God in Vedas and Upanishads

Re: # 141
I have to agree with pmishra2. There is no one way. It is best to have many roads and many pilgrims and doubters.
Actually one of the most endearing parts of Hinduism is the belief that everything is a manifestation of the divine. There is no superior life form.
Hinduism does not command that animals be subservient or slaves to man, or that man should exploit the earth. This is of course present in other religions but not in the Abrahamic traditions.

Pmishra2 I am one up on you. I had to feed an elephant after the puja. It was exhilarating and frightening. -)

Re: # 144, swarrier:
All religions have God forgiving of the ``truly`` repentant. What I am referring to by Forgiving God is related to adoption of non-violence in daily life - turning of the other cheek. Sorry, if I was not clear.

For your question about the Hindu God: No, that is the entire Karma theory. Do good you will be rewarded, do ill you will be punished if not in this life in the next. See also, in the article above. Later thinkers have tried to introduce the concept. For example the common Hindu Prayer at the end of the day:

Hey Prabhu rakshaa karo Hamaarii,
Ham aaye haiN sharan tihaarii;
Din bhar key aparaadh hamaarey,
Kshamaa karo Karunaanidhi saarey.

By the way, the envisaging of a forgiving God is also a means to have assuaging of the pricks of the Conscience which as pointed out in #142 forms one third of the Vedantic God which according to me is the Quintessential God (QG). Other interpretations prevalent in polytheistic Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam are the subsets (no undermining implied) of the philosophical/psychological mix.

Monotheistic models of Semitic religions are simply user-friendly approximations which people with average abilities can grasp and function with. Buddhism in contrast with the the religions above adopted an agnostic approach - by declaring non-existence of soul. I am afraid that is all that could be done 2500 years ago as there was no idea of DNA to be used at that time to explain the operation of living organisms.

Re: # 145, swarrier:
In the ecstasy to praise Hinduism, let us not forget the Sanskrit formula:

Viir bhogyaa Vasundharaa.

Re: # 147
The meek shall inherit the earth, but they won`t keep it for long.-) Do you like my Christian take on it?

We still worship our swords and our kul-devi Bhagawati in our ancestral home.

Re: # 148, swarrier:
You are entirely consistent with my #125.

And there are some areas of Hinduism I`d like to confine to the rubbish heap of history. Sati, caste, the patriarchal bits, some esoteric aspects of tantrism. ..... We`ll get there eventually.

I would like some knowledgeable Muslim to expound on the philosphy of the Koran. With quotes. I am not interested in social rules and regulations, hellfire and stuff like that.

I am only interested in the philosophical aspects. Where there is some kind of discussion on the nature/origin of the universe, on the nature of consciousness, on the meaning of life and existence etc.

I have looked pretty hard, and come up empty. So if there is something I am missing, I would appreciate someone pointing it out. With quotes. And translations.

Maulana Urstruly (pbuh)

(God is absolute and he is above all human emotions, norms, and criteria of justice. He is not constrained by time and space. Just as a woman hates to share his man with another woman or vice versa, God does not like His rule shared. )

Your views on God are not very different from the nirguna (i.e. attributeless) theory of God that some Hanuds have-according to them too God is formless, infinite, omnipresent, omnipotent etc. But obviously your God does have one human quality- jealousy.

Regards

#150, swarrier: Unless you know and have experienced what an esotric thing is it is better to not commit to trash it.

#151, Krishna_abcd:
I am not a Muslim but I can tell you that you are barking up the wrong tree.

I do not think that Islam concerns itself with the philosophical aspects of epistemology. Like other Judeo-Christian religions, it starts with the given assumption that Allah created the world and its inhabitants like a kumhaar, if you understand the Hindi term.

Above all Islam is, much more so than Christianity, a politico-social strategy. Upto that point it was very effective in introducing reforms in arbitrary and ritual laden West Asia and Northern Africa, even in India due to exploitative caste system.

Even the Vedas are not philosophical despite the quotation from Rig Veda given in the article above. It is the unique charateristic of the Upanishads that you are trying to find the analog of in the Islamic Koran and it is nowhere to be found other han the Upanishads.

However, Islam has been completely done-in by the ridiculous and fascist emphasis on one god. This is simply because due to most acute lack of secular education the Muslims are a cheap and effective cannon fodder for the clever internal rulers who are buttressed by the foreign powers due to their own selfish needs.

#152, majumdar:
Inspite of the fact that Kabir did take inspiration from Islam, your comment does injustice to Nirguna because Nirguna is based in the Upanishads` Absolute rather than the jealous allah.

