“In Western thought, the body holds the soul; in Indian thought, the soul holds the body.”

On Hinduism (2000)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "In Western thought, the body holds the soul; in Indian thought, the soul holds the body." by Ram Swarup?

Ram Swarup photo

Ram Swarup64

Indian historian 1920–1998

Related quotes

“Having left us with thought (not a soul), and extension (not a body), [Descartes] does not know how to account for the union of soul and body.”

Étienne Gilson (1884–1978) French historian and philosopher

Methodical Realism

“Because the purity of the eye of the soul is obscured and weighed down by the corrupt body, all the powers of this rational soul born in man are laid hold of by the mass of the body and cannot act and so in a way are asleep.”

Robert Grosseteste (1175–1253) English bishop and philosopher

Accordingly, when in the process of time the senses act through many interactions of sense with sensible things, the reasoning is awakened mixed with these very sensible things and is borne along in the senses to the sensible things as in a ship. But the functioning reason begins to divide and separately consider what in sense were confused. ...But the reasoning does not know this to be actually universal except after it has made this abstraction from many singulars, and has reached one and the same universal by its judgement taken from many singulars.
Commentarius in Posteriorum Analyticorum Libros (c. 1217-1220)

“Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Variant: There are thoughts which are prayers. There are moments when, whatever the posture of the body, the soul is on its knees.

“To smell to a turf of fresh earth is wholesome for the body; no less are thoughts of mortality cordial to the soul.”

Thomas Fuller (1608–1661) English churchman and historian

The Virtuous Lady.
The Holy State and the Profane State (1642)

“I thought that intimacy with another soul was the closest I could ever come to leaving my body.”

Douglas Coupland book Life After God

Life After God (1994)

“Begin to see yourself as a soul with a body rather than a body with a soul.”

Wayne W. Dyer (1940–2015) American writer

“Dignity is as essential to human life as water, food, and oxygen. The stubborn retention of it, even in the face of extreme physical hardship, can hold a man's soul in his body long past the point at which the body should have surrendered it.”

Laura Hillenbrand book Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

Source: Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

“I'm not a body with a soul, I'm a soul that has a visible part called the body.”

Paulo Coelho book Eleven Minutes

Source: Eleven Minutes

“As the separation of the soul from the body is the death of the body, so the separation of God from the soul is the death of the soul. And this death of the soul is the true death.”

Gregory Palamas (1296–1359) Monk and archbishop

Source: To the Most Reverend Nun Xenia (c. 1344), p. 296

“Saying that what we call our “selves” consist only of our bodies and that reason, soul, and love arise only from the body, is like saying that what we call our body is equivalent to the food that feeds the body. It is true that my body is only made up of digested food and that my body would not exist without food, but my body is not the same as food. Food is what the body needs for life, but it is not the body itself. The same thing is true of my soul. It is true that without my body there would not be that which I call my soul, but my soul is not my body. The soul may need the body, but the body is not the soul.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Source: Path of Life (1909), p. 12

Related topics