00:00When an Oxford student asks Acharya Prasanth relevance of inquiry in Indian philosophy.
00:06If you could have some historical examples of how Indians have desisted on belief and insisted on inquiry.
00:12You go to the Upanishads. The Upanishads come after the ritualistic part of the Vedas.
00:22And it's so beautiful and so profound that what comes early on in the Vedic corpus is questioned so deeply
00:30and so honestly by the Upanishads that come at the fagand.
00:35For example, the Karma Kand, the Sangita Pads will say, okay, all the powers are located outside of me.
00:43And they'll worship the various aspects of Prakrati as the various gods.
00:48So Agni is there, Varun is there, Indra is there.
00:53And they are all worshiped.
00:55In fact, the Rig Veda opens with Agni worship.
01:01And then you come to the Upanishads and they are saying something far higher and deeper.
01:08They are saying that there is no need to identify with any aspect of the scene universe.
01:17It's not just a U-turn.
01:18It's an ascension.
01:20It's a climb.
01:21So that's the Indian way.
01:22You don't have to be afraid of questioning anything.
01:26And you don't have to be squeamish about anything that you have called as your own or alien.
01:35Right?
01:36Do you understand this?
01:37So it's lovely.
01:39You say one thing and in the same book, in the same holy book, as part of the same scripture,
01:47then you move on to question what you have said.
01:49You're not even questioning what somebody else has said.
01:52You have the spiritual and the intellectual courage to turn upon your own words and verdict and question them.
02:00And not just question them, actually ruthlessly refute them.
02:03So that's so beautiful.
02:04India does not live in thoughts and ideas and images.
02:07India worships the truth.
02:09So if there is something that is coming to me as an image of the truth, the Indian way is
02:14to ask, is this the truth or just the image?
02:17So that's what India does best.
02:19You come with stuff and the stuff is questioned.
02:22Nothing else doesn't matter if there is something without knowing that of a
02:23India!
02:24India!
02:24India!
02:26India and India!
02:27India!
02:28India!
02:28India!
