Are Brahman and the God of Abraham the same entity?

[Muffled]

Well, what do you think? Are they? I personally find Brahman much nicer, but I'll let the believers speak.

::Sits back and watches::

If Brahman is nicer then he isn't God.

 

[ZoyaHayat]

Well, what do you think? Are they? I personally find Brahman much nicer, but I'll let the believers speak.

::Sits back and watches::

Hiya Proud 2B Gay ...yeyyyyyyyyyyyy...
Should always be proud of who and what you are ...

I personally believe Brahman and the God of Sri Abraham Ji are the same...

To me both are personal and impersonal...i mean 'God(Brahman,God of Abraham etc)' surpasses it all :S...

Am i making sense? Lol xxx

 

[ZoyaHayat]

In the Baha'i view, yes!

ALL the major religions were founded by the One God, Who has many different names in the various religions and cultures!

Just a few of these include:
In fact, God has MANY names and titles, in the various languages and cultures, and they are all equally acceptable!

Just a few of these names are: God, Boje, Jehovah, Dieu, Wankantanka, El, Gott, Yahweh, Dios, Brahman, Elohim, Allah, Bog, Adonai, and Parvadegar.

ANY of these are just fine!

Peace,

Bruce

I totally agree with you BruceDLimber...i hold such beliefs myself xxx

 

[Valjean]

Undifferentiated being is worthless. You might as well worship a rock. However IMO no such being exists.

Nobody worships Brahman, Muffled. It's a metaphysical abstraction.
Did you read my post?

Hindus -- popular Hindus, in any case -- worship personalized (conceived of as personages, for convenience) aspects or qualities of Reality.

 

[Gaura Priya]

People moreso meditate on Brahman, at least from what my past Vaishnava experiences were. Krishna in the Gita speaks of Brahman as incorporeal, impersonal, ineffable as an aspect of God, and as far as I know of, there is no Abrahamic comparison. The Jewish 'Yehovah' or the Christian 'Jehovah' would have more paralellism with Sriman Narayana or Vishnu than Brahman.

Seyorni is right. People do not and can not worship Brahman. It's God's reality as His impersonal form, such as Light or Totality. Some Hindus will meditate and see Brahman as the ultimate conception of God. Others who are dualists will see more of the personal side of God, which corresponds almost equally with Allah or Jehovah in the other religious traditions.

 

[Rainbow Mage]

Hiya Proud 2B Gay ...yeyyyyyyyyyyyy...
Should always be proud of who and what you are ...

I personally believe Brahman and the God of Sri Abraham Ji are the same...

To me both are personal and impersonal...i mean 'God(Brahman,God of Abraham etc)' surpasses it all :S...

Am i making sense? Lol xxx

If this is true that the God of Abraham is the same as Brahman then Abrahamics certainly view Jehovah as much more personal then people tend to view Brahman.

 

[Valjean]

No. The God of Abraham is a personage. He has a personality, a sex, and many other qualities, emotions, preferences, &c described in the Bible/Torah.
Brahman has none of this. Brahman is more like the multiverse or an M-theory brane.

 

[Rainbow Mage]

No. The God of Abraham is a personage. He has a personality, a sex, and many other qualities, emotions, preferences, &c described in the Bible/Torah.
Brahman has none of this. Brahman is more like the multiverse or an M-theory brane.

Yes, which is why I ultimately rejected the Abrahamic god being the same as Brahman, which I prefer to call "the force", or cosmic universal energy, whatever. I think all gods, including the Abrahamic one, are limited beings who are mere projections of this force, if that's a good word for it.

 

[Gaura Priya]

If this is true that the God of Abraham is the same as Brahman then Abrahamics certainly view Jehovah as much more personal then people tend to view Brahman.

I think a better comparison to Jehovah would be the Hindu conception of Ishvara.

I think Wikipedia sums it up very nicely:

In Vishishtadvaita, Ishvara is the Supreme Cosmic Spirit who maintains complete control over the Universe and all the sentient beings, which together also form the pan-organistic body of Ishvara. The triad of Ishvara along with the universe and the sentient beings is Brahman, which signifies the completeness of existence. Ishvara is Para Brahman endowed with innumerable auspicious qualities (Kalyana Gunas). Ishvara is perfect, omniscient, omnipresent, incorporeal, independent, creator of the world, its active ruler and also the eventual destroyer. He is causeless, eternal and unchangeable — and is yet the material and the efficient cause of the world. He is both immanent (like whiteness in milk) and transcendent (like a watch-maker independent of a watch). He is the subject of worship. He is the basis of morality and giver of the fruits of one's Karma. He rules the world with His Māyā — His divine power.

