Sophocles, a Greek Playwright, created at least three characters that history and literature has remembered well: Oedipus, Theseus, and Antigone. In this article, we are going to discuss Antigone. She can be described as a perfect victim of fate, and also a child of neglect. All the customs of her land contradict her sense of …
The modern society has structured life to be a race. We need to reach goals after goals, and accumulate achievements after achievements to feel worthy.
Understand Jacques Lacan through Structuralist and Post Structuralist Lenses
Critical studies is a line of thought in humanities that now has influence in applied social sciences. It has its origin in Marxian line of thought. Critical theory focuses on criticizing social structures and economic structures, which it considers responsible for societal ills. One cue to recognize the influence of critical theory is whenever you hear the word “hegemony, “intersectionality”, “imbalance of power” and ‘privilege”. We are going to decode the origins of Critical Theory. It has its root in Marxist hypothesis that economy and economic relationships influence culture. Thus, Critical theory takes a stance against power structures and aims to dismantle them. It has a long history in western thought originating from Marx’s writings to culminating in deconstruction. It has now found voices in gender studies, labour studies, and other academic disciplines that deal with study of societies and people.
Ramana Maharisi advised his disciples to continuously ask this question to one self: “Who am I?” This question is supposed to deliver us to our inner freedom. When we start to notice our experiences or thoughts and emotions, we realize they pass through us.
Perhaps the most famous things that got out of this book is the diagram of Ikigai: which simply states that we find our purpose in middle of four things: What we are good at, what we love, what the world needs, and what we can be paid for. It’s a perfect system of what value we offer to the world and what we get in return, while maximizing the benefits from both ends. We maximize our self-interests and pleasure by doing what we love and what we can be paid for, while the rest of the world gets something that it needs and is of quality (because we are good at doing what we do).
India that is Bharat was a book that was long due. It is a book that translates the conscious and subconscious understandings of any Indian who is in touch with her soil into solid written form. It expresses what has since long been waiting to be expressed by any common Indian. In my opinion, this book is the first of the many milestones that Indic thinkers should achieve in order to balance the epistemological gap between the colonial mindsets and the indigenous voices.
In this blog, we are going to talk about The Untethered Soul written by Michael A. Singer. The book teaches us how to move towards freedom. This freedom is much more personal. In my personal opinion, this individual freedom is the basis of all other kinds of liberty we may want to experience as a collective.
The burning desire to know is perhaps the most prized concept in Indic literature when it comes to knowing the absolute reality. And in order to know, we literally have to forget what we already understand. A seeker is also a beggar: accepting alms of knowledge as it comes to her. Whatever it is that we want to know or understand in our lives, we have to open ourselves to inspiration and learning through curiosity. We have to forget for a moment that we live in a competition or an audition of who has it all figured out, because no one does. Even with limited intellectual and material resources, human beings can always open themselves up to growth by the means of curiosity.
The academic community is used to standing on the shoulder of giants. That is how we justify our methods. However, there are other perspectives to consider.