How Culture of Ancient India Differs from the Rest

(CHAKRA) Like any other country, the culture of India too is derived from her ancient history, more appropriately called the history of ‘bhAratha’. This culture or tradition is the result of a quest for “cause” unlike the quest for “effect” in most other cultures. This is evident if we take any field of interest, from medicine to judiciary to astronomy to spirituality.

If we take Indian medicine, i.e., ayurveda, it cures the root cause and not the effect. Most of the current medicine techniques do the reverse. And obviously, it never ceases the original cause and thus never “cures” the possibility of future diseases. Moreover, it has its own side effects, adding salt to the injury.

Next let us see the judiciary and handling of crime/evil. If we take the judicial system of present India, we see a lot of crimes happening throughout the map. This can be called as an ‘effect’ here. And what is the ’cause’ for it? There are two factors.

1. The lack of dhArmic moral values.
2. Second, the abundant supply of self degrading commodities such as drugs, alcohol etc which destroy the self-control of a human being; thereby leading to uncontrolled emotions and finally, crime. The latter heavily depend on the former point.

The term ‘dharma’ has no equivalent in English. It may be vaguely translated as a combination of “righteousness + duties + values +……etc”. This rich tradition of dharma is the only reason why most of ancient India could keep crimes at bay.

Now don’t confuse this education as something that is externally induced to you. This sense of dharma is inherent in every being, but needs training to shine forth. This is how dhArmic education works. It never teaches anything new. It only helps you discover what you already have.

The ancient education system was built on this foundation. Today, we are following the Britishers’ remains that they left here. And in that sense, they have succeeded in establishing a society which feels ashamed of its own culture! We, as fools have replaced every tinge of our tradition with what they wanted. The whole of our history was re-written, which we still follow today.

Rather than going deep into that, let’s come to our point of discussion. If we need any improvement, it is this cause that has to be corrected.

This search for “cause” is evident in every level. The same technique was led into the concept of ultimate reality or supreme Brahman as well. When every other tradition/religion assumed an external ‘creator’ that created and maintains the universe, the vEdic India [bhAratha] demanded every being to search for this. Rather than blindly imposing the laws and teachings of a particular man/book, it guides and enables each individual to discover the truth by oneself. Whatever a religion teaches is an ‘effect’ of what its founder discovered. Or what he discovered is the ’cause’ of that religion. Rather that binding to the effect, vEdAnta takes you directly to the cause – the supreme Brahman. This is why it’s called vEdAnta – the ‘anta’ of ‘vEd’ – the end of what a man can know – the rest has to be experienced by oneself. This can be achieved easily by guidance of one who have already experienced, and hence the significance of a ‘guru’.

By Vishnu Prakash Nangath