Removing The Sheen From Buddhism

[Husky]

Romani,

It's amazing how wrong you are about ... practically everything.



For example, you're absolutely wrong about:



a) - the reasons you imagine E Asians would have had for "preferring" Buddhism to their own religions (and Hindu elements E Asians had already adopted, if any)



- the majority of lay Mahayana Buddhists of E Asia, and how "devotional" their practice/views are. Where do you get your opinion from, it sounds like nothing I've ever heard or seen from actual practitioners.



BTW, I deliberately gave no examples on Buddhism's interactions with E Asian native religions. No examples means no misconstruing as ammo, means no misuse.



- "all major chinese schools are preocupied whit this life only ... These is the reason that buddhism have especially an after-life place in the chinese religion.It didnt have competition from the chinese school in this regard"

Wrong about Taoism. (Also, Taoism is a religion, not merely a 'school of thought').



- about "'common' people not understanding the intricacies of philosophy"

"Philosophy" (English use) comes naturally to heathens. It's just that for the laity (and, in religions concerning the Gods, most certainly not only the laity), "philosophy" is but part of their living religion.



- wrong about the use of "sentimentality" in describing the way traditional followers of Gods-based, Gods-centred religions view their Gods. But others make this absurd mistake/accusation also.



- wrong about the Chinese and Japanese traditionalists and how they see their Gods (it's quite the same as traditional Hindus see their Gods)

i just show that they are less incline to devotionalism,bhakti ,you name it.

Sure they have feelings ,but usually don't have overwhelming feelings like indians have the tendency to have,an least in the religious sphere.

No. Rather the opposite. They are more honourable. Do you even know what their private religious life is like at home, do you know how they actually view their Gods?

Unlike the overwhelming mass of absolutely cowardly angelsk-speaking Hindu vocalists today, who are so successfully and so thoroughly alienated by the Miseducation Project (and consequently, all their subsequent generations are even more permanently lost to the Hindu religion), traditional Taoists are full of love for their Gods. The Gods are their life. What Julian was (=a devout follower of his Gods) - just as other traditional Hellenes were - is what the traditional Taoists and Shintos are. I.e. they are like the ancient Hindus and the fast-dying-out older generation of Hindus, and the fewer (but still extant) invisible Hindoos.

I find traditional Taoists and Shintos - though silent and hence invisible too - something to take pride in.





b.) - you are wrong about the way traditional Hellenes viewed Philosophy. Julian is certainly not the only example to make the point I had mentioned in my post (and I merely re-iterated their views, of course: it was too serious an issue for me to opinionate on). And Julianus was himself re-stating the common views of his Hellenistic predecessors and contemporaries. R.Smith's explanation of Julian's reason for choosing to bring up this established Hellenistic view in public - in order to use it vis-a-vis christianism - certainly has its merits. However, the point here is that Julian's supporting references to his predecessors' views on the matter, shows that it was indeed the established, common Hellenistic POV.

It is Julian and his fellow Hellenes that know their religion.

d-maybe it was first a greek word but later become universal.Its like saying that physics is only a greek science because the word is greek.So we should drove out the science from schools because is only a greek stuff.

Your logic is wrong. It does not and never did concern a mere word in the case of Philosophy: Philosophy is a religious term and has a very specific meaning. The error I speak of is akin to saying "Vedanta is universal and can be applied to all religions in the world" if we just adopted it into English to mean what "philosophy" means now in English. No, Vedanta is not universal, it is Hindu alone.

English has been misusing Philosophy in this way.

It subverted a core religious term that has a specific meaning (which it deserves to retain) among those who own everything to do with the word.





c) The "animist" accusation is entertaining.

Let's try to recall the different things you've accused me of being over the years of your visiting IF.

Smarta. Wrong. Advaitin. Wrong. On yet another occasion, you declared I was doing some random "folk religion" or something. Wrong. (Unless it's defined as just the religion of the Hindu folk. )

Then there was another accusation - I forget. (You accuse so often, it's hard to keep track.)

Now animist. (Ironically, despite the christoword, you may be getting closer. Well, it depends on the intended meaning/connotation of animist.)



I'll make it easy for you.

Leaving aside my own person, my *ancestors* - down to my parents and uncles and aunts - are of the very same religion as the Hindu monkey that hugged his=my Rama-moorti before dying at Rama's feet and the Hindu Cobra that did puja to his=my Shiva-moorti (news articles on this were posted in the Hindu thread I think). I.e. the Hindu religion. My ancestors are of the religion of the RuShis who set down knowledge of the Hindu religion/Gods in our various scriptures.

The Husky way to see religion ,from a aesthetical or terestrial benefit,is from my point of view,incomplete.

You're again creating a "Husky" that doesn't exist. I will state my views for myself if or when I choose to. Don't ascribe opinions to me (which you seem to do just so you can declare you disagree, the same way you presume to attach labels to me - how often must you be so totally wrong before you will stop it?)





d)

shankarian advaita impersonalists

Poor misrepresented Shankara Bhagavadpada: most of the vocalists speaking on Vedanta today and bringing him in, entirely ignore his many works on the Gods and imagine that he was purely a "philosopher", and so they keep peddling just that one aspect of his: the one aspect that they are able to appreciate. It's because the Gods don't compute to the modern people who have developed an interest in Vedanta: people who generally tend to have been non-religious until they 'discovered' Advaitam. (I have yet to find one who didn't fit this pattern.) In contrast, the Gods certainly computed to Shankara. E.g. he declares at the end of his SAL, which is in praise of the one he was named for, that he did not lie in his praise. People who discover Shankara and his explication of Vedanta frequently dismiss - when they do not outright ignore - all the rest of his works, as being but his materials "meant for the (unintellectual) Hindoo masses". Yet all his output was part of his same Hindooness, and he was sincere about them all.

