Namaste 🙏
This site provides quality assistance towards an in-depth understanding of India's most beautiful offering to the world:
the recognition of the unity of reality as oneself.
This offering is presented by A.K. Aruna, who has invested over forty years learning and crafting the multi-faceted method presented here.
Aruna offers shortcuts and distils the steps for seeking this beauty in the shortest and clearest route available.
Starting from English-only, this method initiates you into the Sanskrit language that envelops the teachings within India's primary sacred texts – the Upaniṣads and the Bhagavad Gītā.
This quickly immerses you in this beauty so you may more easily commit to further developing the clarity needed to approach and best learn from a qualified teacher (guru). It also gives you the keys to discovering who would be the best teacher to assist you.
1. Starting from English, the first two texts presented are the Bhagavad Gītā and the Yoga Sūtras (use 🐭 or 👆 on green things). The first is the all-inclusive scriptural presentation of the beauty of the unified reality. The second is adopted as a very helpful, topic-oriented presentation of the mental preparation needed to thoroughly appreciate this beauty.
2. Next is moving from viewing this beauty via English with its cultural bias of multiplicity and disunity to the original language of these two texts and their sources, the Upaniṣads. To assist in this are a Sanskrit Grammar, Pronunciation Guide, and various dictionaries for the Bhagavad Gītā specifically, and generally for English-to-Sanskrit, for Sanskrit-to-English, and for advanced Sanskrit-to-Sanskrit needed in research and clarification of certain terminologies.
3. The Bhagavad Gītā grammar and commentary is offered as a starting text to learn this language. Why spend time learning childish sentences and vocabulary from a typical grammar book? The real quest here is not the language itself but rather the sacred texts that specifically reveal the mature beauty one is seeking. Of course, most students will still need to find a Sanskrit teacher to guide and assist you.
4. The two texts – Bhagavad Gītā and Yoga Sūtras – themselves are also linked to their sources by quotations from the sacred Upaniṣads. These Upaniṣads also are fully presented with their commentaries by Ādi Śaṅkara, as well as several introductory texts and the Brahma Sūtras that tie all these texts into a coherent understanding of the unified reality as oneself.
As the months and years keep rolling, I will supplement these text that are Sanskrit only with an English rendering of the original works, but not the commentaries which need to be taught. I may also later add other Sanskrit texts. Keep checking back regularly if you are interested.
All of these are freely offered in html scripts that run on any browser from the UpasanaYoga.org website or even downloaded to your local computer to run off-line. The texts are linked to each other so one can thoroughly research the texts or just get immersed into a line of inquiry leading to a beautiful contemplation.
Additionally, for those who like having a book in hand, a few of these are available through print-on-demand services. These include the Bhagavad Gītā in English and the Yoga Sūtras from Amazon worldwide, and the grammar books and Bhagavad Gītā from an online source in India. See the Books link above.
Hariḥ Om,
A.K. Aruna 🙏
July 2018