Bertrand Russell was the greatest
English-speaking philosophers of the 20th century and
also one of its greatest mathematicians. Few people know it but he
also had time to appear in what were then known in the west as
“Bombay Dreadfuls” and what we now call Bollywood movies. It was 1967, Russell
was already 95 and the big issues of the day were the Vietnam war and nuclear
disarmament, the former which Russell opposed and the latter which he
supported. So when he was approached to appear in a film about a young Indian
studying medicine in London who planned to go to
Japan to help the victims of
Hiroshima, the
always kindly and open Russell agreed. The
film is called Aman and the doctor, played by Rajendra Kumar, gets an
audience with the great man who gives him his blessings and encouragement. It’s
not clear whether the director coned Russell or that he Russell
understood that the film was going to be a popular one – perhaps he thought it
was going to be a documentary. Anyway, the result really is one for Ripley’s
Believe It Or Not.
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5 comments:
Delightful! Thanks.
Bertrand Russell’s writings examined various subjects as a rationalist. He was my hero in my younger days when his writings helped me sort out the mental and emotional struggles I had with Christianity. For quite a while, naively, I tried to order my life solely on the basis of reason. But such a life was impractical, dry and insipid. Even Bertrand Russell himself said that what gave meaning to life was something like “Christian love.” Bertrand Russell had some good words for Buddhism. It must be because Buddhism is rational. I recall reading somewhere that the Rationalist Society in Sri Lanka had a plague saying that the first rationalist in the world was the Buddha (correct me if I am wrong). However, the Buddha went beyond what is purely rational, ie into the realm of the emotive and the “supramundane,” a more complete approach.
you have been rather racist towards anything Indian in all of your posts that have to do with India..so much for a monk...you are just a bitter white man
Bhante
I'm trying to help a PhD student I know who's interested in Buddhist writings in Syriac & Aramaic. Can you help locate them?
Is Russell wearing red slippers in this clip?
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