COMMENTS GALORE ... 13

COMMENTS GALORE ... 13

Sugata Bose @Vaibhav Kaushik Joshi : Grand. Carry on with your scriptural reading and research.

Sugata Bose @Geeta Sridhar : 'The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna' was recorded by Mahendranath Gupta (M) who was Sri Ramakrishna's householder disciple and not by Mohendranath Dutta who was Swami Vivekananda's younger brother. Mohendranath Dutta, however, had written an analytical biography, more a study really, of Sri Ramakrishna. This latter work, as mentioned in the post proper, was called 'Sri Sri Ramakrishner Anudhyan' which may be translated as 'The Study of Sri Sri Ramakrishna'.

Sugata Bose @Joydeep Ghosh : Do you understand literature and the nuance of literary expression? If so, you would have followed the current of the post. In a short and pithy post that can attract the ever-shifting attention of the fickle public it is often impossible to pack in more elaboration while maintaining the literary quality of expression. One must learn to appreciate the underlying idea of a post in which case one will not so easily fall into the lurking loopholes of misapprehension. Thanks, nonetheless, for reading and responding. And this was an honest answering your question for my part, so, do not again misinterpret intent or implication.

Sugata Bose @সুরমিতা চক্রবর্তী : Where have I said that Hindus are a dying race? I have just stated the reverse of it. Read the post.

Our existential threats over a millennium have shrunk our Asiatic polity now to merely a section of the Indian subcontinent and the process of Islamisation and Christianisation is on and with increasing vigour, any perceptive observer will notice. Hence, the death to our sprawling Asian civilisation should be a pointer to the implication behind the use of the words 'dying race'.

However, I personally do not believe that Hindus will eventually die as a race for the dynamics of world history will help preserve the Hindu race. The recurring descent of divine personalities to save the Sanatan Dharma from practical extinction, perhaps, will yet aid the Hindus in their struggle for existence. The situation is bad, though, and it is fervent faith, almost raised to quasi-irrationality, that prompts us to persist in our faith in the future. That is also indolence of sorts and cannot absolve us of the sin of harbouring such ignorance about the real state of affairs. Hindus have lived long and will live longer, too, on three counts: (a) the truth of their philosophical foundation (b) the grace of God facilitating their bare survival amidst ever-shrinking political space (c) the necessity of humanity in the large of Hindu spiritual culture for its terrestrial survival.

Islam is on the rise once more in India and throughout the world. If Hindus continue to idle away in dreamy fantasizing about their automatic survival, they need to look at Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Kashmir, West Bengal, Kerala, Karnataka and the entire northeastern belt, and come to conclusions. The post has hinted at the worst case scenario and not averred that it will be so, for there are valorous and intelligent Hindus as well who will fight to preserve the Dharma. Hence, you see.

Sugata Bose @A devotee : Well done. This is the spirit, straightforward forthright assertion. Else, the world will crush you. Only humility before God must go hand in hand to avoid bolstering of the unreal ego which is the great bar to spiritual realisation. Daily prayer and humble submission before Thakur helps cleanse the soul of such accretion and approximates one to Him.

Sugata Bose @Santanu Ghosh : Your response thus is unwarranted, lacking in discretion and a trifle out of place in a cultured forum such as this. I request you to be more circumspect in your responses. Else, readers will misread your noble intentions and think that you lack in fundamental civility. By the way, it would be better if you stick to one language while responding here on the comment stream as bilingual proficiency comes only to the one who has mastered one language for starters. Till then at least spare us your bilingual babble. Also, be a trifle more civil in your responses and do not engage in extraneous offence of sorts. You can appreciate what I mean.

Sugata Bose @Santanu Ghosh : Please help yourself along in the study of Swamiji. I will be gratified to learn from you one day that you have learnt from him enough to be able to hold civil conversation with a fellow human being. As of now it seems a distant day but you have time on your hands and you can make a good beginning. My good wishes to you, brother, in this grand adventure from where you will emerge, I assure you, the richer. So, Godspeed!

