Could someone explain to me the concept of Dharma?

"As It Is" by A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada is excellent and can be found free online

Shreemad Bhagavad Gita "The Song of Love" by Paramahamsa Sri Swami Vishwananda is also nice

Whatever translation you read make sure it's one by a Bhakti

Dravidians are dark blue. Can't blame negras for trying to glom on to them.

I prefer this sort of Krishna art, myself.

what era is this from?
the Miller Gita translation has Mughal art on it, looks very cool but different than what you've posted

This is modern, a lot of the followers of Prabhupada from the 1970s onward are absolutely godlike painters.

Dharma is "The way things are" and they are not only the teachings explaining how the things are, but alzó de merthods to undertand ir by yourself.

I would recommend you to red "The way things are" by Lama Ole Nydahl.

is that Shiva in the bubbles?

I was sold an "As It Is" version a couple of years ago, but it has large sections of commentary between each verse.

I was under the impression that the "As It Is" version wasn't one used by many practicing Hindus, just the Hare Krishnas.

I'll probably go with this version desu.

>I was under the impression that the "As It Is" version wasn't one used by many practicing Hindus, just the Hare Krishnas.
this is my experience as well, I've only ever seen "As It Is" sold at Hare Krishna events
the Miller translation is no bullshit, a short book with a brief introduction, the text in plain english, and that's it.

It's little universes, with their own reclining Vishnus lying on Anandas, with their own Brahmas sprouting out of the Vishnu's navels on lotuses to create the material cosmos as we know it.
The big central Vishnu in the photo, out of the bubbles, is MahaVishnu, who slumbers in the cosmic ocean, dreaming these bubble universes that arise and pop just as they do in our own oceans. The Light above him is a glimpse of the supreme reality above all of that, above even Mahavishnu, which is Goloka Vrindavana, the abode of Krishna, which is identical to Vrindavan in India 5000 years ago, or rather, Vrindavan on Earth 5000 years ago was an iteration of Goloka Vrindavan.

Krishnaism is pretty cosmologically interesting.

Gita4Free edition is not As It Is, As It Is is simply a nice version once you have the original text understood.
It's by Ramananda Prasad, PhD.
You can get an e-book of it or just order the thing, it's small enough to fit in your pocket, no commentary.

Got mine for free at a motel when I asked the clerk how to pronounce the title and that I had always wanted to read it. It opened the door for me that God very well may be real, definitely worth a read. Was Buddhist at the time and I still am on the fence of it all except reincarnation, meditation, and Nirvana but I have been studying theology a lot more since that day.

You should seriously read this, man. If you can't afford a copy I'll upload it somewhere for you.
Really bridges the gap with western science.

would you happen to know anything about a story of Shiva consuming a poison during the churning of the cosmic ocean and it almost killing him, but he remembers a vision of baby Rama and manages to control the poison from reaching his heart (where baby Rama resides)? my dad told me a story about it once, I tried to retype what i remembered but it makes no sense, and i might be remembering the entire story incorrectly
unrelated to the thread but I thought i'd ask while you're here

>If you can't afford a copy I'll upload it somewhere for you.
if he's not interested, I am

Sounds like a version of the Kurma incarnation of Vishnu.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurma

I will be eternally grateful if you upload it as I am currently facing financial troubles

drive.google.com/open?id=0B2w_rjadg1tWTGhTc0kyNFBTbGM

It's used by many Vaishnavas and it's not sectarian. The commentary by Prabhupada is extensive but very detailed and worth reading. The idea is the Gita can only be properly understood when studied under a guru in the sampradaya system, which Prabhupada is. There's a lot of commentaries by westerners in particular that don't really understand the personal conception of God and Bhakti that the Gita talks of.

Many thanks

found this en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halahala
i don't know what story i'm thinking of with Ram and Shiva

thank you

C A N C E R
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That event is called the Samudra manthan

don't you have a Reddit post to upvote or something?

Perchance do you know of any good books that link Judaism or pre-catholic Christianity to the Vedas. Or a good commentary on The Holy Bible from that perspective?

Learn that Sanskrit and start reading the old parchments that is only available in varanasi.

yup

>Learn that Sanskrit
isn't this an extremely difficult language to learn?

