The Gentle Power of the Sufi Tradition

Re: # 360
This subject is not about evangalism. Evangalism was mostly practiced by the apostles of of religion. Buddha was no evangalist but Ashoka was as also Paul who actively promoted the faith of Jesus. Ashok was a gentle evangalist who believed in conviction and not force. But many Christian and Islamic priests were very violent and intolerant.

Let's try to get back to the gentler issues of faith and spirituality.

Re: # 333
Dear Eklavya.

Sorry I was out of town for a Suzuki Ritz (Splash)test drive in Vizag. But Please let me have the best book or other source on the historical Shankara who I greatly admire even if so much myth has been beilt around him.

It is interesting to note that murad claims to love "“the human soul was an emanation of this cosmic essence and like a lighted taper is waiting passionately for its disengagement from earthly trammels to return to its only beloved."

but it was Shankara who provided the most systematic and sophisticated philosophical defence of that idea that any philosopher in the history of the world has.

And yet murad prefers Muhammad, whose view of God was quite different.( Monotheistic rather than monistic)

Humsab ji, one of the reasons why caste will, one day, not survive in its hideous discriminatory form among Hindus is because of shankaracharya's advaitvic message that informs the intellect of most Hindus.

Adi Shankara is by no means our only great leader. But because of his prominence in the development of Indian thought, and because of the power his teachings can have in any era, to attack him and to blatantly distort his teachings is central to promoting the cause of Muhammad in India.

We can have no issues with Muslims who do that. But if Hindus or people who claim to be agnostics and atheists join in, they must be challenged.

This also includes speaking out against some of our own 'shankaracharyas' who have not given up on casteism. At some point, educated Hindus must get interested in their own religion. Enough of this deliberate ignorance. It's no virtue. Never was.

thanks satyan..

Kaalchakra Zindabad!!!
Anyway, Yesterday, I was re-reading a book 'Swami Chinmayananda Reader' by Anita Raina and I specifically read something from Shankracharya source which showed his views against any kind of casteism. Don't have the book right now otherwise would have posted it.
Great job, KC Sir.
Keep it up!

Re: # 369
jang, here are some vids I found on youtube,
1. Adi Shankara - wins debate (1st of the FACTS in #368)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUNoJWkGH5U&feature=channel_page
2. Adi Guru Shankaracharya confronts Chandala
(2nd of the FACTS in #368)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ewta7YJCmyw

There are other clips from this movie as well.

Alright, I just lost a post! :)

Please hold the thought here. I will recap and continue, perhaps tomrrow. It should be fairly easy to wrap this up now. You will learn a lot more about things you almost thought you knew but didn't (like the buddha carrying knives and spears), that were custom-made for a bunch of Indians and were never spread outside (of even those spcific communities) despite the fact that these dais who came from outside kept regular contact with their foreign Imams and those Imams in turn kept track of their growing number of Indian subjects....and many other interesting things, hopefully :)

And all this leading to Mr. Jinnah, and to Hindus and Muslims being two completely different people, to TNT, and bloodshed; and the rest, as we are all too familiar.

So one doesn't need gullibility, as ombhai argued earlier. Just openness and ignorance.

Well, satyan, that will be an easy one. That is the standard and old technique used everywhere - to fill in a divine slot that a society considers open. As Mirza ji tried to do with Christ with Muslims.
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And actually caste need not come into the picture at all. All my study of Islam has convinced me that caste was never a (signficant) factor in conversions (as it became with Christian missionaries later).

All you need are/were two things:

(1) Openness - willingness to welcome and listen to you.
(2) Ignorance

Both were plentiful among Hindus - as remains the case today. So you could peach to them with merely verisimilitude - Buddha, carrying knives and spears, said - follow Muhammad, the last avatar!

sattarbhai:

I defer to your scholarship in this area.

I am just an onlooker here and find this discussion very interesting.
My answer to Ekalavya's (#397) question, I would say Mohamad is the 10th and last avatar of Vishu, as being done by Dr. Zakir Naik here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpVWSH8f4f0

If he is low caste Hindu, whom Brahmins of old did not permit to enter in temple, I will have good chance of taking him to Majid.

Before I describe that, here is a bit of an assignment to any Indic who has followed part of the fascination journey of many Hindus into Islam.

IF what I have described below about the Imam and his being the Face of Allah is what YOU believed, and it was YOUR job to bring Hindus to the political and religoius kingdom of the Imam, how would YOU go about it?

Can you think of a way? :)

So essentially, the 'philosophy' divided the world into enemies of sorts, into subjects who followed rules and orders, and into lovers of the Imam. The more you loved the Imam, the higher up you were in realizing the "Ultimate Truth" as represented on earth by our man the Imam.

And this was not some airy fairy following that our poor gurus had in India. You were a proper subject! You followed firmans. Most importantly, paid hard cash every year.

Aga Khan anyone? The man lives a luxurious life even today because his luxury is paid for by sundry Jinnahs every day.

He is the Imam, the face of Allah, according to this "Philosophy".

----------------

Next, after a real break, we will see how Hindus were led to this path.

Oh heck, a little more for now.

PART V: OF IMAMS, THEIR DEIS, AND SHIA PHILOSOPHY!!

So I told you about the pattern. Every now and then, another fellow would claim to belong to Muhammad's family in some way, and would claim total political and religious authority. He would be the Imam. And as the Imam, the fellow would have a bunch of deis whose job it was to bring people to the Imam, as subjects and believers.

But why would any human being subject himself to this sort of stuff. Therein developed a whole "Philosophy!!"

What was this philosophy?

Well, the Imam claimed to be God's veritable representative on earth. Allah's face, no less.

Beyond that each Imam would create his own little shade of philosphy. But basically

Human beings were divided in three cateories, in their relation to the Imam:

People of opposition: who exist only in the real of appearancs and are spiritually non-existent.

People of gradation: ordinary followers of the Nizari Imaam (who are busy following the sharia rules as understood by approved by the Imam)

People of Union - Super elite ( ahass -i-khass): who perceive the imam in his true spiritual reality as the epiphany (Mazhar) of the Word (Kalima) of God. Only they arrive at the realm of haquiqa, where they find the full truth, and as such enjoy salvation in the paradisal state actualized for them in this state.'

So this was it. Serving the Imam to know the real ULTIMATE TRUTH because the Imam has the truth, heck he is pretty much the truth to these deies.

Ismaili literature: a bibliography of sources and studies
By Farhad Daftary, Institute of Ismaili Studies

This is the Ismaili belief (actually, I have described the nizari version since they are most relevant to us in the story I am telling you - of Khojas and of Mr Jinnah)

ok, a break needed. When I return later, I will tell a little about these dais and what they believed before they spread out in the world, from africa, to egypt to India.