Bhakti in Upaniṣads: A detailed Perspective on Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad

Bhakti in Upaniṣads: A detailed Perspective on Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad

-Ms. V.Durgalakshmi & Dr Meera Baindur

Upanishads are some of the oldest texts in Indian intellectual traditions. A part of the Vedic literature, Upaniṣads are distinguished from the rest of the Veda-sections because of their emphasising the path of knowledge called Jñana kānda as opposed to the rest of the Vedic sections that focus on ritual or karma kānda.

The term Upaniṣad is formed from the root word śad which means ‘to sit’ and the two prefixes, ni that means ‘down’ and upa which means ‘near.’ The term therefore refers to the act of ‘sitting down near’ or in another sense it also means ‘to draw close to’. The word represents both the context and the content of the Upanishads. The context is that of a close conversation between the teacher and the taught and the content of teaching of these texts is the revelation of a secret knowledge that leads the student closer to a supreme spiritual state. The Upaniṣad-s are also called Vedanta, a culmination of Vedic enquiry into the nature of the truth (Dasgupta, 1922, p.30-31).

One can say that with the requisite physical, mental and intellectual temperaments, an entire generation of seekers exhausted enquiry into all possibilities of material sciences. Having done so, they turned inward and continued their seeking in the depths of their own personality. Having observed, analyzed and experienced “life”, they generously imparted their wisdom to deserving students, the next generation of sincere seekers. These experiences and teachings were crystallized into what is available to us as the Upaniṣad-s.

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This article come to our forthcoming book entitled: Reconsidering Classical Indian Thoughts.

RE-INTERPRETING THE CONCEPT OF DHARMA IN CLASSICAL INDIAN ETHICAL PERSPECTIVE

RE-INTERPRETING THE CONCEPT OF DHARMA IN CLASSICAL INDIAN ETHICAL PERSPECTIVE

-Dr Aditi Patra (Nee Ray)

In India, morality is never considered as separated from human existence and life. As a matter of fact, it is necessary to consider the basic factors of morality in relation to the study of human nature. Moral type of an individual depends on the basic intrinsic nature of the individuals. Each individual according to his own capacity is supposed to sustain a society, and that is value, that is his ‘dharma’. In my present thought provoking paper, my intention is to analyze and explicate the multidimensional interpretations of the concept of dharma from the classical Indian ethical perspective and more specifically from some of the thoughts of the Indian philosophical schools.

This paper is divided into four sections. The first section of this paper begins with the analysis of the etymological and other meanings of the word ‘dharma’. The term ‘dharma’ may be explained in the sense of objective morality as well as subjective morality. In the second section, the concept of dharma has been analyzed in the sense of objective morality. In the third section, discussions have been made about dharma as character trait and its consequences, i.e. in the sense of subjective morality. How does an individual achieve moksa or liberation by performing dharma has been critically analyzed in the concluding section.

I

Dharma, in the Indian ethics, is a key term and it is a term with many senses. The multivocal character of the word ‘dharma’ is evidenced by the fact that it has been used to denote such widely different things as nature, law, custom, religious rituals, rules, morality, duties, character-trait. This term, actually, covers the entire range of a man’s life. However, behind all of these dimensions, there is a normative one which constitutes also the central core. Dharma as a human value or purusartha, can be said to be the value which consists in, or is constituted by, living a morally good life, a life which is in accordance with the requirements of morality appropriate to a man’s just being a human being in his society or to his being a participant in interpersonal transactions .In this paper, the word ‘dharma’ is understood in the sense of morality and the other sense of dharma as religious consciousness has been excluded.

This article come to our forthcoming book entitled: Reconsidering Classical Indian Thoughts.