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parabrahman

I want a Liberal Arts Education in Sanatana Dharma (Hinduism) like there is in the West. But the Hindu knowledge system is so vast and the traditions cover so many things that it is a bit overwhelming if someone was not born into it or was unfamiliar with the different tradition systems. Having been raised in the West and rediscovering my Hindu identity there was no track on how to go about this.

This leads to confusion because the very nature of what being a Hindu changes from one person to another. While this choose your own adventure nature of Santana Dharma is wonderful as we are not bound by a singular path, it also causes confusion for the diaspora. We may go to a temple and pray but we may not know the deeper meaning behind the prayer. We may not even know who the devas are except vague understandings. Furthermore, each YouTube guru teaches according to their tradition Vedanta, Yoga, Tantra, etc. and if we read western writers their perspective is almost entirely on the Vedanta-Yoga systems without any real coverage of the Bhakti based systems that most Hindus grow up in. All of this leads someone coming to Hindu dharma to be confused as to where to start.

After reading and practicing and reading and misunderstanding and practicing some more I have come up with a curriculum that provides an 80%, non-sectarian understanding of what it means to be a Hindu. In Sanatana Dharma the purushartha are the four goals of life: Dharma, Artha, Kama, Moksha that is duty within society, wealth, pleasure, and liberation. A common basis of a Sanatana Dharma Liberal Arts Education should be based on the purusharta as these are the four goals of life.

Furthermore, Indic thought does not live in isolation and it never has. A bridge needs to be built from Dharmic thought to Western thought. As much as Hindus like to boast our ancient culture we have been influenced by Western thought for millennia whether it was Alexander, the Roman Empire, Islam, or the British. We have also in return have significantly contributed to those thoughts as well. As I am living in the West, the best ideas of Western civilization should be incorporated and reformulated within Dharmic thought to create a stronger syncretism that infuses the best of Western and Dharmic thinking. What I find is that there is more compatibility than meets the eye.

Foundational​

There are only four sastras to study as a Hindu and put into practice for the rest of one's life. If nothing else is read on Hindu dharma and you only have patience for a few texts these would be it.

  • Hanuman Chalisa. Devotion and Service. What it means to be serve Isvara. I would further state that if there is only one text in Hindu dharma to study this would be it. Hanuman embodies what it means to be a devotee of Bhagavan. If we can embody him and live as selflessly as he did then we will have fulfilled dharma.
  • Bhaja Govindam. Discrimination. While the Hanuman Chalisa deals with dharma and how to live Bhaja Govindam deals with moksha and the impermanence and ephemeral nature of reality.
  • Bhagavad Gita. Understand of Yoga. Understanding Karma, Bhakti, Raja and Jnana Yoga and messy reality of life. While this covers all the purusharta, I do think it speaks to artha in terms of Arjuna being a warrior and fulfilling his dharma even when life is messy.
  • Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. Practice of Yoga. The astanga system provides the framework for putting the other three texts into practice. Ironically, this text is the one most Westerners turn to but is relatively unknown within the Hindu community.

purusharta​

The Foundational texts express the goal and practice of a Hindu. However, though the Bhagavad Gita covers a portion of this these texts don't cover the larger Hindu though process which is that we live in an imperfect world. Most of us are likely not striving after moksha but money, pleasure and power. While gurus and swamis cajole us to the path of moksha the paths of dharma, artha and kama are all important pursuits of life.

Traditional Hindu thought understood this and said that there are four goals of life, the purusharta. These are duty in society, wealth, pleasure and liberation. A core reading of the full Mahabharata and Ramayana which encompasses the entire thought process is thus vital to understanding this.

Syncretic​

Lastly, Hindus don’t live within a vacuum and with Islam and the British a new current of thought was established within India. Vivekananda, Aurobindo, Hedgewar were all educated and understood Western thought. It is because they understood the thoughts that they were able to create what constituted the Hindu identity.

While an extensive Liberal Arts textual workload is out of the question. I again wanted to choose a few core texts that fit the 80% rule. Here I also include studying Vivekananda and Ramakrishna who have had a profound influence of modern Hinduism.

  • Dharma
  • Artha
    • Panchatantra
    • Chanakya Neeti
    • Arthasastra
    • 📚 Thucydides – History of the Peloponnesian War
    • 📚 Plutarch – Lives
    • 📚 Aristotle - Works
    • 📚 Plato - Works
    • 📚 Epictetus – Discourses / Enchiridion
    • 📚 Cicero – On Duties
    • 📚 Marcus Aurelius – Meditations
    • 📚 St. Augustine – Confessions
    • Niccolò Machiavelli – The Prince
    • Adam Smith – The Wealth of Nations
    • B.H. Liddell Hart – Strategy
    • Sun Tzu – The Art of War
    • Carl von Clausewitz – On War
    • 📚 Xenophon – Cyropaedia
    • Dante – Divine Comedy
    • 📚 Will Durant – Lessons of History
    • Charles Darwin - On the Origin of Species
    • The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
  • Kama
    • Kama Sutra
    • Natysashastra
    • Astadhyayi of Panini
    • Kālidāsa – The Recognition of Śakuntalā
    • Meghaduta
    • Rabindranath Tagore – Gora
    • Shakespeare – Hamlet
    • Shakespeare – King Lear
    • Shakespeare – Macbeth
    • Shakespeare – The Tempest
    • Dostoevsky – The Brothers Karamazov
    • Dostoevsky – Crime and Punishment
    • Tolstoy – War and Peace
    • 📚 Tolstoy – Anna Karenina
    • 📚 Herman Hesse - Siddharta
    • George Orwell - 1984
    • 📚 Gabriel García Márquez – 100 Years of Solitude
  • Moksha

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