'Why is he angry with her?'. You could download the transcript of the episode and lyrics in Devanagari & Roman with the English translation, after becoming a patron on patreon.com/learnhindionthego or https://www.patreon.com/allaboutindiapodcast  . Kindly join our Hindi Leaners' community on Facebook & give feedbacks, suggest new songs - link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/%20learnhindionthegohindilearnerscommunity or https://www.facebook.com/groups/allaboutindiastoryloverscommunity To take a free trial for online Hindi lessons visit: https://learnhindischool.com Links to the song- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6k8Aja80GQM https://www.jiosaavn.com/lyrics/sawaar-loon-from-lootera-lyrics/AyQfXTFdc1g https://open.spotify.com/track/29YePgOxuPLfU7uZKxKf6w?autoplay=true https://music.apple.com/in/album/sawaar-loon/1113025869?i=1113025925 https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=GpLj8f2CI00 Find out more at https://learn-hindi-on-the-go.pinecast.co This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

In this episode, we'll help you understand the #Bollywoodsong # o rangrez ओ रंगरेज़, which is sung by Javed Bashir & Shreya Ghoshal, it's music is composed by # Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy o #Bollywoodmovie Bhaag Milkha Bhaag. And we'll help you understand its lyrics. And you will also learn how to translate and use the verb ‘to drown' and ‘to be submerged' along with other vocabulary and how to translate the sentences like -‘ The child slipped and he got drowned in the river.  and ‘Several villages got submerged in flood water', into Hindi.       You could download the transcript of the episode and lyrics in Devanagari & Roman with the English translation, after becoming a patron on patreon.com/learnhindionthego or https://www.patreon.com/allaboutindiapodcast  . Kindly join our Hindi Leaners' community on Facebook & give feedbacks, suggest new songs - link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/%20learnhindionthegohindilearnerscommunity or https://www.facebook.com/groups/allaboutindiastoryloverscommunity To take a free trial for online Hindi lessons visit: https://learnhindischool.com Links to the song- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5idNBcKDtvA https://open.spotify.com/track/4wjRMsZFkWfdBzCdzXYTv5?autoplay=true https://music.apple.com/in/album/o-rangrez-live/1693926742?i=1693926757 https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=kMp-VM6BEoo Find out more at https://learn-hindi-on-the-go.pinecast.co This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

The Life of Padma, or the Paümacariu, is a richly expressive Jain retelling in the Apabhramsha language of the famous Ramayana tale. It was written by the poet and scholar Svayambhudeva, who lived in south India around the beginning of the tenth century. Like the epic tradition on which it is based, The Life of Padma narrates Prince Rama's exile, his search for his wife Sita after her abduction by King Ravana of Lanka, and the restoration of his kingship. The second volume recounts Rama's exile with Sita and his brother Lakshmana. The three visit various cities--rather than ashrams, as in most versions; celebrate Lakshmana's marriages; and come upon a new city built in Rama's honor. In Dandaka Forest, they encounter sages who are masters of Jain doctrine. Then, the discovery of Sita's disappearance sets the stage for war with Ravana. Eva De Clercq's The Life of Padma (Harvard UP, 2023) is the first direct translation into English of the oldest extant Apabhramsha work, accompanied by a corrected text, in the Devanagari script, of Harivallabh C. Bhayani's critical edition. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

The Life of Padma, or the Paümacariu, is a richly expressive Jain retelling in the Apabhramsha language of the famous Ramayana tale. It was written by the poet and scholar Svayambhudeva, who lived in south India around the beginning of the tenth century. Like the epic tradition on which it is based, The Life of Padma narrates Prince Rama's exile, his search for his wife Sita after her abduction by King Ravana of Lanka, and the restoration of his kingship. The second volume recounts Rama's exile with Sita and his brother Lakshmana. The three visit various cities--rather than ashrams, as in most versions; celebrate Lakshmana's marriages; and come upon a new city built in Rama's honor. In Dandaka Forest, they encounter sages who are masters of Jain doctrine. Then, the discovery of Sita's disappearance sets the stage for war with Ravana. Eva De Clercq's The Life of Padma (Harvard UP, 2023) is the first direct translation into English of the oldest extant Apabhramsha work, accompanied by a corrected text, in the Devanagari script, of Harivallabh C. Bhayani's critical edition. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

The Life of Padma, or the Paümacariu, is a richly expressive Jain retelling in the Apabhramsha language of the famous Ramayana tale. It was written by the poet and scholar Svayambhudeva, who lived in south India around the beginning of the tenth century. Like the epic tradition on which it is based, The Life of Padma narrates Prince Rama's exile, his search for his wife Sita after her abduction by King Ravana of Lanka, and the restoration of his kingship. The second volume recounts Rama's exile with Sita and his brother Lakshmana. The three visit various cities--rather than ashrams, as in most versions; celebrate Lakshmana's marriages; and come upon a new city built in Rama's honor. In Dandaka Forest, they encounter sages who are masters of Jain doctrine. Then, the discovery of Sita's disappearance sets the stage for war with Ravana. Eva De Clercq's The Life of Padma (Harvard UP, 2023) is the first direct translation into English of the oldest extant Apabhramsha work, accompanied by a corrected text, in the Devanagari script, of Harivallabh C. Bhayani's critical edition. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/south-asian-studies

The Life of Padma, or the Paümacariu, is a richly expressive Jain retelling in the Apabhramsha language of the famous Ramayana tale. It was written by the poet and scholar Svayambhudeva, who lived in south India around the beginning of the tenth century. Like the epic tradition on which it is based, The Life of Padma narrates Prince Rama's exile, his search for his wife Sita after her abduction by King Ravana of Lanka, and the restoration of his kingship. The second volume recounts Rama's exile with Sita and his brother Lakshmana. The three visit various cities--rather than ashrams, as in most versions; celebrate Lakshmana's marriages; and come upon a new city built in Rama's honor. In Dandaka Forest, they encounter sages who are masters of Jain doctrine. Then, the discovery of Sita's disappearance sets the stage for war with Ravana. Eva De Clercq's The Life of Padma (Harvard UP, 2023) is the first direct translation into English of the oldest extant Apabhramsha work, accompanied by a corrected text, in the Devanagari script, of Harivallabh C. Bhayani's critical edition. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, we'll help you understand the #Bollywoodsong # tum itna jo muskura rahe ho तुम इतना जो मुस्कुरा रहे हो, which is sung & composed by # Jagjit Singh of #Bollywoodmovie # Arth. And we'll help you understand its lyrics. And you will also learn how to translate and use the verb ‘to smile', and how to translate the sentences like -‘Why are you smiling? and ‘What is she smiling at?', into Hindi. And you can participate in a role-play, as well. You could download the transcript of the episode and lyrics in Devanagari & Roman with the English translation, after becoming a patron on patreon.com/learnhindionthego or https://www.patreon.com/allaboutindiapodcast  . Kindly join our Hindi Leaners' community on Facebook & give feedbacks, suggest new songs - link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/%20learnhindionthegohindilearnerscommunity or https://www.facebook.com/groups/allaboutindiastoryloverscommunity To take a free trial for online Hindi lessons visit: https://learnhindischool.com Links to the song- https://open.spotify.com/track/2PvvYwO6GpWYUV1N3gyPQO?autoplay=true https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=PSn9mLj1Z7k https://wynk.in/music/song/tum-itna-jo-muskura-rahe-ho/sa_INH109632450?autoplay=true https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8eAKT-zQXk Find out more at https://learn-hindi-on-the-go.pinecast.co This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

In this episode, we'll help you understand the #Bollywoodsong # chand chupa badal men चाँद छुपा बादल में, which is sung by # Alka Yagnik and Udit Narayan of #Bollywoodmovie # ham dil de chuke sanam. And we'll help you understand its lyrics. And you will also learn how to translate and use the verb ‘to hide', and how to translate the sentences like -‘Where are you hiding?' into Hindi. And you can participate in a role-play, as well.       You could download the transcript of the episode and lyrics in Devanagari & Roman with the English translation, after becoming a patron on patreon.com/learnhindionthego or https://www.patreon.com/allaboutindiapodcast  . Kindly join our Hindi Leaners' community on Facebook & give feedbacks, suggest new songs - link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/%20learnhindionthegohindilearnerscommunity or https://www.facebook.com/groups/allaboutindiastoryloverscommunity To take a free trial for online Hindi lessons visit: https://learnhindischool.com links to the song - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2knQOXevwKE https://open.spotify.com/track/6LVYBlYJ4pezcfk7V8Tttk?autoplay=true https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=JkLwI5A8BzM https://music.apple.com/in/album/chand-chhupa-badal-mein-from-hum-dil-de-chuke sanam/1233349920?i=1233350315 https://wynk.in/music/song/chand-chhupa-badal-mein/hu_346029?autoplay=true Find out more at https://learn-hindi-on-the-go.pinecast.co This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

In this episode, we'll help you understand the #Bollywoodsong # Kabhi Jo Baadal Barse कभी जो बादल बरसे, which is sung by # Arijit Singh of  #Bollywoodmovie # Jackpot (2013). And we'll help you understand its lyrics. And you will also learn how to translate and use the verb ‘to seem', and how to say ‘How do you find this thing?' and ‘I don't find it very cheap.' in Hindi. And there will be an interactive a role-play quiz, as well.       You could download the transcript of the episode and lyrics in Devanagari & Roman with the English translation, after becoming a patron on patreon.com/learnhindionthego or https://www.patreon.com/allaboutindiapodcast  . Kindly join our Hindi Leaners' community on Facebook & give feedbacks, suggest new songs - link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/%20learnhindionthegohindilearnerscommunity or https://www.facebook.com/groups/allaboutindiastoryloverscommunity To take a free trial for online Hindi lessons visit: https://learnhindischool.com Links to the song -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RazuWp5kSHk   https://music.apple.com/in/album/kabhi-jo-baadal-barse-from-jackpot/1259924946?i=1259925083   https://wynk.in/music/song/kabhi-jo-baadal-barse/hu_2191277?autoplay=true https://www.jiosaavn.com/song/kabhi-jo-baadal-barse/R0VTAQFkBVE Find out more at https://learn-hindi-on-the-go.pinecast.co This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

Soundaryalahari. śivaḥ śaktyā yuktō yadi bhavati śaktaḥ prabhavituṃ na chēdēvaṃ dēvō na khalu kuśalaḥ spanditumapi. atastvāmāmārādhyāṃ hariharaviriñchādibhirapi praṇantuṃ stōtuṃ vā kathamakṛtapuṇyaḥ prabhavati ॥ 1 ॥ tanīyāṃsaṃ pāṃsuṃ tava charaṇapaṅkēruhabhavaṃ viriñchissañchinvan virachayati lōkānavikalam. vahatyēnaṃ śauriḥ kathamapi sahasrēṇa śirasāṃ harassaṅkṣudyainaṃ bhajati bhasitōddhūlanavidhim ॥ 2 . avidyānāmanta-stimira-mihiradvīpanagarī jaḍānāṃ chaitanya-stabaka-makaranda-srutijharī. daridrāṇāṃ chintāmaṇiguṇanikā janmajaladhau nimagnānāṃ daṃṣṭrā muraripu-varāhasya bhavati ॥ 3 ॥ tvadanyaḥ pāṇibhyāmabhayavaradō daivatagaṇaḥ tvamēkā naivāsi prakaṭitavarābhītyabhinayā. bhayāt trātuṃ dātuṃ phalamapi cha vāñChāsamadhikaṃ śaraṇyē lōkānāṃ tava hi charaṇāvēva nipuṇau ॥ 4 ॥ haristvāmārādhya praṇatajanasaubhāgyajananīṃ purā nārī bhūtvā puraripumapi kṣōbhamanayat. smarō'pi tvāṃ natvā ratinayanalēhyēna vapuṣā munīnāmapyantaḥ prabhavati hi mōhāya mahatām ॥ 5 ॥ dhanuḥ pauṣpaṃ maurvī madhukaramayī pañcha viśikhāḥ vasantaḥ sāmantō malayamarudāyōdhanarathaḥ. tathāpyēkaḥ sarvaṃ himagirisutē kāmapi kṛpām apāṅgāttē labdhvā jagadida-manaṅgō vijayatē ॥ 6 ॥ kvaṇatkāñchīdāmā karikalabhakumbhastananātā parikṣīṇā madhyē pariṇataśarachchandravadanā. dhanurbāṇān pāśaṃ sṛṇimapi dadhānā karatalaiḥ purastādāstāṃ naḥ puramathiturāhōpuruṣikā ॥ 7 ॥ sudhāsindhōrmadhyē suraviṭapivāṭīparivṛtē maṇidvīpē nīpōpavanavati chintāmaṇigṛhē. śivākārē mañchē paramaśivaparyaṅkanilayāṃ bhajanti tvāṃ dhanyāḥ katichana chidānandalaharīm ॥ 8 ॥ mahīṃ mūlādhārē kamapi maṇipūrē hutavahaṃ sthitaṃ svādhiṣṭhānē hṛdi marutamākāśamupari. manō'pi bhrūmadhyē sakalamapi bhitvā kulapathaṃ sahasrārē padmē saha rahasi patyā viharasē ॥ 9 ॥ sudhādhārāsāraiścharaṇayugalāntarvigalitaiḥ prapañchaṃ siñchantī punarapi rasāmnāyamahasaḥ. avāpya svāṃ bhūmiṃ bhujaganibhamadhyusṭavalayaṃ svamātmānaṃ kṛtvā svapiṣi kulakuṇḍē kuhariṇi ॥ 10 ॥ chaturbhiḥ śrīkaṇṭhaiḥ śivayuvatibhiḥ pañchabhirapi prabhinnābhiḥ śambhōrnavabhirapi mūlaprakṛtibhiḥ. chatuśchatvāriṃśadvasudalakālāśratrivalaya- trirēkhābhiḥ sārdhaṃ tava śaraṇakōṇāḥ pariṇatāḥ ॥ 11 ॥ tvadīyaṃ saundaryaṃ tuhinagirikanyē tulayituṃ kavīndrāḥ kalpantē kathamapi viriñchiprabhṛtayaḥ. yadālōkatsukyādamaralalanā yānti manasā tapōbhirduṣprāpāmapi giriśasāyujyapadavim ॥ 12 ॥ naraṃ varṣīyāṃsaṃ nayanavirasaṃ narmasu jaḍaṃ tavāpāṅgālōkē patitamanudhāvanti śataśaḥ. galadvēṇībandhāḥ kuchakalaśavisrastasichayā haṭhāt truṭyatkāñchyō vigalitadukūlā yuvatayaḥ ॥ 13 ॥ kṣitau ṣaṭpañchāśad dvisamadhikapañchāśadudakē hutāśē dvāṣaṣṭiśchaturadhikapañchāśadanilē. divi dviṣṣaṭtriṃśanmanasi cha chatuṣṣaṣṭiriti yē mayūkhāstēṣāmapyupari tava pādāmbujayugam ॥ 14 ॥ You may use this link to get the Text in Devanagari , Regional languages of India and English. https://vignanam.org/english/soundarya-lahari.html --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/ramanispodcast/message

Movie: Dum Laga Ke Haisha (2015) ,Singer : Monali Thakur, Lyrics: Varun Grover     Composer:  Anu Malik ;  Music Label: YRF Music In this episode, we'll help you understand the #Bollywoodsong # ye moh moh ke dhaage  ये मोह मोह के धागे, which is sung by # Monali Thakur of  #Bollywoodmovie # Dum Laga Ke Haisha. And we'll help you understand its lyrics. In this episode, we're going to break this song down and you will learn how to translate and use the verb ‘to become complicated', and ‘to be solved' in Hindi. And you'll also learn how to say ‘The matter has become too complicated.' and ‘How will the matter be resolved?' ,in Hindi.  And if you stay till the end, there will be an interactive a role-play quiz, as well. If you want the transcript of the episode and lyrics in Devanagari & Roman with the English translation, please consider becoming a patron on patreon.com/learnhindionthego or https://www.patreon.com/allaboutindiapodcast  by making a small monthly donation. You could also join our Hindi Leaners' community on Facebook, in which Hindi learners help each other in learning Hindi, share learning and travel tips, give feedbacks, suggest new songs - link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/%20learnhindionthegohindilearnerscommunity or https://www.facebook.com/groups/allaboutindiastoryloverscommunity To take a free trial for online Hindi lessons visit: https://learnhindischool.com links to the song- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbDktrsnH40 https://www.jiosaavn.com/song/moh-moh-ke-dhaage-female/BTscSxZpX1Q https://music.apple.com/in/album/moh-moh-ke-dhaage-female-version/965766588?i=965766879 https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=Lzuoe8PtzIs https://gaana.com/song/moh-moh-ke-dhaage-female Find out more at https://learn-hindi-on-the-go.pinecast.co This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

Singer : Ankit Tiwari  Lyrics- Sandepp Nath ;Composer -Ankit Tiwari   ; Music Label- T-Series In this episode, we'll help you understand the #Bollywoodsong # sunn rahā hai  सुन रहा है, which is sung by # Ankit Tiwari of  #Bollywoodmovie # Aashiqui 2. And we'll help you understand its lyrics. In this episode, we're going to break this song down and you will learn how to translate and use the verb ‘to cry' , in Hindi.  And you'll also learn how to say ‘‘Why is the child crying?' and ‘I am not crying. ' in Hindi.  And if you stay till the end, there will be an interactive a role-play quiz, as well. This series will help you to understand and fully enjoy #Bollywoodmusic and #learnHindi through #Bollywoodmusic. If you want the transcript of the episode and lyrics in Devanagari & Roman with the English translation, please consider becoming a patron on patreon.com/learnhindionthego by making a small monthly donation. You could also join our Hindi Leaners' community on Facebook, in which Hindi learners help each other in learning Hindi, share learning and travel tips, give feedbacks, suggest new songs - link: www.facebook.com/groups/learnhindionthegocommunity/ To take a free trial for online Hindi lessons visit: https://learnhindischool.com Links to the song-  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHRrZ5DQCV4 https://www.jiosaavn.com/song/sunn-raha-hai-male/FlAGZA17XFo https://open.spotify.com/track/5PvwPy5eRO8BPwpRzCHK3D?autoplay=true https://music.apple.com/in/album/sunn-raha-hai-reloaded/1111849740?i=1111849966 Find out more at https://learn-hindi-on-the-go.pinecast.co This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

