It’s easy to adopt your culture’s assumptions about what a narrative is and not look beyond them. Western assumptions about what narratives are go way
Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia intensely focused on maintaining the sanctity of the state’s territory and displaying it in spectacular temples and palaces. This focus on
Western scientists in the 16th and 17th centuries increasingly conceived space as a void that objects move around in. At the same time, architects were
Lifeforms in India proliferate and surround you, from elephants to mosquitoes and lots of species of ants. I brought a box of sweets to an
Ancient Chinese thinkers developed ideas of a universe that’s holistic, highly resonant, politically centered, and within the human scale. Confucianism is an excellent example. But
I once drove a friend from Bengaluru (then called Bangalore) and his mother up to San Francisco to sightsee. As a conservative elderly Hindu, she
Many ancient Indians believed that clouds are elephants’ celestial relatives. They actually called an elephant “Cloud” (Megha) when they honored it. According to Heinrich Zimmer,
Many fans of Indian spiritual traditions admire them for teaching that all is one. All beings are unified. We all came from the source and
Before postmodern literary criticism emerged, it was common for Westerners to think that a literary work is a distinct entity, with a beginning, climax, and
The Rigveda is one of the world’s most influential texts, since Indian culture has deep roots in it. It’s also one of the most dense