Some of the intellectual
celebraties in the world of the
West and the East had the following things
to say about Hinduism:
(source: The Spirit of Modern India - Edited by Robert A McDermont and V. S. Naravane p.6 - 7).
He said:
"From the high spiritual flights of the Vedanta philosophy, of which the latest discoveries of science seem like echoes, to the low ideas of idolatry with its multifarious mythology, the agnosticism of the Buddhists and the atheism of the Jains, each and all have a place in the Hindu's religion.
God is the ever-active providence, by whose power systems after systems are being evolved out of chaos, made to run for a time, and again destroyed.
This is what the Brahmin boy repeats every day:
"The sun and the moon, the Lord created like the suns and the moons of previous cycles."
And this agrees with modern science.
(source: Hinduism - By Swami Vivekananda chapter: A Universal Religion p. 3)
Vivekananda said: "The Vedas teach that the soul is divine, only held in the bondage of matter; perfection will be reached when this bond will burst, and the word they use for it is, therefore, Mukti - freedom, freedom from the bonds of imperfection, freedom from death and misery."
The Lord has declared to the Hindu in His incarnation as Krishna:
"I am in every religion as the thread through a string of pearls. Wherever thou seest extraordinary holiness and extraordinary power raising and purifying humanity, know thou that I am there."
(source: Swami Vivekananda Paper on Hinduism http://www.itihaas.com/modern/vivek-speech3.html).
For him India was synonymous with the spirit of religion. He said "If India is to die, religion will be wiped off the face of the earth."
(source: A Call To The Eternal - By Swami Ashokananda p. 78).
Swami Vivekananda in his essay, The Future of India:
"It is the same India which has withstood the shocks of centuries, of hundreds of foreign invasions, of hundreds of upheavals of manners and customs. It is the same land, which stands firmer than any rock in the world, with its undying vigour, indestructible life. Its life is of the same nature as the soul, without beginning and without end, immortal; and we are the children of such a country."
(source: Hindutva is liberal - By A. B. Vajpayee - rediff.com).
Swami Vivekananda said about the Bhagavad Gita:
"No better commentary on the Vedas has been written or can be written."
(source: Gita, An Antidote For All Ills - Times of India).
"Hinduism is the mother of all religions" - so wrote Swami Vivekananda.
“This is the ancient land, where wisdom made its home before it went into any other country… Here is the same India whose soil has been trodden by the feet of the greatest sages that ever lived… Look back, therefore, as far as you can, drink deep of the eternal fountains that are behind, and after that look forward, march forward, and make India brighter, greater, much higher, than she ever was.”
"Say it with pride : we are Hindus", is what Swami Vivekananda taught his fellow Hindus.
(source: Ayodhya and After - By Koenraad Elst).
"Hindu Dharma is the quintessence of our national life, hold fast to it if you want your country to survive, or else you would be wiped out in three generations".
(source: Cry for a Hindu Nation - By V Sundaram - boloji.com).
Swami Vivekananda called upon his people to ‘rise, awake and acquire’ and reminded them that
"Hindu religion does not consist in struggles and attempts to believe a certain doctrine or dogma, but in realizing not in believing, but in being and becoming."
(source: India Rediscovered - By Dr. Giriraj Shah p. 31 Abhinav Publications New Delhi 1975)
The Hindu movement that he started became so
successful in America, that
Wendell Thomas wrote a book called, 'Hinduism Invades America" where he observes:
"An old faith is now invading a new country."
Swami Vivekananda also claimed: "I am
proud to belong to a religion which has taught the world both tolerance and
universal acceptance."
"Say it with pride : we are Hindus",
is what Swami Vivekananda taught his fellow Hindus.
***
Vivekananda
said if you want to do anything in India, do it with the re-establishment of dharma or its
reawakening. In India
the soil and the dharma (the upward aspiration) are one and the same, are body
and soul.(source: The Soul of India - By Satyavrata R Patel p. 206). Swami Vivekananda, who founded the Vedanta Society of America in 1894, was a champion of Mother India.
