Religion God etc - A Discussion
This is from a discussion on my Undergrad email group, I have pasted the conversation into the comments. Some times a joke, a flippant remark or even a single wise crack starts of a serious discussion, so even though I wrote something as a trite remark it started soemthing serious and I got serious too hhaha, all in all it was a great conversation.
adarsh:
I have been thinking about religion and hinduism, i think hinduism is the super duper religion of all time, there were initially 9 avtars of god, if you look at them closely, these 9 avtars correspond to the 9 stages of evolution, fish,tortoise,boar,little man,big man, uncontrolable angry man, decent man, perfect man, naughty man, and then we get to the future, but thats another story. Where hinduism is super cool is buddhists claim to be a big religion,I mean they are, all of china is buddhism, but since hindusim claims buddha as the 10th avtar of vishnu, all buddhists automatically become hindus, I hear somehwere they are working on making jesus and mohammad 11 and 12 avatars of vishnu then the whole world becomes hindus, world domination by acceptance muhahahahha muhhahahahha muhahahahha
adarsh:
I have been thinking about religion and hinduism, i think hinduism is the super duper religion of all time, there were initially 9 avtars of god, if you look at them closely, these 9 avtars correspond to the 9 stages of evolution, fish,tortoise,boar,little man,big man, uncontrolable angry man, decent man, perfect man, naughty man, and then we get to the future, but thats another story. Where hinduism is super cool is buddhists claim to be a big religion,I mean they are, all of china is buddhism, but since hindusim claims buddha as the 10th avtar of vishnu, all buddhists automatically become hindus, I hear somehwere they are working on making jesus and mohammad 11 and 12 avatars of vishnu then the whole world becomes hindus, world domination by acceptance muhahahahha muhhahahahha muhahahahha
posted by adarsh adarsh at 3:51 AM
7 Comments:
Anil:
china is not a buddhist state. we confuse chinese as being buddhist. however, out of 1.3 billion chinese, less than 1.2 billion have a religion. we tend to confuse some south east asians such as cambodians, burmans, thais, laoans, vietnamese, and other ( koreans) as being chinese. these south east asian countries are buddhist.
tibet, which china conquered in 1959 is buddhist (population 6 million) tibet is approximately 1.5 times the size of current India. chinese military excesses to curb and uproot buddhism in tibet are well known. this includes destruction of 6,000 monastaries and buddhist temples.
"buddha" is not identified as an avatara of Sri Maha Vishnu. By definition, an avatara has to do both "dushta sikshana" (punishing evil), and sistha rakshana (protecting good) as promised in the Gita.
Buddha taught a very great philosophy, however he never did either "dushta sikshana" (punishing evil), and sistha rakshana (protecting good). Hence, while vedantins acknowledge buddha to be an avatara, hindus do not. The reason is simple - all avataras (Sri Rama, Sri Krishna, Parusha Rama, Vaamana, Nrsimha, Varaha, Koorma and Matsya) did both the above mentioned things.
Buddha was a great jnani, however is not acknowledged as an avatara. Then, what is the other avatara? Hindus refer to the 8th avatara as Balarama. The evidence is mentioned clearly in the Bhagavata Purana. You will recall that the embryo from Devaki's womb was transplanted into Rohini's womb (hence the name "sankarshana", which means transplant). Hence, several hindu sects accept Balarama as the 8th incarnation.
Now that raises a question - how could two avataras- Krishna and Balarama exist concurrently? The answer is simple - have you not heard of Rama breaking the bow and Parusharam getting angry, and later says "you are I, and I are you"
Seculrism is no doubt a good thing. However, while a high status can be given to genuine saints like christ, accepting them as avataras is modifying our flawless scriptures. Jesus, Shirdi Sai, etc remain saints or rishis. They can never be avatars; the avatars are the absolute and the complete gods. The saints are knowers of the supreme and can definitely be worshipped as Gurus.
i did not mean to offend you, but you may be right in an upanishadic sense, but you are totally wrong in the Hindu sense. For instance, the upanishads declare "purnam adaha, purnam idam. purnat poornam udachyate, purnam adaya purnam eva avasiyate" - meaning "what is the whole?, what is the part? the whole comprises of the part and the parts make the whole - Ishavasa Upanishad of Sukla Yajur veda.
