Hi Kamal's new movie dasavatharam hashim playing ten roles. one of the first roles seems to be a vaishnavaite living in 12th century chidambaram. meticulous researcher that he is I jusst cant wait to see the sets.
I read a one line news item yesterday stating that Kamal reveled the story of Dasavatharam. When opened it curiously, all he said was its a space science related story with spirutuality involved in it. It seems Kamal has gone to depths of spiritual study for this movie. And Kamal is a known atheist. :)
If you are talking about the bust size photo of Kamal and Asin with the lord, in traditional madisar, I think that photo is quite old. I think that was released almost a year back.
It does involve characters from 12th century, but Kamal's note is its related to Space or something like that.
As discussed, too much hype kuduthu kavukka poranga....
But I used to wonder, why no period films in tamil off late? All we have is Veerapandiya kattabomman, Raja raja cholan etc, with half baked history. Why no attempt like Braveheart, Troy, 300 etc.
suddenly i wanted to watch Sivagangai seemai last week and watched in only for an hour or so. Not so impressive. But planning to watch fully. If I remember right, you were all praise for this move earlier!!
I want to share something funny. I read Venkat's message on Kamal with drenched asin at 11 pm. I am out of touch with tamil movies for 15 years now, I know Kamal obviously but if you ask me on any new actors or actresses you will probably get a blank. I had no clue Asin was a lady. Somehow I read his message as Kamal with a statue of Perumal drenched in asin and I thought Asin was like resin or some preservative used to 'drench' old statues, something like that.
Only this morning I was talking to my sister and mentioned that she could not stop laughing. She said Asin was a new lady star, and I can put the rest together. She is still laughing.
I am sure Kamal saar would not have it any other way :)))
Anyway about the subject of the thread, Kamal is what one would call a 'new ager' in the western world. New Agers are mostly people who take what is 'good' or what they see as 'good' from various sources and form a philosphy which mostly makes sense to them and somewhat to others. Their atheism is also strongly based on belief that all belief in God is connected to religion (which is itself compltetly false) and the opposite of that is atheism/humanism which only recognizes the 'anbe sivam' model.There are many belivers who are humanists, many athiests who are orthodox in their beliefs, many combinations which they don't like to think or talk about.
I like the guy in some ways, he tries to combine some message in his movies ,which is good perhaps in today's marketing world. I don't like the 'shallow digs' he likes to take at believers which strongly border on new ageism, or rule out the idea that he makes movies for money, same as everyone else.
I think the moderators has to delete the thread on the movies, especially on the 'Asin' matter.
I was searching for something on temples and the fifth link was from PS.net and then I realised, if someone is going to search for Asin and PS pops up :) An outsider should not think that this group talks about cinema in the name of PS.... :)
That is also true. When we posted messages about Sujatha's death and other information and Raghuavar's death, there was a huge spike in hits in the archive site. I am sure at that time we might had few new members, moderators can reveal if it is available (date of join would give that info).
I cannot see the significance of Balarama as an avatar.what was the reasons of two incarnations of Vishnu at the same time?
There's also a version that Lakshman is Adisesha and since he served Vishnu as a younger brother that he states in the next avatar he will be the younger brother and serve Adisesha who takes the incarnation of Balarama
> I cannot see the significance of Balarama as an avatar…what was the reasons > of two incarnations of Vishnu at the same time? > Good question.
I don't think Balarama is considered as an Avatar of Vishnu, Balarama is incarnation of Adisesha. Parasurama is considered as an Avatar of Vishu who was parallel to Lord Rama.
Yes that is true as far as my knowledge goes also. Parasurama was in his ageing years during Sri Rama's incarnation. My understanding is that avatar is not 100% divine has very clear human aspects and Parasurama was very much human when he met with Sri Rama and finally attained samadhi.
The ninth and tenth to some extent are controversial. Balarama/Buddha issue is controversial, Balarama being Adisesha was not an avatar, some say Buddha was made into an avatar to imbue buddhism into hinduism also and some say he was truly an incarnation himself. Kalki is a yet to happen avatar according to some and among more evangelical hindus has assumed the status of 'second coming' of Christ.
Udanx, whatever little I know, Buddha was included in Avatars to make Buddhism part of Hindusim during the days when conflict between the two religions was very high. I don't understand the Balarama/Lakshmana thing either.
