CHRISTIANITY AND HINDUISM

Mystery and Multiplicity

Sunday, September 13, 2015
In 1965, the Second Vatican Council of the Catholic Church issued its historic
conclusions that still stand as inspired and authoritative for many Christians. In the
Council's document Nostra Aetate, it specifically addressed other world religions,
seeing what was good and eternal in each of them:
From ancient times down to the present, there is found among various peoples a
certain perception of that hidden power which hovers over the course of things and
over the events of human history; at times some indeed have come to the recognition
of a Supreme Being, or even of a Father. This perception and recognition
penetrates their lives with a profound religious sense.
Thus in Hinduism, [humans] contemplate the divine mystery and express it through
an inexhaustible abundance of myths and through searching philosophical inquiry.
They seek freedom from the anguish of our human condition either through ascetical
practices, or profound meditation, or a flight to God with love and trust.
Hinduism prescribes eternal duties such as honesty, refraining from injuring all living
beings (non-violence), patience, forbearance, self-restraint, tolerance, and
compassion. The Hindu texts are very non-dualistic and poetic, opening the spiritual
imagination. The Sanskrit language itself seems to allow non-dual thinking, much
more than the Western languages which are often based on the Greek and Latin
languages. In Greek and Latin, reality comes across as logical contraries or
distinctions, with less room for nuanced and various interpretations. The ancient and
native languages tend to be more subtle, descriptive, poetic, and non-dualistic than
most Western languages which pride themselves on being clear, definitive, and final.
Hinduism has been described as the most tolerant of the world religions perhaps in
part because it honors many gods. This allows many differing worldviews and does
not require having one official scripture. Because of these qualities, Hinduism and its
many children are able to be much more patient with mystery and multiplicity.

The Eternal Way

Monday, September 14, 2015
Like so many Westerners, I grew up knowing almost nothing about Hinduism, even
though it is by far the oldest of the "Great Religions." Because many of us had never
met a true Hindu, and Hindu dress, various gods, and temples seemed so foreign to
ours, we did not take Hinduism seriously. That's what happens when everything is
seen in reference to one's self--whenever one's nationality, era, and religion are the
only reference points.
Most of us likely dismissed Hinduism without ever reading a single text of
the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, or much less the ancient Vedas. So we
disregarded the usually unconscious commandment of religious people that "older is

better" and closer to the Source. We too easily forgot that Christianity is the "Johnnycome-lately" as compared to Hindu and Buddhist Scriptures, and many other spiritual
poets, seers, and philosophers besides. Our inclusion of the Jewish Scriptures in our
own Christian Bible (two thirds of it!) should have cued us that we are building on,
inclusive of, and dependent on other religions older than ours. Most Christians seem
to have never thought of this, for some reason.
Some practitioners refer to the ancient texts that formed Hinduism as "the eternal
law" or the "eternal way." Hinduism draws upon inspirations, we might now say, from
the collective unconscious or the Eternal One Spirit. Western scholars regard
Hinduism as a fusion or synthesis of various East Asian cultures and traditions with
diverse roots and no single founder. Thus it is much more comfortable with seeming
paradoxes or contradictions. Hinduism begins with complete confidence in the One,
whereas Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, while calling themselves monotheistic, are
actually much more preoccupied with the parts than the whole. Within Hindu
scriptures, each story or text seems to stand on its own, and yet in the end creates a
rather mystical world view.
Christians must be honest enough to know that the Holy Spirit was not first
discovered on Pentecost Sunday somewhere around the year 30 AD. Surely Peter
was right when he said, "The truth that I have come to realize is that God does not
have favorites, and anybody of any nationality who respects the Divine and does
what is right is acceptable to him" (Acts 10:34-35). The majority of human creation
could not possibly have been just a throw-away exercise on the part of what would
then be a very indifferent and inefficient God. Yet the three monotheistic religions
often seem to act as if that were the case--as if God did not start becoming God until
we came along. Of course, if our imagined God is that indifferent, it allows us to be
quite indifferent too! Whereas a "God of all the earth" (Psalm 47:8 and throughout the
Hebrew Scriptures) will inevitably create people of all the earth.
Pointing in the Same Direction
Tuesday, September 15, 2015
I was only slowly introduced to Hinduism's profound mystical depths through two very
special authors, and I admit that I first trusted them because they were both Catholic
priests, scholars, and even mystics themselves. One was Dom Bede Griffiths (19061994), an English Benedictine who in the pivotal year of 1968 founded an ashram in
India to combine Western and Eastern spirituality. Griffith's writings are still
monumental and important. He built a huge and holy bridge, which many have now
walked over with great effect.
The other author who led me deeper in Hinduism was a son of a Spanish mother and
a Hindu father, Raimundo Panikkar (1918-2010). Panikkar's intellect and spirit
astounded all who heard him or read his words. Some of his over 40 books--such
as The Silence of God, Christophany,A Dwelling Place for Wisdom, and The
Experience of God--had a twofold and seemingly opposite effect on many readers.
They simultaneously felt that they were in the earliest stages of spiritual
understanding compared to Panikkar, but they equally felt invited, enlightened, and
included inside of something that was universal and available to all.

