Mandalam Musings Day 3 - Indian philosophy is the Sanatana Dharma

 

Mandalam Musings - Day 3

Indian philosophy is the Sanatana Dharma

Indian philosophy, the Sanatana Dharma, is eternal as it has no beginning and hence no end. Anything that has been born is bound to die. Evolution is the only possibility for an ancient culture that is a way of life, a pursuit for perfection. In Sanatana Dharma, the question ‘does the god exists?’ is not at all relevant because the seekers over tens of thousands of years have declared that there is nothing other than god. It is like me asking someone, do I have a tongue? forgetting that I have just used my tongue to ask that question!

Anything that has existence is god and with that logic, we, the human beings are servants of God, God particles, or God itself. But can we define God? No. That is why we call God with a non-gender-specific pronoun - ‘that’ and our scriptures declare: ‘you are that’.  

You do not have to believe this as a theory or dogma. The Sanatana Dharma is not asking you to believe anything without questioning. But it draws your attention to the subjective science and its scientists who have imparted the truth they realized through contemplation and meditation that lasted their lifetime and more. They ask us to find the truth for ourselves. They are asking us to pay attention- Sraddha- to what the scriptures are saying. Sraddha is the ardent trust on something with a conviction to take up a further inquiry into finding the truth about it. 

It is like solving for ‘x’ in a mathematical equation. We trust our teachers when we start our journey to find the value of ‘x’. To find the value of ‘x’, first, we must trust that ‘x’ has some value, even if it is zero or infinity or anything in between. We can all agree that this is not just a belief. It is a hypothesis that can be proved or disproved by the seeker.  If interested, the scriptures and the gurus will guide you, but there is no spoon-feeding here. You find your truth – the value of x – “that” – and realize that you are not this limited ‘i,’ the small individual ego, but the big ‘I’ with infinite potential. 

The Ayyappa culture inspires us to embark on this journey of inquiry, physically and metaphorically.