Welcome to Eternal Path Musings, a weekly newsletter for the modern and curious Hindu, featuring highlights around: religious texts, practice, history, politics, people, and ways to better our engagement and personal progress.
This issue features: Short Reads, “Read-Only Culture”, and an aesthetic
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Reading Highlights: Short Reads
Indu Viswanathan has a great article here titled “Becoming A Dharmic Researcher” . In the article she points out some sobering realities about the way Hindus are treated in academia, including noting a Routledge book on Yoga that managed to not feature any Hindu representation!
Thread on some of the profound thoughts, observations, and diktats embedded in the “Srivachana Bhusham”; a Vishistadvaita (check our Week 36 feature here) text from the 13th century CE. (Via @Ramanujadasa )
Article on “Venkatapati Deva Raya – The Great Savior of Southern India” - Profile on the life of a ruler of the Vijayanagara Empire who was able to prolong its survival for decades by his astute military leadership
Sociology Highlight: Read-Only Culture
A discussion on “read-only culture” dovetails nicely with our earlier feature on building, where we took Marc Andreessen essay “It’s Time to Build” and explored its relevancy to Hindus in Week 38. Tech entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and thinker Balaji Srinivasan, a man described by Andreessen as “the man who has more good ideas per minute than anyone else in the Bay Area” has a fantastic thread on “read-only culture” (full thread link). He starts out by defining the term:
With line one itself, any discerning reader from the Hindu diaspora can instantly identify tens to hundreds of people they know that fit this description. Given the frenetic pace of technological, cultural, and sociological change, each generation is going to have to wrestle with two question
What are the exogenous (ie. Technological, Cultural, Sociological, Geopolitical, etc) factors that are influencing the practice, promotion, and preservation (3Ps) of Hinduism in this specific era?
Given these exogenous factors, how do we practice, promote, and preserve (3Ps) Hinduism in this specific era?
Technological changes in many ways have been good. This platform wouldn’t exist , proper Hindu sampradaya wouldn’t have 4K YouTube content, and the diaspora wouldn’t have access to critical texts without technology. Nevertheless, all of those exist because people had a thirst for finding, learning, and disseminating knowledge; they didn’t stop at passively imbibing Hinduism, rather they took action. Balaji alludes to this solving the problem of replication below:
The lesson for Hindus from this tweet is that the religion must be living. Hinduism is not just “drag your kid to the mandir in a hostile deracinated society and hope for the best”. Hinduism requires work; especially so for diaspora Hindus, but even for Indian ones. It requires unceasing faith, and a desire to spend time and mental effort in identifying the best resources and methods for its practice, promotion, and preservation (3Ps).
A small step towards doing so is reading this newsletter weekly. A bigger step is referring a fellow truth-seeker to it, or sharing with your congregation. The best steps are delving into your sampradaya of choice and really working to: understand its worldview, practice its rituals, follow the guidance of its gurus, and mutually engage with its believers. Engage actively in Hinduism, and you can ensure that a future generation doesn’t inherit the “read-only Hinduism” endemic in many Hindu diasporas.
Aesthetic: Isakki Amman Depiction, Tamil Nadu
