Friends:
Someone sent me an email about Shashi Tharoor, who might be the next UN Secretary-General (I certainly hope so!). There was this interview by someone named Visi Tilak and his answers. I have given the extract where he is explaining his Hindu beliefs. I have learnt something from this!
Describe your faith and religion? What do you like most about your religion?
I am a believing Hindu. Hinduism is uniquely a religion without fundamentals. We have an extraordinary diversity of religious practices within Hinduism, a faith with no single sacred book but many. Hinduism is, in many ways, predicated on the idea that the eternal wisdom of the ages about divinity cannot be confined to a single sacred book. We have no
compulsory injunctions or obligations. We don't even have a Hindu Sunday, let alone a requirement to pray at specific times and frequencies.
What we have is a faith that allows each believer to reach out his or her hands to his or her notion of the Godhead. A faith which uniquely does not have any notion of heresy--you cannot be a Hindu heretic because there is no standard set of dogmas from which deviation would make you a heretic. Here is a faith so unusual that it is the only major religion in the orld that does not claim to be the only true religion. I find that most congenial.
[FONT="]For me, as a believing Hindu, it is wonderful to be able to meet people from other faiths without being burdened by the conviction that I have embarked upon a "right path" that they have somehow missed. I was brought up in the belief that all ways of worship are equally valid. My father prayed devoutly every day, but never used to oblige me to join him: in the Hindu way, he wanted me to find my own truth. And that I believe I have.[/FONT]
Someone sent me an email about Shashi Tharoor, who might be the next UN Secretary-General (I certainly hope so!). There was this interview by someone named Visi Tilak and his answers. I have given the extract where he is explaining his Hindu beliefs. I have learnt something from this!
Describe your faith and religion? What do you like most about your religion?
I am a believing Hindu. Hinduism is uniquely a religion without fundamentals. We have an extraordinary diversity of religious practices within Hinduism, a faith with no single sacred book but many. Hinduism is, in many ways, predicated on the idea that the eternal wisdom of the ages about divinity cannot be confined to a single sacred book. We have no
compulsory injunctions or obligations. We don't even have a Hindu Sunday, let alone a requirement to pray at specific times and frequencies.
What we have is a faith that allows each believer to reach out his or her hands to his or her notion of the Godhead. A faith which uniquely does not have any notion of heresy--you cannot be a Hindu heretic because there is no standard set of dogmas from which deviation would make you a heretic. Here is a faith so unusual that it is the only major religion in the orld that does not claim to be the only true religion. I find that most congenial.
[FONT="]For me, as a believing Hindu, it is wonderful to be able to meet people from other faiths without being burdened by the conviction that I have embarked upon a "right path" that they have somehow missed. I was brought up in the belief that all ways of worship are equally valid. My father prayed devoutly every day, but never used to oblige me to join him: in the Hindu way, he wanted me to find my own truth. And that I believe I have.[/FONT]