True principles of Sanatana Dharma

[ratikala]

I dont get it , ??? Too much debate on the nature of brahman , too much difference and rivalry between the veiw points of individual sects , not enough adherance to the principles of sanatana dharma ! what is going on ?
what trap are we falling into ?
is this the direction we should be going ?

what does sanatana dharma mean to you ?

 

[Pegg]

Are there any unifying beliefs amongst all the different sects that bring hinduism together?

 

[Shuddhasattva]

Karma, reincarnation, moksha, nominal adherence to and descent from the Vedas,

 

[Shantanu]

Are there any unifying beliefs amongst all the different sects that bring hinduism together?

Why should there be unifying beliefs: are you not an individual with a different set of genetics to me? Am I not a free person to determine the scope of my religion and what is good for me?

 

[ratikala]

dear peg ,

Are there any unifying beliefs amongst all the different sects that bring hinduism together?

yes , that ultimately the lord (in what ever form or formless state he is seen , or by what ever name we might call him ) is supreme and that we are subordinate to the lord and in ignorance of his true nature , his true glory .that we are temporarily sepperated from the lord , but that ultimately it is to the lord that we are destined return .

excuse me as I have tried to encapsulate a huge spectrum of beleifs in to very simple english , there are also codes of conduct to which all or most adhere to some degree dependent upon the level of their personal devotion . allthough they appear to be structured differently within each school a concurrent thread runs throughout all .

this is only my humble opinion , there is much debate , as is not uncommon amongst most human beings !!! although it is my beleif that a greater unity would be more in keeping with the principles of sanatana dharma .

Isaiah 2:2 "...the mountain of the house of Jehovah will become firmly established...and to it all the nations must stream" BIBLE STUDY
​

I belive this also to be true from the veiw point of sanatana dharma , thankyou this is a very nice verse .

 

[Shuddhasattva]

Namaste Mata-ji

With respect, that is not a unifying belief however. Some of us do not have that doctrine...

 

[Pegg]

thank you for your replies

can i also ask another question, how is hinduism organzied in terms of its structure...how is it organized in terms of leadership?

 

[Shuddhasattva]

it is organized around paramparas - lineages of gurus, but it is not ecclesiastical in nature. we have a very loose structure, most of us.

 

[ratikala]

dear shuddhsattva ji

Karma, reincarnation, moksha, nominal adherence to and descent from the Vedas,

it is this nominal adherence to decent from the vedas which concerns me ?
what I am interested in is each of us contributing a little discussing what sanatana dharma means to us ?
yes we may all have slight differences in conception but this is only due to time place and circumstance , how we were taught and by whom we were taught .....
however I would like to hope that by discussion we might deepen or broaden our understanding .
my fear is that to strong an adherance to any sectarian veiw can at times fuel our ignorance in that there is a tendancy to argue over points of veiw rather than to graciously accept another , or even to rejoice that another is one of faith ?

you use sanatana dharma as a description in your title , I am interested that you choose this title , rather than hindu , vedanta , or as I have put vaisnava /buddhist allthough I could easily have chosen sanatana dharma , as it was the teachings on sanatana dharma that made a buddhist feel at home amongst vaisnavas :namaste

 

[Shuddhasattva]

Namaste Mata-ji

I chose Sanatana Dharma because to me, this means whatever is true, right and spiritually efficacious at all times, in all places... it transcends the cultural trappings.

Rishis clothe raw divinity into name and form that is culturally appropriate for a particular time, place and mind-type, and build practices, rituals, etc. around these. Or otherwise, doctrines of the divine are put into a particular viewpoint and promulgated for the sake of some group of people who is predisposed towards this viewpoint...

But the Sanatana Dharma transcends these limited cultural manifestations and viewpoints, it is the root source.

I defined dharma here in a way you may also appreciate:
http://www.religiousforums.com/forum/3036085-post2.html

 

[Shantanu]

thank you for your replies

can i also ask another question, how is hinduism organzied in terms of its structure...how is it organized in terms of leadership?

Pegg, by posting these questions it seems that you wish to understand Hindusim and see if there is any reason why you should also consider becoming a Hindu. So let me explain it to you in a nutshell what Hindusim is.

