The Challenge of a New Simple Terminology

Through his remarkable Systems Approach, Prof.V.K. Choudhry has furnished us with a research-based system of Vedic astrology that has successfully addressed itself to the two challenges facing the ‘global avatar‘. In response to the pressing urgency ‘to lighten’ the sophisticated spiritual terminology of Vedic astrology, he has introduced in our modern language – just to take an illustrative example – his key astrological concept of an ‘affliction’, as much of the analysis in his Systems Approach consists of studying the ‘afflictions’ and other weaknesses of the planets/houses in the natal chart.

Though the astrological concept of an ‘affliction’ does have its age-old existence in the Vedic astrological Samskrit literature, nonetheless, Prof. V.K. Choudhry has certainly modernized this ancient term and breathed new life into it, through its systematic quantification – thereby leaving behind classical interpretations of this ‘affliction’ in terms of ‘sins committed in some past-lives’. However, contrary to him, a Vedic astrologer from traditional Hindu society, will speak not in terms of this easily-acceptable and conveniently quantified concept of an ‘affliction’, but will insist only on sourcing the misfortunes, tied up with this ‘affliction’ to some ‘curses from former lives.’

Through such simplifications in terminology, he has arrived at this powerful but simple SA sutra on the consequences of these dreaded ‘afflictions’:

“‘Afflictions’ cause misfortunes, while weak planets merely cause delay in the fructification of their general significations & the significations of the Houses they happen to rule, during appropriate sub-periods.”

While the concept of past-lives may also be accepted by most Westerners, who accept Vedic astrology, yet it would also be better to provide a more concise, mathematically quantified and modern astrological concept, such as the ‘affliction’- as these ‘afflictions’ have such an important and recurring role to play in the SA. While these cases of ‘curses from past-lives’ vis-à-vis the ‘affliction’ are only a corresponding pair of concepts that illustrate the swing of Vedic astrology from the matrix of a traditional Hindu society to the world-stage in modern times; in our own times too, Vedic astrology has also a much larger and newer responsibility.

In that, it cannot leave any uncomfortable questions unanswered, but, must rather make an attempt to present its truth – which is couched in the language and worldview of an ancient spiritual-civilization – in a modern language and idiom, but without losing its original spiritual profundity in the process and at the same time without forsaking its spiritual foundations. This will be the third challenge facing Vedic astrology, as it gets ready to manifest on the world stage in its form as the emerging ‘global avatar‘ still in the making.