Thread by @RK36087949

1/22:
Swami Vivakanand's PAPER ON HINDUSIM presented on Sep 19, 1983 at the World's Parliament of Religion, Chicago is highly recommended reading on Hindusim.

If you can read only one article on Hinduism, then this is it! The paper is available at...
belurmath.org/swami-vivekana…

2/22:
Paper explains genesis of the Hindu thought process about "the God", emerging out of Vedic literature. It approaches the topic in as scientific manner as possible in those days.

Beyond, Aatman-Brahman unity in duality that is preached in the Bhagvad Gita, it tells more...

3/22:
...about how Vedas call mortals as "Children of immortal bliss", rather than as "sinners"

and, thereby challenges humans to shed their inferiority complex with a call...

4/22:
"Come up, O lions,
and shake off the delusion that you are sheep;
you are souls immortal, spirits free, blest and eternal;
ye are not matter, ye are not bodies;
matter is your servant, not you the servant of matter"

5/22:
To attain this blissful state of ultimate freedom - the freedom of soul - Swami ji asks to worship Him.

But how? "Through love", he says and...

"He is to be worshipped as the one beloved, dearer than everything in this and the next life"

6/22:
This ought to be self-less worship, in which one must pray...

"Lord, I do not want wealth, nor children, nor learning. If it be Thy will, I shall go from birth to birth, but grant me this, that I may love Thee without the hope of reward-love unselfishly for love’s sake"

7/22:
Only by following this Bhakti principle and being like a "lotus leaf, which grows in water but is never moistened by water; so a man ought to live in the world-his heart to God and his hands to work" does a Hindu aspire to reach ultimate realization...

8/22:
... this is what Swami ji means when he states "The Hindu religion does not consist in struggles and attempts to believe a certain doctrine or dogma, but in realizing-not in BELIEVING, but in BEING and BECOMING"

9/22:
Swami Vivekanand also argues against existence of polytheism or henotheism in India, for as "The rose, called by any other name, would smell as sweet", so does prayers offered to any form still amounts to worship of the God.

10/22:
Therefore, those who question Hindus as mere idolaters, are counter-questioned by Swami ji "Can sin beget holiness?" because "Superstition is a great enemy of man, but bigotry is worse".

And people of all religions need mental image of something to which they pray, for...

11/22:
"Man is to become divine by realizing the divine.
Idols or temples or churches or books are only the supports, the helps, of his spiritual childhood;
but on and on he must progress"

So, idols/external worship "is the lowest stage" of worship...like kindergarten

12/22:
Next stage is "mental prayer" or high-school...
and "the highest stage is when the Lord has been realized" the ultimate graduation

So, a Hindu believes that "man is not travelling from error to truth, but from truth to truth, from lower to higher truth"

13/22:
Those who do not need lower stages - of "images, crosses, and crescents" to reach the Realization - "have no right to say that it is wrong"

Nor is such image worship "compulsory in Hinduism"

14/22:
Swami ji accepts flaws of certain practices by Hindus, but staunchly defends that these practices "are always for punishing their own bodies, and never for cutting the throats of their neighbors"

15/22:
And, "even this cannot be laid at the door of his religion any more than the burning of witches can be laid at the door of Christianity"

16/22:
On the contrary, as stated by Vyasa, Vedantic tradition of Hindus acknowledge that "We find perfect men even beyond the pale of our caste and creed" and this tradition does not ever say that "the Hindu alone will be saved and not others"

17/22:
Swami Vivekanand makes his final point that no religion, incl. Vedic/Hindu religion, is at the zenith of religious development - there is room for improvement

18/22:
And, he makes a case of a global religion...
"which will have no place for persecution or intolerance in its polity,...

which will recognize divinity in every man and woman, and..."

19/22:
"...whose whole scope,
whose whole force,
will be centered in aiding humanity to realize its own true, divine nature"

Our way to converge to such a religious belief is still paved with fanaticism Swami ji mentioned and continue to see it unfold in our neighborhood

20/22:
Link to Swami Vivekanand's response to the opening of the Parliament is at: threadreaderapp.com/thread/1436645…

21/22:
Link to his lucid explanation on why everyone disagrees is at this link:
threadreaderapp.com/thread/1436648…

22/22:
unroll @threadreaderapp