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Showing posts from July 27, 2009


Dalit Priests in Hindu Temples – a much needed revolutionary change

Sanskrit and Vedic Universities in India have started opening the doors Hindu priesthood to all those who want to practice it. The Vedic school managed by the world famous Tirumala Tirupati Venkateswara Temple has started training Dalit priests. The much needed progressive and revolutionary change of breaking the male Brahmin monopoly of Hindu priesthood is surely happening but at a snail’s pace. Tamil Nadu Government has set up a Hindu priest training center and has already started inducting people from all sections of Hindu society as priests in temples run by the government. Famous temples in Bihar have started appointing of Dalit priests . In 2002, the Supreme Court of India had ruled that a person belonging to Hindu community could be appointed as priests in temples so long as they were qualified to conduct the ritual. Times of India reports Is India on the threshold of real change in that most regressive of monopolies, the priesthood? This has alw

What do the Upanishads teach us? – Edmond Holmes

The authors of the Upanishads did not all think alike; but, taking their meditations as a whole, we may say that they are dominated by one paramount conception’ that of the ideal of oneness of the soul of man with the soul of the universe. The Sanskrit word for the soul of man is Atman and the word for the soul of the universe is Brahman. ‘God’s dwelling place’, says Professor Radhakrishnan in this exposition of the philosophy of the Upanishads, ‘is the heart of man. The inner immortal self and the great cosmic power are one and the same.’ Brahman is the Atman, and the Atman is the Brahman. The one supreme power through which all things have been brought into being is one with the inmost self in each man’s heart.’ What is real in each of us is his self or soul. What is real in universe is its self or soul, in virtue of which its All is One, and the name for which in our language is God. In other words of one of the Upanishads: ‘He who is the Bra