Bran-wise

All humans are mortal.
Phil is mortal.
Therefore, Phil is a human.

Actually, Phil is a groundhog. (Bennett 2013, 11)

Bran: pieces of grain husk separated from flour after milling. An intact kernel may be good too.

To be bran-wise is to know about husk. To be better wise - to gain gnosis - is to know of content within the bran. Meditation is for that. ◦TM is a researched meditation method that serves many, according to findings.

Learning Sanskrit and getting more bran-wise

The Sanskrit language of Indian philosophy provides a vast and subtly differentiated set of definitions. . . . "The student of Indian philosophy, perhaps more than any other student, greatly benefits" from good explanations of useful Sanskrit terms on the road toward direct "understanding of reality enlightenment", Neal White writes. (In Grimes 2009, 8).

A yoga glossary linked to the yoga pages (see left corner). Or better still, get a Sanskrit-English Dictionary that is about right for your needs. In the course of his studies John Grimes compiled a concise dictionary of Indian philosophy terms, and later expanded it to suit both the scholar and layperson. It became a standard text for college students and post-graduate students of Indian philosophy. Grimes's dictionary is designed for those interested in Indian philosophy in general and in Vedanta in particular, and is referenced. A number of other dictionaries are available too (Grimes 2009, 9, 10)

Learn Vedanta?

Study of the scriptures is fruitless as long as Brahman [God] has not been experienced. And when Brahman has been experienced, it is useless to read the scriptures. [Shankara)

When the Great Reality is not known, the study of the scriptures is fruitless. When the Great Reality is known, the study of the scriptures is also fruitless. [Another translation of it]

For all that, Shankara wrote several works, and commentaries on scriptures.

There are many interpretations of Sanskrit works, and subsequent differing schools of Vedanta. Vernon Katz' book Conversations with Maharishi, Volume 2 (2015) contains insights into the Brahma Sutras. They were delivered were the island of Mallorca and alpine Switzerland and France.

The Brahma Sutras - also known as Vedanta Sutras - are not simple: Different commentators understood it so differently that several Vedanta schools were formed during the centuries, and their differences stemmed from the different understanding of early commentators. [WP, "Vedanta"]

The Brahma Sutras summarise teachings of the Veda over many generations, and also form a "head spring of an ever broadening activity of commentators as well as virtually independent writers" to our days. (Thibaut 1: xii)

And the good thing to bear in mind: Different sorts of corn, different sorts of husk-lore, even though what is inside is much the same. Cores may be digested.

Decent all-round meditation does not call for beliefs, but rather working hypotheses, and may offer many benefits, like Transcendental Meditation.

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Beware of Unfounded Beliefs

Get to the facts. Solve prejudice-caused queries if any, since prejudice and other problems due to indoctrination tend to bind and hem and make fools of dogmatism or blind belief ever so often. How to get to facts? Bo Bennett (2013) offers tall answers, but there is much labour involved for a fact-searcher.

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Debunking a Lot by Reasoning ☼

A belief is defined as the psychological state in which an individual holds a proposition or premise to be true. Beliefs are formed in many different ways, . . . many beliefs are not formed by reason and critical thinking. (2013, 5)

Fallacious reasoning: When an individual is using erroneous thinking (including bypassing reason) in evaluating or creating an argument, claim, proposition, or belief. (2013, 6)

Basing arguments on prospertity is haughty.*

Fallacious arguments and fallacious reasoning are more often probability-based than based on an objective fact. (2013, 10)

Basing arguments on emotion . . . makes communication, cooperation, and prosperity a real challenge. (2013, 7)

Beliefs can often be stated explicitly as beliefs, stated as opinions, implied, or arrogantly stated as fact. (2013, 5) ◇

Trying to debunk one superstitious and/or irrational belief after another . . . is like giving people intellectual fish, rather than teaching them how to intellectually fish for themselves. . . .(2013, ii)

Beliefs can be wonderful . . . Beliefs can be benign . . . Beliefs can also be devastating. Get help to find the truth of many forms of beliefs, by examining fallacious reasoning. (2013, 5)

Expose an irrational belief, keep a person rational for a day. Expose irrational thinking, keep a person rational for a lifetime. (2013, ii)

So: Consider arguments well, hidden or otherwise. ⚴

Wrong Beliefs . . . or Fallacies ☼

The term "fallacy" can be used in many ways, I will be using the term . . . to promote better reasoning. (2013, 6)◇

Arguments are everywhere. . . . Where you find fallacious arguments, you find fallacious reasoning. (2013, 5)

Fallacies are dangerous because they are not always easy to spot, . . . Some, however, are as clearly wrong as a pig roast at a bar mitzvah. (2013, 6)

Fallacies are named and referred to mostly by common usage, namely, the most commonly used name for the fallacy, followed by other names for the fallacy if any. Fallacies go by many different names, and there are varying definitions for the fallacies. (2013, 9, 8)

Factual errors are not fallacies. (2013, 7)

In many cases, fallacies can be committed by either the author of the argument, the audience interpreting the argument - or both the author and the audience. (2013, 7)

So: In an argument lies a dormant claim or more. ◇ ⚴

Arguments Help Little ☼

If the premises are true, then the conclusion must be true. That is what makes an argument deductive. (2013, 4)

One type of erroneous argument is the "Appeal to Authority fallacy." (2013, 6)

An argument is an attempt to persuade someone. Sometimes statements of facts can be considered arguments - or more precisely, made into arguments. (2013, 3, 4)

We just need to be able to recognize arguments when we hear them or make them. (2013, 3)◇

Arguments that are fallacious contain one or more non-factual errors in their form. (2013, 6)

In virtually all situations, what is trying to be passed off as a great argument, might be logically fallacious. (2013, 3)