Sugata Bose @Santanu Ghosh : One must not pander to ignorance and lower literary culture further. Not all would share your exclusive opinion and articulation thereof. Those who are literate in the language would for sure appreciate whatever may be worthy in my writings. So, there the matter ends. I hope you understand and do not yet hold me responsible for supposed engagement in babble when human incompetence should deem introspection the better alternative by way of extrication from its present predicament, albeit a self-imposed one. Now meditate on this with dictionaries galore waiting on you and for good measure keep the analytical mind handy, too. Thank you.

P.S. However, I appreciate your concern sincerely and consider your point valid. But then you see, I write for the pleasure of exercising my faculties, letting out my emotions and reactions on the spur of the moment, and to allow the outflow of my thoughts in the linguistic vehicle they choose to ride from the inner recesses of my consciousness to the outer reaches of my being and beyond, travelling straight to penetrate the thought-fields of my audience. It is ever a spontaneous overflow and never a calculated statement couched in verbal adornment that may seem put on or artificial or written with the specific aim to confound my readers. My poor audience reach in real terms thus, that is, from the perspective of understanding of what my posts wish to convey, does not discourage or dishearten me in anyway because the real pleasure I get out of my posts when the thoughts flow out in rhythmic, lyrical terms from the tip of my tapping index finger onto the mobile screen. There is no expectation of return from this act of self-expression for there is no audience that I specifically cater to who, to my mind, ought to respond. Yes, it irritates a deal to witness intellectual laziness on the part of participating persons in the post, but then the average individual is that way and must be, if even grudgingly, accepted as that. The people's penchant for photographs and for standard responses of adoration of the great ones in commonplace language that lack originality and smack of staleness owing to overuse does become bothersome, even frustrating at times, when I unwittingly stray into the fold of expectation of a better response from them owing to our existential exigencies today. But then the next post follows and all is forgotten.

One more thing I need to draw your attention to. I quite often write in easier English and easy Bengali which ought not to be difficult to understand. But where you are there appreciating such posts, my friend? Reflect on that, too. Cherry-picking posts and hazarding opinion on the basis of predisposition becomes the surface critic. Read all my posts, read deep and respond. May Thakur bless you!

Sugata Bose @Santanu Ghosh : 🕉 Hindu! You are my brother, my co-religionist, my countryman, my fellow builder of the fate of future India.

Sugata Bose @Santanu Ghosh : That day has been today and we can continue our conversation every day. Keep commenting and whenever it is expedient I shall try to respond.

Sugata Bose @Manish Goswami : The God who you objectify outside of your body is the Atman seated at the core of your consciousness. When a person goes into samadhi, he witnesses his own Atman (Self) as God. This Self is the triune of absolute existence-consciousness-bliss and is erroneously objectified by the ignorant as the creator God enthroned elsewhere, the extracosmic authority of the cosmos and its creatures. But Abrahamic religions have a problem here. There is no way that an extracosmic being can interact with the cosmos, these being parallel entities without any intersection whatsoever. Interaction in the absence of intersection is impossible. Thus, the Sanatan Dharma does not bring in the concept of creation at all. It affirms the idea of 'anaadi srishti, ananta srishti' (beginningless creation, and endless creation -- here creation is to be understood as manifestation).

Sugata Bose @Manish Goswami : Brahmacharya (continence/absolute purity), akaamahata (sinlessness), shraddhaa (reverence that tends to perfection), svaadhyaay (scriptural study), nididhyaasan (meditative concentration) -- these are some of the means for achieving self-confidence that will conduce to such a faith in one's divinity. When Swamiji says it is possible, it is possible. One has to have this 'gentlemanly faith' in his words and pursue the spiritual line as prescribed by him. But remember, it is ever 'the wave of the Ganga and not the Ganga of the wave', as Thakur (Sri Ramakrishna) used to say. Our ideas of divinity should be clear and not cluttered with egoistic misconceptions that can drown us in the material mire. Hence, daily study of 'Sri Sri Ramakrishna Kathamrita' ('The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna') is necessary. Coupled with it one must read daily 'The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda', some section of it, in a disciplined and dedicated manner. Prolonged study will produce the desired change in the spiritual constitution and help induce that supreme self-confidence devoid of lower distractions in the fullness of time. Swamiji says, 'Purity, patience and perseverance' -- these three attributes will lead inevitably to success.

