Hindu or Spirit soul

Haridham · September 24, 2003

Hare krsna everyone.

I am curious as to know why we are reffering to our culture as Hinduism when the word actually doesnt exist. We are vaisnavas or better known as Sanatan Dharmis.

I once once talked to this Indian girl who asked me what was the difference between "hindus" and Hare krsna's. I told her there is no such thing as "hinduism"

Well she went nuts. She told me how dare you say that. I am a hindu, my grandfather is a hindu and my father is a priest(funny she was wearing leather) hhahahaha. She said you have no right to say that. SHe said "my grandfather said hinduism is about unity, how can you say that there is no such thing as hinduismYou have absolutly no right to say that"

After listening to her banter for like ten minutes i asked her if i could ask her something. She said sure.

I asked her "have you ever read the Bhagavat gita? SHe siad "no" I asked her what about the Srimad Bhagavatam and she said "no" so I asked her what about the Chaitanya Charitamrita, any of the Isopnisads, Puranas or any other vedas and ofcourse her answer to those questions were....drum roll please....."no"

So i told her guess what? "In any of those scriptures the word hindu is never mentioned, so how can u claim to be a hindu".I told her that in vedic culture there is no question of religion, cast, color, creed or anything like that. We are eternel spirit souls, not this body which might be brown this life and white the next.

I continued. "As for your grandfather saying that Hinduism is about unity, sure it sounds nice but if hinduism is about unity why is there a cast system" I continued "We dont listen to people's grandfathers, we only listen to Vaisnava Acharyas and the Parampara system.

I told her that "hinduism" or Sanatan Dharma is about Self Realization not "unity" and self realization can bring the highest form of unity which is to understand we are not these bodies we are eternel spirit soul.

So to finish off what she started i just said, "Its actually you who has no right to talk about things you arent intelligent enough to understand"

I mean a lot of indian people have lost their culture, from North America to India itself. We are not these bodies.

We are eternel spirit souls, the servents of krsna.

Hare krsna

Hari Dham Das.

yasodanandana · September 24, 2003

for the first thing i am sorry to say that you had to be a little more kind and helpful.. there's no need to scandalize people in this way, it seems to me that in this way you have created in this girl an useless avversion to krsna consciousness... i hope to be wrong

any religion or spiritual path has some people who practice seriously going towards godhead.... and some who, without really practicing, identify them selves with this sect or religion with only the material need to be "protected" o "reassured" by this belonging to a group or a tribe

between these two positions there's a lot of people

krsna consciousness is, in some sense, very young and "extreme" especially in the west.. so we are accustomed to see somewhat (only or mostly) "serious" pratictioneers, or people who center their life on krsna consciousness...

so hinduism, basically, is a phenomenon based on sanatana dharma where cohesist all the forms of acceptance of it, included people who go to the temple and make cerimonies only for a social custom, included also many serious practitioners and saints, included many fanaticisms and racial revenges and some philosophical position that we consider erethics, like mayavadism

prabhupada says that we are not hindu for saying that krsna consciousness has not national boundaries and that it is not, in his higher sense, a social affair or a dogmatic religion

saying that we are not hindu is very similar to say that we are not a religion.. but the sense is that we are not a material , dogmatic, social religion... but surely we are a real religion (re-ligo = union... yoga = union)

so, in my humble opinion, there's not all this need to be too strong on this "we are not hindu".. or we have to be able to explain it to the hindus as an advantage.

They have not to renounce to hinduism (or christianism, islamism etc.) .. they have only to chant hare krishna.. in this way the "sectarian", "nationalist", "tribal", "politic" part of the "material religion (sarva dharma)" will go away..

sorry for my strange english

Haridham · September 25, 2003

Hare krsna.

THank you very much for your kind reply. Well what i stated wasnt to scandalize or insult this young girl but only to inform this girl. After me and her had this discussion she got more appriciative of krsna consciousness. I dont hate hindus or anything like that but to me i dont want to be put in that catogary. We talked a lot more after this conversation and it just opened both of us up to what she thought about us and to what she thought i thought about them.

Please reply to this email if you can.

Also please address the situation about all this mess that i see here.

Vancha Kalpa.

Hare krsna

Hari Dham