Finding the right path - Hinduism/Buddhism

[Cassandra]

You hit the nail on the head. Modern caste conflict in India is a product of democracy where the majority caste rules. They are not the higher caste Hindus, they are Hindus in the middle rung in the caste structures, Jats, Patels and Yadavas, mostly agriculturists, in Northern India. They are the people who are tormenting the lower castes. Prior to Indian independence, people lived together peacefully, each satisfied in their own position in the society.

The Christian way to destroy Pagan societies is always the same. Try to create and enlarge divisions in society. Seek less content groups and criminals, corrupt and convert them and then create conflict. Try to destroy the priest class to make people adrift and fall in the hands of converters.

We live in Kali Yuga. This is the last era of the cycle in which decay and destruction become dominant. The Dark manifestations of the three Gods now dominate religion and bring misery and conflict over the world. The Mahabharata was especially written to prepare us for that. The Mahabharata war was the last battle to keep the decay at bay by a coalition of the willing. Rulers and even Sages on their courts were already getting deeply corrupted. Now they have corrupted religion itself, falsifying true values and blinding people. India is the last bastion of dharmic religion. For Good people there is a refuge. People that religiously hold on to the path of Dharm will survive this era. It is the final test for the pure. The rest will be on the dunghill of history.

 

[Kirran]

Hmm, I will mention that there are many cases where people of higher castes will refuse to share a meal with low caste people for example, Dalits esp, and intermarriage remains rare. There ARE genuine indigenous problems with the caste system, which stem from pre-colonial times. Things are improving, and certainly the intersection of casteism with parliamentary politics has brought its own issues.

In a strange way, Christian missionaries helped end casteism in Guyanese Hindu society - to defend against their conversion of low-caste Hindus, the Brahmins opened up temples and roles in the religion to them, which were previously closed, so they wouldn't be excluded. The vast majority of Christian conversions in India have been tribal groups and low-caste people.

 

[ShivaFan]

Question from OP:

"Is there some "mid-point" school between Hinduism and Buddhism?"

The answer is yes.

Jaina, Jainism.

The Buddha was a Hindu of Royal blood from Southern Nepal. As was common, many of the Royal advisors were Jains (e.g. followers of Mahavira and so on, Mahavira viz "The Great Hero" who was a yogi ascetic and Arhat (Arihant, viz "Conquering Aryan"), a Tirthankars (viz "The Perfect Master"), was a contemporary of Gautama and there is absolute proof of this because while Mahavira was a bit elder to Buddha ("The Intellectial") we have documented proof of Mahavira's disciples questioning Gautama Buddha found in various suttas. Much of the Buddha's Hindu reformations at the time came from Jainism.

And, Jainism itself comes from Hindu tradition, but strongly linked to the traditional ascetic yogis of certain schools which wandered ancient but somewhat "exclusively secret" foot paths from the Himalayas to Varanasi Kashi to Ganga. As typical with many Hindus, which I am, I attend many different Temples some not Hindu but of the Dharma path and this includes going to Sikh and Jain Temples, I regularly attend the Milpitas California Jain Temple but of course mostly I go to Darshan at Hindu Temples, but as in the Milpitas Jain Temple you will find the Hindu Gods which are worshipled, first let me show you some murtis at the Jain Temple:

HINDU DEVI SARASWATI AT JAIN TEMPLE

AMBIKA DEVI

NOW see some of the Tirthankaras at the Jain Temple!. DO YOU SEE? THE SAME POSTURE AS IN THE MURTIS OF BUDDHA. Why? Because these type of murtis PREDATE the Buddha and are of Arhats in ascetic mode:

So the answer is yes, and inaddition there are many aspects of Jainism that approximate your mayavadi or ascetic or your vedantic mode. So my instinct is Jainism might be perfect for you. But keep in mind, 100% vegetarian, and austere in aspects, and you will also find SKY CLAD Jains who were no clohes, some wear a mask on their mouth to prevent insects from death or use brooms to carefully brush the pathway, and so on.

