Hinduism Today and article by Morales

[Guest guest]

Dear List

 

We have received the following positive response to our email of concern to Hinduism Today magazine for the article they had published by Morales. We will be submitting an article to them on the role of Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda in reconciling the truth claims of many diverse world religions. We are sharing this email in confidence with our colleagues.

 

regards

jay Vivekananda Centre London

 

==========email from Hinduism Today chief Editor========

 

Namaste,Thank you for the private message to Satguru Bodhinatha and myself. Be assured that we hold Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda in the highest regard. Indeed, Swami's books were among the first texts on Hinduism read by our own beloved Satguru, Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, when he was a young man embarking on the spiritual path. And many decades earlier, it was the sight of Swami lecturing at Saraswati Hall in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on his return from the West in 1889 that inspired Gurudeva's guru, Siva Yogaswami, to adopt sannyas as a young man. Even today, Swami's "Song of the Sannyasin" is enshrined in our monastic vow documents and honored as one of the most articulate statements ever uttered on the ideals of renunciation.As mentioned before, you are most welcome to submit an article along the lines proposed, and the editorial team will give it every consideration.It's not clear to me if your response on this article is coming as a personal response or if you are stating the position of the Ramakrishna Mission. If it is personal, which I gather it is, then has the RK Mission itself made any statement? We want to be sure that people are responding to our edited version of Frank's article, and not the original, as there was substantial editing, going from 16,000 words to 6,000. The article we published was much more thoughtful and did not include the author's stronger statements, which we found fault with.The article does rather specifically define what is meant by "all religions are the same," in the second and third paragraph, and thereafter the statement is a kind of shorthand for that longer definition. Morales carefully says that Ramakrishna believed "all religions aimed at the same supreme destination," and that Vivekananda "advocated a sort of hierarchical radical universalism that espoused the quality of all religions, while simultaneously claiming that all religions are really evolving from inferior notions of religiosity to a pinnacle mode. That pinnacle ... was... Hinduism." Do you find these two statements to be incorrect characterizations?Looking forward to continued discussion on this important issue.Sannyasin ArumugaswamiManaging EditorHinduism Today