User:Sunil vasisht

Imagination is the greatest gift and the worst curse on mankind. It can take one to the heights of creativity or to the depths of delusion

क्रमशः कणशः क्षणशश्चैव विध्यते कार्य सिध्धिः

"Success is achieved by doing things - step by step, bit by bit and overtime"

Welcome to the userpage of Sunil Vasisht.

Who Am I

I am a male, Indian-American, computer designer, philosopher and a believer in Hinduism.

My Website

My Interests

Computer architecture
Philosophy in general and Hindu philosophy in particular
Religious and political Ideologies

Off late, i have been greatly influenced by Dr.S.N.Balagangadhara's book Heathen in his Blindness. I believe that we are living in an age defined almost singularly by Western ideas and viewpoints. Those viewpoints, even though they may appear secular, are still defined by and based on assumptions of christian theology, in most cases not universal at all.

My Lectures

I am giving Lectures on Upanishad, Gita and the Brhmasutras in Houston. The audio recording is posted here -

Gita chapter 3 - Karma Yoga part5 - [1]
Gita chapter 3 - Karma yoga part4 - [2]
Gita chapter 3 - Karma yoga part1 - [3]

What do I want to achieve in Wikipedia

Balance the domination of western viewpoints as the only universal, by providing an alternative and sometimes better understanding from Eastern Hindu viewpoint

Example - Look at any philosophical article such as Causality, problem of evil etc., the ideas are discussed only from a western christian perspective (as if that is the universal) even though these ideas are not even entertained as a possibility in Eastern philosophy. A truely universal view takes into account all the different variants on the subject.

Causality is defined in samkhya and Nyaya schools of Hindu philosophy and taken to the zenith by the genius buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna much earler (in the case of samkhya and Nyaya) and much better (in the case of Nagarjuna) than any of the Greeks and their medival western followers have.

The problem is two-fold -

Visibility - The Hindu philosophical works are not widely known in the western world or for that matter in India too.

Cultural imperialism - The west wants to project itself as the dominant culture, understand-able, but is it sustainable? Can the truth be suppressed for ever?

Point out the basis of many western concepts and inventions in Eastern works, particularly Hindu and Buddhist works

Project De-Latinization

I am in the process of studying the effects on individual psychologies when bombarded with alien terminology -

Most of the names in sciences are Latin derived. They make no sense to me, there is no connection to my experiences of the world which are "sanskrit" based. The Latin-derived names are pretty empty of experiences to me. I am interested to know how this affects my psyche. Does it make my feel that the universe does not belong to me since i cant name and explain them in my language? it is pretty interesting to see how language shapes our experiences.