Movie: Love Aaj Kal 2                                                     Singer : Arijit Singh Lyrics: Irshad Kamil              Music: Pritam          Music Label: Sony Music India In this episode, we'll help you understand the #Bollywoodsong # shāyad jo tum nā ho rahéñgé ham nahiñ शायद जो तुम ना हो, रहेंगे हम नहीं, which is sung by # Arijit Singh of  #Bollywoodmovie # Love Aaj Kal. And we'll help you understand its lyrics. In this episode, we're going to break this song down and you will learn how to translate and use the ‘to be missing' and the phrase ‘I think' in Hindi.  And you'll also learn how to say ‘My luggage has been missing.' and ‘I think, you should help her.'  in Hindi.  And if you stay till the end, there will be an interactive a role-play quiz, as well. This series will help you to understand and fully enjoy #Bollywoodmusic and #learnHindi through #Bollywoodmusic. If you want the transcript of the episode and lyrics in Devanagari & Roman with the English translation, please consider becoming a patron on patreon.com/learnhindionthego by making a small monthly donation. You could also join our Hindi Leaners' community on Facebook, in which Hindi learners help each other in learning Hindi, share learning and travel tips, give feedbacks, suggest new songs - link: www.facebook.com/groups/learnhindionthegocommunity/ To take a free trial for online Hindi lessons visit: https://learnhindischool.com Links to the song- https://open.spotify.com/track/018eOid2aGaPdxon7T6GsC?autoplay=true https://music.apple.com/in/album/shayad/1499107781?i=1499107789 https://gaana.com/song/shayad-from-love-aaj-kal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJyKN-8UncM Find out more at https://learn-hindi-on-the-go.pinecast.co This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

Movie: Pardes                                                                           Singers: Kumar Sanu Lyrics: Anand Bakshi              Music: Nadeem-Shravan       Music Label: Zee Music Company In this episode, we'll help you understand the #Bollywoodsong # do dil mil rahe hain दो दिल मिल रहे हैं, which is sung by # Kumar Sanu of  #Bollywoodmovie # Pardes. And we'll help you understand its lyrics. In this episode, we're going to break this song down and you will learn how to translate and use the verbs ‘someone to come to know about something' and ‘to know something' in Hindi. And you'll also learn how to say ‘How did you come to know this? ' and ‘ Do you know his phone number?' in Hindi. And if you stay till the end, there will be an interactive a role-play quiz, as well. This series will help you to understand and fully enjoy #Bollywoodmusic and #learnHindi through #Bollywoodmusic. If you want the transcript of the episode and lyrics in Devanagari & Roman with the English translation, please consider becoming a patron on patreon.com/learnhindionthego by making a small monthly donation. You could also join our Hindi Leaners' community on Facebook, in which Hindi learners help each other in learning Hindi, share learning and travel tips, give feedbacks, suggest new songs - link: www.facebook.com/groups/learnhindionthegocommunity/ To take a free trial for online Hindi lessons visit: https://learnhindischool.com Links to the song- Links to the song : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmJW33derRY https://www.jiosaavn.com/lyrics/do-dil-mil-rahe-hai-from-pardes-lyrics/FFk9AhtCVmQ https://wynk.in/music/song/do-dil-mil-rahe-hain/sm_A10328E0003824827X https://open.spotify.com/track/7qzsNpJvOR8attSueN3zqq?autoplay=true Find out more at https://learn-hindi-on-the-go.pinecast.co This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

In today's episode we are concluding our reply to @the__weird_1 regarding how to read the scriptures and approach them with purity of the mind and as to why in ISKCON we write "Krishna" instead of "Krsna", meaning as English transliteration of Sanskrit, all foreign languages have to resort to transliteration due to lack of knowing the language of Sanskrit and Devanagari. And sure enough it looks imperfect, but we are a work in progress. Also in the last question of the episode I speak about how devotees find content, "something to post" by being Nimitta Matram, simply an instrument.

Movie: Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania  Singers: Arijit Singh, Shreya Ghoshal Lyrics: Ahmad Anees, Kumaar     ;   Music: Jawad Ahmed ;  Music Label: Sony Music India In this episode, we'll help you understand the #Bollywoodsong # maiñ tainu samjhava kī  मैं तैनु समझावां की which is sung by # Arijit Singh # Shreya Ghoshal of  #Bollywoodmovie # Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania. And we'll help you understand its lyrics. In this episode, we're going to break this song down and you will learn how to translate and use the verbs ‘to explain', and ‘to understand' in Hindi. And you'll also learn how to say ‘Do you understand English? ' and ‘Will you please, explain him what I say?' in Hindi.  And if you stay till the end, there will be an interactive a role-play quiz, as well. This series will help you to understand and fully enjoy #Bollywoodmusic and #learnHindi through #Bollywoodmusic. If you want the transcript of the episode and lyrics in Devanagari & Roman with the English translation, please consider becoming a patron on patreon.com/learnhindionthego by making a small monthly donation. You could also join our Hindi Leaners' community on Facebook, in which Hindi learners help each other in learning Hindi, share learning and travel tips, give feedbacks, suggest new songs - link: www.facebook.com/groups/learnhindionthegocommunity/ To take a free trial for online Hindi lessons visit: https://learnhindischool.com Links to the song- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2f7MZaw3Yo https://open.spotify.com/track/78C0GLBBWOlTOGyLWS0a94?autoplay=true https://wynk.in/music/song/home/hu_25636688?autoplay=true Find out more at https://learn-hindi-on-the-go.pinecast.co This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

https://music.apple.com/in/album/main-koi-aisa-geet-gaoon/1130320599?i=1130320632 Movie: Yess Boss (1997)   Singers: Abhijeet Lyrics: Javed Akhtar  Music: Jatin–Lalit    Label: Venus In this episode, we'll help you understand the #Bollywoodsong # maiñ koi aisā geet gāūñ which is sung by # Abhijeet of  #Bollywoodmovie # Yess Boss. And we'll help you understand its lyrics. In this episode, we're going to break this song down and you will learn how to translate and use ‘to decorate' in present simple tense. And you'll also learn how to say ‘Do you decorate your house on Christmas?' and ‘What are you doing now?' in Hindi. And if you stay till the end, there will be an interactive a role-play quiz, as well. This series will help you to understand and fully enjoy #Bollywoodmusic and #learnHindi through #Bollywoodmusic. If you want the transcript of the episode and lyrics in Devanagari & Roman with the English translation, please consider becoming a patron on patreon.com/learnhindionthego by making a small monthly donation. You could also join our Hindi Leaners' community on Facebook, in which Hindi learners help each other in learning Hindi, share learning and travel tips, give feedbacks, suggest new songs - link: www.facebook.com/groups/learnhindionthegocommunity/ To take a free trial for online Hindi lessons visit: https://learnhindischool.com Links to the song- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uxe_dAKjrM https://open.spotify.com/track/4hLShJ4RCa2KhqVHD7MRDn?autoplay=true https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=vDCnew2uhT4 Find out more at https://learn-hindi-on-the-go.pinecast.co This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

Movie: Kalañk  कलंक                                           Singer: Arijit Singh Music: Pritam      Lyrics: Amitabh Bhattacharya   Music Label: Zee Music Company In this episode, we'll help you understand the #Bollywoodsong # hazāroñ méñ kisī ko  which is sung by # Arijit Singh of  #Bollywoodmovie # Kalañk. And we'll help you understand its lyrics. In this episode, we're going to break this song down and you will learn how to translate and use ‘to live' in present continuous tense. And you'll also learn how to say ‘Are you living here alone?' and ‘Where are they living nowadays?' in Hindi. And if you stay till the end, there will be an interactive a role-play quiz, as well. This series will help you to understand and fully enjoy #Bollywoodmusic and #learnHindi through #Bollywoodmusic. If you want the transcript of the episode and lyrics in Devanagari & Roman with the English translation, please consider becoming a patron on patreon.com/learnhindionthego by making a small monthly donation. You could also join our Hindi Leaners' community on Facebook, in which Hindi learners help each other in learning Hindi, share learning and travel tips & give their feedbacks & suggest songs /topics for podcasts - link: www.facebook.com/groups/learnhindionthegocommunity/ To take a free trial for online Hindi lessons visit: https://learnhindischool.com The links to the song : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ih0u4Rlsxo8 https://open.spotify.com/track/6vo7Y1iWyZvpjvFbf6BiZ5?autoplay=true https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=if7X8G9c3t0&list=RDAMVMif7X8G9c3t0 https://music.apple.com/in/album/kalank-title-track/1529544725?i=1529544908 Find out more at https://learn-hindi-on-the-go.pinecast.co This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

The Maharashtra legislative assembly has approved a law which makes it mandatory for all shops and establishments to have Marathi written in the Devanagari script on their signboards. Tune in with RJ Rohini to know more!

A version of this essay was published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/requiem-for-a-japanese-statesman-who-loved-india-abe-shinzo-10896211.htmlAbe Shinzo will be remembered as Asia’s greatest 21st century statesman. He recognized early that the Indo-Pacific will (re)occupy center stage as it did throughout most of history, barring a brief Atlanticist interregnum. And then he did something about it, by proposing the Quad and the “free and open Indo-Pacific”. He realized that China would revert to imperialism, and would have to be contained.Abe-san understood that America would withdraw into its comfort zone (“Fortress America”) as its economic and military dominance diminished. It was up to Asians to defend themselves, and not depend on cross-Pacific partnerships. This may have driven his nationalist sentiments. Japan, with its proud history, could not forever be anybody’s junior partner. It would have to assert itself, and it could no longer be hobbled by the pacifist Article 9 imposed by the US, that prevented it from arming itself. All of this has come to pass, more or less. After Obama’s content-free “pivot to Asia”, Biden’s obsessions with Russia, Ukraine and AUKUS, and China’s consistent saber-rattling along its entire periphery, it is evident that the old “liberal, rules-based international order” with its Euro-American bias can no longer protect Asia’s democracies. A muscular Quad, or even an ‘Asian NATO’ is necessary.This is critical for India’s very survival, and Abe helped turn around Japan’s official attitude towards India. Even his grandfather, former Prime Minister Kishi Nobusuke, had been positive towards India, but Abe-san turned out to be a true friend. Under him, relations bloomed; and from a stance of anger at India’s Pokhran blasts, Japan has now become India’s most, and in fact only, trusted partner. This endeared Japan’s longest-serving PM, Abe-san, to many Indians. He believed in India, and it showed. So much so that some of us are in personal mourning. India has lost its best friend, and in a world where it has no friends, that is a tremendous loss: even after he resigned the PM position on health grounds, Abe-san continued to generate goodwill for Indo-Japanese partnerships. The last time the death of a foreign leader affected Indians so much was when John F Kennedy was assassinated in 1963.Prime Minister Modi put it well in a personal note, “My friend, Abe-san” https://www.narendramodi.in/my-friend-abe-san-563044. He also declared a day of national mourning. Among his greatest gifts to us and his most enduring legacy, and one for which the world will always be indebted, is his foresight in recognizing the changing tides and gathering storm of our time and his leadership in responding to it. Long before others, he, in his seminal speech to the Indian Parliament in 2007, laid the ground for the emergence of the Indo-Pacific region as a contemporary political, strategic and economic reality - a region that will also shape the world in this century.There is a starkly different, and possibly grossly unfair, characterization of Abe-san in the US media, as some kind of ultra-nationalist. The left-leaning NPR was positively churlish. But then this goes back to the Manichean/Abrahamic “with us or against us” dualism put about by US sources. They portray Japan as being particularly wicked, with Pearl Harbor as Original Sin, and the “Yellow Peril” as being particularly dangerous, deserving of the ultimate horror of the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.Remarkably enough, this was along the same lines as the vitriol from China.I can understand China being extraordinarily mean. That’s just par for the course. But an American outlet saying this is a little surprising, that too a public-sector, publicly-funded, non-commercial entity. Are there wheels within wheels?But wait, here’s more:Growing up in India, I too was subject to this negative barrage, but I had the advantage of reading Malayalam translations of Tanizaki, Kawabata and Lady Murasaki in my teenage days. I understood Japan as a unique but Dharmic civilization with integrity and codes of honor. Later, I read about Subhas Bose’s perspective on imperial Japan, and its support for the Indian National Army. Many years later, I went to Nair-san’s Indian restaurant on the Ginza in Tokyo: he had been Rash Behari Bose’s interpreter. The dichotomy of reactions persists. The Western-Chinese narrative against Japan was one of convenience; on the one hand, the Chinese realized that they just needed to shout “Rape of Nanjing”, and the Japanese would give them money to shut them up. On the other hand, the famous “liberal rules-based international order” (see my deconstruction thereof at ) consistently tried to keep Japan down as a low-caste vassal even when it was the world’s second largest economy.There was an enormous fuss about the fact that Abe-san visited the Yasukuni Shrine, the memorial to Japan’s war dead. I could never quite understand this. Every country is entitled to remember its warriors, and most do, with gratitude. Why is it that Japan, alone, was prohibited from doing so? In 2019, I visited the shrine myself. It is a stately, mournful, quiet place of introspection. It has a magnificent torii, a museum, and a shrine. It is pure gaslighting to claim this place is somehow loathsome.And it has a memorial to Justice Radhabinod Pal, the Indian jurist who was part of the War Crimes Tribunal post World War II. He was the only dissenting voice in what he more or less said was a kangaroo court. Its intention, from the victors’ point of view, was to extract revenge rather than to arrive at the truth about the war. If some Japanese military men were deemed war criminals, were William Calley of My Lai and Henry Kissinger who ordered the carpet-bombing of neutral Cambodia any less?It was an honor for me to stand before Justice Pal’s memorial. Many older Japanese are grateful to Justice Pal for what he did then; Abe-san, though he was born a few years after the trials, may have heard from his grandfather Kishi-san about it. There are several other connections to India. I used to visit Japan frequently on business in the 1990s, and I found a number of links old and new. Kabuki, for example, is rather similar to Kathakali in concept. Sanskrit is still chanted in Japan’s Buddhist temples, and they write it in the Siddham script that is extinct in India, but seen in temples in Japan.I found actual Devanagari written on the Peace Bell in Hiroshima: it is one of the sutras that constitute prayers for the dead. In Nara, where Abe-san was assassinated, there is the famous great bronze Buddha in the Todaiji temple. In the adjacent park, where a lot of tame deer roam, there is also a reproduction of the Ashoka Stambha, the Lion Capital of Sarnath, the emblem of the sovereign republic of Bharat/India.The links between India and Japan go back a long way, at least to Daruma, or Bodhi Dharma, the preceptor of the Zen school of Buddhism, who took kalari payat and Buddhist philosophy to the Shaolin monastery in China, around 500 CE. He was reputedly a Pallava prince, who embarked from Muziris or Kodungallur in Kerala. There is the famous Zen koan, “Why did Bodhi Dharma go east?”.Is that why Abe-san came west to India? To repay an ancient debt? Moksham praptirastu, Abe-san. You were a good man. We miss you. 1150 words, Jul 9, 2022 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

#MUSICINTHEAIR @Villahangar #PodcastShow THIS WEEK presents >> @devanagari-m-sica [EPISODE 200-69] #TRACKLIST 01. David Devanagari - La Copa del Pintor (Original Mix) / Roth Sounds 02. David Devanagari - Ocean (Original Mix) / Sonika Music 03. Mashti + Deep Dive + David Devanagari - Aruna Chandra (Original Mix) / Refeelable Records 04. Monsieur Le Dètrakè + David Devanagari - Vimanika Shastra (Original Mix) / Big Bada Boum 05. David Devanagari - Tlaneci (Original Mix) / Sonika Music 06. David Devanagari - AfroCaribe (Original Mix) / Unreleased 07. David Devanagari - Gandhi (Original Mix) / Roth Sounds 08. David Devanagari - Pulque con Hongos (Original Mix) / Sonika Music 09. David Devanagari + Kheertana Kunalan - Sacred Moon (Original Mix) / Sonika Music 10. David Devanagari - Salines (Original Mix) / Sonilka Music / Sonika Music 11. Delum + David Devanagari - Paradise Found (Original Mix) / Lump Records
 Site -> www.villahangar.com FB -> www.facebook.com/villahangar TT -> www.twitter.com/Villahangar

01. David Devanagari - La Copa del Pintor ( Original Mix ) / Roth Sounds 2021 
02. David Devanagari - Ocean ( Original Mix ) / Sonika Music 2018 03. Mashti + Deep Dive + David Devanagari - Aruna Chandra ( Original Mix ) / Refeelable Records 2019 
04. Monsieur Le Dètrakè + David Devanagari -Vimanika Shastra ( Original Mix ) / Big Bada Boum 2020 05. David Devanagari - Tlaneci ( Original Mix ) / Sonika Music 2018
 06. David Devanagari - AfroCaribe ( Original Mix ) / Unreleased 2022
 07. David Devanagari - Gandhi ( Original Mix ) / Roth Sounds 2021
 08. David Devanagari - Pulque con Hongos ( Original Mix ) / Sonika Music 2018
 09. David Devanagari + Kheertana Kunalan - Sacred Moon ( Original Mix ) / Sonika Music 2018 10. David Devanagari - Salines ( Original Mix ) / Sonilka Music / Sonika Music 
11. Delum + David Devanagari - Paradise Found ( Original Mix ) / Lump RecordsMusic in the Air is an incredible travel into house, deep house and nu-disco sound selected by Villahangar' s Djs, Download

Music: Mithoon      Lyrics: Manoj Muntashir   Music Label: Zee Music Company In this episode, we'll help you understand the #Bollywoodsong # maiñ phir bhī tum ko chāhuñgā which is sung by # Arijit Singh & Shashaa Tirupati of  #Bollywoodmovie # half girlfriend. And we'll help you understand its lyrics.  We'll also break the song down and we'll explain how to translate and use ‘to be separated' and ‘to see someone'.  And you'll also learn how to say ‘When did you get separated? and When did you see  someone for the first time?' in Hindi. And if you stay till the end, there will be an interactive a role-play quiz, as well. This series will help you to understand and fully enjoy #Bollywoodmusic and #learnHindi through #Bollywoodmusic. If you want the transcript of the episode and lyrics in Devanagari & Roman with the English translation, please consider becoming a patron on patreon.com/learnhindionthego by making a small monthly donation. You could also join our Hindi Leaners' community on Facebook, in which Hindi learners help each other in learning Hindi, share learning and travel tips & give their feedbacks & suggest songs /topics for podcasts - link: www.facebook.com/groups/learnhindionthegocommunity/ To take a free trial for online Hindi lessons visit: https://learnhindischool.com The links to the song : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iktURk0X-A https://music.youtube.com/browse/FEmusic_language_selection https://www.jiosaavn.com/song/phir-bhi-tumko-chaahunga/OQQJQBJ4fGc https://wynk.in/music/song/phir-bhi-tumko-chaahunga/lyrics/zm_ZMC00493-02 https://open.spotify.com/track/35P2Xal9x3GAdOHytyEUFe   Find out more at https://learn-hindi-on-the-go.pinecast.co This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

Die Sprache der Götter - für die Yogis ist sie die Stimme des gesamten Kosmos und seit tausenden von Jahren DIE Geräuschkulisse, DIE Klangwelt, die die Indischen Religionen, Philosophien, Kulturen und der Gesellschaft gestaltet hat. Und nicht nur in Indien sondern weltweit in der Yogakultur!

