Heroic

spirituality

What do you think of when you think of a hero, or a heroine? I mostly think of people who have done amazing things in war. The film Black Hawk Down, for example, tells the story of heroes who stayed behind to save their fellow soldiers, who were trapped in hostile territory in their crashed helicopter.

You may have thought of some other kind of hero|ine - the mother, the doctor, the nurse, the teacher. Hero|ines tend to be people who are brave, who sacrifice a great deal for their ideals, who become singular in their commitment to someone or something.

I have discovered something that intrigues me in two very different philosophies. On the one hand, we have the great European atheist Friedrich Nietzsche. On the other, we have great Indian philosopher-theologians like Abhinavagupta in the Tantrik tradition.

These two traditions could not be further apart. One emerged in Europe in the nineteenth century. One flourished in South Asia in the medieval period. Nietzsche proposed the death of G…