Tag: sanskrit
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Remembrance Day Thoughts – Poetry and WW1
‘For the Fallen’ is one of the most well-known poems, not only of its author Laurence Binyon, but in fact of all war poetry. Often recited at Remembrance Day services, it seems to strike the right note of solemn dignity, lauding the sacrifices of English soldiers who died in the First World War without glorifying…
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Sanskrit prompts for ChatGPT
ChatGPT and other large language models (LLMs) are a major technology breakthrough, albeit some of the claims made about their capabilities is overstated. Rather than being genuinely creative or intelligent, what such models can do is to continually repackage, rephrase and recombine things that human beings have already created.
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Indra driving the chariot
The chariot race was one of the most important competitive sports in Greece, Rome and many other ancient cultures. In the Iliad, we read a description of a chariot race held as part of the funeral games. The energy and competitive spirit of the racers is vividly described as follows
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On the moment of insight
This description nicely illustrates something about how the brain works to generate new ideas, alternating between periods of focused intensity of thought and stillness in order to arrive at a sudden moment of insight or intuition. A similar process is behind many such ‘eureka moments’, where the would-be inventor or discoverer sets aside his or…
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मिस्रदेशे मम यात्रा
अस्मिन् वर्षे अहं मिस्रदेशं गतवान् | मिस्रदेशस्य सभ्यता, भाषा, साहित्य च खलु प्राचीनाः सन्ति |
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Family and society in the Vedic period
On the occasion of Guru Pūrṇimā, our thoughts may turn to the venerable lineages of successive teachers and students in India. As we will see, the need to record and preserve genealogical details of family and pedagogical lineages was already recognized in India in the earliest times. Indeed, this is very likely a continuation of…
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On war in Ukraine and in the Mahabharata
In the ancient Indian epic Mahābhārata, we read about a shocking and devastating war at Kurukṣetra that seems to have many parallels with the ongoing war in Ukraine. In this summary of some key points about the Kurukṣetra war, we may perhaps find some revealing similarities.
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गुरु लक्ष्मीङ्कर की कहानी
तिब्बत और भारत के सांस्कृतिक और ऐतिहासिक सम्बन्ध कई प्रकार के हैं | अतीत में, बहुत सी भारतीय साहित्यिक और आध्यात्मिक शास्त्रों को तिब्बत भेजा गया था, और उनके तिब्बती भाषा अनुवाद भी किया गया था | इनमें से बौद्ध ग्रन्थ हैं, जैसे के नागार्जुन, शान्तरक्षित, और कमलशील के लेखन | साथ ही व्याकरण के…
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Creation in the Rig Veda (again)
again from the tenth book. Though a different verse, the immensity of the boulder does give an impression of something elementary, mysterious and primordial that perhaps matches the idea of creation that starts with ‘night’ and basic elements such as ‘water’.
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Some Indian love poetry
Human emotions such as love, anger and sorrow have a universal dimension, affecting all peoples in all times and places similarly. But emotions also perhaps have a specific way of emerging and manifesting themselves which perhaps varies according to contextual factors.
Desire To Think 