Somehow Panikkar's ancient roots, stellar mind, and his Christian love all came
through. He saw the Christ as the fully adequate Christian symbol for the whole of
Reality. I never felt Panikkar compromised his Christian belief even though he was
quite able and willing to use metaphors for the same experience from Hinduism and
Buddhism. In fact, it was his Hinduism that often led Panikkar to the depths and the
full believability of his Christian experience. I would say the same for Bede Griffiths.
The great mystics tend to recognize that Whoever God Is, he or she does not need
our protection or perfect understanding. All of our words, dogmas, and rituals are like
children playing in a sandbox before Infinite Mystery and Wonderment. If anything is
true, then it has always been true; and people who sincerely search will touch upon
the same truth in every age and culture, while using different language, symbols, and
rituals to point us in the same direction. The direction is always toward more love and
union--and in ever widening circles.

An Ancient and Mature Religion

Wednesday, September 16, 2015
If you have ever traveled to India, you will realize that Hinduism is less a religion
there and more a 5000-year-old culture, formed by such ancient sources as
the Vedas, theUpanishads, and the Bhagavad Gita and communicated in thousands
of other ways. Hinduism is the product of millennia of deep self-observation, human
history, a confluence of cultures, and innumerable people seeking the Divine and
seeking themselves.
Hinduism is much more comfortable with pluriformity and multiplicity than are the
three religions of "the book." This is symbolized by thousands of gods and dozens of
primary deities in Hindu literature and tradition. Christians have surely dismissed
polytheism too quickly as "wrong" or with nothing to teach us. Claiming monotheism
as their religion has allowed Western "believers" to worship ideologies like
Communism, Capitalism, Jihadism, and Success/Consumerism without recognizing
that they are indeed our real and operative "gods"--and like all gods they are always
"above question." We are de facto polytheists ourselves, while pretending to have
"one God before us."
On a related note, the best way to be captured by a heresy is to pretend to have
condemned it. Christians condemned polytheism and verbally affirmed our strict
monotheism, while fully allowing ourselves to be polytheistic in practice. We did the
same with Gnosticism, pretending to dismiss it as a heresy in almost every century
under a different name--while most of Christianity floated blissfully along "in its head,"
which is the exact meaning of "Gnostic"!
In a recent webcast, Mirabai Starr shared that "Hinduism is actually quite
monotheistic or better said monistic. The Upanishads assert that there is only one
supreme, divine reality." The ancient, diverse tradition led to the overwhelming
consensus and conclusion that the Atman (True Self/Individual Consciousness) is the
same as Brahman (God). This is summarized in the well-known Sanskrit phrase Tat

Tvam Asi, loosely translated as "Thou art That." This is the final extent and triumph of
non-dual thinking (advaita): God and the soul are united as one.1
Hinduism's maturity--which allows it to refrain from argumentation--is shown in its
respect for at least four basic personality types and four stages of life. This provides
for much human variety and patience with individual growth and understanding, and
it moves people toward both tolerance and compassion. The Hindu religion does not
tend to be highly organized around one right belief or one right ritual or any uniform
seminary training.
This of course can be seen as either its greatest strength or its greatest weakness.
But I cannot deny that people wander in great numbers in and out of temples all day
every day in India and Nepal, while many Christian churches have a hard time filling
up even once each Sunday morning. You don't need an elite priesthood for people to
light candles, bow, sit in silence, offer flowers, chant, or pour oil over sacred stones.
Hindu children just watch, and the reverence and respect is passed on to another
generation; while we Christians argue in academies about theories of justification and
who is worthy to go to communion--and that is what we too often pass on--not quiet
worship of Mystery but noisy ideas about which we are certain.