I don't know about something so specific, but Apophthegmata Patrum is on archive.org and it's an excellent book from the primordial church

Shiva receives his name Neelakantha or blue throat because of the churning of the Great Ocean or the Cosmic Ocean. Basically the Devas and Asuras, both powerful races who saught control of the three worlds, heaven, earth and hell.

In their eternal war the Devas were defeated they were advised the only way to recover their losses is to get the Nectar of immortality as advised by Vishnu, so they allied with teh Asuras and told them how to get the Amrita (Nectar of Immortality), together they came to the great mountain of Mandara and then Vasuki a great serpent king gave his body to be used as the rope to the churning rod of the mountain, they then churned the cosmic ocean of milk []]...maybe Milky way??[[] and from it wonderous and terrible things arose, including the Ratnas and the poison Halahala, this could endprocess all creation. So they called on Shiva who appeared and swallowed the poison, but his wife Goddess Parvati knew that there are entire universes in his body that would be destroyed so she grabbed his throat and stopped it there, thus the eponym neelakatha or Bluethroat.

>In their eternal war the Devas were defeated
war against who and how?

Against the Asuras. It says right in his post.
For even more fun, check out Zorastrianism, which is the Iranian survival of the same Vedic religion: their Evil Gods are called Daevas and their Good Gods are called Ahuras, opposite of the Indian Vedic Good Devas and Evil Asuras.

heh

was Zoroastrianism created as a response to the Indian Vedic gods or did the two styles of worship arise at similar times

The founder of Zoroastrianism, Zoroaster, aka Zarathushtra, took some good dope, tripped hard, and said "like, what if the GODS were really the DEMONS, maaaaan??" like that

essentially

Zoroastrianism is v cool stuff tho.

Sorry against the Asuras. Devas and Asuras are forever fighting. Asuras led by Bali defeated the Devas,

Not entirely, I suspect it was due to the priestly caste loosing their heritage or rites being observed incorrectly, this lead to a variance in religious thought that spawned Zoroaster's idea, he may have said that the perspective of gods with mortal weaknesses were more than likely demons, and that true goodness is always united, thus Ahura Mazda began as thought as the godhead of goodness. Around the same time proto shaivism and vaishnavism along with Krishna cults was being born in india. So in all both cultures deviated by the time they had settled and planted their roots, typical of most other cultures.

If I was to be as technical, I would say that Iran went through a Semitic Reform of the Indo-Iranian Religion, and that India went through a Dravidian reform of same.

kek

Eknat Easwaran

amazon.com/Bhagavad-Easwarans-Classics-Indian-Spirituality/dp/1586380192

This is probably the most noob-friendly one. Easy to understand translation and commentary.

I honestly think Hinduism probably has an uncanny amount of truth to it. It's completely compatible with evolution, multiverses, and it's practices are self-evidently effective. Christianity and Islam convert based on FOMO and fear. Buddhism and Hinduism is like "ok guys, here is the reality. Take it or leave it. It's probably for your own benefit if you do what we recommend but it's up to you." Awesome.

Who is the man on the right? Some sort of Indian Hercules?

Ah you sound like me towards the end of my Christian phase. I found so much compelling wisdom elsewhere but I still loved Christ. So I went through all these mental gymnastics to try to make it all fit with the Bible.

>Judaism or pre-catholic Christianity to the Vedas.
For Judaism, I recommend any books on Kabbalah. "God is a Verb" by Dave Cooper is a good one and he has others. The wisdom of the Kabbalists is surprisingly similar to Vedic philosophy. Just goes to show you how cross-cultural these truths are. Kabbalah is also weighed down by dogma but it's box is a bit more roomy than Christian box.

As far as Christianity, you find pockets of wisdom in various church fathers but it's weighed down by dogma which makes it hard. Gnosticism is more blatantly trippy but it's also pretty needlessly convoluted. For this, I recommend Elaine Pagel's book "The Gnostic Gospels".

I basically studied the above for a long ti,e because I was so determined to maintain my Abrahamic framework while fulfilling until I finally had to let go of that.

Forgive typos, phonetyping right now

Anyone here who read the Bhagavad Gita? WHat did you think of it?

