speedguy said:
Quran also teaches peace and that is what real muslims follow. People who teach such things are misguiders, not God.
On one hand you think others shouldn't talk about a "particular religion" and then you are fancying with Islam.
O you who believe, take not the Jews and the Christians for friends. They are friends of each other. And whoever amongst you takes them for friends he is indeed one of them. Surely Allåh guides not the unjust people. (Quran 5.51)
“The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger [i.e., Muhammad], and strive with might and main for mischief through the land is: execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land: that is their disgrace in this world, and a heavy punishment is theirs in the Hereafter. ( Quran 5.33)”
Fight those who believe not in Allåh, nor in the Last Day, nor forbid that which Allåh and His Messenger have forbidden, nor follow the Religion of Truth, out of those who have been given the Book, until they pay the tax in acknowledgement of superiority and they are in a state of s subjection (9.29)
Quran not only talks about a particular religion, but calls to destroy those who do not believe in Islam. Perhaps, you should tell the maulanas that Quran should not talk about "Jews and Christians" and infidels. The above source is from muslim.org. I have quoted the same old thing many times in the past, but many people with the same mentality that "All religions are the same", busy tagging themselves into the foolish definitions of theists and atheists which are based on Abrahamic framework and not Indian could neither provide me an alternate translation let alone disconnecting it from the ignorant idea of "Islam teaches peace". The above is just a salad. If you think it is flawed, then I request you the same to find me alternate translations for it which do not talk of killing jews, christians and infidels.
@Rishabh has told you some wonderful concepts. The Indian thought is neither about some religion or god or atheists or theists. It is much beyond these limited and childish taggings, the fancies of an immature mind which people in this thread have still not graduated from. The Indian thought is neither about the impressions you recieve from the TV shows and serials where the devi-devtas are busy conspiring, marrying and leading a life like that of humans. If you are speaking about secularism, then do understand where, how and why it came into being in Europe.
The Islam speaks about judging the taggings of Jews and Christians and killing the people tagged under such banner. Can you tell if any of the Indian texts like Guru Granth Sahib, Upanishads etc speak about killing and judging someone called "Sikh, Hindu, Buddhist etc"?
The Quran speaks about attachment to a name Allah : la ilaha il-alaha, mohammed urrasool allah, whereas the Indian texts speak about nameless : Ekam satviprabahuda vadanti, where the infinite is nameless yet called by various names like brahman, purusha (not purush i.e guy if you think) etc, formless yet manifests into various forms like different waves from the same ocean, where that "ideal ocean" is infinite and its essence, the central binding force, immutable, whereas the waves are finite and mutable some marked with a sense of "I" and some not! To be explicit, I hope you understand the metaphor. Many people I discuss this, esp. atheists, think I'm talking about oceans literally. No wonder, they cannot understand the Indian shrutis.
Bhagvad-Gita said:
When a man liberated, free from attachment, with his mind, heart and spirit firmly founded in self-knowledge, does works as sacrifice, all his work is dissolved. Brahman is the giving, Brahman is the food-offering, by Brahman it is offered into the Brahman fire, Brahman is that which is to be attained by samadhi in Brahman-action. ( BG 4.23-24)
If you understand any of the above distinctions, then proceed to this for further details : Theism and Vedas | The Chakra News
If you understand that, do read Aurobindo's : The secret of Vedas. It is available freely with pdf format. Trust me, you'll laugh yourself at the average understanding of the Indian philosophies which we see in this thread alone which is not even intellectual in nature, let alone being intelligent!
Like Zakir Naik speaks in inferior words : In Islam everything is "God's" (with an apostrophe s, which is the whole central point of discussion in this thread i.e Modern Science Vs God, who is actually Abrahamic and not Indian devi or Devta) where as in Hinduism everything is God (In Hindi it means divya and divya is not the same as God. These devi-devta are the different powers of the infinite, like air/wind, water, intellect, mind, supermind which are called by terminologies like vayu, varuna, indra, Vishnu etc in the Vedas, Shakti and Shiva in the Tantras, purusha and prakriti in the Gita etc . From divya comes the sanskrit offsprings like deva and even Maya is a devi. There is a similar analogy to the Greek philosophy as well). He, Zakir, surely doesn't know how he himself is making a mockery of Islam! IMO, he is speaking the truth.