Yoga
Thursday, September 17, 2015
As I mentioned yesterday, there is allowance for great variety within Hinduism. Surely
there are some temperamentally rigid Hindus, but the religion of itself emphasizes
concrete practices (yogas) which allow practitioners to know things for themselves. I
often wonder if conservative Christians are afraid of the word yoga because they are
in fact afraid of concrete orthopraxy! They prefer to strongly believe things but have
very few daily practices or yogas.
The summary belief in Hinduism is that there are four disciplines, yogas, toward
which different temperaments tend to gravitate. The word yoga comes from the
Sanskrit for "the yoke which unites the seeker with the Sought." Hindus believe that
all four yogas can lead one to enlightenment; in other words, there are at least four
foundationally different ways of praying and living in this world. C. G. Jung built on
these in his human typology of Feelers, Thinkers, Judgers, and Perceivers, now used
in the Myers-Briggs Personality Indicator. Yet the West has too often tended to try to
fit everyone into one and the same box. In Catholicism we at least had Benedictine,
Carmelite, Franciscan, Charity, and Ignatian spiritualities, along with many others.
The four basic Hindu disciplines are:

Bhakti yoga--the way of feeling, love, and the heart, preferred by Christianity
and most mystics

Jnana yoga--the way of knowledge, understanding, and wisdom, or headbased enlightenment, preferred by Buddhism in all its forms

See John 17.11,21,22.

Karma yoga--the way of action, engagement, and work, which can be done in
either a knowledge way or a service/heart way, preferred by both Judaism and
Islam

Raja yoga--this roughly corresponds to experimentation or trial and error with

mind and body through practices and empirical honesty about the inner life
and the world, preferred by Hinduism itself

Each of these paths leads one to union with the Supreme Reality. For example, Raja
yoga focuses on the mind's ability to create our world through eight sequential steps,
ending in enlightenment:
1) Yamsas--five moral "thou shalt nots," calling for non-violence, truthfulness,
moderation in all things, no stealing, and not being covetous
2) Nimayas--five "thou shalts," requiring purity, contentment, austerity, study of the
sacred texts, and constant awareness of and surrender to divine presence
3) Asanas--postures (Westerners typically use the word yoga to simply
mean asanas.)
4) Pranayama--controlling the breath
5) Pratyahara--withdrawal of the senses
6) Dharana--concentration of the mind
7) Dhyana--meditation
8) Samadhi--enlightenment, union with the Divine

Four Stages of Life

Friday, September 18, 2015
Hinduism teaches there are four major stages of life: 1) the student, 2) the
householder, 3) the forest dweller (the "retiree" from business as usual), and 4) the
wise or fully enlightened person "who is not overly attached to anything and is
detached from everything" and thus ready for death. I once saw these four stages
represented in four stained glass windows in a Catholic Church in Bangalore,
showing how central this cultural paradigm is.
Western cultures tend to recognize and honor the first two stages at best. Seeing this
missing piece in our societies, I helped develop men's initiation rites, explained
in Adam's Return, and explored the later stages of life in my book Falling Upward. My
experience tells me that when you do not do the third and fourth stages, you actually
lose both the skills and the elders to do the first and second stages too!
This is foundational to understanding the spiritual problems we are experiencing in

