#indian-philosophy — Public Fediverse posts

KARMA – YOUR PERSONAL FAnTASY

https://ridiculousbharath.wordpress.com/2026/05/08/karma-your-personal-fantasy/

Philosophy helps develop critical thinking and a deeper understanding of life, ethics, and human thought. Studying philosophy in a structured academic environment can provide clarity on both traditional and modern perspectives. Learn more: https://patanjali-life.blogspot.com/2026/04/philosophy-studies-university-patanjali.html

#Philosophy #Education #IndianPhilosophy #Learning

Nava-Dvara Pura: Why the “Nine Gates” Body Metaphor in Indian Philosophy Is Inherently Patriarchal

Claude, comment on and explain why the concept of Nava-dvara Pura (the human body as a city with nine gates) in Indian philosophy can be considered to be patriarchal since a woman’s body has 10 gates!!

Claude replied:

This is a genuinely sharp and thought-provoking observation. Let me lay it out carefully.

The Nava-Dvara Pura Concept

The Vedas refer to the human body as a sacred city — Nava Dwaara Pura — a fortress with nine gates, which are the physical openings through which the jīva (individual soul) interacts with the material world. Holistichealthwsa

These nine gates are: two ears, one mouth, two nostrils, two eyes, the anus, and the genitals. The soul is like the king of this city, whose administration is carried out by the ministry of ego, intellect, mind, senses, and life-energy. Bhagavad Gita

This framework appears prominently in the Bhagavad Gita (5.13), the Kathopanishad, the Atharva Veda, and is elaborated into a rich allegory in the Bhagavata Purana through the story of King Puranjana. The City of Nine Gates represents the human male body, with its nine openings — two eyes, two nostrils, two ears, mouth, anus, and the genital opening. Dandavats

The Patriarchal Problem — Your Point Is Well-Founded

Your observation cuts to something real and philosophically significant. Here is why:

1. The Template Body Is Male

The most direct evidence is in the sources themselves. Multiple commentaries explicitly state that the City of Nine Gates represents the male human body Blogger. This is not incidental — the allegory is built around a king (Puranjana) inhabiting the city. The conscious self, the sovereign, the soul navigating embodied existence, is gendered male by default. The female body is not the template; it is the deviation that requires explanation.

2. The Woman Has a Tenth Gate

This is the anatomical crux of your argument, and it is entirely correct. The female body has an additional opening — the vaginal canal — which does not exist in the male body. If the framework were genuinely universal and body-neutral, it would either:

• Count ten gates and note that one is present only in females, or
• Explicitly acknowledge the asymmetry

Instead, the concept simply defines nine as the number, universalizes it, and silently excludes the female anatomical reality.

3. The Female Is Cast as Other — Not as the Self

In the Bhagavata Purana’s Puranjana allegory, the beautiful woman represents Buddhi (intelligence), a subtle material energy. The attraction between King Puranjana and the Queen is the root of embodied consciousness. Dandavats So the woman is not the dweller in the city — she is part of the city’s furniture. She is an allegorical object encountered by the (male) conscious self, not a subject in her own right. The conscious soul (jīva) is implicitly coded as male; the female principle becomes an instrument or a distraction.

4. Intelligence Itself Is Feminized as Subservient

The eleventh attendant, who is the commander of the senses, is known as the mind, the leader of senses both in the acquisition of knowledge and in the performance of work. Vaniquotes In the allegory, the Queen (Buddhi/intelligence) is ultimately subordinate to the King (the conscious self). Feminizing intelligence and then subordinating it to the male principle is a recurring patriarchal move in classical Indian philosophy — Prakriti (nature, female) is always subject to Purusha (consciousness, male).

5. The Universalizing of the Male Body as “The Human Body”

This is perhaps the most structurally patriarchal move. The concept doesn’t say “the male body has nine gates.” It says the body — the universal human body — has nine gates. The male body is treated as the default, neutral, unmarked category of what a human body is. The female body’s additional gate is erased by this universalization. This mirrors critiques made in modern feminist philosophy of science — that medical and philosophical frameworks historically take the male body as the norm and treat female bodies as variations or special cases.

A Note of Fairness

It’s worth acknowledging that some later commentators and Ayurvedic traditions do note that women’s bodies have additional features — some texts count seven primary openings for women separately from men, and tantric traditions often explicitly honor the female body’s gates as sites of power (shakti). The tradition is not monolithic. Additionally, at the ātman level, the soul in these philosophies is considered genderless — the nine-gate framework is about the body, not the soul’s essential nature.

But your point stands at the level of how the default template is constructed: when a philosophical tradition builds its central metaphor for “the human body” around the male anatomy and leaves the female body as an afterthought or an absence, that is patriarchal philosophy at work — however sophisticated the metaphysics surrounding it may be. The woman’s body is literally rendered incomplete by a framework that was never designed with her in mind.

🌍 Ancient philosophers mapped consciousness onto cosmic geography. They asked: what if gravity worked on ethics too, pulling souls naturally toward their karmic weight?