It is impossible to say what is right and wrong in all this since many years have gone by and many interpolations have happened. With due respect to all of our hindu sentiments but religion is not history to nail down anything as exact.
Here is my two paise (In the true Indian Sense) worth.
As per Srimadh Bhagavatham composed by Sage Vyasa, the Avatars of Vishnu are not 10 but 21. It also includes Buddha. But this Buddha is said to be different one from that of Gauthama Buddha. The legend of this Buddha is as follows:-
Once, the Asuras started following Vedas and also by virtue of this they became very powerful and hence defeated the Devas very easily. As usual(!!) Indra runs to Siva for protection. Siva says, the Asuras have become powerful, because they have started following the Vedas. So try to wean them away from the Vedas and it will be easy for you to defeat them.
Now Indra runs to Vishnu to ask for help. Then Vishnu took the Buddha Avathar and mispropagated to the Asuras that the Vedas are to be renounced etc. The Asuras fell for this and it was easy for Indra to defeat them.
The above is as recorded in Srimadh Bhagavatham. So this Buddha of Vishnu is definitely different from the Gauthama Buddha. The later day (but as early as Pallava sculptures) artists could have misconstrued this to be Gauthama Buddha and hence we see him in the 10 Avatars list.
Regarding Balarama Avatar, it is the most confusing one in the line up. I will try and post something after I go through Srimadh Bhagavatham in detail.
> > The above is as recorded in Srimadh Bhagavatham. So this Buddha of > Vishnu is definitely different from the Gauthama Buddha. The later > day (but as early as Pallava sculptures) artists could have > misconstrued this to be Gauthama Buddha and hence we see him in the > 10 Avatars list. > > Great hypothesis.
The ISKCON translation of Srmad Bhagavadam mentions a sloka 'Buddha born in Gaya to redeem mankind'. I am not a sanskrit expert to verify this and also not a huge fan of ISKON either.
There was also an article in times of india which I saved a long time ago, as below.
Malathi
The Buddha as an Avatar of Vishnu Author: A Seshan Publication: The Times of India Date: May 7, 2001 THE story of Gautama, the Buddha (the enlightened one), is well known. He expounded the four noble truths (Arya Satya) concerning suffering, its cause, its destruction and the way to the elimination of sorrow. He was against the extremes of both self-indulgence and self-mortification. A Middle Path was advocated consisting of right views, right aspirations, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right contemplation. He rejected the authority of the Vedas, condemned ritualistic practices, especially animal sacrifice, and denied the existence of gods. Buddhism flourished for more than a millennium and spread to foreign lands also. But a decline set in after the Golden Age of the Guptas (4th to 5th centuries AD). Foreign historians, with limited knowledge of Indian philosophical systems, have attributed the decline of Buddhism in the land of its birth to the advent of Adi Sankara. The 68th Sankaracharya of the Kanchi Kamakoti Math, Shri Chandrasekharendra Saraswati, has effectively nailed this canard. According to him, Sankara was more concerned with setting right the errors in Saankhya and Meemaamsa philosophies of Hinduism which denied the importance of Isvara though basically subscribing to the Vedas. Even where he specifically dealt with Buddhism, he condemned only its denial of the existence of God. Then how did the religion decline? It was because of the vehement opposition to Buddhism on philosophical and religious grounds by Meemaamsakas and Taarkikas (logicians). The point is also that, even as people admired Buddha and turned to his religion, they did not give up their old beliefs and ritualistic practices. To give a contemporary example, many call themselves Gandhians but in their lives, official or personal, they follow a path just the opposite of what he showed! King Ashoka (2nd century BC) did much to propagate the religion within India and without. Still in his rock edicts he calls himself as "Devanampiya" or "the beloved of the gods". There were no gods in Buddhism at his time. So obviously he was referring to Hindu gods. In other words, he continued to believe in Hindu religion even as he admired Buddha. Buddhist texts written by bikshus have a Saraswati stotra in the beginning paying obeisance to the Hindu goddess of learning. It is not unusual to see an idol of Lord Ganesh in a Buddhist temple. Adi Sankara accepted the tenets of Buddhism at the level of pure consciousness. The ultimate