Some time back an article of mine on Vedanta titled 'Deconstructing the inanity of Brahman and the Vedantic worldview' was posted on Nirmukta as an attempt of firing one of the first salvos of critical examination of ancient Indian religious treatises termed as Upanishads, which scriptures eventually paved the way for emergence and continuity of a philosophy, cult, phenomenon or movement (depending upon ideological perception) called the Vedanta.
From the responses it received, it is quite obvious that it did not go down well with some sections of urban Hindu intelligentsia, who accused it of flaws ranging from being directionless, sophomoric and un-scholarly to westernized, reductionist and misrepresenting the views of Vedantins.
While that article admittedly did not attempt a thorough-going critical scrutiny of various aspects of Vedanta and its practices, it focused mainly on these two primary features of Vedanta philosophy:
• The central worldview of the Vedanta of the one and only absolute truth of a totally attribute-less and characterless state of bliss and unity with the one and only Self, that underlies and is masked by a fictional world (or the unreality) of physical matter, appearances, our senses and change / modification / flux of them , as the ultimate end or goal of human existence and endeavor.
• The entities of Brahman as the Universal soul or consciousness and the Self as the individual soul or consciousness and their cat-and-mouse games of gazing and chasing, non-requital and consummation and its interminable lives of agony and ecstasy in the endless odyssey of metempsychosis (reincarnation) as narrated in the principal Upanishads.
These fancy words and phrases (barring the sarcastic dig of cat-and-mouse games) are not mine, but as close as feasible, a faithful reproduction of primary Vedantic doctrines, as gleaned from various sources, commentaries and opinions of Vedantic chroniclers from India and abroad, and squeezed into single paraphrases. One is of course mindful of the conviction of Vedantic worthies that the truths of Vedanta are beyond the grasp of even human language and expression!!.
High-sounding, esoteric, baffling and mind-boggling as these ideas may seem or sound, on closer look they most probably come across as utter and absolute nonsense.
This is my own personal, poor and low opinion and characterization of the Upanishads and Vedanta whether as a scripture or philosophy or cult of practices and/or rituals. Possibly many other critics of Vedanta may share these sentiments, yet not choose to be so forthright or candid about it.
Yet some frivolous objections to that article glibly complained that it did not state what was wrong or the problem with Vedanta. To refresh their memories and feeble attention spans, here is the quick and dirty recapitulation:
• The Vedanta and its works are a compilation of quasi-religious opinions of the variety of the most absurd and bizarre speculative fantasies on cosmology, ontology and monastic life.
• In the view of some critics like Lala Hardayal and VR Narla, in their obsessive quest for Absolute truth, these treatises with their absurd conceits, quaint fancies and chaotic speculations represent some of the most spurious metaphysics of ancient India.
• While BR Ambedkar was more generous in giving the Upanishads some benefit of doubt, about its pockets of abstracted reformism, he yet ultimately concluded that these works were a “totally inconsequential piece of speculation with no beneficial impact on the Hindu society”.
• All or most of the doctrines of Vedanta are resting on the foundations of the ‘castles in the air’ type of flimsy scriptural and religious apologetic without any care or concern for its implications on the real world.
• In its current form, Vedanta is inspiring an orthodox Hindu revivalist creed riding on the bandwagon of cultish movements that are leading multitudes of Hindus into a wild-goose chase of Vedantic fantasies.
From the lot of reviled Indologists from the western hemisphere, TH Huxley is almost sheepish and apologetic while wondering at the severe mortification of flesh that the Upanishads subject the Indian ascetic anchorite to (AE Gough has called this kind of ascetic a forest anchorite) and is perplexed by the state of impassive quasi-somnambulism to which Upanishadic ‘thought and discipline’ seeks to reduce the human mind to.
I am as perplexed or even more so than Thomas Huxley, that this kind of morbidity and life-denying nature of thought in the Vedanta can be the object of reverence and worship of so many millions of Hindus and other followers.
Are the Hindu multitudes and their followers so incapable of a plain and common sense reading of these texts, that they are so utterly blind to the mind-numbing nonsense and idiocy in these works?
Since then as an attempt to probe these oddities and conundrums, other skeptics on the Nirmukta forum and I have engaged the Vedanta faithful and apologists in a series of arguments and refutations against Upanishads and Vedanta, which will be found among the 270 comments posted there so far. In that process Nirmukta and this blog have launched the most comprehensive attack on the ideology of Vedanta.
To provide a better structure and clarity to these broadsides against the irrationality and superstition of Vedanta and its bogus spiritualism, I have co-opted many of the comment-responses on that article to this blog and have further fortified it by my separate posts on related topics.
