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I was gifted a set of books called Complete Works of Vivekananda by my mother on my 16th birthday, not something every 16 year old would actually want to have but however I was a different kind of person. I had a fascination with science as well as the Hindu tradition. I used to wonder if science and religion could actually meet my cousin said no it is not possible. What shocked me were the following words of Swami Vivekananda, “The Hindus have received their religion through revelation, the Vedas. They hold that the Vedas are without beginning and without end. It may sound ludicrous to this audience, how a book can be without beginning or end. But by the Vedas no books are meant. They mean the accumulated treasury of spiritual laws discovered by different persons in different times. Just as the law of gravitation existed before its discovery, and would exist if all humanity forgot it, so is it with the laws that govern the spiritual world. The moral, ethical, and spiritual relations between soul and soul and between individual spirits and the Father of all spirits, were there before their discovery, and would remain even if we forgot them.” This actually gave me a very big shock although Swami Vivekananda did emphasize on all religions leading to the same goal, he actually showed me a clear difference. The reader could try an experiment he could simply ask a Christian or a Muslim where do their scriptures actually come from, I can assure you that they will immediately say that it comes from a Super-Personality named God. This means that unless they believe this , their scriptures have no meaning. I once asked my grand mother where do the Vedas come from, who actually wrote them. She immediately replied that no one actually wrote the Vedas but that they were already existent. This only makes sense if we were to take Swami Vivekananda’s statement above. It was then that I understood that Hinduism in general is not actually against the exploration of science per se, in fact we do find many scientific texts in the Sanskrit language as well. From my understanding the Marxists, and Nehru unfortunately have labelled Hinduism as a mere belief system and denigrated it as much as possible. In my experience these people have absolutely no idea about Buddhism, or Jainism’s Syaadvada. Neither have they studied even one Sanskrit text properly . A sad thing with Hindus in general which also included me is that we see all traditions as explorations into divinity. This is actually not the case, people may argue that there are Gnostic texts of the Christians and the Sufism of the Muslims. However go and ask a Muslim do you know what the Sufis say ? in fact a Sufi by the name Mansoor was killed for saying “Anal-Haq” an equivalent of Aham Brahmasmi. In fact the only goal for a normal Christian is to reach heaven and stay there for ever. Some people may say that all religions lead to God not quite, Buddhism for instance does not have any concept of a God. Once a Catholic asked Dalai Lama what is Sunyata ? Dalai Lama immediately told him that this is Buddhist business do not bother about it. Reason being that the concept of Sunyata actually negates the concept of a Super-Personality called God. People may argue what about the various spiritual traditions in the Abrahamic religions for eg Kaballah in Judaism. Even if we were to examine these traditions it is not necessary that all of them speak of oneness in the same way. Also while having a discussion with a person who professes Gnosticism, he clearly does not belief in the concept of “Aham Brahmasmi”. But did look at Jesus Christ as not merely a personality but as a presence that actually pervaded the whole of the cosmos. So the Dharmik Traditions like Hinduism , Buddhism, Jainism and so on, do not stress on the person having faith in certain things. They actually tell the person to decondition their minds, the Zen masters are famous for this. Even the philosophies which should not be rightfully called so are meant for the Sadhaka to actually help him or her in the Adhyatma Vidya of the respective traditions. One must understand that even all Adhyatma Traditions are not same. Buddhism , Hinduism and Jainism should be termed more as Adhyatmic systems that contain both works relating to Adhyatma Vidya and secular works as well. So this means the study of Hinduism or Buddhism will not be a study of theology. But rather Darshanas, Darshanas are certain well argued systems of knowledge which completely based their knowledge on observation and Adhyatma Vidya. But in traditions like Christianity and Islam, the Adhyatma realm is not very prominent though it is there, so a dialogue between Christianity, Islam and Judaism can definitely be an interfaith dialogue as they have their respective theologies. But the dialogue between the Adhyatma based traditions like Buddhism, Hinduism and Jains and the theological traditions can never be called interfaith dialogue. This would be actually belittling the Adhyatma systems within these traditions it would also be a very reductive approach to things. In fact the Atheists in India especially are quick in critiquing Hinduism with regards to the Puranas and the stories present within them. So for such people Puranas mean only stories which they have heard, but as I told before they haven’t touched even one Sanskrit text. For them Hinduism is only caste system or Brahminism but they haven’t bothered to explore Hinduism as an Adhyatmic system, as they believe it is a waste of time. The various Poojas and karma kanda (figuratively speaking ritualism) are actually based on the ideas of Adhyatma as well as the ultimate or divine actually pervading everything. It is for these reasons that an interfaith dialogue cannot happen in the Indian context as it would neglect the knowledge systems present in the various traditions and would not give a level playing field. It would be more like Dialogue between theological and Adhyatma systems. So that both sides get an equal opportunity to learn from each other, in fact such dialogues can help bring out the Adhyatma realm present within the theological traditions like Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
Author: Shriram Bhandari
The post Why interfaith dialogues make no sense in the Indian context. appeared first on The Bold Indian.