COMPILED by London swaminathan
swami_48@yahoo.com
Date: 29 JANUARY 2019
GMT Time uploaded in London -18-38
Post No. 6003
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FEBRUARY 2019 ‘GOOD THOUGHTS’ CALENDAR
28 more quotations from Dr S Radhakrishnan (a great philosopher and Formerly President of India.) sometime ago gave 30 quotations from his book in a month’s calendar. The quotations below are from his article on philosophy
February 2019 Important Days—4 Thai Amavasai, 9 Vasantha Panchami, 12 Ratha Saptami/ Bhishma Ashtami, 19 Masi Magam
Full moon day- 19, New moon day- 4,Hindu Fasting Days/ Ekadasi- 16
FEBRUARY 1 FRIDAY
PURPOSE OF RELIGION
Hindu culture is directed towards that which is transcendent and beyond. Its great achievements in times past were due to the high tension of the spirit to which our age has no parallel. The purpose of religion is spiritual awakening and those who are awakened are delivered from the base delusions of caste and creed, of wealth and power.
FEBRUARY 2 SATURDAY
Religion expresses itself in and discloses its quality by the morality which it demands.
FEBRUARY 3 SUNDAY
ROLE OF HINDUISM
Hinduism strove victoriously against the corruption of the ancient world, civilised backward people, transformed and purified the new elements and preserved the tradition of the spiritual and profane sciences.
FEBRUARY 4 MONDAY
Religion may start with an individual but it must end in a fellowship.
FEBRUARY 5
TUESDAY
It is essential to liberate not only the bodies
from starvation but minds from slavery.
FEBRUARY 6
WEDNESDAY
SAINT
Saintliness, when genuine, is marked by true
humility and love. Religion is a search for truth and peace, not power and
plenty.
FEBRUARY 7 THURSDAY
RELIGION MEANS ADVENTURE
In the name of religion we are often taught that the prevailing conditions are ordained by god. Thus it had been, was now and ever would be. Rightly interpreted, religion means courage and adventure, not resignation and fatalism.
FEBRUARY 8 FRIDAY
SCIENCE AND RELIGION
Religion needs certainty, complete assurance, but this just the quality which scientific naturalism has pretty thoroughly rejected. Our need to believe, we are told, cannot be sufficient foundation for faith.
FEBRUARY 9
SATURDAY
RELIGION- LENIN, DURKHEIM,CROCE, SANTAYANA
Religion, according to Santayana,a species of
poetry, mythology (Croce), sociological phenomenon (Durkheim), or a narcotic
for a decadent society (Lenin).
FEBRUARY 10
SUNDAY
BAD THINGS IN THE NAME OF RELIGION
Religion, as a matter of history, has crippled
the free flight of intelligence and stifled glad devotion to human values. It
has fostered superstition and prescribed crime. It has comforted millions of
suffering humanity with illusions of extra-terrestrial solace to compensate for
the barrenness of their earthly lives.
FEBRUARY 11 MONDAY
PRIESTS ARE NOT GOOD
The present class of
priests, with rare exceptions, have lost their good breeding, kindliness and
polish and have not gained in sureness of intellect, learning and adaptability.
FEBRUARY 12
TUESDAY
NEED OF THE WORLD
A veritable renewal is what the world and not merely India stands in need of. To those who have lost their anchorage, to our age itself which is in a great transition, the way of the spirit is the only hope.
FEBRUARY 13 WEDNESDAY
CHAOS IN OUR MINDS
The present chaos in the world can be traced
directly to the chaos in our minds.
The modern intellectual whose mind has been
moulded to a degree seldom recognised by the methods and concepts of modern
science, has great faith in verifiable facts and tangible results. Whatever
cannot be measured and calculated is unreal. Whispers that come from the secret
depths of the soul are rejected as unscientific fancies.
FEBRUARY 14 THURSDAY
Philosophy
In India, philosophy has been interpreted as an
inquiry into the nature of man, his origin and destiny.
FEBRUARY 15 FRIDAY
To the Indian mind philosophy is essentially
practical, dealing as it does with the fundamental anxieties of human beings,
which are more insistent than abstract speculations. We are not contemplating
the world from outside but are in it.
