Sublime

The Sufi is “not Christian or Jew or Muslim,” Rumi wrote. He is not of “any religion or cultural system … not from the East or the West, not out of the ocean or up from the ground, not natural or ethereal, not composed of elements at all … not an entity of this world or the next.” He is, in Ishan Kaiser’s description, “the actual temple of the fire

சேமக்கலம்

associated with a specific religious tradition, the religion of Śiva-Śakti, also known as Shaivism, the dominant religion of India throughout the medieval period.

“The word swaraj is a sacred word,” he said, “a Vedic word, meaning self-rule and self-restraint, and not freedom from all restraint which ‘independence’ often means.”

"[Swaraj] is loosely defined as self-rule but it actually goes much deeper," says Kothari, who has written extensively on Swaraj and the ecological crisis. "It means my own autonomy, self-reliance, self-sufficiency, my independence, both as an individual and as a community. But it's not the American notion of individualism that I can

A. T. Ariyaratane, a Buddhist elder, who is considered to be the Gandhi of Sri Lanka.

Seen in this light, the samaya vow in Vajrayana Buddhism represents a vital safeguard against the misuse of the teachings and the ultimate harm and destruction that this will inevitably bring.

We don’t experience the world fully unless we are willing to give everything away. Samaya means not holding anything back, not preparing our escape route, not looking for alternatives, not thinking that there is ample time to do things later.

The dramatic way in which both Hindus and Muslims had rallied to the Mughal capital at the outbreak of the Uprising had demonstrated the degree to which the mystique of the dynasty was still very much alive more than a century after the Mughals had ceased to exercise any real political, economic or military power.