Hence, the enlightened Jnanin says that the individual (such as adarsh or anil) is also the supreme soul (Ref Sankara's Vivekacoodaamani -"Jivo Brahma, na aparah" - the individual is the God, there is never any difference)
I see your intentions are good. However, the expressions that we will add eleventh and 12th avatars is both inapproriate and it is a perversion of our scriptures.
the other wording, "the avataras represent various stages of evolution"
who drew this conclusion? stunted man, angry man, etc? or are you trying to correlate with darwinism?
the avataras are absolute. trying to define avataras in light of darwinism is not approriate. is such a thing your personal conclusion? or are you basing it on some authentic veda or upanishad, brahma sutra or purana?
please do accept my sincere aplogies. none of this is intended as being personal. i do however, agree with you that every metaphysical thought is mentioned in Hinduism. Einstein's relativity, included. however, the problem with our generation has been that we were forced at one point of time to quit vedic education (in my case my great-grandfather's time). the wheel of time turned and blind westernization has deprived us of any vedic knowledge. for instance, in south india, the congress governments, well know for anti hindu attitude cut of funding to several veda paathasaalas. it is shameful that we do not have a veda patasaala in visakhapatnam. in south india, no person can recite the saama veda, which i think is the most beautiful of all the vedas.
we, younger generation tries to draw flimsy conclusions and we hardly make any attempt to learn veda.we try to acquire more and more of the "utilitarian knowledge" such as engineering and medicine. we are all in the same ignorant dark boat.
if you go to the balaji temple in aurora, do pradakshina around venkateswara, you will find the avatara's vigrahas around and behind the balaji sanctum. note that you will see balarama and then Krishna. you can visit any temple in India (atleast southern India). you will never see buddha depicted as an avatara. my knowledge of north Indian temples is very poor. as for east india (orrissa and bengal), i have not visited. but i know the orrissan poet Jayadev in his song the dashavataras refers to the eight avatara as "kesava roopa, halasana dhara, Jaya Jagadisha Hare", "halasana" means the one whose weapon is the till, which i believe is a reference to balabadhra. i do not see buddha wearing a hala-asana
Seshadri:
Believe me... knowing your religion is not being fundamental... "Fundamental" is being unable to understand other religions... unable to accept / cope up with other religions..
Though there are no qualms about accepting Allah as Vishnu's Avatar; do you want to accept Muslims? I don't think so. Why? Because they are not refined.. Similarly while accpeting Jesus as Vishnu, can't accept the Christians who follow the old testament and make Crusades against anybody who is not a Christian.. ok.. who is making Crusades? Nobody does that any more openly, but the inherent tendency to destroy other religions is prevalent in so called many charitable organizations...
While I agree with some of your words, you did not get the concept of GURUs.
Lord Krishna was a Guru first and then became a god...
For example, when Lord Krishna was adjudged for taking high honour by Rishis and kourava shresthas, Sisu pala defies Lord Krishna.. Many people think that Sisu pala is a rakshasa and that's why he defied Krishna... but they do not understand that he defied Krishna because Krishna is a contemporary of Sisu pala and typically people cannot accept a contemporary as a god..
Now, after 5000 years (After Krishna's Samadhi), we believe that Krishna is a god..
Similarly, after 5000 years (or much before if our next generation is cleverer than us..) will realize that Shirdi Sai is a god..
The history shows us that this is true even in the case of Jesus Christ..
There are many many instances in Guru Charitra, in which Siddha tells namadharaka, that Guru is above god and should be worshipped by everybody in addition to god..
Though Gurus are not Avataras, they are above the incarnations of god.. as you rightly said, Avataras are for dushta sikshana and sistha rakshana, where as Guru is always required with everybody to keep them in right path and to give jnana.... An Avatara will go away after a brief period, but Guru is always with you...
And Adarsh's analogy of Avataras to Darwin's theory is to correlate his scientific beliefs with that of his childhood learnings and to continue his belief in the religion.. in that sense, it should be encouraged that people make such analogies to keep their faith, as faith is higher than respect...
As you rightly said, we are not highly educated in Vedic sense, but then who did? Bharadwaja himself could not make out the head or tail of Veda... Though, it is not my excuse for not reading the Veda, I believe in following more simpler and contemporary life style of Gurus to define and practice the belief.. In Dharma, the self criticism is the only option allowed..
Kittu:
I think Rama, Krishna and Buddha are good sequence to choose. As
Rama wants to play by the rules gets frustated then he twists the
rules as krishna and by the time he is buddha he becomes indifferent
to all existing rules of the society.
adarsh:
anyhow i shll try not the change topic, irrespective of where man is from, he felt the need to create a god, i am approaching stuff more from a evolution perspective, the evolution of man, society and religion. Isnt it suprising that where ever man created religion they call came up with the same basic tenets. Apart from the usual dont kill, give, etc which essentially were rules for a stable society imbibed into the enforcer that is religion. I have always believed that religion went from being the enforcer to imposer during the ages, it was supposed to enforce good society and then it starting imposing itself as it became a singular entity which needed nourishment for its survival, like everything man created, created with good intention and then ran amuck uncontolled. Well basic premise is all men will never be scared of corporal punishment, but most will be of eternal damnation in a land unknown, and hence religion and god.
