Just as God is One – the Truth is One. It shines through all revelations, through all the cultures and all languages although it is covered by the diversity of the traditions. Blessed are the ones who manage to find the golden thread running through all religious wisdoms of the world. All the ancient religions established and accumulated traditions over the many centuries. All the living revelations of the world prophets became buried under the many traditions of the rituals and commentaries of the “guardians” of their respective traditions. The danger of loosing the true meaning, Divinely inspired message, which was at the core of the given tradition, became apparent to some individual brightest minds.
Here we provide two quotes from two great masters of spirituality. One is Jewish Rabbi Bahya Yoseph Ibn Paguda who lived in 11th century Spain ( no relation or any access to the Buddhist sources at that time and location). Another quote from Buddha 400 BC.
R. Bahya (from the categorization of the individuals by their levels of spiritual development in relation to understanding of God’s unity, quoted from “Duties of the Heart”, 1:2 ):
“ … On the second level is the acknowledgment of God’s unity with heart and tongue only, based on what one has received from tradition, because he believes the person from whom he has received it. However such individual does not grasp the true meaning of the subject on the strength of his own intellect, rather, he is like blind man who is led by one who can see. It may happen that he receives from someone else who, likewise knows it only from tradition. That would resemble a line of blind men, each of whom has his hand on the shoulder on the one in front of him, until the line ends up with person endowed with sight, who is at their head and guides them all. Should this guide of theirs fail them and neglent to watch over them carefully, or if one of them should stumble or suffer an accident, then all of them would be effected, they would all stray from the path and either fall into the pit or blunder into an obsticle that would prevent them from continuing. The same is true of the one who acknowledges God’s unity because he relies on tradition.”
Dialog with Buddha, as quoted from Canki-Sutta. no. 95, Tripitaka of Pali tradition by Buddhist Monk Walpula Sri Rahula of Ceylon in his book “What the Buddha Taught” :
“… (relating to the time when) Brahmanic orthodoxy intolerantly insisted on believing and accepting their tradition and authority as the only Truth without question. Once a group of learned and well Known Brahmins went to see Buddha and had a long conversation with him. One of the group, a 16 years old Brahmin, named Kapathika, considered by them all to be an exceptionally brilliant mind, put a question to the Buddha:
‘Venerable Gotama, there are the ancient holy scriptures of the Brahmins handed down along the line by unbroken oral tradition of text. With regard to them, Brahmins come the absolute conclusion: ‘This alone is truth, everything opposite is false’. Now, what does the Venerable Gotama say about this?’
The Buddha inquired: ‘Among Brahmins is among them anyone single Brahmin who claims that he personally knows and sees that ‘this alone is Truth, and everything else is false?’
The young man was honest and said : ‘no’.
‘Then, is there any one single teacher, or teacher of teachers of Brahmins back to the seventh’s generation, or even any one of those original authors of those scriptures, who claims that he personally knows and he sees: ‘this alone is Truth, and everything else is false?’
‘No’
‘Then it is like a line of blind men, each holding on to the preceding one; the first one does not see, the last one also does not see. Thus, it seems to me that the state of the Brahmins is like that of a line of blind men’ “
I don’t get it. What was the point of this article? Brahmanism or modern day Hinduism is the only religion with some of the most diverse schools of thought prevelant. Your comparison is clearly flawed. The eastern religions, be it Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism etc are not totalitarian like the Abrahamic religions. Unlike the Judeo-Christian texts that are more concerned about warning people and threatning them, our texts are more focused on free thinking and understanding spirituality and the self. So the above quote by the Rabbi is completely baseless as Jews are the oldest in the group of Jews, Christians and Muslims, blindly following something which they can’t connect to. In regards to Brahmanism, aren’t there Upanishads contradicting some of the teachings of the earliest four Vedas? Isn’t there the Bhagavad Gita that introduces newer theories and bewares people of Indra/demi god worship? The very same demi god who was the epicentre of worship in the the Rig Veda is discouraged from being worshipped. The very phrases of Vedas that promise worldly or beyond earthly pleasures are discouraged upon for life is about Moksha or freedom from cycle of birth. And if you look at history, the Bhagavad Gita and teachings of Buddha became prevalent at almost the same time in history, specially because the Vedas were being heavily misutilized at that time. But again, it was us, the very same followers of Vedas to accept these newer theories as more enlightening ones and imbibing them. The very fact that Hindus as a group are some of the most tolerant people in the world. And that is the reason that India is the only land in the world where not a single Jew was persecuted, Persians were given refuge and currently is the host of the largest Persian community, and where the Muslims and Christians were warmly welcomed. Until, of course the last two groups started killing us in the name of God… We the Brahmanics, the Vedantists, the Shramanics, the Sikhs, the Shaivites, the Vaishnavis, we the Indians, understand one fact. There is a path to achieve Moksha and lets focus on that. Trying to understand God, this Universe and beyond is like a spaceship trying to find the end of the universe.