He had said: “The time
has come for the Hinduism of the Rishis to become dynamic. Shall we stand by
whilst alien hands attempt to destroy the fortress of the Ancient Faith?…shall
we remain passive or shall we become aggressive, as in the days of old,
preaching unto the nations the glory of the Dharma?…In order to rise again,
India must be strong and united, and must focus all its living forces. To bring
this about is the meaning of my sannyasa!
(source: Hinduism Invades America - By Wendell Thomas p.
64 - 72 published by The Beacon Press Inc. New York City 1930)."By what strange social alchemy has India subdued her conquerors, transforming them to her very self and substance..... ? Why is it that her conquerors have not been able to impose on her their language, their thoughts and
customs, except in superficial ways?"
(source: The empire strikes back - By Suma Varghese - Free Press Journal December 5 1997).
"If one religion is true, then all the others must also be true. Thus the Hindu faith is as yours as much as mine."
(source: http://www.geocities.com/hindusoc/special/hindintr.htm).
Vivekananda's philosophy was one of pride in the past. " Look back, therefore, as far as you can, drink deep of the eternal fountains that are behind, and after that, look forward, much forward, march forward and make India brighter, greater, much higher than she ever was... We must go to the root of this disease and cleanse the blood of all impurities.”
He had put immense faith in Hinduism:
"To my mind', our religion is truer than any other religion, because it never conquered. Because it never shed blood, because its mouth always shed on all, words of blessing, of peace, words of love and sympathy. It is here and here alone that the ideals of toleration were first preached. And it is here and here alone that toleration and sympathy become practical; it is theoretical in every other country; it is here and here alone, that the Hindu builds mosques for the Mohammedans and churches for the Christians.”
(source: Secularization of India…? - By S. Balasundar - Hindu voice).
Religion is the main theme of India. Swami Vivekananda wrote:
"Each nation, like each individual, has one theme in life, which is its center, the principal note round which every note comes to form harmony....if one nation attempts to throw off its vitality, the direction which has become its own through the transmission of centuries, the nation dies....if one nation's political power is its vitality, as in England, artistic life is another and so on. In India religious life forms the center, the keynote of the whole music of life."
(source: Glimpses of Indian Culture - By Dr. Giriraj Shah p. 27).
He proclaimed the non-dualistic "spirituality" of Vedanta as the metaphysical root and basis of universal tolerance and brotherhood, as well as of India's national identity.
He said:
“India alone was to be, of all lands, the land of toleration and of spirituality…in that distant time the sage arose and declared, ekam sad vipra bahudha vadanti (He who exists is one; the sages call him variously). This is one of the most memorable sentences that was ever uttered, one of the grandest truths that was ever discovered. And for us Hindus this truth has been the very backbone of our national existence…our country has become the glorious land of religious toleration…The world is waiting for this grand idea of universal toleration….The other great idea that the world wants from us today….is that eternal ideal of the spiritual oneness of the whole universe…This is the dictate of Indian philosophy. This oneness is the rationale of all ethics and all spirituality.”
(source: Vivekanada's Complete Works III, 186ff).
“India alone was to be, of all lands, the land
of toleration and of spirituality. "I am proud to belong to a religion
which has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance."
22. Adi
Shakaracharya (5th century BC) was undoubtedly an immortal spiritual leader who, by his
matchless speculative daring, grand practical idealism, remorseless logic and
stern intellectualism gave an interpretation of the mysteries of life
whose influence is still great. Shankaracharya is a colossus of India's cultural history.
He re-established the Swami order and, along with propounding Advaita (non-dual Brahman), his unequalled contribution to life in the country lies in providing a geographical as well as metaphysical definition to Hinduism. Adi Shankaracharya established mathas across the length and breadth of the country: Sringeri in the south, Dwarka in the west, Badrinarayan in the north, Govardhan, Puri, in the East. It is to his journeys that the Indic civilisation owes both its metaphysical continuity as well as its physical unity.