 

[Rainbow Mage]

Isn't this creator and reciever of worship though a lower expression of Brahman like all the other devas?

 

[Gaura Priya]

Isn't this creator and reciever of worship though a lower expression of Brahman like all the other devas?

Not necessarily.

While the philosophy of Advaita Vedanta is popular in Hinduism, it is not the belief of every Hindu at all whatsoever.

If you look into the Shaivite perception of life, (and I may be completely wrong, but) God has both impersonal and personal attributes.

In Vaishnavism, the background I am most familiar with, the Brahman, or the impersonal, monistic conception of God is inferior to the personal form of God, which is superior. While yes, Brahman is attainable, Krishna in the Gita mentions the Para-Brahman, which is 'beyond the Brahman.' Lord Vishnu or Krishna is considered the Para-Brahman, who is a highly personal God, not unlike Jehovah or Allah.

ARJUNA: Among those of Thy devotees who always thus worship Thee, which take the better way, those who worship the Indivisible and Unmanifested, or those who serve Thee as Thou now art?"

KRISHNA:
"Those who worship Me with constant zeal, with the highest faith and minds placed on Me, are held in high esteem by Me. But those who, with minds equal toward everything, with senses and organs restrained, and rejoicing in the good of all creatures, meditate on the inexhaustible, immovable, highest, incorruptible, difficult to contemplate, invisible, omnipresent, unthinkable, the witness, undemonstrable, shall also come unto Me.

For those whose hearts are fixed on the unmanifested the labor is greater because the path which is not manifest is with difficulty attained by corporeal beings. But for those who worship Me, renouncing in Me all their actions, regarding Me as the supreme goal and meditating on Me alone, if their thoughts are turned to Me, O son of Pritha, I presently become the Savior from this ocean of incarnations and death.

Place, then, thy heart on Me, penetrate Me with thy understanding, and thou shalt without doubt hereafter dwell in Me.

-- Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 12


And even the last verse of Chapter 6 of the Gita:

"But of all devotees he is considered by Me as the most devoted who, with heart fixed on Me, full of faith, worshippeth Me."


In Arya Samaj, which I am exploring right now, Ishvara is the Supreme Controller. He is a personal Being, and yet completely incorporeal and omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, etc.

 

[Levite]

People moreso meditate on Brahman, at least from what my past Vaishnava experiences were. Krishna in the Gita speaks of Brahman as incorporeal, impersonal, ineffable as an aspect of God, and as far as I know of, there is no Abrahamic comparison. The Jewish 'Yehovah' or the Christian 'Jehovah' would have more paralellism with Sriman Narayana or Vishnu than Brahman.

Seyorni is right. People do not and can not worship Brahman. It's God's reality as His impersonal form, such as Light or Totality. Some Hindus will meditate and see Brahman as the ultimate conception of God. Others who are dualists will see more of the personal side of God, which corresponds almost equally with Allah or Jehovah in the other religious traditions.

If this is true that the God of Abraham is the same as Brahman then Abrahamics certainly view Jehovah as much more personal then people tend to view Brahman.

It is worth noting that while the average Jew tends to employ many of the anthropomorphisms that our traditional liturgy and sacred text use in order to aid us in relating to certain aspects of God, Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism) teaches us that the truest nature of YHVH is Ein Sof, the Infinite, which is unknowable, beyond all anthropomorphism, beyond all simile and metaphor. We Jews do not often attempt to relate directly to that aspect of God, because we are finite, and the Infinite is incomprehensible to us. Plus, we are creatures of emotion, and passion, and poetry, and we relate best to things that we can understand with the heart: human beings are not set up by nature to understand the Infinite with our hearts.

But that does not mean that we do not acknowledge the Infinite that is God.

In Jewish meditation, we sometimes seek to contemplate the Ein Sof, and to draw down to ourselves more or a different form or a purer kind of the shefa, the divine light-energy of Infinity that flows from God's center.

Part of what makes God God, in Jewish understanding, is that He is both transcendant and immanent, simultaneously: both ineffable and knowable. God, being God, is paradox. What is personal and present and comprehensible are all aspects of the One. What is impersonal and remote and incomprehensible-- still all aspects of the same One.

 

[Breathe]

(I just wrote this. ******* wireless)

That's sort of how many Hindus see God too, Levite. Many Hindus believe God is both personal and impersonal, immanent and transcendent, Brahman and Bhagavan. Once more, how I admire Judaism's theology.

