11-27-2007, 06:55 PM
Found it and so now I don't need to repeat myself beyond duplicating an earlier post. Thought the following belongs here, since the poem on Zeus is very in line with this thread. (Added a statement in purple)
<!--QuoteBegin-Husky+Jan 23 2007, 10:26 AM-->QUOTE(Husky @ Jan 23 2007, 10:26 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin--><!--QuoteBegin--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->FACING THE CHALLENGE OF AMERICAN PLURALISM ON THE FUTURE OF THE NRI COMMUNITY
By - Jakob De Roover<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
There are a number of points I specifically agree with in the above article. For instance, De Roover writes how the HAF and VF have been forced to do the following in presenting Hinduism in America:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->That is, the many devatas are transformed into different ways of worshiping the one true God. Hinduism becomes a proper monotheistic faith. A variety of pagan Indian traditions are excluded because they are embarrassing to the sanitized biblical model of American pluralism.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->The concept of the Divine in Hinduism is as infinite as the Divine itself. He/she has form, is formless, a universal energy. Reading about Brahman in the Upanishads and then reading the Tao Te Ching, one realises that they speak of this unmanifested, indescribable divine ... matter or intelligence or intellect or force or whatever the best description is. The Vedas and Upanishads and commentary by Adi Shankaracharya all explain Brahman with negation: 'not (just) this - beyond all this'. The Tao Te Ching also takes an indirect route to explain the Tao without being able to describe what is essentially indescribable. The Tao Te Ching also does an excellent job in conveying the idea in a human language and explain it to human thought.
In Hinduism, the same Brahman, that force inconceivable to limited imagination, is also manifest to us in a myriad of conceivable forms: Mahavishnu or his variations-(with particular and definite purposes) like Rama and Krishna, Shiva the Cosmic Intelligence, Shakthi the Power and Energy, Ganapathi without whom no Sacrifice bears fruition, and the like. In a different view, the same Gods return to explain the cosmos in a different manner: creation, preservation, dissolution or Goddess the infinitely generative (Parvati) or protective (as Kali), memory, knowledge, wisdom and speech (Saraswati), all kinds of wealth and contentment (Lakshmi). The Gods return again to be individual characters to their bhakthas, they fuse (as Ardhanareeshwara or Shankara-Narayana) to symbolise their oneness. They play the easily comprehensible (Krishna and his butter snatching, Muruga and his playfulness) to the incomprehensible: how each God is described in the scriptures devoted to or expounded by them as being Brahman: Devi (Devi Mahatmyam), Krishna in Gita, Shiva, Ganapathi, Muruga and all .
The Divine is also manifest as the Gods of nature: Rain (Indra), Fire (Agni), Sun, Wind, and the like.
The Divine is everything to us, (s)he is both personal and impersonal and beyond all conception - the Gita explains this repeatedly. There seems to be both personal interest/touch in creation, all while it is merely a natural process of Brahman, from what I could understand of it.
Roover again, on how the Christian understanding of Hinduism using the biblical framework, returned to us to affect Hindu perceptions of our own religion:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The scholars and human sciences of Europe took these Christian theological descriptions as the basic material of their theorizing. Later, Americans reproduced the same assumptions and images. The result is âHinduismâ â the religion of the Hindus. Tragically, colonialism had the Indian pagans adopt this description of their own traditions. Today their intellectuals and educated layers also believe this âHinduismâ exists. Consequently, the NRI community understands the predicament it confronts in a particular way: how should this religion of Hinduism be represented fairly and accurately in the American public sphere and educational system?<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->The author states that our real trouble is figuring out<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>how to break out of the straitjacket in which American pluralism and its theological structure have imprisoned the pagan traditions of India?</b><!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->I feel that his answer is partly hidden in here:<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->This straitjacket has a long history. It is the framework through which the western culture has always looked at other cultures. It is the paradigm that still sustains the dominant human sciences of today and their understanding of nonwestern cultures. It effectively transforms the Hindu traditions into pallid variants of biblical religion.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->We are not alone in Hinduism.
Christianity, Islam are both part of a group of three related religions, together with Judaism. (<b>INSERT:</b> Changed my opinion on this since the original post: I no longer think of Judaism belongs in the category of christoislamicommunism. The monotheism and OT's plagiarism of Judaic books had confused me earlier.)
