Welcome to Eternal Path Musings, a newsletter geared towards content that educates, informs, and inspires the Modern Hindu!
To read previous issues, click this link.
This week we feature: a commentary on an interesting piece around the meaning of religion, a Sanskrit story, and an aesthetic!
Sociology Highlight: Critiquing Secular Modernity
Every now and then we like to feature pieces from thinkers outside the Hindu universe that have interesting insights that us Hindus can ponder on and apply. Along these lines we highlighted: Balaji Srinivasan on “Read-Only Culture” in Week 41 , Marc Andressen’s “Its Time to Build” in Week 38 , and Edward Butler on Polytheism in Week 34. This week’s essay of choice is from journalist Antonio Garcia-Martinez titled “Why Judaism? - On abandoning secular modernity”. Its the second half of that title which Hindus should take note of. The essay starts with these poignant lines.
You will watch your parents die and be buried. You will watch your newborn child emerge in a messy circus of heaving grunts and high-pitched wailing. You will watch your dreams and projects dashed, only to wake the next day and greet the fruits of your failure anew and cobble a life out of them all the same. You will punctuate the cavalcade of events with moments of transcendent meaning that will linger in memory like fading signposts during that final moment: your death.
Navigating that journey without a religious tradition is like trying to cross open country without a path: you can do so, but you’ll do lots of stumbling and very likely lose your way.
While reading through this, our minds immediately turned to the Hindu concept of samskaras, the rites of passage that guide Hindus through various stages of life. For resources on understanding these rites, check out Himalayan Academy’s explainer on the topic. Antonio then goes on to excoriate the modern secular liberal’s allergy to commitment or rootedness.
the current liberal project’s moral goal, which is creating lives devoid of any unchosen obligations and absolutely rife with chosen identities of fanciful and recent coinage. The problem is that it’s the unchosen obligations—or the obligations chosen but whose downstream responsibilities cannot be unchosen—that will give us the only real meaning in life. Family, children, our hometowns, our childhoods, our ethnic identity (if we have one), or the chosen-but-undoable commitments—marriage, joining the military, that company we start, religious faith—are the defining obligations where our selves really play out.
When we look at the best in our own communities we see examples of lighthouses resisting the pull of the churning sea of nihilism. Groups of people coming together for a higher purpose, people painstakingly preserving ancient traditions, and community organizations helping one another. All of these are anathema to the secular individualist zeitgeist. Next up, Antonio goes deeper with questions on narrative and identity.
As frivolous as they sometimes might seem, the stories we tell ourselves are what we ultimately become as people and a civilization. There’s perhaps no more important choice we face as stewards of the present than what we pass on to the future as shared narrative. We all subconsciously realize that, which is why the debates over The 1619 Project or Critical Race Theory have grown so heated and deafening. With the grim examples of slavery and the Holocaust in mind, let’s revisit the question: what then do we put in our children’s heads?
This one hit home very deeply. It touches on why this newsletter exists in the first place. There are so many interesting stories to be shared, so many great figures to learn from, so many traditions to preserve, so many articulate gurus from real parampara who need a bigger platform, and so little time. Its important for Hindu parents, temples, and community organizations to think very critically about what stories are being passed on to the next generation and what narratives should be promoted.
There is much more to this essay that a Hindu reading with a critical eye can uncover - link at “Why Judaism? - On abandoning secular modernity”. Part 2 released right before publication, which you can read here.
Sanskrit Highlight: Childrens Nursery Story
Source: Saptavarna Sanskrit Magazine from the folks at LanguageCurry.