Talk:Hindu philosophy

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Could someone review the section on the Hindu tradition in ethics? It might better be called Indian tradition since Moghul/Muslim emperors, Jains, etc., and other traditions had much influence, and also since Mohandas Gandhi is so prominent as an ethicists - not everyone thinks he's a Hindu. Right now that page is protected so talk:ethics is a good place to propose rewrites of that section. Thanks.

Do you know anything about hinduism or Gandhi or history at all? The hindu philosophy is as old for Islam as old Islam is for you. Meaning hindu philosophy is many thousand years older than Islam. Mughals can not even count how many grandfathers they have had during that time. Gandhi always relied on Gita during his difficult times he even wrote one translation of Gita and used to teach people what it is about. However Gita is not the source of most of hindu philosophy. source of most of hindu philosophy are Upnishads and oldest of them is at least as old as 900BC.Read history and get yourself acquainted with Upnishads first, before you try to understand what hindu philosophy is. Who told you that Gandhi was not a hindu? Gandhi was a devout hindu. --skant

--

Also, the primary article title should be Hindu philosophy, without a capital "P". This is not a proper noun. The most prominent book by that name can be at Hindu Philosophy, and if there is no consensus, then, it must be a redirect here or at Hindu Philosophy (book). Thanks.

Contents

[edit] Siddhanta?

I'm trying to work out in my mind where Shaiva Siddhanta tradition fits in with the other strands of Hindu philosophy. Can this be addressed? QuartierLatin1968 El bien mas preciado es la libertad 21:29, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Shaiva and Vaishnava are not Sidhdhanta, they are sampradyaya. There is a lot in hindu religion compared to any other religion. It has the strongest philosophical base.

[edit] Copy-edit

The problem isn't syntax, etc., but tone and style; the article is full of material like: "The philosophical and theological diversity of Hinduism is limitless, being nurtured by the fundamentally eclectic and liberal universalism that is its defining characteristic." It needs to be rewritten in prose that's less purple. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 12:06, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

My only personal objection to the above-cited sentence was its term "limitless", which does seem hyperbolic. Otherwise, though, the sentence appears to me to offer a fairly precise, and concise, summary of its declared topic: one of the best I've ever come across, in fact. So, how about the following instead:
"The great diversity in the thought and practice of Hinduism is nurtured by the fundamentally eclectic and liberal universalism of its underlying philosophies."
And if there other specific phrases which offend "tone & style" in the same manner, how about listing them here, both so they might be dealt with one-by-one and so others might get a better sense of the style you'd like to see yourself? It seems wise to me, however, to retain the general tone & style of the article as-originally-written, insofar as we can: it appears to have been composed originally by someone her/himself Hindu, and most probably Indian -- and the flavor, of that particular linguistic tone & style of English, to me seems more suitable for this sort of article than would be some form of editor-supplied Westernized / Anglicized prose.
The latter, at its most-dry, is unable to convey the sort of concepts involved in a topic such as "Hindu philosophy", for one thing. And authorial intent generally is better-captured by the original than by editors, for another.
--Kessler 17:16, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
My concern is that the style is wilfully obscure — the worst kind of pseudo-academic writing, full of pointless polysyllables. If clear communication is the aim, the language should be simplified and made more direct. (The content of the sentence is also dubious, in fact.) --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 10:55, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
I agree with this last statement. Structurally, the article seems fine to me. However, a lot of the material sounds snowy — words like magic carpets, floating on nothing but air. Cheers, --MILH 18:59, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

I copy-edited quite a bit here and reordered the schools of thought so that they matched with the text. (For example, we read about the "Yoga offshoot" and the next school mentioned is Yoga.) Where these in any particular order before - importance or something? Also, I noticed that the Mimamsa article is cut-pasted into this one - if Mimamsa won't be expanded it should probably be deleted. --will 00:41, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Also (again): any thoughts on making the six schools their own Level 2 headlines? Right now it's as if the article has the same topic for the title and a heading which seems redundant. --will 00:44, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
Well, I'm just going to do it and if someone hates it please revert. --will 03:00, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Tantra

