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Tattvadasa

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  1. There are 10 offenses to the Holy Name. A follower of Mahaprabhu is careful not to commit offenses against the Holy Name. This one is usually listed as #4 Blaspheming the Vedic Literature * To denounce the information in the revealed scriptures. * To regard the Vedas as mundane literature * To keep scriptures in a dirty place Yes in the Veda the length and breadth of this universe is told as well as the age of this universe. The biblical version of the age of the planet is wrong and the Vedic scripture is right. How to counter-act the offense of disrespecting the Veda: Offer flowers to the Srimad-Bhagavatam and Bhagavad-gita.
  2. You are right you will not find dates in the Bible but you will find chronology. Bible Time line and Chronology (abbreviated) accepted by most Christians Jews and Moslems. Year 0 (4230 BCE) Adam and Eve is created from matter (dirt). The whole human race is populated beginning with one man and one woman. Year 2083 (2147 BCE) God floods the world and destroys mankind but saves Noah his family and his animals. From Noahs family the world repopulates. Year 2083 ( 2147 BCE) Abraham the patriarch of Judaism (Islam and Christianity ) appears. He has sons Ismael Isaiah and Ham . From Ismael the Arab race descends. From Isaiah the Jewish race descends. From Ham the negro race descends. The Jews are the chosen ones by God. All the other races that morped from from Noahs family including Chinese, Indians, Caucasions etc. etc. are not chosen by God. How all there races came from Noahs family is not explained in the Bible. Year zero - Jesus appears Year 31 Jesus is crucified Year 2007 present time. These numbers vary from scholar to scholar but all are close to this. The earth according to most believers of the Bible is around 6-7 thousand years old. Now you want to compare this to the VEDA? Many early Christian Church fathers were confounded as to where all the other races came from and how the whole earth got populated from just Noahs family after the flood. Up until fairly recent history It was a crime punishable by death to question the Biblical account of history. Ok if you want to split hairs and say they are not talking about the age of the earth you cannot say they are not talking about the age of civilization on earth. How does everyone in the world descend from Noah's family in only 4,000 years? The devil is in the details? No the truth is in the details. If you say this has nothing to do with Jesus you are wrong. It has everything to do with Jesus, without the Bible you have no Jesus story.
  3. Again to make things clear. I do not promote the Buddhist doctrines or theology other than the conclusion the material world is a place of suffering. Buddhist are athiest and the teaching of Buddha is contrary to Vaishnava siddhanta. However, I do acknowledge that Buddha did exist and I do recognize that although these Buddhist are atheist they are still much more moral and godly than the majority of those who adhere to Abrahamic religions. History is proof.
  4. Of course there are no real followers of Mahaprabhu who believe Bible history when it comes to the creation or the 6,000 year old earth myth. Any Vaishnava must dismiss such accounts as myth. I have no sentiment what-so-ever for the teachings of Buddha anymore than I have for the myth of Jesus. But I will defend the fact that Buddha did exist, his appearance was foretold in the Veda . Whereas we cannot validate the appearance of Jesus anywhere other than the New Testament. The only evidence the 'Jesus as Vaishnava" proponents can give is that there were other writings that disappeared. The poinit being you have NO evidence of Jesus's existence other than texts you admit were tampered with. We have only the word of the New Testament writers who never saw Jesus. Or the revelations of those not in parampara, basically we have the speculations and wild dreams of questionable mystics. If we want to compare the two religions Buddhism and Christianity and other Abrahamic Religions (yes Christianity is the evolution of the Old Testament Story, Abraham being the patriarch of Islam, Judaism and Christianity). then all I can say is you can know a tree by its friut. When was the last time you heard of a Buddhist suicide bomber? WHen was the last time you heard of a Buddhist terrorist? So that religion does promote peace and harmony hunderds of more times than the Abrahamic religions although all three profess to be religions of love and brotherhood. In fact the three Abrahamic religiions that sprang from the Bible have a long and bloody history of terrorism from day one. At least the Buddhist story is real and can be validated and is not a debate in the Vaishnava world considering the authenticity of Lord Buddha. I do not understand your logic that I have affinity for Buddha beacuse he was born in India? What difference would that make to me?????? Furhtermore: Jesus DOES NOT say anything about the paramatma. His followers talk about ghosts who posses them and cause them to speak all kinds of jibberish. Mohammad said love god, Jimmy swargart says love god, Charlie manson said love god, everyone says love god, this does not mean they know anything about god. If they give some process then I will believe they know what 'LOVE GOD' means and that they have it themselves and can therefore give it to others. But the history of Christianity shows something contrary to this. Those who love god do not exploit. As pointed out by Bhaktivinode Thakur, “The followers of this religion have no power to worship God selflessly. In general their idea is that by cultivating fruitive work and speculative philosophy one should work to make improvements in the material world and in this way please God. By building hospitals and schools, and by doing various philanthropic works, they try to do good to the world and thus please God. Worship of God by performing fuitive work (karma) and by engaging in philosophical speculation (jnana) is very important to them. They have no power to understand pure devotional service (suddha-bhakti), which is free of fruitive work and philosophical speculation." Christianity teaches only speculative knowledge and good works. It is not on the transcendental platform. They have been speculating for 2,000 years. I believe the Thakur was actually being generous about the good works part.
