Insights—Lost Art of Vedic Discussions
Channel: Consciousness Research Centre
Date: 2024-03-24

Namaste 🙏 One of the surprising and unexpected things that I learned by reading Shankaracharya's books, especially his commentaries on the Upanishads and Vedanta Sutra or Brahma Sutra, is how to have a discussion.

Now this is one of those funny things, because Shankaracharya never says, “Okay, now I'm going to teach you how to have a discussion.” He *shows* you how to have a discussion, and there are one or two purports where he discusses it a little bit.

And one of the very interesting things he says is that there are basically three kinds of discussions. One kind is of a friendship nature where there's nothing to be lost or gained, no point to be made. It's pure hanging out, pure pleasure. And another kind of discussion is one where one party is trying to defeat or convince or change the behavior of the other. And this he calls contentious discussion.

And then there's a third type of discussion where the participants may take up different points of view and may argue different logical arguments based on evidence, to try to come to the truth. This, he says, is the only type of discussion worth participating in. In other words, a really wise person, a really intelligent person never tries to coerce or defeat another.