SWAMI KRUPALVANANDJI ON CELIBACY

Man is a social animal, and thus live in society with family, friends and other human beings. To live in this world, one needs to live with certain rules, principles, and good behaviour, so as to form a best system of life, “dharma” was established. India being a land of yoga for thousands of years, pratice of yoga is been carried out by thousands of sages, in which they have achieved the supreme power. By self experiences these sages (yogis) gave the world plenty of literature, like Vedas, Upanishads, Yoga Sutra etc. These scriptures came from the sages penance, deep knowledge and self experiences. So these all Indian Scriptures are very valuable, with the essence of truth. Sage Patanjali in yoga sutra, classifies yoga into eight steps and at the end of which highest aim of human life, is attained which is, of achieving divine body, and dissolving one’s self into the ultimate supreme divine energy. From the eight steps of yoga, the first two steps are very important, which are yamas and niyamas, without which no one can move a step ahead. Yamas and niyamas play a very important role in yoga seeker’s life, as well as for all human beings. There are five golden rules in eachyamas and niyamas. Five yamas are non-violence, truthfulness, non-stealing, celibacy and nonpossessiveness. And the five niyamas are purity, contentment, self-study, worship of god and austerity. Yamas play necessary role in social religion, as they are the principles to follow with all human beings. Celibacy is of prime importance in socialreligion, as it is avery strong code for yogi to reach ultimat goal of divine body. Yama are moral restraints and niyamas are moral observnces. So both these play a strong role for all human beings.Sanatan Dharma mentions about four parts of life, in which first is Bramcharyashram, Gruhasthashram, Vanprasthashram and Sanyastashram. At first place comes Bramcharyashram, in which comes celibate students. So this is a great arrangment, which builds up character, There is no means equal to celibacy.

Pretty Beasts and Flowers

This chapter opens with a reading of Rossetti’s nursery rhyme book, Sing-Song (1872), in which the nonhuman world is disclosed as an evolving incarnation of the Spirit. Her close attention to the minutiae of creation in Sing-Song offers the reader a lens through which to assess Rossetti’s profound love for animals and plants. Rossetti’s London was not an urban metropolis, but comprised Regent’s Park, the newly opened Zoological Gardens, and many gardens, terraces, enclosures, and conservatories. In close readings of her mid-career poetry and prose, the chapter suggests that Rossetti imagined creation as a sacred commons of companion species, creaturely and vegetal, that evolves over time as part of the divine. It also reveals Rossetti’s horror at any practice, such as vivisection, that threatened to dismember the divine body and her consequent turn to a weakened or kenōtic form of thinking and love she identified specifically with plant being.

The Transfiguration of the Real in Abstract Painting

This article challenges a series of assumptions associated with abstract painting, arguing that this type of art makes one understand a visual manifestation which does no longer refer to the visible world only, but also to an intelligible world, accessible to the senses. Non-figurative painting abandons the reproduction of the visible, in order to present us with the invisible, and in order to account for this phenomenon the author elaborates three types of philosophical decision to interpret the mode of being of the image. The comprehension of this original experience of abstract art is then compared to the relations between the visible and the invisible, as Christian theology delineates them. Christianity is defined first by the experience of the figuration of God, by His embodiment, which actually enables one to conceive of certain images, such as the icon of the Orthodox liturgy, but at the same time it also bestows, for the first time, an incredible status to the disappearance of the visible divine body, when it returns to the invisible, while remaining present in the visible.