stage in his philosophy was the giving up of rituals and concentrating the mind on the infinite. Buddha wanted his followers to take a quantum leap at the initial stage itself to this ultimate goal, something which is difficult to expect of ordinary men and women. Sankara advocated abiding by the karmas, as stipulated by Meemaamsa, to begin with, and proceeding gradually to the stage envisaged by Buddha of giving them up altogether. However, Buddha did believe in two cardinal principles of Hinduism, viz. the transmigration of the soul and the law of karma (that our actions have consequences). Thus fundamentally there is little difference between the two religions except that Buddha conceived his as an ethical and secular way of life. Perhaps the most important reason for the decline of Buddhism as a separate religion was the absorption of its founder in the Hindu pantheon of gods - indeed an irony for one who denied their existence! There are many incarnations of Vishnu of which the Dasavatar or the ten incarnations are the most well known. In the Southern tradition they are: matsya (fish), koorma (tortoise), varaha (boar), Narasimha (the man-lion), Vamana (the dwarf) Parasurama (the angry prince), Rama (the perfect human), Balarama, his younger brother Krishna (the divine statesman) and Kalki (the redeemer of righteousness in the kali yuga, who is yet to appear). In the Northern tradition Balarama is replaced by Buddha who appears as the ninth avatar after Krishna, his mission being to purify Hinduism. Srimad Bhagavatam (circa 900 AD, according to Farquhar) takes the stand that Krishna is the original form of Vishnu and the incarnations were all his. In its list of Dasavatar, which many consider as the most authentic, both Baladeva (or Balarama) and Buddha appear. Krishna is not mentioned because he is the original god. The Dasavatara Stotra of Jayadev (12th century), parts of which are included in Adi Guru Granth compiled by Guru Arjun Singh, follows the list of Bhagavatam. In this scheme, Buddhism was like the reformation movement of Martin Luther in Christianity. Once Buddha himself became an incarnation of Vishnu there was no need for the religion to exist separately in this country.
Another version why Buddha is not Vishnu Avatar, again spiritual no proof.
Adishankarar seem to have commented that the one of the principles of Budda which is "Everthing is Soonyam" is wrong. Soonyam is nothing and this world would have not have come from nothing. As everybody know Adishankarar who did lot of reformations, created 5 madhams. If Buddha was Vishnu's avatar he would not have commented like that.
my question is when was the word dasavatharam mentioned first? any idea.
we need to agree that buddha was not a 9th century phenomenon to be juxtaposed in the other avathars. he was as much in the past as krishna to those in mallai or thanjchai .
if we find an answer to the above i think we owe one to kamal for stirring it up. venketesh
Thiru, the scientific origins of the universe as explained by Stephen Hawking and other theorists is that it did come from nothing (and eventually will dissolve into nothing). The hindu concept has more in common with Genesis or intelligent creation as it is the more modern term, although Hindus do not believe in a male white bearded God who created it in stages.
Spiritually the Buddhist Dharma does have a lot in common with Adi Sankara's Advaita philosophy. Buddha be an avatar of Vishnu or not, and Vishnu with his 8 or less than 10 avatars are still equally revered for what they represent and teach.
Anyway, what exactly is Zero ? How do you define Nothing without relating it to something? Why do people say they know nothing when they are really educated ?
When we delve into this we may find out what the 6 matham's preach or the aspect Budha did not preach.
Sol aranthalum summa irukka mudiyma ?
Song 13 of Anubuthi
Uru Anru, Aru Anru, Ulathu Anru, Ilathu Anru Irul Anru, Oli Anru Ena Ninrathuve
Ravi, i am not any big philosopher, from what little I know,
1 How do we define nothing - that is the whole point , we cannot. Nothing, vastness, the great 'mounam' whatever you call it can only be experienced, not defined and limited in words.
2 Why do people say they know nothing when they are really educated? It depends on what people you are referring to - the great gnanis, Buddha, Ramana Maharishi, Ramakrishna all claimed to know 'nothing' or that 'nothing can be taught' for the same reason, that what they experienced is only experiential and impossible to contain in words. In fact when J Krishnamoorthy started teaching he also asked the same thing 'what is there to teach?'.
