Changes and development in education in India; a study.

The Indian philosophers lay emphasis on mind-control. Mind-control is not only negative practice. For, we are not only required to check and curb our evil tendencies but also employ them for a better purpose. The lower constituents of human beings can not be annihilated but can only be tamed and reformed. Cessation of bad tendencies is coupled with cultivation of good tendencies and is followed by good actions. According to Jainism & Buddhism, the path of liberation from sufferings starts with (...) mind-control. The Jainas emphasize on right faith, right knowledge and right conduct which are regarded as Triratnas, three Jewels. Right conduct consists in abstinence from injury, falsehood, stealing, self-indulgence and attachment. According to Buddhism, way to Nirvan (cessation from suffering) consists in eight-fold path which is nothing but self-control. It starts from right views, right determination and right speech and proceeds through right conduct to right livelihood to right effort and to right mindfulness. This process of self-control finally culminates in right concentration. The Upanishadic thinkers and the systems based on Upanishadic traditions have also recognised the importance of self-control. In view of the importance of mind-control in familial, social, moral and spiritual lives we should consistently and constantly make endeavour to practice mind-control and should fight despondency with enthusiasm in the event of some initial failures. (shrink)

The Tattvasaṃgraha, or Encyclopedia of Metaphysics, is the most influential and most frequently studied philosophical text from the late period of Indian Buddhism. This edition includes verses by Śāntarakṣita (c. 725-788 CE), which are clarified and expounded in the commentary of his student Kamalaśīla (c. 740-795 CE); both of these authors played crucial roles in founding the Buddhist tradition of Tibet. In the Tattvasaṃgraha, they explain, discuss and critique a vast range of views and arguments from across the whole South (...) Asian philosophical and religious spectrum. The work deals at length with ideas drawn from Buddhism, Jainism, and a variety of traditions now incorporated within Hinduism, including Mīmāṃsā, Nyāya-vaiśeṣika, and Sāṃkhya; it also includes the earliest discussion of Advaita Vedānta in any Buddhist text. The chapters selected for translation from Sanskrit and Tibetan deal with such fundamental philosophical issues as the existence or nonexistence of God and the soul; the nature of matter and of causal relationships; the connection between words and their referents; the rules of logic; the sources of our knowledge; and the compatibility of beliefs about karma with Buddhism's fundamental claim that there is no self. Introductory chapters discuss translation choices and explain the forms of argument and methods of reasoning employed by Śāntarakṣita and Kamalaśīla. (shrink)

Study on views of Rāmadāsa, 1608-1681, on philosophy and aesthetics of Hindustani classical music, expressed in Dāsabodha, Marathi verse work on Hindu religious life.

On Jaina philosophy; includes translation in Hindi.

This article presents insights from a research project on sex work that took place in the Caribbean region during 1997–8. First it briefly summarizes common themes in historical and contemporary studies of sex work in the region, then describes the aims, methodology, and main trends of the project. It pays particular attention to the differences between definitions and experiences of sex work by female and male sex workers and of male and female sex tourists, as well as describing conditions in (...) the Caribbean sex trade. Finally the article identifies some implications of the complexity in the region that were uncovered through the research project for feminist theorizing about sex work. (shrink)

To date, the concept of ecological justice, when applied to international climate change policy, has largely focused on the North-South dichotomy and has yet to be extended to Central and Eastern European countries. This article argues that current formulations of climate change policy cannot address potential issues of ecological injustice to Central and Eastern European countries. Several Central and Eastern European countries recently joined the European Union, but ecological justice discourse in the EU is shown to be underdeveloped. Although the (...) analysis argues that equal per capita emissions is a socially and ecologically useful starting point for EU climate policy, it is further argued that bringing pertinent regional concerns into the discussion can enhance efforts to realize just outcomes to the climate problem. (shrink)

On religious duties and spiritual rights of the women in Hinduism.

