Re: Jesus of History
Hindu Sages on Christianity: Swami Vivekananda
The contrast between the Guru and the ShiShya is staggering, even puzzling.
The Guru, RamakrishNa Paramahansa, was an 'illiterate' old man, always immersed in 'samAdhi' with his Mother KAli.
The ShiShya, Narendra, who was desparate to meet a person who 'saw God' and was initiated into Self-Realization by this Guru to become Swami Vivekananda, was a young man bubbling with enthusiasm, energy and real knowledge that drove him overseas to America and England, where he met and fought in their own dens the affluent, scholarly and fanatically religious Christian lions and tamed them into reason, made them see the merits of the oldest 'pagan' religion in the world, taught them that the path to spirituality was not in subversion but in realizing the 'kingdom of heaven' within themselves that their own Jesus Christ taught and demonstrated throughout his life.
In the proverbial story, the hare took the lion to a well, 'showed its enemy' and let the lion kill itself in a passionate war with the 'enemy'. In the story of Swami Vivekananda, which is actual, historic and stranger than the fictitious one, the 'sattvic hare from India' took the fanatical Christian lions to the well of their own minds, showed them their farcial face and prodded them to find their real face--the face of Jesus--inside them and live up to it, instead of invading other religions and cultures and creating havoc in the peaceful forests of the world.
If the Guru was a stream of compassion, the ShiShya was the fire of knowledge.
To Swami Vivekananda, Vedanta was the only Religion capable of becoming the Universal Religion. He measured the spirituality of all other religions, including the various sects of Hinduism only inasmuch as they facilitated realization of the Self as Brahman, the Advaitic Unity of the universe and all its creations. While he praised the spiritual aspects he found in Christianity, Islam and other religions with felicity, he criticized their non-spiritual aspects with a forthrightness never seen before (or after) in a Hindu sage of such divine heights.
No wonder, Swami Vivekananda was, still continues to be, and must be the role model for the Hindus, both young and old, in their study, practice and safeguard of their religion, culture and country.
During the time Swami Vivekananda lived, the ancient country of India, from its legendary wealth, health, education and life of dharma had been reduced to a pathetic state of penury, illiteracy and disease, due to the divide and rule policy of the British and European rule (preceded by the earlier centuries of barbaric Islamic rule). Adding to the woes was the state-sponsored, intense conversion activities of the Christian missionaries who sought to destroy the Hindu religion, culture and society and Christianize the whole of India.
It is really sad to see Swamiji pleading his Western audience that what India wanted was not religion but bread. Though a mendicant who sought alms for himself, Swamiji did not beg for the country but fiercely demanded equal facilities due to the Indians under the British rule and challenged their political might and religious authority.
He fought so much against the Christian aggression and in the process taught so much--of their own religion to the Christians and exhorted mankind in general and Hindus specifically to "Awake, arise, and stop not till the goal is eached"--that every Hindu should know him and his teachings as much as he/she knows about Mahatma Gandhi.
I have compiled a lot of Swami Vivekananda's expressions from the 9 volumes of The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, about Christianity, Jesus and the Church. I shall post them here in convenient instalments, so members can read them quickly and discuss their everlasting relevance, specially to the Hindus in the present situation of Christian aggression.
I have read only portions of the Complete Works that I have compiled. Swamiji spoke a lot about the history of Christianity and established that "Ours is the religion of which Buddhism with all its greatness is a rebel child, and of which Christianity is a very patchy imitation." I have not compiled them here.
I believe that most of what Swamiji spoke about Christianity are not only the contextual, but his considered opinions. However, since I have not read the Complete Work in their entirety, I request the members to check the original source on this point.
**************************************************
About Jesus Christ and his disciples
**************************************************
Buddhism, the Fulfilment of Hinduism
26th September, 1893
vol.1, p 21
But our views about Buddha are that he was not understood properly by his disciples. The relation between Hinduism (by Hinduism, I mean the religion of the Vedas) and what is called Buddhism at the present day is nearly the same as between Judaism and Christianity. Jesus Christ was a Jew, and Shakya Muni was a Hindu. The Jews rejected Jesus Christ, nay, crucified him, and the Hindus have accepted Shakya Muni as God and worship him. But the real difference that we Hindus want to show between modern Buddhism and what we should understand as the teachings of Lord Buddha lies principally in this: Shakya Muni came to preach nothing new. He also, like Jesus, came to fulfil and not to destroy.
