The Indian philosopical heritage, particularly the advaita (non-dual) principle, is generally called Vedanta, so called due to its collective occurrence at the end of the great scriptures called the Veda-s. This text is a compilation of the weekly distributions through text and email to a small group of friends and relatives over a period of 5 years. The goal of this work is to introduce the principal sources of the Vedantic philosophy and to motivate the reader to study further this vast subject and also practice it in their daily lives. The prasthānatrayī (the set of trilogy of sources for philosophical journey) is generally considered as the fountainhead of the Vedānta philosophy. It consists of (1) the Upanishad-s (generally known as Śruti prasthāna, the set of revelations to the great sages as part of the four Veda-s; ṛk-, Yajur-, Sāma-, and Atharva-), (2) the Brahma Sūtrā-s (Nyāya prasthāna, logical set of axioms), and (3) the Bhagavad Gītā (Smriti prasthāna, part of remembered traditions). All the three parts of the trilogy are briefly covered in this text.

This introduction to the Madhva school of Vedanta is accessible to a wide audience with interest in Hinduism, Indian thought and in the comparative philosophy of religion. Deepak Sarma explores the philosophical foundations of Madhva Vedanta and then presents translations of actual debates between the Madhva and Advaita schools of Vedanta, thus positioning readers at the centre of the 700 year-old controversy between these two schools of Vedanta. Original texts of Madhvacarya are included in an appendix, in translation and in Sanskrit.

A fascinating look at India’s remarkable impact on Western culture, this eye-opening popular history shows how the ancient philosophy of Vedanta and the mind-body methods of Yoga have profoundly affected the worldview of millions of Americans and radically altered the religious landscape. What exploded in the 1960s, following the Beatles trip to India for an extended stay with their new guru, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, actually began more than two hundred years earlier, when the United States started importing knowledge--as well as tangy spices and colorful fabrics--from Asia. The first translations of Hindu texts found their way into the libraries of John Adams and Ralph Waldo Emerson. From there the ideas spread to Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, and succeeding generations of receptive Americans, who absorbed India’s “science of consciousness” and wove it into the fabric of their lives. Charismatic teachers like Swami Vivekananda and Paramahansa Yogananda came west in waves, prompting leading intellectuals, artists, and scientists such as Aldous Huxley, Joseph Campbell, Allen Ginsberg, J. D. Salinger, John Coltrane, Dean Ornish, and Richard Alpert, aka Ram Dass, to adapt and disseminate what they learned from them. The impact has been enormous, enlarging our current understanding of the mind and body and dramatically changing how we view ourselves and our place in the cosmos. Goldberg paints a compelling picture of this remarkable East-to-West transmission, showing how it accelerated through the decades and eventually moved from the counterculture into our laboratories, libraries, and living rooms. Now physicians and therapists routinely recommend meditation, words like karma and mantra are part of our everyday vocabulary, and Yoga studios are as ubiquitous as Starbuckses. The insights of India’s sages permeate so much of what we think, believe, and do that they have redefined the meaning of life for millions of Americans—and continue to do so every day. Rich in detail and expansive in scope, American Veda shows how we have come to accept and live by the central teaching of Vedic wisdom: “Truth is one, the wise call it by many names.”

This book authored by Swami Tathagatananda, a senior monk of the Ramakrishna Order and the resident minister and spiritual leader of The Vedanta Society of New York, highlights the problems, criticisms and hardships faced by Swami Vivekananda during his lifetime, and how he eventually trumped over these adversities with strength and courage and fulfilled his mission. These glimpses of Swami Vivekananda’s heroic struggle will help readers find strength and courage when dealing with adverse situations in life.

This book, authored by Swami Tathagatananda, a senior monk of the Ramakrishna Order and the resident minister and spiritual leader of The Vedanta Society of New York, USA, highlights the problems, criticisms and hardships faced by Swami Vivekananda during his lifetime, and how he eventually trumped over these adversities with strength and courage and fulfilled his mission. These glimpses of Swami Vivekananda’s heroic struggle will help readers find strength and courage when dealing with adverse situations in life.

The Brahma-siddhi, 'The Demonstration of Brahman' is Mandana Misra's largest work, his most important and the sole one dedicated as a whole to Vedanta. The topics occurring in the doctrine of this work which the present author intends to study here in this book are inter-related; they all have to deal with the nature and functioning of error, whether every-day error or the transcendental error, avidya, which makes us see the multiplicity of phenomena where there is nothing but the utter oneness of brahman. Thet also demonstrate the number of different sources upon which Mandana depended in erecting his own system. In spite of the number and variety of these sources Mandana created a system, the closed coherence of whose parts is a cause of admiration, even if one does not always accept his conclusions.Two appendices are also added to give a glimpse of Mandana Misra's date and his order of works. An exhaustive bibliography has been provided to facilitate the curiosity of readers. An index of important words has also been given.