Re: # 153
Inquirer
In my opinion no religion is perfect. All of them have imperfections because I believe they are man-made. There is no need to sanctify things that will creep into a religion such as Hinduism because of it`s accomodating nature.

The cult of the Thuggee is one such example, child sacrifice is another . There have been other esoteric cults that have been practiced various tribes in the past, I can look them up in some of the books that I have back in India. Now a lot of these have fallen by the wayside because people have taken strong objections to them. We should continue to do so.

Besides some rituals , beliefs etc made sense years ago. There is no need to hang onto them when they outlive their time, especially when our religion has not been created from some divine revelation.

We must never stop questioning our beliefs. I`m thankful that Hinduism can accomodate my agnosticism very well. It does not make me laugh at my mother`s belief in fasting on specific days of the week , going to all neighbourhood temples etc. . But I will criticise when somebody brings up something that justifes caste based discrimination or worse.

Again these are my opinions. We can argue about them, as they aren`t perfect either. -)

Re: # 154, swarrier:
You have the right attitude toward religious practices. I agree with it.

You mentioned Thuggee. My father had published several research papers on that subject. He established that it was not a part of Hindu religion. Due to a general collapse of societal structure between 1700 and 1800, there was a widespread unscrupulousness then. Many a crooked organizations just adopted an easy way of robbing the travellers who had proliferated due to amassing of wealth away from homes and the British misinterpretted them attributing their casual and shallow signalling system to be originating from religious practices. Attributing Thuggee to Hinduism is just like attributing sea-piracy to Christianity.

Child-sacrifice is simply irresponsible parenthood into which the hapless couples blundered in. Since there were no laws to protect a child - until recently women and children all over the world were regarded as proerty of the man who had to gather resources to bring them up. Ultimately, the acceptability of any practice hinges on the where withal to support it.

Re: # 155

Is it possible to get some of those papers on Thugee? I had read somewhere else that the British also over-did the hype on them.

Christians are no strangers to genocide. The Crusades were a power consolidating, money grabbing exercise sanctioned by the Pope Urban. And weren`t the Mafia dons good Catholics to a man.

[Ultimately, the acceptability of any practice hinges on the where withal to support it.]
Very true. I agree it is easy to blame things on religion. And sometimes people end up believing it too. People should be always be vigilant against the purveyors of inhuman cruelty.

#151 abcd-Krishna.

I would like to suggest two sources to address your question. Please keep in mind that when Allah chose to communicate with human beings thruough a conduit named Mohammad (pbuh) the addressee were all possible range of people. On one hand there were people who were already aware of the message of Islam. Those were the oldest surviving Mulims who had started calling themselves Jews and Christians and on the other hand there were polytheists, animists, Naturists, and of course the atheists. Qura`n uses a different argument for each of these categories of people to convince them and bring them to their true Creator. So an atheist if reads the arguments meant for polytheist may not find them convincing and vice versa.

The first source is quite general but does address the question regarding the philosophical basis of Islam. The core addressees of the argument presented here are atheists, secularists and people of the book. If you have short attention span, and would like to feel just the gist of the philosophy visist this:


A BRIEF ILLUSTRATED GUIDE TO UNDERSTANDING ISLAM

http://www.islam-guide.com/



But if you would really want to go into the relatively deeper philosophical argument then visit this:

An Introduction to the understanding of the Qur`an


http://www.iiu.edu.my/deed/quran/understand.html


Please let me know if you have any questions.

Re: # 157: I hope krishna_abcd finds help reading your input. I looked at the ``deeper`` article and find that it merely repeats the demand to accept, without understanding, the arbitrary statements that are quite routinely purveyed by Mullahs.

Re: # 156, Swarrier:
Thanks for showing interest in those papers. Unfortunately I do not have them and I tried to locate them on the internet but did not succeed.

Re: # 158

I don`t think that the approach demands a complete submission before treading into understand the philosophy. As a matter of fact the Moulana have made it very clear in the very beging that there are three ways to get to the truth, but only one way will take you to it:

1. One way is to tread on the journey towards truth by committing to oneself that since the object of my pursuit is all a lie and falsehood therefore the purpose of my journey is to confirm my preconcieved notions.

2. The second way is to tread on the journey towards truth by committing to oneself that since the object of my pursuit is absolutely true therefore the purpose of my journey is to reaffirm my preconcieved notions.

3. The third way is to tread on the journey towards truth by committing to oneself that the object of my journey is to find out the truth and I do not know whether it is the right path or the wrong one; but I will find out.

But one does not have to be a Moulana to understand that only the third way is the valid and correct way for learning. This is called an open-mind approach.