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In this book, we analyze the psycho-social consequences faced by Indian American children after exposure to the school textbook discourse on Hinduism and ancient India. We demonstrate that there is an intimate connection—an almost exact correspondence—between James Mill’s colonial-racist discourse (Mill was the head of the British East India Company) and the current school textbook discourse. This racist discourse, camouflaged under the cover of political correctness, produces the same psychological impacts on Indian American children that racism typically causes: shame, inferiority, embarrassment, identity confusion, assimilation, and a phenomenon akin to racelessness, where children dissociate from the traditions and culture of their ancestors.


This book is the result of four years of rigorous research and academic peer-review, reflecting our ongoing commitment at Hindupedia to challenge the representation of Hindu Dharma within academia.

Bhavapratyaya

From Hindupedia, the Hindu Encyclopedia

By Swami Harshananda

Bhavapratyaya literally means ‘that which causes transmigration’.

The Yogasutras of Patañjali (200 B.C.) describes eight graded steps for controlling the mind. The last step is ‘samādhi,’ perfect concentration, resulting in a super-conscious experience. This samādhi is twofold:

  1. Samprajñāta - In this the object of concentration is fully revealed and known.
  2. Asamprajñāta - In this the mind settles down into itself without any vṛttis or modifications. Hence there will be no jñāna or knowledge of any object in particular.

Asamprajñāta samādhi is twofold:

  1. Upāyapratyaya
  2. Bhavapratyaya

‘Pratyaya’ means kāraṇa or cause. ‘Bhava’ means samsāra or transmigratory existence. Since this latter samādhi does not give mokṣa or liberation, but causes bhava or transmigration, has been rightly called ‘bhava-pratyaya.’

Some yogis, endowed with apara- vairāgya or inferior spirit of renunciation, choose such objects as the pañca-bhutas (the five elements such as earth and water), the indriyas (the sense-organs) or ahaṅkāra (the ego) and so on for their objects of meditation. When they attain asam-prajñāta samādhi through these, they attain a state which is similar to kaivalya or liberation. However, since they lack viveka-khyāti or the direct experience that the ātman (the Self) is separate from prakṛti (nature), they return to transmigratory existence after some time.


References[edit]

  • The Concise Encyclopedia of Hinduism, Swami Harshananda, Ram Krishna Math, Bangalore

Contributors to this article

Krishna Maheshwari, Deval Sancheti

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