I think that the Ayn Sof element is close to Brahman, and the latter aspect is more similar to Bhagavan/Ishvara.

May I ask what the relation of Ayn Sof is to the sefirot? I don't really know much about Kabbalah, despite knowing someone who is "into it".

I'd like to read through the Bible (again) but this time with Jewish commentary. Are there any Kabbalah-friendly translations that would explain a more esoteric side of the passage of the Tanakh?

Something I'd like to see as a whole would be a whole Bible--NT too, translated by Jewish rabbis with commentary. It'd be interesting to see misconceptions and misunderstandings of the Jewish faith by Christians, and what Christ, and Gehennah mean and so on, written and explained in a study Bible.

It'd be interesting to see for example, how Judaism sees Sodom and Gomorrah and the Deluge compared to a number of Christians who see it literally. Many of those Christians who don't say they see it as a myth, or fable to highlight something, but never really expand upon it. I'd love to know Jewish understandings of this. I kind of think that most Study Bibles seem to prefer more literalistic interpretations of texts, though, to quote one study Bible I said on Genesis 1, "The verse here clearly talks about actual days, and not an indefinite period of time, and it talks about it with a historical side, leading to the obvious conclusion that Genesis 1 is historical in its message, and should be treated as such" (paraphrased and probably mish-mashed a bit, but you get the idea). I'd like to see a more.. spiritually mature interpretation of the texts.


My two cents.

 

[Onkara]

Isn't this creator and reciever of worship though a lower expression of Brahman like all the other devas?

I am not sure if that perception would make any difference because the point is to recognise Brahman is everything imho. So even if you see Brahman to be in/through worship of a deva, that is good (In Hindusim).

The difference is where the teachings/religions draw the line. Christians worship Jesus and even Mary as God (similar to a deva) whereas Muslims and Jews draw the line at only God and add extra qualities to make him personal if required.

 

[Levite]

May I ask what the relation of Ayn Sof is to the sefirot?

That is a very complex question, and I'm not sure that, even if I had space, I could properly explain it in the nuanced and full fashion. But the one-penny condensed version is that the sefirot (usually translated as "emanations," although properly the word reflects a concept somewhere between "Those which are counted out," "Those which procede forth," "Those which are told of in succession," and "Those which are spoken of," depending on how one wishes to turn the root shin-peih-resh, upon which the word is based) are kind of like nesting zones or areas of flow, depicting different aspects of the divine energy as it spreads outward from the core of Ein Sof. Though we often depict the sefirot graphically arranged on a treelike structure according to how the different aspects are said to be related and interact, a better way to depict them in a simplified, three-dimensional way would be as a series of nested solid spheres, with the substance of each one slightly blending into the substance of the next.

These sefirot are associated both with personal, anthropomorphic aspects of God's more immanent being, and also with concepts (such as Hod, "glory,") or even emotional ideas (such as chesed, usually translated "lovingkindness," but meaning something much more subtle: a kind of kindness and compassion motivated by a love of justice and righteousness and mercy, done instinctively for its own sake, and not for any external motivation), by which we mean (roughly, and among many other things) that the energy associated with those sefirot engenders or fosters those ideas or concepts, or, in alliance with some other aspect(s) coheres into a kind of persona or presence that is personal, somewhat comprehensible, relatable to us as finite human beings.

Some have compared Ein Sof to the single nature of a jewel, and the sefirot to the different natures of the one jewel's many facets.

Again, this is all terribly simplified and hasty. If you are really interested, I recommend reading some basic Kabbalah. Sefer Yetzirah (The Book of Creation) was translated with an excellent commentary by the late, great Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, who also translated and commented on Sefer ha-Bahir (The Book of Splendor). From a more academic standpoint, Gershom Scholem's On The Kabbalah And Its Symbolism and Kabbalah, On The Mystical Shape of the Godhead, and Kabbalah are terrific starting points for beginning to understand Kabbalah. Just keep in mind that there are several schools of Kabbalah, and many different understandings of those schools that have evolved.

I'd like to read through the Bible (again) but this time with Jewish commentary. Are there any Kabbalah-friendly translations that would explain a more esoteric side of the passage of the Tanakh?

I wish there were! It would be a great idea. There are thousands of Torah commentaries that have been written, and there is only beginning to be quality English translations of some of the great Torah commentaries. Many of the standard mainstays of the commentaries can't yet be found in translation, let alone the more esoteric and quirky commentaries.

