sanskrit

  • The Rigveda’s 22nd Sukta

    Namaste, my brother in Christ, and welcome (or welcome back) to my latest adhyayana posting. Our subject today is the Rigveda’s 22nd Sukta, which, to be frank, proved to be a ball-busting behemoth. Blessedly, I got there in the end, through sheer tenacity. Supposedly a hymn to the Ashvins, the 22nd Sukta is, in truth, an advanced…

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  • The Rigveda’s 21st Sukta

    Namaste, my brother in Christ, and welcome (or welcome back) to my latest adhyayana posting. We’re studying the Rigveda, Hinduism’s oldest and most sacred scriptural text, which has never before (to my knowledge) been accurately translated. But then, neither have the Bible or the Quran, because the Ego Mind (Satan) weaves fear, guilt, divine wrath,…

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  • The Rigveda’s 17th Sukta

    Namaste, my brother, and welcome (or welcome back) to my latest adhyayana posting. We’ve reached the Rigveda’s 17th Sukta, a supposed hymn invoking Indra (the Red Ray of the Soul’s eternal life) and Varuna (the mind-healing water of oneness). Like the first sixteen Suktas, the 17th is, in fact, a prose wisdom teaching for Brahmins…

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  • The Rigveda’s 13th Sukta

    The Rigveda’s 13th Sukta

    Google tells us the Rigveda’s 13th Sukta “consists of twelve verses in Gayatri meter, focusing on inviting deities to the sacrifice through Agni, often featuring phrases like samiddho adya manuṣvad agnir (1.13.1) and narāśaṃsam iha priyam (1.13.3). The verses are dedicated to various deities associated with the ritual, including Agni, Narāśamśa, and the Barhis (the sacred grass).” If you’ve…

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  • The Rigveda’s 6th Sukta (part 2)

    Let’s continue our conversation about the Rigveda’s Sixth Sukta by reviewing the verse we ended on last time. That verse is Rv 1.6.5, rather than Rv 1.6.6, as per Max Muller, the 19th-century Oxford orientalist credited with restoring the Rigveda to its original metric form. In so doing, he divided Rv. 1.6.4 into two lines,…

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  • The Rigveda’s 5th Sukta

    The Rigveda’s 5th Sukta

    At last, we reach the Fifth Sukta of the Rigveda, the most ancient and sacred of the Hindu scriptures. This one also concerns King Indra, but it’s neither a hymn nor a metered poem. Like the first four Riks, the fifth is a spiritual teaching aimed at “Brahmins.” Contrary to popular egoic belief, Brahmin is…

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  • The Rigveda’s 4th Sukta to Indra

    We now come to the Rig Veda’s fourth Sukta, the first of many presumably addressed to Indra, the king of the Hindu devas. As explained earlier, Indra personifies the Red Ray of the Father’s Will to make earth like Heaven. As such, Indra represents the most powerful force in the universe — the reason he…

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  • The Rigveda’s 2nd Sukta

    The Rigveda’s 2nd Sukta

    Now that we’ve established that the divine force the Vedic rishis call “Agni” actually represents the Transformational Fire of God in our heart-of-hearts (the Inner Altar within the Temple of the Holy Spirit), let’s proceed to the Rigveda’s second Sukta. Long presumed to be a “hymn” extolling the virtues of “Vayu,” the alleged “god of…

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  • The Rigveda’s 1st Sukta

    The Rigveda’s 1st Sukta

    Over the centuries, the illusion-manifesting Ego Mind has tangled the foundational teachings of the Great Rishis of India into such a snarled hairball of lies, it’s hard to know where to begin the “detangling” process. So, let’s start at the beginning, with the earliest and most sacred of the Hindu shruti (divinely revealed) texts: the…

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