American historian Will Durant has written about him:
"In his short life of thirty-two years Sankara achieved that union of sage and saint, of wisdom and kindliness, which characterizes the loftiest type of man produced in India. "
"Shanakara establishes the source of his philosophy at a remote and subtle point never quite clearly visioned again until, a thousand years later, Immanuel Kant wrote his Critique of Pure Reason."
(source: Story of Civilization: Our Oriental Heritage - By Will Durant MJF Books. 1935. p 546 - 547).
Sankara's philosophy is called Kevaladvaita or absolute monism which can be summed up thus. The Supreme Spirit or the Brahman is alone real and the individual self is only the Supreme Self and no other. Brahman is supreme intelligence, devoid of attributes, form, changes or limitations. It is self-luminous and all pervading and is without a second. The empirical world is unreal, an illusion born of ignorance. The jiva continues in Samsara only as long as it retains attachment due to ignorance or Maya. If it casts off the veil of Maya through knowledge or Jnana it will realize its identity with the Brahman and get merged into it.
(source: Main Currents in Indian Culture - By S. Natarajan p. 35 - 37).
"In his short life of thirty-two years
Sankara achieved that union of sage and saint, of wisdom and kindliness, which
characterizes the loftiest type of man produced in India."
He is considered one of the foremost of India's mystic philosophers and religious thinker who developed Advaita Vedanta, a system of philosophical thought within Hinduism. Adi Shankaracharya was born during the time when Buddhism held somewhat of a sway in India, and the philosophy of Buddhism had come to be interpreted as a denial of God. Buddhism was Puritanical. And by banning drinking, dancing, singing and theatre, Buddhism sowed the seeds of opposition. Moreover, Hinduism was divided into various sects and the ritualistic practice had taken a predominance over actual philosophical practice.
Adi Shankaracharya revived Sanatana Dharma. He effectively turned back the wave of Buddhism and Jainism and established Hinduism firmly in Bharat. His works on religion and philosophy pointed out the unique features of our ancient religion. Shankara, in his indisputable style, set out on a difficult mission and changed the outlook of the country and its people by revamping the vast hindu literature into simple easy to understand language.
The great genius of Adi-Shankaracharya led him to establish in the four corners of India, four principal seats of learning for propagating his teaching; at a time when he had revived the understanding of the people and established the true and eternal fundamentals of Vedic wisdom.
(source: Introduction to Shankara - About.com).
The great genius of
Adi-Shankaracharya led him to establish in the four corners of India, and
established the true and eternal fundamentals of Vedic wisdom.
Advaita Vedanta has been and continues to be
the most widely known system of Indian philosophy, both in the East and the
West.
Shri Shankara
composed a number of hymns to foster the sense of devotion in the hearts of men
and this is His greatest service. Bhaja
Govindam is one among His many works and in this short garland of poems in praise
of Lord Govinda (Krishna). Refer to Bhaja Govindam - kamakoti.org.
Advaita Vedanta has been and continues to be the most widely known system of Indian philosophy, both in the East and the West.
The entire philosophy of Shankara can be summed up in the following statement: Brahma satyam, pagan mithya, jivo brahmaiva naparah (Brahman is real, the world is false, the self is not-different from Brahman).
(source: Great Thinkers of the Eastern World - By Ian Philip McGreal Editor p. 214 - 215).
This is what he thought of the Bhagavad Gita:
" From a clear knowledge of the Bhagavad-Gita all the goals of human existence become fulfilled. Bhagavad-Gita is the manifest quintessence of all the teachings of the Vedic scriptures."
Karl Jaspers (1883-1969) the famous Austrian existentialist philosopher Regarding Shankara's commentary, once told Professor K. Satchidananda Murthy that, 'there is no metaphysics superior to that of Shankara.'
(source: Vedanta influence - vedanta.org)
He was a brilliant scholar in Greek and Latin. He had learned French from his childhood in Manchester and studied for himself German and Italian sufficiently to study Goethe and Dante in the original tongues. He passed the Tripos in Cambridge in the first class and obtained record marks in Greek and Latin in the examination for the Indian Civil Service.
This is what Aurobindo said in his book, India's Rebirth (ISBN 2-902776-32-2) p 139-140.
