Talk:Brahman

Changes

This article is quite small and doesn't really do the trick. I've started with a major upheaval and would like to trace its early origins and eventual metamorphosis over the years. Also, the quoted analyses of so many great Hindu systems to be found in the Upanishads, the Yoga Sutras, the Tantras, and Hindu saints in particular like Shankaracharya, Chaitanya, Ramakrishna and Vivekananda, Shri Aurobindo, Ramana Maharshi, etc. would greatly benefit the page and shed better light on the subject, in my opinion, than any other possible summarizing most others could do. I'm in a rush doing volunteer work and studies, but I'll keep trying to add occasionally. I hope others put in their ideas and maybe we can make this a Featured Article sometime. I guess the only problem would be that one couldn't have any adequate pictures... though since AUM is integrally tied to the concept of Brahman we could do neat things with that. --LordSuryaofShropshire 17:10, Jul 1, 2004 (UTC)

My Lord Surya: You made the following change:

from

brahmán on the other hand, is a priest, one of the Brahmin caste (brahmin being an adjective). Etymologically, the word may be related to latin flamen (a priest), supporting the "trifunctional hypothesis" of Georges Dumézil.

to

Brahmin is another term with the same root, which refers to the highest of the four castes, the Brahmins, who by virtue of their purity and priesthood are held to have such powers.

and marked it as minor. How is this a minor change (such as correcting punctuation etc)? The flamen comparison you removed without comment, even though I gave my source and quoting a "hypothesis", making it NPOV. I know that flamen=brahman is doubtful, but the possibility deserves mention. So could you please restore it.

More involved is the brahmän : brahmin issue. My immediate source is the Monier-Williams dictionary. We are dealing with a chronological problem here. In vedic sanskrit, accent was important, and it was enough to distinguish "prayer" (accent on first syllable) from "priest" (accent on second syllable). At that time, "brahmin" was a simple adjective relating to these concepts. Later, it seems the distinction became too subtle, and the former adjective became the name for the members of the caste. Maybe you did not know this, but then that's what an ecyclopedia is for (not just for editing, but also for learning new things). The point of noting accent and gender of brahman "prayer" is to contrast it with "brahman" priest, which you removed. Could you maybe add your notion of brahmin purity without removing this carefully researched information? thank you -- Dbachmann 13:12, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I reverted my etymological stuff, making your romantic description of ritual and sacrifice a separate paragraph (although I doubt it belongs under a heading "Etymology and origin of the name Brahman"). I hope you can live with this. Dbachmann 14:38, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Your sarcasm aside, I'm quite aware of the linguistic changes witnessed from Vedic to Upanishadic and post-Vedantic Hinduism. However, your flamen thesis, regardless of its source, is frivolous and a minority opinion at best; also, my aim is to clearly delineate the differences between ancient, middle and modern usages of the term, which contribute greatly to understanding by modern readers. By leaving unexplained diacritics (which most people, who don't study any sort of linguistics, let alone Sanskrit) you confuse people. I hope your constitution can bear with the possibility of modification of your immaculate writing. --LordSuryaofShropshire 18:03, Aug 8, 2004 (UTC)

agreed, let's leave our sarcasm aside. I admit I was disgruntled at your unexplained change. I would have taken much less offence had you presented your reasons, even if I don't agree with them. I will not interfere with your exposition of Hindu Brahman as divine reality etc. This is simply about the etymology section, where the word itself should be explained. brahman and flamen are a perfect equation according to latin and indic sound-laws. How is it frivolous to say a word meaning "priest" in Sanskrit may be related to a word meaning "priest" in Latin? Are you implying that Hindu religion is in some way more sublime than roman religion? The reason the equation is disputed is not because it is faulty, but because there are other, equally convincing explanations for flamen. Now if you would call frivolous the etymological connection of brahman and bulge I could understand. But this is not disrespect, it is language change. The concept is by no means degraded because its name derives from an ultimately mundane root. The hypothesis brahman:flamen is well known, widely quoted in etymological dictionaries, has weighty implications and certainly has a place in a section on the etymology of brahman. If you want to add that it's probably a minority view, that's fine with me. Ah, yes, and if you expand the explanation, giving a deeper perspective of how the word evolved in Vedic/Sanskrit, rather than removing information, I will of course be thankful and will shed no tears for my then-superseded formulations. Dbachmann 19:26, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I have no such pretensions about the sublimity of any religion or cultural paradigm. I am perfectly aware that myriad connections between what are now considered European and Indian languages exist. Flamen and Brahman have little of an implicit or explicit relationship, in spite of the notoriety of the thesis. I have also not removed your information in this most recent of edits and hope that we can call this a fair resolution. --LordSuryaofShropshire 21:15, Aug 8, 2004 (UTC)

alright... look, I am aware that you put some effort into this article, and I don't want to spoil it for you. So how about this: have a look at the Brahma disambiguation page. These words are all etymologically related. It's not obvious that the resolution of the etymological connections have to be in this Brahman article, they could be in any of these, or in a separate one, say, Brahman (etymology). So how about I take my flamen and go away to a separate article resolving the history of all these terms in more detail (explaining the diacritics etc. in all leisure). Dbachmann 06:45, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Jayjg: Those "centuries passed" and "1st millenium BCE" are pure speculations based on the linguistic analysis ("do you think this language looks older than this... I don't."). No evidence though it's repeated on and on because "100x repeated lie becomes truth." (Goebbels) Just to let you know.