@Abhishek Chatterjee:
The point of the article is as it says “Criticism of Blindly Following the tradition”.
Our comparison cannot be flawed, because … there is no comparison :=) There are different pointers from different cultures to point the reader to the same phenomenon in both cultures: following the tradition without applying your own mind. That’s all about the topic of the given article.
Your language indicates that you did not learn much of the Vedantic literature (Buddhism also born in Vedic culture of India).
Although there is no space in this response to talk much about Vedas but I’ll try to give you some responses from Vedic culture to your comments.
Let’s start from your vision of Judaic theology as a religion of “about warning people and threatening them”.
In India the ideas of the reward and punishment come in Puranas. I will use a quote from the lion of India – Swami Vivekananda:
“The ideas of punishment and reward are very material, and they are consonant only with idea of Personal God who loves one and hates another just as we do.” (Quoted from Swami Vivekananda. “Practical Vedanta” Part 2, London, 1896). He goes on explaining how the idea of Personal God works and then shows the evolution into Impersonal in the time of Upanishads. Go to any Hindu Temple today and see how the idea of Personal God works for Hindus today. This is the same “Bhakti” path to the Divine as in Judeo-Christian theology.
Even in the theology not involving any deity, there is a different language yet pointing to the same – in Buddhism the words of “suffering” and “freedom of suffering” (Moksha) play exactly the same role in the mind of individual as “reward” and “punishment”. If that sounds of too different then let’s translate these terms as “badness” versus “goodness”. When do those apply? When individual follows dharma he frees himself from suffering (rewarded) or does not follow dharma (whence – punishment). What is that Dharma which Hindu should follow to get Moksha? Not going too deep into the relationships between Brahman-Atman and created maya, it is enough to say that Dharma is the same what Dao in China and Derech Hashem in Judaism – a Divine Path in Creation.
On the topic of Upanishads versus Vedas – in short, they are never in contradiction to each other but a new, deeper, meaning and new path for realization was given in Upanishads as compared to Vedas, yet the theology of Vedas was never rejected. More on this read Swami Vivekananda’s lectures on Vedanta.
If you want to focus on Moksha, then, according to Swami Vivekananda, you have to first focus on … becoming free from misconceptions inherited in all old traditions. Vivekananda provides a funny example to mock his own tradition, he says: ” You know why a cow exist according to Hindus? Because Vedas say so.” This blindness also present in Judaism and those who understand this, will see similarities in all the cultures and this is a topic of given article.
Hello Ben,
I guess I had taken the article politically instead of trying to understand the message conveyed. I am not a very religious guy and just know bits and peices of the major religions, and hence my lack of knowledge. However what I know and feel for sure is, there are contradictions between the Vedas and Upanishads and between Upanishads as well. I would have loved to quote some examples but it’s a bit difficult to search through the shlokas of the Vedas on the internet. I know them from my Grandma who was very religious. These Upanishads were written at a time when man had developed a much superior thought process. The oldest 4 Vedas focus more on diety praise, worship and sacrifice. Even those Vedas, you will see that the later Vedas have more spiritual insightment. The Upanishads go in depth on the subjects of spirituality and universe and out of context quote a shloka which in theory would contradict something from the original 4 Vedas. I don’t think the shift in thought of Bhagavad Gita needs explanation. It has many verses criticizing worship of the very same Gods which are central in the top 4 Vedas. And instead of using these contradictions to say that Vedantism is flawed, I would say, it just shows how the Indian religious philosophies and principles have evolved. We followed the very basic law of biological nature, “evolution”.
Just a note on those contradictions, my personal belief is that the original Vedic writings came from the Indo-European society (whichever that was) since you have many similar Gods in the Greeks and Roman religions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_religion
It continued its evolution in India where we saw the writing of Upanishads and the Puranas by the sages and seers.
Anyway, thanks for replying Ben. Judaism is very interesting to me and hence my presence on your website.
Reply @Abhishek
Indian thought truly evolved between the time of Vedas and time of Upanishads. But this “evolution” is not biological as Indian heritage is not materialistic but rather spiritual. Whence this evolution is spiritual. The nature of this evolution is the PATH to get to the goal of human existence, not the change of theology. As Rigveda talked about “Absolute” to Whom all the names and prayers belong, so do the Upanishads and Buddhism Sutras talk about the “Absolute” or “Ultimate” point as a state of mind, to which all the meditation practices lead. Once you “get there” through whatever practice (meditation, 8 steps of Raja Yoga, Bhakti devotion such as God’s worship by King David or Krishna worship of Krishna devotees, …, Mantra meditation, etc.) you will experience “Him”.
I do not recommend you to study Vedanta (or religion in general) from Wikipedia. The article you mention is flawed. All study must be done only from the scriptures inspired by those who are realized. This is BTW a greatest tradition of India to trust only those who are realized.
Sincerely,
Ben