  5. The people who say such things as the Veda was written after the Bible are the same types who say the earth is 6,000 years old. No credible historian, archaeologist or scholar takes them seriously and neither should those who preach Mahaprabhus mission. Nor should we give any indication that our histories are similar to theirs or that ours are just as unprovable as theirs. This will attract the intelligent members of society. Those who are deemed with good sense and are educated in philosophy and science reject Christianity and other man made religions because of the unscientific nature of these religions and the utter absurdness of their doctrines. The same people if approached in the proper way will become interested in Vedic knowledge. Once converted such people rarely become fanatical. To tell you the truth in my research I have found the secular humanist and atheist to be a lot more civil when it comes to discussing these matters. Most have been converted to atheism due to the fanatical believers who have nothing to back up their belief but blind faith. If we try to align ourselves too closely with those groups simply because we fall into the category of theists we lose a large very intelligent segment of society. Concerning Buddhism at the time of Jesus. Yes it is true the karma kanda teachings of Jesus are very similar and if we examine the parables of Jesus and Buddha most are exaclty the same and this is why many Buddhist claim Jesus as one of them. The view we get from the Bble is more impersonal than personal and many now believe the Essenes and other Gnostic cults of the time were influenced heavily by Buddhism. Lord Buddha was certainly an avatar but the Vaishnavas still try to defeat the arguments of Buddha. Why are we so sentimentally inclined towards Christianity when in fact its teachings are far inferior to Lord Buddhas????? Why do we distance ourselves from Buddhism but not from Christianity????? I say it is because of our western conditioning from birth and our affinity towards Christianity is based more on mundane sentiment than logic.
  6. You are not sure who borrowed??? The fact that Krishna appeared before all other religious figures is no longer a subject of debate. It is established fact. It is no longer debated what was the original scriptures on earth. Most all agree the Veda was the first religious texts on earth. Concerning Christians borrowing from Krishna. The birth story is too identical for me to accept as a coincidence. Or to dismiss by saying the truth is one. But it is ashamed the concept of guru parampara was not also copied. I know those who claim Jesus was a Vaishnava say he did accept the principle of having a guru because he took babtism from John the Baptist. But such initiation was nothing like Vaishnava diksa and more and more scholars and historians are concluding that John the Baptist was a competitor of Jesus like so many other 'want to be' messiahs of the day. The Middle East seems to have been full of them at the time of the Jesus story. The Dead Sea Scrolls have shed a lot of light on the matter and this information is just now beginning to be understood by those who look into it. It changes much of what we have been led to believe concerning the spiritual and political climate in the Middle East at the time the story of Jesus takes place. Perhaps Jesus was an Essene? That seems the most likely. They were looking for a war with Rome to herald in the day of judgement. And apparently they got their war and got wiped out. I know the romanticized version of the Essenes paints a picture of them being like some kind of pacifist love group from Berkley.. But the Dead Sea Scrolls show they were anything but that. Yes they were vegetarian but they had other beliefs that are just plain crazy by Vaishnava standards. Read the Dead Sea Scrolls without cherry picking and see what I mean. If Jesus was an Essene or influenced by them, he could not have been a Vaishnava. Just a counter spin here. No offense intended. Discuss....