I can see that your thoughts are noble, but there is still an immense amount of conditioning where your views, both positive and negative, are based on abrahamic thought and not Indian at all. It is the story of most of the Indians today who assume on Indian texts based on the perceptions from TV shows and movies like Jaani Dushman, Freddy Vs Jason etc, instead of reading the texts and behave in the exact way that the missionaries like Max muller, Griffith, Bloomsfield wanted them to, the missionaries who mistranslated many of the Indian works like Vedas through their degraded understanding based on the same taggings like Theism, Atheism, Religion where they saw Vedas to be speaking about Gods figting and worshipping different animals like Cow, Horse etc and drinking liquor called Soma . If you are thinking of tagging me into some words like theist, atheist, religionist etc, then feel free. I'd only ask you to rise beyond these childish terminologies!
Some excerpts from Secret of The Vedas -----
The word go means both cow and light and in a number of passages evidently meant light even while putting forward the image of the cow. This is clear enough
when we have to do with the cows of the sun — the Homeric kine of Helios — and the cows of the Dawn. Psychologically, the physical Light might well be used as a symbol of knowledge and especially of the divine knowledge (Page 43) { i.e cow is the metaphor of light or wisdom/knowledge recieved}
Indra is invoked as the maker of perfect forms to drink the wine of Soma; drinking he becomes full of ecstasy and a “giver of cows” .... A study
s of the Vedic horse led me to the conclusion that go and asva represent the two companion ideas of Light and Energy, Consciousness and Force, which to the Vedic and Vedantic mind were the double or twin aspect of all the activities of existence. (Page 44) { i.e mind is illumined when by the sheer amount of knowledge, the eternal bliss, the truth and thus "giver of cows" by which we can act objectively and wisely }
Agni for the ordinary worshipper may have meant simply the god of the Vedic fire, or it may have meant the principle of Heat and Light in physical Nature, or to the most ignorant it may have meant simply a superhuman personage, one of the many “givers of wealth”, satisfiers of human desire. How suggest to those capable of a deeper conception the psychological functions of the God? The word itself fulfilled that service. For Agni meant the Strong, it meant the Bright, or even Force, Brilliance. So it could easily recall to the initiated, wherever it occurred, the idea of the illumined Energy which builds up the worlds and which exalts man to the Highest, the doer of the great work, the Purohit of the human sacrifice. (Page 56) { i.e Agni is the will power, the force which is one the first devtas who is invoked by Indra i.e mind/itelligence. Obviously this is true in any case. If you want to learn guitar, your mind will automatically increase focus.
}
This wine of Soma represents, as we have abundant proof in the Veda and especially in the ninth book, a collection of more than a hundred hymns addressed to the deity Soma, the intoxication of the Ananda, the divine delight of being, inflowing upon the mind from the supramental consciousness through the Ritam or Truth. If we accept these interpretations, we can easily translate the hymn into its psychological significance. (Page 74) { i.e The awakening as experienced by the mind, metaphorically written in the form of drinking of soma by Indra. }
What can these rivers be whose wave is full of Soma wine, full of the ghrta, full of urj, the energy? What are these waters that flow to the goal of the gods’ movement, that establish for man the supreme good?....Obviously these are the waters of the Truth and the Bliss that flow from the supreme ocean. These rivers flow not upon earth, but in heaven; they are prevented by Vritra the Besieger, the Coverer from flowing down upon the earth-consciousness in which we mortals live till Indra, the god-mind, smites the Coverer with his flashing lightnings and cuts out a passage on the summits of that earth-consciousness down which they can flow. Such is the only rational, coherent and sensible explanation of the thought and language of the Vedic sages. (Page 113)
This matter of the lost herds is only part of a whole system of connected symbols and images. They are recovered by the sacrifice and the fiery god Agni is the flame, the power and the priest of the sacrifice; — by the Word, and Brihaspati is the father of the Word, the Maruts its singers or Brahmas, brahmano marutah, Saraswati its inspiration; — by the Wine, and Soma is the god of the Wine and the Ashwins its seekers, finders, givers, drinkers. The herds are the herds of Light and the Light comes
by the Dawn and by the Sun of whom Pushan is a form. Finally, Indra is the head of all these gods, lord of the light, king of the luminous heaven called Swar, — he is, we say, the luminous or divine Mind; into him all the gods enter and take part in his unveiling of the hidden light. We see therefore that there is a perfect appropriateness in the attribution of one and the same victory to these different deities and in Madhuchchhandas’ image of the gods entering into Indra for the stroke against Vala. Nothing has been done at random or in obedience to a confused fluidity of ideas. The Veda is perfect and beautiful in its coherence and its unity. (Page 144)
Vedas : Mind is the chief controller of all the senses, of the breaths in the Human being (inhale, exhale, life breath etc) which we see as "devraj Indra". It is the mind which is always wavering with positive and negative thoughts and yields to the self for the guidance which we see as "Swargaloka always wavering and being attacked by Demons and presided over by devtas and Indra running to Vishnu for guidance".