The only structure that is common to all forms of Hindusim is the steadfast pursuit of truth through freethought and rationalism. We accomodate atheists too for that reason. I call this mode of being the practice of satya-advaita. Every life has a fresh new beginning. We as parents give that life the start that it it needs. By its evolution over tens of thousands of years Hindus have realised that a theistic start is the default start that is good for the child. But we teach according to the stories of God that have been handed down to us in the forms of Krishna, Shiva, Vishnu, Durga, Kali, lakshmi, etc. We do not teach Christianity because it is based on the falsehood of Genesis and the falshood of the effects of sin in terms of an afterlife. We normally hate the creotardism of the Abrhamaic religions for this reason. But we then leave the child to find its own path. We need our indivudual freedoms to think and determine our own futures. We do not require the impostion of a Holy Book of a Holy Person. There are numerous books and millions of gurus all of which have something that we have as food for thought. It shows with what lack of fear of God they all pursued their individual courses to the truth. Since time immemorial people have done a lot of truthseeking and determined Reality but today we still start afresh daily to reaassess and reveiw everything based on our daily experiences of truth.
So Sanatana Dharma is Hinduism, Advaita is Hinduism, Jainism is Hinduism, Sikhism is Hinduism, but Buddhism is not Hinduism because it is not interested in how the universe came into being, and Christianity is not Hinduism.

 

[ratikala]

thank you for your replies

can i also ask another question, how is hinduism organzied in terms of its structure...how is it organized in terms of leadership?

asside to parampara there are also distinct sampradayas , sampradayas are the liniage in which the guru parampara decend . each sampradaya strictly adheres to preserving an un broken line of teaching and is concidered to be the word of the lord , transmited un broken from master to deciple .

 

[Maya3]

I dont get it , ??? Too much debate on the nature of brahman , too much difference and rivalry between the veiw points of individual sects , not enough adherance to the principles of sanatana dharma ! what is going on ?
what trap are we falling into ?
is this the direction we should be going ?

what does sanatana dharma mean to you ?

It means that God is everything.

And it means that his/her/its manifestation is diverse, so no we shouldn't have to debate about this.

God is what God is weather we figure it out or not.

Maya

 

[Vinayaka]

I dont get it , ??? Too much debate on the nature of brahman , too much difference and rivalry between the veiw points of individual sects , not enough adherance to the principles of sanatana dharma ! what is going on ?
what trap are we falling into ?
is this the direction we should be going ?

what does sanatana dharma mean to you ?

I understand it as the creeping in of the intellect/ego. Too much talk, not enough action. So if you want social change, look at changing yourself first. But what you see here on the internet and forums is an extremely unrandom sample of Hindus. I'm not sure if what you're saying applies to all those Hindus who never come to the internet. When's the last time you went to a temple, observed daily shri or purusha dharma in a village in India, Fiji, Mauritius, Guyana, Sri Lanka, or any multitide of enclaves or communities and overheard someone debating the nature of Brahman? For the record, as far as I can recall, I never have.

We have maybe 20 Hindus on this forum. Not only is it unrandom and unfair, but its also an incredibly small sampling.

 

[ratikala]

just wanted to add post reffered to ...

shuddhasattva wrote

Order or law is a limited translation.

Dharma is truth, dharma is righteousness, dharma is the highest good for all, dharma is duty, dharma is the clothing compassion wears.

Dharma is most fundamentally embodied in mother and father - for most people, mother moreso as men have been programmed to be adverse to a nurturing role.

I defined dharma on HDF sometime back in this context, and I don't think I can do so better again:

Quote:
Just as is God changeless and always-changing, so is the dharma.

The dharma is timeless, unchanging. The dharma is without beginning or end, always changing.

It changes to accommodate, yes, just as does a mother, who, as our first guru, plants the seeds of all virtues. Jai mata bhava, an exalted state of being, may we all realize that we have all been mothers to all beings, and our hearts stationed in this truth.

A good mother is full of virtues, but does she demand that her child be able to match her own standards? Of course not, if she did, there would effectively be no bond between them, and no learning process. Childhood is a process of educational transgression, much like karma and embodied life in general. How lucky are we to have the mother as guide in childhood, may the dharma be likewise for us throughout our life, and may we never forget that the dharma is embodied in the mother.

Likewise, the dharma is our eternal mother, giving to us our own true nature; this is the function of the dharma, this is also what a human mother does in bringing forth and nurturing life, causing it to manifest its own nature. What an incomparable gift.

So then, let our dharma be a mother to us. May it change to accommodate the needs of the time, the place, the society it manifests itself. It is moral, for the sake of the immoral. It is just, for the sake of the unjust, and it is kind for the sake of the unkind. It reforms everything in its image.

The sanatana dharma is openly manifest in all systems of thought - wherever there is truth, righteousness and spiritually efficacious means, the Sanatana Dharma lives. Most particularly, from our viewpoints, it is manifest most powerfully as our own convictions, which cannot be forced to arise by scriptural injunction, though indeed they can result from a true reading of scripture; the reading is not true merely because the words are.

