Category: Monthly Articles

Goswami Tulsidas was an Awadhi poet and philosopher. He was born in Rajapur, India in 1532 A.D. during the reign of Akbar. Tulsidas wrote twelve books and is considered the greatest and most famous of Hindi poets. He is regarded as an incarnation of Valmiki, the author of Ramayana written in Sanskrit. The most famous book is his Ramayana in […]

Born on February 22, 1856 at village Talwan in Jalandhar district of the Punjab province, Swami Shraddhanand ji was named as Brihaspati and Munshiram. The young boy, a pampered child, moved from place to place on his dad’s transfers and was bereft of formal education in the formative years of life. Nonetheless, he learnt a lot in the school of […]

Shankaracharya’s name stands out very prominently in so far as Hindu religion is concerned. Before the advent of Shankaracharya, Buddhism had a strong hold in India. Shankaracharya propagated the Hindu-Veda Dharma or Vedanta. Hence he was known as the World Teacher or Jagad Guru. Shankara was born in very poor family 1400 year ago in South India in a village […]

Guru Nanak ji was a poet singer who founded Sikhism and was the first of the ten gurus of Sikhs. He was born in 1469 in Talwandi, Punjab (in present day Pakistan). He preached that there was one God. He was able to remove many objectionable religious practices. Both Hindus and Muslims came under the influence of his teachings and […]

Swami Dayanand Saraswati (1824 – 1883) was an important Hindu religious scholar born in Gujarat, India. He was known as the founder of Arya Samaj. He was a sanayasi from his boyhood. Throughout his life, he preached against many Hindu traditions, which he felt were dogmatic and oppressive. These included traditions like child marriage, caste by birth, exclusion of females […]

Continuing with our 2007 topic of “Great Religious Leaders and Philosophers of India”, this month, we will cover teachings of one of influential religious leader of Nineteenth century, Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa. He fought against ritualism and superstition that was wide spread and all pervasive in India . As such, all of our religious leaders addressed various aspects of religion, spiritualism […]

We will start the year with Swami Vivekananda, the Valiant monk who proclaimed in America the greatness of Hinduism and of Indian culture at a time when the west regarded India as a land of Barbarians . The beloved disciple of Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, he was the great thinker and mighty man of action. Swami Vivekananda was born on 12th […]

Samadhi is the final state of meditation in yoga. Samadhi means “to bring together, to merge.” In this state of Samadhi the body and senses are at rest, as if asleep, yet the mind and reason are alert, as if awake; one goes beyond consciousness. It is final experience in which yogi attains to a state of perfection. The achievement […]

Dhyaan is the seventh limb of yoga. When mind is fully engaged on a particular thought or idea without interruption, it is said to be in Dhyaan. In this state person forgets its surroundings, his body or anything that is connected with him. During meditation mind should be fixed on the work of God. Fix thoughts on Gayatri Mantra together […]