But our Hinduism is not alone at all, having similarities with many religions - all natural religions: Japan's Shinto has the Kamisama, the Divine, which manifests in many Gods. Like our Brahman:
http://www.basilisk.tv/ (History link)
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->A strong spiritual influence [of the Ninjas] was Shinto, "the way of the Kami." Kami is the Japanese word of "god" and rather than referring to a being, Kami refers to a sacred force that runs through the entire world.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Again, this is like Tao too. Then there is Le Grand Esprit of the North American native Americans: the Grand Spirit, even though the native Americans have totem animals and many other Gods or Spirits to guide them in life, all of whom are manifestations in some capacity of the Grand Spirit. The Ancient African religion of Ifa has the Divine manifesting as many Gods to love and guide all creatures. Hellenismos, the real thing - not the 'petty' religion christians have made it out to be over the last 1.5 millennia - is like our religion too: the Cosmic Power manifests as the Gods representing different aspects of Nature. Zeus is the active Creator, also a deity of Nature, also the Intelligence of the Kosmos itself. Read how the poetic ancient Greeks described Zeus in the section "Greek Wisdom" at http://www.sunyaprajna.com/Worldview/SRKcomments.html
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><i>The last and greatest of them, Porphyry, interprets an <b>Orphic hymn to Zeus</b> as follows: </i>
Now look at the wisdom of the Greeks, and examine it as follows. The authors of the Orphic hymns supposed Zeus to be the mind of the world, and that he created all things therein, containing the world in himself. Therefore in their theological systems they have handed down their opinions concerning him thus:
  Zeus was the first, Zeus last, the lightning's lord,
  Zeus head, Zeus centre, all things are from Zeus.
  Zeus born a male, Zeus virgin undefiled;
  Zeus the firm base of earth and starry heaven;
  Zeus sovereign, Zeus alone first cause of all:
  One power divine, great ruler of the world,
  One kingly form, encircling all things here,
  Fire, water, earth, and ether, night and day;
  Wisdom, first parent, and delightful Love:
  For in Zeus' mighty body these all lie.
  His head and beauteous face the radiant heaven
  Reveals and round him float in shining waves
  The golden tresses of the twinkling stars.
  On either side bulls' horns of gold are seen,
  Sunrise and sunset, footpaths of the gods.
  His eyes the Sun, the Moon's responsive light;
  His mind immortal ether, sovereign truth,
  Hears and considers all; nor any speech,
  Nor cry, nor noise, nor ominous voice escapes
  The ear of Zeus, great Kronos' mightier son:
  Such his immortal head, and such his thought.
  His radiant body, boundless, undisturbed
  In strength of mighty limbs was formed thus:
  The god's broad-spreading shoulders, breast and back
  Air's wide expanse displays; on either side
  Grow wings, wherewith throughout all space he flies.
  Earth the all-mother, with her lofty hills,
  His sacred belly forms; the swelling flood
  Of hoarse resounding Ocean girds his waist.
  His feet the deeply rooted ground upholds,
  And dismal Tartarus, and earth's utmost bounds.
  All things he hides, then from his heart again
  In godlike action brings to gladsome light.
Zeus, therefore, is the whole world, animal of animals, and god of gods; but Zeus, that is, inasmuch as he is the mind from which he brings forth all things, and by his thoughts creates them. When the theologians had explained the nature of god in this manner, to make an image such as their description indicated was neither possible, nor, if any one thought of it, could he show the look of life, and intelligence, and forethought by the figure of a sphere.
But they have made the representation of Zeus in human form, because mind was that according to which he wrought, and by generative laws brought all things to completion; and he is seated, as indicating the steadfastness of his power: and his upper parts are bare, because he is manifested in the intellectual and the heavenly parts of the world; but his feet are clothed, because he is invisible in the things that lie hidden below. And he holds his sceptre in his left hand, because most close to that side of the body dwells the heart, the most commanding and intelligent organ: for the creative mind is the sovereign of the world. And in his right hand he holds forth either an eagle, because he is master of the gods who traverse the air, as the eagle is master of the birds that fly aloft - or a victory, because he is himself victorious over all things.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Some of the statements about Zeus in this poem is like the description of Brahman in the Gita. It gives the lie to the christians who have maligned the Great Father Zeus. The Greeks used to say about him "For we are all indeed his offspring". Clearly.
