Finally got a chance to read that NYT article and wanted to add: studying the Greeks is what brought me back to my own roots. Growing up in America, I was acutely aware of the strangeness of my own "Hinduness." Studying the Greeks felt like coming home. https://twitter.com/razibkhan/status/1357006895815553027

The pouring of libations, sacrificial fires, stories of gods and (wo)men-- these were not cultural artifacts for me, but a bridge between my day-to-day American life and my ancestral traditions that I had largely left behind or relegated to purely symbolic cultural practices.

Socrates was not just a gadfly who died for Athenian democracy, but a sage in the mould of the Upanishadic Yājñavalkya, teaching mortals how to live and how to die; Heraclitus was not a "pre-socratic philosopher" (such a dry term!) but a Ṛṣi, a seer blessed with cosmic vision.

The list goes on. The point is the Greeks brought home the fact that the traditions I had grown up with were also part of an integrated world, one that-- although presently confined to isolated temples and modest household puja rooms-- contained a seeds of something greater.