<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Ramakrishna mission<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->I'd never speak ill of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa or Vivekananda, both very Hindu. The Ramakrishna Mission is also very Hindu. Many of my Hindu books are written and published by them. They are never ashamed to mention all the Gods, and they don't focus on just Shiva or just Krishna or just Devi ... , but are enthusiastic about presenting all of them. Okay, they translate Samskritam 'Devas' as 'Gods' or 'gods' in English, but I think this had already started this during end-British period and so they continued to keep it up for consistency.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->but now some of them go around claiming that Ramakrishna founded a "new universal faith"<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Isn't this only in Bengal where they don't want to be terrorised by the communists or have their organisations taken over by the government, because the government does this to all Hindu organisations and temples in the rest of India? Neither Ramakrishna nor Vivekananda ever founded a religion. They were Hindus, being Hindu in their lives and popularising Hinduism. Ramakrishna's way was one path of the Sanatana Dharma. Can't think of anyone but the pseculars who could be trying to appropriate him for some fake cause they dub 'universal'. Sanatana Dharma is universal in the true sense of the word, but it's wrong when any part of it is called a 'new universal faith' and made to appear separate from its whole self, or when it's used to project it against the rest of Hinduism.
<b>EDIT:</b> On another matter, there's another form of Hindu dhimmitude that permeates much of our society. I have a book on the 1000 names of Mahavishnu (not Ramakrishna Mission). The author takes a page to explain each name. All of a sudden I found that at one point, he was trying to reason why some Hindu ritual or saying was quite alright, since it was in line with the 'great' thinking of the catholic 'mystic' saint Teresa of Avila. Ignoring what weird, disgusting people those mystic saints were (see http://freetruth.50webs.org/C1.htm#Existed and look for "St Teresa of Avila"), why do Hindu expressions need reference to christianity or islam to validate them? And - when there are so many respectable belief systems in the world - why those two religions? It's always only christoislamism that Hindu authors choose to bring in as some kind of comparable examples. The examples are often utterly irrelevant; and sometimes, as in the case of the Teresa of Avila error mentioned above, the authors are unwittingly connecting the sacred with the icky. Just because catholics say Teresa of Avila was great, or because christoislamics say so-and-so was brilliant, doesn't mean we should blindly accept their assertions. First we must find out who these people are, what they believed and did, and then, if they are really worthwhile (never have been so far) and relevant, one can include them.
Still, best to keep away from religions whose primary objective in India is to destroy Hinduism and replace it with their own. Instead, it's good to get the copious examples available from Shintoism or Taoism or other natural religions to point out similarities with. Not as some need to get some kind of external validation of our beliefs, but to tell Hindus that we are not alone, and that truly great thinkers of other natural religions had also come to the same conclusions during different times. This is what I'd like to see in the coming generations of Hindu books (written by Hindu authors of course).
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->but now some of them go around claiming that Ramakrishna founded a "new universal faith"<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Isn't this only in Bengal where they don't want to be terrorised by the communists or have their organisations taken over by the government, because the government does this to all Hindu organisations and temples in the rest of India? Neither Ramakrishna nor Vivekananda ever founded a religion. They were Hindus, being Hindu in their lives and popularising Hinduism. Ramakrishna's way was one path of the Sanatana Dharma. Can't think of anyone but the pseculars who could be trying to appropriate him for some fake cause they dub 'universal'. Sanatana Dharma is universal in the true sense of the word, but it's wrong when any part of it is called a 'new universal faith' and made to appear separate from its whole self, or when it's used to project it against the rest of Hinduism.
<b>EDIT:</b> On another matter, there's another form of Hindu dhimmitude that permeates much of our society. I have a book on the 1000 names of Mahavishnu (not Ramakrishna Mission). The author takes a page to explain each name. All of a sudden I found that at one point, he was trying to reason why some Hindu ritual or saying was quite alright, since it was in line with the 'great' thinking of the catholic 'mystic' saint Teresa of Avila. Ignoring what weird, disgusting people those mystic saints were (see http://freetruth.50webs.org/C1.htm#Existed and look for "St Teresa of Avila"), why do Hindu expressions need reference to christianity or islam to validate them? And - when there are so many respectable belief systems in the world - why those two religions? It's always only christoislamism that Hindu authors choose to bring in as some kind of comparable examples. The examples are often utterly irrelevant; and sometimes, as in the case of the Teresa of Avila error mentioned above, the authors are unwittingly connecting the sacred with the icky. Just because catholics say Teresa of Avila was great, or because christoislamics say so-and-so was brilliant, doesn't mean we should blindly accept their assertions. First we must find out who these people are, what they believed and did, and then, if they are really worthwhile (never have been so far) and relevant, one can include them.
Still, best to keep away from religions whose primary objective in India is to destroy Hinduism and replace it with their own. Instead, it's good to get the copious examples available from Shintoism or Taoism or other natural religions to point out similarities with. Not as some need to get some kind of external validation of our beliefs, but to tell Hindus that we are not alone, and that truly great thinkers of other natural religions had also come to the same conclusions during different times. This is what I'd like to see in the coming generations of Hindu books (written by Hindu authors of course).