आज Sahiba Khan बात करेंगी कल हुए Ajay Devgan और Kiccha Sudeep के Twitter war की। दोनों अभिनेता लड़ गए क्योंकि एक ने कहा कि Hindi राष्ट्रभाषा है तो दूजे ने पूछा कि अगर किसी को Hindi नहीं आती तो क्या वो भारतीय नहीं?   Introduction 0.09 - 1.54   जान-गण-मॉं दुनिया का best national anthem नहीं है, जी हाँ UN ने ये कभी नहीं बोला है  Narendra Modi दुनिया के  best PM नहीं हैं, ye bhi UN ने नहीं बोला है आम भारत के राष्ट्रीय फल नहीं है Hockey हमारा राष्ट्रीय खेल नहीं है, और न ही Cricket है और इसलिए कई लोगों को ग़लतफहमी है कि Hindi हमारी राष्ट्रभाषा है। मगर नहीं है   नमस्कार अदब सत्श्रीअकाल,   मैं हूँ आपकी अपनी host Sahiba Khan और आप सुन रहे हैं ABP Live Podcasts का शो FYI जहाँ हम बातें करते हैं दुनिया-भर की और देते हैं बिन-मांगा मगर ज़रूरी ज्ञान। हाँ तो आप सोच रहे होंगे कि ये शुरुआत में मैंने क्या कुछ भी बोला है। जी मैंने आपके दिमाग में हमारे देश से संबंधित जो मिथक थे, उनका भांडा फोड़ा है। हम में से कई ऐसे पढ़े-लिखे होंगे जो इन सभी बातों में से किसी न किसी बात को तो सच मानते हो होंगे। नहीं, गलती आपकी या मेरी नहीं बल्कि Fake News और Whatsapp पर चल रही बिन डिग्री की की University की है। आज हम इन मिथकों के बारे में इसलिए बात कर रहे हैं क्योंकि कल ही Twitter पर Ajay Devgan और Kiccha Sudeep की  हिंदी भाषा के मुद्दे पर बड़ी गहमगहमी हो गई और दोनों ही public platfrom पर एक-दूसरे पर बरस पड़े।   Body: 1.55 -    इस मामले की शुरुआत एक इवेंट से हुई थी. जहां किच्चा सुदीप ने कहा था कि हिंदी अब राष्ट्रभाषा नहीं रही. बॉलीवुड अब पैन इंडिया फिल्म बना रहे हैं. वह फिल्मों को तमिल और तेलुगू में डब कर रहे मगर उनसे हो नहीं पा रहा है. हम ऐसी फिल्में बना रहे हैं जो हर जगह देखी जा रही हैं. किच्चा का ये बयान अजय देवगन को खटक गया और उन्होंने ट्वीट किया-किच्चा सुदीप मेरे भाई, आपके अनुसार अगर हिंदी हमारी राष्ट्रभाषा नहीं है तो आप अपनी मातृभाषा की फिल्मों को हिंदी में डब करके क्यों रिलीज़ करते हैं? हिंदी हमारी मातृभाषा और राष्ट्रभाषा थी, है और हमेशा रहेगी. जन गण मन."  तो ये तो था सुदीप और देवगन का twitter interaction. मगर Hindi को कई लोग आज भी राष्ट्रभाषा मानते हैं। ये तथ्य सरासर गलत है। हिंदी भारत की राष्ट्रभाषा नहीं है मगर हाँ, official यानी कि औपचारिक भाषा ज़रूर है। मगर संविधान का अनुच्छेद 343 कहता है कि  “The official language of the Union shall be Hindi in Devanagari script, यानी कि देश की औपचारिक भाषा Hindi होगी जो देवनागरी लिपि में लिखी जाएगी। संविधान के मुताबिक, अंग्रेज़ी और हिंदी, दोनों ही भारत की औपचारिक भाषाओँ में शुमार हैं यानी कि पूरा सरकारी काम, संसद की बातें इन्ही में होंगी। साथ ही साथ संविधान हमें ये भी बताता है कि हर राज्य यानी कि State को अपनी औपचारिक भाषा चुनने का पूरा हक़ है। आपको बताती चलूँ कि पुरे संविधान में कहीं पर भी किसी भी राष्ट्रभाषा का कोई ज़िक्र नहीं है।    PTI ने सन 2010 में report किया - गुजरात उच्च न्यायालय ने कहा था, "आम तौर पर, भारत में कई लोग हिंदी को राष्ट्रभाषा के रूप में देखते हैं और बहुत से लोग हिंदी बोलते भी हैं और देवनागरी लिपि में लिखते हैं, लेकिन अगर पिछले रिकॉर्ड चेक किये जाएँ तो उन में ऐसा कुछ भी नहीं है जिस से ये लगे कि इस पर कोई भी प्रावधान लागू किया गया है। हिंदी को देश की राष्ट्रभाषा घोषित करने के लिए किया गया है या आदेश जारी किया गया है   अब जब संविधान में भी इस पर कुछ नहीं है फिर भी इस पर आरसे से चला आ रहा है इस पर विवाद   Amit Shah ने कुछ यूँ हिंदी के बारे में बात की, सुनिए   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftVDF9hVZ4c&ab_channel=ABPNEWS 0.34 to 0.44   ये पहली बार नहीं है जब Amit Shah ने हिंदी को लेकर कोई विवादित बयान दिया हो। 2019 में भी उन्होंने हिंदी के बारे में कहा था की ये भाषा सबको एक करती है और इसे भारतीय पहचान का हिस्सा होना चाहिए। इस ट्वीट पर लोगों की काफी गर्म प्रतिक्रिया भी आयी थी। खासकर के दक्षिण भारत के लोग इस ट्वीट पर काफी गुस्साए क्योंकि उन्हें लगा कि हिंदी बोलने से ही क्या भारतीय होने की पहचान होती है।   आईये ये भी सुनते हैं कि 8 अप्रैल 2022 को RJD सांसद मनोज झा क्या कहते हैं हिंदी पर और BJP बंगाल के पूर्व राष्ट्रीय सचिव राहुल सिन्हा ने क्या जवाब दिया https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftVDF9hVZ4c&ab_channel=ABPNEWS इन बातों को सुन कर सवाल यही पैदा होता है कि जिन्हें हिंदी नहीं आती, वो क्या देश का हिस्सा नहीं? सवाल लज़्मी है। कई राज्यों में कई लोगों को हिंदी थोड़ी-ही आती है या अति ही नहीं। तो क्या वो भारतीय नहीं?   इसी पर एक और विवाद भी हुआ।    राष्ट्रीय शिक्षा नीति के ड्राफ्ट में अनिवार्य हिंदी शिक्षा का सुझाव दिया गया   2019 में केंद्र सरकार द्वारा आगे की गई राष्ट्रीय शिक्षा नीति के एक ड्राफ्ट में यह provision डाला गया था कि पूरे देश में अनिवार्य रूप से हिंदी सिखाई जानी चाहिए।   जहाँ तमिलनाडु के कद्दावर नेता Stalin ने हिंदी की धौंस और दबदबे का विरोध किया, वहीँ  पश्चिम बंगाल की मुख्यमंत्री Mamata Banerjee ने कहा कि - “आप सब कुछ control नहीं कर सकते। हर राज्य का एक अलग तौर-तरीका है और अलग भाषा है। हमें हर क्षेत्रीय भाषा का सम्मान करना चाहिए। मगर पहले मातृभाषा और फिर कोई और भाषा।    तब जा कर के draft में कुछ सुधार किये गए।    अब PM नरेंद्र मोदी का हिंदी के लिए प्रेम भी किसी से छुपा नहीं है। एक मर्तबा 2014 में नरेंद्र मोदी ने ट्वीट किया जिसमें इंग्लिश की बजाए हिंदी को ज़्यादा तवज्जो देने की बात कह गए। बाकायदा एक आर्डर भी पास हुआ था। उस समय तमिलनाडु की सबसे बड़ी नेता Jaylalitha ने मोदी जी को एक विनम्र पात्र लिखते हुए चेताया भी था कि इस आर्डर से तमिलनाडु के लोग आहत हुए हैं क्योंकि उन्हें अपने इतिहास और अपनी भाषा - तमिल भाषा पर - बहुत गर्व है।   चलिए अब तथ्यों पर भी आते हैं  पहली बात तो ये कि 2011 का census उठा कर देखेंगे तो पता लगेगा कि भारत में 56% लोगों की मातृभाषा हिंदी है ही नहीं है। जी हाँ सही सुने हैं - 2011 के census की बात करें तो भारत में करीब 52 करोड़ लगों की मातृभाषा हिंदी है। हाँ ये बात सही है कि हिंदी सबसे ज्यादा बोली जाती है भारत में लेकिन वो सिर्फ ऊपरी हिस्सों में। भारत के बाकी हिस्सों में हिंदी बहुत कम ही बोली जाती है। इसी census  में ये भी पता लगा कि भारत में करीब 270  अलग-अलग मातृभाषाएं हैं। तो जिस देश में इतनी ख़ूबसूरती और विविधता है कि देश-भर में 250 से ऊपर मातृभाषाएं हैं, वहां एक भाषा को राष्ट्रभाषा का ताज पेहेनना तो बेईमानी होगी। और जब आधे से ज़्यादा देश हिंदी को मातृभाषा नहीं मानता तो क्या फायदा ज़बरदस्ती एक भाषा को किसी पर मढ़ने की। कई बार लोग समझते नहीं है मगर बड़ी-बड़ी जंगें छिड़ गई हैं केवल भाषा और सभ्यता के चक्कर में। Bangladesh बटवारा इसका जीता जागता सबूत है।    Conclusion: 10.51 - 11.55 भाषा एक ऐसी कड़ी है जो इंसान को इंसान से जोड़ती है। कोई भी एक पल में आकर किसी को नहीं बोल सकता कि ये भाषा सही है या ये सही है। भाषा वो सही है जो आपको सामने वाले तक अपनी बात कहने दे, आसानी से। यही भाषा का काम है। इंसानी सभ्यतों का पुल बनना। Host, Producer: @jhansiserani Sound designer : Lalit

आज Sahiba Khan बात करेंगी कल हुए Ajay Devgan और Kiccha Sudeep के Twitter war की। दोनों अभिनेता लड़ गए क्योंकि एक ने कहा कि Hindi राष्ट्रभाषा है तो दूजे ने पूछा कि अगर किसी को Hindi नहीं आती तो क्या वो भारतीय नहीं?   Introduction 0.09 - 1.54   जान-गण-मॉं दुनिया का best national anthem नहीं है, जी हाँ UN ने ये कभी नहीं बोला है  Narendra Modi दुनिया के  best PM नहीं हैं, ye bhi UN ने नहीं बोला है आम भारत के राष्ट्रीय फल नहीं है Hockey हमारा राष्ट्रीय खेल नहीं है, और न ही Cricket है और इसलिए कई लोगों को ग़लतफहमी है कि Hindi हमारी राष्ट्रभाषा है। मगर नहीं है   नमस्कार अदब सत्श्रीअकाल,   मैं हूँ आपकी अपनी host Sahiba Khan और आप सुन रहे हैं ABP Live Podcasts का शो FYI जहाँ हम बातें करते हैं दुनिया-भर की और देते हैं बिन-मांगा मगर ज़रूरी ज्ञान। हाँ तो आप सोच रहे होंगे कि ये शुरुआत में मैंने क्या कुछ भी बोला है। जी मैंने आपके दिमाग में हमारे देश से संबंधित जो मिथक थे, उनका भांडा फोड़ा है। हम में से कई ऐसे पढ़े-लिखे होंगे जो इन सभी बातों में से किसी न किसी बात को तो सच मानते हो होंगे। नहीं, गलती आपकी या मेरी नहीं बल्कि Fake News और Whatsapp पर चल रही बिन डिग्री की की University की है। आज हम इन मिथकों के बारे में इसलिए बात कर रहे हैं क्योंकि कल ही Twitter पर Ajay Devgan और Kiccha Sudeep की  हिंदी भाषा के मुद्दे पर बड़ी गहमगहमी हो गई और दोनों ही public platfrom पर एक-दूसरे पर बरस पड़े।   Body: 1.55 -    इस मामले की शुरुआत एक इवेंट से हुई थी. जहां किच्चा सुदीप ने कहा था कि हिंदी अब राष्ट्रभाषा नहीं रही. बॉलीवुड अब पैन इंडिया फिल्म बना रहे हैं. वह फिल्मों को तमिल और तेलुगू में डब कर रहे मगर उनसे हो नहीं पा रहा है. हम ऐसी फिल्में बना रहे हैं जो हर जगह देखी जा रही हैं. किच्चा का ये बयान अजय देवगन को खटक गया और उन्होंने ट्वीट किया-किच्चा सुदीप मेरे भाई, आपके अनुसार अगर हिंदी हमारी राष्ट्रभाषा नहीं है तो आप अपनी मातृभाषा की फिल्मों को हिंदी में डब करके क्यों रिलीज़ करते हैं? हिंदी हमारी मातृभाषा और राष्ट्रभाषा थी, है और हमेशा रहेगी. जन गण मन."  तो ये तो था सुदीप और देवगन का twitter interaction. मगर Hindi को कई लोग आज भी राष्ट्रभाषा मानते हैं। ये तथ्य सरासर गलत है। हिंदी भारत की राष्ट्रभाषा नहीं है मगर हाँ, official यानी कि औपचारिक भाषा ज़रूर है। मगर संविधान का अनुच्छेद 343 कहता है कि  “The official language of the Union shall be Hindi in Devanagari script, यानी कि देश की औपचारिक भाषा Hindi होगी जो देवनागरी लिपि में लिखी जाएगी। संविधान के मुताबिक, अंग्रेज़ी और हिंदी, दोनों ही भारत की औपचारिक भाषाओँ में शुमार हैं यानी कि पूरा सरकारी काम, संसद की बातें इन्ही में होंगी। साथ ही साथ संविधान हमें ये भी बताता है कि हर राज्य यानी कि State को अपनी औपचारिक भाषा चुनने का पूरा हक़ है। आपको बताती चलूँ कि पुरे संविधान में कहीं पर भी किसी भी राष्ट्रभाषा का कोई ज़िक्र नहीं है।    PTI ने सन 2010 में report किया - गुजरात उच्च न्यायालय ने कहा था, "आम तौर पर, भारत में कई लोग हिंदी को राष्ट्रभाषा के रूप में देखते हैं और बहुत से लोग हिंदी बोलते भी हैं और देवनागरी लिपि में लिखते हैं, लेकिन अगर पिछले रिकॉर्ड चेक किये जाएँ तो उन में ऐसा कुछ भी नहीं है जिस से ये लगे कि इस पर कोई भी प्रावधान लागू किया गया है। हिंदी को देश की राष्ट्रभाषा घोषित करने के लिए किया गया है या आदेश जारी किया गया है   अब जब संविधान में भी इस पर कुछ नहीं है फिर भी इस पर आरसे से चला आ रहा है इस पर विवाद   Amit Shah ने कुछ यूँ हिंदी के बारे में बात की, सुनिए   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftVDF9hVZ4c&ab_channel=ABPNEWS 0.34 to 0.44   ये पहली बार नहीं है जब Amit Shah ने हिंदी को लेकर कोई विवादित बयान दिया हो। 2019 में भी उन्होंने हिंदी के बारे में कहा था की ये भाषा सबको एक करती है और इसे भारतीय पहचान का हिस्सा होना चाहिए। इस ट्वीट पर लोगों की काफी गर्म प्रतिक्रिया भी आयी थी। खासकर के दक्षिण भारत के लोग इस ट्वीट पर काफी गुस्साए क्योंकि उन्हें लगा कि हिंदी बोलने से ही क्या भारतीय होने की पहचान होती है।   आईये ये भी सुनते हैं कि 8 अप्रैल 2022 को RJD सांसद मनोज झा क्या कहते हैं हिंदी पर और BJP बंगाल के पूर्व राष्ट्रीय सचिव राहुल सिन्हा ने क्या जवाब दिया https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftVDF9hVZ4c&ab_channel=ABPNEWS इन बातों को सुन कर सवाल यही पैदा होता है कि जिन्हें हिंदी नहीं आती, वो क्या देश का हिस्सा नहीं? सवाल लज़्मी है। कई राज्यों में कई लोगों को हिंदी थोड़ी-ही आती है या अति ही नहीं। तो क्या वो भारतीय नहीं?   इसी पर एक और विवाद भी हुआ।    राष्ट्रीय शिक्षा नीति के ड्राफ्ट में अनिवार्य हिंदी शिक्षा का सुझाव दिया गया   2019 में केंद्र सरकार द्वारा आगे की गई राष्ट्रीय शिक्षा नीति के एक ड्राफ्ट में यह provision डाला गया था कि पूरे देश में अनिवार्य रूप से हिंदी सिखाई जानी चाहिए।   जहाँ तमिलनाडु के कद्दावर नेता Stalin ने हिंदी की धौंस और दबदबे का विरोध किया, वहीँ  पश्चिम बंगाल की मुख्यमंत्री Mamata Banerjee ने कहा कि - “आप सब कुछ control नहीं कर सकते। हर राज्य का एक अलग तौर-तरीका है और अलग भाषा है। हमें हर क्षेत्रीय भाषा का सम्मान करना चाहिए। मगर पहले मातृभाषा और फिर कोई और भाषा।    तब जा कर के draft में कुछ सुधार किये गए।    अब PM नरेंद्र मोदी का हिंदी के लिए प्रेम भी किसी से छुपा नहीं है। एक मर्तबा 2014 में नरेंद्र मोदी ने ट्वीट किया जिसमें इंग्लिश की बजाए हिंदी को ज़्यादा तवज्जो देने की बात कह गए। बाकायदा एक आर्डर भी पास हुआ था। उस समय तमिलनाडु की सबसे बड़ी नेता Jaylalitha ने मोदी जी को एक विनम्र पात्र लिखते हुए चेताया भी था कि इस आर्डर से तमिलनाडु के लोग आहत हुए हैं क्योंकि उन्हें अपने इतिहास और अपनी भाषा - तमिल भाषा पर - बहुत गर्व है।   चलिए अब तथ्यों पर भी आते हैं  पहली बात तो ये कि 2011 का census उठा कर देखेंगे तो पता लगेगा कि भारत में 56% लोगों की मातृभाषा हिंदी है ही नहीं है। जी हाँ सही सुने हैं - 2011 के census की बात करें तो भारत में करीब 52 करोड़ लगों की मातृभाषा हिंदी है। हाँ ये बात सही है कि हिंदी सबसे ज्यादा बोली जाती है भारत में लेकिन वो सिर्फ ऊपरी हिस्सों में। भारत के बाकी हिस्सों में हिंदी बहुत कम ही बोली जाती है। इसी census  में ये भी पता लगा कि भारत में करीब 270  अलग-अलग मातृभाषाएं हैं। तो जिस देश में इतनी ख़ूबसूरती और विविधता है कि देश-भर में 250 से ऊपर मातृभाषाएं हैं, वहां एक भाषा को राष्ट्रभाषा का ताज पेहेनना तो बेईमानी होगी। और जब आधे से ज़्यादा देश हिंदी को मातृभाषा नहीं मानता तो क्या फायदा ज़बरदस्ती एक भाषा को किसी पर मढ़ने की। कई बार लोग समझते नहीं है मगर बड़ी-बड़ी जंगें छिड़ गई हैं केवल भाषा और सभ्यता के चक्कर में। Bangladesh बटवारा इसका जीता जागता सबूत है।    Conclusion: 10.51 - 11.55 भाषा एक ऐसी कड़ी है जो इंसान को इंसान से जोड़ती है। कोई भी एक पल में आकर किसी को नहीं बोल सकता कि ये भाषा सही है या ये सही है। भाषा वो सही है जो आपको सामने वाले तक अपनी बात कहने दे, आसानी से। यही भाषा का काम है। इंसानी सभ्यतों का पुल बनना। Host, Producer: @jhansiserani Sound designer : Lalit

The BMC mandates that the names of all the shops and business establishments in Mumbai must be written in Marathi in the Devanagari script. Also stated that the Marathi language letters should be prominently displayed and larger than fonts of other languages that appear on the signboards. Tune in with HT's Sachin Kalbag and RJ Rohini to know more!

