Selling Islamic Wine with Hindu and Christian Trappings

Bridging the Gap Between Hinduism and Christianity

Source: The Huffington Post

By Gadadhara Pandit Dasa: Hindu Chaplain, Columbia University and New York University

Growing up in a Hindu family in Los Angeles while attending a Christian high school for four years, I was never able to make any connection between the two traditions. In fact, they seemed worlds apart. My Christian friends were monotheists, worshippers of one God, with no images other than the cross, while on my home altar, there sat pictures and images of about 20 goddesses and gods, some of whom were human like while others were half human and half animal, carrying items such as weapons, lotus flowers and conch shells. I actually never let any of my friends see our home altar for two reasons: fear of ridicule and because I knew I wouldn’t be able to explain what it was all about.

It wasn’t until about 16 years later, when I decided to pursue the path of becoming a Hindu monk that I decided to see if a bridge existed between the two traditions. Living in New York City as a monk and conducting lectures and discussions at many of the local universities, to an audience of primarily Christians, I realized it would be important for me to explore the teachings of Jesus Christ, so I could become more familiar with the teachings and so that my explanations of Hindu wisdom could address some of their hang-ups about Hinduism. A fellow Hindu monk, who had been raised Catholic, suggested I look at the Gospels. I was very surprised to see the Gospels suggesting the same approach toward God and humanity as my Hindu faith.

The first general similarity I discovered was that both traditions were monotheistic. The Bhagavad Gita and the Bhagavata Purana clearly suggest the idea of one supreme, divine, creator for all people. Even many Hindus accept that Hinduism is monotheistic. According to the two texts listed above, Krishna is proclaimed as the supreme deity and described as the source of all spiritual and material worlds, the life of all that lives, and the origin of all other gods. The understanding in the Bhakti yoga tradition I practice is that Krishna is the same God who others address as Jehovah, Allah and Yahweh. Read further.

The 33 Million Gods of Hinduism

Source: The Huffington Post

By Gadadhara Pandit Dasa: Hindu Chaplain, Columbia University and New York University

Why Hindus worship so many gods and goddesses is a real mystery for most people. In the West, where the mass majority of people are part of the Abrahamic faith tradition with one God, the concept of polytheism is nothing more than fantasy or mythology worthy of comic book material. The interesting thing is that one culture can see this as fiction while most Hindus, without a second thought, can walk into a temple with multiple deities, bow down and offer prayer and worship with devotion treating that deity as much like a person as you and me.

The Bhakti tradition offers an explanation for this complicated theology of millions of gods. I find this explanation quite satisfying. For a country, state, or city to run properly, the government creates various departments and employs individuals within those departments — teachers, postal workers, police and military personnel, construction works, doctors, politicians, and so many more. Each of these departments employs hundreds or thousands of individuals carrying out their respective duties and each sector has an individual or multiple individuals that oversees the activities of that one unit. Each head of an area is endowed with certain privileges and powers which facilitates them in their tasks. It’s safe to say that the number of individuals working for the United States government goes into the millions. This is just to keep one country working. Multiply that by all the countries on the planet, which is around 200, and all the people working for these governments, the total would easily come out to tens of millions of people employed by the various governments of the world to run one planet.

The way it’s explained is that in order to keep the universe running, Krishna, the supreme being, has put into place individuals that oversee different parts of the material universe. These individuals are powerful beings that have been appointed by Krishna and have been bestowed with the necessary powers and abilities to manage and govern their area of creation. They can be referred to as demigods. For example, there is someone responsible for the sun and his name is Surya. The goddess Saraswati is the overseer of knowledge. The creator of the material universe is known as Brahma. The destruction of the universe is overseen by Shiva and Vishnu serves as the maintainer. There are individuals overseeing the oceans, the wind, and practically every facet of creations. When seen from this perspective, 33 million is not that big a number.

We take it completely for granted that the sun is always perfectly fixed in its position. If it were to move even slightly closer to the earth we would burn to a crisp and if it were to distance itself from us, we would become popsicles. We also take it for granted that all day and all night, there is oxygen in the atmosphere for us to breathe. It’s not by chance that all this is existing. It has been placed here and someone has been put in charge of each aspect of it. For example, we plug our electronic gadgetry into power outlets. That’s not magic and it’s not by chance. It was constructed into the building to facilitate our needs. If for some reason, there’s a massive power outage, then the person in charge would have to take responsibility for its maintenance.

The material universe functions like a big governmental structure with heads of departments managing their respective affairs. These heads or “demigods” have also been endowed with abilities to grace humanity with certain boons and that’s why so many people pray to the different gods to have their material wishes fulfilled. Granting boons to whatever degree deemed appropriate is up to the individual god. Read further

The Muslim Times’ Editor’s comments: In a poetic sense, I agree with the author of the above two articles from the Huffington Post, Gadadhara Pandit Dasa, as regards to what he has to say about Monotheism.

But, if we are going to be precise and get into the nitty-gritty, then what he is saying is more akin to Islam than conventional Hinduism or Trinitarian Christianity.  In that sense, I will have to offer a few additional reading materials below.

The Holy Quran says that it has preserved the salient features of all the previous religions:

A Messenger from Allah, reciting unto them the pure Scriptures. Therein are lasting commandments. (Al Quran 98:3-4)

Whatever was of lasting value, according to the Holy Quran, Allah has reproduced in the Scripture of Islam. As regards the teaching of Monotheism, it is said that a third of the Holy Quran highlights and explains it and many a Christian apologist, including William Montgomery Watt and Rev. Elwood Morris Wherry.

 How can Hindus think like a Muslim despite the mention of 330 million gods?

Who was Jesus? Man or God? debate – Sir Anthony Buzzard and Drew Ayers

Is God the Father the Creator, the Trinity as a whole or are there three Creators?