Western religion and culture today, and probably why we now seem to have an
epidemic of mental and emotional illness. It seems so many people are angry today,
especially at religion itself. (Although I hope they do not waste too many years there.)
They are angry because we do not honor variety, staging, interiority, or depth; but
their attachment to that very anger becomes their major hindrance itself.
Hinduism at its best honors staging, timing, ripening, and maturity, and not just the
zeal and fervor of the newly "born again." We see this same mature understanding in
Christianity in the "mansions" of Teresa of vila and the "nights" of John of the Cross.
But this was seldom mainline Catholicism, which taught "mortal sin" to seven-yearolds and was quite content with elderly people living in fear of God and fear of hell.
What a huge loss of potential and holiness.
In the first half of life--the student and householder stages in Hinduism--the focus is
on developing an ego, a separate self. It's all about being safe and law-abiding and
doing the right practices. This is as it should be. It teaches the ego necessary
impulse control. The problem is when we get stuck and stay here. Unless we move
toward maturity, we will miss the real purpose and meaning of our existence and
become over-identified with our small "faithful" self and our practices too often
become catatonic, unconscious repetition. I know Christians who attend Mass every
day or read the Bible every day and are still in the kindergarten of prayer and love.
The first half of life is about building a strong container; the second half is about
discovering the contents the container was meant to hold. Yet far too often, solidifying
one's personal container becomes a substitute for finding the contents themselves!
The second half of life--represented by the forest dweller and the wise, enlightened
person--moves the willing individual beyond the basic needs for separateness,
status, and security to an awareness of their eternal, unchangeable identity as one
with others and with God. Your concern becomes not so much to have what you love,
but to love what you have. In the second part of life you have a great sense of
freedom, no longer attached to outcomes but intimately involved in the process and
relationships. You can trust that all will be well because all is held together by Love
and Divine Presence.

Summary
Sunday, September 13-Saturday, September 19, 2015
"From ancient times down to the present, there is found among various peoples a
certain perception of that hidden power which hovers over the course of things and
over the events of human history." --Nostra Aetate, Second Vatican Council (Sunday)
Hinduism draws upon inspirations, we might now say, from the collective
unconscious or the Eternal One Spirit. (Monday)
The great mystics tend to recognize that Whoever God Is, he or she does not need
our protection or perfect understanding. (Tuesday)

Hinduism provides for much human variety and patience with individual growth and
understanding, and it moves people toward both tolerance and compassion.
(Wednesday)
The word yoga comes from the Sanskrit for the yoke that unites the seeker with the
Sought. (Thursday)
Hinduism teaches there are four major stages of life: 1) the student, 2) the
householder, 3) the forest dweller (the "retiree" from business as usual), and 4) the
wise or fully enlightened person "who is not overly attached to anything and is
detached from everything" and thus ready for death. (Friday)
Practice
Pranayama
Raja yoga, one of Hinduism's four paths to enlightenment, follows eight sequential
steps, including pranayama (controlled breathing). Ginny Wholley, Mindfulness and
Yoga Teacher, offers this description of pranayama.
Prana is life's force or energy. Pranayama is willful changing of one's energy, often
through the breath, using variations of inhalation, exhalation, and sometimes holding
the breath. From God's breath we were created, and from breath, life continues.
Prana as breath is inhaled into the body, carrying with it the essence of the life.
Within our being it is transformed, as well as transforming. Exhaled, it carries our
essence, our unique energetic print; it is all one breath.
I invite you to follow Ginny's simple steps for the pranayama practice Ujjayi, oceansounding breath:
This breath is slow, deep, and deliberate. Focusing on the sound is an effective
technique to quiet the mind. It is very helpful in reducing mind chatter and preparing
for meditation or relaxation. Sit comfortably with your feet flat on the ground and your
hands relaxed on your thighs. Close your eyes or lower your gaze. Through your
nose, slowly breathe in and out while partially restricting your throat. It may help to
imagine your throat as the size of a straw. This breath creates an audible sound, at
least to you. An alternative image is to exhale out of your mouth as if you are fogging
a mirror, making a long "haa" sound. After trying it this way, close your mouth and
repeat the exhalation through the nose.
Put it together slowly, drawing the breath in and out of the nose. Imagine you are on
the shore. The water draws back into the ocean on the inhalation and rolls onto the
shore as you exhale. Use your breath and limitless imagination to hear the ocean
sound.
For Further Study
Bhagavad Gita (translated by either Stephen Mitchell or Eknath Easwaran)
Raimundo Panikkar, Christophany: The Fullness of Man
Wayne Teasdale, Bede Griffiths: An Introduction to His Interspiritual Thought