Movie: ae dil  hai mushkil (2016)             Singer: Arijit Singh             Music: Pritam Lyrics: Amitabh Bhattacharya                      Music Label: Sony Music India In this episode, we'll help you understand the #Bollywoodsong # ae dil  hai mushkil ऐ  दिल है मुश्किल which is sung by # Arijit Singh of  #Bollywoodmovie # ae dil  hai mushkil. And we'll help you understand its lyrics. We'll also break the song down and we'll explain how the verb ‘to ask a question' is translated into Hindi and how it's used. And you'll also learn how to say ‘Is the life easy here?' and ‘It's difficult to find a house in this city.' in Hindi. And if you stay till the end, there will be an interactive a role-play quiz, as well. This series will help you to understand and fully enjoy #Bollywoodmusic and #learnHindi through #Bollywoodmusic. If you want the transcript of the episode and lyrics in Devanagari & Roman with the English translation, please consider becoming a patron on patreon.com/learnhindionthego by making a small monthly donation. To help us improve the show, kindly give your feedback & suggest some topics on our Facebook page – https://www.facebook.com/learnhindionthego/  To take a free trial for online Hindi lessons visit: https://learnhindischool.com Links to the song:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUCM_0evdQY https://gaana.com/song/ae-dil-hai-mushkil https://open.spotify.com/album/5XfOSDomcrv4lDvlrxknlt https://www.jiosaavn.com/song/ae-dil-hai-mushkil-title-track/Cg0AdD0DeQU Find out more at https://learn-hindi-on-the-go.pinecast.co This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

This episode of Cine Ink Podcast Series Kitaab Kaulum features London-based Urdu poet, Hilal Fareed and his latest collection of Urdu poetry Pyar Ki Boli Bol (Speak The Language Of Love) in Devanagari script. An MS in Orthopaedic Surgery from Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College, AMU Aligarh, and a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, Hilal Fareed works as a Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon both in the NHS and in the Private Sector. In conversation with broadcaster Achala Sharma, he shares his passion of writing Urdu poetry and recites his latest Kalaam. Pyar Ki Boli Bol has been published by Vani Prakashan. His first collection of Poems Jab Diyon Ke Sar Uthe (When The Lamps Lightened Up), published in 2011, was received well both by Urdu and Hindi poetry lovers.With this episode of Kitaab Kaulum, we launch ‘Book Club', a new segment within the podcast, featuring our listeners and their favourite books. Delhi based photographer and short story writer, Prerna Jain talks about her all time favourite book, Arms and the Man, by George Bernard Shaw.

Movie : Kabir Singh             Singer: Sachet Tandon / Arijit Singh   ;Music label: T-Series Lyricist – Irshad Kamil    Music – Sachet and Parampara In this episode, we'll help you understand the #Bollywoodsong # békhyālī méñ bhī térā hī khyāl āyé बेखयाली में भी तेरा ही ख्याल आए  which is sung by # Arijit Singh & Sachet Tandon of  #Bollywoodmovie # Kabir Singh  . And we'll help you understand its lyrics. We'll also break the song down and we'll explain how the verb ‘to ask a question' is translated into Hindi and how it's used. And you'll also learn how to say ‘I ask him many questions' and ‘He asks difficult questions.' in Hindi.  And if you stay till the end of the episode you can hear a role-play and participate in it, as well. This series will help you to understand and fully enjoy #Bollywoodmusic and #learnHindi through #Bollywoodmusic. If you want the transcript of the episode and lyrics in Devanagari & Roman with the English translation, please consider becoming a patron on patreon.com/learnhindionthego by making a small monthly donation. To help us improve the show, kindly give your feedback & suggest some topics on our Facebook page – https://www.facebook.com/learnhindionthego/  To take a free trial for online Hindi lessons visit: https://learnhindischool.com Links to the song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOLKJJvfAbg https://wynk.in/music/song/bekhayali-from-kabir-singh/hu_52180057 https://gaana.com/song/bekhayali-1 https://open.spotify.com/album/5m5aIc0rrrPUMDARDnQzB9 Find out more at https://learn-hindi-on-the-go.pinecast.co This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

https://wynk.in/music/song/home/hu_33656094?autoplay=true Singer: Arijit Singh ; lyrics : Kausar Munir ; Bollywood movie: Youngistaan In this episode, we'll help you understand the #Bollywoodsong # suno nā sangémarmar kī yé mināréñ सुनो ना संगेमरमर की ये मीनारें which is sung by # Arijit Singh of  #Bollywoodmovie # Youngistaan. And we'll help you understand its lyrics.**** We'll also break the song down and we'll explain how the verb ‘to listen' is translated into Hindi and how it's used. And you'll also learn how to say ‘Do you listen to the podcast?'  and ‘I listen to Bollywood songs'. And if you stay till the end of the episode you can hear a role-play and participate in it, as well. This series will help you to understand and fully enjoy #Bollywoodmusic and #learnHindi through #Bollywoodmusic. If you want the transcript of the episode and lyrics in Devanagari & Roman with the English translation, please consider becoming a patron on patreon.com/learnhindionthego by making a small monthly donation. To help us improve the show, kindly give your feedback & suggest some topics on our Facebook page – https://www.facebook.com/learnhindionthego/  To take a free trial for online Hindi lessons visit: https://learnhindischool.com Links to the song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXh_8V7L1-Y https://open.spotify.com/track/0RrR3wg4ezBVwm7lyeybir?autoplay=true Find out more at https://learn-hindi-on-the-go.pinecast.co This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

Movie : dilwālé dulhaniyā lé jāyéñgé  दिलवाले दुल्हनिया ले जाएंगे , Music label: YRF In this episode, we'll help you understand the #Bollywoodsong # tujhé dékhā tō yé jānā sanam तुझे देखा तो ये जाना सनम  which is sung by #Kumar Sanu & # Lata Mangeshkar  of  #Bollywoodmovie #dilwālé dulhaniyā lé jāyéñgé  दिलवाले दुल्हनिया ले जाएंगे. And we'll help you understand its lyrics. We'll also break the song down and we'll explain how the verb ‘to see' is translated into Past tense, in Hindi and how it's used. And you'll also learn how to say ‘Did you see a movie yesterday?' And if you stay till the end of the episode you can hear a role-play and participate in it, as well. This series will help you to understand and fully enjoy #Bollywoodmusic and #learnHindi through #Bollywoodmusic. If you want the transcript of the episode and lyrics in Devanagari & Roman with the English translation, please consider becoming a patron on patreon.com/learnhindionthego by making a small monthly donation. To help us improve the show, kindly give your feedback & suggest some topics on our Facebook page – https://www.facebook.com/learnhindionthego/  To take a free trial for online Hindi lessons visit: https://learnhindischool.com Links to the song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNV5hLSa9H8 https://open.spotify.com/album/13ARHaZ61wode7XY4Dfmtr https://gaana.com/song/tujhe-dekha-to https://wynk.in/music/song/tujhe-dekha-to/lyrics/sa_INH109537390 Find out more at https://learn-hindi-on-the-go.pinecast.co This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

I had the ocasion to test for a while a new app called SuperLidar which is using one of the newest technologys built-in iPhones from Pro level. SuperLidar is able to detect obstacles due the Lidar sensor which is available in iPhone 12 Pro and Pro Max but in 13 Pro and pro Max too. The feedback is given via haptic vibration but through a variable sound pitch as well. The app also have a unique feature which helps in this pandemic times: mask detection. In this podcast episode I have Shane Law as invitee from Supersence who will talk mainly about SuperLidar but also a little about Supersence which is available for all iOS devices but for Android too. Here's what's inside of the Supersense Premium Package: The Document Reader, which enables you to read any type of document.The Smart Scanner Mode that detects what you're scanning instantly.The Multi-page Scanner Mode, which allows you to scan longer documents.The Barcode Reader along with the QR Code Reader.The Currency Reader.The Scene describer, which describes the scenery around you and allows you to capture high-quality images of it.The Explore mode that allows you to explore your environment and,The Find Mode, which can detect more than 600 individual objects! And we have updated Supersense's Quick Read feature, which is now super accurate and reads in Non-Latin languages such as Chinese, Devanagari, Japanese, and Korean even when there's no internet connection.  To unlock all these features, upgrade now and get 40% off of annual and 50% off of lifetime subscriptions.*  *Prices may vary by region.  Supersense for iOS: https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1484547836?mt=8Supersense for Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mediate.supersense The SuperLidar is free of charge but SuperSense have some features unlocked when a subscription is purchased. A 7 days trial period is available for new instalations when the app can be used in full. You can listen in this episode the most important things what you need to know about this product bundle such helpfull for blind: SuperSense and SuperLidar.#Enjoy your listening and good luck with the product trials.

