Talk:Ramana Maharshi

Jivanmukta

It doesn’t seem appropriate to Wikipedia to make an ‘internal’ claim like this. We can say ‘considered a jivanmukta (profoundly enlightened being) by his followers’ or something similar Harsimaja (talk) 07:47, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

Yoga

@Chiswick Chap: regarding this addition to the lead

Ramana Maharshi /rəˈmʌnə məˈhʌrʃi/ (30 December 1879 – 14 April 1950) was an Indian yoga guru,

References

it's totally WP:UNDUE. Newcombe makes a passing remark to Ramana Maharshi:

Although the physical culture craze of the early 20th century somewhat declined in influence after independence, Indians continued to teach subjects called “yoga” in India and increasingly on the global stage. The idea of receiving spiritual insight through contact with a teacher (guru) is pervasive in Indian culture.79 Many gurus are also understood as yogis, and the spiritual insights they offer are often presented as representing the essence of yoga.
During the 20th century, many different figures gained prominence, attracting devotees and forming both religious and social organizations in their names. In addition to some of the figures mentioned previously, other influential early 20thcentury yoga gurus include Sai Baba of Shirdi (1835–1918),80 Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950),81 Meher Baba (1894–1969), and Sri Anandamayi Maa (1896–1982) (see Figure 2).82

Newcombe refers to Ankur Barua, “The Silences of Ramana Maharshi: Self-Enquiry and Liberation in Sāṁkhya Yoga and Advaita Vedānta,” Religions of South Asia 9.2 (2015): 186–207. I think you'll be hard-pressed to find sources which start with stating that Ramana Maharshi was a yoga-guru, or that his teachings are "representing the essence of yoga"; none of the sources I've read ever does so. And if there's more on this, first it would have to be added to the body of the article, before summarizing it in the WP:LEAD. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 14:55, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

At second thought, when taking yoga as pointing to purusha, pure consciousness c.q. witness-consciousness, and taking into account that later Advaita was infused with yoga-ideas, in {presumed?) contrast to Shankara's classical Advaita, then the notion of Ramana as a 'yoga guru' makes sense. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 18:44, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

Ebert

Regarding this removal of Gabriele Ebert, Ramana Maharshi: His Life, it's one of the better sources on Ramana Maharshi, and on eof the few which go furtehr than mere adoration; Ebert also provides context. She's academically trained, which can be seen in her style of writing. Regarding her book being published via Lulu.com: this is the Further reading-section. As fot the orher references to her: a lot of the publications on Ramana Maharshi are {were) written by devotees, and published via the ashram, that is, kind of self-published. As noted before, her book is one of the better publications, and not the only source used in this article. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 15:26, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

We should not be linking to Lulu, or YouTube, or to similar deprecated sources (Facebook, Twitter, Blogspot, and all the rest). A possible exception is if a professor of Indology has used his or her own blog to say something unique, but frankly if it's at all important they will surely put it in a paper or book so it can be cited properly.

Your frank admission that "most sources on Ramana Maharshi are kind of self-published anyway..." raises the immediate question of notability; we should not be using them for two different reasons - firstly, they're deprecated; and secondly, they're probably closely connected to the ashram and Maharshi so they're most likely WP:PRIMARY. By the way, I hope we don't have a conflict of interest here; if you do have one, such as by being a devotee, please be aware of the cautions around editing on such a subject.

I've had a go at tidying up the worst of the double-sourcing errors, not helped by your instant reversion. Obviously it isn't good for an article to contain a mass of broken sfn links. There are still several links which don't point to any citation. Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:39, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

No, no connection whatsoever to the Ramana-ashram. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 15:56, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

Citation-tag

@Chiswick Chap: it's the citation-tag in the Further reading-section that causes the problems. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 15:32, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

Or does ref= also solve the problem? Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 15:33, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

ref=none disarms the harv links in citation tags. Over to you, I'm off. Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:40, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

Ajativada

@Jhertel: WP:SURPRISE says "use a short phrase or a few words to describe what the link will refer to once it's opened." The phrase "[[Ajativada|no birth or death]] within Self" does exactly that.
In your second edit-summary diff you wrote

Be As You Are p.108:

Q: You seem to be an exponent of ajata doctrine of advaita vedanta.
A: I do not teach only the ajata doctrine. I approve of all schools. The same truth has to be expressed in different ways to suit the capacity of the hearer. The ajata doctrine says, ‘Nothing exists except the one reality. There is no birth or death

Chapter 18 deals with RM's ultimate rejection of reincarnation. I don't see how you can claim that '"no birth or death" cannot refer to ajativada, "as it would be strange if Maharshi followed any doctrine."' And removing links goes against a basic principle of Wikipedia, namely using links to provide more info and context.Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 04:35, 22 October 2023 (UTC)
PS: admittely, at second thought, after reading the source and the whole paragraph again, (this is a doctrine called ajativada) also does the job, though I'd object to the term "doctrine," despite the fact that RM ( or the translator?) uses it here, and instead prefer ", a teaching called [[ajativada]]." Regards, Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 05:13, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

@Joshua Jonathan: Okay, so let me explain a bit more why I did what I did. You do seem to have understood in your last comment, but I feel like explaining to be more sure my point is getting through.