"Hinduism.....gave itself no name, because it set itself no sectarian limits; it claimed no universal adhesion, asserted no sole infallible dogma, set up no single narrow path or gate of salvation; it was less a creed or cult than a continuously enlarging tradition of the God ward endeavor of the human spirit. An immense many-sided and many staged provision for a spiritual self-building and self-finding, it had some right to speak of itself by the only name it knew, the eternal religion, Santana Dharma...."
" The people of India, even the "ignorant masses" are by centuries of training are nearer to the inner realities, than even the cultured elite anywhere else"
“The Gita is the greatest gospel of spiritual works ever yet given to the race."
In his famous Essays on the Gita, Sri Aurobindo summed up the whole problem in these words:
We will use only soul-force and never destroy by war or any even
defensive employment of physical violence ? Good, though until soul-force
is effective, the Asuric force in men and nations tramples down, breaks,
slaughters, burns, pollutes, as we see it doing today, but then at its ease and
unhindered, and you have perhaps caused as much destruction of life by your
abstinence as others by resort to violence. Strength founded on
the Truth and the dharmic use of force are thus the Gita’s answer to pacifism
and non-violence. Rooted in the ancient Indian genius, this third way can only
be practised by those who have risen above egoism, above asuric ambition or
greed. The Gita certainly does not
advocate war ; what it advocates is the active and selfless defence of
dharma. If sincerely followed, its teaching could have altered the course of
human history. It can yet alter the course of Indian history."
The Gita is, in Sri Aurobindo’s words, “our chief national heritage, our
hope for the future.” (source: The Gita in Today’s World - by Michel Danino - bharatvani.org). Refer to Sri Aurobindo Ashram.org.
Aurobindo says in his book Karmayogin:
"Hinduism, which is the most skeptical and the most believing of all, the most skeptical because it has questioned and experimented the most, the most believing because it has the deepest experience and the most varied and positive spiritual knowledge, that wider Hinduism which is not a dogma or combination of dogmas but a law of life, which is not a social framework but the spirit of a past and future social evolution, which rejects nothing but insists on testing and experiencing everything and when tested and experienced, turning in to the soul's uses, in this Hinduism, we find the basis of future world religion. This Sanatana Dharma has many scriptures: The Veda, the Vedanta, the Gita, the Upanishads, the Darshanas, the Puranas, the Tantras:......but its real, the most authoritative scripture is in the heart in which the Eternal has his dwelling."
Aurobindo in his book, Letters, Vol. II wrote:
"The Hindu religion appears....as a cathedral temple, half in ruins, noble in the mass, often fantastic in detail but always fantastic with a significance - crumbling or badly outworn in places, but a cathedral temple in which service is still done to the Unseen and its real presence can be felt by those who enter with the right spirit."
(source: The Soul of India - By Satyavrata R Patel p. 60-61).
"That which we call the Hindu religion is really the Eternal religion because it embraces all others."
(source: The Wisdom of Hindu Gurus -Timothy Freke pg 56 ).
In a brilliant speech, Aurobindo equated the Indian land with Sanatana Dharma or Hindu religion which is but another name for the yearning of the Divine or the quest of the Spirit. He also said that in India religion and nationalism are one. India rises with religion, lives by it and will perish with it and to rise in religion is to raise India.
(source: The Soul of India - By Satyavrata R Patel p. 206).
"India of the ages is not dead nor has she spoken her last creative word; she lives and has still something to do for herself and the human peoples."
(source: India's Rebirth - By Sri Aurobindo Publisher: Mira Aditi ISBN 81-85137-27-7 p. 158).
Aurobindo calls the commercial civilization of the West "monstrous and asuric (demonic)".
He pointed out: " ...the seers of ancient India had, in their experiments and efforts at spiritual training and the conquest of the body, perfected a discovery which in its importance to the future of human knowledge dwarfs the divinations of Newton and Galileo, even the discovery of the inductive and experimental method in Science was not more momentous..."
(source: The Upanishads - By Sri Aurobindo vol. 12 p. 6).