Mike Isaacson: Ride the tiger, bro. [Theme song] Nazi SS UFOsLizards wearing human clothesHinduism's secret codesThese are nazi lies Race and IQ are in genesWarfare keeps the nation cleanWhiteness is an AIDS vaccineThese are nazi lies Hollow earth, white genocideMuslim's rampant femicideShooting suspects named Sam HydeHiter lived and no Jews died Army, navy, and the copsSecret service, special opsThey protect us, not sweatshopsThese are nazi lies Mike Isaacson: Thanks for joining us for another episode of The Nazi Lies Podcast. You can support the podcast by subscribing to our Patreon or donating to our PayPal or CashApp. Today, we're going to touch on esoteric fascism by talking to someone who actually knows something about Hinduism. Shyam Ranganathan is a translation theorist and philosopher at York University in Canada. He is the author of several books including his most recent, Hinduism: A Contemporary Philosophical Investigation. Thanks for coming on the podcast Dr. Ranganathan. Shyam Ranganathan: Thanks for having me. Mike Isaacson: Okay. So the central contention in your book is that the West has gotten Hinduism wrong. How does the West get Hinduism wrong? Shyam Ranganathan: Right. It's an even weirder contention. There are two parts to this. There's first a historical observation that religious identity is actually a creation of Western colonialism. You wouldn't know this if you only paid attention to the exemplars from the Western tradition, but even then the evidence is pretty much there. Jesus was crucified by the Romans, and Christian identity was formed within the context of Roman imperialism. So even that isn't really an exception to this rule, and of course Jews were colonized by the Egyptians and the Romans and it's within the context of Roman imperialism that we first get this idea of religion, which is the precursor to our idea of religion. So the Romans had this idea that there was some type of acceptable traditional practice but wasn't the standard practice. There's some type of standard practice that everybody has to be involved in, and that evolves into our idea of secularism and then there are these kind of traditions that are tolerated. Overtime what happens is this then gets converted into a way of making sense of the European tradition as a kind of universal standard, and then anything that's got origins outside of Europe, any origins at all, ends up being called religion. Now this is most obvious, I mean, it's kind of stark when you look at the development to religious identity in Asia, because prior to Western colonialism there was no religious identity. So one of the things I point out is that if you look at the history of South Asian philosophy, they disagreed about the right and the good, and that's just what you disagree about in moral philosophy. They had a word Dharma that they use to disagree about the right or the good, and that was just how they got along. They had different views on Dharma, and some people were really famous like the Buddha. He had a very influential view and lots of followers. But under Western colonialism, there's this need to box in the people that are being colonized. And so the British end up using a Persian word for South Asia Hinduism or rather Hindu was the Persian word. And it has a similar route to our word India, and there's a place in Northern India called the Sindu, and these are all cognates. So anyways, the Persians had this way of talking to South Asians and the British decided to use that as a word for all indigenous South Asian religion, whatever that is, and it was a way to try and make sense of South Asians in contradistinction to Islam, which has a long history, but not a very ancient history in South Asia. So the British wanted to try and just have a word to refer to some type of native or indigenous practice. Now the thing is prior to this, no South Asian called themselves a Hindu, and then overnight you have like millions of people calling themselves Hindus because it happened under a condition of colonialism where people had to conform to these expectations in order to be recognized. So there's a kind of before and after moment when we want to study Hinduism, because there's the before moment where there's the entire history of South Asian philosophy and everybody was just happy to disagree with each other. And then there's the moment of naming this tradition of religion Hinduism, and then there's the after history that we have inherited where South Asians and everybody else tries to make sense of the indigenous tradition in terms of religious categories. And then they read these categories backwards into the history of South Asia. So people ask nonsensical questions like what did Hindus disagree with? What were the disagreements between Buddhists and Hindus in ancient times? There were no Hindus, there were just people who disagreed about how to live and what to do. So in so far as there's a misunderstanding, it's a misunderstanding that comes from taking really seriously these artifacts of colonialism. One of the things I point out is that religious identity is just a precursor to racial identity. So racial identity is born out of the West treating itself as a kind of standard of what it is to be a full fledged person, and then everybody's judged by way of their conformity or deviation to that. And so brown people of color we get this funny expression. Europeans don't have any color, everybody else does. And religion is the same thing, it's the racialization of BIPOC intellectual traditions. What people don't often realize is the same position said by Plato, for instance, that there's a God and afterlife. And in fact, reincarnation is treated as secular philosophy because there's no extra European origin. But if it's said by a brown guy from the Middle East, it's religion, and you can find all sorts of Atheist positions in South Asia where there's no God, history of reality is just the evolution of matter. If it's said by a brown guy 2000 years ago in Sanskrit, it's Hinduism. If it said by someone of European descent today on the basis of Democritus or something, it's secular philosophy. So the misunderstanding then is in a way a matter of taking these artifacts of Western colonialism seriously as though they map out the way things really are when in reality they're just artifacts of colonialism. Mike Isaacson: In the book, you said that Hinduism basically encapsulates four separate traditions, at least. There's the Vedic tradition, there's the Dravidian tradition, the Adivasi tradition, and then there was one other one that I forgot. Shyam Ranganathan: Oh, I see. Well, in the sense that... I didn't say that, van Buitenen said that. [The book gives the citation as Klostermaier] But I was pointing out that there is... If you try to harvest all the things that get called Hindu, there's basically nothing that's left out of it. So my analogy here is that it's an odd kind of category, a class category like fruit salad. So some categories are kind categories, and in a kind category the criterion of inclusion is also exemplified by its members. So red is a kind category. So the category of red things is the set of things that display redness. But fruit salad is a collection of different pieces of fruit, so it doesn't follow that a piece of fruit salad is a collection of different pieces of fruit. A piece of fruit salad could be a piece of apple or an orange, but when you put them together, fruit salad. And so if we want to think about Hinduism, we can certainly catalog different traditions that go into it. But I think what's really illuminating is that it wasn't created by a matter of self representation, in exactly the way racial categories are created, they were created as a way for a hostile outsider to box people in. So I just describe it, I say the founding membership criterion of something being Hindu is South Asian, no common founder. So this leads to funny logical properties like so you could be a Hindu and say a Christian in so far as you could be a Christian South Asian, but you couldn't be a Christian first and a Hindu second because Christianity is a kind category. So all Christian things are going to display some type of commitment to Jesus, etc. But just in the same way that a piece of fruit salad can be an apple but a piece of an apple is not fruit salad. So we have to just appreciate there's more than one kind of category that we're invoking when we talk about religion. And so Hinduism, even though all religious identity is really a creation or function of Western colonialism, Hinduism is odd in simply being the disagreements of philosophy. There's no common position or text or commitment that defines what it is to be Hindu. So I argue that thinking about Hinduism historically, not what comes after people try to make sense of it as a religion, but historically has just this openness to diversity of philosophical disagreement is a model for us to think about how we can move forward from a Westernized world where there's one tradition that's used as a standard to judge everything else. Mike Isaacson: Okay. So let's jump into the part that everybody's looking for, the fascist part. So esoteric fascists make a lot of noise about living in the Kali Yuga. “We're living in the Kali Yuga. Everything's fucked. Ride the tiger.” So what is the Kali Yuga? What is a yuga? Are we in the Kali Yuga? And what would that mean for us? Shyam Ranganathan: So a yuga is a period or an aeon. It's a large increment of time. And in many stories that are part of the Hindu tradition, there are these cosmologies that divide up time into the cyclical patterns. Just like Monday will repeat itself next week and so will Saturday, the yuga as well too, but they're large scale increments of time. And according to one very popular cosmology, there are four basic yugas and it starts off with the best yuga, where it's all based on truth. And then it's a slow descent to the fourth, which we're supposed to be in Kali Yuga. And so what defines Kali Yuga in a lot of descriptions is that it's just this moral degradation. And but by moral degradation, the descriptions usually turn on violence, fear and anger as being defining features of Kali Yuga. So I think it's funny the fascists like this because they're actually evidence that we're in Kali cause they trade in things like fear and anger. So if we're in Kali Yuga, it's their fault, we can blame them for it. Mike Isaacson: Okay. You ready for some fascist lore? Shyam Ranganathan: Sure, yeah. Mike Isaacson: Okay. Strap in for this one. So Greco-French Nazi and self-styled Hindu Savitri Devi like to claim that Hitler was an avatar of Vishnu, specifically the ninth avatar, describing him as a man against time and the greatest European who ever lived. I don't want to spend too much time on Hitler but I do want to talk about his Vishnu and his avatars. So what kinds of people were Vishnu's avatars and what did they do in life? Shyam Ranganathan: Yeah, so I want to take a step back before I answer this question and just provide some context for deities from South Asia. So one of the important traditions of philosophy in South Asia, and we don't have this philosophical theory anywhere else is yoga or sometimes called devotion. And so I'm going to distinguish yoga from three very common ethical theories we have and three very common theories in the Western tradition. One is virtue ethics, the idea that in order to know the right thing to do you have to be a good person. So theism is a version of virtue ethics, God is the ultimately good person whose preferences are what we should follow. Then there's consequentialism, this idea that there are these good ends that we should aim for and then the right thing to do is instrumental to that. And then there's deontology, the idea that there are a bunch of good things that we can do, but only some of them we have special reason to do. These are very popular, salient, iconic, ethical theories in the Western tradition. We find them also in South Asia, but South Asians also had a fourth ethical theory, namely that... Well, the right thing to do involves devotion to an ideal of right doing, and then as you perfect that devotional practice, you bring about the good, but the good is just the success of that practice. So when we look at deities in South Asia, they often play a role not as good agents whose preferences are what we should follow, but rather as procedural ideals, ways of living or choosing that when we are devoted to we work on emulating those kinds of procedures ourselves. So Vishnu represents one of the essential features of the ultimate procedural ideal according to yoga, which is unconservatism, so self-challenge, not being ruled by one's own past choices, working through difficulties, and his partner Lakshmi is the goddess of self-determination, she's depicted as a lotus who sits on herself. And these two, being unconservative and self-governing, make up the ideal of what it is to be a person in the yoga tradition. So when you read a lot of the stuff about Vishnu, it makes more sense when you realize that he's that procedural ideal. Now there's a story as to why he has to have avatars, I'm sure there's lots of stories. But one story is that he was just kind of doing his own thing his realm. And these youthful people who look like kids approached the gate and he had entrusted these two guards to act as sentries, and the guards wouldn't let them in to see Vishnu because they assumed they were... They claimed to be sages, but they looked too young. And so they barred entry to these very useful looking child-like figures. But they were really sages and they look really young because of their personal work and transformation. And so they curse the gatekeepers and then Vishnu has to take responsibility for that for empowering those gatekeepers. Now, one of the interesting features of this story is that it's a criticism of patriarchy. Patriarchy is the theory that, well, not only are men superior to women, but importantly, age is an important factor in authority or being taken seriously. So the older are treated as though they are to be deferred to over the anger. But also there's this prejudice that set foot, it's a prejudice against novelty. So this story is a metaphor for that, that there are these kind of novel-looking people come along and they're not allowed to see Vishnu. So then he has to... So the story goes... Anyway, these are all thought experiments, they're just ways to think about what these ideals are like. The story goes that he has to take on these life experiences to work through basically all the issues and prejudices and problems that gave rise to that encounter. And so he has lots of different incarnations or avatars. They span species. And they choose to kind of mimic a bit of our understanding of evolution, starts with a fish and an eternal amphibian and then a boar and then half-lion half man, small man. And in every case, in virtually every incarnation, there are some themes about Vishnu. First, he is a deity of working on problems, overcoming challenges, but there's always a theme of friendship, loyalty, and diversity. So Vishnu himself presents in these diverse ways. And his friends are diverse too, and they come from all sorts of different walks of life and species. So it's really weird that fascists think that Hitler could be an avatar of Vishnu because Hitler wasn't really interested in diversity, and he also wasn't really interested in overcoming his prejudices and his assumptions. So that's entirely bizarre. And another thing that's entirely bizarre is that Vishnu as someone who's challenging himself is aware of himself by self triangulation. And that triangulation is when you look at something from two different points, but then he also triangulates the activity of triangulation. And that's actually represented as a disc. But if you look at the disc, it's got superimposed triangles that look like the star of David. So that's even weirder that Nazis would think that there's anything going on with Vishnu there. So, yeah, so I would say that as a kind of character in the stories is he's compassionate, social relationships are important and so is diversity. And one of the themes of a lot of the stories where Vishnu is concerned is that you make room for yourself or Vishnu makes room for himself by making room for other people. So he's the preserver of a world of diverse beings. Mike Isaacson: Okay. Now surprise, surprise, there's a big reverence for caste among the esoteric fascists. So what is caste? Where did caste come from? What place does it hold in Hinduism? Shyam Ranganathan: All right. So caste, there's two things going on. There's three things actually, I think, going on when we think about caste. First of all, I think it's really important to note, and I'm always surprised that people don't talk about this, they're not aware of this, that clearest philosophical defense of caste is to be found in Plato's Republic. And Plato argues there that there are three castes. There's kind of work or appetitive class and there's kind of implementing motivative class and then the philosophers who rules. And the state is on Plato's account the soul writ large. So just as the soul has to be, the individual soul has to be governed with reason at the top providing both motivation and appetite their proper place, so to in society should there be this hierarchy, and the hierarchy should be a kind of meritocracy. Now, one of the really important features of Plato's theory of caste, well, there's a couple of interesting features. First of all, it's hierarchical. So it's really important in the Plato story that there are some people who really should be in the position of telling other people what to do. And other people would really be smart to listen to what these wise people have to tell them, but because they're not smart, they're not going to be able to recognize that. So Plato actually thinks you have to lie to them, and you have to tell them a noble lie that they were all created by the same loving God. So I think when people think about caste, a lot of times their idea of caste is actually this Platonic idea where there are people who need to be directed, and then there are people who need to do the directing. Now in South Asia, caste goes all the way back to the start of the Indo-European peoples there. So you can find in the Vedas that caste there, I think, was different because one of the things that's really different about South Asia or rather one of the things that's really peculiar about the Western tradition is that in the Western tradition community was the basic category of political explanation. So not the individual, it was community. So you understood your place, what to do by understanding your place in your society. So we find this in Plato, find it in Aristotle, and there's a long tradition of thinking just this way in the Western tradition. But in South Asia community was not the basic unit of explanation. So if you were going to understand caste, caste allows people to have a vocational identity that they can pass, that they can inherit and then pass down, but it allows them to be modular. So they can actually float in and out of different societies because they understand what kind of contribution they could make if they were part of a society. And so that way of thinking about caste takes away a lot of the hierarchy only because it's not tied to community in the way you find it in Plato. Now in South Asia, there is a long tradition of one caste, the Brahmins, of them doing all the writing. So what ends up happening and the Brahmins are kind of the intelligentsia, the literati, and they're tasked with conserving the Vedas, which is this kind of ancient corpus of the Indo-European peoples. But they're also often the intellectuals and the advisers and stuff, but they have a class interest in making themselves seem like they're top of the [heap 26.23]. So in most of the literature that was created by Brahmins, you get this story of a hierarchy where the Brahmins are supposed to be regarded as the most important. Now the funny thing about the Brahmins is that they weren't a rich group. They didn't have a lot of money. Just that most had the ability to legitimize and influence political leaders. So if you could get a Brahmin on board, it was like saying, "Oh, well, this intellectual approves of what I'm doing." So in Brahminical literature, there's a lot of propaganda where these Brahmins try to tell the story of themselves at the top of this heap. And like most people before I started doing, well, becoming a scholar of South Asia, I believed that that's what caste was. And I remember very clearly sitting in my historiography class in Master's in South Asian studies and we're doing the history of history-- is what historiography is— and I learned for the first time that even though there's a chart for your class, which is a martial class that's supposed to be the ruling class, there were lots of kings from various castes. There were kings in dynasties from the Shudra caste, which is according to Brahminical reckoning, the lowest caste because they do all the kind of the hard labor, etc. So there's this kind of story that gets told in literature, and then there's the reality of how people related to each other. And so the story that gets told in literature is this very stylized for caste story where there is the Brahmin intellectuals, and then there are the warrior Kshatriyas, and then there are these kind of merchant class folks, and then there's a fourth caste which are the Shudras, who kind of do the heavy lifting. But the reality of South Asia is there's just a million castes. Everybody has their own story about how important they are and everybody has a caste. So Jews, Christians, Muslims, Jains, Buddhists, it's just kind of what South Asians do. They have this history of understanding themselves in terms of this idea of inherited vocation. So when the British come along and they decide that they need to figure out what's going on with these South Asians, they turn to the Brahmins and the literati who have all these stories. And so one of the funny things that starts to happen is these stories and these ritual manuals that were largely just part fantasy, part propaganda, part self idealization, gets legitimized as Hindu law. So these books where you see Brahmins talking about ritual purity and how they're so important gets retold in the colonial period as what was law for Hindus prior to colonialism. Now, there are lots of funny things about that. First of all, there was no Hinduism before British colonialism. And second of all, you have this writing of a history based on the literature of a small group of people who had a class interest. Now once this gets created as the narrative, it starts to become more and more real. And so colonialism really then ends up weaponizing caste in ways that it was probably far more benign. I'm not saying that it was perfect, people use distinctions as a way to be crappy to each other all the time, but it gets ramped up in terms of its weaponization because it gets part of the official story that people believe under colonialism and then it just ends up being what people inherit. And so there's this fantasy or myth that colonialism in South Asia is over, it's not cause people still believe all these things that were formulated during that time. Mike Isaacson: Okay. So lastly, you reserve an entire chapter in your book to discuss what you call the global alt-right. How has the alt-right interacted with Hinduism? Shyam Ranganathan: Yeah, so that chapter is me providing an explanation for how conservativism and xenophobia and this idea of the new conservatives, so more conservative than conservatives, it's this kind of contemporary invention of some type of path that doesn't really exist except in these people's heads. How does that happen at all? So as I was writing it, things were starting to get pretty wild in the US with the rise of the far right. And for South Asianist it wasn't anything particularly new because South Asianists have been watching the rise of the far right in South Asia for some time. And so in this chapter, I'm thinking about or I'm asking the question of how is this a global... In what way is this a global phenomenon? Or how can you account for the same weird thing happening in different places? Now in the case of South Asia, it's particularly weird because South Asians historically were super open to diversity. So people fleeing persecution elsewhere often had a place to settle down in South Asia. I don't know how old the Bene Israel is, but there's a group of Jews who've been there for some reckonings to millennia in India. And then the Farsis when Iran became Islamicized, they had to leave and a large number of those folks settled down in India, and Christians came and it was just... And the thing about South Asia traditionally, which is something that I was interested in in this book and in this chapter, was a place where two things happened. People were okay with disagreeing and they also thought that they were right. So everybody thought that they were right and everybody else was wrong, but they were also okay for that just to be the way things are. So they were okay that they thought that they were right and everybody was wrong, and they were okay to live like that, which meant that they were really okay with diversity. So diversity for them wasn't this kind of liberal relativism or skepticism that you see now, where people go, "Oh, it's just all about your perspective." People took their philosophical commitment seriously, but they also had this long tradition of not thinking that somehow the existence of other people who didn't agree with them was a problem for them. Most people thought, "Oh, well, it's a problem..." If I was really committed to some philosophical position, I might think it's a problem for the people who don't agree with me cause they're just going to lose out. But the reality is that I'm just still going to do my own thing. And that was really a very dominant feature of the history of South Asia. And I think it's quite historically unique amongst the three major philosophical traditions with ancient roots. So in China you have Confucianism from ancient times really stressed the importance of social cohesion and conformity. And then there was Daoism that also rejected that, but there is a strong tradition in Chinese thinking about the importance of social agreement and practice. That's a major mind in Confucian thinking. And if you go back all the way to the beginning of the Western tradition with Plato and Aristotle, it was all about the centralization of all decisions in a community in the hands of a few elevated individuals. But in South Asia there was always this kind of decentralized idea. There were empires and there were kingdoms, but they tended to be fluid and people were just far more okay with diversity and disagreement. So one of the questions I ask is how is it that South Asians can go from being so comfortable with diversity in descent to being so fascist and xenophobic? So in South Asia with the rise of the Hindu right, you see all this Islamophobia, and there's this creation of this kind of very strange Brahminical Hinduism that tries to deny caste and historical injustices against marginalized peoples. And there's also just this rise of violence and lynchings or perceived slights against being Hindu. So it's remarkable, within a span of few hundred years, a whole continent, sub-continent where people knew how to get along with diversity, a large number of those people lost the ability. They went from being reasonable about diversity to being progressively and increasingly unreasonable. Not everybody but enough people to cement a new political reality of the Hindu right. So most people who try to write about these things, the phenomena fascism in the far right, etc, they'll focus on the values of the people in question. And my account of this is that it's not about the values that people say they profess because so many times you would have say Christians talking about love and then participating in genocide or forced conversion, colonialism, and kind of horrible... There's a kind of disconnect between the values that people pass and what they're actually doing. And so my story says, well, let's look at what model of thought people are operating with, not the values that they claim to endorse, but how they model thought. And so there's two options that I compare. One option is the option that the model of thought that characterizes the Western tradition, there's no second model of thought in the Western tradition. There's this default model of thought. And it's the idea that thought is the same as linguistic meaning or the meaning of what you say. And I started to realize that this was just this hegemonic view when I was writing my dissertation on translation. And the connection between thought and speech goes back all the way to the Greeks who had one word for thought, reason, speech, logos. So if you believe that thought is the meaning of what you say, then you're going to have difficulty understanding what you wouldn't say. So everything then becomes assessable by way of whatever your culture in codes and its language. And at the same time, you lose the ability to understand alternative perspectives because understanding for you becomes a matter of explanation in terms of what you agree to. So it's a very debilitating model. I started to realize not only that it was ubiquitous, but it causes all these technical problems in trying to make sense of translation, etc. And I was thinking about alternative models of thought, and there's a South Asian model of thought that avoids all these problems where you think about thought as what you can do with something meaningful. And so I set up this thought experiment. The thought experiment is... I've written about it in a few different places, some places planted ethics, some places planted subcontinent Dharma, but the thought experiment goes like this: You have a large area where there's several different communities and each community has a national ethical identity. And in every community, the ethical identity is going to be different, it's going to be distinctive, and their word ethics or morality in the case in South Asia Dharma is going to be defined in their language, in their intellect, as their national theory. So you could imagine a place where ethics or morality is just whatever Jesus said. So that ends up you have this kind of Christian nation. Then next to them, you would have this thing you could imagine a Muslim nation where it's whatever Muhammad said. And then in the thought experiment in the South Asian version, I just populate this place with all sorts of different ethical theories, Dharma theories, that people entertained in South Asia. And I asked, "Well, how are they going to understand each other?" Because when everybody says something like hitting your neighbor is not Dharma, they actually are saying something with the different meaning because Dharma means something different in each of their languages. So if you adopt this yogic approach to thought, you would say, "Well, the thought isn't actually the linguistic meaning, but it's the disciplinary use that we can make of it. So insofar as all of those sentences could be used to articulate a philosophical thought about hitting your neighbor being inappropriate, everybody could use their native intellectual resources without having to buy the values of their culture, and it would allow them to also be critical of the values of their culture. But let's say we assume the standard Western account of thought, where thought is just the meaning of what you say, anybody who operates with this will never be able to understand anything except for the values encoded into their language as just the only possible answer. And so what that then does for people is it makes them incapable of operating successfully in a world of diversity because everybody else will seem like a threat to their moral identity. And so what I argue is that the rise of the far right if you really want to understand it, you have to understand it in terms of this adoption of a really bad model of understanding. And I think it's actually a pretty good explanation. So for instance, one of the things I talk about is antithematism, them as in t h e m. And the thems are a bunch of people who are dispersed, and they have two linguistic identities. They have the linguistic identity of the society they live in, and then they have some historical them identity. And if we operated with the yoga model of thought, it would be fine. We could understand them just like we could understand anybody else. But if we switch to the Western models thought, where thought is the meaning of what you say, these people start to seem like double agents because once they participate, they seem to participate in your culture's linguistic practices, but they also have an allegiance to another value system in another language. So I think, for instance, it explains things like an antisemitism, why was there antisemitism in Europe but not in South Asia? Why does, for instance, why were South Asians generally okay with Muslims and then once they started becoming westernized by adopting this linguistic model of thought, all of a sudden Islamophobia becomes increasingly a problem?. So a lot of people might not be aware of this, but there was one language Hindustani, and then when the British came along and gave South Asians this idea that they had a religious identity or at least there was such a thing as Hindus, then they had to split up the language into two languages, a Muslim language and a Hindu language. And so that's where you get the birth of Urdu, a Muslim language written with an Arabic script in Hindi which is supposed to be a Hindu language written in Devanagari. But it's the same language which is just kind of remarkable. But this is what colonialism does, it convinces people that they are tied to their cultural identity by way of some kind of external threat. And then once they're tied to this cultural identity, they then experience the world from this corner of terror where everyone else is out to get them. And so that's my explanation for what we're seeing in South Asia, but also I think this explains ways in which the far right in Europe and in North America is a continuation of Western colonialism. Mike Isaacson: Antithematism, I like it. Shyam Ranganathan: Antithematism, yeah. They were the thems and everybody would refer to them as the thems. And whether you were scared or creeped out depended upon what model of thought you adopted. Mike Isaacson: Okay. Well, Dr. Ranganathan, thank you so much for coming on The Nazi Lies Podcast to talk to us about Hinduism. Again, the book is Hinduism: A Contemporary Philosophical Investigation out from Routledge. Thanks again. Shyam Ranganathan: Thank you so much. Mike Isaacson: If you want to support the guest fees and transcription fees we pay to run The Nazi Lies Podcast, subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/nazilies and we'll send you some stickers and stuff. If you'd like to make a one time donation, you can send your payment via PayPal or CashApp to user NaziLies. Include your mailing address so I can throw you some merch.  [Theme song]

Sukadev spricht über den 17. Vers der Hatha Yoga Pradipika, 2. Kapitel, als Inspiration des Tages. Essenz: Mehr zur Hatha Yoga Pradipika findest du im Hatha Yoga Pradipika Portal: Hatha Yoga Pradipika auf Sanskrit plus deutsche Übersetzung Deutsche Übersetzung plus Kommentare von Swami Brahmananda, Swami Vishnu-devananda und Sukadev Hatha Yoga Pradipika Sanskrit Text auf Devanagari […]