Fair trade is a new form of commercial partnership whereby actors in the North engage with actors in the South on a number of conditions, including setting a minimum price, a development bonus, and so on. But above all, fair trade organizations in the South are implementing mechanisms that more or less facilitate the empowerment of their members. This article analyzes the empowerment effects of two fair trade organizations in South India. It shows that while positive effects can be seen, (...) the prevailing social norms in India are extremely influential for women at the moment, so that women are putting all their hopes on their daughters through their education. (shrink)

The topic of this dissertation is one that has been in the forefront of contemporary metaphysics in the Anglo-American philosophical tradition, namely, the problem of personal identity through time. Although we generally believe that we remain the same persons throughout our lives, the answers to questions concerning just what it is that remains the same about us prove to be elusive. Contemporary debate on the subject has its roots in the challenges posed by Locke and Hume to theories which assert (...) that persisting and substantial selves, or souls, constitute the ground for personal identity, and their efforts to suggest alternative theories based on such concepts as memory and causality. It is remarkable that a similar debate, aroused by the "non-self" doctrine of the Buddha, occupied a central position in Indian philosophical discourse during the last centuries B.C.E. and the first millennium C.E. While much historical and philological research has been devoted to Buddhist approaches to this problem, the task of interpreting these materials in the light of recent refinements of philosophical method has not yet been undertaken. It is this task to which the present thesis is devoted, drawing on the works of such Buddhist philosophers as Vasubandhu and Santaraksita, and their Brahmanical opponents such as Uddyotakara, as well as recent contributions to the debate on personal identity by Chisholm, Parfit and others. The dissertation is divided into three main sections: Part One, in six chapters, traces out the history of the problem of personal identity in Indian philosophy, and is especially concerned with the role played by refinements of Indian philosophical method in the developments discussed; Part Two presents a selection of the most important Buddhist and Brahmanical contributions to the problem, newly translated from the Sanskrit for the present dissertation; and Part Three includes three supplementary essays on personal identity in the work of Derek Parfit and Steven Colline, Buddhist idealism, and Buddhist hermeneutics. (shrink)

The present article aims to explain Kamala??la’s understanding of the nature of insight, specifically considering it as the ‘discernment of reality’ -- a technical term identified with insight in the author’s well known Bh?van?krama? texts. I approach my analysis of bh?ta-pratyavek?? from three different angles. I begin by providing a rationale for its translation. This is followed by an account of Kamala??la’s reading of key passages in the La?k?vat?ra S?tra describing the process to which the term refers. Here the aim (...) is to illustrate Kamala??la’s understanding of bh?ta-pratyavek?? as it is actually experienced in meditation. The final section examines bh?ta-pratyavek?? in relation to other important technical terminology employed in the course of making arguments against his historical rival in debate, the Ch’an monk Mo ho yen. By providing these three different perspectives on the same process it is my hope that both scholars and practitioners will be able to more fully comprehend and benefit from the instructions provided by the ancient master Kamala??la. (shrink)

The present article aims to explain Kamala??la’s understanding of the nature of insight, specifically considering it as the ‘discernment of reality’ -- a technical term identified with insight in the author’s well known Bh?van?krama? texts. I approach my analysis of bh?ta-pratyavek?? from three different angles. I begin by providing a rationale for its translation. This is followed by an account of Kamala??la’s reading of key passages in the La?k?vat?ra S?tra describing the process to which the term refers. Here the aim (...) is to illustrate Kamala??la’s understanding of bh?ta-pratyavek?? as it is actually experienced in meditation. The final section examines bh?ta-pratyavek?? in relation to other important technical terminology employed in the course of making arguments against his historical rival in debate, the Ch’an monk Mo ho yen. By providing these three different perspectives on the same process it is my hope that both scholars and practitioners will be able to more fully comprehend and benefit from the instructions provided by the ancient master Kamala??la. (shrink)

I respond to the charge that one of my objections to Marilyn Strathern’s rejection of feminist anthropology is the same as an objection made by Kamala Visweswaran. They may seem very similar to begin with, but I argue that there is both a difference in focus - in which premises we are concentrating on - and in method.

This book addresses prominent views on the nature of the self in Indian philosophical traditions and presents Buddhist critiques of those conceptions through the translation and commentary on Śāntarakṣita's chapter in the Tattvasaṃgraha on theories of a self and Kamala-śīla's commentary on it in his Tattvasaṃgrahapañjikā. The book is comprised of an introduction presenting the theories of a self in the Indian Buddhist Middle Way philosophies and in the different philosophical schools Śāntarakṣita and Kamalaśīla study and offers a background for (...) the translation. The detailed translation that follows reveals the theories of a self that are explained in the philosophical schools in India called the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika, Mīmāṃsā, Sāṃkhya, Jain, Advaita Vedanta, and Vātsīputrīya. It is complemented by a thorough commentary by the author which brings the text to light for a modern audience. A useful contribution to Indian philosophy and global philosophy, this book will be of interest to researchers in the fields of Philosophy, Religious Studies and Buddhist Studies. (shrink)

Forest Recollections: Wandering Monks in Twentieth Century Thailand. Kamala Tiyavanich. University of Hawai'i Press, Honolulu 1997, xxi, 410 pp. Cloth, $49.00; pbk, $29.95, £24.95. ISBN 0-8248-1768-0/1781-8.

