That in the Martyā Which is Amṛta: a Dialog with Ramchandra Gandhi
This philosophical meditation, which deals with death as question, presence, and even teacher, begins with Ramchandra Gandhi's (RCG's) penetrating essay On Meriting Death.' What does it mean to merit' death? To provide an answer, I travel through RCG's corpus, in dialog wi...
Main Author: | |
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Format: | Electronic Article |
Language: | English |
Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
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Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
Published: |
Springer Netherlands
[2018]
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In: |
Sophia
Year: 2018, Volume: 57, Issue: 3, Pages: 389-404 |
RelBib Classification: | BK Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism TK Recent history VA Philosophy |
Further subjects: | B
Daya Krishna
B Meriting death B Death B Ramchandra Gandhi B Deathlessness |
Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) |
Summary: | This philosophical meditation, which deals with death as question, presence, and even teacher, begins with Ramchandra Gandhi's (RCG's) penetrating essay On Meriting Death.' What does it mean to merit' death? To provide an answer, I travel through RCG's corpus, in dialog with contemporary theorists such as Sri Aurobindo, Daya Krishna, and Mukund Lath. RCG implies that the question about meriting' death, and life, is not and cannot be personal' or isolated'. For X to die, is for his close and distant samāj a matter of losing him and living without him. Hence meriting death, as also life, is a joint venture which involves deep understanding regarding non-isolation as the heart of the human situation. RCG's creative thinking, or svarāj in ideas, reaches its peak when he dares to offer an answer of his own to the piercing question kim āscaryam, what is amazing?' raised in the Yakṣa-prasna episode of the Mahābhārata. For RCG, the heart of the matter is not the ungraspability' of one's unavoidable death, or the perennial search for permanence' in vain, but our failure to perceive that in the martyā which is amṛta,' i.e., a sense of solidarity in the face of death, connecting I and Thou,' which he derives from the icchā mṛtyu of his grandfather, the famous Mahatma. |
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ISSN: | 1873-930X |
Contains: | Enthalten in: Sophia
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Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1007/s11841-018-0680-7 |