Monthly Archives: February 2009

Christians, friends of Hindus

Posted on February 27, 2009 | 34 Comments

Someone recently commented that my blog was anti-Christian. It was certainly not my intention to be anti-Christian, though my condemnation of the fundamentalist, evangelical Christian Right may have given that impression.

A while ago I wrote an article “Muslims, friends of Hindus“. I had not written a post about the friendship between Christians and Hindus, perhaps because I take for granted the fact that there are many Christians who want friendly, supportive relations with other religions. In fact in Britain probably a majority of Christians would be against aggressive conversion tactics. Continue reading →

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I have put the content of the blog under a Creative Commons license

Posted on February 25, 2009 | Leave a comment

I have put the contents of this blog under a Creative Commons license which allows non-commercial use when attributing this site as the source. I thought that it would further Hinduism to allow people to copy information from this site. See the License Tab for more information if you want to use content from this site.

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How I became a Hindu – part three

Posted on February 24, 2009 | 39 Comments

Continued from How I became a Hindu – part two which follows How I became a Hindu – part one.

Lord Shiva

Nataraja, Shiva the cosmic dancer.

Nataraja, Shiva the cosmic dancer.

One day, when surfing the Internet I came across a Nataraja, the image of Shiva as the cosmic dancer on eBay. Almost on impulse I purchased it. I found myself impelled to read up on the symbolism. The symbolism of the dance of creation, preservation and destruction struck a chord with me and immediately felt right.

I found that whenever I passed the Nataraja I could see that this image represented God, and I felt compelled to thank God for all that exists.

I live near to a Hindu temple, and I decided to visit. At first I was very nervous about just turning up, but I was made very welcome and the Pandit explained many things to me. I also bought and studied many books on Hinduism, as I knew that I had been called to this path. One of the books I bought was “How to become a Hindu”, which is published by the Himalayan Academy and available online. Continue reading →

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How I became a Hindu – part two

Posted on February 22, 2009 | 15 Comments

Continued from How I became a Hindu – part one.

Multicultural Britain

Having been brought up in a small town that was almost exclusively white and Christian, at University I met a number of people from all over the world and of all religions. In fact I have lived in ethnically diverse cities since then.

A mela in the UK

This in itself had a major impact on my understanding of Christianity as “the only way to salvation”. One of my closest friends at University was a Sikh, and whereas it is one thing to theoretically hear that people you don’t know will be destined for hell, it is quite different if you know this is talking about friends, fellow students, work colleagues, etc. It is obvious to anyone who meets people from many different religions and cultures that if God is loving, then it can’t be true that only those from one particular religion will be saved.

The strength of atheists’ arguments

I also met many articulate atheists. These were in general sincere, people of integrity and they had very logical arguments. Continue reading →

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How I became a Hindu – part one

Posted on February 19, 2009 | 9 Comments

I have been asked why I am became a Hindu. In one way this is simple to answer, God called me to this path. What people really want though is a description of the manner and the process of this calling. I will attempt to describe this, though in some ways it is quite difficult. Writing things down makes it appear as though they are an ordered set of steps, one leading to another. In reality I am not certain which thoughts and ideas occurred before others, and many things happened concurrently. I have also left out certain influences and events concerning other people. Anyway, I will start at the beginning and end at the present, and even if the order in the middle is a little uncertain the gist will be correct. Continue reading →

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Strange Web Searches

Posted on February 14, 2009 | Leave a comment

WordPress tells you the searches that people have made to find your blog. Some of these are quite interesting, because they are very telling about what people are looking for. This can help to see whether people are getting the answers they want. Some are just funny! I thought I would look at a few of them. I have not capitalised the searches, most people use lower case on google. yahoo, etc.

Common search strings that I think I address

These have links to the pages which I believe answer them.

Common search strings that I don’t address

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Fundamentalism, and the rock so heavy that God cannot lift it

Posted on February 8, 2009 | 2 Comments

I have been thinking about fundamentalists’ claims that everyone apart from “true Christians” will go to hell and be eternally tortured. They often try to reconcile this with a good, merciful and loving God by saying “it is written, it is the Law, and God cannot disobey the Law”. Unlike Christianity Hinduism does not have a definitive book. There are the Vedas of course, but these are more works of praise to God than Law or rules, and these are supplemented by agamas from each school. Christians, like Hindus, believe that God is omnipotent. It seems to me that if God writes the Bible as a definitive book that he must follow from that point until eternity then this is limiting his omnipotence. Metaphorically speaking God has created a rock so heavy that he can’t lift it; the Bible.

That is fair enough, but if God creates this rock which is so heavy that even he cannot lift it so that it will crush most of humanity forever then this cannot be an all-loving and good God. The God who would do this is not the God that I worship.

Aum Shivarpanamastu

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