Only, in the case of Jesus, it was the old people, the Jews, who did not understand him, while in the case of Buddha, it was his own followers who did not realise the import of his teachings. As the Jew did not understand the fulfilment of the Old Testament, so the Buddhist did not understand the fulfilment of the truths of the Hindu religion.
Again, I repeat, Shakya Muni came not to destroy, but he was the fulfilment, the logical conclusion, the logical development of the religion of the Hindus.
**********
Soul, God and Religion
vol.1, p 260
All the different religions which grew among different nations under varying circumstances and conditions had their origin in Asia, and the Asiatics understand them well. When they came out from the motherland, they got mixed up with errors. The most profound and noble ideas of Christianity were never understood in Europe, because the ideas and images used by the writers of the Bible were foreign to it.
Take for illustration the pictures of the Madonna. Every artist paints his Madonna according to his own pre-conceived ideas. I have been seeing hundreds of pictures of the Last Supper of Jesus Christ, and he is made to sit at a table. Now, Christ never sat at a table; he squatted with others, and they had a bowl in which they dipped bread — not the kind of bread you eat today. It is hard for any nation to understand the unfamiliar customs of other people. How much more difficult was it for Europeans to understand the Jewish customs after centuries of changes and accretions from Greek, Roman, and other sources!
Through all the myths and mythologies by which it is surrounded it is no wonder that the people get very little of the beautiful religion of Jesus, and no wonder that they have made of it a modern shop-keeping religion.
**********
Teachings of Jesus to be read in context
vol.1, p 262
The different stages of growth are absolutely necessary to the attainment of purity and perfection. The varying systems of religion are at bottom founded on the same ideas. Jesus says the kingdom of heaven is within you. Again he says, "Our father who art in Heaven." How do you reconcile the two sayings? In this way: He was talking to the uneducated masses when he said the latter, the masses who were uneducated in religion. It was necessary to speak to them in their own language.
**********
Sermon on the Mount
vol.1, p 265-266
Q. Do you believe in Christ's crucifixion?
A. Christ was God incarnate; they could not kill him. That which was crucified was only a semblance, a mirage.
Q. Do you believe Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount?
A. I do believe he did. But in this matter I have to go by the books as others do, and I am aware that mere book testimony is rather shaky ground. But we are all safe in taking the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount as a guide. We have to take what appeals to our inner spirit. Buddha taught five hundred years before Christ, and his words were full of blessings: never a curse came from his lips, nor from his life; never one from Zoroaster, nor from Confucius.
**********
Reason and Religion
vol.1, p 306
That soul is strong that has become one with the Lord; none else is strong. In your own Bible, what do you think was the cause of that strength of Jesus of Nazareth, that immense, infinite strength which laughed at traitors, and blessed those that were willing to murder him? It was that, "I and my Father are one; it was that prayer, "Father, just as I am one With you, so make them all one with me." That is the worship of the Impersonal God.
**********
Practical equality
vol.1, p 345
Do you believe what Christ says, "Sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor?"
Practical equality there; no trying to torture the texts, but taking the truth as it is. Do not try to torture texts. I have heard it said that that was preached only to the handful of Jews who listened to Jesus. The same argument will apply to other things also. Do not torture texts; dare to face truth as it is. Even if we cannot reach to it, let us confess our weakness, but let us not destroy the ideal.
**********
Jesus and KrishNa
vol.1, p 357-358
A few words about the life of Krishna. There is a great deal of similarity between the lives of Jesus and Krishna. A discussion is going on as to which borrowed of the other. There was the tyrannical king in both places. Both were born in a manger. The parents were bound in both cases. Both were saved by angels. In both cases all the boys born in that year were killed. The childhood is the same. ... Again, in the end, both were killed. Krishna was killed by accident; he took the man who killed him to heaven. Christ was killed, and blessed the robber and took him to heaven.
There are a great many similarities in of the New Testament and the Gita. The human thought goes the same way. ... I will find you the answer in the words of Krishna himself: "Whenever virtue subsides and irreligion prevails, I come down. Again and again I come. Therefore, whenever thou seest a great soul struggling to uplift mankind, know that I am come, and worship. ..."(Ibid. IV. 8; X. 41.) At the same time, if he comes as Jesus or as Buddha, why is there so much schism? The preachings must be followed!