Advaita
Sunday, September 20, 2015
As I mentioned before, Eastern and Western philosophies come from different
starting points. With such dissimilar foundations, at core they have very different
worldviews. Our Christian problem has been that we assumed Jesus was a
Westerner, when his Aramaic language and thought forms would have been much
more similar to the East. It is no accident that Jesus lived in what we call "The Middle
East," on the cusp and under the control of Greek and Roman cultures, but surely not
inside of them. Nonetheless, Western Christianity has understood and even pictured
Jesus as if he were a European.
Several central ideas, affirmed by Jesus, were already formed in the ancient
Hindu Vedas, then unfolded by the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita. In each
case, notice that the mind revealed in these scriptures first sees things in their
wholeness; whereas Westerners tend to first see things in their diversity. Today I'll
briefly introduce advaita, then we'll explore the Hindu themes of karma and maya on
Monday and Tuesday.
The word advaita is loosely translated as "having no duality," implying that the proper
or spiritual way of understanding things is outside the realm of comparison or
judgment. Advaita describes the non-dual or contemplative mind that understands
things in their unity and connection before it separates them: not completely one, but
not two either. Mirabai Starr says advaita "is not about everything being one big
mushy, homogeneous, tasteless thing." [1] Rather, it's the subtle distinction that all
things share the same ground of being, the same supreme reality that encompasses
great diversity. At root, nothing is separate.
Can you "imagine" that way? Westerners have a very hard time doing this until they
are trained: first one, then two; first similarity, then dissimilarity. If you start with two
(dissimilarity and distinction) it is almost impossible to ever get back to unitive
consciousness or similarity, from which most compassion, or at least tolerance,
proceeds. If you start with advaita, you can still go back to making needed and
helpful distinctions, but now love and union is prior to knowledge and information.
That is the unique starting place of so many Eastern religions!
Reference:
[1] Mirabai Starr, "Unitive Consciousness: An Eastern Perspective" (an unpublished webcast from the
Center for Action and Contemplation: 2015).

Karma
Monday, September 21, 2015
We have moved closer to the Eastern understanding in our more recent use of the
term karma, but it is still said like a joke. "Bad karma!" or "Good luck!" or "What goes
around comes around" we might say in half jest. For the Hindu, karma is an inviolate
law and not just a clever aphorism. It is the nature of the universe and moves people
toward purification of motive and honesty about why they are doing what they are
doing. Karma is an absolute law of cause and effect. Even thoughts and desires have

a predictable karma. You are responsible for your own thoughts and motives, and
you cannot avoid the consequences. Thoughts and motives are real and create the
Real. You cannot walk around thinking negative thoughts, or they will destroy you.
Conversely, no love is lost in the universe. I believe you are actually punished by your
sins; whereas Western religions tend to teach that you are punished for your sins.
Goodness is its own reward and evil is its own punishment, karmic law would say.
These are two very different world views, and frankly, I am convinced that Jesus
taught the karmic one. "You cannot pick grapes from thorns or figs from thistles. A
good tree will bear good fruit," he said, "and a bad tree will bear bad fruit" (Matthew
7:17-18). Jesus also said, "If you show mercy, mercy will be shown to you." (Matthew
5:7, Luke 6:37) and "The standard you use will be used for you" (Mark 4:24).
Jesus sought to create a deep sense of personal choice, responsibility, and freedom
right now, and not just disconnected payoffs in the afterlife. But we have understood
much of the Gospel in terms of divine threats and artificial rewards--a delayed
schedule of merits and demerits. This deeply distorted the transformative message of
the Gospel and appealed to our self-interest instead of love. In other words, it fed us
at the ego level instead of the soul level.
I believe Jesus teaches that rewards and punishments for behavior are inherent and
now, and only by karmic implication are they external and later. Karma, rightly
understood, creates responsible and self-actualized people instead of fear-based
people. Your choices matter now! Threats of punishment or promises of candy later
create perpetual adolescents and very well-disguised narcissism at every level of
Christianity.

Maya
Tuesday, September 22, 2015
The Hindu word maya is often translated as "illusion." But that does not get to the
root of the insight and is too easily dismissed by the Western person who prefers to
take things for what they are at face value. We might understand deceit, but we do
not understand illusion very well. A better translation of maya might be "tricky." This
understanding can have a truly transformative effect on how you live and die. When
Hinduism (or Buddhism which is a child of Hinduism) says all the world of forms
is maya (or emptiness), they are trying to help you look deeper, broader, and in the
long term.
If you recognize that what you first see is "tricky," you might be more open to this
better seeing. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it actually might not be a
duck--it might be a goose, a swan, or a cartoon. The Upanishads
illustrate maya using the familiar experience of finding a rope on a path. You jump
back, thinking it's a snake, but it isn't. Mirabai Starr says, "Wisdom comes with being
able to engage in inquiry with curiosity (with childlike wonderment as Jesus calls it)
[in order] to see what really is, and to discover it's not something we have to defend
ourselves against." [1] Reality is hard but also benevolent.

