Amit Majmudar @AmitMajmudar Twitter profile

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

16 days

Pixels to pixels, dust to dust

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

24 days

Borges describes an occasion when someone asked him about the “use” of poetry

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

2 months

Stereotypes of past Brahmins as bookish, constantly memorizing Sanskrit, ritualistic turn out to be false once you study actual British census data. Over 50% tilled the soil; thousands left the Raj as indentured laborers. They were also listed among the "martial races of India."

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

7 months

Robert Frost is unimpressed by your erudition

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

1 year

AP world history textbook, United States, 2023

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

2 months

India, said Naipaul, has “an infinite capacity for being plundered.”

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

1 year

Upanishads, Hindu epics, etc were written with no notion of any rival religion--or of any "other" religion at all. no attempt to set up a collective immune system or establish group identity. contrast the first commandment & verses against nonbelievers. explains a lot.

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

9 months

Tulsidasa (an Indian poet, contemporary with Shakespeare) founded a wrestling school that still exists to this day in the holy city of Varanasi Like Plato, Tulsidasa didn't believe physical fitness and spiritual fitness were separate things

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

8 months

wasn’t going to write about this…but then the folks over @timesofindia reached out Is it possible, I wondered, to zoom out and place this event in context, and write something clear-eyed and meaningful about it? Here it is. Let me know what you think

Why consecration of Ayodhya temple is a truly new historical moment

The Hagia Sophia, once a cathedral, now a mosque, was built on the foundation of a pagan temple. Early Christians, a roughly 10% minority in the late Roman Empire, seized power and eventually...

timesofindia.indiatimes.com

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

2 months

Indians love Niagara Falls more than any other group on earth including the natives who worshipped it

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

1 month

Ireland provided half the white troops in British India (and a quarter of the officers in the British military overall). Include the Scots and you realize India, in one sense, was colonized by the colonized. The Raj was a release valve for the UK’s prospectless young men.

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

4 months

What does it mean to "restore" a long-ruined temple, especially in a place like Kashmir? Here's my meditation on the past, present, and future of the Hindu temple--and the fraught relationship between archaeological preservation and religious revival...

Restoring the Sun God In Kashmir - Open The Magazine

IF RELIGION ITSELF were to vanish tonight, it would reappear at dawn. The sun has inspired worship for centuries, across civilisations, the obvious objective correlative of the divine. The Rig Veda...

openthemagazine.com

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

1 month

Borges’s sonnet about the origin of the sonnet

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

3 months

“Decolonization” is impossible. There’s no reversing the arrow of time, no purification process & no purity. Absorb the strengths & slough the weaknesses that made them the colonizers & you the colonized in the first place, & give thanks your ancestral tradition survived at all.

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

2 months

According to Naipaul, in the 1970s urbane Indians were still using antiquated British terms like “By Jove!”

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

1 year

I wrote for @Openthemag about what I call the Great Disillusionment--how and why Western intellectuals fell out of love with Hinduism, and what can be done about it. Towards the end, when speaking of a renaissance, I was thinking of artists like @abhiart

The Great Disillusionment - Open The Magazine

MANY PEOPLE KNOW that J Robert Oppenheimer quoted the Gita’s eleventh chapter on seeing the first atomic bomb go off—even more people than before, now that a major film has been released about him....

openthemagazine.com

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

1 year

the arc of history is long, but it bends toward what fresh hell is this

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

6 months

Frost’s most famous poem in his own hand, 1923

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

6 months

Based on my studies of classical paganism and its destruction, linking the priesthood to the State is a disastrous move. Historically, this religion in particular has survived due to its decentralized nature. Hinduism must not give its enemies a single head to cut off.

