Dear All: It is my pleasure to publish this guest post by KV Sarma J on “Athirathram” – one of the most ancient and sacred ritual associates with Vedic Dharma.  I should confess that if you had mentioned the word “Athirathram” to me before April, I would have drawn a blank on it. Now, I know better – in large part due to the efforts of bloggers like KV and others. Below is a condensed version of the full series that appeared on KV Sarma J’s blog…Please read, share and …

Thanks to Parthasarathy-ji for alerting me to this recent interview of Jeffrey Armstrong. I found it fascinating for the breadth of subjects it covered and the insights it offered. Some excerpts below (emphasis added). As some of you may know,
Jeffrey Armstrong is an award-winning author of numerous books on Vedic knowledge..He is a philosopher, practitioner and teacher of the Vedas for the past 40 years. He has degrees in Psychology, History & Comparative Religions, and Literature and had a successful career as an executive in Silicon Valley before turning to …

…don’t forget to tell the young ones about its origins! This post has been pending for a very long time in my drafts folder. It was prompted by a statement I read by chance many months ago about the origins of this favourite children’s game. That statement prompted some digging which ended up as this post. To start with this brief extract, courtesy Wikipedia about the origins of this game (emphasis added throughout):
Snakes and Ladders originated in India as a game based on morality called Vaikuntapaali (stairs to Vaikuntha) or …

Stumbled on this yesterday in the NY Times (emphasis added):
“We started this, really, for our kids,” said Dr. Shukla, a urologist and a second-generation Indian-American. “When our kids go to school and say they are Hindu, nobody says, ‘Oh, yeah, Hindus gave the world yoga.’ They say, ‘What caste are you?’ Or ‘Do you pray to a monkey god?’ Because that’s all Americans know about Hinduism.”
The “Dr Shukla” mentioned in the article is Dr Aseem Shukla and what he is talking about is the “take Yoga Back movement..Below, some excerpts …

Many amongst you would remember the story of DharmaRaj and the “Yaksha Prashna” (Questions of the “Yaksha*”). I stumbled on these questions a few weeks ago on a Dr Srinivasan’s website . Dr Srinivasan has used the “Yaksha Prashna” as an anchor to write a primer aimed at inculcating moral and ethical values amongst the young and the children. I had almost forgotten this story until I re-read it a few weeks ago. It is a story worth telling. Some excerpts from “Yaksha Prashna” by Dr A Srinivasan
This episode is …

The final part of  “What is Dharma” by Harapriya. Today, can one fight a dharma yudh against adharma?
*** What is “Dharma”? – Concluding Part by K Harapriya ***

Can one fight a dharma yudh against adharma?
The Mahabharata gives a pretty clear answer —-yes, we can fight a dharmic war mostly although some acts of adharma will be committed.
This will seem like equivocation to most people because we tend to believe two prevailing myths:   one, that dharmic people should be held to much higher standards than the totally adharmic;   and two,  that …