" Spirituality is indeed the master key of the Indian mind; the sense of the infinitive is native to it. India saw from the beginning, - and, even in her ages of reason and her age of increasing ignorance, she never lost hold of the insight, - that life cannot be rightly seen in the sole light, cannot be perfectly lived in the sole power of its externalities. She was alive to the greatness of material laws and forces; she had a keen eye for the importance of the physical sciences; she knew how to organize the arts of ordinary life. But she saw that the physical does not get its full sense until it stands in right relation to the supra-physical; she saw that the complexity of the universe could not be explained in the present terms of man or seen by his superficial sight, that there were other powers behind, other powers within man himself of which he is normally unaware, that he is conscious only of a small part of himself, that the invisible always surrounds the visible, the supra-sensible the sensible, even as infinity always surrounds the finite. She saw too that man has the power of exceeding himself, of becoming himself more entirely and profoundly than he is, - truths which have only recently begun to be seen in Europe and seem even now too great for its common intelligence.
She saw the myriad gods, and beyond God his own ineffable eternity; she saw that there were ranges of life beyond our present life, ranges of mind beyond our present mind and above these she saw the splendors of the spirit. Then with that calm audacity of her intuition which knew no fear or littleness and shrank from no act whether of spiritual or intellectual, ethical or vital courage, she declared that there was none of these things which man could not attain if he trained his will and knowledge; he could conquer these ranges of mind, become the spirit, become a god, become one with God, become the ineffable Brahman."
' India is the meeting place of the religions and among these Hinduism alone is by itself a vast and complex thing, not so much a religion as a great diversified and yet subtly unified mass of spiritual thought, realization and aspiration." "Metaphysical thinking will always no doubt be a strong element in her mentality, and it is to be hoped that she will never lose her great, her sovereign powers in that direction..."
(source: The Renaissance in India - Shri Aurobindo Arya Publishing House Calcutta. p. 10 - 55).
Maharshi Aurobindo points out,
"Indian religion has always felt that since the minds, the temperaments and the intellectual affinities of men are unlimited in their variety, a perfect liberty of thought and of worship must be allowed to the individual in his approach to the Infinite."
(source: Hindutva is liberal - By A. B. Vajpayee - rediff.com).
He wrote this regarding Hindu culture:
"More high-reaching, subtle, many-sided, curious and profound than the Greek, more noble and humane than the Roman, more large and spiritual than the old Egyptian, more vast and original than any other Asiatic civilization, more intellectual than the European prior to the 18th century, possessing all that these had and more, it was the most powerful, self-possessed, stimulating and wide in influence of all past human cultures.
(source: The Soul of India - By Satyavrata R Patel p. contents).
Sri Aurobindo in a series of luminous essays called A Defense of Indian Culture, published in the Arya:
"Spirituality is the master key of the Indian mind. It is this dominant inclination of India which gives character to all the expressions of her culture. In fact, they have grown out of her inborn spiritual tendency of which her religion is a natural out flowering. The Indian mind has always realized that the Supreme is the Infinite and perceived that to the soul in Nature the Infinite must always present itself in an infinite variety of aspects.
(source: The Vision of India - By Sisirkumar Mitra p. 53 - 54).
Speaking of Christianity's claims to an exclusive and universal salvation, Sri Aurobindo in his book, India's Rebirth (ISBN 2-902776-32-2) page 141, says:
"The aggressive and quite illogical idea of a single religion for all mankind, a religion universal by the very force of its narrowness, one set of dogmas, one cult, one system of ceremonies, one ecclesiastical ordinance, one array of prohibitions and injunctions which all minds must accept on peril of persecution by men and spiritual rejection or eternal punishment by God, that grotesque creation of human unreason which has been the parent of so much intolerance, cruelty and obscurantism and aggressive fanaticism, has never been able to take firm hold of the Indian mentality."
(source: India's Rebirth - By Sri Aurobindo (ISBN 2-902776-32-2) p 141).
