Most of the religious conflicts and wars involving the Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Judaism, Islam) stem from disputes over what exactly God said and how he said it and what exactly it means. To ensure that order prevails, canons of “authentic” texts are formed and creeds, or condensed forms of crucial affirmations and beliefs, are debated, written down, and carefully observed as litmus tests for participation in the faith.

In Christianity, this obsession with the history of God’s intervention is best illustrated by the Nicene Creed, which makes various historical claims about the life of Jesus. It is recited in every Christian church as the basic affirmation or mission statement of Christians to which they must pledge allegiance repeatedly. For those who doubt this centrality of history in Christianity, it is instructive to read this Creed, which was first composed in the year 325 CE when Christianity was becoming the state religion of the Roman Empire. It is official doctrine in Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, most Protestant churches, as well as the Anglican Communion.

The underlying message in the Creed is that salvation can be achieved only through obedience to God’s will as understood through prophets and historical events. Salvation is necessary in order that man be saved from eternal damnation for having committed Original Sin in the Garden of Eden. The solution to the Christian problem of sin is for God to enter human history at a certain point in time. Hence, the historical record of that intervention must be carefully maintained, and its truth must be taken forward and aggressively asserted. It is a truth which is born of history and applies to history, both past and future: its goal is to make sure that humans collectively obey a specific “law.” This history, if it is to be valid, must be considered universal, however particular and fallible its agents (individual and collective) may be. I have coined the term “history-centrism” to refer to this fixation on specific and often incompatible claims to divine truth revealed in history.

There is a profound difference between the history-centrism of the Abrahamic faiths and the goal of dharma (comprising Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism) which is that the individual aspirant elevate his or her consciousness in the here-and-now and in his or her very body. Dharma is not burdened by history, nor by the problem of “sin” as it recognizes no such historical act of disobedience. This was one of the topics of a wonderful conversation I had with Joshua Stanton, Co-Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Inter-Religious Dialogue.

From the dharma perspective, one does not require a historical consciousness, at least not a rigorously developed one. Instead, the aspirant is free to start afresh and tap into his potential for discovering the ultimate reality without bondage to the past. All the dharmic traditions share this a-historical and direct approach to knowing the ultimate truth. Furthermore, this potential to know the ultimate reality by direct, disciplined practice exists in all humans even those who do not believe it does.

The prevailing Abrahamic view, by contrast, is that humans are not able to achieve unity with the divine and that, besides, the spiritual goal is salvation, not “unity with God.” Salvation can be achieved only through obedience to God’s will as understood through historical events and prophets.

Such an absolute status of history weakens the authority of individual spiritual explorations (hence, mystics are regarded notoriously with suspicion in these traditions) and becomes the basis for competing claims to truth which cannot be reconciled. Moreover, the Abrahamic view is that those without access to these historical revelations must remain, by definition, in the dark, lacking the most elementary means to make contact with God. I regard this historical fixation as the major difference between a dharma path (Hinduism and Buddhism in particular) and the Abrahamic one (Christianity, Judaism, Islam).

For the individual who follows a dharma path, it is not necessary to accept a particular account of history in order to attain a higher, embodied states of consciousness. Nor is any such historical account or belief sufficient to produce the desired state. Thus, dharma traditions have flourished for long periods without undue concern about history, relying instead on the numerous lineages of spiritual masters who teach from a state of enlightenment. Meditative practices remove the layers of conditioning that obfuscate the light of one’s true self and thereby help one to realize the highest truthwithout depending on history. Even if all historical records were lost, historical memory erased, and every holy site desecrated, the truth could be recovered by spiritual practices.

Published: March 2, 2012

In an earlier blog, I introduced the concept of mutual respect and why it is superior to the patronizing notion of “tolerance” that is typically celebrated at interfaith events. My recent book, “Being Different” (HarperCollins, 2011), is entirely about appreciating how traditions differ from one another rather than seeing them as the same. In parallel with these works, I have been in conversations and debates with numerous thinkers of traditions other than my own.

