r/hinduism

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Narasimha in the Form of Rama

According to the Sthala Purana, Hanuman undertook penance under the Karanja tree at this place to have darshan of Lord Rama. Lord Narasimha appeared before him. Hanuman was disappointed that he had not been blessed with the darshan of Rama Himself.

When Narasimha tried to convince Hanuman that He was the same Rama, appearing in a different form, hanuman dismissed the suggestion, saying that his Rama was handsome and always held a bow in His hand. What he was seeing before him, however, was a fiery form with very long nails.

Hanuman declared that he would continue his penance until he received darshan of Rama. Pleased with Hanuman’s unwavering devotion to Rama, Lord Narasimha granted him darshan in a special form: He appeared with a bow in His left hand, like Rama, and with Adishesha above Him, representing Lakshmana, while retaining His Narasimha form. In this way, Narasimha convinced Hanuman that Rama and Narasimha are one and the same Supreme Lord.

Karanja Narasimha is traditionally associated with the planet Chandra, or the Moon. Therefore, devotees who experience an unfavorable placement of the Moon in their horoscope may worship Karanja Narasimha as a form of remedy and seek His blessings to mitigate its effects.

Narasimha Upasakas who perform the Narasimha Ekakshari/Bija Mantra - Kshraum (क्ष्रौं), may recognize this form as the Dhyana Swaroopa of that mantra. In this form, Lord Narasimha is depicted with three eyes, holding the Sudarshana Chakra and the Sharanga bow, with His lower hands displaying the Abhaya and Varada Mudras.

Finally, I would like devotees to contemplate on one thought:

Narasimha = Rama
Varaha = Krishna

Their nature, mantra prayogas, and tattva—and the way they interact with and respond to their devotees—are remarkably similar.

If anyone is interested in Narasimha Upasana, feel free to DM me. I can share a simple Upasana Padhati with you.

📍Location: Karanja Narasimha - Ahobilam, Andhra Pradesh

If a machine becomes more powerful than anything you created, the quick solution would be to look for safeguards or build security around it. One of the most valuable and largest artificial intelligence companies in the world, Anthropic, took a very different approach.

It convened a gathering of religious scholars and philosophers, including a monk from India. To discuss and address an increasingly pressing question: what is this thing which we are building, and what should be its protective barriers?

Swami Sarvapriyananda was among those invited to Anthropic's San Francisco headquarters early this year. His videos are now going viral on social media.

According to Sarvapriyananda, he was first contacted by Anthropic for an online interview and was then asked if he would travel to the company's San Francisco headquarters.

The monk revealed that the tech giant provided the travel and accommodation for his visit. After reaching there, he met theologians from various religions, counsellors and mental health professionals.

Sarvapriyananda said the key objective of the discussion was to train Claude and examine questions around AI ethics.

According to him, the tech company presented some of its latest AI developments to participants; however, Sarvapriyananda could not discuss most of the details as he did not sign a non-disclosure agreement.

“Details I cannot give because they have something called an NDA, a non-disclosure agreement,” he said during a June 2026 talk at the Unity of Dallas.

He said the group also discussed AI safety and the potential risks posed by AI systems. The monk recalled Anthropic expressing concern over the rapid pace of AI development and emphasising the need for stronger safeguards.

Anthropic's growing engagement with religious thinkers has come under focus. According to a New York Times (NYT) report, the tech giant had been conducting private meetings with philosophical and religious figures from different traditions.

The agenda was AI ethics, morality, whether advanced AI could have consciousness and, consequently, develop some form of moral status

Anthropic has also worked on a constitution for Claude that outlines values meant to guide the model's behaviour. It has described the approach as an effort to make AI systems act safely and responsibly.

The discussion, according to Sarvapriyananda, was also mainly about how society should respond to an AI-driven future. The monk cautioned people about excessively relying on AI to make decisions, the potential for job losses, and the rising concentration of wealth as AI systems become more capable.

“Stand your ground as a spiritual seeker,” Sarvapriyananda told the audience. Adding that everyone should remain centred in knowledge, meditation, devotion and service while adapting to an AI-driven changing landscape. His advice was rooted in Vedanta

Who is Swami Sarvapriyananda

Sarvapriyananda's speciality lies in Advaita Vedanta, making him perhaps an apt person for Anthropic to have him on the table. Advaita Vedanta is a non-dual philosophical tradition connected with the Upanishads and Shankara.

Sarvapriyananda is a monk of the Ramakrishna Order. He joined that organisation in 1994 after completing his MBA from Xavier Institute in Bhubaneswar. Sarvapriyananda took final monastic vows (Sannyasa) in 2024.

He taught and worked in Ramakrishna Mission institutions in India for years. Reports suggest he also served in Southern California. In 2017, Sarvapriyananda became spiritual leader of the Vedanta Society of New York.

