Sri Lankan president offers prayers at Tirupati Balaji Temple

[Rusty]

Guidelines are better or rules are better? who cares?

Islam has unified ideology as per you and yet so many sects of your religion are involved in killing each other...thus rests the glorification of unified ideology....

you care, since you were making that distinction.

and yes, there are sects within Islam, but remember 85% of all Muslims are Suni, so they follow the same ideology. 12% of Muslims are Shia, they still follow the tennents of Islam, the 5 pillars of Islam. 2% of "Muslim" are what we would consider non Muslims because we have a metric to judge that. We have a way of saying "Hey, you think Mirza Ahmed is the last prophet, well the first pillar of Islam is that Mohammad is the last prophet, so you can't be Muslim"
Can Hindus do that? Can Hindus say "according to such and such vedas, you cannot eat meat" ?
No they can't

The rest of your comment are just red herring.
People kill each other all the time, it does not negate the underlying ideology.
If a Woman is raped in a democracy, does that mean a democracy is not good?

 

[kingkobra]

you care, since you were making that distinction.

and yes, there are sects within Islam, but remember 85% of all Muslims are Suni, so they follow the same ideology. 12% of Muslims are Shia, they still follow the tennents of Islam, the 5 pillars of Islam. 2% of "Muslim" are what we would consider non Muslims because we have a metric to judge that. We have a way of saying "Hey, you think Mirza Ahmed is the last prophet, well the first pillar of Islam is that Mohammad is the last prophet, so you can't be Muslim"
Can Hindus do that? Can Hindus say "according to such and such vedas, you cannot eat meat" ?
No they can't

The rest of your comment are just red herring.
People kill each other all the time, it does not negate the underlying ideology.
If a Woman is raped in a democracy, does that mean a democracy is not good?

You are just blabbering now dude..You never had logical answers in first place...
You portrayed unified ideology as something so great that it makes islam better than Hinduism...but yet with 85% or 15% or whatever statistics you guys are killing each other with hatred so strong that negates the need for unified ideology....

Hinduism as it contains many ideologies does not need unified code as all the ideologies are based on karma...meat eating theist or atheist are so small things that they do not even matter as despite unified ideology you will not find a Hindu from vaishnavite faith killing hindu from shaivite faith or the other way around...Unified ideology of Islam has failed big time since death of your prophet..Enjoy your so called unified ideology with all the sectarian divide while we Hindus and Dharmic faiths function without Unifying ideology

 

[HeinzG]

1. My conscience says that if I kill your kids and steal your land I am a good person. Does that mean that if I do that I will get good karma?
do you know that most Serial killers honestly think that what they are doing is a good thing? now if we go by what you said, they should only get good karma.

oh come! on conscience don't say that. If I'm wrong listen to your own conscience. All the people who do bad things know they do bad things.

2. Lets say I am a sadist , so according to you I should hurt people and inflict pain in them because I want that to happen to me.

Sadist don't wish to hurt themselves as they hurt others. Sadist enjoys their victim's pain that's all. If they do want to get hurt really bad for themselves then they should kill themselves instead. We don't see that happen. Do we?

3. so you are making a distinction between the length of the punishment, but at least you knowledge that there is a punishment. Before you made it sound like you didn't believe Karma was punishment.
Btw, being re-incarnated for eternity until you become a good person sounds like a long long punishment to me

You don't re-incarnate to become a good person. You incarnate because you naturally do. You will reincarnate for eternity unless you want to end the Karma cycle. During that time you will both be good and bad. Karma be a punishment if you think it as a punishment, but it according to you it's like punishing yourself for nothing.

4. amm...no. It does say you have to do good deeds, or you will have punishments.
So it's like saying "Fire doesn't say you can't touch it, but if you touch it you will suffer" So yes, Fire is saying to not touch it.
just like Karma is saying to be good or you will suffer. (as is God)

Karma don't say anything. It's like a flowing river, going downhill or uphill in that river depend on your choice. If you throw yourself into the flow and don't do anything you go downhill. Is that a punishment? Would you call it as punishment for not riding uphill?

 

[scorpionx]

Alright, you have 4 Vedas, that is a good starting point.
And you have reformers, that is also good.
The problem is still getting the masses to adopt this reform.
When your faith is based on people doing what ever they want, then this is an almost impossible task. So once again, no unifying theory.
2. I am glad you see that there is no unified theory and not getting defensive like the other members.
So what are the 3 main streams?
And if what you say is true then that BEGS the question. Why do Hindus get upset when other Hindus join another religion?
According to your own faith, all paths lead to God. Why does it bother Hindus when a Hindu says "I want to follow the Christian path to God" or the Islamic path to God or what ever.
If you truly believed in this, there would be no RSS or even BJP, there would be no communal violence against minorities and half of India's problems would be solved just like that.
Unfortunately this is not the reality.

