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–