well i think i digress, what came first religion or god, is another classic chicken and egg question, I shall think about it little more.
back to discussion, islam and christianity were more created as a reply to persecution, a means to get people together for something, and god being the easiset coagulator it worked out fine. Hinduism is a religion that evolved, something that got meshed with culture, how are festivals ask us to put rangoli, to something that needs to be done everyday as a part of daily rituals, to the need to keep bugs out and clean dirty feet through limestone, i am sometimes unsure, so many of hindu customs and rituals have so much scientific reason behind them, is it coincidental that all the points fit the curve, or is there a curve. All of us know, just because the curve exists doesnt mean there is a correlation, so when i say the 9 avtars of vishnu are similar to the 9 major steps of evolution, am i fitting a curve, or was there always a curve, same with many of the different things in the vedas, there are many complex theoretical physics and medical observation in them, I am questioning, did they really really think far ahead of the present generation to come up with those, or are we jsut making ideas like interpreting nostradamus, i wish i knew more, what do you guys say, what does the heart say, what does the mind say are they the same. In as much i want to believe everything, i sometimes get the funny feeling that maybe there was some alien race which imparted ancient civilizations all tha tknowledge....
Kittu:
Manipulating info to brain
During the summer we collected lot of field data for our project. One
of the guys who enjoyed working outdoors was lokesh krishnan. Ever
since I met him I was fascinated by his "can build and fix anything"
attitude.
Based on his strong interests I scheduled him for every data
collection. And during one of the data collections he injured his leg.
It wasn't major injury but I was little concerned, so I asked him to
take advil or tylenol. He resisted my suggestion saying that he
doesn't prefer taking medicine unless its necessary and that advil and
other similar medicines are only pain relievers.
"Pain relievers Pain relivers". It got stuck in my mind.
Like most people whenever I burnt my finger I used imerse the burnt
part into cold water. The pain is there but as long as the burnt part
is in water, the pain is not relayed to the brain. If I was mentally
strong I wouldn't have put the finger in water as its just a pain
reliver.
Its almost certain one will not be able to answer the questions like
"What the heck are we doing" "is there any true meaning to life" or
in adarsh words "Am I just fitting the data to a curve"
At some point when his/hers metal energy drains it becomes practical
to take religion pill, as it relieves lot of pain. When I was coming
back from data collection I smiled inward remebering the quote
"Religion is an opium".
Anil:
I do not disagree with your concept of "Guru" being the humanly form/manifestation. Any puja starts with "Guru Brahma, Guruhu Vishnu, Guru Devo Mahesvara", sad Guru charana aravindabhyam namaha" meaning " Prostrations to the lotus feet of (my) Guru who is the Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesvara.". The guru imparts the knowledge (either vedic, upanishadic, or allied fields such as music or dance) and is hence all the respect that is given to God is also given to the Guru.
The word Guru is derived from Gu = dispeller or destroyer, Ru = darkness.
Worshipping Rama/Krishna/Mahesvara or worshipping a personal Guru amounts to the same thing. In the upanishads it is said that the knower of the Brahman (Brahman is not the caste name. Vedic religion uses the word "Paramatma" in the dvaitic sense and "Brahman" in the advaitic sense) becomes one with the Brahman. Yogi vemana says, "manasu verigene maaya tolagunu, mahini brahmambu taanu agu". So, when enlightenment comes, the self effulgent Brahman, which is present in all jivas bursts forth as a steady stream of consciousness, as the "I- I" (aham, aham).
Let me put it this crude way. The individual soul upon enlightement dissolves in a flood of effulgence, and loses its identity ( "manasu tirigi, virgi demmude taanu agu") and hence becomes God himself.
Hence, can anybody say that the sadguru and God are different? For instance, all vedic pundits regard Sankaracharya as the greatest teacher and expounder of vedanta and Hinduism simultaneously. Worshipping Jagadguru Sankara is as good as worshipping a vedic deity.
This is precisely the grestest beauty of hinduism. I could say that the avataras are gretaer than gurus, and seshu can slightly disagree. However, both seshu know that we are both right.
You have opened a new question. Vedic education- I want to remind you that for over a million years, little has changed with the vedic culture. The Vedic religion absorbed Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism. However, it maintained and preserved its scriptures, primarily the vedas, which are its cornerstone. Being a Hindu, you are aware of how simultaneously we can accept, love and revere personal gods and at the same time visit temples pertaining to other Gods, once in a while. Further strict smarthas such as Adarsh and I can easily revere several personal Gods at the same time.
However, I strongly condemn your words that we will let go the past (did you mean vedas?) Again, I want to remind you that you are thinking in a utilitarian and materialistic way.
"Why pray? If it changes God's mind, then he is not sovereign; if it
does not change His mind, then it is superfluous."
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