Walden

Kasi

“Kasi, Benaras or Varanasi is the spiritual capital of India. Many scholarly
books have been written in the city, including the Ramcharitmanas of Tulsidas.
Today there is a temple of his namesake in the city, the Tulsi Manas Mandir.
One of the largest residential universities of Asia the Banaras Hindu University
is located here. Varanasi is often referred to as "the city of temples,” "the holy
city of India,” "the religious capital of India,” "the city of lights,” "the city of
learning,” and "the oldest living city on earth."

– Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia

Keshab Chandra Sen

Keshub Chandra Sen, (19 November 1838 – 8 January 1884)
was an Indian Bengali Hindu philosopher and social reformer
who attempted to incorporate Christian theology within the
framework of Hindu thought. Born a Hindu, he became a
member of the Brahmo Samaj in 1856 but founded his own
breakaway "Brahmo Samaj of India" in 1866 while the
Brahmo Samaj remained under the leadership of Maharshi
Debendranath Tagore (who headed the Brahmo Samaj till his
death in 1905). In 1878 his followers abandoned him after the
underage child marriage of his daughter which exposed his
campaign against child marriage as hollow. Later in his life he
came under the influence of Ramakrishna and founded a syn-
cretic "New Dispensation" or Nôbobidhan inspired by Christianity, and
Vaishnav bhakti, and Hindu practices.

– Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia

Related Glossary Terms
Brahmo Samaj, Ram Mohun Roy, Unitarian

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Kullu
“Kullu (1,220 m or 4,000 ft) was once known as Kulanthpitha - `the end of the
habitable world`. Beyond rose the forbidding heights of the Greater Himalayas
and, by the banks of the shining river Beas, lay the fabled `Silver Valley`.

The Chinese pilgrim monk Xuanzang visited the Kullu Valley in 634 or 635
CE. He described it as a fertile region completely surrounded by mountains,
about 3,000 li in circuit, with a capital 14 or 15 li in circumference. It contained
a stupa (tope) built by Ashoka, which is said to mark the place where the Buddha
preached to the local people and made conversions. The stupa was taken away
by a mughal ruler and put in feroz shah kotla maidan in Delhi. There were some
twenty Buddhist monasteries, with about 1,000 monks, most of whom were Ma-
hayanist. There were also some fifteen Hindu temples, and people of both faiths
lived mixed together. There were meditation caves near the mountain passes in-
habited by both Buddhist and Hindu practitioners. The country is said to have
produced gold, silver, red copper, crystal lenses and bell-metal.”

– Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia

Related Glossary Terms
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Kundalini Shakti

“One energy with many names and
forms: There is one energy that
keeps taking on new shapes and
forms. In Tantra the name of that
energy is Shakti, which is the mani-
festing, or feminine force that is actu-
ally one and the same with its only
apparent companion Shiva, the la-
tent, or masculine. Each time the en-
ergy takes on a new form, we give it
a new name. Shakti becomes Kundalini Shakti, or simply Kundalini. Kundalini
becomes the energy of Prana, which flows in patterns or channels called Nadis,
and concentrates itself by forming intersections known as Chakras. The subtle
energies condense and become known as earth, water, fire, air, and space, form-
ing our experience of the gross world. With Kundalini awakening, the primal en-
ergy of Shakti awakens in its true form. 

Seek to experience that one energy: To know, in direct experience, that un-
changing truth, the one energy that is the substratum of all of the names and
forms, is one of the ways of describing the universal goal of spiritual life. It is the
experience of the union of Shakti and Shiva, creation and its ground, feminine
and masculine, even though they were never actually divided in the first place. It
is like wetness that is never separate from water, sweetness that is never separate
from sugar, and warmth that is never separate from sunlight.”

— Hindupedia

Related Glossary Terms
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Chapter 1 - How Thoreau's Walden Pond Mixed with the Ganges and Yoga Came to America with Swami Vive

Liberation

Religions can be divided into two main types: The vast majority offer Salvation
to the individual. Usually, in these traditions, the individual is not defined in
terms of the body, but rather as a soul or spirit. In such teachings, the individual
being has some experience or attains to some state, purification, level or grace
such as ‘heaven’. This is the general understanding of what is meant by religion
and the underlying principle of the traditions of Christianity, Judaism, Islam and
most sects of Hinduism.

Salvation of “self ” “or soul” is the most common basis for religion and relig-
ious thinking in the world. It is so common, it has come to be the only way of
considering a religion and what it proposes. However, this is a naïve assumption
and is simply not true. We are just unaware of any other way of looking at what
religion seems to offer.

There is another viewpoint and type of religious tradition and understanding.
It is Liberation, or freedom. It is Liberation from the idea or assumption of any
form of separate self, soul or even Self. The traditions of Liberation, hold that
the assumption of ‘self,’ or any form or idea of individuality is illusory, non-
necessary and false. Such an assumption is at the basis of duality, a reality that is
held to not be the case. Duality is at the root of all suffering, As the Upanishad
says, “Certainly fear is born of duality.”

For the Religions of Liberation, herein lies the root of all suffering . . The as-
sumption of Self or Soul, which is criticized from the point of view of Libera-
tion.

There are very few traditions of Liberation in the great tradition of religion
and spirituality. It is found elaborated in Advaita Vedanta and in certain schools
of Mahayana Buddhism.

Related Glossary Terms
Salvation

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Lingam

“The lingam (also, linga, ling, Shiva linga, Shiv ling, liṅgaṃ, meaning "mark,”
"sign,” "inference" or is a representation of the Hindu deity Shiva used for wor-
ship in temples. The lingam is often represented alongside the yoni, a symbol of
the goddess or of Shakti, female creative energy. The union of lingam and yoni
represents the "indivisible two-in-oneness of male and female, the passive space
and active time from which all life originates.” The lingam and the yoni have
been interpreted as the male and female sexual organs since the end of the 19th
century by some scholars, while to practicing Hindus they stand for the insepara-
bility of the male and female principles and the totality of creation.”

– Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia

Related Glossary Terms
Shiva, Siva lingam

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Chapter 2 - The Kashi Yatra, the Spiritual Master and!the Living Water of Life