  7. "The early Christian missionaries and scholars had indeed found a significant number of very interesting similarities between Vaishnavism and Christianity which in their own words were, "Not single and obscure, but numerous and clear." The Borrowing Theory by an anonymous Vaishnava The era of the "Borrowing Theory," as it was known, first began when Antonio Giorgi published his book Alphabetum Tibetanum [Roma 1762]. The materials for Giorgi's writings were gathered from manuscripts of Capucine missionaries [1741] led by Horacio de la Penna [a particularly zealous missionary] who traveled in India and Tibet for several years. Giorgi undertook the task to prove by comparative philology the opinion entertained by the missionaries, that Vaishnavism and Buddhism were a corrupted form of Christianity. Giorgi wrote that "Krishna is only a corruption of the name of the Saviour [Christ]; the deeds correspond wonderfully with the name, though they have been impiously and cunningly polluted by most wicked imposters." Indeed, the parallels between Christ and Krishna are many. Just to name a few: The births of Christ and Krishna were heralded by divine beings [angels]. King Harod of Judea planned to kill the Christ child and King Kamsa of Mathura planned to kill the child Krishna. Christ and Krishna both dispelled demons, cured the sick, performed miracles, taught the truth, were not conceived of seminal conception, and both Christ and Krishna were destined to be Kings. In his monograph Uber die Krishnajanmasthami, Albrecht Weber [1825-1901] pointed out the many and striking similarities between the birth stories of Krishna and Jesus. The following quote from his work notes many of these similarities: "Take, for example the statement of the Vishnu Purana that Nanda, the foster-father of Krishna, at the time of the latter's birth, went with his pregnant wife Yasoda to Mathura to pay taxes (cf. Luke II, 4, 5) or the pictorial representation of the birth of Krishna.... and of the shepherds, shepherdesses, the ox and the ass that stand round the woman as she sleeps peacefully on her couch without fear of danger. Then the stories of the persecutions of Kamsa, of the massacre of the innocents, of the passage across the river (Christophorus), of the wonderful deeds of the child, of the healing-virtue of the water in which he was washed, etc., etc. Whether the accounts given in the Jaimini Bharata of the raising to life by Krishna of the dead son of Duhsala, of the cure of Kubja, of her pouring a vessel of ointment over him, of the power of his look to take away sin, and other subjects of the kind came to India in the same connection with the birth-day festival may remain an open question." Weber even contended that the whole Vedic system of avatars, or incarnations of God, was "borrowed" from the "Incarnation of Jesus Christ." Yes the Christians concluded the cunning Vaishnavas had borrowed their story from the story of Jesus and in this way acted as cunning deceptors. Yes indeed the Christian scholars argued the story of Krishna had been taken from the story of Jesus and tried to debunk the birth and life of Krishna as being just a copy of the birth and life of Christ. Dr. F. Lorinser [1869] translated the Bhagavad-gita and compared it scrupulously to the New Testament. He concluded, that the author of the Bhagavad-gita knew and used the Gospels and Christian Fathers. According to Lorinser the similarities were not single and obscure, but numerous and clear. There was no doubt in Lorinser's mind that the Bhagavat-gita had been largely "borrowed" from the New Testament. Other Western scholars gradually came in contact with the borrowing theory but disputed its validity. One such scholar, Sir William Jones, [philologer] found Vishnu to be one of the more ancient Gods of India, who Vaishnavas asserted was distinct from all the other Avatars [incarnations], who had only a portion of Krishna's divinity. In his fascinating and provocative work, "On the Gods Of Greece, Italy and India" Sir William Jones writes [1786] that "In the principal Sanskrit dictionary, compiled about two thousand years ago, Krishna, Vasudeva, Govinda, and other names of the Shepherd God, are intermixed with epithets of Narayana, or the Divine Spirit." Sir William Jones's is best known today for making and propagating the observation that Sanskrit [the ancient language of India] bore a certain resemblance to classical Greek and Latin. In "The Sanskrit Language" (1786) he suggested that all three languages had a common root. Following in the direction of Sir Jones's research, the English philosopher Edward Moore [1873-1958] later went so far as to say that the popular Greek myths had some basis in real life and could be traced ultimately to India. However, conclusive proof of a borrowing theory for either side of the argument did not surface for some time, thus the debate continued. And in more than one instance it was the religious Christian fervor that won the day in favor of all theological thought in India being borrowed from Christianity. Any literary evidence provided from the ancient Sanskrit literatures which proved that Vaishnavism predated Christianity was never considered as verifiable evidence and was simply brushed aside. The only creditable literary evidence would have to be, in the biased minds of the Christian dominated debate, of Western origin - the "Holy Bible" of course being wholly admissible as evidence - otherwise to question its validity