Sugata Bose @Joydeep Ghosh : When have I preached indoctrination? The Vedanta which I subscribe to and in effect propagate is based on rational investigation into truth and arrival at it by the rigorous process of discrimination between the Real and the unreal. The Sanatan Dharma is based on spiritual realisation followed by acceptance of the essence of Truth and not preceded by faith in some extracosmic deity whose arbitrary willing determines the cosmic course of things? Besides, my posts, often apparently contradictory, are aimed at stimulating human thinking which is the sine qua non for civilisational sustenance and progress. Hence, judgemental readers may be confounded by them when they are apparently contradisposed to each other. May all good attend you and yours! 🕉 Hindu!

Sugata Bose @Debashish Paul : Must others believe in what they say post-realisation or ought they to suspend judgement rationally, maintaining a critical agnosticism before they get to experimenting with Truth likewise and arrive at like realisations hopefully?

Sugata Bose @Vaibhav Kaushik Joshi : Idealistic but unpractical. Does not work in reality thus. Men lead organisation astray. Else, the periodic descent of the Lord would not be necessary to set good the lost order, the undone balance of things.

Sugata Bose @Ramakrishnan Mahadevan : Indeed, they must. But organisation itself to be potent, must be cleansed of commercial corruption, dictatorial tendencies and accumulating dross. It should be bathed in a culture that conduces to continuing good and does not play into the hands of declining values to suit perceived exigencies of the times while sacrificing its fundamental features which have formed its basis, its bedrock, its foundation.

Sugata Bose @Ramakrishnan Mahadevan : Yes, but that does not mean that any organisation should be oblivious of the corruption that accretes in due course. Self-correction requires continuous introspection and admission of growing discrepancies within the order that tend to make it stray off-course. No organisation must be so complacent as to feel that it is immune to internal corrosion. The necessary anti-corrodants must be applied regularly to prevent eventual organisational loss of credibility and collapse.

Sugata Bose @Vaibhav Kaushik Joshi : Integration, yes, provided the other party would allow you to integrate with such harmonic ideas. Else, either a war of ideas fought vociferously as we witness today or a cowardly reticence in discussing hot topics that might inflame the opposition or, yet another, a cowardly cowering before the antagonistic adversary and allowing him to roguishly rule the roost using sleight of hand, deceit, fraud and force.

Sugata Bose @Suman Gangopadhyay : কল্পনায় সিদ্ধপুরুষ দেখছি আপনি | স্বামীজীর স্বদেশমন্ত্র পাঠ করুন, বুঝতে পারবেন স্বাদেশিকতার মর্মার্থ | হিন্দু সংস্কৃতি বহুযুগ বিস্তৃত অতীতকাল হতে | তা না বুঝেই ও হিন্দুর সংস্কৃতির ওপর যুগযুগান্ত ধরে বিধর্মীর অত্যাচারকে স্বল্পায়াসেই বিস্মৃত হয়ে অনর্থক মিথ্যা আরোপে প্রবৃত্ত হয়ে নিজভাব রক্ষা করেছেন বলে আত্মপ্রসাদ লাভ করতে পারেন অবশ্যই কিন্তু বাস্তব সত্যভাষণে অকৃতকার্য হবেন | ভাল থাকবেন আর বিশ্লেষণের শক্তি বৃদ্ধিপূর্বক আলোচনায় প্রবৃত্ত হবেন | নইলে নিঃসার ও অযৌক্তিক মন্তব্যের প্রত্যুত্তর দেওয়ার প্রয়োজনীয়তা অনুভব করব না, বিশেষতঃ যখন সে সকল মন্তব্য সেরকম কোন রাজনৈতিক বর্ণে রঞ্জিত দেখব যা স্বধর্মের ও স্বজাতির স্বার্থবিরুদ্ধ | 🕉 হিন্দু!

Sugata Bose @Swami Sunirmalananda : There is no force from the star or the planet. This is misconception of modern physics, a misreading of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. A massive body merely warps the geometry of space-time around it which in turn makes for the fall of objects and even the bending of the trajectory of electromagnetic radiation within its ambit. This is secondary effect and not primary force that is the active cause. Such erroneous ideas must not be spread to glorify Hinduism the wrong way. Better scholarship would serve the cause that much better. Alas, by any means one must prove one's cultural greatness, it seems has become the predicament of some bigoted proponents of Hindu culture! This cannot be the way forward for facile suppositions based on faulty reading of history and science cannot fool those with erudition and will only boomerang in the long run upon one's own degraded cultural state when more people get to know about such flimsy assertions.