I'm surprised tantra isn't covered here. It certainly is an important part of many a Hindu tradition and should not be omitted. I'm probably not the best person to write it, but I hope somebody will. --Snowgrouse 02:26, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Mr. Snowgrouse, you are right. As a hindu from india i see this article as a propaganda of hindu fundamentalists such as RSS(similar to kkk), BJP, VHP. Probably their texts have been lifted & pasted here. For a critical review of hinduism see this http://www.ambedkar.org/ambcd/

--Anirudh777 10:41, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

I am tired of your endless nonsense (RSS compared to KKK!). Go find yourself a publication of KKK (if any) and compare it with the literature of RSS. This b.s. of equating a Hindu organisation with KKK is nothing but slandering. Wikipedia is not a propaganda site for jobless people like you.--Babub | Talk 15:25, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
Also, it will be a worthwhile effort for you to figure out who funds http://www.ambedkar.org/ and http://www.dalitstan.org/. deeptrivia (talk) 16:08, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
All of you are off-base. Hindu Philosophy is a description of the six orthodox or aastika schools of Vedic Philosophy. Tantra is a powerful and integral contribution of Hinduism to religious thought. In fact, much of the modern puja or worship practice of Hindus is based on lots of Tantric ideas and rituals. Tantra, in consultation with Yogic philosophy, gave the average Hindu, regardless of caste, a more direct means of expressing and exploring his/her religious and spiritual life. However, Tantra is not technically one of the six darshanas or aastika schools. Like Bhakti, Tantra is a part of greater Hinduism adjunct to the six schools. --68.173.46.79 20:57, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
These people are much more than off-based. They are frightened. They hardly understand what six schools of hindu philosophy are and simply want to corrupt article. Somebody even talked about BJP/RSS here?? Even on scholary article, they are trying to find BJP/RSS because of their fear. No other religion is feared so much for its good things than Hinduism. If you tell them how old these schools of though are they will panic. If you further write what Volataire said about Upanishads, some of them may come to kill you.

[edit] athiestic darshans

why there is no mention of Nastik darshans. i can claim myself an athiest and still be a hindu. if nobody else has a prob. can i add a article or two about athiestic darshans like charvak. nids 21:39, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

No, wikipedia is not for professing individual beliefs. If you are a Hindu then that's fine, but you need not write about your beliefs here. Anyway, this article is about the shad-darshana (which itself includes the atheistic Samkhya and Mimamsa}, but Charvaka as well as Jainism are covered under Indian philosophy.--Babub→Talk 00:47, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

see, charvaka and jainism are under athiestic darshans of hinduism and are wrongly just listed under indian philosophy. i know about hindu philosophy because my mom is a Ph.D. in Sanskrit on the topic of Shad darshan and i still have a copy of her thiesis. i m goin to add that part here myself, but just waitin for any suggestions or objections. nids 19:31, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

This article is specifically about Shad-darshan: Samkhya, Yoga, Vaisheshika, Nyaya, Mimamsa and Vedanta. Add material about these darshans here. About Charvaka and Jaina darshans, you can add in their respective articles.--Babub→Talk 05:09, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] copyediting

I will be editing this article off and on today, so my apologies if this causes any edit conflicts. I usually do one aspect of grammar, style, format, etc. at a time for the whole document.Shawn Fitzgibbons 19:29, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

I have edited the article up to Advaita, and I'm done for the day. I will continue tomorrow.Shawn Fitzgibbons 22:42, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

I have reverted some of the recent changes because I felt statments such as "Yoga practitioners are not in agreement on whether Brahman has a personal attribute" are too one-sided in their approach for the reader (it is subtle but still it is apparent) - In order to give an equal playing field to advaita and dvaita schools of thought. Ys, Gouranga(UK) 12:57, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
I'm ok with minor changes, but try not to hack it to death or impose POV on it.Shawn Fitzgibbons 13:29, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

I've tried to make this article as consistent as possible with articles it links to in wikipedia. If you absolutely must make changes to the content of the article, please try to find references to support your contention. I'm also glad to discuss any philosophical opinions you may have on my talk page.SFinside 14:08, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