was an act of heresy. As destiny would have it there finally surfaced a Western literary account of ancient India that was in fact much older than the Bible. This record of ancient India was found in the book, Indica, written by Megasthenes [3rd century BCE, Greek] and authoritatively referred to by his commentators in their writings. Sometime in the third century BCE, Meghasthenes journeyed to India. The King of Taxila had appointed Meghasthenes ambassador to the royal court of the great Vaishnava monarch, Chandragupta. Evidently while there, Megasthenes wrote extensively on what he heard and saw. Unfortunately, none of Megasthenes original writings survived the ages. However, through early Greek historians like Arrian, Diodorus, and Strabo, fragments of Megasthenes's writings were available and remain so today. German orientalist Christian Lassen [1800-1876] was the first scholar to bring Megasthenes into the debate on the borrowing theory. He noted that Megasthenes wrote of Krishna under the pseudonym of Heracles and that Heracles, or Krishna, was worshipped as God in the area through which the Yamuna River flows. A respected German Indologist, Richard Garbe [journeyed to India 1885-1886], agreed with Lassens analysis and called the testimony of Megasthenes indisputable. Soon, other scholars who had formerly supported the borrowing theory changed their minds and admitted, that the evidence of Megasthenes had exploded the borrowing theory once and for all. The life of Krishna and the religion of Vaishnavism had not been influenced by Christianity, but had appeared autonomously on Indian soil and was already well-established by at least the third century BCE. Indeed, according to numerous accounts in the ancient Sanskrit literature [that began to appear more creditable to Western scholars] Krishna and the worship of Krishna as God appeared in India close to 3,000 BCE. Following close behind the evidence of Magasthenes were several archaeological discoveries that also verified the Vaishnava faith as independently existing in India several centuries before the advent of Jesus and the doctrine of Christianity. By far, the most important archaeological discovery made was by the indefatigable General Sir Alexander Cunningham in 1877. During an archeological survey of Beshnagar in central India [near present day Bhopal], he noted a curious ornamental column. The shape of the column caused Cunningham to attribute it erroneously to the period of the Gupta Dynasty (CE 300-550). Thirty-two years later, however, two gentleman, Mr. Lake and Dr. J. H. Marshall saw some lettering on the lower part of the column in an area where pilgrims customarily smeared it with red paint. When the thick red paint was removed an inscription dating the curious pillar to 113 BCE was revealed. In the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society in 1909, Dr. J. H. Marshall described his conclusions. Cunningham had dated the column far too late and could little have dreamt of the value of the record which he just missed discovering. A glance at the few letters exposed was all that was needed to show that the column was many centuries earlier than the Gupta era. This was, indeed, a surprise to Dr. Marshall, but a far greater surprise was in store when the opening lines of the inscription were read. The following translation of this ancient Brahmi inscription was published in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society [London: JRAS, Pub, 1909, pp 1053-54]. "This Garuda-column of Vasudeva (Visnu), the God of Gods, was erected here by Heliodorus, a worshipper of Visnu, the son of Dion, and an inhabitant of Taxila, who came as Greek ambassador from the Great King Antialkidas to King Kasiputra Bhagabhadra, the Savior, then reigning prosperously in the fourteenth year of his kingship." The column had been erected in BCE 113 by Heliodorus, a Greek ambassador to India. He, like Megasthenes, hailed from Taxila in the Bactrian region of northwest India, which had been conquered by Alexander the Great in BCE 325. By the time of Heliodorus, Taxila then covered much of present-day Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Punjab. After the publishing of the findings on the Heliodorus pillar in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society in 1909 little more was said amongst scholars about the borrowing theory. Indians did not take much interest in the debate of this theory, as they did not realize its relevancy in their times. The early Christian missionaries and scholars had indeed found a significant number of very interesting similarities between Vaishnavism and Christianity which in their own words were, "Not single and obscure, but numerous and clear." So it was only logical to any trained mind that this idea should arise. However, since it was concluded long ago that the worship of Krishna existed long before Christianity - could it then be reasonable to assume or at least to question that possibly it was Christianity that borrowed from Vaishnavism? Of course the Vaishnavas are not interested in opening up an old can of worms but it was the Christians who first made the challenge. It is reasonable that at least the possibility that it could have very well been the early Christians who were looking for a good story and found one in the birth and pastimes of Krishna then cunningly attributed it to the Middle Eastern sage Jesus. Discuss...?
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