Many Gods and Easy Acceptance: Question from Suresh

[Guest guest]

Worship of Too many Gods

 

Hinduism in its Vedantic flights take only one Personal God. Remember " Ekam

Sat Vipra Bahudha vadanti " (Truth is really one, though the learned call it

variously). In spite of all this, there is rampant worship of too many

Gods, (this God for this purpose, that God for that purpose,etc). The

average Hindu remains unaware of the Ishta Devatha theory and worships as

many Gods as he likes!

 

This is to the wrath and ridicule of monotheistic religions who claim they

worship only one God (which is always not the case). This seems to be a

major reason to convince new recruits for conversion!

 

Acceptance of Anything and Everything

The Hindu is not only tolerant, " but we accept all religions as true. "

(Response to Welcome, Chicago Addresses by Swami Vivekananda). Very good.

But how far should he go? The basic problem is, he Hinduises other peoples'

Gods and worships them in his own manner: A thing not at all accepted by

others! To them, exclusive acceptance of their God rejecting others is a

pre-requisite before worship! The Hindu's worshipping Jesus (an example) in

place of say, Ganapati doesn't get accepted, because the Christian idea is

entirely different. Simply changing the picture alone will not be accepted

as the real thing. Should the Hindu do this? Can he not stop with his own

army of Gods and leave others' Gods alone? It is remarkable that Hindu alone

does this.

[Guest guest]

Dear Suresh:

Worship of God in many names and forms does not

contradict monotheism because all gods are considered

manifestations of the same God and Hnduism recognizes

that there is only one God. Of course ignorant Hindus

always fight about whether the GOd at Tirupathy is

greater than God at Badrinath or Varanasi. This

ignorance motivates them to seek God in various places

and therefore, they have to go to Tirupathy to offer

their prayer and cant beleive that they can achielve

the same result by mediatatign and worshipping in

their own home because they consider Tirupathy alone

as sacred! A true seeker of God sincerely tries to

recognize the presence of God everywhere and not just

in certain places or forms. Since Hindus consider that

there are several manifestations of God, their worship

of Jesus does not contradict the monotheistic

pricnciple of Hinduism. In cse of Christianity and

Islam, if you dont worship Jesus or Allah alone, you

are doomed to fail in your search for truth. This is

the big difference between Hindu monotheism and other

monotheisms.

 

--- Vivekananda Centre <vivekananda

wrote:

> Worship of Too many Gods

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