Abstract:This paper scrutinizes some of our most enduring assumptions about the genre of autobiography. More particularly, it examines the predicative links, the transitivities, which bind notions of self-life-and-writing. It comes to this exercise through a reading of Madhavikutty-Kamala Das’ Balyakala Smaranakal (Memories of a Childhood) (1987). This autobiography promises to trace the self from its incipience—only to side-step the self’s emergence and to hide this deferral in plain sight. The paper argues that Balyakala Smaranakal (BS) uses our expectations of the (...) genre and our presumptions about the writer—particularly her abiding preoccupation with self-production—as accomplices. It invites us to witness the textual densities which the child-protagonist gathers and then deploys these strategies to un-do the self’s emergence. By deferring the production of the self BS stages the autobiography as “intransitive”. This paper goes some way in examining the reasons why it becomes impossible for BS to produce a legible self; for the child-protagonist to step into the social category that it summons forth. It examines the formal as well as socio-historical conditions within which this autobiography becomes the place of self-postponement—rather than of self-presentation and self-actualization. (shrink)

The philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel emphasises the importance of understanding consciousness and, even more so, self-consciousness. His lectures on aesthetics contain aesthetic theories for all forms of art (viz. architecture, painting, music or poetry), but critics use them only in significantly altered versions. The present paper attempts to give an in-depth analysis of a poem following one interpretation of Hegel's philosophy of self-consciousness. The poem analysed is not a German Romantic poem, but an Indian poem from the mid-20th century. The (...) explanatory force of Hegel's aesthetics is thus assessed with the needs of a global culture studies in mind. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:preface This issue of Feminist Studies includes a cluster of essays that demonstrates new approaches to life writing, with special attention to unconventional women’s autobiographies. Lara Vapnek describes the historical inhibitions that shaped the self-presentation of pioneering American labor activist Elizabeth Gurley Flynn in the early twentieth century such that she omitted her sexual relationships with both women and men from her autobiographical writings. Overlapping with Vapnek’s historical focus, (...) Nora Doyle’s essay takes a new look at Gertrude Stein’s bestknown and most accessible work, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, seeing it as Stein’s clever reworking of the women’s genre of domestic fiction in its pairing of a domesticated wife with a “genius” husband. In her examination of Kamala Das’s Balyakala Smaranakal (Memories of childhood), Sharmila Sreekumar discusses how the memoir’s depiction of self-deferral rather than self-realization unsettles autobiographical conventions through its troubling of the relationship between “self,” “life,” and “writing” that is constitutive of the genre. In Olga Zilberbourg’s short story, two women are baffled as they contemplate a friend’s suicide: what does it say about their own accomplishments and losses? Attention to the visual aspects of women’s lives and to their embodiment is highlighted in Estelle Carol’s memoir about her time spent as a member of the Graphic Collective of the Chicago Women’s Liberation Union in the 1970s. Corey Hickner-Johnson’s lyrical essay describes the first-person I of the poem as pushing herself to a physical extreme. Her autobiographical crisis-moment, depicted in acutely visceral and visual terms, wills into relief life’s underlying colors against a backdrop of otherwise drab monotony and disappointment. Feminist graphic artwork is discussed in Hillary Chute’s review essay on the newly popular genre of graphic novels by women. Alexandra Ketchum’s “‘The Place We’ve Always Wanted to Go But Never Could Find’: Finding Woman Space in Feminist Restaurants and Cafés in Ontario 1974–1982” and Samantha Pergadia’s “Geologies of 8 Sex and Gender: Excavating the Materialism of Gayle Rubin and Judith Butler” shift our attention away from individual life trajectories to broader sweeps of space and time. Ketchum’s history of feminist restaurants and cafes in Ontario, Canada, in the mid 1970s to early 1980s encourages us to consider the importance of space to the formation of feminist solidarities and political organizing, while Pergadia’s analysis of the geological understandings that undergird the work of both Gayle Rubin and Judith Butler invites us to rethink the temporalities through which gendered and sexed subjects, as well as academic disciplines, are formed. In closing, Ashwini Tambe reflects on the #MeToo movement and how we might fashion a more responsive public reckoning with sexual coercion. The issue leads off with Vapnek’s essay, “The Rebel Girl Revisited: Rereading Elizabeth Gurley Flynn’s Life Story.” As Vapnek details, Flynn, an activist in the Industrial Workers of the World, chronicled her life only as far as 1926. Although she envisioned women’s emancipation as an integral component of