Sugata Bose Christianity burnt future saints like Joan of Arc and hundreds of thousands of others including great scientists like Bruno in the fire of the Inquisition. Christianity incarcerated geniuses like Galileo and thwarted the advance of science. The horrendous tale goes on. Read The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda and you will be enlightened about it all including the real Christianity about which you have no clue. The Christ of Asia is not quite the Christ Rome upholds with all the pomp and show of the Vatican. Go back to the Nazarene who had no stone to lay his head on and lived in rags a life of supreme renunciation and spirituality to which evidently the West has no clue imbued as they are with ideas of social development and worldly good living. Visit India and then the headquarters of the Ramakrishna Math and the Ramakrishna Mission commonly called Belur Math if you wish to come to any semblance of a comprehension of the spiritual Christianity as opposed to your pompous understanding of Western 'superior' Christianity. In realisation lies the essence of religion and not in articles of faith born in arbitrary assumption and doctrinaire imposition thereafter. The day your earthly desires diminish, then alone will you see reason in being rational in the real sense of the term and stop being so pompous in your claims about the attainments of Christianity while conveniently choosing to ignore the mass murder and genocide that the same religion has unfortunately inspired dictators and kings and reformers within its fold to have conducted. Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism, the three great dharma traditions of India, the heartland of spirituality, have never resorted to such barbarous activities in their history which not only predate Christianity in their origins but also outmatche her in philosophical profundity and catholicity of spirit despite, ironically speaking, the largest sect of Christianity, the Roman Catholic Church, having assumed the term which it does not in any way stand by thanks to its dogmatic insistence that it alone is the true way to godhead. You may argue that of late such is no more the case but that is only a political stance and not a sincere one for in that case the Vatican would have desisted from all programmes of conversion to its fold right away. Om! Shanti! Shanti! Shanti! (Om! Peace! Peace! Peace!) @ Deborah Edwards
P.S. Talking of loving sinners as you point out Christianity advocates, well, Hinduism does not in the first place condemn the lot of humankind to 'original sin' as Christianity does. Hinduism, on the contrary, in trumpet voice proclaims the essential divinity of the human soul and all of sentience. So, there is no question of loving the sinner. Hinduism emphasises the oneness of all of phenomena at the level of its spiritual foundation, that is, the fundamental oneness of existence. Out of the awareness and the consequent conviction that one is everywhere in all of sentience in essence, flows the fountain of love divine for all and not out of pity for the so-to-say sinner. This is a far more ennobling idea of love than the love for the sinner.
A final pointer and it is this. Unlike Christianity which is based on faith and personality and mythology without a genuine scientific or philosophical basis, Hinduism is based on the realisation of countless seers of transcendental truth, recorded in the Hindu scriptures, methodologies of spiritual practice that are possible to undergo with verified and verifiable results as of yore and elaborate philosophy of profundity and sublimity unmatched in the annals of religious history anywhere else in the world. The Upanishads are the only books that can successfully stand the test of time and the scrutiny of advancing modern science which the Bible full of fantastic assertions like the Resurrection cannot. Just as science is impersonal, so is Hinduism impersonal and if any number of personalities be taken away from its body politic, it will stand as strong and erect as ever. But just imagine if Christ be taken away from Christianity what remains of it. No sane person will repose faith in the Resurrection which is the foundation stone of Christianity and the 'proof' of the divinity of Christ and to sanity Christianity will fail to press home its 'truths' which is why so many millions of educated Europeans are turning to atheism, humanism, Hinduism, Buddhism and the like. The concept of heaven, hell and their ilk are central to the destiny of Christians. Not so for Hindus who think heaven to be too low a place for God or the soul to inhabit. Hinduism has heavens and hells of a mythological kind but they are places of temporary residence for experience of the consequences of temporal karma following which the soul must revisit earth to continue its spiritual journey en route to eventual liberation in the realisation of Existence Absolute, Consciousness Absolute and Bliss Absolute. It is the non-dual plane of transcendence of the sensory universe whence there is no return. The soul is now free of all dual throng and is one with the fundamental principle whose shadow is this universe. Hari Om Tat Sat!
P.S. Talking of loving sinners as you point out Christianity advocates, well, Hinduism does not in the first place condemn the lot of humankind to 'original sin' as Christianity does. Hinduism, on the contrary, in trumpet voice proclaims the essential divinity of the human soul and all of sentience. So, there is no question of loving the sinner. Hinduism emphasises the oneness of all of phenomena at the level of its spiritual foundation, that is, the fundamental oneness of existence. Out of the awareness and the consequent conviction that one is everywhere in all of sentience in essence, flows the fountain of love divine for all and not out of pity for the so-to-say sinner. This is a far more ennobling idea of love than the love for the sinner.
A final pointer and it is this. Unlike Christianity which is based on faith and personality and mythology without a genuine scientific or philosophical basis, Hinduism is based on the realisation of countless seers of transcendental truth, recorded in the Hindu scriptures, methodologies of spiritual practice that are possible to undergo with verified and verifiable results as of yore and elaborate philosophy of profundity and sublimity unmatched in the annals of religious history anywhere else in the world. The Upanishads are the only books that can successfully stand the test of time and the scrutiny of advancing modern science which the Bible full of fantastic assertions like the Resurrection cannot. Just as science is impersonal, so is Hinduism impersonal and if any number of personalities be taken away from its body politic, it will stand as strong and erect as ever. But just imagine if Christ be taken away from Christianity what remains of it. No sane person will repose faith in the Resurrection which is the foundation stone of Christianity and the 'proof' of the divinity of Christ and to sanity Christianity will fail to press home its 'truths' which is why so many millions of educated Europeans are turning to atheism, humanism, Hinduism, Buddhism and the like. The concept of heaven, hell and their ilk are central to the destiny of Christians. Not so for Hindus who think heaven to be too low a place for God or the soul to inhabit. Hinduism has heavens and hells of a mythological kind but they are places of temporary residence for experience of the consequences of temporal karma following which the soul must revisit earth to continue its spiritual journey en route to eventual liberation in the realisation of Existence Absolute, Consciousness Absolute and Bliss Absolute. It is the non-dual plane of transcendence of the sensory universe whence there is no return. The soul is now free of all dual throng and is one with the fundamental principle whose shadow is this universe. Hari Om Tat Sat!
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