The Hindu Mind (Fundamental of Hindu Religion and Philosophy for All Ages) [MLBD]

The Hindu Mind

In this remarkable and highly rewarding book, The Hindu Mind, the author Bansi Pandit has met head-on two pressing challenges of our times: (1) how to cull and distill the essential features of the enormously vast and deep Hindu heritage so varied in scope, in the short span of a handy volume, in an easily understandable, highly engaging and readable style, and (2) how to make it highly rational, objective, interesting, relevant, and meaningful to our new generation and future generations of Hindu youth. They are growing up fast, with the full impact and influences of westernization, in all its best and worst forms, at the same time deprived of the opportunities to know, understand, and appreciate their own rich time-tested spiritual heritage and thus their own true selves. Also, Hindu adult men and women, many of them professionals in their own fields, yet unaware and uninformed, desirous of acquiring an intellectual sensibility for the rich religious and cultural “Great Tradition of Hindu religion”–profound with its illuminating wisdom, life-sustaining moral values, and splendid aesthetic expressions–will also find this volume highly rewarding.

Bansi Pandit fully yet succinctly explores, with great clarity, all the visible and tangible aspects of Hindu religion: the scriptures, epics, symbols and symbolisms, teachings, deities, the important Hindu paradigms such as the “four- goals” and “four-stages” models, rituals, and festivals–that is, all the Hindu institutional machinery, all which constitutes the “hardware” of Hindu religion. But more important are his significant contributions illuminating Hindu religion’s “software”, that has been running the great machinery of Hindu religion in its world’s longest history. In his philosophical discussions, enhanced by a rational, scientific, and truly moral sensibility that is distinctly unique to Hindu religion, Pandit also discusses the why of things.

He unravels the genius and vision of Hindu religion flowing down from the wisdom and wizardry found inside the Vedas and un- folding through the course of Hindu history, showing the secret of its universal and cosmic outlook and cosmic consciousness. This drive and impulse, that has always throbbed, has enabled Hindu religion to keep itself reinvigorating and re-inventing, again and again. The author emphasizes the purity of reason and true knowledge that are essential for recognizing the brotherhood and oneness of all mankind, found in Hindu religion.

The Hindus have al- ways felt and believed that the essential Self, the vital essence in man, is the same as that found in all forms of life–a tiny gnat, an ant, an elephant, a tiger, and a butter- fly–indeed the same as that found in the whole universe. Bhagavad Gila declares: “The ones full of wisdom, the true pundits, behold and relate to a learned Brahmin, a cow or an elephant, or a dog, or a dog-eater, with the same equanimity of vision and evenness of love.” (BG 5.18) The author also recognizes, clarifies, and removes the various stereotypes, harmful misconceptions and partial understandings, which many non-Hindus have long nurtured and written about. The cross-references, faithful drawings of the sacred deities, and well-arranged and organized charts and tables, all make the book highly informative and modern.

I wish and hope this valuable volume finds, in many different ways, the wide use, appreciation, and circulation it truly deserves–as a text in Hindu heritage classes in our Hindu temples, as a meaningful gift for our graduating Hindu youth, and as a basis for study and discussion in the Hindu homes. The author deserves our congratulations and gratitude.