✍️ Explore the vertical universe 🏛️: https://TPC8.short.gy/WfbJukZh

🌌 Where heaven ascends in tiers and ethics becomes architecture

#Philosophy #IndianPhilosophy #Cosmology #Culture #History #Heritage #AncientWisdom #SacredGeography #TPC8

If you stood at Kurukshetra today, which inner conflict would demand your honesty? #Kurukshetra #Mahabharata #Sanatan #BhagavadGita #IndianPhilosophy #Dharma #AncientIndia #Civilisation #TimelessWisdom #BetterLiving
https://spiritulality.stayingalive.in/inspiring-harmony/kurukshetra-the-moment.html

THREAD

Since my paper “A quote attributed to Udbhaṭabhaṭṭa, which is actually from Arcaṭa”, published on BSOAS, is not open-access, in this thread I provide a summary of its main contents.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/bulletin-of-the-school-of-oriental-and-african-studies/article/abs/quote-attributed-to-udbhatabhatta-which-is-actually-from-arcata/A6B9126B238CEF697A5D2F6FB381F0C8

The study resolves a long-standing attribution question in Indian #philosophy, a work that proves crucial for the reconstruction of an almost lost philosophical tradition: the Cārvāka (hereafter C) school, also known as Lokāyata.

@philosophy #indianphilosophy

Book review: Indian Philosophy by Sue Hamilton

https://kedara.eu/indian-philosophy-review/

"I’ve read the book Indian Philosophy, A Very Short Introduction by Sue Hamilton. I was looking for a good reference book on the various traditions of Indian Philosophy. Unfortunately, I’ll have to keep searching. I appreciate it’s a very tall ask to summarize Indian Philosophy in less than 200 pages, as per the Very Short Introductions format. Sue Hamilton — being an archaeologist — has taken a perfectly valid approach, by (...)"

#BlogPost #BookReview #IndianPhilosophy #philosophy #books #bookstodon

Which of Shiva’s three symbols—the damaru, trishool, or serpent—resonates most with you, and why? Share your reflections below. #Shiva #Damaru #Trishool #Serpent #IndianPhilosophy #Yoga #AdvaitaVedanta #SpiritualWisdom #BetterLiving
https://medium.com/@skmohindroo9/the-spiritual-significance-of-shivas-holy-trio-the-damaru-the-trishool-and-the-serpent-377b95c60153

Sri Aurobindo bridged revolutionary politics and spiritual philosophy with a radical idea: the Divine isn't complete until fully expressed on Earth.

New essay on embodied #spirituality, the four stages from seeking to fulfillment, and what this means for everyday ambition.

"What part of the Divine might be clawing its way into existence through your work, your failures, your most ordinary morning?"

https://open.substack.com/pub/terraphilosophica/p/the-secret-engine-of-existence-why?r=5lwmoo&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false

#Philosophy #SriAurobindo #IndianPhilosophy #Theology #Contemplation

जानिए भारतीय दर्शन और प्रकृति के संग जीवन को श्रेष्ठतम स्तर तक ले जाने का रहस्य।
📘 श्रेष्ठ से श्रेष्ठतम कैसे बनें — डॉ. वीरेन्द्र कुमार शेखर

उपलब्ध 👉 Flipkart | Amazon | www.diamondbooks.in
#Books #IndianPhilosophy #DiamondBooks

#DOTD: Tang Yongtong 湯用彤 (1893–1964), doyen of #BuddhistStudies in #ModernChina. Having studied Sanskrit, Pali, and philosophy at Harvard, his work on #medieval #ChineseBuddhism and #IndianPhilosophy remains influential until today.#BuddhistConquest #佛教 #中國化 #印度 #中古

Diwakar Acharya generously shared his exciting new research on early Sāṃkyha and Yoga in Vienna, in a two-part lecture jointly hosted by the University and Academy institutes, organized by Nina Mirnig. Memorable evenings! #Indology #IndianPhilosophy #SouthAsianPhilosophy

This just came in: a massive two-part memorial volume for Helmut Krasser, who passed away in 2014, published in the Hamburg Buddhist Studies series (https://www.buddhismuskunde.uni-hamburg.de/publikationen/hamburg-buddhist-studies.html). 918 pages (and remarkably affordable!). #BuddhistStudies #BuddhistPhilosophs #IndianPhilosophy

Students of Indian and Buddhist philosophy, rejoice: you can finally read the sixth chapter of Jinendrabuddhi's 8th century Pramāṇasamuccayaṭīkā in Sanskrit, masterfully edited by Ono, Muroya and Watanabe, and learn about "futile rejoinders" (jāti) and other intricacies of debate logic. To order the print copy or download the open-access PDF, click https://verlag.oeaw.ac.at/produkt/jinendrabuddhi-s-vi-l-malavat-pram-asamuccaya-k/99200813?name=jinendrabuddhi-s-vi-l-malavat-pram-asamuccaya-k&product_form=4955 #IndianPhilosophy #BuddhistPhilosophy

Is there any good soul here who has access to this #book and could lend me a hand with a quote from it?

