Western scholars
are Rishis
Worship Western scholars as Rishis, Rishivatyepi Poojyanthe,
said Varaha Mihira, remarking that their Astronomy is well developed. Not only
Western, but scholars in all civilizations !
Who is an Exemplar?
He who proves that Example is better than precept. His Life is his Message.
Rishis are Exemplars
Grace is All in All
Truth is enshrined in Divinity,
Exemplars manifest Divinity,
Our heroes they are!
Daivadheenam Jagat Sarvam
Satyadheenam tu Daivatam
Tat Satyam Uthamadheenam
Uthamo Mama Devata
Whitman, Emerson and Thoreau, the American Trinity, were transcendentalists of
no mean order. When Emerson went to see Carlyle, Carlyle gave him a copy
of the Gita and Emerson initiated the Concord Movement.
Thoreau modeled his 18 chapters of Walden on the 18 chapters of the Great
Song of Eternity, the Gita. And Walt
Whitman in his "Song of My Self " , expressed the quintessence
of the First Science, Vedanta Sastra.
Walt Whitman was what the Upanishadic Seer- Poets recommended to mortals. What
Lord Krishna prescribed to the discriminative intellect.- a
Realised Self who views Becoming under the metaphor of Being. At times he wanted
to become the Macrocosm, to become the Earth Geist, to flow in and out of
the veins of Nature, a consummation that Goethe's Faust devotedly yearned for,
but was delayed at the last minute, because he fell back on mundane
experience and empirical becoming !
Another Exemplar was Sir Edwin Arnold, whose poems Light of Asa and Song
Celestial were translations of Buddha Charita and Gita.
About revealing Wisdom to the elect and hiding it from the profane, he wrote
Hide, the Holy Krishna saith,
This from him who hath no faith,
Him that worships not nor seeks,
Wisdom's Teachings when She speaks,
But wherever amid the flock,
Of My Lovers, one shall teach,
This divinest, wisest Speech,
About the Cause of all Causes,
Teaching them in the faith to bring,
Truth to them and offering,
All honor unto Me,
Unto Brahma cometh He !
Rishis and Yogis averr that the Ultimate reality is Intellectual Love,
Prajnanam Premam Brahma.
In the 33rd Canto of the Divina Commedia, Dante experiences Cosmic Consciousness. He sees the essence of the Universe as One Perfect Whole and the Whole as nothing but Love. Deeper and deeper he penetrates into the mysteries of the Trinitarian Unity (symbolic of immanence, transcendence and cosmicity ) and sees the changeless glory of the triune Deity and the countenance of humanity, the unconditioned self-completeness of Being, generating the Cosmos.