Below are quotes and selected short text excerpts written by Dr. Ashok Gangadean covering a range of topics and global issues. The subject of each selection is listed, as is the date (when known).

• Note on "Educational Policy Regarding South Asian Studies"
  (October 12, 2004)
  
  

  "One of the great challenges facing educational policy and practices in our global age is being sensitive to the importance of competence in our discourse and relations across worldviews and cultures. It has become painfully clear that people are raised in more localized worldviews and develop a cultural lens which both enables us to experience our selves and our world, but can also debilitate us and prejudice our perception of those who inhabit very different worlds, and see the world through a different lens. The most profound and chronic forms of violence continue to persist when diverse worldviews meet and collide. At the same time, the collective wisdom of our great cultures has recognized that such dysfunctional patterns inevitably flows from egocentric patterns of life which privilege our own local cultural lens and violently reduces the 'Other' to our particular worldview and terms of reference.

  This wisdom also shows the higher ways of the deep dialogue mentality that can enable us to take a critical step back from reducing the Other to our lens, and enter into a more healthful and mature rational space in which we can encounter the Other with new eyes that allow them to appear as they truly are, and as they see themselves. Nevertheless, our educational policies and practices continue to be dominated by these osbolete and dysfunctional egocentric patterns of mind. And of course this dis–figures and de–forms our relations and encounter with Other cultures, religions, worldviews, forms of life. Needless to say, these dominant egocentric patterns color and distorts our discourse in South Asian Studies, which is especially ironic because the heart of South Asian spirituality focused poignantly on recognizing and overcoming egocentric patterns of conducting our mind and our discourse. For example, the meditative turn taught by Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita, and the Eightfold Path that is the heart of Buddha's Dharma are essentially about the cultivation of this higher form of holistic, dialogic, integral and critical intelligence that is now vital for our cultural sustainability in today's global world."



• Note for the "Global Dialogue Music Series"
  (February 13, 2004)
  
  

  "The Global Dialogue Institute is pleased to inaugurate its 'Global Dialogue Music Series' which is designed to tap the potential and power of Music and the diverse Arts to touch our souls and transform our hearts and minds and bring our people into deeper harmony and mutual respect across the borders of our minds, lives and worldviews. Our Global Dialogue Music Initiative is therefore designed to bring us into deeper encounter with diverse musical traditions in a global context to experience their transformative power, and also to bring these diverse traditions together in mutual encounter to demonstrate the deep–dialogue power of diverse musical languages to flow naturally together in harmony and common ground. In this way this sacred power of music to cross all borders and help us experience its universal language and global power can model the higher esthetic and moral consciousness that is now vital for our co–existence and sustainability in sharing this planet as one human family. While people are lodged in chronic patterns of war and violence our musical traditions nevertheless flow in deep harmony and mutual resonance, and thus can teach us paths to peace. And what better way to inaugurate our initiative than with this celebration of the life of Rukmini Devi which embodies her global power and vision across borders."



• Note on "Picture Me an Enemy"
  (December 25, 2003)
  
  

  "This moving and compelling documentaty focuses on what is perhaps the foremost challenge facing humanity in the 21st Century — the deeply entrenched roots of violence stemming from ethnic, national and ideological identity. This touching person to person relationship between Natasha and Tahija across these borders is a timely reminder of the power of the human spirit to triumph over the destructive forces of ego identities. This important film should be shown in all schools, in fact it should be seen by all who seek to be global citizens and co–create cultures of peace."



• Note on "The Awakening of Global Consciousness"
  (October 30, 2003)
  
  

  "Perhaps the single most powerful event facing humanity today is a great awakening on a planetary scale that has been millennia in the making. We humans are in the midst of a profound advance as a species to a higher form of global consciousness that has been emerging across cultures, religions and worldviews through the centuries. This awakening of global consciousness is nothing less than a shift, a maturation, from more egocentric patterns of life to a higher form of integral and dialogic patterns of life. In this drama it is seen that egocentric patterns of minding and living directly lead to fragmentation, alienation and human pathologies at the individual and collective level. And the key to ending violence between cultures and advancing to global cultures of peace, nonviolence and mutual flourishing is our individual and collective advance as beings who live in patterns of deep dialogue. We suggest that this transition as a species has arrived at critical turning point and that the single most important event now facing the human condition is this advance to awakened global consciousness and our conscious evolution into dialogic patterns of life which bring forth our true moral, rational and spiritual nature as a species. This is a key to our sustainability. This is our moment of choice."



• Note on "The Natya Academy"
  (May l7, 2003)
  
  

  "One of the greatest needs on the planet today is the urgency of helping people awaken to the living realities of different worlds – different cultures, religions, traditions, worldviews. And the artforms of music and dance are powerful potential forces in bringing diverse worlds together in the deepest forms of global dialogue in which we can genuinely encounter different cultural worlds and also experience deeper common ground between our cultures and traditions. We know that Bharata Natyam is a magnificent classical dance form that flows at the heart of Indian spirituality and encodes its classical culture, and yet also expresses a universal grammar that crosses all borders and has the capacity to reach and touch people on a global scale. The Natya Academy is a treasure in our midst because it is not only keeping this wonderful artform alive in its most authentic form, but is serving the common good in the Philadelphia region by reaching out to an ever widening circle of citizens to build sacred bridges across cultures east and west. The main credit for this, of course, goes to the founding teacher, Shoba Sharma, who is herself a gifted and visionary artist of the highest order. Especially noteworthy is her capacity to teach her artform with power, integrity and a sensitivity to being true to the purest classical traditions. At the same time she is gifted in her ability to make this artform accessible to people in our Indian communities as well as audiences and students coming from diverse cultural orientations. As you can see for yourselves in the performances of her students, Shoba is able to instill a deep love respect in her students for Bharata Natyam and to bring forth their potential through rigorous discipline and skillful teaching. I encourage you to get involved in Natya and support the work of the Academy in any way you can."



• Note on "The Cosmic Light"
  (August 13, 2002)
  
  

  "'The Cosmic Light' is a breath of fresh air for the dramatically expanding community of global wisdom seekers...It opens higher space for an unfolding deep dialogue at the converging frontiers of science, spirituality, global ethics and cultural life. In opening literary space beyond older disciplinary, literary and cultural borders it breaks new ground at the horizon of emerging cosmic awareness and planetary awakening."



• Note on "The Perennial Quest for the Fundamental Unifying and Universal Truth"
  (April 22, Year Unknown)
  
  

  "The founders of the great religious and spiritual traditions, like Buddha, Moses, Jesus, Lao Tzu, Confucius, and others have recognized that the Infinite Primal Form has a lawlike structure that at once shapes the laws of nature and issues in moral and spiritual laws which have universal jurisdiction over all human life. Whether we speak of the Laws of God, the Mandate of Heaven or the Universal Dharma it is clear that these diverse formulations have a common source in the primal pattern.

  Similarly, the greatest philosophical minds have recognized that there must be a Universal Form whence all possible forms arise. The traditions of First Philosophy were born in the intuition that there must be a First Principle that generates all that appears. This is at the source of the Vedic teachings that all possible names and forms arise from the Infinite Symbol – AUM. It is also the force of Plato's insight that the universal form of Goodness is the form of all forms. The Buddhist tradition teaches that the primal form is Absolute Emptiness (Sunyata) and this principle issues in a boundless Unified Field wherein all this co–arise in dynamic creative process."