In Acintya: Singularity is an innapropriate word in this context. The philosophy does not go as far as stating that the individual soul and God exist as a single entity. Also to use Brahman as the only descriptive word for the Supreme being is not strictly in accordance to NPOV - that is why I do not agree with the recent changes. Other viewpoints are given as 'possible theories' only. Also many words are not wiki-linked. It is just the yoga and acintya sections where I see this being an issue. Ys, Gouranga(UK) 12:29, 27 November 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Yoga's primary text

In the formal sense of the orthodox Yogic school, the primary text is the Yoga Sutras, which developed a lot of the strains of Upanishadic thought and the seminal teachings of the Bhagavad Gita. The Bhagavad Gita is the main text only in conjunction with the Yoga Sutras and this should be more clearly highlighted in this explanation to maintain accuracy and, additionally, proper coordination with the main Yoga article. --68.173.46.79 21:08, 18 December 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Buddhi Yoga? and Raja Yoga

Karma Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, and Jnana Yoga have good links and are well described. But Buddhi Yoga isn't. I removed the link to Buddhi only , because it is not explaining Buddhi Yoga at all, and it is better to have a void link than a misleading link. Perhaps Buddhi Yoga needs to be stricken? What about Raja Yoga which the other three pages do mention? Gschadow 22:01, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Ideally someone could create the Buddhi Yoga article which having a blind link may encourage (rather than it just going to Buddhi). Raja Yoga is not mentioned by name in the Bhagavad-Gita and is already linked slightly lower down in the yoga paragraph so I do not feel Buddhi-yoga should redirect there. Buddhi, if not perfect, would seem more appropriate to me than any other links in that instance. Ys, Gouranga(UK) 20:57, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "abstruse Vedanta" what??? - and a request regarding date claims

What does this mean?

The more abstruse Vedanta is the essence of the Vedas, as encapsulated in the Upanishads. Vedantic thought drew on Vedic cosmology, hymns and philosophy. The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad appeared as far back as 3,500 years ago. While thirteen or so Upanishads are accepted as principal, over a hundred exist. The most significant contribution of Vedantic thought is the idea that self-consciousness is continuous with and indistinguishable from consciousness of Brahman.

Can people please begin to critically support such datings? With the Rig Veda dated about 1500 BCE, which is 3500 years ago, how can an Upanishad, even if it's an Upanishad associated with the Rig Veda Samhita, be dated as far back as that? Thanks. Gschadow 22:12, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What is Vedic Brahminism?

I propose that brahminism be deleted from the introduction. It is a european term unintelligible to hindus. In europe, the protestants saw catholic priests as the ones who corrupted God's true message. When these very protestants came as colonisers to India, they saw hindu religion with the same model and saw brahmins as the "priests" that corrupted God's true message and transformed hinduism into paganism. But this view makes no sense to hindus. There is no term Brahmana dharma or brahmanatva. Brahminism is just a european ideological term and not a translation of any equivalent sanskrit word. I propose to delete it under NPOV --SV 20:22, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

As long as the article - Brahmanism - exists in Wikipedia we cannot really use the above argument to delete any references or links to it. However, I have replaced it with Vedic Religion which seems more appropriate in this instance. Regards, Gouranga(UK) 21:25, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
The existence of brahminism is not an issue since westerners do use it. But the issue is that it is NOT a description of hinduism of itself and so should not find a mention in the article on hindu philosophy.
I also see that you have reverted my edits. The intro says - "The criterion for these six schools was that they partly derived from and accepted the authority of the Vedas, while clearly developing their own strains of thought". Not only is the above false it is also illogical. Acceptance of authority contradicts "developing own strain". The reason why the six schools developed their own strains is because they accepted vedas as an authoritative guide and NOT as absolute authority.
--SV 21:55, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
I take your point and have removed the sentance, it wasn't even clear in what it said. I believe we should ideally avoid any generalisations of this type (or counter-type) in the article in order to keep it as neutral as possible. Thanks for pointing this out. Regards, Gouranga(UK) 11:21, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] What to do about forking?