They've entirely hijacked (<- that word again) Adi Shankaracharya. But he was just a Hindoo. An Acharya, yes (I have made his stotras on the Gods my own*, as I have those of others before and after him: they so eloquently say what I want to say), but a Hindoo.

* Lines like "aham chAtibAlo, bhavAn lokatAtaH" addressed to shaktipaNe :mine: are simply perfect for me to want to steal the words. The entire stotram is magnificent, like the shloka on worshipping His Twelve Infallible Arms that protect the Universe :love: and the one on the same Baby - who was already seen addressed as the Father of the Kosmos - running to its Dad.



Anyway, I think affected and concerned Hindus really should reclaim the Acharya before it is too late for them. Else the way Vedanta is being manipulated in our time (particularly Advaitam, esp. as explained by Shankara), will force these Hindus into an unnatural 'choice' - where there never was any before - between the Gods and Shankara/Shankara's explication of Advaitam. That was never his intention.





e) You know nothing about the Hindu religion. You just do some westernised brand of Indian religion.

Your two or 3 years (or were it even decades) of dabbling in ISKCON doesn't make you an expert on Hindu religion. And it certainly gives you no right to presume as you do. You keep playing the put-upon ISKCONite and declaring This and That from behind the safety you think your assumed label/affiliation buys you. But I am quite unaffected: in this one respect I am entirely unlike other modern Hindus, in that I'm not remotely interested in gaining or retaining western converts and their mostly passing interest in 'Hinduism'. Privately, I wait for them to get bored and find something else to do, as fortunately so many do. (Goes without saying that I have no problem with people of western origin who genuinely find their home to be in Hindu religion. But they are very different and do not concern us here.)

You really ought to stop your presumption in lecturing Hindus about our own religion, it got tiresome the very first time you tried it. You, and similar persons, sound like all those western people dabbling in Taoism (they get their knowledge of "Taoism" by reading books, of course, or from joining overseas orgs) who then ignorantly and arrogantly lecture Taoists and the world that "Taoism doesn't actually have Gods". Fortunately, the traditional Taoists expressly disregard them and their opinionations.



Why Hindus continue to stand for all the interference, I don't know.





f)

when shaivas see Shiva as the Supreme and Vishnu as his servant and despise vaishnava who believe otherwise.

Now don't make up absurdities.



[color="#0000FF"]INSERTED:[/color] You don't deserve to know, but I will write it anyway for any poor Hindoo out there who naturally felt slighted by such lame accusations like yours involving "despise" and other inanities.



To Shaivas, Vishnu is seen as an equal, and those that ultimately make no conscious distinction, see him as an extension of Shiva's very self (or vice-versa).

Confirmed by Shiva's name as Vishnuvallabha, and the consequent fact that Vishnu (like Uma) is seen as occupying half of Shiva (or vice-versa, or rather, since it is an equal half, Harihara is part Shiva part Vishnu). Other full-on Shaivas like Lingayats don't make any distinction in quality either, they merely primarily worship their kuladevam (in their case Shiva) like the rest of the Hindus do, but I know for a fact that they worship Vishnu too when the occasion comes and have seen them do so with great eagerness.



It is generally the norm, as far as I know, that Shiva Kovils be constructed with a Sannidhi for Vishnu, as also for various other Gods like Lakshmi, Saraswati, Hanuman, the Navagrahas, etc. (which is why the construction of Shiva Kovils therefore also requires it have a special area for the Navagrahas). And ShivagaNas and, in Tamizh Kovils, Nandikeshwara.

And Hindus who pray in Shiva Kovils do NOT think of the other Gods as servants of Shiva (other than Nandi and the gaNas), but eagerly go to see all the Gods' sannidhis and pray to them all, each time with only the God/Couple they're currently looking at in mind. Shiva requires all these Gods to be worshipped - not as some lesser entities to himself, but so that Hindus do not forget, even in a temple primarily dedicated to Shiva+wife, that there are many Gods (and also particular manifestations of these same Gods) that also deserve Hindus' worship - which is exactly why his Kovils generally must house all these Gods. It is as Shiva wants it.



Pooja to the Shivalingam is likewise considered to be pooja at once offered to the Trimoorti (and all their spouses, of course) and ultimately all the Hindu Gods of the cosmos, as they are all represented in the very form and construction of the Shiva Lingam itself (most noticeably the Trimoorti is represented, but not exclusively them). The Shiva Lingam is a concentrated form of the Shiva Kovil, which is a concentrated form of the Kosmos. So the Hindu whose kuladevam is Shiva, when he prays to a Shivalingam, is praying to Shiva+every other Hindu God too. This is both consciously and subconsciously so. Certainly, the prayers that are offered ultimately go to all the Gods. Which is why Shiva becomes so immensely pleased. A Shiva Lingam is Shiva. A Shiva Lingam is Shiva+Uma. A Shiva Lingam is the Trimoorti (their spouses automatically included). A Shivalingam is also All the Hindu Gods. A Shiva Lingam is a concentrated version of Everything.



You're just obviously ignorant of Hindu religion altogether.





Anyway, to the easiest question of them all:

If a shaiva say that shaiva are good version of hinduism and all other hindu sects are the decadent versions of hinduism,or when a vaishnava say that vaishnava is the restoration of the true hinduism degraded in time,what do you say?

Your If is theoretical.

Regardless: I always say that People (and modern movements) Who Have Never Seen* the Hindu Gods Should Shut Up about said Gods. (Well, it is the only reasonable thing to say.)



[* "seen": with which I obviously don't mean in a vision/in the mind's eye/while dreaming or even while meditating or other such cases where the evidence can be dubious.]