Hinduism is saying that all phenomena pass themselves off as total and final in their
independent and free existence. But just wait a while, or look deeper, and you will
see that all things are parts of much larger ecosystems of connection and life. In their
separateness they will pass. Everything is qualified and provisional and contingent on
something else. Anything that asserts its completely free and self-formed existence is
lying to you. Everything from the "self-made man," to the myth of private property, to
"my rights over my body," to the pollution of the earth--these all proceed from a
Western hubris which is not willing to admit and face its self-serving illusions. Morally
speaking, the illusion of our separateness makes it hard for us to seek the common
good.
It is no surprise that the tragedy became the supreme form of both Greek and
Shakespearean drama, which always ends in the sad results of human hubris. Yet of
the many arts in India, the tragedy is the only form India failed to produce! If you face
illusions early, lasting and destructive tragedies are rare. Hubris is undercut at the
very start. Jesus, of course, taught the same when he told us to "take up the cross" of
this passing world and our own fragile lives.
Reference:
[1] Mirabai Starr, "Unitive Consciousness: An Eastern Perspective" (an unpublished webcast from the
Center for Action and Contemplation: 2015).

Sacred Texts
Wednesday, September 23, 2015
To begin to understand the ancient and many sources of Indian philosophy and
Hinduism (which are often synonymous), and surely at the risk of immense
oversimplification, I will briefly introduce their primary sacred texts.
In the next few days, I will elaborate with several key ideas that emerge from
centuries of spiritual experience and reflection upon that experience. These ideas
amount to the essential differences between Eastern and Western philosophies and
show why some ideas of Eastern religions seem new or foreign to Western believers.
The Hindu sources clearly say contradictory things, with what are surely conflicting
ideas, but there is no need to perfectly harmonize them in the Eastern mind. They are
each contributing their waters to a pool of wisdom that we can swim inside of and
thus learn to honestly struggle with the conflict itself--which can be quite broadening,
deepening, and enlightening. This is similar to the Jewish idea of midrash and the
Christian idea of lectio divina. If only we all could have approached the Bible and the
Koran in the very same way, how different history would have been.
Westerners lived in blissful ignorance that holy people and saints were already
coming to our own later conclusions centuries before Christ Jesus. One would think
that Christians would know that this does not in the least diminish Jesus but in fact
supports and affirms him.
The three major texts in Hinduism and Indian philosophy:

The Vedas are the most ancient Sanskrit writings (as much as three to four
thousand years old) containing hymns, philosophy, guidance, and rituals.

The Upanishads--which means "what is learned sitting at the feet of"--are later
(800-400 BC), even more mystical texts which elaborate on many of the
ancient themes. There are probably 13 major and many minor Upanishads.

The Bhagavad Gita emerged in various translations from four centuries before
Christ to four centuries afterward. It is an extended dialogue between Prince
Arjuna, who is a passenger in a chariot, and Lord Krishna, who is teaching him
how to drive the chariot. The 700 classic verses amount to an extended
commentary on "action and contemplation."

Hinduism was not even named when these texts were first written. And almost all of
the Indian Scriptures were not translated into English or modern languages until the
19th century. Don't dismiss any of these until you have at least tried to read them.