There may be an English translation of the commentaries of Ramban (sometimes called Nachmanides-- Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman, 13th century, Barcelona; not to be confused with Rambam, Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, or Maimonides). If so, it would be worth your getting it. He is the only one of the standard great commentaries that has any kind of a mystical bent, although I can't promise the translator won't have kind of steamrolled right over that-- a lot of translators tend to iron the mystical right out of their text....

Something I'd like to see as a whole would be a whole Bible--NT too, translated by Jewish rabbis with commentary. It'd be interesting to see misconceptions and misunderstandings of the Jewish faith by Christians, and what Christ, and Gehennah mean and so on, written and explained in a study Bible.

I have never heard of such a thing, and to be honest, I don't see one as being forthcoming. I think that most Jewish scholars would see it as causing much more trouble than it was worth.

It'd be interesting to see for example, how Judaism sees Sodom and Gomorrah and the Deluge compared to a number of Christians who see it literally. Many of those Christians who don't say they see it as a myth, or fable to highlight something, but never really expand upon it. I'd love to know Jewish understandings of this. I kind of think that most Study Bibles seem to prefer more literalistic interpretations of texts, though, to quote one study Bible I said on Genesis 1, "The verse here clearly talks about actual days, and not an indefinite period of time, and it talks about it with a historical side, leading to the obvious conclusion that Genesis 1 is historical in its message, and should be treated as such" (paraphrased and probably mish-mashed a bit, but you get the idea). I'd like to see a more.. spiritually mature interpretation of the texts.

Now that is something that could be remedied, at least in part. JPS (Jewish Publication Society-- the oldest Jewish press in America) is slowly putting out an English edition of the Mikra'ot Gedolot, which is an edition of the Torah offers the translation five or six of the great medieval commentators, plus the Targum Onkelos and Targum Yonatan (two Aramaic paraphrases of the Torah dating from about the second century and the first century, respectively). They have released Leviticus and Numbers, but they haven't gotten to the other three books yet. I think Exodus is next on their list, but they ought to get around to Genesis pretty soon, relatively speaking.

But even those you may find too literal for your preferences, although some contain some rather surprising ideas, especially those of Rabbi Ovadyah Sforno (Italy, around the turn of the 16th century).

There is a collection by Nechama Leibowitz of commentary and midrash on the Torah called Studies In... (e.g., Studies in Bere****/Genesis, Studies in Shemot/Exodus, etc.), that you might enjoy. And (if you're feeling spendy, since it's expensive) the JPS Commentary On The Torah presents an excellent modern commentary on the Torah, with a collection of both traditional, modern academic, and modern rabbinical views.

 

[Breathe]

Thanks for the explanation and books! I'll try and get around to reading them sometime. I believe I can understand the relationship between sefirot and Ayn Sof. Trust me to ask a difficult question though.

I use Chabad.org for reading the Tanakh when possible (I don't know of any other sites for online Tanakh, is this one appropriate?), and I'd love to see a Kabbalah-inspired Tanakh, but I don't think there will be one in my lifetime. Sadly as you mentioned, a Jewish-opinioned commentary on the NT would probably not go down so well with a lot of people, but I think it'd still be an interesting read, especially since there are some more unusual claims on what Gehennah and Sheol are, for example.

Toda raba.

 

[Levite]

I use Chabad.org for reading the Tanakh when possible (I don't know of any other sites for online Tanakh, is this one appropriate?)

You could do worse. But their translation is not great, and is deeply biased by the tendency of Orthodoxy to view everything in light of how Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki, 11th century, France, greatest commentator of all time) saw things, which is sometimes very debatable.

Unfortunately, I don't know that there's a better Jewish site for reading the scriptures. Frankly, I think it's worth buying a book or two. For the entire Tanakh, I recommend Oxford U. Press' The Jewish Study Bible, edited by Adele Berlin, Mark Zvi Brettler, and Michael Fishbane. For the Torah alone (and it's worth getting both, because this is key), I recommend Everett Fox's The Five Books of Moses, put out by Schocken Press. Never yet been a better English translation of the Torah that this one.

 

[Breathe]

I'll be sure to keep an eye out for them.

 

[iamfact]

Well, what do you think? Are they? I personally find Brahman much nicer, but I'll let the believers speak.

::Sits back and watches::

How can that which has no attributes be "nicer"? Brahman is not a God, it is merely a word used to refer to an impersonal reality.

 

[mohammed_beiruti]

What is a Brahman?! sorry !