One of the ways I thought Hindus can move forward with a proper representation of our religion is to leave the low-level talk of polytheism and monotheism to christoislamism which alone is concerned with this petty nonsense.
If you have children, explore the other natural religions and teach them how Hinduism is the expression of the Divine in India. How Hinduism is the Truths grasped by our ancient Indian ancestors. And why our Gods are special to us: in the same manner that the Gods of the other natural religionists are special to them - they represent their people's historic, accumulated, evolutionary understanding of the Divine. It is the greatest gift our ancestors have given us and something that the small-minded, petty babbling book or koran can never give even the remotest glimpse of.
De Roover also writes the following though:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->In reality, however, the notion of God is absent in the Hindu traditions: there is no eternal person, whose will has created and governs the universe and who has revealed His true will to sections of humanity.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--> That is not true. Like Zeus and the other Olympic Gods and the various Kami (manifestations) in Shinto or the Yoruba in Africa, our Gods are represented in physical manifestation too. The Gita says that this entity or being, both formless and yet with myriad forms, is the creator and preserver of all of Creation (the whole Cosmos: all the universes) who pervades every particle of it. As time, (s)he guides everone and everything to their final destinations. There is a repeated cycle of creation, life and dissolution set in motion by the Cosmic 'Mind'.
Krishna explains who he is to Arjuna, who being a prince must have learnt the Vedas from his teachers like Bhishma and Drona. Krishna tells Arjuna: you have heard of Brahman, that which is everything and beyond everything you know - I am a manifestation of that.
And this is what Rama, Shiva, Devi, Ganapathi and the others all are.
As for our Hindu background: we are not alone, but are in the greatest and most worthwhile of company (and we are ourselves as worthwhile), sharing with other natural religionists such a unifying understanding of the Divine. It's time well-spent when we learn about these other ancient religions (after forcing ourselves to read through the babble/koran to realise we have nothing in common with these two) and realise how so many aspects of Hinduism have a parallel with other natural religions. No more time wasted on apologetics about non-issues like the monopoly-theisms discussions and about idols or what nots.
[right][snapback]63421[/snapback][/right]<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-Husky+Jan 23 2007, 10:26 AM-->QUOTE(Husky @ Jan 23 2007, 10:26 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin--><!--QuoteBegin--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->FACING THE CHALLENGE OF AMERICAN PLURALISM ON THE FUTURE OF THE NRI COMMUNITY
By - Jakob De Roover<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
There are a number of points I specifically agree with in the above article. For instance, De Roover writes how the HAF and VF have been forced to do the following in presenting Hinduism in America:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->That is, the many devatas are transformed into different ways of worshiping the one true God. Hinduism becomes a proper monotheistic faith. A variety of pagan Indian traditions are excluded because they are embarrassing to the sanitized biblical model of American pluralism.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->The concept of the Divine in Hinduism is as infinite as the Divine itself. He/she has form, is formless, a universal energy. Reading about Brahman in the Upanishads and then reading the Tao Te Ching, one realises that they speak of this unmanifested, indescribable divine ... matter or intelligence or intellect or force or whatever the best description is. The Vedas and Upanishads and commentary by Adi Shankaracharya all explain Brahman with negation: 'not (just) this - beyond all this'. The Tao Te Ching also takes an indirect route to explain the Tao without being able to describe what is essentially indescribable. The Tao Te Ching also does an excellent job in conveying the idea in a human language and explain it to human thought.
In Hinduism, the same Brahman, that force inconceivable to limited imagination, is also manifest to us in a myriad of conceivable forms: Mahavishnu or his variations-(with particular and definite purposes) like Rama and Krishna, Shiva the Cosmic Intelligence, Shakthi the Power and Energy, Ganapathi without whom no Sacrifice bears fruition, and the like. In a different view, the same Gods return to explain the cosmos in a different manner: creation, preservation, dissolution or Goddess the infinitely generative (Parvati) or protective (as Kali), memory, knowledge, wisdom and speech (Saraswati), all kinds of wealth and contentment (Lakshmi). The Gods return again to be individual characters to their bhakthas, they fuse (as Ardhanareeshwara or Shankara-Narayana) to symbolise their oneness. They play the easily comprehensible (Krishna and his butter snatching, Muruga and his playfulness) to the incomprehensible: how each God is described in the scriptures devoted to or expounded by them as being Brahman: Devi (Devi Mahatmyam), Krishna in Gita, Shiva, Ganapathi, Muruga and all .