The Bhagavad Gita

Thursday, September 24, 2015
The Bhagavad Gita describes Lord Krishna, one of Hinduism's central gods, as both
this and that, totally immanent and yet fully transcendent, physical and yet formless,
the deepest inner self and yet the Godself (Bhagavad Gita 10). Krishna has even
been called "The Unknown Christ of Hinduism"--the same mystery that Western
Christians, with their dualistic minds, could not put together in Jesus.
Krishna, like Jesus, also shows the integration of action and contemplation. The
Bhagavad Gita does not counsel that we all become monks or solitaries, but in fact,
Lord Krishna tells Prince Arjuna that the true synthesis is found in a life-long
purification of motive, intention, and focus--precisely in your world of action--which is
what makes it "contemplative." The Bhagavad Gita calls the active person, which
most of us are, to a life of interiority and soul discovery, which is still our major
concern today.
How can we do "pure action"? Only by gradually detaching from all the fruits of action
and doing everything purely for the love of God, Lord Krishna teaches. I think our
Christ says the same thing in several places (for example, Mark 12:30: "You shall
love the Lord with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all
your strength."). Jesus even counsels the same love toward the neighbor (Matthew
22:39). Jesus is unitive both vertically and horizontally, illustrated in the geometric
image of the cross. The only way to integrate action and contemplation is to go
ahead and do your action, but every day to ask yourself why you're doing it. Is it to
make money? Is it to have a good reputation? Is it to keep busy? Or is it for the pure
love of Krishna, for the love of God? Only then do we recognize who the Doer truly is!
Reflect on these passages from The Bhagavad Gita (4:18, 23-24):
The wise see that there is action in the midst of inaction,
and inaction in the midst of action.
Their consciousness is unified,
and every act is done with complete awareness.

When a man has let go of attachments,

when his mind is rooted in wisdom,
everything he does is worship,
and his actions all melt away.
God is the offering. God
is the offered, poured out by God;
God is attained by all those
who see God in every action.
In the Gita, Prince Arjuna is the noble individual soul ("Atman"), and Lord Krishna is
the personification of the Divine ("Brahman"). Already in the ancient Vedas, Atman
and Brahman were discovered to be one, at least in a foundational sense. This is
exactly as Jesus proclaimed when he said "I and the Father are One" (John 10:30).
Teresa of vila begins her journey through The Interior Castle by proclaiming God's
castle and chosen dwelling is precisely "the beauty and amplitude of the human soul"
(I, 3). Or as the Sufis say, Ishq'allah mahbud lillah--God is love, lover, and beloved all
at once.

Parallel Texts
Friday, September 25, 2015
Below are a few astoundingly parallel passages between sacred texts from Hinduism
and sacred texts from Christianity. I hope this short introduction will encourage you to
seek much further on your own.
***
"You are the field. I am the Knower of the field in everyone. Knowledge of the field
combined with its Knower is true and full knowledge." --Bhagavad Gita 13:1
"When both your spirit and the Holy Spirit bear a united witness, you will know that
you are a child of God." --Romans 8:16
***
"Just as a reservoir is of little use when the whole countryside is flooded, Scriptures
are of little use to the illumined man or woman, who sees the Lord everywhere."
--Bhagavad Gita 2:46
"You yourselves are our letter . . . not written with ink but with the Spirit of the living
God written on your hearts. . . . Written letters bring death, but the Spirit brings life."
--2 Corinthians 3:2, 6
***

"My true being is unborn and changeless. I am the Lord who dwells in every creature.
Through the power of my own appearance, I manifest myself in finite forms."
--Bhagavad Gita 4:5-6
"In the beginning was only Being; One without a second. Out of himself he brought
forth the cosmos and entered into everything in it. There is nothing that does not
come from him. Of everything he is the inmost Self." --The Chandogya Upanishad,
Chapter 6, 2:2-3
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
Through him all things came to be, and not one thing had its being but through
him. . . . And the Word became flesh and dwells among us." --John 1:1, 3, 14
***
"A person is what his deep desire is. It is our deepest desire in this life that shapes
the life to come. So let us direct our deepest desire to realize the Self." --The
Chandogya Upanishad, Chapter 3, 14:1
"So this is how you should pray. . . . May we do your will on earth as it is done in
heaven." --Matthew 6:9-10
***
"There is nothing that does not come from him. Of everything he is the inmost Self.
He is the truth; he is the Self Supreme. And you are that! You are that!" --The
Chandogya Upanishad, Chapter 6, 2:3
"I give them eternal life, and they will never be lost, and no one can steal them from
me. . . . Nor can anyone steal them from the Father. Know that I and the Father are
one." --John 10:28, 30
"He is with you, he is in you. . . . On that day you will know that I am in the Father,
and you are in me, and I am in you." --John 14:17, 20