BUT many Jains are just family people, though many who go to the Jain Temple I attend are super rich. One group wants to go to the moon to establish the first GOD STATUE on the moon but in this case a TIrthankars or Arhat in standing position and naked.

 

[Aupmanyav]

Things are improving, and certainly the intersection of casteism with parliamentary politics has brought its own issues.

You have been to Varanasi. Uttar Pradesh was ruled a few years ago by Mayavati, who claimed to be the messiah of dalits. She is a Jatav and her caste stands between Yadavas and untouchables. The BJP higher caste politician was killed by the Varanasi Jatav legislator. At present Uttar Pradesh is ruled by a Yadav family and the Jatavs and dalits are at the receiving end. The last higher caste Chief Minister in Uttar Pradesh was the current Indian Home Minister, Rajnath Singh in 2002. I say this to indicate that caste atrocities have depended on who rules the state. There are many Chief Ministers in India who belong to what is known as 'Other Backward Classes' and not the higher castes. They have the numbers on their side, and in a democracy numbers rule, for good or worse.

 

[Aupmanyav]

No, Shiva Fan, I do not think Jainism will suit Tom. It is too harsh on life. Mahavira was a radical. He was like Che Guara of non-violence (Ahimsa). And their eschatology is too confused. It is like Quantum Mechanics of Indian religions with their 'Syadavada/Anekantavada - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anekantavada). It is difficult to make a head or tail of it. Their karma theory is similarly confused. Sorry to be writing against Jainism which is dear to me for its steadfastness to its (own) principles. It is certainly not a middle ground between Hinduism and Buddhism. Hinduism and Buddhism themselves are middle grounds. They both do not advocate excesses.

 

[ShivaFan]

The Jain Temples here are ok for family peoples. I think there is one not to far away from his home.

215 Park Avenue, Hoboken, New Jersey
Jain Temple of Jersey City Area
http://www.jsou.org/

 

[Aupmanyav]

Sure, Hindus have no conflict with Jainism. It has been a part of life for upward of 2,500 years. We honor their Tirthankars and jain monks. They are peaceful people and have beautiful temples which we like to visit. I think Mahavira escaped being made an avatara of Lord Vishnu by a bare whisker. My first teenage crush was a jain girl in Udaipur.

 

[Tom Ciocco]

Shiva Fan-

I've also done a bit of reading on Jainism and there are elements of it that are very attractive - like the Jain notion of truth so often illustrated by the blind men and the elephant with regard to the animal's "ultimate nature". BUT, for example, and as Aupmanyav mentions, and with all due respect to Jains, their doctrine of "extreme" ahimsa to me seems obsessive and ultimate unworkable. In an odd and totally coincidental way it smacks of the more extreme forms of Judaism that has created a vast amounts of rules and regulations, "do's and don'ts" that it winds up spending more time trying to disentangle the "right" course of action in this or that odd situation.

Similarly from my own background of Roman Catholicism, which is highly rule-bound and hierarchical, it brings to mind the great and famous free-thinking, ex-Catholic comic George Carlin who tells a story of smart-mouthed teenagers ribbing a priest with silly or unanswerable questions that Catholic doctrine should have answer to but really are just pointless conundrums. One question posed to the priest is: "If God is all-powerful, could he create a rock so big that even he himself couldn't lift it?" Hahahaha!

Another question to the board - A large part of what I know about Samkhya is also quite intriguing, but in my understanding of it, it's essentially a defunct school and that its modern heir is Yoga. Is this true? Why did it fade?

 

[Kirran]

Samkhya, Yoga etc often weren't so discrete - Yoga isn't really that discrete either, it's basically folded into Vedanta.

 

[Tom Ciocco]

Here's another piece of information that can hopefully help you guys to help me, and if you're not already familiar, might intrigue some of you: Quakerism. I was for several years attending Quaker (most officially called The Religious Society of Friends) "meeting" as it's known.

Again, for so many, there is a lot of misconception about who the Quakers/Friends are, but whether through direct or indirect influence from Hinduism, or just via the convergence of all human pursuits of the truth, for me, Quakerism is the most generally "Hindu" branch of Christianity, but with the spareness and intuitive bent of Zen Buddhism.