Shiva and Shakti : Where Shakti is the individual jiva (when perceived at human level) always trying to achieve the state of perfect knowledge i.e Shiva which we see in serials loosely as Shakti always trying to seek Shiva and how consciousness continues seeking even after death e.g Sati to Parvati where the desires are part of the nature of the body, but one has to control over those desires or detach from those desires. This Shiva is residing on the top of Mount Kailash which is metaphor of the human body itself and the super-mind, the top of Kailash which is beyond all the dualities of life, where space and time cease to exist, where past, present, future all become one, which are nothing more than the division created or perceived by the mind only.
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Some quotes from Aurobindo's : Kena and other Upanishads's
If God is everywhere, He must be in the food we eat. Not only is God the eaten, but He is the eater and eventually, says the Vedanta, when you come to the bottom fact of existence there is neither eaten or eater, but all is God. (Sri Aurobindo, Kena and Other Upanishads, Page 166)
What is the use of avoiding the word “God” and speaking always of the Supreme as “It” simply because the Sanscrit usually, — but not, be it observed, invariably — employs the neuter gender? The neuter in Sanscrit applies not only to what is inanimate but to what is beyond such terms as animate and inanimate, not only to what is below gender but to what is above gender. In English this is not the case. The use of “It” may therefore lead to far more serious misconceptions than to use the term “God” & the pronoun “He”. (Sri Aurobindo, Kena and Other Upanishads, Page 169)
“Now the Mind in dream revelleth in the glory of his imaginings. All that it hath seen it seemeth to see over again, and of all that it hath heard it repeateth the hearing; yea, all that it hath felt and thought and known in many lands and in various regions, these it liveth over again in its dreaming. What it hath seen and what it hath not seen, what it hath heard and what it hath not heard, what it hath known and what it hath not known, what is and what is not, all, all it seeth; for the Mind is the Universe.
But when he is overwhelmed with light, then Mind, the God, dreameth no longer; then in this body he hath felicity.
(Prashna Upanishad, translated by Sri Aurobindo, Pg 186 of Kena and Other Upanishads)
Therefore as all these flowing rivers move towards the sea, but when they reach the sea they are lost in it and name and form break away from them and all is called only the sea, so all the sixteen members of the silent witnessing Spirit move towards the Being, and when they have attained the Being they are lost in Him and name and form break away from them and all is called only the Being; then is He without members and immortal. Whereof this is the Scripture.
(Prashna Upanishad, translated by Sri Aurobindo, Pg 191 of Kena and Other Upanishads) { i.e the waves merging back into the nameless ocean }
Sat, Chit and Ananda are in this Highest, but He is neither Sat, Chit nor Ananda nor any combination of these. He is All and yet He is neti, neti, He is One and yet He is many. He is Parabrahman and He is Parameswara. He is Male and He is Female. He is Tat and He is Sa. This is the Higher than the Highest. He is the Purusha, the Being in whose image the world and all the Jivas are made, who pervades all and underlies all the workings of Prakriti as its reality and self. It is this Purusha that Aswalayana seeks. (Page 289, Sri Aurobindo, Kena and other Upanishads)
it is in another passage stated to have two sides, obverse & reverse, Vidya and Avidya, Science and Nescience. Nescience eternally tends to envelop Science,
Science eternally tends to displace Nescience. Avidya or Nescience is Parabrahman’s power of creating illusions or images, things which seem but are not in themselves; Vidya or Science is His power of shaking off His own imaginations and returning upon His real and eternal Self. The action and reaction of these
two great Energies doing work upon each other is the secret of Universal activity. (Page 378, KOU) { Essentially talking about Purusha and Prakriti and Maya as one of the powers or forms of Prakriti }
Like I stated, the Indian thought is neither the Vedic rituals you see these days nor the presentation of Indian TV shows. It is neither some reduction into childish terminologies like theists, atheists, religion etc.