[Prev][Next][Index][Thread]
ARTICLE : Parallels/Divergences (Was Re: ARTICLE : Just say no...)
-
To: soc-religion-hindu@uunet.uu.net
-
Subject: ARTICLE : Parallels/Divergences (Was Re: ARTICLE : Just say no...)
-
From: vspatz@access.digex.net (Virginia Spatz)
-
Date: 22 Sep 1996 13:15:57 -0400
-
Newsgroups: soc.religion.hindu
-
Organization: Express Access Online Communications, Greenbelt, MD USA
-
References: <ghenDwHznC.9A0@netcom.com> <ghenDxL7JJ.L21@netcom.com> <ghenDxoKJw.51o@netcom.com> <ghenDy1H39.2tM@netcom.com>
I am not a Hindu nor a scholar/teacher of any faith, but I am deeply
interested in spiritual questions and in the ways that various religious
traditions have sought truth and devised ways to live in relationship to
God. So, I was disturbed to read the post below, which claims to speak for
many faiths, while misrepresenting them all (to the best of my
understanding.)
An earlier poster (the original name is missing) remarked:
>: Janis and other religions in India (even Sikhs, and other related branches
>: to Islam) are evolved because there was new philosophies that it could not
>: be explained with Hinduism alone. They incorporated it into Hinduism.
>: However, by doing that they themselves became unique.
>: Christianity and Islam are different as they are a completely new
>: Revelations and are separated from Judaism. They each stand alone without
>: acknowledging Judaism.
This latter statement about Christianity, Islam, and Judaism is certainly
untrue. While Christians do believe that Christ Jesus brought God's
revelation to humanity in an entirely new way, they by no means completely
discount the earlier revelations of Judaism. While various sects give
varying degrees of importance to the "Hebrew" or "Old" Testaments, I have
never met a Christian who refuses to acknowledge Judaism. My experience
and reading in Islam is somewhat less, but I do know that Mohammed
acknowledged Judaism as important in his understanding of God and that
many if not most Moslems acknowledge the importance of the prophets and of
Jesus as a teacher, although not as the Messiah.
So, I must conclude that the former statements about Jains, Sikhs, and
Hindus are most likely wrong, given that the author does not seem well
grounded in the beliefs of so many other faiths.
The point of the original author seems to be that Buddhism was a reaction
to Hinduism and so "Cannot stand on its own." There are other parallels
and differences to be found between Christianity/Judaism and
Buddhism/Hinduism, but it seems that in introducing this metaphor, the
author of the above missed the true parallelisms between the faith trees.
I doubt that anyone with any degree of familiarity with eastern or western
religious traditions would fail to realize that Jesus was Jewish or that
Siddhartha was Hindu and that each defined a new way of path
which was born, in part, of the tradition in which the teacher lived.
A futher parallel appears in that both new faiths became extremely
important, especially among seekers who were at some distance from the
original culture in which the revelation took place. Christianity spread
more thoroughly among the Jews of the Greek disaspora than among those of
Palestine, and Buddhism became much more important in China than in India,
for example.
Jews among the Hellenes might have accepted Christianity more readily
because of cultural conditions which made the one path more attractive
than traditional Judaism. Similarly I believe that many may have
accepted Buddhism in part because of cultural conditions which made it
seem more attractive than Hinduism.
But these situations arose AFTER THE FACT, i.e., after the deaths of the
Buddha and of Jesus. If there is a difference between Buddhism/Hinduism
and Christianity/Judaism in terms of which "stands alone", I would say
that Buddhism branches much more sharply from Hinduism than does
Christianity from Judaism in overall philosophy.
Jesus criticized the Jewish authorities, but he also took much from his
teachers, such as Hillel, who taught the famous "do unto others" rule.
On the other hand, my understanding is that the Buddha simply found that
Hinduism was not working for him and set out on a new path, one which left
behind most of the Hindus' beliefs about Brahman and his manifestations.
Other posts which I have read here seem to support this belief in much
more detail than I could.
Still though, I am puzzled by this author's intent. Is the idea to say
that Buddhism is somehow a branch of Hinduism because it shares some
beliefs and was born of the same culture?
I have been following this thread for sometime to the best of my non-Hindu
abilities and it seems clear that "Hindu" is even less useful a label
than "Christian" for the purposes of serious discussion. Cannot
differences be acknolwedged without disavowing the importance of the
tradition from which one differs?
Virginia
vspatz@access.digex.net