Sugata Bose @Anil Dhar : No, quite a few but certainly not all. So many are converts to communism and other like left creeds bearing the name of liberal-secular who are patently anti-Hindu in their professed statements and harboured sentiments and in consequence they undermine everything that goes to uphold Hindu interests and safeguard their survival. Their alignment thus with non-Hindus, be they Muslims or Christians or whosoever else, even after so many of them have been driven out of erstwhile East Pakistan post-Partition, is amusing, to euphemistically put it with a touch of sarcasm added to spice it up. These are the internal ones who bear brahminical surnames but act quite contrary to what a brahmin should behave like. Thus, there are internal as well as external enemies of the Hindus about whom we have to be wary as we wage our civilisaltional struggle for survival and future flourishing.

Sugata Bose @Dipankar Paul : I have written enough in the past and continue to write so. Generally, though, I discreetly pass the message so as not to defame individuals and institutions, a reputation that they have earned through selfless service in the past and to which they have a right. But I always am forthwith and forthright in my constructive criticism of pertinent parties over issues that involve human rights and entail human suffering, not absolving any as sacrosanct and above censure. What seems to be the universal case, though, is this setting of institutional and individual interest over the larger interests of humanity. So much of futile spiritual talk when most do not have the character to stand upto tyranny of the sword or to diabolical doctrine. In the end such institutions become fossilised and incapable of delivering the mission for which they were founded in the first place. The space for free speech with it is shrinking by the day and making the fight against the forces of the dark that much more difficult. What these so-called secularists, individuals and institutions must no more do is to aggravate the situation by upholding partial truths and outright false narratives as being emblematic of their cause emanating from their 'founding fathers' because it will embolden the fanatics further and precipitate a worse human crisis in the days to come. Character is utterly missing in those who pretend that everything is hunky dory in a world fractured by selfish motivations, fanatical ideologies and gross violation of everything that is grand and great in human affairs. It is best to neglect these Individuals and institutions and move ahead. Let them modify stance and stop preaching partial truths and outright falsities; let them stop pandering to capitalist corruption by commercialising their moves to a retrograde degree; let them go back to original impulse and principle, that of their founders, before they hope to receive cooperation, help and public sympathy anymore. Till then let us strengthen our own resolve to fight injustice; let us manifest the character which we so cherish as the prriceless gift to humanity by humanity's greats and which we believe is the structural foundation of all positive response to the dark forces that beset humanity. Overall a bleak picture but hope shines in the corner like the silver lining of a dark monsoon cloud that promises a life-giving shower, nonetheless.

Sugata Bose @Dipankar Paul : I agree on this point and they are gradually shifting stance to align themselves to this cause of the defence of Hindus and Hinduism, albeit very carefully so as not to jeopardise their larger international interests. It is a tightrope that they have to tread -- ideological adherence to original principles, pragmatic considerations that have to be taken into account, especially keeping in view their foreign centres, and commercial considerations which have of late raised eyebrows owing to gross violation of original principles. The Mission is right now in a quandary and needs to introspect deeply before taking the next false step that may undo much of what they have thus far achieved. They must take recourse to Thakur-Swamiji's teachings and must no more neglect them to suit convenience. Once when they had declared themselves a non-Hindu organisation to save themselves from communist invasion of their welfare institutions, they had incurred the wrath of the Hindu polity, but in those days there were no social media to highlight such misadventures. But now public awareness, thanks to the internet services, are at its height and any more alienation from the bulk of the Hindu community will completely isolate the Mission and undo their cause. So, you see, the Mission is playing the dual game of appeasing the international order by its superficial universalism that has no spine whatsoever in standing up for truth and justice in the real world, and that of cautious camaraderie with the political forces that rule the order today, be they at the national level or at the provincial level. This is their apolitical political predicament and this is why religious orders throughout history have eventually been relegated to the wastebin of actual usefulness regarding revolutionary human progress. The Mission, perhaps, will be no exception to that general principle, judging from its current activities which in no way resonate to what Ramakrishna-Vivekananda stood for.