The Divine is also manifest as the Gods of nature: Rain (Indra), Fire (Agni), Sun, Wind, and the like.
The Divine is everything to us, (s)he is both personal and impersonal and beyond all conception - the Gita explains this repeatedly. There seems to be both personal interest/touch in creation, all while it is merely a natural process of Brahman, from what I could understand of it.
Roover again, on how the Christian understanding of Hinduism using the biblical framework, returned to us to affect Hindu perceptions of our own religion:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The scholars and human sciences of Europe took these Christian theological descriptions as the basic material of their theorizing. Later, Americans reproduced the same assumptions and images. The result is âHinduismâ â the religion of the Hindus. Tragically, colonialism had the Indian pagans adopt this description of their own traditions. Today their intellectuals and educated layers also believe this âHinduismâ exists. Consequently, the NRI community understands the predicament it confronts in a particular way: how should this religion of Hinduism be represented fairly and accurately in the American public sphere and educational system?<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->The author states that our real trouble is figuring out<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>how to break out of the straitjacket in which American pluralism and its theological structure have imprisoned the pagan traditions of India?</b><!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->I feel that his answer is partly hidden in here:<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->This straitjacket has a long history. It is the framework through which the western culture has always looked at other cultures. It is the paradigm that still sustains the dominant human sciences of today and their understanding of nonwestern cultures. It effectively transforms the Hindu traditions into pallid variants of biblical religion.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->We are not alone in Hinduism.
Christianity, Islam are both part of a group of three related religions, together with Judaism. (<b>INSERT:</b> Changed my opinion on this since the original post: I no longer think of Judaism belongs in the category of christoislamicommunism. The monotheism and OT's plagiarism of Judaic books had confused me earlier.)
But our Hinduism is not alone at all, having similarities with many religions - all natural religions: Japan's Shinto has the Kamisama, the Divine, which manifests in many Gods. Like our Brahman:
http://www.basilisk.tv/ (History link)
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->A strong spiritual influence [of the Ninjas] was Shinto, "the way of the Kami." Kami is the Japanese word of "god" and rather than referring to a being, Kami refers to a sacred force that runs through the entire world.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Again, this is like Tao too. Then there is Le Grand Esprit of the North American native Americans: the Grand Spirit, even though the native Americans have totem animals and many other Gods or Spirits to guide them in life, all of whom are manifestations in some capacity of the Grand Spirit. The Ancient African religion of Ifa has the Divine manifesting as many Gods to love and guide all creatures. Hellenismos, the real thing - not the 'petty' religion christians have made it out to be over the last 1.5 millennia - is like our religion too: the Cosmic Power manifests as the Gods representing different aspects of Nature. Zeus is the active Creator, also a deity of Nature, also the Intelligence of the Kosmos itself. Read how the poetic ancient Greeks described Zeus in the section "Greek Wisdom" at http://www.sunyaprajna.com/Worldview/SRKcomments.html
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><i>The last and greatest of them, Porphyry, interprets an <b>Orphic hymn to Zeus</b> as follows: </i>
Now look at the wisdom of the Greeks, and examine it as follows. The authors of the Orphic hymns supposed Zeus to be the mind of the world, and that he created all things therein, containing the world in himself. Therefore in their theological systems they have handed down their opinions concerning him thus:
  Zeus was the first, Zeus last, the lightning's lord,
  Zeus head, Zeus centre, all things are from Zeus.
  Zeus born a male, Zeus virgin undefiled;
  Zeus the firm base of earth and starry heaven;
  Zeus sovereign, Zeus alone first cause of all:
  One power divine, great ruler of the world,
  One kingly form, encircling all things here,
  Fire, water, earth, and ether, night and day;
  Wisdom, first parent, and delightful Love:
  For in Zeus' mighty body these all lie.
  His head and beauteous face the radiant heaven
  Reveals and round him float in shining waves
  The golden tresses of the twinkling stars.