This week is a special episode focusing on 2014 in the cinema of India, with your host Joe McCulloch (along with Sean "Shitty Excuse For Carl Reiner" Witzke). 01:46: Specifically, Part XVII of the Constitution of India provides that “Hindi in Devanagari script” is “the official language of the Union,” although English can still be used for Parliamentary purposes, among other governmental functions. Technically, there are 22 (rather than 23) languages listed in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution, but I've taken the liberty of adding English as an effective 23rd, given its official status in several Indian states, as well as its continued governmental function. Also, *I* speak English, and it is therefore the most important language.   03:15: GREAT NEWS - Here I have confused the cinema of Pakistani Punjab -- which is based in Lahore, the capital city of Punjab province and the effective center of Pakistan's domestic film industry -- with the cinema of Indian Punjab, which is based in Mumbai (i.e. not the Indian state of Punjab). I've also erred in tethering the use of Urdu to historical period; there are geographical considerations as well, particularly in relation to Muslim communities, although Hindi and Urdu are (in the words of linguistic scholar Wikipedia) mutually intelligible registers of basically the same tongue. 04:15: A hit film from one major regional cinema, it should be clarified, is not in any way guaranteed popularity across India, even in regional dubbed versions. Sometimes, stars from one region's cinema will do special appearances or supporting roles in another region's films, as a means of shoring up trans-Indian box office. Additionally, larger regional cinemas have a tendency to tap actors or technicians from smaller regional cinemas, who might then return to their home region with enhanced prestige – I'm thinking specifically of the Karnataka native Prakash Raj, who did a lot of Kannada-language film and theater work before becoming a delightfully odd character actor (mostly villains and dads) in the Tamil, then Telugu, then Hindi cinemas, eventually returning to write and direct films in Karnataka.  06:05: This is not to suggest that there haven't been South films created with outside money and an eye on the international market; Disney, for example, co-produced a Telugu film in 2011, Anaganaga O Dheerudu, which was subsequently released on home video in North America as Once Upon a Warrior. I don't recall it playing in theaters around here, though.  06:55: TERRIFIC - Here I'm conflating the designations “NRI” (non-resident Indian) and “PIO” (person of Indian origin); there's legal implications in terms of taxation and international travel.  10:05: The issue of skin whitening is hardly unaddressed in Indian popular cinema itself, in case you were wondering: off the top of my head I can recall no less a venerable presence than the Tamil movie superstar Rajinikanth -- at one time among the highest-paid actors in Asia -- devoting a skit to the issue in his 2007 vehicle Sivaji. Granted, there's also some prominent 'dark skin = nasty' jokes in that one, perhaps as a means of sugaring the pill... 11:45: One hopes the message taken from this entire unfortunate soliloquy is that Orientalism (the term I am grasping for) is not assuaged by the white observer amassing specialized knowledge; in fact, that is just as easily a bulwark, insofar as 'expertise' is often used as a means of Outsider A pulling rank on Outsider B in terms of disseminating novel tidbits and otherwise exercising the soft colonialism of dull concern.  12:36: American exploitation movie icon David F. Friedman did indeed work on the 1955 U.S. release of Bergman's Summer With Monika, although I probably should have cited to his boss, the infamous Kroger Babb, who's actually the one that ordered severe edits re: the artsy bits and a fortuitous re-titling to Monika, the Story of a Bad Girl, which I think is how Woody Allen saw it.  13:00: Per my close friend Wikipedia (again), there were 201 Hindi films released in 2014, and 195 Telugu films. Both of these were less than the 215 Tamil films premiered. By way of comparison, there were about 230 new domestic films released in 2014 throughout all of China.  13:20: For example.  As always, the streams of cinema aren't ever entirely separate, as one of B-grade impresario Suresh Jain's earlier productions was excerpted in a 2011 mainstream smash, Rockstar. Of course, if you want to talk extreme badness in Bollywood, the first place you'll need to go is the 1998 Mithun Chakraborty-starrer Gunda, which enjoys Troll 2-level prestige amongst Hindi movie fans of a certain persuasion. 13:50: Specifically, the production or distribution of pornographic materials is illegal in India, although possession is not a crime – as a result, hardcore sex films are not necessarily unfamiliar (the initial mainstream visibility of Sunny Leone, former Vivid contract player-turned-Indian reality tv phenom-turned-established movie star, was premised on the titilation inherant to such familiarity clashing with the wider society), they're just not domestically made. Public exhibition of films not cleared by the Central Board of Film Certification is likewise illegal. There are three general 'ratings' – U, UA, and A, with an A restricting viewing or purchase to those 18 or older. An odd side-effect of the comparitive modesty of Hindi films is that my local theater tends to run children's movie advertisements before all of them, apparently resting on the 'family' reputation of the scene; this makes for a very amusing juxtaposition with A-rated mainstream fare like 2011's Delhi Belly, which contains approximately 12,000,000 spoken variations on the English term 'fuck'. 14:40: In case it's not clear, Hindi movie performers very rarely *sing* the songs featured in their films; they lip-synch to whatever the vocals of the actual track might be, leading to one actor or actress adopting multiple singing 'voices' throughout the course of one film. 16:46: We finally arrive at the films of 2014 by talking about Queen, directed by Vikas Bahl, and starring Kangana Ranaut, Rajkummar Rao & Lisa Haydon. It is Bahl's first solo directorial feature, although he had done production work on numerous prior works by his Phantom Films cohorts Vikramaditya Motwane & Anurag Kashyap. I first saw Ranaut in Kites (2010), an eccentric Rakesh Roshan production seemingly aimed at 'selling' his son Hrithik Roshan (already an established Hindi star) as an international player – Brett Ratner(!!) even supervised an alternate cut of the film, which (I'm told) drastically downplayed all the Bollywood elements, e.g. songs. The non-Ratner cut became the first Hindi picture ever to place in the North American box office top ten, although Hrithik did not go on to light the states ablaze to even the limited extent of Anil Kapoor post-Slumdog Millionaire.    18:12: Asking after a fixed definiton of a masala movie is like chasing the concept of mise-en-scène: it means different things to different people. Indeed, the culinary etymology of the term encompasses the notion of certain ingredients being switched in and out, so that some films might be heavier on romance while others might favor action or comedy... still, it's a mix. I'm talking about a certain type of chest-thumping '80s-style masala here, reintroduced in tremendous popular form by way of Telugu remake via a 2009 Salman Khan vehice, Wanted, directed by the famous dancer Prabhudheva, who was briefly a tee-hee-look-at-this viral video fun figure on the international scene via this.  19:08: The other actress-driven films from 2014 I mention are: Mary Kom, starring Priyanka Chopra; Mardaani, starring Rani Mukerji; and Bobby Jasoos, starring Vidya Balan, whose 2012 film Kahaani I mispronounce to fearsome effect.  21:50: Zainab Akhtar sent me a link to this comedy video the other day, which off-handedly speaks to the cult reputation of Gangs of Wasseypur (2012, not 2013) – appreciable as the least 'Bollywood' of all Bollywood films. It also played the Directors' Fortnight at Cannes 2012, which would probably have been a more appropriate reference to make!  23:50: All of these qualities, I remind you, are in relation to the recent mainstream of Hindi popular cinema; obviously, films about women dealing with their own lives have existed before in Indian films. I mean, really.  25:00: Here I'm referring to the phenomenon of writer/director Sooraj R. Barjatya's Hum Aapke Hain Koun..! which, to allude to another cinema game-changer of 1994, acted like a shot of adrenaline directly to the heart of Indian filmgoing, albeit in an exceedingly wholesome manner. The phrase I'm using, btw, is “paisa vasool,” which is not limited to movie usage. 27:35: Now I'm talking about Kick, directed by Sajid Nadiadwala, and starring Salman Khan, Jacqueline Fernandez, Randeep Hooda & Nawazuddin Siddiqui.  Nadiadwala has seen much of his recent success as a producer on dubious comedy contraptions such as the Housefull series, although he branched significantly this year as co-producer on the well-received 'serious' drama Highway and the splashy relationship comedy 2 States (which I mention a bit later). Nonetheless, this -- his directorial debut -- plays it good and safe, to splendid financial returns. I cannot stress enough that anything with Nawazuddin Siddiqui (one of the stars of the aforementioned Gangs of Wasseypur) is good for at least the presence of Nawazuddin Siddiqui. The bleak crime/sleaze movie history-themed Ashim Ahluwalia picture Miss Lovely may be of particular interest to listeners of this podcast, and can still be bought or rented digitally via Amazon. 28:47: I'm alluding here to Katrina Kaif and Sonakshi Sinha, two well-known actresses who've mentioned Khan functioning as a mentor to them.  31:50: You may remember Om Puri quite recently from Lasse Hallström's The Hundred-Foot Journey, in which he stars opposite Helen Mirren as... a concerned father! I am told Juhi Chawla (of numerous '90s favorites such as Yash Chopra's Darr, which is also notable for one of the early, weird Shah Rukh Khan performances) also shows up, only to die quickly. I keep expecting one of these world-class folks to roll into a Best Exotic Marigold Hotel movie, preferably Manoj Bajpai with a crew of goons. #jokes 32:27: Next on the agenda is PK, directed by Rajkumar Hirani, and starring Aamir Khan, Anushka Sharma, Saurabh Shukla, Sanjay Dutt & Sushant Singh Rajput. And Boman Irani, who's one of those reliable character actor types who seem to pop up in every third movie. (The king of these is a Telugu comedian, Brahmanandam Kanneganti, who averages over one dozen film appearances per year, usually in designated comedy relief segments.) I'll be writing more about PK in the next installment of The Most Popular Movie Column in the Entire World, which should be a real treat, since in a column I can do the lecture and the errata at the same time. 35:47: I didn't pick these topics at random. See: Taare Zameen Par (2007), aka Like Stars on Earth, which Khan also directed; and Rang De Basanti (2006), perhaps *the* canonical 'serious' popular smash of the past ten years, and the foundation upon which Khan has built his latter-day persona as a superstar-cum-crusader for social betterment. 40:24: As it happened, I didn't get around to saying anything more about Sanjay Dutt -- have I mentioned that there's no script here? -- so let me clarify that not only has Dutt appeared in three out of four Rajkumar Hirani films, but he is expected to be the subject of the fifth: a full-blown biopic. He's definitely led a colorful life, including a supremely infamous arrest on terrorism and conspiracy charges in the wake of the 1993 Mumbai blasts; he was ultimately convicted for possession of illegal weapons, and is currently in prison.   48:22: Fandom in action. 51:21: The name I can't recall here is Chetan Bhagat, whom I forgot to identify earlier as one of several screenwriters to work on the aforementioned Kick (to reprise my earlier statements about masala implicating some shifts in emphasis/spices). The male star of 2 States was Arjun Kapoor.  56:05: You may not have heard of Singham, but maybe you've seen this.  To continue the superhero theme, Singham Returns is the “Winter Soldier” of the Singham franchise. Maybe I just find Ajay Devgan more convincing in these macho authoritarian roles than most. Certainly his scripts don't go deepest into insanity – I'm reminded of a 2012 Telugu picture, Businessman, which finds Martin Freemanesque tic-laden cutey boy star Mahesh Babu essaying an underworld hotshot whose disgust at the corruption of establishment interests moves him to revolutionize Indian politics through heroic intimidation and hot-blooded violence, including a great moment where he and his crew bring a wise and necessary end to press freedoms. It's honest-to-god borderline fascism, with a big speech delivered right to the camera at the end. RECOMMENDED.  58:42: Finally, we have Haider, directed by Vishal Bhardwaj, and starring Shahid Kapoor, Tabu, Kay Kay Menon, Shraddha Kapoor & Irrfan Khan, who was on In Treatment, not Bored to Death – look for him in Jurassic World this summer! Since there's always time for one last flub with me, know that  Bhardwaj began his career in Hindi film as a music composer, not a lyricist. Also recommended outside of his Shakespeare trilogy (also including Maqbool, 2003, and Omkara, 2006) are the very popular 2009 thriller Kaminey, and 2013's Matru Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola, a political comedy about a landowner who becomes an ardent leftist when drunk and his communist chauffeur/enabler that simultaneously adopts the form of a super-mainstream Bollywood programmer, with a big wedding and everything. Next Week: MANN.

