“Philosophy is the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence, especially when considered as an academic discipline.”
Despite having written before about my tryst with philosophy in my blog, it is still nice to be able to revisit my story from a different perch as it were.
I approach the topic with a historic perspective highly personal in nature as, I am deeply involved in the study of philosophy. I was not always so and hence this approach.
I was burning both ends of the candle in the late seventies of the last century when a dear friend, concerned about my well being put me in touch with Transcendental Meditation. I learnt it and started practicing it in earnest with amazing results. While practicing, I also studied the first six chapters of the Bhagwat Gita translated and commented on by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
This continued till 1983 when on a dare, I attended a ten day Vipassana camp and got hooked to that form of meditation which I continue to practice till today. That little adventure also led me to study Buddhist philosophy.
Two more synchronistic developments that led to further incidents that got me thoroughly involved in Indian philosophy.
While on a business visit to Chennai, another dear friend insisted that I accompany him to a lecture on Vedanta by Swami Paramarthananda. That got me further interested and when the same friend on a visit to Pune requested me to take him to a colleague and fellow Sanyasi of the Chennai Swamiji, I did and met Swami Satswarupananda of Pune.
I not only met him, but became his student and studied Vedanta under him in our Guru Shishya Parampara for fifteen years.
He finally retired to full time sanyasa to Rishikesh after instructing his students in Pune that Shravanam. (Learning) and Mananam (Internalising the learning) were over and the time had come for them to focus on Nidhidyasanam. And that is what I have been doing since the last many years.
In the meanwhile, I also had the privilege of meeting Swami Dayananda Saraswati, the Guru to both the Swamijis mentioned earlier, both at Anaikatti, his head quarters and in Pune during two of his visits.
Having bored my readers with that background, let me now explain what Vedanta, means to me.
In the Vedantic system, one goes through various stages of life with four goals called the Purushartha.. Having crossed the first three fairly successfully, I am at the last stage of my progress to achieve Moksha.
End of my story.
To understand the contents of my post, please do use the links given for various words without which, it will be difficult to.
This is my take on this week’s Friday 4 On 1 blog posts where Conrad, Sanjana, Shackman and I write on the same topic. Today’s topic has been suggested by Sanjana. Please do go over to the other two blogs to see what they have to say on the same topic. Thank you.
