Selected Sanskrit works with Hindi interpretation on Jaina philosophy and doctrines.

Swami Sahajananda, the founder of the Swaminarayan Movement, considered by his followers as an embodiment of Krishna, let Swami Shatananda write the Satsangijivanam in order to vouchsafe that his presence and teaching live on among his followers in and through this text. The extensive work is composed in Sanskrit and is here presented in an English summary. The text describes the biography of Swami Sahajananda and is an important document for the religious situation in the Gujarat of its time; it (...) testifies to the religious practices by which Swaminarayan wanted to replace practices that were considered as abuses. The content of the text is made accessible through a detailed index. (shrink)

Abstract:Ratnākaraśānti (ca. 970–1040) holds three conflicting positions: luminosity (prakāśa) is the ultimately real nature of consciousness; luminosity and appearances (ākāras) are identical; and appearances are false (alīka) because they are targeted by the neither-one-nor-many argument. But why is luminosity not false, too, given its identity with appearances? In response to this worry, Ratnākaraśānti develops a notion of identity (tādātmya) that lets him claim that, although luminosity and appearance are composed of the same stuff, they are not identical in every respect. (...) On the basis of this, he limits the scope of the neither-one-nor-many argument such that it targets appearances but not luminosity. Other philosophers (and possibly Ratnākaraśānti himself) then further limit the argument's scope, showing that it also does not target experiences of pleasure (sukha) and, crucially for their buddhology, the innate bliss (sahajānanda) that characterizes the experience of buddhahood. (shrink)