He also held a Nagral Fellowship at Harvard Divinity School in 2019-2020. Sarvapriyananda's lecture on the Mandukya Upanishad is very popular online, gathering millions of views. This Upanishad is devoted to the nature of consciousness and the importance of the sacred sound Om.

Source of text: https://www.firstpost.com/explainers/why-anthropic-invited-hindu-monk-swami-sarvapriyananda-for-claude-training-meet-14050140.html/amp

Source of video: NDTV (Instagram)

Radhe Radhe 🕉🙏

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Something struck me while going through some old texts recently. We usually think of the Sun as one deity with one job, giving light, marking the day and sustaining life on earth. But that's not really how the old texts talk about him. They call him omnipotent. Omnipresent. And the same lines that glorify Shiva, or Vishnu, or Devi, they just turn around and say, yeah, this is the Sun too. It's the same one.

Take Sri Rudram, or Rudradhyaya as it's also called. Before the actual hymn even starts, there's a whole preliminary section chanted called the Sri Rudra Laghunyasa, and it opens with a viniyoga line, basically an attribution line, that tells you who you're really praying to.

संकर्षणमूर्तिस्वरूपो योऽसावादित्यः परमपुरुषः स एष रुद्रो देवता ।
saṅkarṣaṇa-mūrti-svarūpo yo'sāv ādityaḥ paramapuruṣaḥ sa eṣa rudro devatā
"The deity of this hymn is that Supreme Person who is the Sun, whose form is Sankarshana. He alone is this Rudra."

Before a single verse of Rudram is even chanted, in this opening line of the Laghunyasa itself. Rudra is Aditya. Not similar to. Not symbolic of. Is.

And then there's Devi. Sri Suktam actually calls her by the Sun's own colour.

आदित्यवर्णे तपसोऽधिजातो वनस्पतिस्तव वृक्षोऽथ बिल्वः ।
ādityavarṇe tapaso'dhijāto vanaspatis tava vṛkṣo'tha bilvaḥ
"O you who are of the colour of Aditya, from your tapas the Bilva tree was born."

Aditya-varne. Same colour as the Sun. And it's not a one-off line either, because elsewhere she's described sitting right inside his disc.

भानुमण्डलमध्यस्था भैरवी भगमालिनी ।
bhānumaṇḍala-madhyasthā bhairavī bhagamālinī (Sri Lalita Sahasranama)
"She who dwells in the centre of the Sun's own disc."

His orb (SuryaMandala) becomes her seat, basically. So Shakti isn't off somewhere separate from the Sun, she's using him as her own visible throne, in a sense.

And Vishnu, well, that one's almost too easy. Surya's own name is Surya Narayana. Narayana. That's just Vishnu's name, sitting right there inside the Sun's name.

Okay but here's where it stops being "oh nice comparison" and becomes something a lot heavier. The Rigveda says:

सूर्य आत्मा जगतस्तस्थुषश्च ।
sūrya ātmā jagatas tasthuṣaś ca (Rigveda 1.115.1)
"Surya is the Atman, the Self, of everything that moves and everything that stands still."

Not a self. The self. Of the entire universe, moving things, still things, all of it.

And the Taittiriya Aranyaka doesn't even leave room to argue with it, it just says:

आदित्यो वा एष एतन्मण्डलं तपति । असावादित्यो ब्रह्म ।
āditya vā eṣa etan maṇḍalaṃ tapati, asāv āditya brahma
"This Sun who heats this orb, that Sun is Brahman."

That's from the Suryopanishad section of it. And it really doesn't say represents, or symbolizes, or points toward. It says is.

 

The jyotish side of it. In Vedic astrology Surya is called the Atmakaraka, which just means the significator of the soul. Every other planet handles something, the mind, money, siblings, whatever. Surya alone handles the Self. And that's not some invention astrologers came up with on their own, it's basically lifted straight from that Rigvedic line, atma jagatah. If Surya's the self of the whole universe, then of course in a birth chart he ends up being the self of the individual too. Same logic, just zoomed in.

And it goes even further than that, honestly. Surya isn't just one planet sitting among nine others. He's kind of the power source all the others plug into. The Linga Purana actually names seven main rays coming off him, and each one is said to activate a different planet. Sushumna activates Chandra. Vishvakarma activates Budha. Vishvavyacha, Shukra. Sannaddha, Mangal. Sarvavasu, Brihaspati. Svarat, Shani. And Harikesha activates the whole nakshatra mandala. So really, every planet's light is just borrowed light. It's Surya's light, just rerouted through whichever ray belongs to that planet.