One such dialogue has been with Father Francis Clooney, a noted Jesuit theologian and a leading professor of Religion at Harvard. Clooney not only took a good deal of time in 2010 to read through my entire manuscript and write me his useful comments, he and I have also responded to each other’s public talks over the years and argued online. There have been agreements and disagreements, but always with mutual respect. I wish to reflect on how this experience relates to my overall approach to interfaith dialogues.

Chapter one of my book is titled “The Audacity of Difference,” and it cites numerous examples to show that most religious leaders feel more comfortable publicly taking the position that various traditions are the same as each other (even though in private teachings to their followers they emphasize their own side’s distinct advantages). I coined the term “difference anxiety” to refer to the anxiety that one is different from the other — be it in gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, religion or whatever else. The opposite of difference anxiety is difference with mutual respect, the posture I advocate for dialogue.

This is not merely a shift in public rhetoric, but requires cultivating comfort with the infinitude of differences built into the fabric of the cosmos. The rest of my book explains several philosophical foundations of the differences between the dharmic traditions (an umbrella term for Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism) and the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam).

There are multiple audiences I wish to debate using this book, including those Hindu gurus who preach that all religions are the same, and many westerners who adopt an assortment of eastern spiritual practices in combination with their own Judeo-Christian identities and who blur differences or wish them away. I also respond to complaints that the acknowledgment of differences will lead to mutual tensions rather than mutual respect.

In response to my recent talk at University of Massachusetts (Dartmouth), Francis Clooney made some interesting observations mostly (but not entirely) in agreement with my approach to difference.

What particularly struck me from his talk and our subsequent conversation was his observation that most of his readings of prior Hindus have shown them to be either dismissive of Christian theology’s positions, trivializing of its important differences, or reducing the differences to modern politics, rather than uncovering the deep structures from which the differences emanate. He also accepts my book’s emphasis that many Sanskrit terms cannot be simply translated into western equivalents.

We also disagreed on several points. For instance, Clooney views inculturation as a positive posture of Christian friendship toward Indian native culture by adopting Indian symbols and words, whereas I find it to be often used as a means to lure unsuspecting Indians into Christianity by making the differences seem irrelevant.

The significance of such an approach to dialogues is not dependent upon whether both sides agree or disagree on a given issue. In fact, I do not consider it viable to reconcile the important philosophical differences without compromise to one side or the other. Rather, the significance here is that we are comfortable accepting these differences as a starting point, which is more honest than the typical proclamations at such encounters where differences are taboo to bring up.

This approach to difference opens the door for any given faith to reverse the gaze upon the other in dialogue. Given the west’s immense power over others in recent centuries, the framing of world religions’ discourse, including the terminology, categories and hermeneutics, has been done using western religious criteria combined with subsequent western Enlightenment theories. In my book, I refer to this as “Western Universalism” and feel that this artificial view of non-western faiths has been assumed as the “standard” space in which all traditions must see themselves, leading to difference anxieties, and hence to the pressure to pretend sameness.

My hope is to hold more such dialogues with experts from as many other traditions as I can, and be able to freely share both areas of agreement and disagreement without pressure or guilt.

Hindu cosmology has naturally led me to this comfort with difference: The entire cosmos and every minutest entity in it is nothing apart from the One, i.e. there is radical immanence of divinity such that nothing is left out as “profane.” Hence, unity is guaranteed by the very nature of reality, eliminating the anxiety over difference at the very foundations. In fact, the word “lila” represents the profound notion that all these differences are forms of the One, and that all existence is nothing apart from divine play, the dance of Shiva.

Given the power of the Vatican, the choice of a new pope will impact people of all faiths, not just Catholics. Whenever there is a change of national leadership in the USA, China, Russia or other large country, it gets discussed and debated by people of all countries because it impacts everyone. Unfortunately, the discussions surrounding the change of the pope have been largely limited to the internal issues within the Catholic Church. I’d like to argue that this transition into a new papacy presents a historic opportunity to change the world in a significant way for the better. All of us, including non-Christians, are stakeholders in this conversation.