Does anyone have a good suggestion on how to reduce forking between this article and Indian philosophy which of necessity covers much of the same ground, being a superset of Hindu philosphy? Buddhipriya 19:37, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

The other article looks to be coming more from an historical rather than a philosophical perspective. Do you think it might help to re-name to History of Indian Philosophy, linking to this article for a more detailed overview of the philosophies? Ys, Gouranga(UK) 10:37, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
The concept of Indian philosophy includes non-Hindu philosophies such as Buddhism. The two need to be kept distinct I think. I would avoid renaming to History of Indian Philosphy because that would created more forking potential such as what I am trying to unscramble now with Shaivism and History of Shaivism. Probably Dab's suggestion that the Indian Philosphy article be a set of stubs to detail articles such as Hindu philosphy is best, but I am still unsure of the best approach, as the component articles are all very weak. There has been quite a bit of conflict on the articles related to Hinduism and Buddhism regarding the history of the relation between those two systems, and that subject is related as well. It is an interesting topic that is very poorly handled now. Buddhipriya 19:37, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

I actually don't see Indian philosophy and Hindu philosophy as forks. Rather the two articles discuss related issues at different resolutions/depths, with the latter subject being the most prominent component of the former. Continuing down the chain (or more accurately tree) are articles on individual schools of Hindu philosophy and going up, are more general articles on philosophy. This non-linear, multi-resolution structure is IMO a distinct advantage rather than a problem, since it allows the reader to choose the depth to which he/she wants to study a topic. We simply need to ensure that the "Hindu Philosophy section" of the Indian philosophy article is an accurate summary of the topic discussed in this article - but that is an issue handled regularly on wikipedia when dealing with topics of sufficient breadth. Abecedare 20:12, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

I think I probably am just ignorant of the best term to use. The issue I am seeing is redundancy between multiple articles, and what policies, if any, cover how to maintain consistency across articles that have the type of rollup structure that you describe. It would seem easiest from a maintenance point of view to keep the higher level article as short as possible, with referral down to the detail article. If that is so, then one approach would be to move detail out of Indian philosophy down to Hindu philosophy, and correspondingly move general material up in the other direction. Does that make sense, and are there any Wiki guidelines on this? I am seeing very similar issues with the complex of articles on Shaivism that I have been interested in lately. Buddhipriya 20:39, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
I agree with you that editors needs to decide what depth of discussion is appropriate for an article, and details beyond that point should be moved to the more specialized article (so called "main articles" on the subject). WP:SS provides some pointers in this regards, but eventually this is a matter of editorial judgment rather than wikipedia policy and hence needs to be handled on a case-by-case basis on the respective articles' talk page.
So yes, any details about Hindu philosophy should be added to this article first. Note though that "general material" on Hindu philosophy (for example, that it arose on the Indian sub-continent, starting ~ 2000 BCE (or whatever); has six main schools etc) should be discussed in both articles. So there should be redundancy between the articles with the view that anyone who has read the Hindu Philosophy article should learn nothing new from reading the "Hindu Philosophy" section of the Indian philosophy article!
Please let me know if my replies are addressing the issue you have in mind, because it is quite possible that we are talking at cross purposes :-) Abecedare 21:05, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Raja Yoga / Yoga

I'm not really convinced at having Raja Yoga as the main link under Yoga? Either the section needs to be re-written to explain things more clearly, or surely the main Yoga link is more appropriate? Anyone else think differently? Gouranga(UK) 10:45, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree that the main link should be to Yoga as there are various forking problems with Raja Yoga. Buddhipriya 19:32, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Shaivism, Shaktism, Tantra and Trika?

Hi there. Some of the most significant parts of the Hindu philosophical thinking are missing from the list. Is Tantra not a part of the Hindu philosophy? It is also missing in the parallel article Indian philosophy. Also, Kashmir Shaivism and other forms of Shaivism and Shaktism. Am I correct to think they should be added sometimes in the future (soon hopefully)? Visarga 16:14, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Why are sages like Atri, Yagnavalkya, Dattatreya, Ashtavakra etc - the authors of the Upanishads missing

Shoudn't they be under the people/ancient section? 24.10.195.188 (talk) 10:12, 23 December 2007 (UTC)Vi