Obviously, there's this, and it's actually quite good.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quakers

And here's the site of one of the largest "diocese" so to speak, in the world:

http://www.nyym.org/?q=AboutQuakers

Not in any way proselytizing here, by the way - I'm not a Quaker, and as a religion, they don't believe in it anyway.

Dig it...

 

[Rick O'Shez]

Here's another piece of information that can hopefully help you guys to help me, and if you're not already familiar, might intrigue some of you: Quakerism. I was for several years attending Quaker (most officially called The Religious Society of Friends) "meeting" as it's known.
......Quakerism is the most generally "Hindu" branch of Christianity,

Same here. I enjoyed "silent worship", but eventually got fed up with people talking during it.

Interesting comparison with Hinduism, it hadn't occurred to me before, but they do talk about the "God within".

 

[Aupmanyav]

You may not have seen one of my posts regarding Hinduism books, which is here:

"Members, I think I have found a very good book on Indian Philosophy.
It is a PDF download at http://www.dli.ernet.in/handle/2015/49851

Also available at https://archive.org/details/AHistoryOfIndianPhilosophyBySurendranathDasgupta-5Volumes"

This is a beautiful book, the best that I have ever read on Hinduism which includes scholarly description of all Hindu philosophies. The writer is Surendranath Dasgupta who was a Principal of Sanskit College, Kolkata. The first link is about philosophies and the second all five parts about Hinduism. I have read only the 'philosophy' part.

"His participation in the debates of the Aristotelian Society, London, the leading philosophical society of England, and of the Moral Science Club, Cambridge, earned for him the reputation of being an almost invincible controversialist. Great teachers of philosophy like Ward and McTaggart, under whom he studied, looked upon him not as their pupil but as their colleague. He received his Cambridge doctorate for an elaborate thesis on contemporary European philosophy.

M. Renou, Professor of Sanskrit in the University of Paris, wrote to him afterwards: " While you were amongst us, we felt as if a Sankara or a Patanjali was born again and moved amongst us." Kind and simple and gentle as he was, Dasgupta was always undaunted in challenging scholars and philosophers.

In the second International Congress of Philosophy in Naples, the thesis of Dasgupta's paper was that the philosophy of Benedetto Croce (1866-1952) had been largely anticipated by some forms of Buddhism, and that where Croce differed, he (Croce) was himself in error. On account of internal differences Croce had no mind to join the Congress, but the fact that Dasgupta was going to challenge his philosophy and prove it to be second-hand in open congress, induced him to do so.

In the same way he challenged Louis de La Vallée-Poussin, the great Buddhist scholar, before a little assembly presided over by McTaggart. In the meetings of the Aristotelian Society Dasgupta was a terror to his opponents, his method of approach being always to point out their errors. He inflicted this treatment on many other scholars, particularly Fyodor Shcherbatskoy (Stcherbatsky) (1866-1942) and Sylvain Lévi (1863-1935)."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surendranath_Dasgupta#Career

Actually I was searching for information on this book since a long time. I had not remembered the name of the book or the name of the writer, only that it was once published by Sahitya Academy (premier government literary society in India). But fortunately I found it this week, and that too as a free PDF download.

Surendranath Dasgupta (1887 – 1952)

 

[Tom Ciocco]

Rick-

In the meeting that I attended, they were assiduous about "eldering" any chatter during the meeting as well as, discretely, post gathering, curbing anyone whose messages got too close to polemics or lectures. Like Hinduism, because Quakerism is so relatively "loose", so much depends upon the clerk and the general character of the meeting as a whole.

 

[Shantanu]

Hello all-

New to the forum and glad to be here. I'll try to keep this question as short as possible.

I have done quite a bit of reading about the many schools of Hinduism and Buddhism and I am a regular "secular" meditator.

Here is my dilemma: I feel connected and attracted to the metaphysics of Hinduism (especially Vishistavaita Vedanta and Yoga) but I find the trappings of all of the many deities, caste, etc. to be off-putting.