Which is, honestly, exactly why astrologers do what they do when a chart is a mess. You know, heavily afflicted, nothing working, remedy after remedy for this planet or that planet just doesn't land. Eventually they stop chasing individual planets and go straight for Surya. Strengthen the Sun. Because if every planet is running on his energy anyway, fixing him is like fixing the main supply line instead of patching each broken wire separately.

So jyotish isn't really adding meaning to a planet here, it's just repeating, in its own language, what the Veda already said ages ago. Surya, Devi, Shiva, Vishnu. Not different things. Same light.

There's also the Shatapatha Brahmana, which comes at this from a slightly different angle. In its Pravargya section the Sun keeps getting addressed under different functional names, Yama, "the one who controls everything here," Prajapati, "lord of creatures," and there's this bit where he unites with Savitri and shines together with Surya in the ritual formulas of Vajasaneyi Samhita 37. Doesn't matter which function you pick, cosmic order, control, creation, it all loops back to the same Sun.

And then Vishnu comes up again, among the twelve Adityas themselves. Dhata, Mitra, Aryama, Shakra, Varuna, Amsha, Bhaga, Vivasvan, Pusha, Savita, Tvashta, and, yes, Vishnu. That last name isn't just borrowed for the list. Srimad Bhagavatam 8.13.6 says it outright:

अत्रापि भगवज्जन्म कश्यपाददितेरभूत् ।
आदित्यानामवरजो विष्णुर्वामनरूपधृक् ॥
atrāpi bhagavaj-janma kaśyapād aditer abhūt, ādityānām avarajo viṣṇur vāmana-rūpa-dhṛk
"The Lord himself was born here from Kashyapa and Aditi as the youngest of the Adityas, this is Vishnu himself, who took the form of Vamana."

So the Vishnu sitting among the twelve Adityas isn't some lesser deity that happened to share the name. It's Vishnu. Actually him. Born as an Aditya, and later stepping out as Vamana to measure the three worlds in three strides.

Put it all together and, I don't know, it kind of stops feeling like coincidence after a while. Rudram's own opening line calls Aditya Rudra. Sri Suktam calls Devi Aditya-varna and gives her his own disc to sit in. Vishnu's carried right inside the Sun's name, and shows up again as one of the twelve Adityas by birth. The Rigveda calls him the Self of everything, moving and still, and the Taittiriya Aranyaka just flatly says, that Sun is Brahman. And jyotish, in its own way, says the exact same thing, Surya is the Atmakaraka, the soul's own signifier, and every other planet is just running on light he handed them.

Hari Aum Tatsat.

 

 

(Pic: A Durga Puja pandal in Dibrugarh, Assam)

With Durga Puja approaching, I thought it would be interesting to look at one of the lesser-known chapters in Assam's history, how the tradition of worshipping Durga through an earthen image became established in the Ahom kingdom.

Assam had traditions of Shakta worship long before the Ahom period. Places such as Kamakhya, Digheswari, Ugratara, Maha Bhairavi and other ancient shrines had long-standing traditions of worshipping the Goddess. So it would be incorrect to say that Durga worship itself was "introduced" to Assam by the Ahoms.

What changed during the Ahom period was the emergence of the earthen-image Durga Puja as a public and royal festival, and one of the earliest accounts connecting this tradition to the Ahom court takes us to the reign of Swargadeo Susenghphaa, better known as Pratap Singha (1603–1641).

The story also connects Assam with the neighbouring Koch kingdom and its famous ruler Nara Narayan.

According to historian Benudhar Sarma, Pratap Singha came to know about the elaborate Durga Puja celebrated by Nara Narayan in Koch Bihar. One of the people through whom he learned about the practice was Sondar Gohain, who had spent time in the Koch kingdom.

The Koch tradition particularly impressed the Ahom king because of the use of earthen images of Goddess Durga and the grandeur with which the festival was celebrated.

Pratap Singha then decided to learn the art himself.

Historical accounts describe him as sending Ahom artisans to Cooch Behar to learn the technique of making earthen images of Durga and other deities. An account reproduced in Assam Buranji specifically says that, after hearing about the use of earthen images in Durga Puja, the Ahom king deputed artists to Cooch Behar to learn image-making. The artisans eventually returned along with Koch envoys named Gaja Singha and Patal Singha.

The first recorded Ahom royal Durga Puja involving an earthen image is associated with Bhatiapara, near present-day Sivasagar. A modern historical account places this tradition in the early 17th century, with the clay images being made by local khanikars following the techniques associated with the Koch tradition.

Bhatiapara itself is not some random name attached to the story. It was an established locality in the Ahom kingdom, and historical records also associate the area with royal public works. The Census of India still records Bhatiapara as a village in the Sivasagar district.

This episode is especially fascinating because it shows how cultural exchange worked between the different kingdoms of medieval Assam and the eastern Himalaya.

