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Re: Your posting
Santosh wrote :
>
> Sankar Jayanarayanan (kartik@Eng.Auburn.EDU) wrote:
> :
> : Rajan Parikar wrote :
> :
> : >
> : > In article <4dnfue$q6c@babbage.ece.uc.edu>,
> : > Sankar Jayanarayanan <kartik@eng.auburn.edu> wrote:
> :
> : Do you consider Adi Sankara to be a Hindu? If so, why?
> :
> : This, of course, brings the question of who a Hindu is. I,personally,
> : go by the definition that a person is a hindu if he believes in the
> : Vedas/Upanishads.
> I am sorry that I was not able to respond to this thread before
> though it was a follow up of my posting, at my site the previous
> postings on this did not appear. Sorry about that.
>
..no problem..:-)
>
> But the Vedas says "Go beyond Vedas", does it mean that "A Hindu
> will cease to be a Hindu if he/she follows Vedas"?
>
Suppose you call a person who follows the Vedas a "Vedici".
Let's see...if a person is a "Vedici" then will he cease to be a "Vedici"
if he follows the Vedas? I'd seriously like an answer to that...note
that I've simply changed the word "hindu" to "Vedici".
No - a person who goes beyond the Vedas(if the Vedas do say that..;-)),
has "gone beyond the Vedas" only with the help of the Vedas...
(HELP!!This is going haywire...God help me!!)...and he belongs to another class
of "hindu" altogether. You could call him/her a REALISED soul...or a REALISED
"hindu".
and Yes - if a person does indeed "go beyond the Vedas", he MAY do so with
Buddhism too. So there is, indeed a separate class of realised souls, not ALL
"hindu"...:-)
>
> In my opinion, the word "Hindu" could be defined in two ways,
> one in its original form, the one from Hindustan following
> Sanatana Dharma. In this way, it goes beyond the ethnical
> defenition of religion and goes to a nationality. Next, if
> you take the ethnical dimension of the religion like Christanity
> or any other religion which is based on a dogma/personalised
AT last!! We're now in the domain of religion...:-)
> God, then you need to consider Hinduism as a collection of
> religions, we have over a million idols, each one will form
> a religion if you add the ethnical dimension to it, in addition
Yeah...and Christains too have many "Gods" because there is really
no way the conception(in the mind) of one Christian's "God" is going to be the
same as another's. So what is called Christianity is actually
a collection of many religions...
> we have different paths, like the path of Gyan which does not
> necessarily need any idol, then the path of yoga, and so on. If you
> accept the latter defenition, you can conclude that "A christian
> is a Hindu", he is after all in the path of Bhakthi, only
> difference is the image of Jesus Christ is identified with
> Christanity (pl., I do not intend to offend Christians!),
... and since Judaism and Christianity both believe in "Yehovah",
the Christian and Jewish "God" are the same...so there is really
no difference between a Christian and a Jew...;-)
> but remember Hinduism does not mind about your idol ( image
> of God ) as long as it leads you to realising the Athman ( Self )
> and Bhakthi is one of the paths it proposed.
>
And I MUST point out to you that you've used the word "HINDUISM"
WITHOUT defining it. What is your "Hinduism" in your statement above?
I really don't understand what you mean when you use the word "hinduism".
First tell me THAT and then we'll continue the discussion.
>
>
> It is matter of how you define the word HINDU. Anybody could follow
> santana dharma and benefit from it, be a Christian, Muslim, or Sikh,
...my idea is that they would ALL have to be classified under
"hindu" ...if they do practise "Sanatana Dharma", that is...
> does not matter. If a non-american follows american customs, will
> he become american.
>
You were talking about religion and now you are switching
towards "American-ness" which is really a "cultural" word...:-)
Like I said, there are TWO definitions of "hindu"
1) Cultural- born and/or brought up in India
2) Religious- belief in the Vedas...rather, the "Sanatana Dharma".
I think I can be more explicit. For example, there are two definitions of"Jew"-
1) A person who follows the religion Judaism.
2) A person of the Jewish RACE.
Think both are merely "criteria" which are to be satisfied for a person to
be Jewish?
Consider-
1) There are some Africans who follow the Jewish religion. They call
themselves "Jews".
2) I can give examples of Jews who'd converted themselves to Christianity but
are still known as "Jews".
>
> : >
> : I don't believe that the Vedanta philosophy is universal. Buddha, for example,
> : rejected the Vedas completely.
> :
>
>
>
> Budha did not reject Vedanta philosophy. We think that Budha rejected
> Vedanta because we accept the social setup at the time
> of Budha as Hinduism. There are two different aspects in the indian
> society, Smriti and Sruti. What Budha rejected was the Smriti,
> the social setup (Smruti) at that time, and not the Vedas or
> Advaita philosophy. After all, Lord Budha in his search for truth
> was realising His Athman (self) under the Bodhi tree in deep meditation.
Can you prove it ?...:-)
> So, Budha was following Vedas, and was not rejecting it. Budhists,
> especially the ones who would like it to be distinguished from
> Hinduism would tell it as "enlightenment", does the terminolgy
> really matter?
>
>
-Kartik