Specifically, it would be a watershed event if the new pope would reorient the Church’s policy towards other faiths, and implement this change in the structure and practice of the Church.
Thus far, the most generous official posture of the Vatican towards non-Christians has been laid down in the “Lumen Gentium,” a doctrinal statement emerging from the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). This document, now part of the official teaching of the Church, makes a rather grudging and highly qualified concession to other faiths. It says that God is the Savior who wills that all men be saved, and then it makes the following patronizing statement: “Those also can attain to salvation who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or His Church, yet sincerely seek God and moved by grace strive by their deeds to do His will as it is known to them through the dictates of conscience.”

This statement has not improved interfaith relations on the ground, for three reasons. Firstly, Lumen Gentium does not recognize non-Abrahamic faiths such as Hinduism to be worthy of respect as equals; it merely recognizes that all men as individuals do have conscience. Also, it presupposes the Christian view that the human condition requires “salvation.”

Secondly, the teachings of the Second Vatican Council suffered a big setback when Cardinal Ratzinger (who later became Pope Benedict) issued an updated doctrine called “Dominus Jesus.” This edict clarified that the “truth of other religions” was limited compared to Catholicism, and no others could be considered on par with it. This rejection of genuine pluralism implies that other faiths can help prepare a person up to a point only, while the Church alone can fully implement religious truth, its doctrines taking precedence over all others wherever there is discrepancy. This posture allows many churchmen to speak from both sides of their mouths. It means that other faiths’ legitimacy depends on the extent to which they can be mapped onto Catholic dogma about the nature of the human problem (“sin”) and the nature of the solution (“salvation through Jesus”). (See my earlier blog, “Tolerance isn’t good enough.”)

Thirdly, there is no Church mandate or structure in place that would allow for such a significant change of attitude. Such a shift would have to entail, among other things, the denunciation of aggressive and manipulative missionizing of the sort that tells people they are “going to hell” if they are not Christians. (According to many Catholic views, some of them still held, all one billion Hindus and Buddhists — yes, even Gandhi and the Buddha and all the dharma saints and sadhus, parents, ancestors and children — have followed a “false” faith, the consequence of which is eternal damnation in hell’s inferno.) The new pope should reject the right and competence of any religious body to pass such sweeping judgment on other faiths.
The theological basis for the dramatic change I seek would lie in directly addressing the problem to which my work repeatedly calls attention: the “history centrism” which leads the Abrahamic religions to claim that we can resolve the human condition only by following the lineage of prophets arising from the Middle East. All other teachings and practices are required to get reconciled with this special and peculiar history. By contrast, the dharmic traditions – Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism — do not rely on history in the same absolutist and exclusive way. This dharmic flexibility has made a fundamental pluralism possible which cannot occur within the constraints of history centrism, at least as understood so far. (See my book, Being Different, for a detailed explanation and comparison of Abrahamic history centrism and dharmic approaches.)

While I recognize that the centrality of revelation through history is a core value in the Abrahamic faiths, I would point out that not only does it cause problems for non-Abrahamic faiths, but among the Abrahamic traditions as well. Their respective rival claims cannot be reconciled as long as they cling to a literal account of the Middle Eastern past, an insistence that this past is absolutely determinative of religious truth.

This is a very serious and complex conversation that needs to start in order to bring a new level of interfaith collaboration, one that moves beyond rivalry and platitudes. The new pope could champion such a conversation. What I would like to see is that the Catholic Church advance its ideas towards what may be considered as Vatican III, rather than regress backwards and retreat from the beginning that was made in Vatican II and slide into the doctrine of Dominus Jesus.

The next pope will need to have not only the skills of a corporate turnaround executive who can implement deep administrative reform, but also those of a “big thinker” — someone with theological vision, in-depth appreciation of other faiths, and the courage to re-examine long held attitudes in his Church.

In my view, such a person will not be identified on the basis of the identity politics and ethnicity issues that the media is currently promoting. As an Indian, I am by convention a “person of color,” yet it matters not whether the new pope is black, brown, white, red or yellow of skin. What does matter is that he should undertake house cleaning on such issues as punishing sex abusers and corrupt churchmen, and bringing diversity of theological perspective more than diversity of ethnic identity.