Ernst Steinkellner (ed.). 2016. Dharmakīrti's Hetubindu: Critically edited by Ernst Steinkellner on the basis of preparatory work by Helmut Krasser with a translation of the Gilgit fragment by Klaus Wille. (STTAR 19.) Beijing, Vienna: China Tibetology Publishing House and Austrian Academy of Sciences Press

#philosophy #indianphilosophy #buddhism #logic #sanskrit @philosophy @indianphilosophy

I'm currently working on the Lokāyata section of Bhavyakīrti's (10th century) Pradīpoddyotanānusandhiprakāśikānāmavyākhyāṭīkā. Although it seems that Bhavyakīrti doesn't fully understand the meaning of some Lokāyata arguments, the section is quite interesting.

The main subjects are:
- rejection of the Lokāyata epistemology,
- discussion of the mind-body relation,
- rejection of the Lokāyata negation of afterlife.

#philosophy #buddhism #lokayata #indianphilosophy @philosophy @indianphilosophy

@philosophy @indianphilosophy

A Harvard University scholar in a chat on another social proposes that greater focus in ongoing research be directed towards the works of Skandasvāmin, the earliest known commentator on the Ṛgveda.

Interesting suggestion indeed!

Here a paper (in French) on Skandasvāmin by Silvia D'Intino:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/24360015

#philosophy #indianphilosophy #veda

The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps is a great podcast and book series for an introduction to the topic, covering not only western philosophy back to Plato and Aristotle but also Indian, Islamic and Africana philosophy (and in the future Chinese too). The podcast is at https://historyofphilosophy.net/

#history #ancienthistory #philosophy #ancientgreece #ancientgreek #greekphilosophy #plato #aristotle #indianphilosophy #indianhistory #hindu #buddhist #buddhism #islam #muslim

In your opinion, which relatively lesser-known author of Indian philosophy (including Buddhism, Jainism etc.) deserves more attention in current research, and why?

#philosophy #indianphilosophy #research #buddhism #jainism @philosophy @indianphilosophy

Is the Hinduism we practice, Vedic?

#IndianPhilosophy

https://pradx.in/2023/04/27/is-the-hinduism-we-practise-today-vedic/

It is a sad fact that much of Western #Philosophy, far from being simply “footnotes to #Plato,” is the result of Westerners being deeply inspired by #IndianPhilosophy such as #Hinduism or #Buddhism only to minimize or altogether hide such influences out of a Eurocentric intellectual pride that ancient #India could not possibly have been a far more spiritually and philosophically advanced civilization than Ancient Greece.

Rajiv Malhotra has dubbed this the “U-turn Effect”

A Sunday morning reflection on #AdvaitaVedanta and St. Anselm's ontological argument, and why Vedanta escapes from Kant's famous objection that existence is not a predicate, providing a phenomenological and methodological means of Self-inquiry for Self-realization, which is God-realization.

#Vedanta #Hinduism #Philosophy #Theology #Spirituality #God #Metaphysics #Writing #Blogging #Consciousness #Phenomenology #Ontology #IndianPhilosophy #Advaita #Nonduality

https://orderoftarot.com/advaita-vedanta-and-the-ontological-argument/

A few weeks ago I sent to a journal a short paper, in which I discuss and translate a faunal episode described in Ṛgveda 10.28.10cd. The idea for this paper came to me because some modern translations of the same half a stanza are not only weird but also out of context.
This gave me the opportunity to highlight the so-called principle of plausibility, which we should adopt when interpreting passages in ancient texts with many possible translations.

#indianphilosophy
@indianphilosophy

Uh-oh, today my last paper is #openaccess!

#philosophy #Indianphilosophy #research

https://mastodon.world/@krishnadeltoso/109722795511850603

Again on the translation of the terms ariyasacca-s/āryasatya-s, here's an interesting article:

Harvey, Peter. 2009. The Four Ariya-saccas as ‘True Realities for the Spiritually Ennobled’ — the Painful, its Origin, its Cessation, and the Way Going to This — Rather than ‘Noble Truths’ Concerning These, Buddhist Studies Review 26, pp. 197-227.

#philosophy #indianphilosophy #buddhism #truth @philosophy @indianphilosophy @philosophyofreligion
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/BSR/article/view/13692

Finally it sees the light!

My paper "Bhāviveka and Avalokitavrata on the Two So-Called Non-cause Theories (ahetuvāda) of the Lokāyatikas" was published today on Indo-Iranian Journal, issue 66.1 (which I share with Oskar von Hinüber).

Here the link https://brill.com/view/journals/iij/66/1/article-p1_1.xml

#philosophy #IndianPhilosophy #buddhism #lokayata
@indianphilosophy @philosophy

Fresh from the press on my desk: it looks small (but, hey, 558 pages), but it's a huge accomplishment. And very handy for travel! #IndianPhilosophy