Full moon over Rishikesh

2016

Verses in glorification of the Holy Name. I have revisited these translations several times. They were done in connection with my work on Hari-nāma-cintāmaṇi. It appears that on this day in 2016 I was relishing a few of them which I posted on Facebook. The complete collection was put on the blog for the first time in January this year:

2014

Vote counting has started in India. The exit polls show a BJP led majority. Indeed, it looks like they are crushing the opposition. Namo NaMo.


The full moon over Rishikesh. Last day tomorrow. As usual, I am completely behind in everything. It has been pretty silent. Swamiji was looking a little better today, but yesterday he said that each day brings new physical problems. I said, "We just pray that you finish your Yoga Sutra work and your five year silence."
His face is puffy since the last major crisis and the toll it has taken on him. It is inevitable, of course, but I miss the old Rishikesh night club days. He is slowly picking up a bit of strength and since I got here started working on YS again, and today he was upbeat about moving forward. He had pretty much stopped work altogether for the past five months.
The Yoga Tarangini is getting closer to publication. I can see that Swamiji considered this project very important in terms of fulfilling an obligation to his guru. I wonder if I will ever complete my obligations to mine.
2012

When I see pictures of Freud and Jung with their pipes and cigars, tweed jackets, vests and ties, I get the impression that brilliant as they were, they were so immersed in themselves that their entire exercise of psychology was just a reflection of their own personalities, which was in fact would have been impossible for them to break out of.

[I have been reading a book called "Belief" by James Alcock. He is a very strong rationalist and discredits both Freud and Jung and practically equates them with pseudoscience. There is of course some pseudoscience in both of them -- after all, there are psychic places that science cannot reach -- for all the attempts to do so by means of ECG scans, etc. Biochemical reductionism is not particularly helpful and indeed a pseudosolution to the problems of philosophy and psychology. Ultimately., what I am trying to get at is based on Rupa Goswami's aesthetic psychology of religious experience, which therefore links in with both of these psychologists' approach. I intuitively believe that there is some merit in both their approaches. Nevertheless, as the above comment shows, my affinity for the Indian way of being leaves me indifferent to their lifestyles and personal psychologies. I could say the same of someone like Jordan Peterson.]







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