The Other Side of the Coin

[renuka]

Share:

Facebook X (Twitter) LinkedIn WhatsApp Email Share Link

Lets explore the Other Side of the Coin.

1)Why were the Asuras always trying to stop Rishis doing Yagnas?

It was made to seem as if the Asuras hated Rishis and Yagnas without a proper explanation and the poor little Asuras were always killed off.

What was the true story?

Was it that there was an on going differences of opinion between Rishis and some other clan who did not believe in rituals?

Were the Asuras a clan that relied more on analysis than merely following rituals?

Why was Lord Rama too arrow friendly and finished off Asuras as ordered by Vishwamitra?

Why didnt Lord Rama decide to speak to the Asuras to find out what caused the differences of opinion?

From stories we read there seems to be hardly any dealings with the Asuras..its just encounter and shoot at sight order.

Why? Could it be a very primitive scenario where warring tribes just attacked each other and did not know what diplomacy meant?

There is so much left unanswered.

What beats me is how come no Guru ji wants to answer these questions?

Everyone just expects us to think of God Triumphs over Evil and break into a frenzy without hearing the Other Side of the Coin.

So does a coin have value if only one side is given importance?

We need to toss it to know!

 

[auh]

Asura or Rakshasa?

 

[renuka]

Asura or Rakshasa?

That we have to ask Janaki Ji cos she wrote well about the differences between an Asura and Rakshas.

Anyway I guess in Ramayan the word Rakshasa were used often...and Lord Rama killed Rakshasa as per instructed by Vishu mitra.

 

[JR]

Was it that there was an on going differences of opinion between Rishis and some other clan who did not believe in rituals?

Were the Asuras a clan that relied more on analysis than merely following rituals?

Why was Lord Rama too arrow friendly and finished off Asuras as ordered by Vishwamitra?

Why didnt Lord Rama decide to speak to the Asuras to find out what caused the differences of opinion?

Throughout our legend, all devatas have killed asuras... even Murugan has killed many asuras including Soorapadman and Lord Shiva has killed Tripurasura. It is not that only Rama killed.

If the asuras were in 'talking terms', surely the benevolent devas would have heard their story. But that not being the case, the only course of action was to kill the asuras.

Let us assume, for example, that asuras were such "great souls" that believed in "analysis" and not in "yagyas", still asuras had no right to harass the devas for 'their belief'. Everyone is entitled to believe in whatever they want, and thus the devas and the rishis had all the right to believe in god and perform yagyas peacefully which is what they did. And the asuras had no right to harass the devas to the point of mutilating and killing them just because 'their opinions' differed from that of the rishis!

So only after seeing this did Rama kill the asuras. When in Dandakavana, Rama sees so many rishis being reduced to pathetic state of existence, having survived great assaults from the "asuras" that Rama vouched to kill these asuras!

I thought all this is self-explanatory that we do not need any guruji tell us the above explanation.... right? ;-)

 

[prasad1]

In Zoroastrian culture which is contemporary of Hindu vedic Culture.
Both Teaching agrees that Ahura/Asura and Daeva/Deva both were Celestial Beings and later one of the group would then be casted out.
For Hinduism, Deva remained Gods & Asura were they casted out group [Demons] becoz of their greediness and wildness. On the Other Hand, Zoroastrianism Ahura was the God and the Daevas were casted out becoz of choosing LIE as their companion and thus bringing evil thoughts in Humans.

 

[renuka]

Throughout our legend, all devatas have killed asuras... even Murugan has killed many asuras including Soorapadman and Lord Shiva has killed Tripurasura. It is not that only Rama killed.

If the asuras were in 'talking terms', surely the benevolent devas would have heard their story. But that not being the case, the only course of action was to kill the asuras.

Let us assume, for example, that asuras were such "great souls" that believed in "analysis" and not in "yagyas", still asuras had no right to harass the devas for 'their belief'. Everyone is entitled to believe in whatever they want, and thus the devas and the rishis had all the right to believe in god and perform yagyas peacefully which is what they did. And the asuras had no right to harass the devas to the point of mutilating and killing them just because 'their opinions' differed from that of the rishis!

So only after seeing this did Rama kill the asuras. When in Dandakavana, Rama sees so many rishis being reduced to pathetic state of existence, having survived great assaults from the "asuras" that Rama vouched to kill these asuras!

