Hindol Sengupta > Quotes

“To find what the Rig Veda describes in a hymn to the funeral pyre: ‘Carry him, O Fire, in your arms gently. Carry him where the fathers live, where there is no more sorrow, where there is no more death.’15”
― Hindol Sengupta, Being Hindu: Old Faith, New World and You

“What is that by knowing which everything in this universe is known?’22 That is the answer that Hindu philosophy seeks to provide.”
― Hindol Sengupta, Being Hindu: Old Faith, New World and You

“Guru Gobind Singh taught the Khalsa: ‘If you must be a monk Be like this Let your own home be the forest And your own heart, the monastic recluse Eat less, sleep less Teach yourself to love, have mercy and forbearance Be mild, be patient Bear no lust, or wrath Nor be greedy or obstinate.”
― Hindol Sengupta, The Sacred Sword: The Legend of Guru Gobind Singh

“We grow up believing that to pray is to reach out to the external, that which lies outside of us. All the while, in reality, we are seeking something that lies within us. Our relationship with God, we are led to believe when we grow older, is irrational hocus pocus. It is not just embarrassingly naïve but condemnably stupid to be discussing matters like faith. The opium of the masses is not for us, for we are, presumably, not the masses.”
― Hindol Sengupta, Being Hindu: Old Faith, New World and You

“this: What is it that brings the greatest knowledge of life? And the answer: the acceptance that one will die. Nothing clears the mind of its illusions more than this: one must live as if one will die the same day.”
― Hindol Sengupta, The Sacred Sword: The Legend of Guru Gobind Singh

“Bhargava says he was able to accomplish this by reading old Sanskrit manuscripts preserved by his grandfather, Purshottam Lal Bhargava, who was the head of the Sanskrit department at the University of Rajasthan. In their library reserves he found the work of seventh-century Indian mathematician Brahmagupta, and he realized, using Brahmagupta’s work, that he could crack a problem unresolved for two centuries. Essentially, when two numbers, which are both the sum of two perfect squares, are multiplied together, what is arrived at is the sum of two perfect squares. He found a generalization of this principle in Brahmagupta’s work that helped him simplify the expansive Composition Law introduced by the German Carl Friedrich Gauss in 1801.”
― Hindol Sengupta, Being Hindu: Old Faith, New World and You

“It is, therefore, more critical than ever to define not just what being Hindu means but also what it does not mean; that to be Hindu is to be plural is not enough. We must aggressively proclaim that to be Hindu is to shun bigotry, to accept diversity, embrace differences, respect gender rights and actively adopt new technologies and sciences.”
― Hindol Sengupta, Being Hindu: Old Faith, New World and You

“the Mundaka Upanishad says, ‘What is that by knowing which everything in this universe is known?’22 That is the answer that Hindu philosophy seeks to provide.”
― Hindol Sengupta, Being Hindu: Old Faith, New World and You

“Then I found a marvellous, cliché-shattering short essay by the African writer Binyavanga Wainaina titled How to Write about Africa. Wainaina’s contribution critically examines the Western gaze on Africa, while engaging with his own identity as a Kenyan homosexual writer who rose from modest beginnings to become an author of renown, as well as the director of the Chinua Achebe Centre for African Literature and Languages at Bard College in the US.”
― Hindol Sengupta, Being Hindu: Old Faith, New World and You

“Come, be men! [he writes] Kick out the priests who are always against progress, because they would never mend, their hearts would never become big. They are the offspring of centuries of superstition and tyranny. Root out priestcraft first. Come, be men! Come out of your narrow holes and have a look abroad. See how nations are on the march! Do you love man? Do you love your country? Then come, let us struggle for higher and better things; look not back, no, not even if you see the dearest and nearest cry. Look not back, but forward!20 Come”
― Hindol Sengupta, The Modern Monk

“numismatics,”
― Hindol Sengupta, Being Hindu: Old Faith, New World and You

“On further research, I found that Brahmagupta was one of the greatest mathematicians of all time, being the first to introduce in India the concept of negative numbers and spell out all theirs rules of operation. His two seminal books are Brāhmasphuṭasiddhānta and Khaṇḍakhādyaka.”
― Hindol Sengupta, Being Hindu: Old Faith, New World and You

“In Roberto Calasso’s Ardor, which is the retelling of the wisdom of the Vedic age, there is this utterly enlightening conversation between Yajnavalkya—the pupil of Surya (the sun god) and the master of all yajnas or sacrifices—and the sublimely wise King Janak. Janak asks Yajnavalkya, ‘What happens after death?”
― Hindol Sengupta, Being Hindu: Old Faith, New World and You

“Man stands against even the so-called authority of God. What is God but the best in man? What is God but the highest reason? Why shouldn’t man, then, stand against even the authority of God if it goes against the laws of inquiry and reason?”
― Hindol Sengupta, The Sacred Sword: The Legend of Guru Gobind Singh

“The Tao of Physics,”
― Hindol Sengupta, Being Hindu: Old Faith, New World and You

“The major idea of jnana yoga is to gain greater knowledge of who you really are. What does that mean? Take the first two steps of jnana yoga—shama and dama. They talk about training the mind to internalize and the sensory organs to ‘centre’ themselves so that they can determine what one truly feels or is experiencing. The next natural step in this process is called uparati, which is the practice of not thinking about the senses and going deeper into the consciousness. This is followed by titiksha, which if you think about it, would follow from not being a slave to your senses; it is the idea that no matter whether faced with happiness or sorrow, adulation or insult, one accepts and embraces it without reaction. The mind is consistently calm as if nothing happened. Then comes shraddha or faith, followed by samadhana or the exercise to constantly focus the mind on divinity and finally mumukshutva, the desire to be free from the ties of the world.”
― Hindol Sengupta, Being Hindu: Old Faith, New World and You

“prestidigitation”
― Hindol Sengupta, Being Hindu: Old Faith, New World and You