He was widely admired as a master of the English language, a spellbinding orator, a dynamic leader, and a generous human being. Was India’s most eminent 21st century philosopher. He was brought up and educated in colonial India where Christian missionaries proclaimed Christianity to be the only true religion and portrayed Hinduism as being seriously defective. In his first published works, Radhakrishnan defended the Hindu theory of karma and the ethics of Vedanta. In his lectures Radhakrishnan answered the many Christian critics of Hinduism by formulating his interpretation of the essence of Hinduism. Hinduism is a way of life rather than a dogmatic creed. Its foundation is spiritual experience. Through meditative practices, one has direct experience of the Absolute Spirit (Brahman). This experience brings home the unity of the individual self and the Absolute Self. Attaining one’s deepest self by losing one’s selfish ego becomes the supreme goal.
(source: Great Thinkers of the Eastern World - By Ian Philip McGreal, Editor p. 279 - 280).
There were many interpretations of Hindu scriptures and philosophy, but Radhakrishnan was perhaps the first Indian philosopher to present to the world the deeper aspects of Indian philosophy. He was truly India’s cultural ambassador to the world. After listening to him, one English lady was prompted to say, "There is no need for us to send missionaries to India."
"My religious sense," he used to say, "did not allow me to speak a rash or a profane word of anything which the soul of man holds or has held sacred. The attitude of respect for all creeds, this elementary good manners in matters of spirit, is bred into the marrow of one’s bones by the Hindu tradition.’
(source: Dr S. Radhakrishnan - tribuneindia.com).
"Hinduism is not just a faith. It is the union of reason and
intuition that cannot be defined but is only to be experienced. Evil and error
are not ultimate. There is no Hell, for that means there is a place where God
is not, and there are sins which exceed his love. " "In the history of the world, Hinduism is the only religion, that exhibits a complete independence and freedom of the human mind, its full confidence in its own powers. Hinduism is freedom, especially the freedom in thinking about God."
"In the search for the supernatural, it is like traveling in space without a boundary or barrier."
(source: Bhagavad Gita - By S. Radhakrishan pg - 55).
" A large part of the world received its religious education from India." In spite of continuous struggle with theological baggage, India has held fast for centuries to the ideals of spirit."
(source: Eastern Religions & Western Thought - By. Dr. S. Radhakrishnan p. 116).
"Hinduism is wholly free from the strange obsession of some faiths that the acceptance of a particular religious metaphysics is necessary for salvation, and non-acceptance thereof is a heinous sin meriting eternal punishment in hell."
(source: The Hindu View of Life - By S. Radhakrishnan p. 28).
He noted that: "If the Upanishads help us to rise above the glamour of the fleshy life, it is because their authors, pure of soul, ever striving towards the divine, reveal to us their pictures of the splendors of the unseen. The Upanishads are respected not because they are a part of Sruti or revealed literature and so hold a reserved position but because they have inspired generations of Indians with vision and strength by their inexhaustible significance and spiritual power. Indian thought has constantly turned to these scriptures for fresh illumination and spiritual recovery or recommencement, and not in vain. The fire still burns bright on their altars. Their light is for the seeing eye and their message is for the seeker after truth."
(source: The Principal Upanishads - By S. Radhakrishnan London: Allen & Unwin/ New York: Humanities Press. 1953, p. 18-19).
"Indian thought is an extraordinary mass of material which for detail and variety has hardly any equal in any other part of the world. There is hardly any height of spiritual insight or rational philosophy attained in the world that has not its parallel in the vast stretch that lies between the early Vedic seers and the modern naiyAyikas."
(source: Indian Philosophy, Volume I - By S. Radhakrishnan).
Hinduism recognizes that each religion is inextricably bound up with its culture and can grow organically. While it is aware that all religions have not attained to the same level of truth and goodness, it insists that they all have a right to express themselves. Religions reform themselves by interpretations and adjustments to one another. The Hindu attitude is one of positive fellowship not negative tolerance."
Tolerance is the homage which the finite mind pays to the inexhaustibility of the Infinite.
Therefore, according to the Bhagavad Gita, even those who worship other gods (anyadevatah), ancestral deities, elemental powers, if they do so with faith, then their faith is justified, for the Divine accepts every form conceived by the worshipper."
