Vedanta

[Greggorious]

I've been reading a book by Deepak Chopra and he seems to mention Vedanta a lot in it, it seems very interesting and I'd like to learn more about it. Does anyone have any good links, books, youtube video's I could check out.
Also I come from London and want to know if there are any Hindu, Vedanta groups, Temples I could go and see?

[wundermonk]

Hello Greggorious:

In general, it is difficult to weed out the wheat from the chaff i.t.o. new age gurus. I personally havent read Deepak Chopra's works so I dont want to get into the business of praising/talking bad of him. But it appears that by "Vedanta" he is specifically referring to the idealism of Advaita Vedanta.

Vedanta, etymologically, means "the end of the Vedas" and refers specifically to the philosophy of the Upanishads, which are considered the end of the Vedas.

The problem is [as with most things in Hinduism ], there are varied interpretations of the Upanishads. There are 3 major schools of Vedanta - Dvaita, Visishtadvaita and Advaita. The former two are realist schools while the latter is idealist. All 3 of them claim that the true purport of the Vedas/Upanishads is honestly represented by their school only.

To learn more about the philosophies behind these, one should study the translation provided of the Gita by the respective Acharyas [Madhva for Dvaita, Ramanuja for V Advaita, Shankara for Advaita] and complement that by the study of the Brahmasutras' commentaries also by the respective Acharyas.

You may also want to look at the "Philosophy" subforum of HDF and the folders therein for more specific pointers.

[charitra]

you are reading a wrong author for insights into spiritualism and hinduism, i have nothing against him though.He is an astute businessman who lives in luxury, please remember people who maintain such llifestyle wont fit into the genre of hindu acharyas iam afraid. More importantly he doent know sanskrit.

First read the classic scriptures which are Upanishads, doesnt matter which hindu has translated them, at least initially. London has a Ramakrishna mission or vedanta center somewhere which sells relatively less expensive books on upanishads. Try one of which was written by Nikhilananda, i find it useful.Namaste.

[jakethejake]

I wouldn't discredit Deepak Chopra so much.

While he is no source for Pure spiritual thought, he certainly has made the general ideas of the Dharma more accessible to a wide range of people.

I believe it was one of his books, over half a decade ago, that made me start pondering the Dharma myself. It is was lead me to other texts.


So I thank god for his writing of those books