I once participated in a twenty-three-day wilderness program in the mountains of Colorado. If the purpose of this course was to expose students to dangerous lightning and half the world’s mosquitoes, it was fulfilled on the first day. What was in essence a forced march through hundreds of miles of backcountry culminated in a ritual known as “the solo,” where we were finally permitted to rest—alone, on the outskirts of a gorgeous alpine lake—for three days of fasting and contemplation. I had just turned sixteen, and this was my first taste of true solitude since exiting my mother’s womb. It proved a sufficient provocation. After a long nap and a glance at the icy waters of the lake, the promising young man I imagined myself to be was quickly cut down by loneliness and boredom. I filled the pages of my journal not with the insights of a budding naturalist, philosopher, or mystic but with a list of the foods on which I intended to gorge myself the instant I returned to civilization. Judging from the state of my consciousness at the time, millions of years of hominid evolution had produced nothing more transcendent than a craving for a cheeseburger and a chocolate milkshake. I found the experience of sitting undisturbed for three days amid pristine breezes and starlight, with nothing to do but contemplate the mystery of my existence, to be a source of perfect misery—for which I could see not so much as a glimmer of my own contribution. My letters home, in their plaintiveness and self-pity, rivaled any written at Shiloh or Gallipoli. So I was more than a little surprised when several members of our party, most of whom were a decade older than I, described their days and nights of solitude in positive, even transformational terms. I simply didn’t know what to make of their claims to happiness. How could someone’s happiness increase when all the material sources of pleasure and distraction had been removed? At that age, the nature of my own mind did not interest me—only my life did. And I was utterly oblivious to how different life would be if the quality of my mind were to change. Our minds are all we have. They are all we have ever had. And they are all we can offer others. This might not be obvious, especially when there are aspects of your life that seem in need of improvement—when your goals are unrealized, or you are struggling to find a career, or you have relationships that need repairing. But it’s the truth. Every experience you have ever had has been shaped by your mind. Every relationship is as good or as bad as it is because of the minds involved. If you are perpetually angry, depressed, confused, and unloving, or your attention is elsewhere, it won’t matter how successful you become or who is in your life—you won’t enjoy any of it. Most of us could easily compile a list of goals we want to achieve or personal problems that need to be solved. But what is the real significance of every item on such a list? Everything we want to accomplish—to paint the house, learn a new language, find a better job—is something that promises that, if done, it would allow us to finally relax and enjoy our lives in the present. Generally speaking, this is a false hope. I’m not denying the importance of achieving one’s goals, maintaining one’s health, or keeping one’s children clothed and fed—but most of us spend our time seeking happiness and security without acknowledging the underlying purpose of our search. Each of us is looking for a path back to the present: We are trying to find good enough reasons to be satisfied now. Acknowledging that this is the structure of the game we are playing allows us to play it differently. How we pay attention to the present moment largely determines the character of our experience and, therefore, the quality of our lives. Mystics and contemplatives have made this claim for ages—but a growing body of scientific research now bears it out. A few years after my first painful encounter with solitude, in the winter of 1987, I took the drug 3,4-methylenedioxy-N-methylamphetamine (MDMA), commonly known as Ecstasy, and my sense of the human mind’s potential shifted profoundly. Although MDMA would become ubiquitous at dance clubs and “raves” in the 1990s, at that time I didn’t know anyone of my generation who had tried it. One evening, a few months before my twentieth birthday, a close friend and I decided to take the drug. The setting of our experiment bore little resemblance to the conditions of Dionysian abandon under which MDMA is now often consumed. We were alone in a house, seated across from each other on opposite ends of a couch, and engaged in quiet conversation as the chemical worked its way into our heads. Unlike other drugs with which we were by then familiar (marijuana and alcohol), MDMA produced no feeling of distortion in our senses. Our minds seemed completely clear. In the midst of this ordinariness, however, I was suddenly struck by the knowledge that I loved my friend. This shouldn’t have surprised me—he was, after all, one of my best friends. However, at that age I was not in the habit of dwelling on how much I loved the men in my life. Now I could feel that I loved him, and this feeling had ethical implications that suddenly seemed as profound as they now sound pedestrian on the page: I wanted him to be happy. That conviction came crashing down with such force that something seemed to give way inside me. In fact, the insight appeared to restructure my mind. My capacity for envy, for instance—the sense of being diminished by the happiness or success of another person—seemed like a symptom of mental illness that had vanished without a trace. I could no more have felt envy at that moment than I could have wanted to poke out my own eyes. What did I care if my friend was better looking or a better athlete than I was? If I could have bestowed those gifts on him, I would have. Truly wanting him to be happy made his happiness my own. A certain euphoria was creeping into these reflections, perhaps, but the general feeling remained one of absolute sobriety—and of moral and emotional clarity unlike any I had ever known. It would not be too strong to say that I felt sane for the first time in my life. And yet the change in my consciousness seemed entirely straightforward. I was simply talking to my friend—about what, I don’t recall—and realized that I had ceased to be concerned about myself. I was no longer anxious, self-critical, guarded by irony, in competition, avoiding embarrassment, ruminating about the past and future, or making any other gesture of thought or attention that separated me from him. I was no longer watching myself through another person’s eyes. And then came the insight that irrevocably transformed my sense of how good human life could be. I was feeling boundless love for one of my best friends, and I suddenly realized that if a stranger had walked through the door at that moment, he or she would have been fully included in this love. Love was at bottom impersonal—and deeper than any personal history could justify. Indeed, a transactional form of love—I love you because…—now made no sense at all. The interesting thing about this final shift in perspective was that it was not driven by any change in the way I felt. I was not overwhelmed by a new feeling of love. The insight had more the character of a geometric proof: It was as if, having glimpsed the properties of one set of parallel lines, I suddenly understood what must be common to them all. The moment I could find a voice with which to speak, I discovered that this epiphany about the universality of love could be readily communicated. My friend got the point at once: All I had to do was ask him how he would feel in the presence of a total stranger at that moment, and the same door opened in his mind. It was simply obvious that love, compassion, and joy in the joy of others extended without limit. The experience was not of love growing but of its being no longer obscured. Love was—as advertised by mystics and crackpots through the ages—a state of being. How had we not seen this before? And how could we overlook it ever again? It would take me many years to put this experience into context. Until that moment, I had viewed organized religion as merely a monument to the ignorance and superstition of our ancestors. But I now knew that Jesus, the Buddha, Lao Tzu, and the other saints and sages of history had not all been epileptics, schizophrenics, or frauds. I still considered the world’s religions to be mere intellectual ruins, maintained at enormous economic and social cost, but I now understood that important psychological truths could be found in the rubble. Twenty percent of Americans describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious.” Although the claim seems to annoy believers and atheists equally, separating spirituality from religion is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. It is to assert two important truths simultaneously: Our world is dangerously riven by religious doctrines that all educated people should condemn, and yet there is more to understanding the human condition than science and secular culture generally admit. One purpose of this book is to give both these convictions intellectual and empirical support. Before going any further, I should address the animosity that many readers feel toward the term spiritual. Whenever I use the word, as in referring to meditation as a “spiritual practice,” I hear from fellow skeptics and atheists who think that I have committed a grievous error.The word spirit comes from the Latin spiritus, which is a translation of the Greek pneuma, meaning “breath.” Around the thirteenth century, the term became entangled with beliefs about immaterial souls, supernatural beings, ghosts, and so forth. It acquired other meanings as well: We speak of the spirit of a thing as its most essential principle or of certain volatile substances and liquors as spirits. Nevertheless, many nonbelievers now consider all things “spiritual” to be contaminated by medieval superstition. I do not share their semantic concerns.[1] Yes, to walk the aisles of any “spiritual” bookstore is to confront the yearning and credulity of our species by the yard, but there is no other term—apart from the even more problematic mystical or the more restrictive contemplative—with which to discuss the efforts people make, through meditation, psychedelics, or other means, to fully bring their minds into the present or to induce nonordinary states of consciousness. And no other word links this spectrum of experience to our ethical lives. Throughout this book, I discuss certain classically spiritual phenomena, concepts, and practices in the context of our modern understanding of the human mind—and I cannot do this while restricting myself to the terminology of ordinary experience. So I will use spiritual, mystical, contemplative, and transcendent without further apology. However, I will be precise in describing the experiences and methods that merit these terms. For many years, I have been a vocal critic of religion, and I won’t ride the same hobbyhorse here. I hope that I have been sufficiently energetic on this front that even my most skeptical readers will trust that my bullshit detector remains well calibrated as we advance over this new terrain. Perhaps the following assurance can suffice for the moment: Nothing in this book needs to be accepted on faith. Although my focus is on human subjectivity—I am, after all, talking about the nature of experience itself—all my assertions can be tested in the laboratory of your own life. In fact, my goal is to encourage you to do just that. Authors who attempt to build a bridge between science and spirituality tend to make one of two mistakes: Scientists generally start with an impoverished view of spiritual experience, assuming that it must be a grandiose way of describing ordinary states of mind—parental love, artistic inspiration, awe at the beauty of the night sky. In this vein, one finds Einstein’s amazement at the intelligibility of Nature’s laws described as though it were a kind of mystical insight. New Age thinkers usually enter the ditch on the other side of the road: They idealize altered states of consciousness and draw specious connections between subjective experience and the spookier theories at the frontiers of physics. Here we are told that the Buddha and other contemplatives anticipated modern cosmology or quantum mechanics and that by transcending the sense of self, a person can realize his identity with the One Mind that gave birth to the cosmos. In the end, we are left to choose between pseudo-spirituality and pseudo-science. Few scientists and philosophers have developed strong skills of introspection—in fact, most doubt that such abilities even exist. Conversely, many of the greatest contemplatives know nothing about science. But there is a connection between scientific fact and spiritual wisdom, and it is more direct than most people suppose. Although the insights we can have in meditation tell us nothing about the origins of the universe, they do confirm some well-established truths about the human mind: Our conventional sense of self is an illusion; positive emotions, such as compassion and patience, are teachable skills; and the way we think directly influences our experience of the world. There is now a large literature on the psychological benefits of meditation. Different techniques produce long-lasting changes in attention, emotion, cognition, and pain perception, and these correlate with both structural and functional changes in the brain. This field of research is quickly growing, as is our understanding of self-awareness and related mental phenomena. Given recent advances in neuroimaging technology, we no longer face a practical impediment to investigating spiritual insights in the context of science. Spirituality must be distinguished from religion—because people of every faith, and of none, have had the same sorts of spiritual experiences. While these states of mind are usually interpreted through the lens of one or another religious doctrine, we know that this is a mistake. Nothing that a Christian, a Muslim, and a Hindu can experience—self-transcending love, ecstasy, bliss, inner light—constitutes evidence in support of their traditional beliefs, because their beliefs are logically incompatible with one another. A deeper principle must be at work. That principle is the subject of this book: The feeling that we call “I” is an illusion. There is no discrete self or ego living like a Minotaur in the labyrinth of the brain. And the feeling that there is—the sense of being perched somewhere behind your eyes, looking out at a world that is separate from yourself—can be altered or entirely extinguished. Although such experiences of “self-transcendence” are generally thought about in religious terms, there is nothing, in principle, irrational about them. From both a scientific and a philosophical point of view, they represent a clearer understanding of the way things are. Deepening that understanding, and repeatedly cutting through the illusion of the self, is what is meant by “spirituality” in the context of this book. Confusion and suffering may be our birthright, but wisdom and happiness are available. The landscape of human experience includes deeply transformative insights about the nature of one’s own consciousness, and yet it is obvious that these psychological states must be understood in the context of neuroscience, psychology, and related fields. I am often asked what will replace organized religion. The answer, I believe, is nothing and everything. Nothing need replace its ludicrous and divisive doctrines—such as the idea that Jesus will return to earth and hurl unbelievers into a lake of fire, or that death in defense of Islam is the highest good. These are terrifying and debasing fictions. But what about love, compassion, moral goodness, and self-transcendence? Many people still imagine that religion is the true repository of these virtues. To change this, we must talk about the full range of human experience in a way that is as free of dogma as the best science already is. This book is by turns a seeker’s memoir, an introduction to the brain, a manual of contemplative instruction, and a philosophical unraveling of what most people consider to be the center of their inner lives: the feeling of self we call “I.” I have not set out to describe all the traditional approaches to spirituality and to weigh their strengths and weaknesses. Rather, my goal is to pluck the diamond from the dunghill of esoteric religion. There is a diamond there, and I have devoted a fair amount of my life to contemplating it, but getting it in hand requires that we remain true to the deepest principles of scientific skepticism and make no obeisance to tradition. Where I do discuss specific teachings, such as those of Buddhism or Advaita Vedanta, it isn’t my purpose to provide anything like a comprehensive account. Readers who are loyal to any one spiritual tradition or who specialize in the academic study of religion, may view my approach as the quintessence of arrogance. I consider it, rather, a symptom of impatience. There is barely time enough in a book—or in a life—to get to the point. Just as a modern treatise on weaponry would omit the casting of spells and would very likely ignore the slingshot and the boomerang, I will focus on what I consider the most promising lines of spiritual inquiry. My hope is that my personal experience will help readers to see the nature of their own minds in a new light. A rational approach to spirituality seems to be what is missing from secularism and from the lives of most of the people I meet. The purpose of this book is to offer readers a clear view of the problem, along with some tools to help them solve it for themselves. THE SEARCH FOR HAPPINESS One day, you will find yourself outside this world which is like a mother’s womb. You will leave this earth to enter, while you are yet in the body, a vast expanse, and know that the words, “God’s earth is vast,” name this region from which the saints have come. Jalal-ud-Din Rumi I share the concern, expressed by many atheists, that the terms spiritual and mystical are often used to make claims not merely about the quality of certain experiences but about reality at large. Far too often, these words are invoked in support of religious beliefs that are morally and intellectually grotesque. Consequently, many of my fellow atheists consider all talk of spirituality to be a sign of mental illness, conscious imposture, or self-deception. This is a problem, because millions of people have had experiences for which spiritual and mystical seem the only terms available. Many of the beliefs people form on the basis of these experiences are false. But the fact that most atheists will view a statement like Rumi’s above as a symptom of the man’s derangement grants a kernel of truth to the rantings of even our least rational opponents. The human mind does, in fact, contain vast expanses that few of us ever discover. And there is something degraded and degrading about many of our habits of attention as we shop, gossip, argue, and ruminate our way to the grave. Perhaps I should speak only for myself here: It seems to me that I spend much of my waking life in a neurotic trance. My experiences in meditation suggest, however, that an alternative exists. It is possible to stand free of the juggernaut of self, if only for moments at a time. Most cultures have produced men and women who have found that certain deliberate uses of attention—meditation, yoga, prayer—can transform their perception of the world. Their efforts generally begin with the realization that even in the best of circumstances, happiness is elusive. We seek pleasant sights, sounds, tastes, sensations, and moods. We satisfy our intellectual curiosity. We surround ourselves with friends and loved ones. We become connoisseurs of art, music, or food. But our pleasures are, by their very nature, fleeting. If we enjoy some great professional success, our feelings of accomplishment remain vivid and intoxicating for an hour, or perhaps a day, but then they subside. And the search goes on. The effort required to keep boredom and other unpleasantness at bay must continue, moment to moment. Ceaseless change is an unreliable basis for lasting fulfillment. Realizing this, many people begin to wonder whether a deeper source of well-being exists. Is there a form of happiness beyond the mere repetition of pleasure and avoidance of pain? Is there a happiness that does not depend upon having one’s favorite foods available, or friends and loved ones within arm’s reach, or good books to read, or something to look forward to on the weekend? Is it possible to be happy before anything happens, before one’s desires are gratified, in spite of life’s difficulties, in the very midst of physical pain, old age, disease, and death? We are all, in some sense, living our answer to this question—and most of us are living as though the answer were “no.” No, nothing is more profound than repeating one’s pleasures and avoiding one’s pains; nothing is more profound than seeking satisfaction—sensory, emotional, and intellectual—moment after moment. Just keep your foot on the gas until you run out of road. Certain people, however, come to suspect that human existence might encompass more than this. Many of them are led to suspect this by religion—by the claims of the Buddha or Jesus or some other celebrated figure. And such people often begin to practice various disciplines of attention as a means of examining their experience closely enough to see whether a deeper source of well-being exists. They may even sequester themselves in caves or monasteries for months or years at a time to facilitate this process. Why would a person do this? No doubt there are many motives for retreating from the world, and some of them are psychologically unhealthy. In its wisest form, however, the exercise amounts to a very simple experiment. Here is its logic: If there exists a source of psychological well-being that does not depend upon merely gratifying one’s desires, then it should be present even when all the usual sources of pleasure have been removed. Such happiness should be available to a person who has declined to marry her high school sweetheart, renounced her career and material possessions, and gone off to a cave or some other spot that is inhospitable to ordinary aspirations. One clue to how daunting most people would find such a project is the fact that solitary confinement—which is essentially what we are talking about—is considered a punishment inside a maximum-security prison. Even when forced to live among murderers and rapists, most people still prefer the company of others to spending any significant amount of time alone in a room. And yet contemplatives in many traditions claim to experience extraordinary depths of psychological well-being while living in isolation for vast stretches of time. How should we interpret this? Either the contemplative literature is a catalogue of religious delusion, psychopathology, and deliberate fraud, or people have been having liberating insights under the name of “spirituality” and “mysticism” for millennia. Unlike many atheists, I have spent much of my life seeking experiences of the kind that gave rise to the world’s religions. Despite the painful results of my first few days alone in the mountains of Colorado, I later studied with a wide range of monks, lamas, yogis, and other contemplatives, some of whom had lived for decades in seclusion doing nothing but meditating. In the process, I spent two years on silent retreat myself (in increments of one week to three months), practicing various techniques of meditation for twelve to eighteen hours a day. I can attest that when one goes into silence and meditates for weeks or months at a time, doing nothing else—not speaking, reading, or writing, just making a moment-to-moment effort to observe the contents of consciousness—one has experiences that are generally unavailable to people who have not undertaken a similar practice. I believe that such states of mind have a lot to say about the nature of consciousness and the possibilities of human well-being. Leaving aside the metaphysics, mythology, and sectarian dogma, what contemplatives throughout history have discovered is that there is an alternative to being continuously spellbound by the conversation we are having with ourselves; there is an alternative to simply identifying with the next thought that pops into consciousness. And glimpsing this alternative dispels the conventional illusion of the self. Most traditions of spirituality also suggest a connection between self-transcendence and living ethically. Not all good feelings have an ethical valence, and pathological forms of ecstasy surely exist. I have no doubt, for instance, that many suicide bombers feel extraordinarily good just before they detonate themselves in a crowd. But there are also forms of mental pleasure that are intrinsically ethical. As I indicated earlier, for some states of consciousness, a phrase like “boundless love” does not seem overblown. It is decidedly inconvenient for the forces of reason and secularism that if someone wakes up tomorrow feeling boundless love for all sentient beings, the only people likely to acknowledge the legitimacy of his experience will be representatives of one or another Iron Age religion or New Age cult. Most of us are far wiser than we may appear to be. We know how to keep our relationships in order, to use our time well, to improve our health, to lose weight, to learn valuable skills, and to solve many other riddles of existence. But following even the straight and open path to happiness is hard. If your best friend were to ask how she could live a better life, you would probably find many useful things to say, and yet you might not live that way yourself. On one level, wisdom is nothing more profound than an ability to follow one’s own advice. However, there are deeper insights to be had about the nature of our minds. Unfortunately, they have been discussed entirely in the context of religion and, therefore, have been shrouded in fallacy and superstition for all of human history. The problem of finding happiness in this world arrives with our first breath—and our needs and desires seem to multiply by the hour. To spend any time in the presence of a young child is to witness a mind ceaselessly buffeted by joy and sorrow. As we grow older, our laughter and tears become less gratuitous, perhaps, but the same process of change continues: One roiling complex of thought and emotion is followed by the next, like waves in the ocean. Seeking, finding, maintaining, and safeguarding our well-being is the great project to which we all are devoted, whether or not we choose to think in these terms. This is not to say that we want mere pleasure or the easiest possible life. Many things require extraordinary effort to accomplish, and some of us learn to enjoy the struggle. Any athlete knows that certain kinds of pain can be exquisitely pleasurable. The burn of lifting weights, for instance, would be excruciating if it were a symptom of terminal illness. But because it is associated with health and fitness, most people find it enjoyable. Here we see that cognition and emotion are not separate. The way we think about experience can completely determine how we feel about it. And we always face tensions and trade-offs. In some moments we crave excitement and in others rest. We might love the taste of wine and chocolate, but rarely for breakfast. Whatever the context, our minds are perpetually moving—generally toward pleasure (or its imagined source) and away from pain. I am not the first person to have noticed this. Our struggle to navigate the space of possible pains and pleasures produces most of human culture. Medical science attempts to prolong our health and to reduce the suffering associated with illness, aging, and death. All forms of media cater to our thirst for information and entertainment. Political and economic institutions seek to ensure our peaceful collaboration with one another—and the police or the military is summoned when they fail. Beyond ensuring our survival, civilization is a vast machine invented by the human mind to regulate its states. We are ever in the process of creating and repairing a world that our minds want to be in. And wherever we look, we see the evidence of our successes and our failures. Unfortunately, failure enjoys a natural advantage. Wrong answers to any problem outnumber right ones by a wide margin, and it seems that it will always be easier to break things than to fix them. Despite the beauty of our world and the scope of human accomplishment, it is hard not to worry that the forces of chaos will triumph—not merely in the end but in every moment. Our pleasures, however refined or easily acquired, are by their very nature fleeting. They begin to subside the instant they arise, only to be replaced by fresh desires or feelings of discomfort. You can’t get enough of your favorite meal until, in the next moment, you find you are so stuffed as to nearly require the attention of a surgeon—and yet, by some quirk of physics, you still have room for dessert. The pleasure of dessert lasts a few seconds, and then the lingering taste in your mouth must be banished by a drink of water. The warmth of the sun feels wonderful on your skin, but soon it becomes too much of a good thing. A move to the shade brings immediate relief, but after a minute or two, the breeze is just a little too cold. Do you have a sweater in the car? Let’s take a look. Yes, there it is. You’re warm now, but you notice that your sweater has seen better days. Does it make you look carefree or disheveled? Perhaps it is time to go shopping for something new. And so it goes. We seem to do little more than lurch between wanting and not wanting. Thus, the question naturally arises: Is there more to life than this? Might it be possible to feel much better (in every sense of better) than one tends to feel? Is it possible to find lasting fulfillment despite the inevitability of change? Spiritual life begins with a suspicion that the answer to such questions could well be “yes.” And a true spiritual practitioner is someone who has discovered that it is possible to be at ease in the world for no reason, if only for a few moments at a time, and that such ease is synonymous with transcending the apparent boundaries of the self. Those who have never tasted such peace of mind might view these assertions as highly suspect. Nevertheless, it is a fact that a condition of selfless well-being is there to be glimpsed in each moment. Of course, I’m not claiming to have experienced all such states, but I meet many people who appear to have experienced none of them—and these people often profess to have no interest in spiritual life. This is not surprising. The phenomenon of self-transcendence is generally sought and interpreted in a religious context, and it is precisely the sort of experience that tends to increase a person’s faith. How many Christians, having once felt their hearts grow as wide as the world, will decide to ditch Christianity and proclaim their atheism? Not many, I suspect. How many people who have never felt anything of the kind become atheists? I don’t know, but there is little doubt that these mental states act as a kind of filter: The faithful count them in support of ancient dogma, and their absence gives nonbelievers further reason to reject religion. This is a difficult problem for me to address in the context of a book, because many readers will have no idea what I’m talking about when I describe certain spiritual experiences and might assume that