I thought all this is self-explanatory that we do not need any guruji tell us the above explanation.... right? ;-)

Yes Asuras/Rakshasa were always killed by the Avatars, Lord Muruga,Durga etc..

But why were the Asuras/Rakshasa always fighting with the Rishis?

Were the Asuras/Rakshasa(A &R) concerned about the environment and did not want a haze to be caused by an overdose of smoke due to Yagnas?

It just seems to me that there has to be a reason why A&R did not get along with Rishis.

I get a feeling that A&R could have been following a different "matam" which was not tolerated by the Rishis and a conflict started. We have no idea who started the conflict? We are made to believe that the A&R were trouble causers but who knows if we heared their side of the story they would sing:

We didn't start the fire,
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning.
We didn't start the fire,
No we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it.


Anyway it was always the Rishis who had the fire burning.So who started the Fire?LOL

Since the victor wrote the epics they painted all these A&R in bad light calling them ugly ogres and human flesh eating beings.

Somehow somewhere the story does not jive.

BTW I have to agree with you that its self explanatory..I can see the light now after you brought up some salient points..I finally get to understand that A&R were slandered and made to seem real bad.

You see here in forum itself we have many members who do not really think alike and have opposing views....so therefore various classifications exists like Atheist,Agnostics, Theists and those who do not define themselves anymore.

So many might not really agree with each other and that is how at times conflicts arise.

So I guess differences of opinions and depending who wrote the epic, humans got labelled as Devas,Asuras and Rakshasa and so on and we readers were made to gulp it down without analysis.

Thanks JR.

 

[biswa]

Weren't Asuras just the step brothers of the Devas? How different can they be genetically if they share the same father (Kashyap) and their mothers were sisters (Diti and Aditi).

Something wrong with the gene theory here. The resident geneticists should chime in.

 

[renuka]

Weren't Asuras just the step brothers of the Devas? How different can they be genetically if they share the same father (Kashyap) and their mothers were sisters (Diti and Aditi).

Something wrong with the gene theory here. The resident geneticists should chime in.

Good point..(even though I am not the resident geneticists here)

Yes you are right..the Asuras and Suras have the same Gotra.

Their mums were sisters too.

So that means they were half brothers and also cousins(becos of their mum being sisters).

So what happened?

Lets wait for others to comment..the usual story that Diti pressurized Kashyap for copulation at a inauspicious time/overcome by lust..giving birth to Asuras seems to over ride the Vaagmi Gene theory.

According to the Vaagmi Gene theory Sattva Guna is transmitted by some unknown mechanism but if that is true..the Asuras who were conceived in an inauspicious time would still display Sattva Guna but they did not!

So how did time of conception and the lust of Diti affect the transmission of Sattva Guna when Kashyap is Sattvic and a child follows the father's Gotra?

So is the Vaagmi Gene theory flawed or the Asuras were also Sattvic in nature and the stories about them is pure slander?

So what is it now?

 

[Vaagmi]

Good point..(even though I am not the resident geneticists here)

Yes you are right..the Asuras and Suras have the same Gotra.
Their mums were sisters too.
So that means they were half brothers and also cousins(becos of their mum being sisters).
So what happened?
Lets wait for others to comment..the usual story that Diti pressurized Kashyap for copulation at a inauspicious time/overcome by lust..giving birth to Asuras seems to over ride the Vaagmi Gene theory.
According to the Vaagmi Gene theory Sattva Guna is transmitted by some unknown mechanism but if that is true..the Asuras who were conceived in an inauspicious time would still display Sattva Guna but they did not!
So how did time of conception and the lust of Diti affect the transmission of Sattva Guna when Kashyap is Sattvic and a child follows the father's Gotra?
So is the Vaagmi Gene theory flawed or the Asuras were also Sattvic in nature and the stories about them is pure slander?
So what is it now?

