why on earth are you dwelling so heavily upon the history behind the usage if a trem , when I have allready pointed out to you thay I am not talking about Hinduism or Hindus I am talking about Vedic culture ....?
Because Vedic culture can be understood historically and is thus ambiguous, since Vedic culture which produced the Vedas is nothing like that today:
"In an Asian context, the Western-influenced neo-Vedanta of Indians such as Rammohan Roy, Mahatma Gandhi, Vivekananda, Aurobindo and Radhakrishnan has played a seminal role in the construction of contemporary notions of Hinduism as a universal world religion. This influence is so prevalent that today what most Religious Education courses mean by ‘Hinduism’ is a colonially filtered and retrospective Vedanticization of Indian religion."
(ibid)
you may wish to ascribe to a ''new''understanding of religion that seperates it from culture , but those actualy practicing it might not welcome this outside interferance
1) Lot's of people don't like how others describe their beliefs. I am interested in accuracy.
2) Actually, what's "new" is the understanding of religion as something that one can refer to at least partially in terms of doctrine and/or a belief-system. Throughout most history, "religion" was a set of practices that permeated all aspects of life, social functions, politics, etc. It was something one did. When Herodotus wished to described other religions, he not only lacked a word for it but for him it was merely which gods were worshiped by which practices. The same was true elsewhere, including much of the "East".
, .....furthermore you are quoting one mans thoughts on the subject this is hardly representative of an entire nation or body of people, ...
I'm quoting one man's thoughts because I chose to select that particular source rather than the many others I listed (and those were just the monographs/volumes; most such research exists in studies in academic journals). I can quote from many, many, many others and get the same, as this is a matter of history that has a very direct and traceable tradition from Rammohan Roy to Vivekananda and Radhakrishnan and beyond. For example:
"Sometime between 1789 and 1832, the British perception of Hindu religious traditions underwent a seismic shift...In the shadows and under the auspices of the emerging colonial state, Hindus and the colonial state, Hindus and non-Hindus alike etched the contours of the modern world religion we now routinely call “Hinduism” and its attendant identities."
Pennington, B. K. (2005).
Was Hinduism Invented? Britons, Indians, and the Colonial Construction of Religion. Oxford University Press.
Nor are sources limited to Hinduism nor even to religion:
"For example, the claim that specific gymnastic
āsana sequences taught by certain postural schools popular in the West today are enumerated in the
Yajur and
Ṛg Vedas is simply untenable from a historical or philological point of view. This claim is made by K. Pattabhi Jois about the
sūryanamaskār sequences in his Ashtanga Vinyasa system. Assertions such as this are made with some frequency in popular yoga discourse, and there is no question of accepting them as statements of historical or philological fact. However, the practices themselves cannot be written off as lacking interest or validity merely on the grounds of their late accession to the postural vocabulary of yoga or because of their divergence from the 'traditional yoga' invoked on their behalf. Geoffrey Samuel has recently insisted that 'modern yoga has become a significant part of contemporary western practices of bodily cultivation, and it should be judged in its own terms, not in terms of its closeness to some presumably more authentic Indian practice'"
Singleton, M. (2010).
Yoga body: The origins of modern posture practice. Oxford University Press.
"The publication of Hanegraaff's 1996 work on New Age religion has been especially felicitous for the purposes of the present research because many of the esoteric currents that contributed to the emergence of this type of religiosity are the same as those that contributed to the formation of Neo-Vedantic esotericism, and thus of Modern Yoga. Indeed, it is precisely in Modern Yoga that we find a substantial overlap of New Age and Neo-Vedantic beliefs and practices. As such, Modern Yoga became a live link between East and West: a bridge through which personal, cultural, institutional and other exchanges could take place."
De Michelis, E., & Michelis, E. (2004).
A history of modern yoga: Patanjali and western esotericism. Continuum.
Finally, this is not limited to India and indeed when we examine scholarship on many would-be "ancient traditions" we not only find them to be less ancient than thought, but we find our good friend Chopra misrepresenting them:
"There remains a crucial difference, however,
between the New Age philosophies of Chopra and Russell and those of the Buddhist tradition. Unlike the New Age emphasis upon cultivating the self and individualising responsibility, in Buddhist thought the idea of an autonomous individual self (Sanskrit: atman) is precisely the problem to be overcome. One of the most distinctive features of the Buddha’s teaching was his comprehensive rejection of the idea of a permanent self or soul." (emphasis added)
Carrette, J. R., & King, R. (2005).
Selling spirituality: The silent takeover of religion. Routledge.
And that's just comparing some of Chopra's stated claims to representing ancient Buddhist wisdom. In fact, he's represents the exploitation and commercialization of spirituality and religion:
"Traditional religious appeals to the importance of ‘community’ and social connectedness are here ‘rebranded’ in terms of the desirability of
working for the corporate community or
buying more of this or that product. Such a move allows
advocates of capitalist spirituality to use the traditional language of ‘belonging’ but this time orient it towards the need for employees to align themselves with the corporate mission statements of their employers, or to reinforce the ideology of consumerism. Examples of this trend include
Deepak Chopra, Osho Rajneesh and a variety of authors" (emphasis added)
(ibid)
Refer to Eastern writings and lives of those who shaped many a modern Eastern tradition. In fact, some of them are simply collections writings (or collections with commentary) by Eastern authors showing clear Western influences (in more ways than one) and how they shaped modern traditions. Others are expositions on such figures and their writings, e.g.,:
Hatcher, B. A. (2008).
Bourgeois Hinduism, or the Faith of the Modern Vedantists: Rare Discourses from Early Colonial Bengal. Oxford University Press.
And, of course, much of this research comes from India and is not written by Westerners. Finally, we find in earlier (and in some modern, but nothing like before) Eastern scholarship the embrace of the Western (mis)conceptions of the 'mystic East', which was part of went into fomenting many modern traditions:
"Although introduced through colonial means, these perspectives left their trace on modern Indian religion and scholarship. Figures such as Vivekananda embraced the stereotype of the mystical East to counter western attitudes of superiority: as the more spiritual culture, India provided the cure for what ails the technologically advanced but spiritually bereft West."
Roberts, M. V. (2010). Power, Gender, and the Classification of a Kashmir Śaiva ‘Mystic’.
The Journal of Hindu Studies,
3(3), 279-297.
...and far from being the start of these processes.
there is every possibility that I understand better than you
That is true. After all, most of my training in Eastern practices was Japanese and Chinese, and I have only learned from, never studied under, any of the many modern gurus/Swamis/mystics that base their beliefs and practices on Vedic texts. I have relied mostly from reading the primary and secondary sources. However, even if I am completely wrong about modern Hindu, Buddhist, and other traditions that doesn't change the fact that Deepak Chopra is a sell-out liar, nor the fact that I absolutely
do no more than you about his misuse of physics.
@Spiny Norman?