Prasanna Viswanathan

@prasannavishy

6 months

Indian Purohit-Archaka Service (I.P-A.S): An Idea Whose Time Has Come? Dharmic civil servants can create a vibrant and distinguished assembly of priests that reflect the rich tapestry of India’s social fabric @arvindneela

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

4 months

@SuhagAShukla I wouldn’t celebrate just yet. They have installed their heirs in high places

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

16 days

just learned the old English word for comedian was “laughtersmith”

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

7 months

Some poets on here were curious as to what constitutes the quintessential sonnethood of the sonnet. Turns out the Buddha has an opinion on this matter

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

2 months

@omarali50 Right. Mangal Pandey who set off 1857 was a Brahmin for example. Recent Indian rhetoric regarding this group has wandered far afield from the motley reality

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

2 months

Vijayanagar did not innovate, says Naipaul—its architecture & sculpture deliberately resurrected 500 year old precedents—much like modern Hindu temple architecture that models itself on the distant past. Much like Renaissance art mimicking the classical world. Revival is survival

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

7 months

The Vedic civilization left no temples because the sacred Agni (Fire) was a portable sacred space. Sometimes archaeologists point out the absence of temple-like structures in the IVC sites but they may not realize what that implies

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

1 year

China was producing painting at this level back in the late 1200s—astonishing. Hybrid Daoist-Buddhist art portraying Maitreya and other deities

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

10 months

What if the greatest epic poem of all time were so vast it would take years to work through it? What if it were written in a challenging language, thousands of years ago? What if modern retellings always shortchanged it in some way, either whitewashing its ambiguities--or

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

6 months

several free verse poems recently accepted by various poetry journals. secretly tho it's iambic pentameter with a few irregular linebreaks & substitutions thrown in there to make it look contemporary. STEALTH MODE

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

5 months

"In Cambodia, lidar [laser mapping] helped locate the ruins of the legendary city Mahendraparvata, soon to become a national park, and revealed that Angkor Wat was not an isolated ceremonial center but a sprawling metropolis the size of Berlin."

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

1 month

V S Naipaul, in a 1951 letter, exhorting his father to write

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

5 months

Out here in semi rural Ohio (12 mins from my house) the South Indian community is building a massive full scale replica of this temple

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

1 year

@LuizCr2 Glad to hear it’s not approved by the AP board itself, but still: ugh

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

3 months

The name MAJMUDAR literally translates to 'record keeper' or 'archivist', from the Arabic language majmua (مجموع/মজমুয়া) 'collection' + the Persian suffix -dar (دار/দার) 'possessor'.

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

10 months

often I think about Angkor Wat in Cambodia.... this energetic intricacy was one of the peaks of human art. Ravana in his chariot on the battlefield

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

1 year

Indian historians who rely on the whole "It wasn't in any Sanskrit sources, so it never really happened" school of politically motivated whitewashing might do well to recall that no Sanskrit source mentions the invasion of Alexander the Great, either. did that never happen, too?

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

1 year

Beautiful—Tulsidasa’s Hanuman Chalisa in one image! Dear Twitter, does anyone here who the artist is? I want to post this with the appropriate and much-deserved credit

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

6 months

Me and @A_B_Majmudar back in 2011!

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

1 year

Excellent lineup of poets in the first edition of Revel, a new journal edited by Atsuro Riley

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

1 year

IT IS REAL

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

1 month

Danced to bhangra music in the jaan at a recent wedding in Michigan. And you thought all I could do was write?

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

1 month

For continuing to exist

shri shri peabo gingrich

@pranahaha

1 month

Revenge for what?

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

5 months

Early Cavafy, riffing on a theme from the Gita, translated by @DAMendelsohnNYC

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

5 months

Map of Roman roads / Map of cerebral arteries

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

6 months

A single thread on x from @vjgtweets is worth the entire op-ed output of well known columnists Follow him for cleareyed takes on issues facing the Hindu diaspora, Indian civilization and the propaganda wars against it, and the occasional foray into basketball & classical Greek

Vishal Ganesan

@vjgtweets

6 months

This is now a specific genre of criticism: Specifically, with respect to movies from/about/or set in India, the position that the inclusion of hindu themes/imagery is inherently hindutva-adjacent. We saw the same brain-dead critique with RRR. 1/n

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

1 month

Olympic medalist describes how the Gita fosters focus by foreclosing future-oriented thought (worry, uncertainty) and centering the mind on the action at hand. predisposes to entering the "flow state" common to artistic & athletic performance.