the socialist revolution, her self-censorship reveals “how communism as well as anticommunism has limited our knowledge of the feminist past.” Flynn remained committed to socialism and women’s rights and continued to agitate for social change, but her efforts to narrate her later life were stymied by internal inhibitions and external forces. For a decade she lived with another woman at a time when leftists were not open about same-sex relationships. Nor did she wish to reveal her sexual relationships with a number of men or the psychological breakdown she suffered in 1926. Joining the US Communist Party in 1936 re-energized her career as a labor organizer and resulted in her being sent to prison from 1955 to 1957 during the period of the Red Scare in the United States. By her middle age, she had experienced not only nonconventional personal relationships but also a dramatic change in her appearance: rather than the slim girl pictured on the cover of songs designed to encourage the labor movement, she was a stout, matronly woman. Inhibited from revising her autobiography to account for her later life... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Forest Recollections: Wandering Monks in Twentieth-Century ThailandSulak SivaraksaForest Recollections: Wandering Monks in Twentieth-Century Thailand. By Kamala Tivavanich. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1997. 410 pp.History and anthropology professors at Cornell University were very impressed with this Ph.D. dissertation written by a student of Southeast Asian history at this prestigious institution. And rightly so, for Forest Recollections is a valuable study of twentieth-century wandering ascetics in northeast Thailand.The author includes (...) minibiographies of Ajaan Man Phurithat (1871–1949) and nine of his disciples, who also are now no longer in this world. The nine, all ethnic Laotians from the Isaan, are Waen Sujinno, Dun Atulo, Fan Ajaro, Thet Thetrangsi, Li Thammatharo, La Khempatato, Cha Photiyan, Juan Kulachettho, and Wan Uttamo. Her account of the lives of these holy men is woven into a history of Siam, beginning in the middle of the Fifth Reign as King Chulalongklon implemented a series of sweeping reforms, including centralization of the bureaucracy. The increase of central authority over outlying regions of the kingdom had a direct impact on the Sangha (the community and hierarchy of Buddhist Monks) and the forest tradition (which is a fusion of Buddhism, animism, and local customs that had been practiced for centuries). The book provides a background account of how regional Buddhist traditions were affected by various Sangha reforms in the twentieth century and is divided into three sections: forest communities prior to 1957; the “forest-invasion” [End Page 235] period (1957–1988); and the “forest-closure” period (1989 to the present).For centuries, wandering monks had acted as both physical and spiritual healers for villagers they encountered on their travels. The changing political situation, however, resulted in wandering monks being co-opted and used by the elite. In the name of development, monks endorsed the construction of dams and wide modern roads, the wearing of Buddhist amulets, and the erection of ever more elaborate temple buildings. Many were eventually to lose the influence they had once exerted over rural people. With the notable exception of Ajaan Man Phurithat, however, most of them did not realize the very real threat posed to their way of life by an increasingly powerful centralized administration.Tiyavanich has utilized Thai-language sources extensively, an effort that is hardly matched by any previous Western scholar. But despite the excellent research and the obvious care she took in writing her dissertation, Tiyavanich has failed to fully grasp the complexity of the Sangha order and the reality of the wandering monks themselves. What we get instead is a wide-angle portrait that lacks depth. It is rather unfortunate, for example, that she did not interview wandering monks who are still alive, such as Ajaan Maha Bua and Ajaan Viriyang, or foreign-born monks who are practicing in this same tradition, such as Pannavaddho Bhikkhu (of English birth) and Ajaan Sumedho Bhikkhu (an American). Some important figures have been left out, too. There is no mention, for instance, of Ajaan Bunnag, and this is a great pity for his life story reflects the failed attempts of a wandering monk to gain independence from the centralized power of the state. Conservationist monk Phra Prajak Khuttajitto gets only a brief mention, and even the world-famous Buddhadasa Bhikkhu receives scant attention. If the author had been acquainted with the Sekiya Dhamma group of monks or if she had ever read Sanitsuda Ekachai’s excellent Seed of Hope, her account would have been strengthened. Another weakness is that her English spellings of Thai Buddhist names for monks are often not true to their Pali origins.Nonetheless, reservations aside, Forest Recollections is to be commended because it provides a lucid introduction to an influential Buddhist tradition, which may now well be on its way out, to those with little or no background knowledge of the subject.Sulak SivaraksaSanti Pracha Dhamma InstituteCopyright © 1999 The University of Hawai’i Press... (shrink)

