Collated by Tusar Nath Mohapatra
Veda for Gen Z The Anuvaaka
The first two anuvaakas of the Veda (the first eleven suktas) are two musical movements that are complete in themselves
Yet they synergize beautifully with each other
Each rik is a complete movement. Yet, it connects and interconnects on a larger scale not only with other riks, adjacent and distant, it also is a unit for a larger musical symphony
The mandalas accomplish the same musical cohesion and development. The entire Samhita is extremely complex and extremely simple. You may stay with one rik for days or you may proceed rapidly enjoying the music on an epic scale. I can think of very few other opuses in human history that have attempted a similar project and accomplished it. Perhaps the Indian epics, Homer and Shakespeare might be considered as similarly large and accomplished in scale and heights
https://x.com/AmazingVedas/status/2091275736166375857
Veda for Gen Z
The book is finally out. So far, the reviews have been favorable and encouraging
My primary goal with this book was to reach out to the young at heart, no matter what their age. And also the generation that is my children’s age so that I can leave them my most significant legacy
If we can help them see, even for a brief moment, the grandeur and beauty of the Veda, perhaps we will create for them a foundation that will always be there for them, bearing them through the tumult and upheavals of the future
And also perhaps create the conditions for an awakening to the genius of our first Sruti and make it available for more and more students and researchers to engage with deeply
Just researching the Veda widens one’s consciousness and makes one aware of a civilization that had a more innocent and vigorous outlook, that was far more integral and universal, lofty and heroic than us
https://x.com/AmazingVedas/status/2091253962351759566
Veda for Gen Z
Over the last couple of years I have attempted to learn directly from the Veda
I have learned from great spiritual teachers over the last four decades but I was focused utterly on the spiritual practices in the past
Then I began studying the Veda with a predominantly yogic and literary mindset expecting nothing but a rehash of what we at present think is the neatly packaged product that we call yoga
The Veda is anything but…
It is an entirely different approach and a different outlook. The language, the poetry, even as it has influenced humanity powerfully and extensively, is unique.
And if we can discover the multidimensionality of the Veda again I believe mankind will cure itself of many of the diseases of thought it has contracted in the last 2-3 millennia. At least for me the Veda has completely transformed my yoga and I must say even my understanding of great Rishis such as Swami Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo. They helped me learn of the Veda from the Veda. The Veda helps me understand them better
https://x.com/AmazingVedas/status/2091260730356142400
I remember when Nassim Taleb switched his preference from Greeks to Romans.
First he thought that Greek abstraction was superior to the crude Romans. The Greeks did philosophy after all – the Romans just built roads.
Then he realized that the Romans’ practical sense was superior to empty theorizing.
Similarly, some time ago I switched from British to American spelling. I used to think the British was more sophisticated – now I prefer the American: simpler, truer.
The pattern is the same in both cases. The more sophisticated-looking option turns out to be sophistication performing itself – the appearance of depth without the substance. The simpler option turns out to be the one that actually works, that gets the job done, that doesn’t require you to perform your education while using it.
This is the fumeux problem stated in miniature. The British spelling, the Greek abstraction, the European theoretical tradition at its worst – all of them mistake the appearance of sophistication for the thing itself. The American spelling, the Roman road, the practical mind that asks not "is this elegant?" but "does this work?" – these are the ones that build something.
Depth that produces clarity is Roman. Depth that produces fog is Greek in the worst sense – beautiful, self-referential, and ultimately empty.
The goal is the road. Not the theory of the road.
https://x.com/Kristof_Poland/status/2091215079811227976
Why do the Americans need us, Europeans? Because our specialty is depth – cultural, philosophical, moral. The thing is just that depth can easily lead you to sink into the pretentious, the obscure, the woolly, self-important fog where the thinking becomes so layered it loses contact with reality entirely – the French have a word for it: the fumeux.
And Americans are rightly wary of that. But it doesn’t have to. Depth can also lead to clarity. And that is what we are here for.
——
Three thousand years of civilization compressed into a relatively small peninsula produce a specific kind of mind – one that cannot encounter a problem without asking what kind of problem it is. Not just what is happening but what it means. Not just what works but why it works and what it costs when it stops.
The fumeux version of this — the pretentious obscurantism, the self-important fog where thinking becomes so layered it loses contact with reality — is what the Americans know and distrust. Rightly. The Frankfurt School was fumeux. French Theory was fumeux. The EU regulatory apparatus producing five hundred pages of directive about the curvature of cucumbers is fumeux at industrial scale. European depth, gone wrong, has produced the most beautiful catastrophes in history – with considerable elegance and devastating consequences.
But Tocqueville went to America and came back with the most penetrating analysis of democracy ever written. Not despite his European depth but because of it. He saw what Americans couldn’t see precisely because he was standing slightly to the side. The depth produced clarity – the clarity that comes from having traced the argument back to its roots and forward to its conclusions, from having named the mechanism rather than just observed the symptom.
America supplies the muscle – the energy, the scale, the dynamism, the willingness to build without asking permission. Europe supplies the depth – the memory, the philosophical framework, the understanding of what civilization is, what it cost, and what threatens it. Neither is sufficient alone. America without depth produces power without meaning. Europe without muscle produces analysis without consequence.
This series is the combination. The American distribution platform. The European depth – specifically the Central European depth, the Polish depth, the depth that comes not just from three thousand years of Western civilization but from having paid the full price for losing it to communism and fighting back. Not fumeux. Precise. Not obscure. Named.
The torch changes hands. The light doesn’t go out. But someone has to understand what the torch is. That is our job. We have earned it the hard way.
https://x.com/Kristof_Poland/status/2091151211533623333
In 1945, an American comic book published a story about a woman leading armed tribesmen against an invading army, and called her the Jungle Queen. It read like pulp fiction—except the woman, the war, and the story were all real. It was a true story from our own Nagaland. 1/19
https://x.com/Paperclip_In/status/2091360066121142562
“We don’t want to lose Socratic intellectualism. It’s an ethical theory worth considering that gets obscured with the image of Socrates as a skeptic.” —@AgnesCallard, in conversation with Merve Emre
https://x.com/nybooks/status/2090848924810481885
Nietzsche has been held up as the arch-philosopher of an aristocratic politics. Nietzsche claimed a lineage with Plato and his theory of an authoritarian state. | bit.ly/45Zd4Or But Donovan Miyasaki disagrees, arguing Nietzsche fails to follow the platonic model
https://x.com/IAI_TV/status/2091188396706218187
the critique of pure reason, the book that rebuilt the foundations of human knowledge, came out of that discipline. philosophers describe the depth of sustained abstraction in it as almost inhuman. holding chains of reasoning in the mind for years, refining a single argument for a decade. that kind of cognitive endurance isn't talent. it's fuel management.
Kant understood exactly what he was doing. he wrote about mastery over inclination as the foundation of a free will. a man ruled by his appetites, in his framework, isn't free at all. he's a passenger in a body that makes his decisions for him.
the deepest thinker of the modern era ran his entire life as a retention experiment and produced work that outlived every empire of his century.
total energy discipline for 79 years. the results are still on every philosophy syllabus on earth.
https://x.com/pumamethod/status/2091216329521209830
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