Duplication

There seems to be a duplication between this page, and Brahman (god). Obviously, this page is more detailed. How does one go about removing the duplication? --mkamat 20:06, August 25, 2005 (UTC)

Brahman concept is not entirely unique to vedanta

In the Conceptualization portion there was a line that I removed stating that a monist concept of Brahman is entirely unique to Vedanta. This isn't entirely true. Very similar concepts exist in other religions/philosophies. The most similar being the Dharmakāya of Buddhism, but to a notable degree Ein Sof of Judaism and The One of Neoplatonsim, plus quite a few others. I agree with earlier comments that this article contains some fairly obvious religious bias. Shantideva (talk) 00:45, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for removing that statement. Islam has a similar idea called Tawhid. -- Avindratalk / contribs 16:14, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

I also think that the ideas of the Tao in Taoism are very similar to monistic ideas of Brahman. -- Avindratalk / contribs 16:24, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

“The Ultimate Question”: Brahman’s Origins?

I have long been very much interested in matters such as this. Having investigated Eastern metaphysical religions and philosophies, I independently came to the conclusion that Brahman was Consciousness and that matter is an epiphenomenon of consciousness as opposed to visa versa in accordance with Western scientific and philosophical thought. In our plane of material reality, events unfold via a long chain of causes and effects (“karma”). I later learned that this observation on my part was held by certain schools of Hinduism. This intuitively rings true to me, but once again I come up against the same old seeming metaphorical brick wall.

I wrote a philosophical proof of a creator based upon Einstein’s STR. My proof does not purport to prove God per se; rather, just a creator of some kind who or which might or might not still be existent. Within the proof, I anticipated the question which I refer to as my brick wall: What accounts for the creator’s existence? How do we avoid an infinite regress of creators?

In my proof, I call this “The Ultimate Question.” Not only can I not answer it, I can’t even think how one would go about addressing the issue. All I can suggest is that somewhere within the regress of creators, someone or something must “simply is,” and perhaps in his, her or its plane of reality there is a science that can explain this which is not available to us within the logic of our plane of existence. It doesn’t matter if the material universe always exists (the atheistic contention) or whether some form of sentient non-material entity always exists, it is the same old problem. How can one account for the very notion of existence itself? In short, how can existence exist?

The article doesn’t seem to suggest an answer as to Brahman’s origins or how it can just exist eternally. Has any Hindu sage ever offered any coherent answer to my “Ultimate Question?” which might be added to the article? —Preceding unsigned comment added by HistoryBuff14 (talk • contribs) 22:11, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

What's wrong with an infinite regress? Mitsube (talk) 05:36, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

AFAIK Brahman was not created, it exists from beginning of time. It is "ever-existing" - there was never a time when there was no brahman. I would say that brahman is the origin of time. Žarišče (talk) 05:41, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

I think that the Advaita response to this question would be that Brahman has no qualities so he neither exists nor does not exist. makeswell (talk) 18:03, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

It's more subtle than that - Brahman is not susceptible to questions about time. It's like asking "what exists outside of space". To be outside of space, there would have to be space outside of space - which makes no sense. Chillpadde (talk) 18:35, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

Your question is exactly what has led me here 10 years later. Thanks for asking it. 🙂 Bluesky61 (talk) 21:11, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

The page needs protection?

Brahman is considered the formless absolute in Hinduism. Various sects associate their deities (Shiva/Vishnu/Shakti) with Brahman. Showing that a specific deity represents Brahman is not the appropriate information. Hellobunny001 (talk) 12:13, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

Should Brahman be capitalized?

In Britannica's article titled "Brahman," brahman is never capitalized except when it appears as the title of the article or as the first word in a sentence. I'm scratching my head wondering why this is. Does this raise a larger question, and should that question be included in the Wikipedia Brahman article? Capitalizing Brahman, one might argue, makes Brahman into something of a personal God, an entity that can be described as conscious, blissful, and so forth. Whereas using a lower case "b" identifies brahman as an undefined "something or other." Can anyone say for sure what brahman is? The scared books seem to know, but in the end it is putting faith in human authority. 2600:8801:B011:300:E115:D853:8A85:744A (talk) 19:56, 24 May 2021 (UTC) James.