1. We can not stop communal violence. Bigots happens to be every where. Hinduism is no exception,no matter how much rich it's contents are.So if anybody can not tolerate conversion that's his personal perception problem.Kindly do not blame it on religion.
2.I already said most of us follow these three mainstreams of Dharmic religion only difference is in some small rituals and small philosophical difference. The explanation of these main three streams is a time consuming thing and very difficult to put in a nutshell.
And lastly the number of bigots are much more less than the people who truly follow the teachings of these reformists.The difference is the believers do their work without any media attention and publicity. Thousand of Missionaries like Ramakrishna Mission do their relief work and social service in complete silence with the help of billions of followers all over the world.
PS: The number of bigots must be less than that of good people,isn't it? Otherwise our spiritual platform would have vanished thousand years ago.

 

[acid rain]

Isn't visiting Tirupati considered an acceptance of Hindu faith? only Hindu's are supposed to visit Tirupati and SabariMalai, Sonia Gandhi was prevented from visiting tirupati until she proclaimed that she is a Hindu by marriage.

 

[Rusty]

You are just blabbering now dude..You never had logical answers in first place...
You portrayed unified ideology as something so great that it makes islam better than Hinduism...but yet with 85% or 15% or whatever statistics you guys are killing each other with hatred so strong that negates the need for unified ideology....

Hinduism as it contains many ideologies does not need unified code as all the ideologies are based on karma...meat eating theist or atheist are so small things that they do not even matter as despite unified ideology you will not find a Hindu from vaishnavite faith killing hindu from shaivite faith or the other way around...Unified ideology of Islam has failed big time since death of your prophet..Enjoy your so called unified ideology with all the sectarian divide while we Hindus and Dharmic faiths function without Unifying ideology

I understand that you are frustrated at the fact that you could not provide rational and logical rebuttles to what I said. And I understand that due to this, you are now frustrated and resorting to ad hominem and red herrings.
Fortunately for you, I don't need to fall to your level because I CAN present a coherent and logical idea.

 

[Rusty]

oh come! on conscience don't say that. If I'm wrong listen to your own conscience. All the people who do bad things know they do bad things.



Sadist don't wish to hurt themselves as they hurt others. Sadist enjoys their victim's pain that's all. If they do want to get hurt really bad for themselves then they should kill themselves instead. We don't see that happen. Do we?



You don't re-incarnate to become a good person. You incarnate because you naturally do. You will reincarnate for eternity unless you want to end the Karma cycle. During that time you will both be good and bad. Karma be a punishment if you think it as a punishment, but it according to you it's like punishing yourself for nothing.



Karma don't say anything. It's like a flowing river, going downhill or uphill in that river depend on your choice. If you throw yourself into the flow and don't do anything you go downhill. Is that a punishment? Would you call it as punishment for not riding uphill?

1. you just contradicted yourself. You said that I should do what my conscience says, but now you are telling me what I should do. So which one is it?

2. It doesn't matter. A person who likes pain inflicted on them for their their own pleasure, should according to you also inflect pain on other people.

3. Another definition that is different from other peoples. You are saying that you will keep re-incarnating until you don't want to, then you can stop the cycle when ever you want..... Okay then what was the point of Buddha achieving enlightenment? and why don't people who have bad karma just stop re-incarnating?

4. If Karma doesn't say anything then how does it distinguish what is good and what is bad? how does Karma know that you killed an innocent man vs you killing a murderer after a trial? If Karma is just a force of nature as you describe it, then it has no way to distinguish intent of the human, so to Karma a killer is a killer is a killer. It won't matter if the killer is a murderer, a person defending his land, or an executioner who killed a man after a trial. All 3 of those people would receive bad karma.
Furthermore, How does Karma even distinguish between human life and animal or plant life? When you eat meat you kill an animal, does karma consider that to be murder? how does it know it's murder or not? how about plant life? when you eat a potato you are killing that life, does karma also act on that? who gave karma it's morality?

Laws of nature don't conform to the whims of human, gravity always pulls to to the earth if you like it or not.
But Karma (if it's a force of nature) seems to do a lot of bending to our will. Which to me, makes it suspect as a force of nature as you describe it.

 

[Rusty]

1. We can not stop communal violence. Bigots happens to be every where. Hinduism is no exception,no matter how much rich it's contents are.So if anybody can not tolerate conversion that's his personal perception problem.Kindly do not blame it on religion.
2.I already said most of us follow these three mainstreams of Dharmic religion only difference is in some small rituals and small philosophical difference. The explanation of these main three streams is a time consuming thing and very difficult to put in a nutshell.
And lastly the number of bigots are much more less than the people who truly follow the teachings of these reformists.The difference is the believers do their work without any media attention and publicity. Thousand of Missionaries like Ramakrishna Mission do their relief work and social service in complete silence with the help of billions of followers all over the world.
PS: The number of bigots must be less than that of good people,isn't it? Otherwise our spiritual platform would have vanished thousand years ago.

