Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975)

This is quite an outstanding book. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan was an erudite person and the philosopher President of India.
This book consists of four lectures that he delivered on various aspects of Hinduism. His learning comes through easily, as well as his balanced view of life. As a proud Hindu, he does tend to praise Hindu philosophy, and there is much that we must admire in original Hindu thought.

However, as he also states, much of the original thought has been corrupted. This is a show more statement of fact, but he does not offer us a way forward. He can't.

Read the book slowly. Keep it aside and come back to it again. Refer to it from time to time. This is an excellent book. show less

In this book, Dr. Radhakrishnan, the greatest interpreter of Indian philosophy, examines Indian culture as a whole. He does this from various angles including the religious and the scientific, the mystic and the mundane.

With inimitable felicity and vigour of style he brings together scattered institutions and ideas, whether literary or political, social, religious or economic: and conclusively shows how these have made the sort of nation that India is today. Contemporary savants like show more Vivekananda, Gandhi and Nehru were guided by the same beacon-light of tradition. It is only Dr. Radhakrishnan who could have made this storehouse of knowledge and experience available to the common reader as to the close student. Between the covers of this book the author has given us a compact study of India's rich cultural heritage which is as profound as it is meaningful and thorough. show less

This is a learned book and the author discusses a great variety of religious and philosophical ideas, indian and western, ancient and modern. But I'm not sure what he is really trying to say. He insinuates that indian ideas may have influenced the beginnings of western mysticism and at times he seems to be trying to validate the mystical awe of hinduism as a path toward peace and understanding. But all of it remains much too vague to be interesting.

This is a very thick book with comprehensive commentary on each verse and a great introduction. I highly recommend reading the introduction before delving into the Upanishads. The sanskrit text is presented in Latin transliteration -- I found this very useful. Once I gathered from the reading what are the basic sanskrit terms for major concepts I could always look at the transliteration if I wanted to clarify the translated text. The translation tries to be as literal as possible without show more loosing the meaning. I find that good. Another good thing about this translation is that of the translated Upanishads no passages are skipped.

In many other translations the passages that are thought by the translator to be "irrelevant" to the Western reader are often skipped. I would rather have the version where I have the option of deciding what is relevant and what is not. show less