Of course, I support the recent galvanization of victims’ groups, concerned citizens and the legal community to demand accountability for the notoriously opaque Church governance. It is good that individuals with purportedly divinely ordained authority are finally being taken to task by ordinary humans seeking dignity and reason. But I am disappointed that the demands have focused on internal and administrative changes only.

If the Vatican would drop claims of exclusivity over religious truth, and reexamine dogmas such as the Nicene Creed, it would pressure other denominations of Christianity to follow suit. The Vatican, after all, is the single largest corporate institution of any religion in the world. The moral pressure on others would be huge if the Pope were to champion a new world order among all faiths in earnest, and not as a gimmick to increase his own flock. Once Christendom becomes genuinely pluralistic, Islam and other exclusivist religions would be under pressure to follow suit. The leader of the Catholic Church can thus change the world.

Being realistic, however, I do not expect to see a Gorbachev-like new pope who would challenge the Vatican as radically as Gorbachev challenged the Soviet empire. But let this historic opportunity not get lost. The conversation must begin.

If anyone questions the propriety of my raising this issue on the grounds that I am an outsider to the Catholic Church, let me simply say that as a world citizen I am a stakeholder in the outcome of this process. I do not think the Vatican can continue to operate with respect and legitimacy if it fails to attend to voices such as mine.

Published: February 24, 2013

It is commonplace these days to hear the word “karma” used in popular parlance. Broadly speaking, karma could be translated as, “as you sow, so shall you reap” and this is how it is usually understood and used by Christians. The word karma, in a popular context, underscores the idea that there is a universal law at work, that we do live in a just world and no action (or thought) is exempt from consequences. Many surveys also show that an increasing percentage of Americans believe in karma and its corollary, reincarnation.

But how genuine is this understanding of these notions that play a central role in dharma? A deeper understanding of karma and reincarnation within Dharmic traditions reveals that these notions are at odds with the most fundamental assumptions of Christianity.  Failing to understand the meaning of karma in the Indian context, presumes, mistakenly, that Judeo-Christian and Dharmic worldviews are one and the same.  They are not and it is this and other differences that I explicate in my book.

In Christianity, justice, while it may be approximated on earth, is finally accomplished on the “Day of Judgment” when each person is held accountable for all his actions and assigned permanently to either Heaven or Hell. This is to occur at the culmination of an apocalyptic struggle known as the “End Times”.  In Dharma, in contrast, time isn’t finite but infinite; hence the very notion of the end of time is meaningless. After this universe ends there will emerge another, just as prior to this universe there was another. The series of universes is without beginning or end. There will be no one final day of universal judgment.

Rather, karma is a perpetual cosmic system in which consequences of all actions follow as effects. Unlike the Christian notion of a perpetual Hell or eternal life in Heaven, in Hinduism, such celestial stays in svarga (heaven) and naraka (hell), respectively, are always temporary, in proportion to accumulated karma. They are always followed by rebirth to experience the fruits – negative or positive – of previous actions. Karma thus makes reincarnation important and necessary. Whereas in Christianity, the time span for outcomes is limited to one life, in Indian thought the cycle of causation extends across multiple lives.

Unlike the Christian concept of Original Sin, karma theory posits that it is only our own individual past actions (from both past lives and the current one) for which one must bear consequences. The Christian belief in Original Sin – that all human beings, as progeny of Adam and Eve, partake of their sin, runs contrary to the Hindu understanding of the cosmos. For Hindus, karma is non-transferable. It cannot be accrued due to the actions of someone else such as Adam and Eve. Karma, unlike sin, is not a sexually transmitted condition. Adam and Eve’s sins would therefore, in the Hindu worldview, accrue only to Adam and Eve and not to all humanity.

More importantly, karma theory holds that human beings have the agency for their own liberation, the means to break their karmic bonds entirely by their own spiritual practices.  They do not necessarily need to believe in divine intervention. Hence, regardless of the stature of  Krishna, Shiva or Buddha, it is possible to be a good Hindu or Buddhist and to achieve liberation from the cycles of birth and death, without having heard of them as long as one lives in accordance with Dharma.

