[Advaita-l] Traditional Scholarship vs Modern Pseudo-Intellectualism

[Rajaram Venkataramani]

Memorising improves logical reasoning. Please look at Stanford research
on the topic.
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/SUSE/SEAL/Reports_Papers/YuanEtal_WorkingMemory.pdf


Originally, academic interest in other faiths was to defeat and then arose
a genuine interest
to learn diverse human experience as an outsider. Now, there is a shift in
the stand to actually
experience as an insider. In fact, Islam and Christianity are primarily
taught by practitioners in the
Universities. Western Universities are extending this privilege to
Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism
and Jainism also. Oxford Centre of Hindu Studies is headed by Shaunaka
Rishi, a practising
Gaudiya Vaishnava. Shri Mani Dravid Sastrigal expressed concerns about how
students of
Sanskrit College have to go through so many courses without assimilating
and internalising.

I am not asking for too much when I say that Universities should also teach
traditions as per
traditional methods - at least give that option. It is fanatical to say
that they should only teach
as per modern methods. There are serious epistemological issues in modern
methods, which is
obvious to any one who knows even the basics of the system of pramana. FYI,
many academics
understand that point of view that traditional experience should be part of
traditional education.

The problem is even many modern mutts don't teach tradition in a
traditional way. At the root of
the problem is a lack of bhakti, which is seen as a sentiment rather than
as ontologically supreme.
Without bhakti, to guru and Ishwara, it is impossible to learn tattva. The
logical defence of bhakti
assumes great significance in that context.

On Tuesday, July 23, 2013, Venkatesh Murthy wrote:

> Namaste
>
> Even in teaching Sanskrit also the modern methods are making the learning
> interesting for students. The old tradition methods make the students to
> learn more by memorization but not giving a lot of examples. They were good
> for olden times. Students knew a lot of Sanskrit words already and were
> good in spoken Sanskrit. But now students do not know many Sanskrit words
> and Sanskrit is not the mother tongue. Examples must be given at every
> step.
>
>
> On Mon, Jul 22, 2013 at 2:56 PM, Venkata Subramanian <
> venkat_advaita at yahoo.com <javascript:;>> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ________________________________
> > From: Vidyasankar Sundaresan <svidyasankar at hotmail.com <javascript:;>>
> > To: Advaita List <advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org <javascript:;>>
> > Sent: Monday, 14 November 2011 8:57 PM
> > Subject: Re: [Advaita-l] Traditional Scholarship vs Modern
> > Pseudo-Intellectualism
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > b. There is  something to be learnt from professors in a modern academic
> > institution. If in today's world, we want to articulate a nuanced
> > restatement
> > of traditional positions on the role of revelation in our own
> philosophical
> > traditions, we HAVE to reckon with more than three hundred years of
> > academic
> > study of Indian traditions that has now been firmly established. And
> > rather than
> > find fault with all of academia in a blanket sweeping fashion, learn from
> > it and
> > reconfigure how to utilize the skills you may learn from it, in order to
> > further
> > your own intellectual purposes.
> >
> > == Well said.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Venkat.
> > _______________________________________________
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>
> --
> Regards
>
> -Venkatesh
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