Swami Vivekananda and Sri Ramakrishna

[Ramakrishnan Balasubramanian]

Parisi & Watson <niche at AMERITECH.NET> wrote:

> I don't believe that's the point. It is (or should be) more a matter
of
> having the humility to concede that no one teacher or tradition
encompasses
> all truth, so that every tradition and culture can make its own
contribution

Let us see. First of all Ramakrishna never said each religion
approached the truth partially and every religion had something to
offer. He said that by following every religion to the end, he had the
same "experience". This would be disputed by advaitins like sha.nkara
and sureshvara. It's possible that he experienced nirvikalpa samAdhi,
but that's not advaita siddhi

Let us see if what you say is indeed humility. In order to do what you
say, one must point out the defects in every religion and suggest some
remedy for it. This of course presumes that this person knows better
than the founders of _all_ religions. Doesn't sound very humble to me!
Not only that, the remedies taken and applied to some religion (say
advaita) would form a "perfect" religion. So, a person claiming that
all religions have some defects and something to offer, would only
*seem* to be humble, but is actually an exteremly arrogant person.

> in its own way. Doubtless some traditions are much more rich and
profound
> than others, but there is no monopoly. If 'I am That,' then everyone
else is

Same logic as above holds for this also. So the humility you are
talking about is not humility at all. This person knows better than
any  "rich and profound tradition" to point out defects and also
suggest remedies for those defects from other religions. Again,
doesn't sound very humble to me!

Rama