1. I agree, but the problem is that you don't have a basis to tell the people to stop being bigots. If some Hindus start to destroy a religious site, you can't tell them "In this verse of our holy book it says we cannot do this"
All you can say is "we don't allow that in Hinduism" but if you were pushed to provide further evidence, you could not.
No underlying ideology means that when people get out of hand you have no way to rein them in.

2. And I contest that idea. What you consider small is actually quite big. Just calling yourself Hindu is not enough to unify people whose beliefs seem to be as different as Confusionism to Catholicism. On this very thread some guys were saying you can be an Atheist Hindu, well I garentee you that other Hindus would contest this. This is not a small issue, this goes to the very foundations of your faith. If you can't even define what a Hindu is, then you have a big problem.

3. I have no way of verifying who these reformists are since I have never heard of them. I will agree with that decent people outnumber the bigots. The problem now is that are these reformists working together? or is each one just doing his own thing?
If they are working together then Hinduism has a chance to truly define itself. But if they are just doing their own thing then there no difference between them and the other people who make up their own stuff.

 

[scorpionx]

@Rusty:
1.Bigots do not follow any religious text or its teachings. They just follow the order of their masters. Sometimes it is good not to follow the religious texts word by word. Books do not make a good soul.If my book tells me to cut the head of all the infidels should I start doing so? No.Because if I do so I will be proved to be an idiot. One more thing, Hindu philosophy is not some set of instructions of what to do or what not to. Its all about self realization.

2. A philosophy with a massive hole in its body can not survive 5000 years.What ever problem you are concerned here was not able to make a scratch on the religion ever.The basics of this beautiful religion is and has always been simple. There can be an atheist Hindu who does not know any mantras, does not know how to meditate etc. The only thing he needs to carry out is to do good works,to be unselfish and helpful. As I said our philosophy never forces to follow any particular rituals like other religions.To know this foundation of faith you need to go through the books with patience. Its basically very simple to understand.
3.For the last 1000 years,this philosophy has gone through massive reformations. The most nearest reformists we had were Dayananda Saraswati (who have enriched us with his beautiful narration of vedas) and Swami Vivekananda (whose neo-vedantism is considered to be the epic explanation of vedanta).
Enough reforms have been done and still scholars are studying these narrations,explanations. Lots of books are being published on this field which are being strongly appreciated by every section of the society. So I think Hinduism has enough chance to define itself.

 

[HeinzG]

1. you just contradicted yourself. You said that I should do what my conscience says, but now you are telling me what I should do. So which one is it?

Your conscience is you. So listen to yourself!

2. It doesn't matter. A person who likes pain inflicted on them for their their own pleasure, should according to you also inflect pain on other people.

Are you a sadist? If not there is no point asking this question because you can't fell it.

3. Another definition that is different from other peoples. You are saying that you will keep re-incarnating until you don't want to, then you can stop the cycle when ever you want..... Okay then what was the point of Buddha achieving enlightenment?

Enlightenment or Buddha-hood is extremely difficult to achieve. That's why only Buddha achieved it so far. And also FYI enlightenment means knowing everything about this universe and beyond, but breaking the Karma cycle is called attaining Nirvana. It is easy enough to attain if anyone follows the right path.

and why don't people who have bad karma just stop re-incarnating?

Anyone can stop the reincarnation. All they have to do is follow the right path.

4. If Karma doesn't say anything then how does it distinguish what is good and what is bad?

It doesn't distinguish what is good and what is bad.

how does Karma know that you killed an innocent man vs you killing a murderer after a trial? If Karma is just a force of nature as you describe it, then it has no way to distinguish intent of the human, so to Karma a killer is a killer is a killer. It won't matter if the killer is a murderer, a person defending his land, or an executioner who killed a man after a trial. All 3 of those people would receive bad karma.

Karma relies on our intention. If our intention is bad then the Karma is bad. If our intention is good then the Karma is good. It's like newtons third law. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Furthermore, How does Karma even distinguish between human life and animal or plant life?

Karma don't distinguish between human and animal life, it only distinguishes the life. It only sees the life, whether it be human or animal.

When you eat meat you kill an animal, does karma consider that to be murder? how does it know it's murder or not?

Yes killing a animal is considers as a murder by Karma. It's the intention that drives the Karma to work. If you kill a animal intentionally then it is bad Karma for you.

how about plant life? when you eat a potato you are killing that life, does karma also act on that? who gave karma it's morality?

Well actually people don't eat whole trees. Mainly they eat the product of a tree like fruits. So such products are intent to be eaten, their is no bad Karma in that.