Renukaji,


Instead of making fun calling names--vaagmi theory etc.,--it would do a lot of good to you if you can read this:

Culture Is Essential

by Peter J. Richerson and Robert Boyd

An excerpt from Not By Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution

The American South has long been more violent than the North. Colorful descriptions of duels, feuds, bushwhackings, and lynchings feature prominently in visitors’ accounts, newspaper articles, and autobiographies from the eighteenth century onward. Statistics bear out these impressions. For example, over the period 1865–1915, the homicide rate in the South was ten times the current rate for the whole United States, and twice the rate in our most violent cities. Modern homicide statistics tell the same story.
In their book, Culture of Honor, psychologists Richard Nisbett and Dov Cohen argue that the South is more violent than the North because southern people have culturally acquired beliefs about personal honor that are different from their northern counterparts. Southerners, they argue, believe more strongly than Northerners that a person’s reputation is important and worth defending even at great cost. As a consequence, arguments and confrontations that lead to harsh words or minor scuffles in Amherst or Ann Arbor often escalate to lethal violence in Asheville or Austin.
What else could explain these differences? Some feature of the southern environment, such as its greater warmth, could explain why Southerners are more violent. Such hypotheses are plausible, and Nisbett and Cohen are at pains to test them. Northerners and Southerners might differ genetically, but this hypothesis is not very plausible. The settlers of the North and South came mostly from the British Isles and adjacent areas of northwestern Europe. Human populations are quite well mixed on this scale.
Nisbett and Cohen support their hypothesis with an impressive range of evidence. Let’s start with statistical patterns of violence. In the rural and small-town South, murder rates are elevated for arguments among friends and acquaintances, but not for killings committed in the course of other felonies. In other words, in the South men are more likely than Northerners to kill an acquaintance when an argument breaks out in a bar, but they are no more likely to kill the guy behind the counter when they knock off a liquor store. Thus, Southerners seem to be more violent than other Americans only in situations that involve personal honor. Competing hypotheses don’t do so well: neither white per-capita income nor hot climate nor history of slavery explain this variation in homicide.
Differences in what people say about violence also support the “culture of honor” hypothesis. For example, Nisbett and Cohen asked people to read vignettes in which a man’s honor was challenged—sometimes trivially (for example, by insults to his wife), and in other cases seriously (for example, by stealing his wife). Southern respondents were more likely than Northerners to say that violent responses were justified in all cases, and that one would “not be much of a man” unless he responded violently to insults. In the case of more serious affronts, southern respondents were almost twice as likely to say that shooting the perpetrator was justified.
Interestingly, this difference in behavior is not just talk; it can also be observed under the controlled conditions of the psychology laboratory. Working at the University of Michigan, Nisbett and Cohen recruited participants from northern and southern backgrounds, ostensibly to participate in an experiment on perception. As part of the procedure, an experimenter’s confederate bumped some participants and muttered “Asshole!” at them. This insult had very different effects on southern and northern participants, as revealed by the next part of the experiment. Sometime after being bumped, participants encountered another confederate walking toward them down the middle of a narrow hall, setting up a little game of chicken. This confederate, a six-foot, three-inch, 250-pound linebacker on the UM football squad, was much bigger and stronger than any participant, and had been instructed to keep walking until either the participant stepped aside and let him pass or a collision was immanent. Northerners stepped aside when the confederate was six feet away, whether or not they had been insulted. Southerners who had not been insulted stepped aside when they were nine feet away from the confederate, while previously insulted Southerners continued walking until they were just three feet away. Polite, but prepared to be violent, uninsulted Southerners take more care, presumably because they attribute a sense of honor to the football player and are careful not to test it. When their own honor is challenged, however, they are willing to challenge someone at considerable risk to their own safety. These behavioral differences have physiological correlates. In a similar confederate-insulter experiment, Nisbett and Cohen measured levels of two hormones, cortisol and testosterone, in participants before and after they had been insulted. Physiologists know that cortisol levels increase in response to stress, and testosterone levels rise in preparation for violence. Insulted Southerners showed much bigger jumps in cortisol and testosterone than insulted Northerners.
Nisbett and Cohen argue that the difference in beliefs between northern and southern people can be understood in terms of their cultural and economic histories. Scots-Irish livestock herders were the main settlers of the South, while English, German, and Dutch peasant farmers populated the North. States historically have had considerable difficulty imposing the rule of law in the sparsely settled regions where herding is the dominant occupation, and livestock are easy to steal. Hence in herding societies a culture of honor often arises out of necessity as men seek to cultivate reputations for willingly resorting to violence as a deterrent to theft and other predatory behavior. Of course, bad men may also subscribe to the same code, the better to intimidate their victims. As this arms race escalates, arguments over trivial acts can rapidly get out of hand if a man thinks his honor is at stake. This account is supported by the fact that Southern white homicide rates are unusually high in poor regions with low population density and a historically weak presence of state institutions, not in the richer, more densely settled, historically slave-plantation districts. In such an environment the Scots-Irish honor system remained adaptive until recent times.
This fascinating study illustrates the two main points we want to make in this book.
Culture is crucial for understanding human behavior. People acquire beliefs and values from the people around them, and you can’t explain human behavior without taking this reality into account. Murder is more common in the South than in the North. If Nisbett and Cohen are right, this difference can’t be explained in terms of contemporary economics, climate, or any other external factor. Their explanation is that people in the South have acquired a complex set of beliefs and attitudes about personal honor that make them more polite, but also more quick to take offense than people in the North. This complex persists because the beliefs of one generation are learned by the next. This is not an isolated example. We will present several other similar well-studied examples demonstrating that culture plays an important role in human behavior. These are only the tip of the iceberg—a complete scholarly rehearsal of the evidence would try the patience of all but the most dedicated reader. Culturally acquired ideas are crucially important for explaining a wide range of human behavior—opinions, beliefs, and attitudes, habits of thought, language, artistic styles, tools and technology, and social rules and political institutions.
Culture is part of biology. An insult that has trivial effects in a Northerner sets off a cascade of physiological changes in a southern male that prepare him to harm the insulter and cope with the likelihood that the insulter is prepared to retaliate violently. This example is merely one strand in a skein of connections that enmesh culturally acquired information in other aspects of human biology. Much evidence suggests that we have an evolved psychology that shapes what we learn and how we think, and that this in turn influences the kind of beliefs and attitudes that spread and persist. Theories that ignore these connections cannot adequately account for much of human behavior. At the same time, culture and cultural change cannot be understood solely in terms of innate psychology. Culture affects the success and survival of individuals and groups; as a result, some cultural variants spread and others diminish, leading to evolutionary processes that are every bit as real and important as those that shape genetic variation. These culturally evolved environments then affect which genes are favored by natural selection. Over the evolutionary long haul, culture has shaped our innate psychology as much as the other way around.
Few who have thought much about the problem would dispute either of these claims in principle. Beliefs and practices that we learn from one another are clearly important, and like all human behavior, culture must in some way be rooted in human biology. However, in practicemost social scientists ignore at least one of them. Some scholars, including most economists, many psychologists, and many social scientists influenced by evolutionary biology, place little emphasis on culture as a cause of human behavior. Others, especially anthropologists, sociologists, and historians, stress the importance of culture and institutions in shaping human affairs, but usually fail to consider their connection to biology. The success of all these disciplines suggests that many questions can be answered by ignoring culture or its connection to biology. However, the most fundamental questions of how humans came to be the kind of animal we are canonly be answered by a theory in which culture has its proper role andin which it is intimately intertwined with other aspects of human biology. In this book we outline such a theory.
Culture can’t be understood without population thinking

