Category: Vedanta & Hindu Philosophy
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Purushartha: The Four Legitimate Aims of a Human Life
Dharma, artha, kama and moksha are the four aims Sanatan thought treats as legitimate. The framework is notable for refusing to make wealth and desire into problems.
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Svadharma: Why Your Duty Isn’t Anyone Else’s
Svadharma is the idea that duty is particular rather than universal. The Gita states it in its most uncomfortable form: better your own duty done badly than another’s done well.
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The Two Paths After Death: Devayana and Pitryana
The Upanishads describe two distinct routes a person may take after death, one leading beyond return and one leading back into another birth.
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Adi Shankaracharya: The Monk Who Rebuilt a Civilization’s Thought
Shankara died at thirty-two and left behind a philosophical system, a body of commentary, and four monastic centres that are still running.
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Dvaita: Madhva’s Case for Eternal Difference
Madhva argued that the difference between the self and the divine is real, permanent, and never dissolves. Dvaita is the Vedantic school that refuses the merger entirely.
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Vishishtadvaita: Ramanuja’s Qualified Non-Dualism
Ramanuja agreed that reality is one and disagreed that it is featureless. Vishishtadvaita keeps the unity of Brahman while insisting that selves and world are real parts of it.
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Advaita Vedanta: Why Non-Duality Isn’t Nihilism
Advaita says there is only one reality without a second. It is routinely mistaken for a claim that nothing exists, which is close to the opposite of what it argues.
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Vaisheshika: Atoms and Categories
Vaisheshika proposed an atomic theory of matter and a formal system of categories for classifying everything that exists, well before either idea appeared in Europe.
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Nyaya and the Indian Syllogism
The Nyaya school developed a five-part method of logical proof, independently of Greek logic, built to be demonstrated in public debate rather than written alone.
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Pramana: How Indian Philosophy Decides What Counts as Knowledge
Before Indian philosophical schools could argue about metaphysics, they had to agree on what would count as valid evidence. They did not fully agree, and the disagreement is revealing.
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Jivanmukti: Liberation While Still Alive
Jivanmukti is the claim that liberation can be complete before death, in a body that still ages and still feels pain. It is one of the boldest positions Vedanta takes.
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Tat Tvam Asi: The Sentence That Does the Work
Thou art That is not a compliment or an encouragement. It is a statement of identity, and the Chandogya Upanishad repeats it nine times to make sure the point lands.
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Sakshi: The Witness That Is Never Witnessed
The sakshi is the constant witnessing awareness Vedanta places behind every experience. It has one defining property: it can never itself become an object of observation.
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Why Deep Sleep Is a Philosophical Problem
Most philosophy of mind treats consciousness as simply absent during dreamless sleep. Vedanta disagrees, and its reasoning is worth taking seriously.
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Turiya: The Fourth That Is Not a State
Waking, dreaming, and deep sleep are three ordinary states of consciousness. The Mandukya Upanishad names a fourth that is not, in the same sense, a state at all.
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Annamaya to Anandamaya: The Five Sheaths in Order
The Taittiriya Upanishad describes the self as wrapped in five progressively subtler sheaths, each one mistaken for the self before the next is discovered.
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Sthula, Sukshma, Karana: The Three Bodies
Vedanta describes a person as composed of three distinct bodies, not one, each surviving death differently and each dissolving in its own order.
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Why the Five Elements Are Never Found Pure
Panchikarana is the Vedantic account of how five subtle elements mix into everything material. Its central claim is that nothing in the world is made of one element alone.
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Manas and Buddhi: Why Mind and Intellect Disagree
Manas gathers and doubts; buddhi decides. Most of what people call an inner conflict is a description of these two functions doing their separate jobs.
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Antahkarana: The Four-Fold Inner Instrument
Classical Indian psychology divides the inner mind into four distinct functions, each doing a specific job that the others cannot substitute for.
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Adhyasa: The Single Error Everything Else Rests On
Advaita Vedanta traces nearly every form of human suffering back to one specific cognitive error, superimposition, committed before any thought occurs.
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Neti Neti: Finding Truth by Elimination
Neti neti means not this, not this. It is the Upanishadic method of arriving at the Self by refusing every description of it, and it works by subtraction rather than addition.
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Apaurusheya: The Claim That the Vedas Had No Author
Orthodox Hindu philosophy holds that the Vedas are apaurusheya, not of human origin, and even not composed by any god. The claim is precise and unusual.
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Ahamkara: The Function That Says I
Ahamkara is the specific mental function responsible for the sense of being a separate self. Indian psychology treats it as one function among several, not as the self itself.
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Kanchukas: The Five Coverings That Manufacture an Individual
Kashmir Shaivism describes five specific limitations that convert unbounded awareness into the experience of being a finite person.
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The Thirty-Six Tattvas: Shaivism’s Longer Count
Samkhya counts twenty-five fundamental categories of reality. Kashmir Shaivism extends the list to thirty-six, and the extra eleven matter.
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Why Consciousness Alone Cannot Act
Vedanta and Samkhya both insist that pure consciousness cannot, by itself, do anything at all. Action requires a second principle entirely.
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Maya Is Not the Word for Illusion
Maya is usually translated as illusion, which suggests the world is fake. What the term actually claims is more precise and considerably stranger.
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Ishvara: Why the Absolute Needs a Face to Be Approached
Brahman without attributes cannot be worshipped, addressed, or loved. Ishvara is the same reality considered as it can be approached.
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Akasha: Space as the First Element
Akasha is usually translated as space or ether and counted as the first and subtlest of the five elements. Its defining property is that it accommodates without being affected.
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Anrta: What Happens When the Pattern Is Broken
Anrta, the negation of rta, is not simply a lie. It names any act that pulls a thread out of the pattern holding reality together.
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Why Vedic Oaths Were Structural, Not Social
An oath in the Vedic world was not a social guarantee backed by reputation. It was treated as an intervention in the order of things, which is why breaking one was so serious.
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Rta: The Pattern Nobody Legislated
Rta is the oldest ordering concept in the Veda, and it is not a law, because a law needs a lawgiver. What it names is a pattern that holds without having been imposed.
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Why the Absolute Is Described Only by Removing Things
Vedantic texts describe Brahman almost entirely by saying what it is not. The method is called apophatic elsewhere, and it is a deliberate choice, not a failure of vocabulary.
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Satyam Jnanam Anantam: A Definition Made of Three Denials
The Taittiriya Upanishad defines Brahman in three words. Read closely, each one is ruling something out rather than describing something in.
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Zero as a Metaphysical Idea Before It Was a Number
India gave the world zero as a positional numeral. The philosophical work that made it thinkable was done first, and shunya meant something before it meant nothing.
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Why Brahman Cannot Be an Object of Knowledge
Every act of knowing splits into knower, knowing and known. Brahman is the knower, which is why it can never appear on the other side of that split.
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Nirguna and Saguna: One Reality, Two Descriptions
Vedanta describes the absolute both without attributes and with them. The two are not two things, and the relationship between them decided the shape of Indian devotion.
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Brahman Is Not a God
Brahman is routinely translated as God and routinely misunderstood as a result. It is not a person, does not act, wants nothing, and is not worshipped.
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Asat and Sat: The Hymn That Refuses to Decide
The Nasadiya Sukta opens by denying both existence and non-existence at the beginning. The double negation is deliberate and it rules out the two easy answers at once.