Key Points
Greater value was placed on immortal ideas (sanatan dharma) that all matter is impermanent and happiness lies beyond material attachment...
In Buddhist lore, Prince Sidhartha of Kapilavastu sees dead, diseased, old people around him and realises that nothing lasts forever, and the horror of impermanence makes him turn into an ascetic and find the path that earns him the status of the Buddha..
Human lifespan lasted as long as Indra's blink, Indra's lifespan was Brahma's blink, Brahma's lifespan was Vishnu's blink, Vishnu's lifespan was Shiva's blink, and thus mathematically the idea of infinity (ananta) was conflated with immortality (amrita)...
Four hundred years ago, taking 'amrit' became part of the initiation ceremony of the Khalsa Sikhs, acknowledging the immortality and formlessness (nirakar) of the divine..
Secular politicians find their spiritual guide in ideologies like Marxism, Liberalism, Post-structuralism, nurtured in academic institutions, which function like monasteries of yore, spewing out immortal truths that rely on facts and logic...