That's because the shramana reforms were scientifically oriented, like a kind of Renaissance Enlightenment within the indian subcontinent.
Most of the traditions from this time appeal to intellect, logic, and observed experience.

Several of us have read it and think it's the bees knees.
Read the thread.

Arjuna, a prince of the Pandu dynasty. In the context of the Gita the Pandus are fighting a war against their cousins, the Kaurava dynasty for control of a kingdom. Right before the Battle of Kurulshetra Arjuna laments at the idea of of fighting their kinsmen and tells Krsna he does not wish to fight. Krsna explains that he is acting out of illusion by denying to fight, and speaks the Gita to him.

Its Pandava dynasty. Pandu is the founder.

Highly, highly recommend it.

“Wherever there is Kṛṣṇa, the master of all mystics, and wherever there is Arjuna, the supreme archer, there will also certainly be opulence, victory, extraordinary power and morality. That is my opinion.” (Bg. 18.78)

Glorified legalism.

What did he mean by this?

Means that you will always win if you believe in something greater than yourself.

>compatible with evolution, multiverses,
another doctrine is compatible with what liberals have taught me in liebral acadamia so it is good

>it makes no demands of me, therefore it must be true
I'm not trying to convert you to anything, but there's nothing particularly awesome about this mentality.

That's what you got from that? Crack a fuckin book, kid, bhakti is one of the most demanding disciplines. It isn't that yoga class your gay boyfriend goes to at the mall.

Pathetically uneducated.

Noble Eightfold Path "doesn't demand anything of you"

Are you fucking hydrocephalic?

Spiritual development is very demanding under a Hindu or Buddhist framework. If you mean to say that it doesn't demand you to subscribe to self-sustaining and narrow dogma then you're right.

So Zoroastrianism is reverse hinduism?

>MUH LIBRULS
You can do better than this.

"What you sow, so shall ye reap."

An actual truth saying. Not this dharma bullshit.

>"What you sow, so shall ye reap."

When has any sower gotten his just reaps?

Pic related, meditation has been observed to improve health and cause spiritual experiences, recognized by science, meanwhile christians have to enter very ugly arguments with scientists for their god to "keep existing".

>only things in my one book count, everything else is bullshit
What a limited worldview.

No, it's Judaism + pagan fire god

I credit entheogens to moving me towards this direction. I would still be a Christian or perhaps Atheist without them. I haven't had a ayahuasca experience, perhaps someday.

>When has any sower gotten his just reaps?

Always.

Yup. Only one holy book on the planet, and you lump it in with garbage.

2 + 2 = 4

>what a limited worldview
>laughing.jpeg

Anything except "As It Is". It's a Hare Krishna translation, that's like reading a Jehovah's Witnesses version of the Bible.

So, it depends what you want:

>easy to read
Eaknath Easwaran

>accurate, no frills
W.J. Johnson

>translated by a Hindu spritual leader
Chinmayananda

>waste of time

All three.

Thanks for the recs I will be sure to check them out. And yeah, I'm not really a follower of Abraham but I'm still trying to have a better understanding of it like any other faith since it's not going anywhere anytime soon and if I'm lucky I still have another 60 years of a functional brain to try to understand it all.
By the way if you're still here same request as before but replace early Abrahamic religion with Taoism and Jainism?

There's some good general texts and foundational scriptures on archive.org et c.
I believe the full Gothas, Zoroastrian scripture, are on their own webpage, google that shit.

For those that Google it, search for "Gathas" or else you're going to see aeroplanes, otherwise, thanks!

Christ, was Hinduism created by Grant Morrison or something?

>Chinmayananda a Hindu spiritual leader
Chinmayananda is an atheistic philosopher that simply speculates on the Gita with his impersonalist views. He has no qualifications of his own and is in no means an authority. He's even given lectures on the twelfth chapter of the Gita without once mentioning the name Krsna. Prahupada on the other hand is a bhakta sannyasa in the sampradaya system. How can Chinmayananda possibly be considered to have a superior translation?

Disclipic succession authority is a carny confidence scheme, man, come on now

No, it's pretty simple. However, even if you master it, reading the Gita will still be a hard task since a lot of the words may be unknown to anyone but linguists. You could probably read some of the newer sutras though.

>2 + 2 = 4
Prove it, axiomatically.