shvu

As usual CBrahma and co will conveniently ignore this post. Talk about honesty... Cheers

As I and a number of others have said it before, those statements were in response to original statements made by your mates about the compatbility of C and V. So the burden of proof is on you and your friends. Are you not reading posts or are you just avoiding the fact that this controversy was first raised by your camp? Cheers

After all the ado, you are just another Hare Krishna with no knowledge of what Jnana Yoga is. Cheers

Where have you been? The Jesus/Christian v. Vaishnavism topic came up on this forum by your buddies who posted threads with "Jesus is a Vaishnava" as a title. The identity of Jesus as a Vaishnava was a completely unfounded claim with absolutely no basis other than "Prabhupada said so". The burden of proof is on the person who make the identity claim and clearly over several threads spanning several pages each the people who made this claim failed to provide any semblance of logic and instead engaged in ducking questions and tried to skirt the issue by attacking posters. I can understand that the school dropouts here have a hard time understanding the concept of proof and logic. I assume you with your masters degrees will not have the same problem. Once again the burden of proof is on the person who tries t oestablish links between Christianity and Vaishnavism....not the other way around as you are trying to pass here. Cheers

In other words, you want someone else to write your paper. I doubt you will have much luck with that. Better roll up your sleeves, hit the Library and get your hands dirty. Cheers

I wonder why he failed to mention Baladeva Vidyabhushana's commentary? Avoiding its mention paints an incorrect picture, does it not? I mean the commentary Baladeva wrote in spite of the "natural perfect commentary" written by the author of the vedanta sutras himself. And if I am correct, the commentary that hardly any Hare Krishna reads. Poor Baladeva for going to all that trouble and not even getting mentioned! Cheers

And how is that supposed to help? If you are 31 and cannot find a job for 2 straight years then you have serious problems in life. I suggest you work on resolving these problems and finding a job instead of wasting another 6 months of your time in India. India, Rama and Krishna cannot get you a job. You are on your own with this. Stop wasting more time and get real. Good luck

Yet another argument. Cheers

You were the one who said the Bible "inspired". How does pointing out the same problems in other religions make you correct? It only shows you are agreeing that the Bibile inspired violence. Cheers

There did exist the concept of Mlechcha Dharma [Christianity, Islam, etc] and these religions were not favored in the least by any "Great Acharya". Not until some recent "Great Acharyas" had to go west in quest of US Dollars and global fame. Cheers

One important point about the Bible saying there is only one God - They are aware of other Gods, but these Gods are false and therefore their God is the only God. This is *completely* different from saying all Gods are the same one God. So the Bible does not accept Vishnu as its God. Rather, it says Vishnu is a false God. Cheers

This topic has been whipped to death before, but anyway consider this. 1. A Shaiva prophet says Shiva is the supreme Lord 2. The Bible says Jesus came down from the Lord [unnamed] 3. There is only one God, so the unnamed Biblical God must be Shiva 4. It follows Jesus is a Shaiva, a true worshipper of Lord Shiva, the supreme Lord. If you have no objections to this, then the argument you presented is correct too. If you use Vaishnava scriptures as an anchor & question the validity of Shaiva scriptures/prophets, then you must with equal rigor question the validity of a bible and a christian prophet too. If you will not accept Jesus was a Shaiva worshipping the Supreme Lord Shiva, then you will have to - by the same logic - not accept Jesus as a Vaishnava either. Cheers

The point is, even he was real, he is still not connected to Vaishnavism anymore than a Shaiva prophet. Cheers

I care. So logically, that proves you wrong. You as usual ducked from responding to the hard part by accusing Raghu of throwing tantrums. But that is OK....You are what you are, and you can only think and act the way you are wired. If you are still posting here in 2011 and then 2015 and then 2020, you will still be thinking and acting the the exact same way. Respond to posts in detail, when they are easy, and when they are challenging, accuse the poster of inappropriate writing and escape. But then like I said, you are what you are. Cheers

And the Buddhists are unlike Buddha, Hare krishnas are unlike Krishna... Why should they be like their religious icons? If the christians are like christ, then why will they bother to follow him? Isnt this this just a case of Gandhi blabbering? Many people when they get famous, get into the habit of making statements just for the sake of saying something as there are people around them recording their statements for posterity. And quite of a few of such statements turn out to be stupid. Cheers

Of course, that is simple and plain. Is it necessary to spell out every little thing? Apparently Yes. I can say he is God, you can say he is not...both statements mean nothing as we have no way of knowing. Cheers

Shiva as a deity is not a problem for Vaishnavas. The problem is with Shiva as supreme. You should check a Vaishnava interpretation of the text in that case. Cheers

Or he may be God himself. You really have no way of knowing. Anything anyone writes here on the topic is pure speculation and has zilch value. Cheers

One either has faith in a form of religion or not. If that faith is missing, it cannot be consciously cultivated. It has to happen on its own, which also means it may never happen. Why should we believe the Bhagavatam or any religious text in its entirety? The people who make this claim usually also provide an argument to make their case. If that argument is not compelling enough to you, then it just won't work for you. Trying to separate real and unreal in a religious text is not easy. Three different people trying this on a text will come up with three different sets of results. So it is purely subjective. Cheers

Which creation story is that? There are any number of creation stores - all different from one another. The moment you accept one, you are automatically rejecting the rest which means in the eyes of people who believe those rejected stories, you are a non-believer. As you can see, it is purely relative. Cheers

The word theist means different things to different people. One man's theist is another man's atheist. In general, most religious groups do not consider people outside their own group as theists in the true sense. If the word theist lacks a universal definition, atheism which is defined as absence of theism also lacks a universal definition. Cheers

You had no problems copying a long islamic web page and posting it here. You cannot object to others who respond to your post by copying and posting long web pages. Just like you will not read them, they did not read yours in full either. It is a lot more simpler to approach this problem from the opposite direction. Hindus are worshipping idols though the concept is condemned by scriptures (your position). So why do you think they are doing it? Either, 1. The alleged scriptures are not followed (they follow other scriptures) or 2. These scriptures are interpreted differently than in your Islamic web page. As you can see, with either option, there is no problem here at all. Btw, for interested parties, the Islam web page copied verbatim by Mazhar can be found here and in several other sites. http://www.islam101.com/religions/hinduism/conceptOfGod.htm Cheers

Branch is not an accurate way of connecting the two. But historically, Mahayana Buddhism has been known to be existing from 100 BC at least and Vajrayana showed up around 500 years later. This is by literary texts which means the traditions may have originated earlier. Mahayana concepts are commonly found in Vajrayana Buddhism and it is generally believed that Vajarayana was a new system founded upon Mahayana Buddhism. Cheers

The same sources which tell us about Maya tell us Maya is without beginning. As Maya is without beginning just like God and the soul, the question of why it exists is invalid. Or in other words, the question why cannot be asked about a beginningless entity. Cheers

The concept of real v. unreal has been addressed a long time ago in Indian doctrines. In simple terms the logic is: An experience or understanding is true, until something else comes up that negates its truth. The apparent existence of another person in the room is real or there are two people in the room..until a light is turned on to prove there is no second person after which there is only one person in the room. The earth was flat for thousands of years until it became a globe. America was India until further evidence was found to prove America was different from India. Click on the attached image ([ATTACH]1579[/ATTACH]) for an excellent example of how we can see the same thing in different ways. 1. Focus on the moving dot and all dots are pink 2. Look at a point outside the dots and the moving dot will appear green 3. Focus on the + sign and all dots will eventually disappear The same image appears in three different ways depending on how we look it. Cheers