Similarly, I find the simplicity (obviously depending on the school) and focus of Buddhism very attractive, but try as I might, I cannot get past my perception of reductiveness and pessimism of the starting point in Buddhism, The Four Noble Truths.

So, here's my question to the forum:

Is there some "mid-point" school between Hinduism and Buddhism? I think if there is, for my thinking, it might be more likely to lie on the Hindu side rather than the Buddhist, but clearly. I'm not sure.

So, in a very small, perhaps slightly reductive nutshell, this is my quandry, and I look forward to any and all comments, questions, and guidance. Thanks.

Tom Ciocco

In Hinduism, you have many different schools of thought and ways in which we live: in Buddhism there is only the one path, the way of dukkha alleviation through following the path that leads to enlightenment. The Buddist way is secular enlightenment that requires meditative practices. Among Hindus too there are atheists who formulate their own philosophies and politics. Neither of this is not the realty. The reality is that God is hidden in all of us and in the universe directing human affairs as the Preserver. The aim of knowledge gain is to be at one with this Power so that one accepts that it is not only futile to fight it, it is damn well disrespectful not to try and be at one with the Creator.

So at the highest level of Hinduism, you have the acceptance of God as a Personal God to whom you surrender. There is no such surrender to any deity in Buddhism. So the question you need to address yourself is what kind of Hindu are you striving for, the highest level or the secular/atheisto level? If the latter then you have to ask are you looking for a religion or reality. If a religion then you can join any number of Hindu sampradayas, like Vaishnavas, Shavias, Shakti, etc If it is reality you seek, there is the path of gyan yoga in which one encounters Vishistaadvaita vedanta. Satya-advaita is even higher level of acceptance of Reality that finds God and surrenders to God. You can attain great things in your life through Satya-advaita for it brings the ultimate knowledge of one's surroundings and one's mind.

 

[Kirran]

There's a saying from the Rig Veda you may have heard of - Ekam sat vipraha bahudhah vadanti. This means 'Truth is One, the sages call it variously'. I think this applies r.e. the Buddhist approach and various approaches more inclined towards a personal relationship with God. The differences between these paths fade away in time.

 

[Shantanu]

There's a saying from the Rig Veda you may have heard of - Ekam sat vipraha bahudhah vadanti. This means 'Truth is One, the sages call it variously'. I think this applies r.e. the Buddhist approach and various approaches more inclined towards a personal relationship with God. The differences between these paths fade away in time.

There is only one path to Reality, that is through truth accommodation. Through this path of truth the highest level of knowledge is attained.

 

[Rick O'Shez]

Rick-
In the meeting that I attended, they were assiduous about "eldering" any chatter during the meeting as well as, discretely, post gathering, curbing anyone whose messages got too close to polemics or lectures. Like Hinduism, because Quakerism is so relatively "loose", so much depends upon the clerk and the general character of the meeting as a whole.

Sure, I went to other meetings in my area, and the atmosphere did vary quite a bit. The ministry during "silent worship" is supposed to be inspired by God in some sense, but mostly it felt like people just needing to get things off their chest, or needing to fill the silence ( ironically! ). It was usually the same people of course.
Have you had any recent contact with Quakers? Is it something you might return to?

 

[Tom Ciocco]

Sure, I went to other meetings in my area, and the atmosphere did vary quite a bit. The ministry during "silent worship" is supposed to be inspired by God in some sense, but mostly it felt like people just needing to get things off their chest, or needing to fill the silence ( ironically! ). It was usually the same people of course.
Have you had any recent contact with Quakers? Is it something you might return to?

No, Rick, I haven't been been to a meeting in 25 years despite having a great deal of respect for them. In short, despite the Quakers' de-emphasis of "The Christ", over time I felt less and less like a "CHRISTIAN". Also, being a very philosophically-oriented person, the the simplicity of the religion which initially had been attractive began to wear thin over time. You?

 

[Vinayaka]

This is the Hindu DIR. Can I suggest the Quaker discussion be taken elsewhere?

 

[Tom Ciocco]

I think we're just about done Vinayaka, and I think that there is a tangential relation to Hinduism, but I get your point. But that said, "all is one" anyway, right? (wink, wink)