Eminent biologist Ernst Mayr has argued that “population thinking” was Charles Darwin’s key contribution to biology. Before Darwin, people thought of species as essential, unchanging types, like geometric figures and chemical elements. Darwin saw that species were populations of organisms that carried a variable pool of inherited information through time. To explain the properties of a species, biologists had to understand how the day-to-day events in the lives of individuals shape this pool of information, causing some variant members of the species to persist and spread, and others to diminish. Darwin famously argued that when individuals carrying some variants were more likely to survive or have more offspring, these would spread through a process of natural selection. Less famously, he also thought that beneficial behaviors and morphologies acquired during an individual’s lifetime were transmitted to the offspring, and that this process, which he called the “inherited effects of use and disuse,” also shaped which variants were present. We now know that the latter process is unimportant in organic evolution, and that many processes Darwin never dreamed of are important in molding populations, including mutation, segregation, recombination, genetic drift, gene conversion, and meiotic drive. Nonetheless, modern biology is fundamentally Darwinian, because its explanations of evolution are rooted in population thinking; and if through some miracle of cloning Darwin were to be resurrected from his grave in Westminster Abbey, we think that he would be quite happy with the state of the science he launched.
Population thinking is the core of the theory of culture we defend in this book. First of all, let’s be clear about what we mean by culture:
Culture is information capable of affecting individuals’ behavior that they acquire from other members of their species through teaching, imitation, and other forms of social transmission.