the assertions I’m making must be accepted on faith. Religious readers present a different challenge: They may think they know exactly what I’m describing, but only insofar as it aligns with one or another religious doctrine. It seems to me that both these attitudes present impressive obstacles to understanding spirituality in the way that I intend. I can only hope that, whatever your background, you will approach the exercises presented in this book with an open mind. RELIGION, EAST AND WEST We are often encouraged to believe that all religions are the same: All teach the same ethical principles; all urge their followers to contemplate the same divine reality; all are equally wise, compassionate, and true within their sphere—or equally divisive and false, depending on one’s view. No serious adherents of any faith can believe these things, because most religions make claims about reality that are mutually incompatible. Exceptions to this rule exist, but they provide little relief from what is essentially a zero-sum contest of all against all. The polytheism of Hinduism allows it to digest parts of many other faiths: If Christians insist that Jesus Christ is the son of God, for instance, Hindus can make him yet another avatar of Vishnu without losing any sleep. But this spirit of inclusiveness points in one direction only, and even it has its limits. Hindus are committed to specific metaphysical ideas—the law of karma and rebirth, a multiplicity of gods—that almost every other major religion decries. It is impossible for any faith, no matter how elastic, to fully honor the truth claims of another. Devout Jews, Christians, and Muslims believe that theirs is the one true and complete revelation—because that is what their holy books say of themselves. Only secularists and New Age dabblers can mistake the modern tactic of “interfaith dialogue” for an underlying unity of all religions. I have long argued that confusion about the unity of religions is an artifact of language. Religion is a term like sports: Some sports are peaceful but spectacularly dangerous (“free solo” rock climbing); some are safer but synonymous with violence (mixed martial arts); and some entail little more risk of injury than standing in the shower (bowling). To speak of sports as a generic activity makes it impossible to discuss what athletes actually do or the physical attributes required to do it. What do all sports have in common apart from breathing? Not much. The term religion is hardly more useful. The same could be said of spirituality. The esoteric doctrines found within every religious tradition are not all derived from the same insights. Nor are they equally empirical, logical, parsimonious, or wise. They don’t always point to the same underlying reality—and when they do, they don’t do it equally well. Nor are all these teachings equally suited for export beyond the cultures that first conceived them. Making distinctions of this kind, however, is deeply unfashionable in intellectual circles. In my experience, people do not want to hear that Islam supports violence in a way that Jainism doesn’t, or that Buddhism offers a truly sophisticated, empirical approach to understanding the human mind, whereas Christianity presents an almost perfect impediment to such understanding. In many circles, to make invidious comparisons of this kind is to stand convicted of bigotry. In one sense, all religions and spiritual practices must address the same reality—because people of all faiths have glimpsed many of the same truths. Any view of consciousness and the cosmos that is available to the human mind can, in principle, be appreciated by anyone. It is not surprising, therefore, that individual Jews, Christians, Muslims, and Buddhists have given voice to some of the same insights and intuitions. This merely indicates that human cognition and emotion run deeper than religion. (But we knew that, didn’t we?) It does not suggest that all religions understand our spiritual possibilities equally well. One way of missing this point is to declare that all spiritual teachings are inflections of the same “Perennial Philosophy.” The writer Aldous Huxley brought this idea into prominence by publishing an anthology by that title. Here is how he justified the idea: Philosophia perennis—the phrase was coined by Leibniz; but the thing—the metaphysic that recognizes a divine Reality substantial to the world of things and lives and minds; the psychology that finds in the soul something similar to, or even identical with, divine Reality; the ethic that places man’s final end in the knowledge of the immanent and transcendent Ground of all being—the thing is immemorial and universal. Rudiments of the Perennial Philosophy may be found among the traditionary lore of primitive peoples in every region of the world, and in its fully developed forms it has a place in every one of the higher religions. A version of this Highest Common Factor in all preceding and subsequent theologies was first committed to writing more than twenty-five centuries ago, and since that time the inexhaustible theme has been treated again and again, from the standpoint of every religious tradition and in all the principal languages of Asia and Europe.[2] Although Huxley was being reasonably cautious in his wording, this notion of a “highest common factor” uniting all religions begins to break apart the moment one presses for details. For instance, the Abrahamic religions are incorrigibly dualistic and faith-based: In Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the human soul is conceived as genuinely separate from the divine reality of God. The appropriate attitude for a creature that finds itself in this circumstance is some combination of terror, shame, and awe. In the best case, notions of God’s love and grace provide some relief—but the central message of these faiths is that each of us is separate from, and in relationship to, a divine authority who will punish anyone who harbors the slightest doubt about His supremacy. The Eastern tradition presents a very different picture of reality. And its highest teachings—found within the various schools of Buddhism and the nominally Hindu tradition of Advaita Vedanta—explicitly transcend dualism. By their lights, consciousness itself is identical to the very reality that one might otherwise mistake for God. While these teachings make metaphysical claims that any serious student of science should find incredible, they center on a range of experiences that the doctrines of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam rule out-of-bounds. Of course, it is true that specific Jewish, Christian, and Muslim mystics have had experiences similar to those that motivate Buddhism and Advaita, but these contemplative insights are not exemplary of their faith. Rather, they are anomalies that Western mystics have always struggled to understand and to honor, often at considerable personal risk. Given their proper weight, these experiences produce heterodoxies for which Jews, Christians, and Muslims have been regularly exiled or killed. Like Huxley, anyone determined to find a happy synthesis among spiritual traditions will notice that the Christian mystic Meister Eckhart (ca. 1260–ca. 1327) often sounded very much like a Buddhist: “The knower and the known are one. Simple people imagine that they should see God, as if He stood there and they here. This is not so. God and I, we are one in knowledge.” But he also sounded like a man bound to be excommunicated by his church—as he was. Had Eckhart lived a little longer, it seems certain that he would have been dragged into the street and burned alive for these expansive ideas. That is a telling difference between Christianity and Buddhism. In the same vein, it is misleading to hold up the Sufi mystic Al-Hallaj (858–922) as a representative of Islam. He was a Muslim, yes, but he suffered the most grisly death imaginable at the hands of his coreligionists for presuming to be one with God. Both Eckhart and Al-Hallaj gave voice to an experience of self-transcendence that any human being can, in principle, enjoy. However, their views were not consistent with the central teachings of their faiths. The Indian tradition is comparatively free of problems of this kind. Although the teachings of Buddhism and Advaita are embedded in more or less conventional religions, they contain empirical insights about the nature of consciousness that do not depend upon faith. One can practice most techniques of Buddhist meditation or the method of self-inquiry of Advaita and experience the advertised changes in one’s consciousness without ever believing in the law of karma or in the miracles attributed to Indian mystics. To get started as a Christian, however, one must first accept a dozen implausible things about the life of Jesus and the origins of the Bible—and the same can be said, minus a few unimportant details, about Judaism and Islam. If one should happen to discover that the sense of being an individual soul is an illusion, one will be guilty of blasphemy everywhere west of the Indus. There is no question that many religious disciplines can produce interesting experiences in suitable minds. It should be clear, however, that engaging a faith-based (and probably delusional) practice, whatever its effects, isn’t the same as investigating the nature of one’s mind absent any doctrinal assumptions. Statements of this kind may seem starkly antagonistic toward Abrahamic religions, but they are nonetheless true: One can speak about Buddhism shorn of its miracles and irrational assumptions. The same cannot be said of Christianity or Islam.[3] Western engagement with Eastern spirituality dates back at least as far as Alexander’s campaign in India, where the young conqueror and his pet philosophers encountered naked ascetics whom they called “gymnosophists.” It is often said that the thinking of these yogis greatly influenced the philosopher Pyrrho, the father of Greek skepticism. This seems a credible claim, because Pyrrho’s teachings had much in common with Buddhism. But his contemplative insights and methods never became part of any system of thought in the West. Serious study of Eastern thought by outsiders did not begin until the late eighteenth century. The first translation of a Sanskrit text into a Western language appears to have been Sir Charles Wilkins’s rendering of the Bhagavad Gita, a cornerstone text of Hinduism, in 1785. The Buddhist canon would not attract the attention of Western scholars for another hundred years.[4] The conversation between East and West started in earnest, albeit inauspiciously, with the birth of the Theosophical Society, that golem of spiritual hunger and self-deception brought into this world almost single-handedly by the incomparable Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky in 1875. Everything about Blavatsky seemed to defy earthly logic: She was an enormously fat woman who was said to have wandered alone and undetected for seven years in the mountains of Tibet. She was also thought to have survived shipwrecks, gunshot wounds, and sword fights. Even less persuasively, she claimed to be in psychic contact with members of the “Great White Brotherhood” of ascended masters—a collection of immortals responsible for the evolution and maintenance of the entire cosmos. Their leader hailed from the planet Venus but lived in the mythical kingdom of Shambhala, which Blavatsky placed somewhere in the vicinity of the Gobi Desert. With the suspiciously bureaucratic name “the Lord of the World,” he supervised the work of other adepts, including the Buddha, Maitreya, Maha Chohan, and one Koot Hoomi, who appears to have had nothing better to do on behalf of the cosmos than to impart its secrets to Blavatsky. [5] It is always surprising when a person attracts legions of followers and builds a large organization on their largesse while peddling penny-arcade mythology of this kind. But perhaps this was less remarkable in a time when even the best-educated people were still struggling to come to terms with electricity, evolution, and the existence of other planets. We can easily forget how suddenly the world had shrunk and the cosmos expanded as the nineteenth century came to a close. The geographical barriers between distant cultures had been stripped away by trade and conquest (one could now order a gin and tonic almost everywhere on earth), and yet the reality of unseen forces and alien worlds was a daily focus of the most careful scientific research. Inevitably, cross-cultural and scientific discoveries were mingled in the popular imagination with religious dogma and traditional occultism. In fact, this had been happening at the highest level of human thought for more than a century: It is always instructive to recall that the father of modern physics, Isaac Newton, squandered a considerable portion of his genius on the study of theology, biblical prophecy, and alchemy. The inability to distinguish the strange but true from the merely strange was common enough in Blavatsky’s time—as it is in our own. Blavatsky’s contemporary Joseph Smith, a libidinous con man and crackpot, was able to found a new religion on the claim that he had unearthed the final revelations of God in the hallowed precincts of Manchester, New York, written in “reformed Egyptian” on golden plates. He decoded this text with the aid of magical “seer stones,” which, whether by magic or not, allowed Smith to produce an English version of God’s Word that was an embarrassing pastiche of plagiarisms from the Bible and silly lies about Jesus’s life in America. And yet the resulting edifice of nonsense and taboo survives to this day. A more modern cult, Scientology, leverages human credulity to an even greater degree: Adherents believe that human beings are possessed by the souls of extraterrestrials who were condemned to planet Earth 75 million years ago by the galactic overlord Xenu. How was their exile accomplished? The old-fashioned way: These aliens were shuttled by the billions to our humble planet aboard a spacecraft that resembled a DC-8. They were then imprisoned in a volcano and blasted to bits with hydrogen bombs. Their souls survived, however, and disentangling them from our own can be the work of a lifetime. It is also expensive.[6] Despite the imponderables in her philosophy, Blavatsky was among the first people to announce in Western circles that there was such a thing as the “wisdom of the East.” This wisdom began to trickle westward once Swami Vivekananda introduced the teachings of Vedanta at the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893. Again, Buddhism lagged behind: A few Western monks living on the island of Sri Lanka were beginning to translate the Pali Canon, which remains the most authoritative record of the teachings of the historical Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama. However, the practice of Buddhist meditation wouldn’t actually be taught in the West for another half century. It is easy enough to find fault with romantic ideas about Eastern wisdom, and a tradition of such criticism sprang up almost the instant the first Western seeker sat cross-legged and attempted to meditate. In the late 1950s, the author and journalist Arthur Koestler traveled to India and Japan in search of wisdom and summarized his pilgrimage thus: “I started my journey in sackcloth and ashes, and came back rather proud of being a European.”[7] In The Lotus and the Robot, Koestler gives some of his reasons for being less than awed by his journey to the East. Consider, for example, the ancient discipline of hatha yoga. While now generally viewed as a system of physical exercises designed to increase a person’s strength and flexibility, in its traditional context hatha yoga is part of a larger effort to manipulate “subtle” features of the body unknown to anatomists. No doubt much of this subtlety corresponds to experiences that yogis actually have—but many of the beliefs formed on the basis of these experiences are patently absurd, and certain of the associated practices are both silly and injurious. Koestler reports that the aspiring yogi is traditionally encouraged to lengthen his tongue—even going so far as to cut the frenulum (the membrane that anchors the tongue to the floor of the mouth) and stretch the soft palate. What is the purpose of these modifications? They enable our hero to insert his tongue into his nasopharynx, thereby blocking the flow of air through the nostrils. His anatomy thus improved, a yogi can then imbibe subtle liquors believed to emanate directly from his brain. These substances—imagined, by recourse to further subtleties, to be connected to the retention of semen—are said to confer not only spiritual wisdom but immortality. This technique of drinking mucus is known as khechari mudra, and it is thought to be one of the crowning achievements of yoga. I’m more than happy to score a point for Koestler here. Needless to say, no defense of such practices will be found in this book. Criticism of Eastern wisdom can seem especially pertinent when coming from Easterners themselves. There is indeed something preposterous about well-educated Westerners racing East in search of spiritual enlightenment while Easterners make the opposite pilgrimage seeking education and economic opportunities. I have a friend whose own adventures may have marked a high point in this global comedy. He made his first trip to India immediately after graduating from college, having already acquired several yogic affectations: He had the requisite beads and long hair, but he was also in the habit of writing the name of the Hindu god Ram in Devanagari script over and over in a journal. On the flight to the motherland, he had the good fortune to be seated next to an Indian businessman. This weary traveler thought he had witnessed every species of human folly—until he caught sight of my friend’s scribbling. The spectacle of a Western-born Stanford graduate, of working age, holding degrees in both economics and history, devoting himself to the graphomaniacal worship of an imaginary deity in a language he could neither read nor understand was more than this man could abide in a confined space at 30,000 feet. After a testy exchange, the two travelers could only stare at each other in mutual incomprehension and pity—and they had ten hours yet to fly. There really are two sides to such a conversation, but I concede that only one of them can be made to look ridiculous. We can also grant that Eastern wisdom has not produced societies or political institutions that are any better than their Western counterparts; in fact, one could argue that India has survived as the world’s largest democracy only because of institutions that were built under British rule. Nor has the East led the world in scientific discovery. Nevertheless, there is something to the notion of uniquely Eastern wisdom, and most of it has been concentrated in or derived from the tradition of Buddhism. Buddhism has been of special interest to Western scientists for reasons already hinted at. It isn’t primarily a faith-based religion, and its central teachings are entirely empirical. Despite the superstitions that many Buddhists cherish, the doctrine has a practical and logical core that does not require any unwarranted assumptions. Many Westerners have recognized this and have been relieved to find a spiritual alternative to faith-based worship. It is no accident that most of the scientific research now done on meditation focuses primarily on Buddhist techniques. Another reason for Buddhism’s prominence among scientists has been the intellectual engagement of one of its most visible representatives: Tenzin Gyatso, the fourteenth Dalai Lama. Of course, the Dalai Lama is not without his critics. My late friend Christopher Hitchens meted out justice to “his holiness” on several occasions. He also castigated Western students of Buddhism for the “widely and lazily held belief that ‘Oriental’ religion is different from other faiths: less dogmatic, more contemplative, more . . . Transcendental,” and for the “blissful, thoughtless exceptionalism” with which Buddhism is regarded by many.[8] Hitch did have a point. In his capacity as the head of one of the four branches of Tibetan Buddhism and as the former leader of the Tibetan government in exile, the Dalai Lama has made some questionable claims and formed some embarrassing alliances. Although his engagement with science is far-reaching and surely sincere, the man is not above consulting an astrologer or “oracle” when making important decisions. I will have something to say in this book about many of the things that might have justified Hitch’s opprobrium, but the general thrust of his commentary here was all wrong. Several Eastern traditions are exceptionally empirical and exceptionally wise, and therefore merit the exceptionalism claimed by their adherents. Buddhism in particular possesses a literature on the nature of the mind that has no peer in Western religion or Western science. Some of these teachings are cluttered with metaphysical assumptions that should provoke our doubts, but many aren’t. And when engaged as a set of hypotheses by which to investigate the mind and deepen one’s ethical life, Buddhism can be an entirely rational enterprise. Unlike the doctrines of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the teachings of Buddhism are not considered by their adherents to be the product of infallible revelation. They are, rather, empirical instructions: If you do X, you will experience Y. Although many Buddhists have a superstitious and cultic attachment to the historical Buddha, the teachings of Buddhism present him as an ordinary human being who succeeded in understanding the nature of his own mind. Buddha means “awakened one”—and Siddhartha Gautama was merely a man who woke up from the dream of being a separate self. Compare this with the Christian view of Jesus, who is imagined to be the son of the creator of the universe. This is a very different proposition, and it renders Christianity, no matter how fully divested of metaphysical baggage, all but irrelevant to a scientific discussion about the human condition. The teachings of Buddhism, and of Eastern spirituality generally, focus on the primacy of the mind. There are dangers in this way of viewing the world, to be sure. Focusing on training the mind to the exclusion of all else can lead to political quietism and hive-like conformity. The fact that your mind is all you have and that it is possible to be at peace even in difficult circumstances can become an argument for ignoring obvious societal problems. But it is not a compelling one. The world is in desperate need of improvement—in global terms, freedom and prosperity remain the exception—and yet this doesn’t mean we need to be miserable while we work for the common good. In fact, the teachings of Buddhism emphasize a connection between ethical and spiritual life. Making progress in one domain lays a foundation for progress in the other. One can, for instance, spend long periods of time in contemplative solitude for the purpose of becoming a better person in the world—having better relationships, being more honest and compassionate and, therefore, more helpful to one’s fellow human beings. Being wisely selfish and being selfless can amount to very much the same thing. There are centuries of anecdotal testimony on this point—and, as we will see, the scientific study of the mind has begun to bear it out. There is now little question that how one uses one’s attention, moment to moment, largely determines what kind of person one becomes. Our minds—and lives—are largely shaped by how we use them. Although the experience of self-transcendence is, in principle, available to everyone, this possibility is only weakly attested to in the religious and philosophical literature of the West. Only Buddhists and students of Advaita Vedanta (which appears to have been heavily influenced by Buddhism) have been absolutely clear in asserting that spiritual life consists in overcoming the illusion of the self by paying close attention to our experience in the present moment.[9] As I wrote in my first book, The End of Faith, the disparity between Eastern and Western spirituality resembles that found between Eastern and Western medicine—with the arrow of embarrassment pointing in the opposite direction. Humanity did not understand the biology of cancer, develop antibiotics and vaccines, or sequence the human genome under an Eastern sun. Consequently, real medicine is almost entirely a product of Western science. Insofar as specific techniques of Eastern medicine actually work, they must conform, whether by design or by happenstance, to the principles of biology as we have come to know them in the West. This is not to say that Western medicine is complete. In a few decades, many of our current practices will seem barbaric. One need only ponder the list of side effects that accompany most medications to appreciate that these are terribly blunt instruments. Nevertheless, most of our knowledge about the human body—and about the physical universe generally—emerged in the West. The rest is instinct, folklore, bewilderment, and untimely death. An honest comparison of spiritual traditions, Eastern and Western, proves equally invidious. As manuals for contemplative understanding, the Bible and the Koran are worse than useless. Whatever wisdom can be found in their pages is never best found there, and it is subverted, time and again, by ancient savagery and superstition. Again, one must deploy the necessary caveats: I am not saying that most Buddhists or Hindus have been sophisticated contemplatives. Their traditions have spawned many of the same pathologies we see elsewhere among the faithful: dogmatism, anti-intellectualism, tribalism, otherworldliness. However, the empirical difference between the central teachings of Buddhism and Advaita and those of Western monotheism is difficult to overstate. One can traverse the Eastern paths simply by becoming interested in the nature of one’s own mind—especially in the immediate causes of psychological suffering—and by paying closer attention to one’s experience in every present moment. There is, in truth, nothing one need believe. The teachings of Buddhism and Advaita are best viewed as lab manuals and explorers’ logs detailing the results of empirical research on the nature of human consciousness. Nearly every geographical or linguistic barrier to the free exchange of ideas has now fallen away. It seems to me, therefore, that educated people no longer have a right to any form of spiritual provincialism. The truths of Eastern spirituality are now no more Eastern than the truths of Western science are Western. We are merely talking about human consciousness and its possible states. My purpose in writing this book is to encourage you to investigate certain contemplative insights for yourself, without accepting the metaphysical ideas that they inspired in ignorant and isolated peoples of the past. A final word of caution: Nothing I say here is intended as a denial of the fact that psychological well-being requires a healthy “sense of self”—with all the capacities that this vague phrase implies. Children need to become autonomous, confident, and self-aware in order to form healthy relationships. And they must acquire a host of other cognitive, emotional, and interpersonal skills in the process of becoming sane and productive adults. Which is to say that there is a time and a place for everything—unless, of course, there isn’t. No doubt there are psychological conditions, such as schizophrenia, for which practices of the sort I recommend in this book might be inappropriate. Some people find the experience of an extended, silent retreat psychologically destabilizing.[10] Again, an analogy to physical training seems apropos: Not everyone is suited to running a six-minute mile or bench-pressing his own body weight. But many quite ordinary people are capable of these feats, and there are better and worse ways to accomplish them. What is more, the same principles of fitness generally apply even to people whose abilities are limited by illness or injury. So I want to make it clear that the instructions in this book are intended for readers who are adults (more or less) and free from any psychological or medical conditions that could be exacerbated by meditation or other techniques of sustained introspection. If paying attention to your breath, to bodily sensations, to the flow of thoughts, or to the nature of consciousness itself seems likely to cause you clinically significant anguish, please check with a psychologist or a psychiatrist before engaging in the practices I describe. MINDFULNESS It is always now. This might sound trite, but it is the truth. It’s not quite true as a matter of neurology, because our minds are built upon layers of inputs whose timing we know must be different. [11] But it is true as a matter of conscious experience. The reality of your life is always now. And to realize this, we will see, is liberating. In fact, I think there is nothing more important to understand if you want to be happy in this world. But we spend most of our lives forgetting this truth—overlooking it, fleeing it, repudiating it. And the horror is that we succeed. We manage to avoid being happy while struggling to become happy, fulfilling one desire after the next, banishing our fears, grasping at pleasure, recoiling from pain—and thinking, interminably, about how best to keep the whole works up and running. As a consequence, we spend our lives being far less content than we might otherwise be. We often fail to appreciate what we have until we have lost it. We crave experiences, objects, relationships, only to grow bored with them. And yet the craving persists. I speak from experience, of course. As a remedy for this predicament, many spiritual teachings ask us to entertain unfounded ideas about the nature of reality—or at the very least to develop a fondness for the iconography and rituals of one or another religion. But not all paths traverse the same rough ground. There are methods of meditation that do not require any artifice or unwarranted assumptions at all. For beginners, I usually recommend a technique called vipassana (Pali for “insight”), which comes from the oldest tradition of Buddhism, the Theravada. One of the advantages of vipassana is that it can be taught in an entirely secular way. Experts in this practice generally acquire their training in a Buddhist context, and most retreat centers in the United States and Europe teach its associated Buddhist philosophy. Nevertheless, this method of introspection can be brought into any secular or scientific context without embarrassment. (The same cannot be said for the practice of chanting to Lord Krishna while banging a drum.) That is why vipassana is now being widely studied and adopted by psychologists and neuroscientists. The quality of mind cultivated in vipassana is almost always referred to as “mindfulness,” and the literature on its psychological benefits is now substantial. There is nothing spooky about mindfulness. It is simply a state of clear, nonjudgmental, and undistracted attention to the contents of consciousness, whether pleasant or unpleasant. Cultivating this quality of mind has been shown to reduce pain, anxiety, and depression; improve cognitive function; and even produce changes in gray matter density in regions of the brain related to learning and memory, emotional regulation, and self-awareness.[12] We will look more closely at the neurophysiology of mindfulness in a later chapter. Mindfulness is a translation of the Pali word sati. The term has several meanings in the Buddhist literature, but for our purposes the most important is “clear awareness.”