Sanatana Dharma & Information Technology
I happened to meet an interesting person who is a specialist in the domain of IT. From the many different topics we discussed, an interesting one about Hinduism came out. He began to relate Hinduism with terminologies commonly used in Information Technology. The interesting talk that we had is gladly being presented here. For those who feel the terms to be Greek and Latin, please check the end of this article for an amateur’s definitions about them. You can read this article first and later re-read it with those derivations and appreciate how well it matches 
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I had this thought about Hinduism, although might sound funny at first, its matching terminology with that we have in IT. It is so wonderful how they conceived such great thoughts so long ago and formulated a system (Dharma) which can be both the oldest and the newest, all at the same time.
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￫ Sounds interesting.
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Yeah, see here, we talk about Fault Tolerance a lot. I think Hinduism has built in Fault-Tolerance. By saying this, I don’t literally mean that the system (Hinduism) has failures as in IT term which means that it continues to run even when some part of the system fails. But how it continues to run even when it is faced acute threat from external sources, I meant.
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As you may know, Hinduism faced times where in its people were threatened to be killed or forcibly got converted if they wish to live. Even then, it survived through the constant appearance of preceptors who rise from time to time and by those honest common-men and women who incessantly followed through however little in number, which is phenomenal.
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￫ Hmm!
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It has RAID built-in, which means its ideals and philosophies are distributed across various means (levels) which can be recovered even if its lost.
(eg) have you read Siddha’s songs that deliver deeper meaning when looked deeper yet providing simple truths and analogies from the surface? If you read it plainly, it does not seem to contain anything in depth, but if you know the inner meaning, it leaves you awestruck.
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￫ Another example is the rangoli’s that we put in front of our houses. They are remarkable symbols of energy, as said by one of my Reiki master.
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Built in backup. The Vedas are a perfect example. They are NOT books, they were NOT written, but were perceived and realized by sages. They say that one who is good at this science can actually listen to the vedic verses even now, which are in the ether (cloud computing! – available in the cloud, at all times – hey, don’t make fun of me, but I find this whole thing very interesting). It was Sage Vishwamithra who said that the universe is reverberating with the sound OM and it is said that one can hear it during their advancement in meditation.
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￫ No, no! Please go on, I find it interesting too.
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Extensive support – here too, we get exceptional support from various sources, Parents to be the foremost, followed closely by the Guru, and with such a massive awakening of Hindus initiated by greatest men like Adi Shankaracharya, Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, Swami Vivekananda, our Saint of Kanchi (Paramacharya), Sri Ramana, The Buddha, (..and he goes on naming the great souls of India which will require another long endless post so I present just a few of their names here). What marvelous souls are they? They came in for the salvation of the poor and they lived only for that. They provided support to the downtrodden masses like anything. I sometimes feel very primitive and tiny before the compassion and knowledge they all had! (he keeps his head down, in deep thinking…and in a while…) – Hmm..!
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These souls put forth greatest truths in such simple terms and they marvelously have interwoven them in our day to day practices. Have you ever wondered why we show camphor to our Gods?
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￫ Yeah sort of, but I would love to hear it from you.
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(smiles) You too are a perfect IT guy, who says ‘I don’t know’ in polished terms. The camphor represents our ego. When we burn it, we get to see our soul. This is why they show arathi in temples to the Murthy, who is dark (like the soul is behind the dark veil) to tell us ‘burn thy ego to witness thy self’
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Image Courtesy – Flickr
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￫ Whoa, that’s a wonderful thought. I use to think why these people burn camphor making the whole place stained black etc. Hmm…I feel I am so primitive now!
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It is scalable, meaning it has place for everything, everyone and continues to grow more. Great thinker, philosopher, saint, blind-folded follower of rituals, superstitious (their superstitions are derived out of the ignorance but not from the system), everyone has their place here. More scientific revelations are paving more clarity to the followers accelerating growth. Have you checked SSRF and IISH? They come up with excellent articles on meditation, chanting and they urge you to study the Sanatana Dharma, question it and understand it, so as to follow through, thoroughly.
 Based on requirements (individuals who question everything can follow the Gnana Yoga, ones who are devoted can follow Bhakti yoga and the likewise), one can choose the path that suits them. Sanatana Dharma does not expect the same coat to be fit in every Tom Dick and Harry. We are different and so is our perception, style and level of maturity. Fascinating too is that even the atheists do have a part. They are the ones who follow the stronger ‘Nethi Bhava’, which is negating the non-real by saying ‘not this, not this’ till they find the absolute truth. This falls under the broader category of Gnana Yoga, yoga of discrimination.
To sum up, I would say, Sanatana Dharma (aka Hinduism as it is commonly misinterpreted) is the perfect, state-of-the-art, Open Source system ever. If we think of copyrighting the whole lot of truths laid down by Sanatana Dharma, its unimaginable since the very foundation of our human evolution, like Indus Valley Civilization and the Vedic period, seems to have erupted from this! The truth is laid down before you. You are free to test it, question it and validate it, and realize yourself. Sometimes it is modified by people to suit their comfort also (a not-so-great part however). By open source, I just mean the extensive source of knowledge is available to rich and poor alike. This is a system that seems to have benefited the poor more than the rich. I think India as a whole must start its Open Source methodology to solve its current problems.
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￫ This is a marvelous analogy. Thank you for sharing it with me. It was wonderful listening to you about it.
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I am not sure if you’re thinking ‘this guy’s system (pointing his head), must have crashed’ but I enjoyed chatting with you too!
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Terminologies and their IT derivations:
Fault Tolerance – the design which enables a system to continue operation, even at a possibly reduced level, rather than failing completely when some part of the system fails.
RAID – Redundant Array of Independent (as opposed to inexpensive, which is matching too) Disks. It is a storage technology that combines multiple disk drive components into a logical unit. Data is distributed across the drives in one of several ways called “RAID levels”, depending on what level of redundancy and performance (via parallel communication) is required.
Backup – It simply means to have a safe copy of your data that you find important. It is usually stored elsewhere, like in an external hard disks, internet (SkyDrive from Microsoft) and the likewise.
Scalable – how well a system enables addition or growth, like adding more hardware to an existing setup.
Open Source – is a philosophy or pragmatic methodology that promotes free redistribution and access to an end product’s design and implementation details, the product is free to be used (like free food)
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