I have now re-compiled most of them and grouped under the label of Vedanta Refutation.
I request and urge the readers, followers and critics of these blog posts to review and provide their inputs to these and carry the message of the posts and ideas further and wider.
From the responses it received, it is quite obvious that it did not go down well with some sections of urban Hindu intelligentsia, who accused it of flaws ranging from being directionless, sophomoric and un-scholarly to westernized, reductionist and misrepresenting the views of Vedantins.
While that article admittedly did not attempt a thorough-going critical scrutiny of various aspects of Vedanta and its practices, it focused mainly on these two primary features of Vedanta philosophy:
• The central worldview of the Vedanta of the one and only absolute truth of a totally attribute-less and characterless state of bliss and unity with the one and only Self, that underlies and is masked by a fictional world (or the unreality) of physical matter, appearances, our senses and change / modification / flux of them , as the ultimate end or goal of human existence and endeavor.
• The entities of Brahman as the Universal soul or consciousness and the Self as the individual soul or consciousness and their cat-and-mouse games of gazing and chasing, non-requital and consummation and its interminable lives of agony and ecstasy in the endless odyssey of metempsychosis (reincarnation) as narrated in the principal Upanishads.
These fancy words and phrases (barring the sarcastic dig of cat-and-mouse games) are not mine, but as close as feasible, a faithful reproduction of primary Vedantic doctrines, as gleaned from various sources, commentaries and opinions of Vedantic chroniclers from India and abroad, and squeezed into single paraphrases. One is of course mindful of the conviction of Vedantic worthies that the truths of Vedanta are beyond the grasp of even human language and expression!!.
High-sounding, esoteric, baffling and mind-boggling as these ideas may seem or sound, on closer look they most probably come across as utter and absolute nonsense.
This is my own personal, poor and low opinion and characterization of the Upanishads and Vedanta whether as a scripture or philosophy or cult of practices and/or rituals. Possibly many other critics of Vedanta may share these sentiments, yet not choose to be so forthright or candid about it.
Yet some frivolous objections to that article glibly complained that it did not state what was wrong or the problem with Vedanta. To refresh their memories and feeble attention spans, here is the quick and dirty recapitulation:
• The Vedanta and its works are a compilation of quasi-religious opinions of the variety of the most absurd and bizarre speculative fantasies on cosmology, ontology and monastic life.
• In the view of some critics like Lala Hardayal and VR Narla, in their obsessive quest for Absolute truth, these treatises with their absurd conceits, quaint fancies and chaotic speculations represent some of the most spurious metaphysics of ancient India.
• While BR Ambedkar was more generous in giving the Upanishads some benefit of doubt, about its pockets of abstracted reformism, he yet ultimately concluded that these works were a “totally inconsequential piece of speculation with no beneficial impact on the Hindu society”.
• All or most of the doctrines of Vedanta are resting on the foundations of the ‘castles in the air’ type of flimsy scriptural and religious apologetic without any care or concern for its implications on the real world.
• In its current form, Vedanta is inspiring an orthodox Hindu revivalist creed riding on the bandwagon of cultish movements that are leading multitudes of Hindus into a wild-goose chase of Vedantic fantasies.
From the lot of reviled Indologists from the western hemisphere, TH Huxley is almost sheepish and apologetic while wondering at the severe mortification of flesh that the Upanishads subject the Indian ascetic anchorite to (AE Gough has called this kind of ascetic a forest anchorite) and is perplexed by the state of impassive quasi-somnambulism to which Upanishadic ‘thought and discipline’ seeks to reduce the human mind to.
I am as perplexed or even more so than Thomas Huxley, that this kind of morbidity and life-denying nature of thought in the Vedanta can be the object of reverence and worship of so many millions of Hindus and other followers.
Are the Hindu multitudes and their followers so incapable of a plain and common sense reading of these texts, that they are so utterly blind to the mind-numbing nonsense and idiocy in these works?
Since then as an attempt to probe these oddities and conundrums, other skeptics on the Nirmukta forum and I have engaged the Vedanta faithful and apologists in a series of arguments and refutations against Upanishads and Vedanta, which will be found among the 270 comments posted there so far. In that process Nirmukta and this blog have launched the most comprehensive attack on the ideology of Vedanta.
To provide a better structure and clarity to these broadsides against the irrationality and superstition of Vedanta and its bogus spiritualism, I have co-opted many of the comment-responses on that article to this blog and have further fortified it by my separate posts on related topics.
I have now re-compiled most of them and grouped under the label of Vedanta Refutation.
I request and urge the readers, followers and critics of these blog posts to review and provide their inputs to these and carry the message of the posts and ideas further and wider.
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