FEBRUARY 16
SATURDAY
SCEPTICS
Since men began to think,
there have always been sceptics. The wise man, said Arcesilaus, should withhold
his assent from all opinions and should suspend his judgement. This admirable
attitude for the scientific investigator is now turned to one of dogmatic
denial which offers but an inadequate guide to life and action.
FEBRUARY 17 SUNDAY
LIFE IS AN ACCIDENT
Human life is an infinitesimal speck on a tiny planet, in a system of planets revolving round an insignificant star, itself lost in a wilderness of other stars. Life is an accident arising in some unknown fashion from inert matter. It is wholly explicable, though not yet explained by mechanical laws.
FEBRUARY 18 MONDAY
SCIENTIFIC BARBARIANS
Social groups are formed in the interests of
survival. They have no other purpose than furthering their own material good,
by force and fraud, if necessary. Economic welfare is the end of all existence.
The principles of evolution offer a scientific basis for militaristic
imperialism. When powerful groups exploit the weaker races of the earth, they
are but instruments for furthering the evolution of higher biological forms
which has brought us from amoeba to man and will now complete the journey from
Neanderthal man to scientific barbarians of the modern world.
FEBRUARY 19
TUESDAY
LIFE IS A CIRCUS
Life has become a carnival or a large circus in progress, without structure, without law, without rhythm.
FEBRUARY 20 WEDNESDAY
WHAT WILL RELIGION GIVE YOU?
The need of the world today is for a religion of
the spirit, which will give a purpose to life, which will not demand any
evasion or ambiguity, which will reconcile the ideal and the real, the poetry
and the prose of life, which will speak to the profound realities of our nature
and satisfy the whole of our being, our critical intelligence and our active
desire.
FEBRUARY 21 THURSDAY
POWER OF HUMAN MIND
Hindu systems of thought believe in the power of human mind to lead us to all truth. Our ordinary mind is not the highest possible order of the human mind. It can rise to the level almost inconceivable to us.
FEBRUARY 22
FRIDAY
IMAGE OF GOD IN MAN
The essential truth is expressed in the language
of religion as the in dwelling of the Logos. There is the image of god in man,
an almost deathless longing for all that is great and divine.
FEBRUARY 23 SATURDAY
AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT
Ours is an age which is justly proud of its rationalism and enlightenment. But any sound rationalism will recognise the need for intuition.
FEBRUARY 24 SUNDAY
DESCARTES
Descartes , though a
thorough going rationalist and admirer of the geometrical method, uses the
intuitive principle. While he employs the process of doubt to free the mind
from error and prejudice and insists that we should accept only what presents
itself to the mind so clearly and distinct ly as to exclude all ground s of
doubt, he finds what is clear and distinct in his kno.edge of himself as a thinking
being.
FEBRUARY 25 MONDAY
INTUITION
Intuition is not used as an apology for
doctrines which either could not or would not be justified on intellectual
grounds. It is not shadowy sentiment or pathological fancy fit for cranks and
dancing dervishes. It stands to intellect as a whole to a part, as the creative
source of thought to the created categories which works more or less
automatically.
FEBRUARY 26
TUESDAY
Intuition requires cultivation quite as much as
the powers of observation and thought.
FEBRUARY 27 WEDNESDAY
CANNOT TAME NATURE
Nature cannot be completely tamed to do man’s bidding. Her caprices, her storms and tempests, her cyclone s and earth will continue to shatter his works and dash his hopes. Fortunes vagaries and the fickleness of man will continue to operate. Peace of mind is a remote hope until and unless we have a vision of perfection and is glimpse eternity to prevail against the perspective of time. Security without which no happiness is possible cannot come from mastery of things. Mastery of the self is the prerequisite.
FEBRUARY 28 THURSDAY
BYRON SAID……
In the great cities in the East as well as in the West we meet with young men, cold and cynical with a swagger and a soldierly bearing, energetic and determined to get on, waiting for a chance to get into a place in the front rank, men who esteem themselves masters of life and makers of the future , as Byron said, they lead the world because they go to bed late. Their self-assertive, offhand manner, their vulgarity and violence, their confident insolence and cocksureness , their debasing of the law and derisive disregard of justice show the utter demoralisation through which the world is passing.
–subham–