Dharma as I’ve pointed out in other blogs, has the Sanskrit root dhri, which means “that which upholds” or “that without which nothing can stand” and encompasses the natural, innate behavior of things, duty, law, ethics, virtue, etc. Since the essence of humanity is divinity, it is possible for man to know his dharma through direct experience without any external intervention or knowledge of saints, prophets or a church-like institution. A dharmic person is broadly one who performs his actions righteously and this is sufficient to lead humans to the divine. There is the grace of God in these traditions, but is not essential in the Christian sense of a historical mediation, because each of us is inherently divine already.

In Christianity, salvation and forgiveness from Original Sin is possible only through the unique historical act of God. The only Son of God, Jesus, is exempt from Original Sin because his Virgin Birth makes him not a progeny of Adam and Eve; only he can bring salvation to human beings. The intervention of the divine as flesh in the form of Jesus and his subsequent crucifixion and resurrection are essential for salvation. Here again, Christian belief collides with karma theory.

On the other hand, according to karma, the “phala” or fruit of one’s actions must be experienced by the doer of those actions in this or a future birth. Moreover, phala cannot precede karma but must follow it. Since phala can neither be used retroactively nor deposited as collateral against future sins, Jesus’ suffering could not either erase past sins of men nor the future ones of those not even born.

My hope in discussing these differences candidly is that once laid bare, they become the basis for more fruitful and effective interfaith discussions on a level playing field.

Published: March 15, 2012

The World Negating Thesis

A notion has become widespread that non-duality is escapism from the mundane world. This has become the handle with which Vedanta got dismissed on the basis that:

– It does not bring about advancement in the human condition because it advocates that the human condition as we experience is a false construction, hence there is no need to try and improve it;

– It causes complicity with poverty, social abuse and is therefore socially irresponsible

– Hence, such a people are naturally dependent upon the “progressive” West for help.

Many colonial era writers developed this thesis using Hindu source materials as interpreted by the colonialists, and many Hindus ended up supplying them the fodder. Sometimes I call this notion as pop Vedanta; it is also called Neo-Vedanta. This thesis has become robust and well established in many segments of the academy, public policy, media and popular culture, both Western and Indian. I shall refer to this misinterpretation of dharma as the world-negating thesis.

Ken Wilber’s manipulative claims

Ken Wilber uses this thesis to claim that he has superseded whatever dharma offers. This is done in a series of logical steps as follows:

– He reduces Hindu dharma into what he calls “Advaita Hinduism”, thereby ignoring all other schools.

– He misinterprets  “Advaita Hinduism” to make it fit the above description of world negation.

– He praises this “Advaita Hinduism” in ways that make many naive persons satisfied that he has given it the credit due.

– He collapses Sri Aurobindo’s teachings into this worldview or a similar one – even though Sri Aurobindo vehemently criticized all such interpretations of Vedic thought.

– He then appropriates copiously from various dharmic schools – Sri Aurobindo, Madhyamika Buddhism, Kashmir Shaivism, to name a few – in order to claim that he has moved past the problems that dharma suffers from. I refer to this asintellectual arson – the arsonist is one who first robs the place and then burns it down to hide the evidence.

– He then claims to have achieved states of consciousness that supersede Sri Aurobindo and all others before him, including Buddha.

– He calls this his trademarked Integral Theory, and has started merging it into what he calls Integral Christianity, Integral Judaism, etc. (Ironically, there is no Integral Hinduism movement in his organization, presumably because intellectual arson operates by deleting the source. If he were to equally foster Integral Hinduism, as I have proposed to his people, it would demonstrate that there is virtually nothing new or original in his Integral Theory.)

Hardly any Vedanta teacher I come across is aware of such games and traps which they keep falling into. When all this is pointed out to them, they tend to be dismissive and indulge in what I call the posture of loftiness. This posture consists of claims like: we are all one; all paths lead to the same place; all religions are the same; etc. Many of them have, indeed, joined Wilber’s bandwagon either directly, or indirectly via third party intermediaries.

