"K. Loganathan" <ulagankmy@yahoo.com wrote:

Having soaked in Saiva Metaphysics my metaphysical understanding is quite different from the West even with that of Heidegger who comes close to the Asian in recovering the concers with Being which I understand as ways of Being in the world, ie., EXISTENCE. However I read Heideger some time ago and I could feel there are similarites and at the same time important differcnes with Saivism which I ought to bring out and show that Heidegger is wrong in being a Atheist.

GCM: This is put far too bluntly. The whole issue revolves around what atheism is and how it ACTUALLY deals with the word, not concept, "God" since obviously there cannot be an 'atheism' without a 'God' to deny, and, vice versa, how "God" might most profitably be 'defined' by atheist terms and atheist thinking. Hemming shows the issues are deeply intwined. These same issues MAY have arisen between Charvaka (sp?) and religious philosophies in India. Also, Buddhist, in controversy with Shankara, called him a nihilist and he in turn called them nihilists. There is AMBLE justification for both. To a Westerner, the whole issue of Buddhism and Hinduism is to dress real atheism and mortality in nice clothes that promises to anybody the particular thing they want, i. e., divinity, immortality, without ever bluntly saying -- like one would say "This car is going 62 km. p. hr."-- either there is no God and no after life or that there IS a God and and afterlife. Everyone is appeased, eve ryone gets what they want. But the different expressions of belief are tremendous from people praying to Buddha just like a Christian for certain things to happen or questioning the justice of Buddha because there is so much evil in the world to the practical atheism of the Ch'an Buddhist or the equivocations of Shankara about jivanmukta in this life. To one Hindu reincarnation is the greatest of blessings because one can correct mistakes in a past life or it is the greatest possible of all curses. Do not claim ignorence or misunderstanding of "proper" concepts. This is this actual practice of actual people and that is where all tradition is derived from, the bottom up not the preferred and personally chosen top down. Tradition is primordial power over everything and is understanding itself just as in Heidegger and Hume. Corrections are made latter by each person through criticism of internal consistency from their own personal point of view only!!! Tradition exists only as receiv ed and obviously each person, again, receives a different tradition. That's why Hume was such a wonderful person and Heidegger an ass-hole of a Nazi.

K. Loganathan: Actually the matter is that there is ALREADY an understanding of BEING (God) and what requires is NOT proving but rather clarifying so that the tacit understanding we already have become apparopriated as concious or clear understanding, the TeLlaRivu or MaaNarivu as they say in Tamil. My understaing of the truth of God is already there in my understanding and what I have to do is become CLEAR of it.

In this connection Heideger isolating the Greek "aletheia" and giving the meaning as “to be disclosing, to remove the world from concealedness and coveredness” are quite relevant.

First some philological commemns( that you can throw away if you want): ATTENTION DR. SCULT AND DR. ELDRED AND JUD EVANS:

This word goes to the very roots of the beginning of cicviization and the 'al' at least is related to SumeroTamil eri, el, ellu and which also occur in Akkadian as 'ellu" and all meaning fire, sun, luminance etc. This may also be related Plato's Er, the region of LIGHT that stands as the destination of those in the cave.

Thus 'al-thei-a' ( el-tii-ya) is the realm of bright anf burning light and as applied to the mental processes then it is means being is state of Clear Understanding an understanding that breeds from within itslef the apodictic certainty.

Thus it also means LEARNING where learing is understood as the Destruction of Ignorance, a DARKNESS already there in the understanding and becuase of which we say ' I don't know, not certain, not clear" etc. This is the same as removing the world from its concealedness and covered-upness that the Saivites call 'tirootakam' , casting a screen across so that there is invisiblity. So aletheia can also mean destroying the invisiblity so that visiblity or DARSANA comes to prevail.

Now having grasped this much it would follow that there must be something for which things were invisible but now eminently visible, something that enjoys the DARSANA, the SEEING what could not be seen before.

The Saivites conclude that is in the anma, the self and the NOT simply the da-sein and so forth as Heidegger would conclude.

The next issue is : Can the anma on it's own accord destroy the invisibility and secure the visibility or Darsana?

No it cannot - if it can then it will be like raising ourself up by pulling one's own hair. For the anmas to GAIN the higher visions where there is LESS concealment and in that also devloping spiritually so that there is existential pains on the whole, there must another within the self and which is PERFECT Pure Wholly Blissful and so forth. This is the BEING or God , that which founds Being of the anmas, and where Being is also ways of Being in the the world - always 'as-a" e. g as a king, a priest , a philosopher etc.

Loga