The Tattvasaṃgraha, or Encyclopedia of Metaphysics, is the most influential and most frequently studied philosophical text from the late period of Indian Buddhism. This edition includes verses by Śāntarakṣita (c. 725-788 CE), which are clarified and expounded in the commentary of his student Kamalaśīla (c. 740-795 CE); both of these authors played crucial roles in founding the Buddhist tradition of Tibet. In the Tattvasaṃgraha, they explain, discuss and critique a vast range of views and arguments from across the whole South (...) Asian philosophical and religious spectrum. The work deals at length with ideas drawn from Buddhism, Jainism, and a variety of traditions now incorporated within Hinduism, including Mīmāṃsā, Nyāya-vaiśeṣika, and Sāṃkhya; it also includes the earliest discussion of Advaita Vedānta in any Buddhist text. The chapters selected for translation from Sanskrit and Tibetan deal with such fundamental philosophical issues as the existence or nonexistence of God and the soul; the nature of matter and of causal relationships; the connection between words and their referents; the rules of logic; the sources of our knowledge; and the compatibility of beliefs about karma with Buddhism's fundamental claim that there is no self. Introductory chapters discuss translation choices and explain the forms of argument and methods of reasoning employed by Śāntarakṣita and Kamalaśīla. (shrink)

Bashabi Fraser is known the world over as a Scottish-Bengali aka diasporic writer. Further she has also been slotted as a feminist scholar with a huge corpus on Tagore. This essay proves the fallacy of such pigeon-holeing of Fraser and shows that she is as mainstream as Yeats and even before that, like unto Blake. The essay also makes a point for rejecting every other mode of poetry except the Romantic mode. It established the Vedantic nature of the poetic genius. (...) The endnotes are copious and comment on how/why/(what of) Fraser should compulsory reading at which age. The essay speaks at length on the nature of poetry. It stresses the value of Vedanta in assessing true poetry written even in English. This essay is also valuable since it has within it acute observations on Fraser as a Tagore scholar. (shrink)

Through a ‘micro’ and ‘macro’ level analysis, this study focuses on elements of questioning and question design in the Senate Judiciary hearing conducted for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Specifically, two lines of questioning are analyzed: that of Kamala Harris, D. California, and that of Ted Cruz, R. Texas. Through an analysis that builds heavily on prior research that uses Conversation Analysis to understand the news interview, this study attempts to expand such research to institutional talk done by politicians in (...) Congress. The analysis portion of the paper investigates, on a ‘micro’ level, the linguistic elements at play in each line of questioning. In the discussion section, a ‘macro’ level analysis situates the findings of this paper within the broader US political climate among the public and in terms of the growing conservatism of the Supreme Court. (shrink)

According to the poetician Vāmana, a genitive ending can denote not only a direct relation but also an indirect relation. For example, in kamalasya kandaḥ ‘the bulb of the lotus flower’ the genitive ending Ṅas introduced after the word kamala denotes the indirect relation between the lotus flower and the bulb, the relation established through the intermediary of the lotus plant that has a direct relation with both of them. Is such a view acceptable to Pāṇinian grammarians? Careful scrutiny of (...) Patañjali’s discussions in the Mahābhāṣya concerning what the affix matUP signifies reveals that he does not accept that a genitive ending occurs to denote an indirect relation: he considers that Aṣṭādhyāyī 2.3.50: ṣaṣṭhī śeṣe, which provides for introducing a genitive ending, has for its domain a direct relation alone. For Vāmana, on the other hand, the poetic expression kamalasya kandaḥ and the like serve to testify to the fact that a genitive ending can be used to signify an indirect relation. What is important is that Aṣṭādhyāyī 2.3.50 as it stands does not exclude this. Just as Patañjali accepts a direct relation as the domain of Aṣṭādhyāyī 2.3.50 on the basis of the usage of model speakers, so does Vāmana accept an indirect relation as its further domain on the basis of the usage of great poets. (shrink)