The Ahom kingdom and the Koch kingdoms were not culturally isolated from one another. There were wars, alliances, marriages, diplomatic missions, exchanges of hostages and envoys, and movement of skilled people between their territories. Pratap Singha himself strengthened his relationship with the Koch sphere through marriage and diplomacy.

In fact, the reign of Pratap Singha was an important period of cultural and political transformation in the Ahom kingdom. His reign saw growing interaction with the wider Hindu cultural world, the development of new institutions, expansion towards western Assam and increasing contact with the Koch and Mughal powers.

The Durga Puja story fits into that larger picture.

It is also important to understand what we mean when we call this the 'first Durga Puja in Assam.'

That wording can be misleading.

Durga worship was certainly not new to Assam in the 17th century. The Shakta traditions of Assam are much older, and Kamakhya in particular represents one of the major centres of Goddess worship in South Asia.

The actual historical accounts are talking about the beginning of the present-style tradition of worshipping Durga through an earthen image as a major public or royal festival in the Ahom kingdom.

In other words, Pratap Singha did not introduce Goddess Durga to Assam. Instead, the tradition of making and ceremonially worshipping a clay image of Durga, which he had encountered in the Koch kingdom, was adopted and developed within the Ahom kingdom.

The Koch ruler Nara Narayan (r. 1540–1587) was one of the most powerful rulers of medieval northeastern India. His kingdom had extensive political and cultural connections with Assam and Bengal. By the time of Pratap Singha, these connections had already produced generations of interaction between the Koch and Ahom courts.

According to the historical folk tradition, Pratap Singha's curiosity about the Koch form of Durga Puja eventually resulted in him sending craftsmen to learn how the images were made. And from there, the making of earthen images of Durga became part of the religious landscape of the Ahom kingdom.

One account specifically states that the first such celebration took place at Bhatiapara near Sivasagar, and that this was the first time Durga Puja with an earthen image was celebrated for the wider public in this part of Assam, alongside the older temple-based traditions of Goddess worship.

There is another fascinating detail in the historical tradition, the artisans associated with this development are described as Khanikars of Marangiyal. Which means, this was not simply a matter of importing a finished idol from Koch Bihar. Knowledge of image-making was learned and then incorporated into the local craft tradition.

Over the centuries, Durga Puja developed far beyond that original royal setting.

Today, it is celebrated across Assam by communities of many different backgrounds. From the huge celebrations of Guwahati and Silchar to the traditional pujas of Upper Assam, the festival has become deeply woven into the cultural life of the state.

And that makes the old Bhatiapara story especially beautiful.

A tradition that once travelled between neighbouring medieval kingdoms through diplomats, craftsmen and cultural exchange eventually became one of the most recognisable festivals of modern Assam.

So when we see a Durga idol being shaped from clay during Puja season, there is a fascinating piece of Ahom history behind that tradition.

Pratap Singha heard about the magnificent Durga Puja of the Koch kingdom. He wanted his own kingdom to learn the craft. Artisans were sent to Cooch Behar, they learned the art of making earthen images, and the tradition was subsequently established at Bhatiapara near Sivasagar.

And that is one of the many examples of how Assam's religious culture was shaped not only by its own ancient traditions, but also through centuries of interaction with neighbouring kingdoms and communities.

Happy Durga Puja in advance!

Source:

• E. A. Gait, A History of Assam.

• Assam Buranji.

• H. K. Barpujari (ed.), The Comprehensive History of Assam.

• Benudhar Sarma's historical account.

An article on the history of Durga Puja in Assam: https://aknandy.wordpress.com/2016/10/07/durga-puja-in-assam/

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So guys as you can see , i have posted the pictures of translation of a verse in the bhagavad gita which technically is the 13.12 verse according to gita press tatvavivechani but is 13.13 verse of the iskcon commentary ,

The main doubt i am having is about the translation of the ending part of the last line which has been translated differently in english in both the commentaries.

In the gita press one, it was translated as neither sat nor asat which means neither being nor non being or you can neither existence nor non existentence

But in iskcon version , it is translated as cause and effect.

So what is right and what is wrong i am confused

I also cross checked with the shankara bhashya and in that too the words are translated as existence and non existentence,

So in conclusion the iskcon commentary is kinda contradicting both the shankara bhashya and gita press tatvavivechani commentary.

I am not making allegations or anything just pointing this out , again i am just a teenager who got interested in gita , so i would ask all the iskcon followers of the sub to kinda explain how this happened

Because differences in interpretation of the verse is understandable, but differences in translation is a little bit problematic

I came across of Advaitha Vedantha and found myself feeling that it is the answer for the universe, then why not everyone is following or acknowledging it. Im trying to learn and understand it’s criticisms.

But this is my understanding-upto questions.

No one feels comfortable discussing this-so reddit is the only go to place.