Sachin Padha

@sachin_padha

1 month

Manu Bhaker after winning the Bronze Medal

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

5 months

It’s happened twice now, one convo w/ @vjgtweets and one w/ @vik1857 – literary festival records a live convo but then refuses to release it online (unlike other guests’) bc of India/Hinduism related ideas we think are obvious but they think are dangerous. Total narrative control.

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

20 days

I medaled! No, not in the Olympics…. TWIN A placed as a finalist in the Indie Book Awards Memoir category. Many thanks to @SlantBooks @Gregory_Wolfe ! Get your copy here:

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

1 month

Something mysterious is happening in my reading life right now. Randomly selected or even browsed books are referring to one another, this is happening several times a day. Uncanny convergences far beyond the workings of chance. Something is about to happen.

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

1 year

Progress report

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

11 months

THE ADVENTURES BEGIN!

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

8 months

Sanskrit “janma” and Greek “genesis” have a common Proto Indo European root, *gen-, related to birth/origin. In 1911 the same root gave birth to the modern word “gene”

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

5 months

Babur conquered India using European artillery he got third-hand from the Ottomans--the First Battle of Panipat had nothing to do with "prowess," just a classic case of taking advanced military tech into a virgin environment

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

1 year

@raagatodi many paths were always present, but I am saying they were *written* without the notion of rival/other religion tbh whether those rishis had a sense of "religion" at all (the way we use the English word today) remains something of a mystery to me, it is by no means certain

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

1 year

after extensive study years ago I concluded that the Sanskrit word "dharma" is interchangeable with no English word (not "religion," not "righteousness," not "duty") and when translating the Gita (Godsong, 2018) I didn't translate that word but used it as its own separate thing

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

1 year

India is in for a treat! Another beautiful cover from @PenguinIndia . I can only hope the text lives up to it!

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

2 months

Naipaul predicted, fifty years ago, that with the decline of British prestige, the Indian elites would next begin to mimic either the Russians or the Americans. We can see how that played out

Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

2 months

According to Naipaul, in the 1970s urbane Indians were still using antiquated British terms like “By Jove!”

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

1 year

Been doing this for 20+ years but ngl this was a new one

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

8 months

@TiwariNivedita this video shows us his ego-dissolution during his creative flow state--hence generations of the best Hindu temple and murti sculptors have been anonymous--unlike the great European sculptors (going back to Phidias) they did not sign their own transient names to the work

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

1 year

From Christian Wiman’s new book

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

1 year

Going to write an essay on the spiritual dangers of the proliferation of images of ourselves

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

2 months

What is said of the Mahabharata in the usual descriptions--how it is very long, and full of digressions and treatises--always leave out how it is very tightly plotted, with everything interlinked across those vast stretches: vows & curses are fulfilled, identities revealed, etc.

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

10 months

METER WAS CREATED at the time of Creation itself, says the Rg Veda And very early at that: Meter was created before the sun, the moon, or even people Because metrical speech was the only kind acceptable to the ears of the Gods You cannot communicate with the Gods in prose

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

1 year

On this Hanuman Jayanti, I am thrilled to announce a new book: The Later Adventures of Hanuman, forthcoming soon from @PenguinIndia . I have imagined a whole new mythological cycle for Hanuman—after Rama enters the Sarayu river, and the immortal Monkey is all alone….

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

1 month

Hong Kong, Mumbai, Singapore—astonishing how many major world cities were seeded in unpromising backwaters by the British Empire. Truly a pollinator nation

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

1 year

Twin A unboxed!!! Thank you to my family @A_B_Majmudar , and to @SlantBooks @Gregory_Wolfe and everyone who will read this

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

1 year

Black Avatar and Other Essays has arrived!!!! A thousand thanks to Nicola Mason, @LisaAmpleman , and @acre_books !

