Originally Posted by
Indraneela
Namasté, all,
I started the new year by enrolling in a few correspondence courses, partly for the sake of widening my knowledge and improving my discipline in study, and partly out of curiosity, to see what "official" institutions had to say about Hindu ideas and texts.
One of these classes teaches via video lectures by the professor. In the week 3 lecture, an introduction to the Upaniṣads, the professor related this story:
"I think I said in the very beginning, the Upaniṣads are not widely read at all and not widely known within contemporary Hinduism, outside a small group of very learned scholars and paṇḍits. I remember doing a course - this course, actually, on the Upaniṣads - with the Brahmin community in East London, and I remember the first class I asked, "What do you know about the Upaniṣads" and was greeted with absolute silence, then one voice from the back said, We know they exist...
They were aware of a body of literature called Upaniṣads, but within their religious life, they had never seen the need to delve into them. Not that they were bad Hindus, just the opposite! but the form of Hinduism that they practiced didn't involve a study of the Upaniṣads, and I think that would be fairly typical."
Is it, as the professor suggests, a fairly common Hindu attitude? To consider the Upaniṣads mostly unnecessary to religious practice and study, and/or to largely ignore them? This tale made me sad. But do you think it speaks only of the London community, or might someone addressing a modern Brahmin group anywhere encounter the same response?
Indraneela
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Oṁ Indrāya Namaḥ.
Oṁ Namaḥ Śivāya.
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