(source: Eastern Religions & Western Thought - By. Dr. S. Radhakrishnan p. 335 and 310 - 319).
"Hinduism has come to be a tapestry of the most variegated tissues and almost endless diversity of hues."
" Hinduism is therefore not a definite dogmatic creed, but a vast, complex, but subtly unified mass of spiritual thought and realization. Its tradition of the God ward endeavor of the human spirit has been continuously enlarging through the ages."
(source: The Hindu View of Life - By S. Radhakrishnan p. 8-9).
"The truth suggested in the Vedas are developed in the Upanishads. We find in the seers of the Upanishads, an utter fidelity to every layer and shade of truth as they saw it. They affirm that there is a central reality, the one without a second, who is all that is and beyond all that is."
'From the time of the Rg Veda till today, India has been the home of different religions and the Indian genius adopted a policy of live and let live towards them. Indian religion never quite understood the idea of exclusive worship. Indian religious tradition admits all forms in which the single truth is reflected. Proselytism is discouraged. It is not God that is worshipped but the group or the authority that claims to speak in his name."
The attempts of the western powers to impose their culture on India through the Government and its educational institutions have stirred the huge inertia of the Indian people and ruffled the surface of Indian society, but deep down the immemorial tradition of India has not been greatly disturbed."
(source: East and West: Some Reflections - By S. Radhakrishnan p. 22 -42).
Hinduism according to him is not a religion, but a commonwealth of religions. “It is more a way of life than a form of thought….The theist and the atheist, the skeptic and the agnostic may all be Hindus if they accept the Hindu system of culture and life. Hinduism insists not on religious conformity but on a spiritual and ethical outlook of life…Hinduism is not a sect but a fellowship of all who accept the law of right and earnestly seek for the truth.”
(source: The Hindu View of Life - By S. Radhakrishnan p. 77).
"By what strange social alchemy has India subdued her conquerors, transforming them to her very self and substance..... ? Why is it that her conquerors have not been able to impose on her their language, their thoughts and customs, except in superficial ways?"
(source: The empire strikes back - By Suma Varghese - Free Press Journal December 5 1997).
"They (Ancient Hindus) measured the land, divided the year, mapped out the heaven, traced the course of sun and planets through the zodiacal belt, analyzed the constitution of matter, and studied the nature of birds and beasts, plants and seeds."
(source: The Story of Oriental Philosophy - By L. Adams Beck p. 10 - 13).
"The Gita appeals to us not only by its force of thought and majesty of vision, but also by its fervor of devotion and sweetness of spiritual emotion."
(source: Indian Philosophy, Volume I - By S. Radhakrishnan).
"Hinduism represents an effort at comprehension and cooperation. It recognizes the diversity in man’s approach towards, and realization of, the one Supreme Reality. For it the essence of religion consists in man’s hold on what is eternal and immanent in all being.
"For the Hindu, every religion is true, if only its adherents sincerely and honestly follow it. They will then get beyond the creed to the experience, beyond the formula to the vision of the truth.'
"Hinduism is not bound up with a creed or a book, a prophet or a founder, but is persistent search for truth on the basis of a continuously renewed experience. Hinduism is human thought about God in continuous evolution."
"Hinduism represents the spirit, the spirit that has such extraordinary vitality as to survive political and social changes. From the beginning of recorded history, Hinduism has borne witness to the sacred flame of spirit, which must remain for ever, even while our dynasties crash and empires tumble into ruins. It alone can give our civilization a soul, and men and women a principle to live by."
"Hinduism is an inheritance of thought and aspiration, living and moving with the movement of life itself."
"India puts spiritual values higher than others.
The Hindu realizes not only that all roads lead to the one Supreme, but that each one must choose that road which starts from the point at which he finds himself at the moment of setting out."
(source: Religion and Society - By S Radhakrishnan - p. 43 - 54).
Om Tat Sat
(Continued...)
(My humble salutations to , H H Swamyjis, Hindu Wisdom, great Universal Philosophers, Historians, Professors and Devotees for the discovering collection)
0 comments:
Post a Comment