One year completion: Report

By Moderator

Happy New Year!

It was about one year ago we began this blog and since then there has been some significant interest and contribution from many people. A report on how this blog was received by all is being given here. This is being done mainly to disseminate the fact that your articles and comments are being widely read.

The total number of visits in 2013 was 7705 (excluding the visits by moderator). Sometimes these visits are by internet bots and even if we consider a conservative estimate of 50% as spurious visits, over 3600 visits in a year of its inception is still a pleasant surprise (i.e. an average of 10 per day).


These are the posts most visited in the year (of course, the posts put up in the latter part of the year or in recent months will not have high numbers as of now, therefore you will see only those posted in the early months of the last year in the list given below):

Post Pageviews

Apr 14, 2013, 1 comment
403

Jan 1, 2013, 4 comments
318

Jan 4, 2013, 2 comments
269

Feb 6, 2013, 4 comments
163

Jan 10, 2013
150

Jan 16, 2013, 2 comments
145

Aug 30, 2013, 4 comments
135
128
94

Jan 1, 2013
86

The countries from which audience mostly visited:

Country    Pageviews
United States
      5684
Germany
        273
India
        234
Russia
        187
China
        135
Ukraine
          88
France
          83
Canada
          79
Poland
          50
Sweden
          42

List of all countries from where someone visited the page:
Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Congo, Czech Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, France, Germany, Ghana, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Kazhakstan, Latvia, Lebanon, Moldova, Netherlands, Nigeria, Phillipines, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Russia, S. Korea, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Serbia, Sweden, Thailand, Turkey, U.A.E, U.K., Ukraine, U.S.A, Vietnam, Venezuela

Thank you for all your contribution and interest. Please keep your articles and comments coming. Have a wonderful year ahead!

www.vedantaprov.org

The Universal Archetypes Applied to Religion

by Charles Feldman (Prana)

Political tendencies may support liberty (the libertarians), equality (the communists) and solidarity (the reactionaries). Most religions contain all three of these archetypal values. 

The Dharmic religions seek the ultimate liberty in freedom from the finite, or living with God eternally, while the Semitic religions preach free will to accept or reject God’s scripture, which leads to the freedom of eternal heaven if accepted. The Buddha preached liberty when he said we should each be lamps unto ourselves.

  

Most of the Semitic and Dharmic religions believe that we are all equal in the eyes of God, or that we all have the same divinity within us, or that we can all attain to the same state that the Buddha attained. Some religions do not adhere to equality, such as the Calvinists who preach that we are all predestined at birth to go to either heaven or hell, or white racists or the Black Muslims, who believe one race is innately superior to another.

All religions preach solidarity or loyalty. The Semitic religions preach loyalty to a scripture, or in the Catholic case, to the Pope, while the Dharmic religions preach loyalty to the Guru. Excessive demands for loyalty can turn into exclusivism, negating equality in practice.
Thus, liberty, equality and solidarity are the three archetypal values not only in politics, but in religion  too. They may be weighted differently in different religions, but they are all there in most cases.

www.vedantaprov.org

Spiritual Self-Mutilation

by a Friend of Truth

Spiritual progress is said to go along with renunciation, but what reward can we expect from that? What is renunciation and what are the things we should renounce? What does it mean to “renounce the world”? What is so bad about the “world,” which is, after all, God’s own creation?

In everyday life, we can observe that all success requires renunciation: We have to give up pleasurable things we could enjoy now so that we can get something even more pleasurable later. For example, investing money instead of spending it is a form of renunciation. Some people push this principle to an extreme and never come to enjoy their wealth, simply because they had been reinvesting their profit again and again throughout their entire life.

“Spiritual renunciation” is the logical conclusion drawn from this observation. Instead of looking at what feels good now, we try to widen our horizon and ask what will be good later, when I am no more.  In other words, what will be good for others? What is good from God’s perspective of eternity? In contrast  to a greedy miser, however, we try to get a higher form of happiness, we do not want to get just more money, but a pleasure greater than the one money can give: Instead of reinvesting his first billion into some new enterprise, the successful business man might support a charitable organisation.

So, we have to analyse what types of pleasure there are in our life and then renounce the lower forms for the sake of the higher ones. How do we know what is “higher” and what is “lower”? The objects of higher forms are more and more difficult to measure and to “see” (the measuring container used for milk and money cannot be used for love) but more and more easy to share (if I share my money I’ll have less; if I share love there is no such decline). For humans, economic success gives a higher form of pleasure than physical joy, fame is worth more than money, knowledge is superior to fame and wisdom explains more than knowledge. God/love is the culmination of all, object of “pleasure” and “pleasure” are one, the highest form of bliss.

But just as a miser can waste his life without wasting a single penny, there is also a risk for the spiritual seeker. If one renounces the world out of disgust, it will be hard to develop love for its Creator. Instead of carefully sifting the world and offering the gold nuggets to God, such an aspirant throws everything at God’s face – having renounced everything but his own pride, such a spiritual aspirant has fallen prey to the world of shadows he wanted to leave behind.
www.vedantaprov.org

What is the Meaning of Life? A Simple Answer to a Tricky Question

By Amarram

To be sure, greater people than me have given excellent answers to this question. On wikipedia you’ll find a long article on that subject. On top of that, you can get a more or less elaborate answer from virtually anyone you ask. In the end, all of us have to find our own answer in the course of our life…


But why not give it a try and take the question literally? As if “life” was a foreign word someone asks me to explain? And maybe that’s what it is all about: to talk about what I see with someone else, to be in a relationship and look at the world through one more pair of (inner) eyes.
www.vedantaprov.org

Spiritual Rewards in Everyday Life

By a Friend of Truth
The ultimate reward every spiritual seeker is pining for is the vision of God, the company of his Chosen Ideal. However, we all make the experience that God is apparently not very generous in this respect – how can we then keep our spirits up?

The worst solution to this problem is the easiest, and perhaps the most common one: Instead of trying harder to reach Him/Her, to correct our course of action, to understand His way of looking at things better and to do what pleases Him rather than us, we paradoxically do the exact opposite and use spiritual titbits to make us believe that we are already having some sort of God vision and are very close to Him.

For example, we could attribute our worldly success to our spiritual efforts. How foolish! As if God took the shape of money, name and fame to reveal Himself! Were the holy men who inspire us rich and popular; did they nicely stay within the confines of customs and anxiously fulfill the expectations of society? Before they got His vision, they certainly did not.

Since every mistake – if corrected – can bring us closer to God, there must be some grain of truth in this “worst case scenario” as well. When we carefully analyze “our” success, we notice that we never achieved it on our own, but had always profited from the help of many other people. Thus, it was never our own success. But it cannot simply be said to be other people’s success either, since they are just like me. Who is then to praise? If there is no one else, why not give the credit to God…
www.vedantaprov.org