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

6 months

“Grendel and his mother were indigenous Britons, and Beowulf was a Danish imperialist whose legacy must be purged” may sound like a stretch, and just plain silly—but that is the level of discourse about Hindu epics that gets platformed in universities. I wish I were exaggerating.

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

7 months

“A coolheaded musical sun god; a balanced hexameter dream.” New poem in @32poems —in a meter rarely seen in contemporary English language verse….

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

1 year

One of the Ramayana's main themes is a rather unusual one in epic literature--intramarital true love. Valmiki emphasizes the parted couple's grief. In the Iliad, Menelaus seeks to recapture Helen, but neither the husband nor the wife actually miss each other.

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

1 month

Read this. Worth many a conventionally published think piece. @vjgtweets is the sharpest analyst of the Indian American predicament out there. A Naipaul for the social media age, as it were. Honored to call this guy a friend 🫡

Vishal Ganesan

@vjgtweets

1 month

@MythiliSk Yes, I read your piece, and I've read countless others like it over the last decade. That Indian Americans are a "model minority" is not a myth, it's a statement of fact that is apparent to anyone who has taken even a cursory look at the community's social/economic outcomes in

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

7 months

Wilfrid Owen is a really good poet--so much more than the one poem everyone anthologizes going to post some lesser known ones as I discover them for now, this beautiful haunting string of consonantal semirhymes....

Strange Meeting

Poems, readings, poetry news and the entire 110-year archive of POETRY magazine.

www.poetryfoundation.org

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

26 days

Major essay soon to drop folks

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

1 year

Daughter continuing the family tradition, clearly…🥹

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

8 months

Robert Frost on the poet’s relationship to tradition: your first duty is to deny your ancestors

Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

8 months

Reading Octavio Paz’s account of his visit to Robert Frost in 1945

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

1 year

A distinctive trait of the Iliad, compared to epics from other traditions, is exacting anatomical descriptions of battle wounds--where the spear went in, where it came out. connects to the same culture's uniquely detailed sculptures of human bodies. You don't find this elsewhere.

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

1 year

Such a generous appreciation from Joe Hoover, S.J., the poetry editor of @americamag , a magazine which has welcomed poems for 114 years. This truly brightened my day—so unexpected, so kind. 🙏🏽✍🏼

Why America magazine still publishes poetry

The poetry of Amit Majmudar, whom America has published 10 times in the past few years, moves easily between the mystical and the ordinary, the one rooted in the other.

www.americamagazine.org

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

5 months

Me.

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

1 year

@KahwaJay

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

7 months

Interestingly at the time of the Gita, only 3 Vedas existed. The Atharva Veda was unknown to Krishna, Rama, and the sages of the Upanishads. Reminds us that the most sacred and canonical things exist as living things in constant evolution and accretion

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

9 months

earliest strata of Valmiki’s Ramayana (earlier of the 2 Indian epics) dates roughly the same as Homer Yet after the conquest of Lanka, there is no enslavement of the vanquished, no plundering. Rama puts Ravana’s brother on the throne A different ideal of victory

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

5 months

Sanskrit first names that are so commonplace and used unthinkingly often have profound, abstract meanings, like Amit—Limitless, Ananth—Endless, Rupa—Form

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

3 months

Haven’t been to all the great places in North America yet, but so far the Canadian Rockies have given me the deepest feeling of a sacred landscape. I even saw ancient faces in the mountainsides, as here. (You may not see them, but I do.)

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

4 months

Even so the yogi goes through the pleasures and sufferings of samsara

Learn Something

@cooltechtipz

4 months

A fighter pilot came to an amusement park with his family

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Amit Majmudar

@AmitMajmudar

14 days

Shri Krishna on the nature of sacred offerings. From “Nature/Worship: Dharmic Environmentalism in a Time of Climate Change,” in Black Avatar ( @acre_books , 2023), available in the US here:

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