This is only the introduction part of what they have to say. To know more you do not have to go to University of California, LA. It is enough if you use Google search facility with some intelligence inherited from your forefather's genes. Then you will understand where from you got your intelligence. LOL

 

[renuka]

Renukaji,


Instead of making fun calling names--vaagmi theory etc.,--it would do a lot of good to you if you can read this:

. Then you will understand where from you got your intelligence. LOL

Dear Vaagmi Ji,

Why are you making fun of your own Theory?LOL

Didnt I always say that you might have a point?


BTW so you actually think I am intelligent? Thanks yaar.

My dad and mum are both very intelligent

So I got my ability from them.

Why do I need to Google search that?LOL

 

[Vaagmi]

Dear Vaagmi Ji,
Why are you making fun of your own Theory?LOL
Didnt I always say that you might have a point?
BTW so you actually think I am intelligent? Thanks yaar.
My dad and mum are both very intelligent
So I got my ability from them.
Why do I need to Google search that?LOL

I do consider you to be intelligent.
That is why I read you fully and reply.
I am glad that you got it from your parents.
That proves a point.
Thank you.

 

[biswa]

So I still did not get an answer to why Asuras did not get sattva guna from their genes, that mathematically should be at least 75% same as the Devas. The only gene theory explanation I can think of is the time of conception issue. Maybe at that time some special gamma rays hit the earth to mutate Kashyap's genes in his reproductive cells from the sattvic state to the Asura state.

If we don't agree with this explanation, then maybe we should accept that genes are not a major factor in sattvic behavior.

 

[biswa]

Or alternatively we could say, to hell with gene theory. It is so because the puranas say so.

 

[Janaki Jambunathan]

Lets explore the Other Side of the Coin.

1)Why were the Asuras always trying to stop Rishis doing Yagnas?

It was made to seem as if the Asuras hated Rishis and Yagnas without a proper explanation and the poor little Asuras were always killed off.

What was the true story?

Was it that there was an on going differences of opinion between Rishis and some other clan who did not believe in rituals?

Were the Asuras a clan that relied more on analysis than merely following rituals?

Why was Lord Rama too arrow friendly and finished off Asuras as ordered by Vishwamitra?

Why didnt Lord Rama decide to speak to the Asuras to find out what caused the differences of opinion?

From stories we read there seems to be hardly any dealings with the Asuras..its just encounter and shoot at sight order.

Why? Could it be a very primitive scenario where warring tribes just attacked each other and did not know what diplomacy meant?

There is so much left unanswered.

What beats me is how come no Guru ji wants to answer these questions?

Everyone just expects us to think of God Triumphs over Evil and break into a frenzy without hearing the Other Side of the Coin.

So does a coin have value if only one side is given importance?

We need to toss it to know!

The other side you can see in the book in the link - reason for Return of Ravana! Drag your mouse on to the head of Ravana on the cover of the book . Then click on the sample reading, you may have answers

ASURA TALES OF THE VANQUISHED : THE STORY OF RAVANA AND HIS PEOPLE (English) - Buy ASURA TALES OF THE VANQUISHED : THE STORY OF RAVANA AND HIS PEOPLE (English) by Anand Neelakantan Online at Best Prices in India - Flipkart.com

 

[renuka]

Thanks JJ ji

 

[renuka]

So I still did not get an answer to why Asuras did not get sattva guna from their genes, that mathematically should be at least 75% same as the Devas. The only gene theory explanation I can think of is the time of conception issue. Maybe at that time some special gamma rays hit the earth to mutate Kashyap's genes in his reproductive cells from the sattvic state to the Asura state.

If we don't agree with this explanation, then maybe we should accept that genes are not a major factor in sattvic behavior.

yes..you are right..if the gene theory holds good the only explanation would be Kashyap being exposed to gamma rays or some other radioactive hazards.

Now for that we need to know the original Sattva gene sequence which the originator of this theory has yet to come up with. Only with the isolation of the Sattva Gene we would be able to prove a genetic mutation.