Falsifying the World Negating Thesis

As BEING DIFFERENT elaborates, Ramanuja and subsequently Sri Jiva Goswami were very clear and explicit that  non-dualism does not mean that multiplicity is false. It means that multiplicity is dependent upon Oneness, and in the case of Sri Jiva all multiplicity is a form of the One, just as a smile is a form of the face and cannot exist independent of it. If the face is real then its smile and all other forms are real as well, even though they exist only in dependence on the face. The blueness of the blue lotus cannot exist separately from the lotus – another common example given in the tradition. This is the nature of the relationship between One and Many. Another metaphor to understand the multiplicity is as lila, divine play. Multiplicity is not false, be it seen as form of Brahman (Saguna Brahman) or as lila.

I have asked Swami Dayananda Saraswati, arguably the most prominent authority on Vedanta philosophy in the public square today: If the world is unreal then what is the reason for performing our dharma and karma, for concern over what evangelists do, for wanting to cure diseases and helping those in need, for raising our kids well, etc? I have had this discussion many times. He gives very clear explanations to the effect that: we must deal with the differences in the world we live in as part of dharma, karma, etc.

The Gita’s message is also this. Arjuna gave the escapist argument at first, to justify his inaction, and it takes Sri Krishna 18 chapters to explain why action in the world is necessary – without attachment to the results and without even the sense of being the doer.

The problem is that the Sanskrit word “mithya” has been mistranslated as false, when it is closer to “relative” or “contingent” existence. Even though your tasks today in the office are not permanent , you must still perform them as best as you can today. They are transitory and relative, but not false. Similarly, maya has been translated incorrectly that the world is illusory, when the correct meaning is that our mental construction of the world is illusory until such time as we attain enlightenment.

Are Oneness and Difference mutually contradictory?

The above misinterpretation of the nature of multiplicity has led many dharma scholars to criticize my notion of difference. They think that emphasizing difference is a bad idea because it takes us away from unity. Shouldn’t we be discussing only Oneness, they ask?

My response is that asserting differences is not a negation of Oneness. It is the right insight into the richness of Oneness that Oneness includes all differences as aspects within itself.

Therefore, the dharma/Christian difference is as real for our lives as the dharma/adharma or deva/asura or the tamas/sattva differences.

One’s experience of difference depends upon where one stands in terms of state of consciousness. If you are the rishi rooted in unity consciousness as your state (not mere shlokas one can parrot), then by all means you should act in the world in spontaneity – the One leads your actions amidst all the diversity. But if you are not there yet, you must make a conscious effort to understand right from wrong, what is what in the world – while at the same time reminding yourself that this relative level of multiplicity is a manifestation of the unity.

A related argument often given is the slogan “vasudhaiva kutumbakam” which means “the world is one family”. This is used to claim that therefore there are no differences. But members of a family differ. The kauravas and pandavs in Mahabharata are one family and yet at war. The devas and asuras are one family and yet in mutual tension. Not only humans but all life including animals, plants, bacteria, etc. comprise the “vasudhaiva”; yet we apply viveka (discrimination) to differentiate and do not treat them interchangeably.

Moron Smriti

Since the 1990s, I have been compiling such moronic statements and critiques into a book that I hope to publish one day. It is to titled, Moron Smriti. It discussed what morons frequently say and my responses, as well the history of how this syndrome emerged some centuries back and ended up in the mainstream of Indian society.

According to the logic of morons, medicine could be substituted with poison because both are Brahman only; prasad can be replaced with excreta because they are only mithya, you need not obey any laws because these are man-made in the world of illusions, and so forth. In other words, the misunderstanding I refer to is very dangerous because when taken to its logical conclusion it results in a large population of morons who are simply dysfunctional.

Morons are the product of slavery under Islamic rule and subsequent glorification of the moron mindset under colonialism. It is easy to rule over morons by convincing them that their own glorious heritage encourages them to adopt the world negating thesis, and to therefore let others take control over this-worldly affairs.

Published: March 14, 2012