It is not in vain that Yudhisthir, verily Dharmaraj himself, expressed that Svadharma is the highest dharma. No shastric injunction, phrased and understood in mere vaikhari, can compare to the pashyanti injunctions from the adi guru within, the wordless resolve to be worthy of the supreme grace.

 

[Jainarayan]

I understand it as the creeping in of the intellect/ego. Too much talk, not enough action. So if you want social change, look at changing yourself first.

Not unlike "Think globally, act locally" or some variant on that idea.

But what you see here on the internet and forums is an extremely unrandom sample of Hindus. I'm not sure if what you're saying applies to all those Hindus who never come to the internet.

People being people, I'd bet the majority of Hindus are no different than the majority of Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists who talk the talk but don't walk the walk. That is, using a reference someone made somewhere about Sunday Christians. They are religious because it's a holiday and they are suppposed to be, or they go to church, mandir, synagogue, mosque, temple as a duty. I think people here who discuss their religions in order to learn and share are a minority of those who follow a particular faith.

Now, that's not as cynical as it sounds, because if you strip away all those labels and practices, my money says that (almost) all people have the same desire at heart... get to God. But of course we know how naive I and idealistic I can be.

What was the question?

 

[ratikala]

dear vinayaka ji

I understand it as the creeping in of the intellect/ego. Too much talk, not enough action. So if you want social change, look at changing yourself first. But what you see here on the internet and forums is an extremely unrandom sample of Hindus. I'm not sure if what you're saying applies to all those Hindus who never come to the internet. When's the last time you went to a temple, observed daily shri or purusha dharma in a village in India, Fiji, Mauritius, Guyana, Sri Lanka, or any multitide of enclaves or communities and overheard someone debating the nature of Brahman? For the record, as far as I can recall, I never have.

yes this is what worries me , an acidental lack of respect between traditions ,
if we are to label ourselves hindu (or what ever title we choose we should be very carefull not to set a false example , a missleading impression , or bring any of our traditions in to dissrepute .)

it is without doubt interlect and ego ... ahamkara , false identification with the self , and is quite natural , but our aim should be to rise above such states not perpetuate them , which can only be done by a willingness to learn .there are some wonderfull people here who come with sincere questions but too many posts of recent seem to degenerate in to a sectarian brawl ... or a clash of inflamed egos .

We have maybe 20 Hindus on this forum. Not only is it unrandom and unfair, but its also an incredibly small sampling.

and it will not grow unless we treat each other with a little more respect , further more young aspiring practitioners will be severely missled if not put of all together ?

personaly I see more benifit in discussing the principles as such discussion helps us expand our understanding and develop our sadhana . there are many of us that are a long way from our temples or for one or other reason do not have a regular temple at present however this kind of on line forum could serve as a vital link and become an on line sangha .would this not be more benificial ???

 

[ratikala]

dear jainarayan prabhu ,

if you strip away all those labels and practices, my money says that (almost) all people have the same desire at heart... get to God. But of course we know how naive I and idealistic I can be.

ah , ... but you do not know how much I value naive simplicity and idealism :bow:

What was the question?

Originally Posted by ratikala
I dont get it , ??? Too much debate on the nature of brahman , too much difference and rivalry between the veiw points of individual sects , not enough adherance to the principles of sanatana dharma ! what is going on ?
what trap are we falling into ?
is this the direction we should be going ?

what does sanatana dharma mean to you ?

 

[Jainarayan]

dear jainarayan prabhu What was the question?
Quote:
Originally Posted by ratikala
what does sanatana dharma mean to you ?

Oh, yes... "what does sanatana dharma mean to you ?" Good question, hard to define... ahimsaa (thought, word and deed, to others and myself) to the best of my ability. A very firm principle in my mind of ekam sat. I know I probably use that to death, but it does ring true with me.

I'm going to cop out and say that most of what I believe Sanatana Dharma is and means is spelled out in the Bhagavad Gita. No wonder Swami Tapasyananda's version has the cover title The Bhagavad Gita The Scripture for Mankind.

 

[ratikala]

dear maya ,

It means that God is everything.

And it means that his/her/its manifestation is diverse, so no we shouldn't have to debate about this.

God is what God is weather we figure it out or not.

Maya

jai jai .

should we ever (in this life) figure it out ?
maybe we should simply marvel at the enormity and all encompasing nature of the lord and to glorify that minute fraction that has revealed it self for our benifit , and up hold to the best of our ability the principles of sanatana dharma .