At a more basic level, since this is not a philosophy, theological forum - this debate goes back to form/formless, dwaita and adwaita. Buddhism and Adwaita have a lot in common, except that Adi Sankara believed it is very hard for an ordinary believer to start with belief in the formless, Buddha thought it can be started that way. Dwaita, or form theory has lots of parellels to dualistic abrahamic religions.
There are no answers to whether or not Buddha was a 9th avatar, to me, it does not matter. What he taught far outweights all these questions.
I will stop here,do not wish to be drawn into any theological debate.
One must carefully examine what was the society when Budha started his work.
There was time when man worshiped nature, the formless entity of God, Man respected Mother Earth and the unknown, then he got hold of the forbidden fruit, said he is the boss and coded his own rules.
Budha came in a time and technically debunked the vedas, in a way, it is what Krsna says in his Gita "Yada Yada Hi Dharmasya Glanirva Bhavathi Bharatha, Abhyuthanam Adharmaysya Tadatmanam Srijami Aham'. (Chapter IV-7) Praritranaya Sadhunam Vinashaya Cha Dushkritam Dharamasansthapnaya Sambhavami Yuge-Yuge." (Chapter IV-8)
Budha seemed to do just that, technically speaking and going by sequential time line of events, if not for Budha we may never have seen an Adi Sankara.
All I can say is that there is nothing wrong with worship of nature and worshipping God as a formless entity. The Buddha is a highly respected figure among many hindus, including several freedom fighters, authors including kalki.
.Buddha and Adi Sankara have more parellels than differences, it is ridiculous to say Sankara took birth to get rid of the 'adharma' propogated during Buddha's times.
I did not wish to say more but one should avoid putting down great figures with little thought.
Budha preached something that was never a proven concept till then, Ahimsa. Budha was an element of The Supreme force no denying on that but of which energy force of the supreme is the question. I do not agree that he is a avatar of the protective force, rather I would say he is a avatar of the creative force.
2 questions on Budha's preachings.
a. What was Budha's stance on the vedas ? b. What was Budha's stance on the 4 types of Karma?
Lord Padmanaba says to a query from Naradha on when he will destroy Hiryanakasipu, "I will come not by myself as you chose, but will Hiranya would invite (me) his own death closer as his torments on prahalad increase"
My belief in conclusion: Budha is a part of the Super force but not what we call as an avatar of Vishnu.
Ravi, my conclusion is that it does not matter if he was an avatar of the creative or protective force. It is even debatable if these forces are some distinct separate entities or aspects of the same entity.As you said for Gandhi, if the Buddha did not believe in the vedas,so what? What he taught otherwise far outweighed any other considerations. A belief is only something that leads to an action, and blind belief in vedas can be equally disastrous as blind belief in anything else.
I would very much like to answer your other questions but this is not a theological forum, and I do not wish to be stuck in a stance with noone else opening their mouths and then people get upset that the harmony of the forum is gone because of that.
There are thousands of avatars,technically even RRC/RJC etc were such. Consider the manifestation as a concept of equilibirium. Only in these 10, midst of a select few, the sense and purpose was documented.
Also, I tend believe, Gauthama Budha was only one but the Budha name ('The awakened') is associated with quite a few. G. Budha's birth was close to 400BC, Krsna's cannot be easily documented. Budha title is like Baba...
There seems to be no concrete evidence that Gauthama was a vishnu incarnate. If there is, it would be good if any forum member can share the info.
Yes I agree 100% on the usage of the word Buddha as well as Avathar. Yes there is no evidence that Gautama Buddha was a vishnu avatar too. But is there any 'evidence' that any human being historically was a 'vishnu avatar'? What we wish to believe sentimentally is besides the point,. Puranas are not history, they are a mix of historical events with mythological allegories, we will never be able to prove anyone is an 'avatar', or even a 'saint', we accord those terms to people we think are a certain way and that will always be a matter of dispute.
Venkat, sorry I did not get/see your post and I thought Ravi was replying to me.
As far as my limited knowledge goes, the dasavataram along with the remaining 11 are first mentioned in Garuda Purana, which is supposedly a 'bad purana' (only to be read in funerals). My grandmother tells me there are always 21, 10 were taken out as a convenient subset.
I have no idea of timelines on Garuda Purana, vaishavite experts can throw some light on that.