First I just wanted to make the link to ajativada explicit, as we should try to write articles so they have the same content in print and so no information or claims are hidden in links.

But also, I was surprised to even see the link from no birth or death to ajativada when it comes to Maharshi, as a defining characteristic of enlightened people is that they do not follow any doctrines; I see doctrines as antithetic to enlightenment by the very character of enlightenment (doctrines are thought-based, whereas enlightenment is completely beyond thought). You can perhaps use doctrines as stepping stones or tools along the way, but in enlightenment you end up with none. Anyway, this was not central.

I simply made the link explicit, without changing any claim, so the claim could come out in the open. A link is already a claim, although somewhat "hidden" – in this case it said something along the lines of "no birth or death is identical to the doctrine ajativada". So I just explicitly stated that, also so the concept ajativada became explicit for those reading on paper or not hovering over links. I do believe this is in accordance with WP:SURPRISE: To make it very clear where a link leads to. The link text "no birth or death" does not make it clear where the link leads to. WP:SURPRISE says: "Avoid Easter egg links, which require the reader to open them before understanding what's going on. Instead, use a short phrase or a few words to describe what the link will refer to once it's opened." This is what I wanted to do.

The reason I called ajativada a "doctrine" is that that is what the Wikipedia article about ajativada says it is: "Ajātivāda (अजातिवाद) is the fundamental philosophical doctrine of the Advaita Vedanta philosopher Gaudapada". So I simply took our own claim and used it. I don't have much of an opinion about it. I have no problem calling it a teaching too. I do like being consistent, though, so if you believe it is more of a teaching, perhaps you would want to change it in the ajativada article too? But I digress.

In this edit you reverted my edit and said "not exactly what ajativada is". But what you effectively did with that was removing the explicit claim and making it implicit again, while still saying that the now once again implicit claim was not exactly true. So you claimed that "no birth or death is ajativada" (by reinstating the implicit link to ajativada) while at the same time saying that the explicit text was "not exactly what ajativada is". That puzzled me. It's fine to discuss the claims, and that was one of my points by making the claim explicit, but it was strange to me that you just reverted instead of refining – especially because your edit clashed with what you said in your edit summary. Also, I really tried to describe why I made my edit, so it honestly felt a bit rude to me that you just reverted it with a very short text not really explaining why, reinstating something that you now claimed wasn't exactly true. I'd rather have you worked with me at refining, as you could clearly see that I had put some work into it with my explanations and references.

You said "removing links goes against a basic principle of Wikipedia", but I only removed the link in the second step because you yourself said that "no birth or death" was "not exactly what ajativada is". So I trusted your claim and therefore removed the link, as I understood you said the claim implicit in the link really wasn't true. Again I really tried to explain why in the edit summary. Still you just reverted it, and your text ignored my actual reasoning, which was your very own claim, but only addressed my parenthesized further personal experience which backed your claim up but wasn't the main claim.

But I do appreciate your last comment where it does seem like you now understood my point, but just disagreed with the word "doctrine" (which, as I stated, was only copied from our own Wikipedia article about ajativada, where it is called a doctrine).

So, can we agree on making the claim explicit again, removing the link from "no birth or death" (as I still believe that link is an Easter egg link, a surprise link), and moving the link to the addition "(this is a doctrine called ajativada)", but maybe changing it to "(this is related to a doctrine called ajativada)" or "(this is related to a teaching called ajativada)"? That would also put me at ease with not claiming that Maharshi followed a doctrine, but rather that something he said is also stated in the teaching or doctrine of ajativada.

This became a long text, but I just dislike being misunderstood, so I really wanted to explain. Jhertel (talk) 23:19, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

@Jhertel: I think that the idea that "enlightened" people don't follow any "doctrine" is your personal opinion (see Hakuin's rants against silent illumination and pro koan-Zen), but we can agree to make the link explicit again. I'd just put it as "a teaching called ajativada," also given his own reference to it. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 03:28, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

(For some reason I failed to see that comment until now.) That's perfect for me, thanks! And yes, of course that is/was my personal opinion that I wasn't aware wasn't generally agreed upon. You live and learn. 🙂 Jhertel (talk) 15:23, 11 January 2024 (UTC)