Darśana

How Indian traditions have reasoned about reality, self, ethics, liberation, and the divine — including streams that reject the Veda and streams outside school lists.

Scope

• Āstika school lineages and their internal debates
• Nāstika and non-Vedic currents: Cārvāka, Buddhist, Jain, Ājīvika
• Vedānta lineages; bhakti north and south
• Sufi and Indo-Islamic spiritual currents; Sikh thought; tribal cosmologies
• Ethical vocabularies (dharma, karma, mokṣa, ahiṃsā) as concepts with histories

Out of scope / common mistakes

• One school as “what Hinduism really is”
• Faith claims dressed as laboratory results
• Debunk-tone toward living belief
• Flattening bhakti, Sufi, or tribal worlds into footnotes

Care rules

Present a school from within before comparing. Faith and origin claims in depth work carry Traditional attribution — full respect, not empirical costume. No medical or “quantum mysticism” overlays. Plurality is accuracy.

Load-bearing concepts

Concept	Orientation	Depth later when…
Darśana	“Way of seeing” / philosophical system	Tenet lists, dating of layers
Āstika / nāstika	Pedagogical grouping — not a moral ranking	Boundary cases, modern misuse
Dharma	Multi-valent: duty, law, order, ethics	Any single “true meaning” claim
Bhakti	Devotional movements with regional canons	Specific sant, text, or period
Māyā (Advaita)	Technical term inside Vedānta debate	What a given teacher actually claims

Topics we plan to cover

Advaita’s māyā; temple bells for ritual and sound meaning.

• Nyāya and Buddhist epistemology (essay in preparation)