There is something more to this in Srimadh Bhagavatham than what I wrote earlier.
First let me take the issue of Gauthama Buddha Vs the Buddha mentioned in Srimadh Bhagavatham. I did read some posts, like the one from our Vijay, in which it is clearly indicated that the Buddha was born in Magadha etc., definitely pointing towards Gauthama Buddha. But incidentally, I referred to a very old reprinted edition of Srimadh Bhagavatham by "The Geetha Press" in Gujarat and I could not find any reference to Gauthama Buddha in that. So the question seems to be hanging now in balance. And one more confusion as to which is the Authentic Srimadh Bhagavatham. I have to say sorry that I am not much qualified to infer on this. So I leave it with that ambiguity for other learned members to talk about it.
However the most interesting note that I read is that, it also lists, not 21 but close to 28 avatars of Vishnu, while also mentioning that "In Reality His (Vishnu's) Avatars are countless". Some of the mentioned Avataras are as follows:-
1. SanakAthi Munivar (The four sons of Brahma counted as 1 avatar) 2. Narada 3. Kapila 4. Dattatreya 5. Prishnigarbha (Son of Prishni - Sorry, no idea who is Prishni) 6. Rishabha (Proabably the first thIrthankar of the Jains) 7. Vyasa 8. Nara-Narayana (As in Badrinath) 9. Yagna (A temporary replacement of Indra) 10. King Prithu (after whom the earth was called as Prithvi) 11. Dhanvathari (the God of Medicines) 12. Mohini (During the pARkkaDal kaDaithal) 13. Matsya 14. Kurma 15. Varaha 16. Narasimha 17. Vamana 18. Parasurama 19. Rama 20. Balarama 21. Krishna 22. Buddha (Gauthama or Different) 23. Kalki 24. Hayagriva (the Horse headed God of "GnyAna") 25. Hamsa (The Swan) 26. The Avatar to project the elephant Gajendra from the Crocodile 27. The Avatar when He appeared in front of Dhruva to grant Moksha 28. Purusha
Let us see to other references of these avatars. As Vishnu is considered to be the protector amongst the trinity, it is said that any King is supposed to be an incarnation of Vishnu, Logically. Remember our AMV being spoken of in this manner, with Sangu Chakra rEgais in his hand. That was no passing mention.
Nammazhwar says in his Thiruvaimozhi....
"thiruvuDai mannaraik kANil, thirumAlaik kaNDEnE enRum..." (the mother of the thalavi, here Nammazhwar in peN bhAvam, says that the thalavi has become so mad that whenever she sees any Righteous (the adjective "thiruvuDai" is very apt here for this)king, she thinks of him to be ThirumAl)
Nammazhwar in his Thiruviruttham, expands this further as...
".... en ninRa yOniyumAip piRandhAi, imayOrth thalaivaa....."
meaning, He is born in numerous forms, as confirmed by the usage of the word "en ninRa yOni".
So much for the incarnations, let us see about the Buddha Avatar.
Nammazhwar also makes a reference to Buddha Avatar in his Thiruvaimozhi, though not explicitly.
Here he refers to Buddha Avatar, as I mentioned in my earlier post, that He deceived the Asuras. "kaLLa vEDam" refers to the deceiving form that He had taken. The word "kalandhu" refers to the fact that He mixes with those Asuras and "uLLam bEdham seidhiTTu" refers to the actual act of deception.
This is probably the only reference to Buddha Avatar from the "nAlAyira divya prabhandham" and this does not talk directly about whether it is a different Buddha or Gauthama Buddha.
The straight answer could be, there are no definite timelines for any Puranas, be it Vishnu Purana or Garuda Purana or any thing. Ask any religiously inclined person, he will readily say that it was there even before "kritha yuga". And as some one wrote very aptly, Puranas are a little history with some mythical allegories embedded. So there is no point in trying to ascertain the timelines of any Puranas.
> Similarly, pl refer the iconography of the brihadesvara temple ... Dr francoise l'hernault... > Page 29.. And plates 9 ( southern stairway of vestibule) and plate 16 ( inner gateway west facade)due copyright I can't put the images here, but anyone fm tanjore cn check... The buddha is depicted in these two panels under a tree _ seated..