[Advaita-l] A news item

[Venkatesh Murthy वेङ्कटेशः]

Namaste

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2009/08/14/we-are-all-hindus-now.html

AMERICANS ARE SAYING WE ARE ALL HINDUS NOW

America is not a Christian nation. We are, it is true, a nation
founded by Christians, and according to a 2008 survey, 76 percent of
us continue to identify as Christian (still, that's the lowest
percentage in American history). Of course, we are not a Hindu—or
Muslim, or Jewish, or Wiccan—nation, either. A million-plus Hindus
live in the United States, a fraction of the billion who live on
Earth. But recent poll data show that conceptually, at least, we are
slowly becoming more like Hindus and less like traditional Christians
in the ways we think about God, our selves, each other, and eternity.

The Rig Veda, the most ancient Hindu scripture, says this: "Truth is
One, but the sages speak of it by many names." A Hindu believes there
are many paths to God. Jesus is one way, the Qur'an is another, yoga
practice is a third. None is better than any other; all are equal. The
most traditional, conservative Christians have not been taught to
think like this. They learn in Sunday school that their religion is
true, and others are false. Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and
the life. No one comes to the father except through me."

Americans are no longer buying it. According to a 2008 Pew Forum
survey, 65 percent of us believe that "many religions can lead to
eternal life"—including 37 percent of white evangelicals, the group
most likely to believe that salvation is theirs alone. Also, the
number of people who seek spiritual truth outside church is growing.
Thirty percent of Americans call themselves "spiritual, not
religious," according to a 2009 NEWSWEEK Poll, up from 24 percent in
2005. Stephen Prothero, religion professor at Boston University, has
long framed the American propensity for "the divine-deli-cafeteria
religion" as "very much in the spirit of Hinduism. You're not picking
and choosing from different religions, because they're all the same,"
he says. "It isn't about orthodoxy. It's about whatever works. If
going to yoga works, great—and if going to Catholic mass works, great.
And if going to Catholic mass plus the yoga plus the Buddhist retreat
works, that's great, too."

On Thu, Apr 12, 2012 at 12:19 PM,  <rajaramvenk at gmail.com> wrote:
> Very rightly said. Nazism is due to the Bible, the only religious text to teach anti-semitism in over 400 places. It has nothing to do with right or wrong interpretation of the gita.
>
> The traditional acharyas have to explain their tolerance of a-dharmic paths such as Christianity and Islam that has caused death of millions over centuries. Sankara would have decimated these durmathas.
>
> Those of us who live in Christian majority nations owe it to our fellow countrymen to give them right knowledge. Jesus was taught by 3 jnanis from Puri but Bible is by and large irrelevant today and Church dangerous.
> Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Satish Arigela <satisharigela at yahoo.com>
> Sender: advaita-l-bounces at lists.advaita-vedanta.org
> Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2012 22:42:36
> To: A discussion group for Advaita Vedanta<advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org>
> Reply-To: Satish Arigela <satisharigela at yahoo.com>,
>        A discussion group for Advaita Vedanta
>        <advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org>
> Subject: Re: [Advaita-l] A news item
>
> I looked at the news item and then at the people who were approached in the news item.
>
> Know that, in very recent years, the church has increased its propaganda and is involved in a long term and large scale project to demonize non-abrahamic religions.
>
> This couple, seemingly is one of the many nodes in their project.
>
> Read the article again: Observe how cleverly they avoid mentioning any association of teh Nazi-s with the Church. On the othe rhand also observe how not just Hinduism, but even the non-Christian religions get associated with the Nazi-s.
>
> After that take a look at their website. www.trimond.de  The website is clearly aimed at defaming the noble Dalai Lama and tries to sling mud on bauddha sAmpradaya-s. Why? Along with Hinduism, the Church is losing many people to the bauddha mata.
>
> The rubbish that these idiots propagate becomes very clear.. when they question the Dalai Lama asking him " Why has Buddhism declared a holy war on Islam?"
>
> Does this question from the Mr & Mrs.Trimondi scumbags tell you something? Does it make you laugh when somebody says Buddhism has declared a holy war on Islam?  What does it say about the one who framed this sentence..
>
> This is not a news item: This is the Church fighting a propaganda war.   See the second point here:  This gives away the motives of the writers:
>
>
> http://www.trimondi.de/EN/deba03.html
>
> This is exactly why we should keep our eyes open... and be alert by constantly following and reading up works by the likes of Rajiv Malhotra.
>
> Obtain copies of these books and study them thoroughly. The study of gItA bhAShya, or brahma sUtra can wait for the moment.
>
>
>
> ________________________________
>  From: Vidyasankar Sundaresan <svidyasankar at hotmail.com>
> To: Advaita List <advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2012 10:00 PM
> Subject: [Advaita-l] A news item
>
>
> I saw the following news item today
>
> http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/326075/20120410/heinrich-himmler-hinduism-nazi-germany-krishna-aryan.htm
>
> and learnt of an unsavory association that has been foisted upon the bhagavad-gItA
> by people in Nazi Germany. It turns out that one top Nazi leader was personally a fan
> of the gItA (or what one can only very charitably call his perverted understanding of it).
>
> My immediate reaction to this was the importance of sampradAya in what lessons we
> learn from difficult texts of philosophy. Of course, any true vedAntic teacher would have
> sent back Hitler and Himmler with a solid admonition to develop basic adhikAra before
> even venturing to read the gItA!
>
> In retrospect, one can only wish that German leaders before World War II had read the
> gItA the way Thoreau, Emerson, Einstein and Oppenheimer read it. Each of them read
> the gItA in translation, not in the original. And what a different understanding each one
> of them took away from the text!
>
> One can only imagine how different world history would have been if the gItA had been
> introduced to Europe according to the new American Transcendentalist sampradAya of
> Emerson and Thoreau, rather than being read through the lens of Hitler's sampradAya.
>
> Vidyasankar
>
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-- 
Regards

-Venkatesh