Laws of nature don't conform to the whims of human, gravity always pulls to to the earth if you like it or not.
But Karma (if it's a force of nature) seems to do a lot of bending to our will. Which to me, makes it suspect as a force of nature as you describe it.

I think your answer is in the above texts.

 

[neehar]

Since you are the one who brought it up, let no one here accuse me of bringing religion into this thread.

The difference between Abrahamic religion and Dharma religions is that in Dharma religions anyone can make anything up and claim it to be part of their religion, while Abrahamic religions don't allow that and have standards.

Some Hindus claim that it is against their religion to kill any animals and look down at people who do kill and eat animals. Yet other Hindus not only think it's okay to kill animals but consider it a part of the religion.
So which one is it? Is it that no animal should be killed and eaten and everyone should be a vegetariani? Or that it's okay to kill and eat animals and subsequently sacrifice them?
Of course this is just one of the schizophrenic aspects of Dharma religions. There has never been any confusion in Abrahamic religions about sacrificing and killing animals, and that is a fact.

this is not the apt thread to discuss religion..but i study anthropology ofcourse just for an examination purpose not research..let me tell u some history abt hinduism..its mostly nature worship and as the years passed things got added to it slowly.its the one of the or the oldest religion .sacrifices is one aspect nature worship or tribal worship added to it.ppl give sacrifices for a good hunt etc and slowly the ritual got accustomed in to hinduism prviously sacrifises are done to a great extent..but it was lot decreased coconuts and flowers took place of animals..today if u observe many great gods (gods worshipped through out the religion) are not offered sacrifies but local gods as we say in anthropology are offered sacrifies in some celebrations..like hinduism absorbed many things after the rule of guptas budha is worshipped as incarnation of vishnu...thats the small history

 

[neehar]

Actions speak louder than words

2002 Gujarat violence - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Orissa, India Christians Still Face Boycott, Forced Conversion

Just two examples, countless more available.

religions donot advocate violence ppl does..just as there are bad ppl in every other religion hinduism also does.its not an exception ..we knw many muslims who are terrosits but is it justified to call all the muslims terrorists..no true indian does that..because we are tolerant and habituated to live together for a long time now..u just gave 2 posts of extremism i can tell u 1000 s of examples of harmony..not from papers but my neighbouhood..stop generalising things

 

[neehar]

so you think that you don't need people working under a unifying order to be effective?
I know you are not smart enough to understand the analogy that I just gave, that is a given, but you dint address anything in my post.

The reason is that you cannot defend it because what I said is true. A Hindu from UP might be super vegitarian and only eats vegetables and milk, while a Hindu from Tamil Nadu is eating fish, crabs, shrimps and even sacrificing goats in the name of Hinduism.

How does that make sense in a coherent ideology? please tell me that.
Just answer that one question.
.

good question..a clarification first.hinduism donot prohibit non vegiterianism it has many casts out of which some casts like brahmins are prohibited from eating non veg because of their tasks..so many hindus eat non veg..brahmins are supposed to say prayers and perform rituals can not pronounce properly the mantras as their tounge gets thickened by eating n.v..its the basic reason and now a days everybody is doing everything .its not like olden days where taks are divided per casts..but its followed as a tradition and custom..coming to ur question as different places different food habits..india is very diverse place geographically u cannot afford to live the same way in rajastan and himalayas..so ppl embraced local customs,food habits as per the availability for their living..is this so tough to understand

 

[neehar]

Alright, you have 4 Vedas, that is a good starting point.
And you have reformers, that is also good.
The problem is still getting the masses to adopt this reform.
When your faith is based on people doing what ever they want, then this is an almost impossible task. So once again, no unifying theory.
2. I am glad you see that there is no unified theory and not getting defensive like the other members.
So what are the 3 main streams?
And if what you say is true then that BEGS the question. Why do Hindus get upset when other Hindus join another religion?
According to your own faith, all paths lead to God. Why does it bother Hindus when a Hindu says "I want to follow the Christian path to God" or the Islamic path to God or what ever.
If you truly believed in this, there would be no RSS or even BJP, there would be no communal violence against minorities and half of India's problems would be solved just like that.
Unfortunately this is not the reality.

as i said religions donot create divide but ppl does hinduism do not preach indifference..coming to ur question why would it hurt hindus if some hindu is converted to hinduism??
not every hindu thinks the same way its their personal choice..but hinduism is the oldest religion and is born here..and in only 2 countries predominantly followed..so some feel bad that an old religion which represented our identity and is verymuch part of our culture might end..religion is not just god..its a way of life .its a set of customs and traditions ..and its not just hinduism all the religions work the same way..islam and christianity are no exeptions..every religion tries to expand....

 

[rashtriya.rifles]

seems like philosophical lectures going on here