  On either side bulls' horns of gold are seen,
  Sunrise and sunset, footpaths of the gods.
  His eyes the Sun, the Moon's responsive light;
  His mind immortal ether, sovereign truth,
  Hears and considers all; nor any speech,
  Nor cry, nor noise, nor ominous voice escapes
  The ear of Zeus, great Kronos' mightier son:
  Such his immortal head, and such his thought.
  His radiant body, boundless, undisturbed
  In strength of mighty limbs was formed thus:
  The god's broad-spreading shoulders, breast and back
  Air's wide expanse displays; on either side
  Grow wings, wherewith throughout all space he flies.
  Earth the all-mother, with her lofty hills,
  His sacred belly forms; the swelling flood
  Of hoarse resounding Ocean girds his waist.
  His feet the deeply rooted ground upholds,
  And dismal Tartarus, and earth's utmost bounds.
  All things he hides, then from his heart again
  In godlike action brings to gladsome light.
Zeus, therefore, is the whole world, animal of animals, and god of gods; but Zeus, that is, inasmuch as he is the mind from which he brings forth all things, and by his thoughts creates them. When the theologians had explained the nature of god in this manner, to make an image such as their description indicated was neither possible, nor, if any one thought of it, could he show the look of life, and intelligence, and forethought by the figure of a sphere.
But they have made the representation of Zeus in human form, because mind was that according to which he wrought, and by generative laws brought all things to completion; and he is seated, as indicating the steadfastness of his power: and his upper parts are bare, because he is manifested in the intellectual and the heavenly parts of the world; but his feet are clothed, because he is invisible in the things that lie hidden below. And he holds his sceptre in his left hand, because most close to that side of the body dwells the heart, the most commanding and intelligent organ: for the creative mind is the sovereign of the world. And in his right hand he holds forth either an eagle, because he is master of the gods who traverse the air, as the eagle is master of the birds that fly aloft - or a victory, because he is himself victorious over all things.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Some of the statements about Zeus in this poem is like the description of Brahman in the Gita. It gives the lie to the christians who have maligned the Great Father Zeus. The Greeks used to say about him "For we are all indeed his offspring". Clearly.
One of the ways I thought Hindus can move forward with a proper representation of our religion is to leave the low-level talk of polytheism and monotheism to christoislamism which alone is concerned with this petty nonsense.
If you have children, explore the other natural religions and teach them how Hinduism is the expression of the Divine in India. How Hinduism is the Truths grasped by our ancient Indian ancestors. And why our Gods are special to us: in the same manner that the Gods of the other natural religionists are special to them - they represent their people's historic, accumulated, evolutionary understanding of the Divine. It is the greatest gift our ancestors have given us and something that the small-minded, petty babbling book or koran can never give even the remotest glimpse of.
De Roover also writes the following though:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->In reality, however, the notion of God is absent in the Hindu traditions: there is no eternal person, whose will has created and governs the universe and who has revealed His true will to sections of humanity.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--> That is not true. Like Zeus and the other Olympic Gods and the various Kami (manifestations) in Shinto or the Yoruba in Africa, our Gods are represented in physical manifestation too. The Gita says that this entity or being, both formless and yet with myriad forms, is the creator and preserver of all of Creation (the whole Cosmos: all the universes) who pervades every particle of it. As time, (s)he guides everone and everything to their final destinations. There is a repeated cycle of creation, life and dissolution set in motion by the Cosmic 'Mind'.
Krishna explains who he is to Arjuna, who being a prince must have learnt the Vedas from his teachers like Bhishma and Drona. Krishna tells Arjuna: you have heard of Brahman, that which is everything and beyond everything you know - I am a manifestation of that.
And this is what Rama, Shiva, Devi, Ganapathi and the others all are.
As for our Hindu background: we are not alone, but are in the greatest and most worthwhile of company (and we are ourselves as worthwhile), sharing with other natural religionists such a unifying understanding of the Divine. It's time well-spent when we learn about these other ancient religions (after forcing ourselves to read through the babble/koran to realise we have nothing in common with these two) and realise how so many aspects of Hinduism have a parallel with other natural religions. No more time wasted on apologetics about non-issues like the monopoly-theisms discussions and about idols or what nots.
[right][snapback]63421[/snapback][/right]<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->