So: Arguments may be used for fit or unfit persuasion.  ⚴

Establishing Facts ☼

Humans have the capacity to establish and verify facts [and for] many reasons. (2013, 3) ◇

Deduction is a form of reasoning and argument in which the conclusion follows necessarily from the premises. (2013, 4)

An argument is made up of premises and a conclusion. The premises can also be referred to as reasons, supporting evidence, or claims. At times, our examples are just propositions or assertions - a statement to be accepted. (2013, 4)

The truth of the premises give the conclusions. (2013, 11)

So: From what is put forward (premises, assumptions or claims), deductions may follow. Many statements are erroneous.  ⚴

Moral and Humour Hand in Hand

Abraham Masow studied a lot of so-called self-actualising persons, and one of the things that came up, was that they were moral from within, and did not much consider the opinions of many for being that way. He writes: "These individuals are strongly ethical, they have definite moral standards, they do right and do not do wrong. Needless to say, their notions of right and wrong and of good and evil are often not the conventional ones. (Maslow 1989:141)".

Maslow further noted about these outstanding ones:

Their sense of humor is not of the ordinary type. They do not consider funny what the average person considers to be funny. Thus they do not laugh at hostile humor (making people laugh by hurting someone) or superiority humor (laughing at someone else's inferiority) or authority-rebellion humor (the unfunny, Oedipal, or smutty joke). Characteristically what they consider humor is more closely allied to philosophy than to anything else. It may also be called the humor of the real because it consists in large part in poking fun at human beings in general when they are foolish, or forget their place in the universe, or try to be big when they are actually small. This can take the form of poking fun at themselves, but this is not done in any masochistic or clownlike way. . . . Such humor can be very pervasive. (Ibid 141-42)

Genial adaptations can be great too.

As for morality, the Austrian Rudolf Steiner has a say too.

Throughout your training, you must continually increase your moral strength, your inner purity and your power of observation . . . Strive for purity of your moral character. Banish all thought of ever using knowledge gained in this way for dumb personal benefit, as you may gain a trifle power over your fellow-creatures. A rule: For every one step that you take in the pursuit of higher knowledge, take three steps in the perfection of your own character." ( Wisdom of Rudolf Steiner).

One's own, inner morality is to be finely tuned into, he says. Buddha holds adequate morality to be essential in his way too. We start by seeing our bad or little rewarding conduct and stop doing such "plays, including Games." That is what the Five Precepts are for. After we have stopped doing bad, we could do good. Example: Buddha says we should refrain from telling lies. Follow up: speak the truth, speak gently and politely and speak at the right time. Buddha says:

Giving up malicious speech he does not . . . cause variance between people [through it]. . . . his speech is blameless, pleasing to the ear, agreeable, going to the heart . . . he speaks at the right time, what is correct, to the point, about Dhamma [including what is right to do] and about discipline. He speaks words worth being treasured . . . seasonable, reasonable, well defined and to the point. (M. I, 179)

If we are able to live up to it, it may make a difference. We might even be thanked.

In sane, apt yoga, too, there are do's and don'ts of morality to adhere for much the same reasons as Rudolf Steiner is into. Even better, in Yajnavalkya Yoga

There is good faith and bad faith

The Norse teaching poem Havamal says in verse 81: "Praise day at even, a wife when dead, a weapon when tried, a maid when married, ice when it is crossed, and ale when it is drunk." In other words, it could pay to be sparing with praise until "all is finished".

It does not have to be too bad. "Wife or husband, the wisest governs best," is one more idea from Norway. It is a proverb..

Meat on the Bones

Where all think alike, none thinks deeply. - Proverb

Many who are brought up Catholics, think the same way of it. The faith has been decided on by many topdogs, and we find traces of the same mechanisms in Yogananda's church, Self-Realization Fellowship. The difference is that one is old and established, the other is recent.

Blind trust in a fellowship-church, its leaders and holy guidelines - may be fit only if they are worthy of it. Statistics tell of chances, or odds. On a surface level, the odds that a Christian denomination's faith is right, have a link to how many they are in it, as compared to the many billion people on earth. The average odds is - on the surface - less that fifty (3:7) that all Christians have a proper "bottom-faith", whatever that could be - in the light of flourishing forgeries in the early church and gave rise to the gospels and other texts that Christians believe in as gospel truth, more or less.

What is "signed by or promised by God" may be something freakish anyway

The Lord said to Abra(ha)m, "To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi [or river] of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates - the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites.".

Abraham woke up from a dark sleep where God had given him lands, lots of lands, from the Nile to the Euphrate, but neither he nor his descendants by Sarah have got them so far. It has been 2,500 years or so, unless the gift of land was all invented and dreamt up. Why?

The Abraham story cannot be definitively related to any specific time. The patriarchal age, along with the exodus and the period of the judges, is a late literary construct that does not relate to any period in actual history. A common hypothesis among scholars is that it was composed in the early Persian period (late 6th century BCE). (WP, "Abraham")

The folklore figure called "the wandering Jew" might have had better goings if God has been good at keeping his word as recalled after a deep dream , for sure. Now, study the facts - the folklore figure is in part a work of medieval legend, and in part linked to the fate of many Jews in the world since Jerusalem was destroyed by Titus in 70 CE, the Jews were scattered. [◦More]

"Prestige comes from money, far and wide." It may go along with attractive land too. Minding it could even be worth noting well. Then it could come in handy some day - who knows?.

There is a nice alternative to blind faith and blind rejection around, and that is to keep a bit reserve and check as well as can be. Buddha teaches it in the Kalama Sutta. "Those who are outside a lobster pot might be better off than those who enter and seek to get out again in vain - but there are exceptions.

Adi Shankara gives a clue fit for much and repeated meditation: steadfast intent on the Self toward Enlightenment.