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Comment by sidm83 | Hacker News Reader

Having been very much from the modernist camp, a few years ago I read some Norse mythology followed by some Greek. Whatever I knew of Indian mythology was mostly through festivals, stories told by elders during childhood and some children's books. Norse felt pretty much tribal in comparison and Greek was a bit better than Norse, still it felt short of childhood memories. So I started to dig up more about Indian, and boy it took me a while in wikipedia figuring out the chronology and even the different kinds of literature that existed, a real rabbit hole. I have just about started out and got a long way to go.

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Someone making it easier for the current educated english speaking Indian to know about their history and culture is a guy called Jaggi Vasudev also known to his fans as Sadhguru.

His organisation Isha has 2 ashrams, one in Missippi, US and a bigger one in Coimbatore, India.

Seems to have quite the following as well as is evident by some of the discussions from diverse[1] set of people

1. https://www.youtube.com/user/sadhguru/videos

Not him please. Even otherwise I feel not wise to follow a single guru if your interests are more academic otherwise it generally leads to a more cultish experience. There is no single canonical way to 'enlightenment' here, each one can find their own.

What I am doing - starting with Upanishads (aka Vedanta, literally the end part of Vedas, where you get the gist), there are 10 major ones which come with commentary by Adi Shankaracharya. Remaining are not minor in the sense of importance, just that you get to them once you grasp the major ones first as they come without the authoritative commentary. They are overall philosophical in nature.

Next come the Puranas. Again there are about 8-10 of these. These contain most of the stories or the 'mythology' which we heard in our childhood and read in the books.

There are many more but I guess I'll start here and see where it takes me.

I am currently reading the Aitareya Upanishad with commentary by Swami Chinmayananda (founder Chinmaya Mission), but you can find multiple well rated ones online. For Puranas too there are multiple options though I don't think one could go wrong with the translations by Dr Bibek Debroy (leading Economist and Chairman of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister. Look up his limericks on twitter) who has also translated the Ramayana and only the third person to translate the unabridged version of the Mahabharata.

Otherwise if you can read Hindi and manage to find physical or electronic versions, would recommend Gita Press versions. English ones often come with a multitude of pronunciation symbols (due to the limits of English) which unaccustomed readers may find a bit irritating.

> What I am doing - starting with Upanishads (aka Vedanta, literally the end part of Vedas, where you get the gist), there are 10 major ones which come with commentary by Adi Shankaracharya. Remaining are not minor in the sense of importance, just that you get to them once you grasp the major ones first as they come without the authoritative commentary. They are overall philosophical in nature.

Next come the Puranas. Again there are about 8-10 of these. These contain most of the stories or the 'mythology' which we heard in our childhood and read in the books.

Could you please point to the resources and translations you are using?

A while back I started reading the Bhagavata Purana and boy does it have some good stories. Do you have any favorites or recommendations for old Indian texts?

I feel like Sadhguru is the exact opposite of the person you would want to use as an example in this context.

Please do read about cults before engaging with such nonsense. This is the most famous one and probably an inspiration for copycats:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajneesh

Read the part about the number of Rolls Royces of the "holy" man.

have you read his books? people come out with totally different impression once they do so.

Osho was brilliant. His YouTube videos are great, too! He never took himself as seriously as people think -- too devoted to playfulness and a huge proponent of independent thinking.

Please, not him. Guy has a real shady history. He killed his wife and claimed she attained moksha or something.

The guy is a cult leader who espouses “enlightened” nonsense and claims he has magical powers.

Heads up: he makes really funny claims like "I can make drinking water into poison just by looking at it"

Ref: https://youtu.be/6C1p4HUHlfE?t=105 (1:45 mark)

Some more data points on this one: https://www.google.com/search?q=sadhguru+cult

yeah do your own research, trust only your own experiences

Didn't your high school assign you the book by Edith Hamilton on Greek Mythology?

Not in India. We didn't even study Indian mythology!

OK. I thought you were in USA.

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