A Hindu devotee would say: It is God himself who became Christ and Krishna and Buddha and all these [great teachers]. A Hindu philosopher would say: These are the great souls; they are already free. And though free, they refuse to accept their liberation while the whole world is suffering. They come again and again, take a human embodiment and help mankind. They know from their childhood what they are and what they come for. ... They do not come through bondage like we do. ... They come out of their own free will, and cannot help having tremendous spiritual power. We cannot resist it. The vast mass of mankind is dragged into the whirlpool of spirituality, and the vibration goes on and on because one of these [great souls] gives a push. So it continues until all mankind is liberated and the play of this planet is finished.
**********
Prophetical religions depend on the historicity of their founders
vol.3, p 157
I have become used to hear all sorts of wonderful claims put forward in favour of every religion under the sun. You have also heard, quite within recent times, the claims put forward by Dr. Barrows, a great friend of mine, that Christianity is the only universal religion. Let me consider this question awhile and lay before you my reasons why I think that it is Vedanta, and Vedanta alone that can become the universal religion of man, and that no other is fitted for the role.
Excepting our own almost all the other great religions in the world are inevitably connected with the life or lives of one or more of their founders. All their theories, their teachings, their doctrines, and their ethics are built round the life of a personal founder, from whom they get their sanction, their authority, and their power; and strangely enough, upon the historicity of the founder's life is built, as it were, all the fabric of such religions.
If there is one blow dealt to the historicity of that life, as has been the case in modern times with the lives of almost all the so-called founders of religion — we know that half of the details of such lives is not now seriously believed in, and that the other half is seriously doubted — if this becomes the case, if that rock of historicity, as they pretend to call it, is shaken and shattered, the whole building tumbles down, broken absolutely, never to regain its lost status.
Every one of the great religions in the world excepting our own, is built upon such historical characters; but ours rests upon principles. There is no man or woman who can claim to have created the Vedas. They are the embodiment of eternal principles; sages discovered them; and now and then the names of these sages are mentioned — just their names; we do not even know who or what they were.
**********
Historicity creates only man-made religions
vol.3, p 274
I was told once by a Christian missionary that their scriptures have a historical character, and therefore are true, to which I replied, "Mine have no historical character and therefore they are true; yours being historical, they were evidently made by some man the other day. Yours are man-made and mine are not; their nonhistoricity is in their favour." Such is the relation of the Vedas with all the other scriptures at the present day.
**********
Jesus had no women disciples
vol.7, p 88
Jesus was imperfect because he did not live up fully to his own ideal, and above all because he did not give woman a place equal to man. Women did everything for him, and yet he was so bound by the Jewish custom that not one was made an apostle. Still he was the greatest character next to Buddha, who in his turn was not fully perfect.
Buddha, however, recognised woman's right to an equal place in religion, and his first and one of his greatest disciples was his own wife, who became the head of the whole Buddhistic movement among the women of India. But we ought not to criticise these great ones, we should only look upon them as far above ourselves. Nonetheless we must not pin our faith to any man, however great; we too must become Buddhas and Christs.
No man should be judged by his defects. The great virtues a man has are his especially, his errors are the common weaknesses of humanity and should never be counted in estimating his character.
**********
Historicity of Jesus in Question
vol.7, p 195
There is a great dispute as to whether there ever was born a man with the name
of Jesus. Of the four books comprising the New Testament, the Book of St.
John has been rejected by some as spurious. As to the remaining three, the
verdict is that they have been copied from some ancient book; and that, too,
long after the date ascribed to Jesus Christ.
Moreover, about the time that Jesus is believed to have been born among the Jews themselves, there were born two historians, Josephus and Philo. They have mentioned even petty sects among the Jews, but not made the least reference to Jesus or the Christians, or that the Roman Judge sentenced him to death on the cross. Josephus' book had a single line about it, which has now been proved to be an interpolation. The Romans used to rule over the Jews at that time, and the Greeks taught all sciences and arts. They have all written a good many things about the Jews, but made no mention of either Jesus or the Christians.
Another difficulty is that the sayings, precepts, or doctrines which the New Testament preaches were already in existence among the Jews before the Christian era, having come from different quarters, and were being preached by Rabbis like Hillel and others. These are what scholars say; but they cannot, with safety to their reputation, give oracular verdicts off-hand on their own religion, as they are wont to do with regard to alien religions. So they proceed slowly. This is what is called Higher Criticism.
**********
Karma of Jesus
vol. 8, p 119
My own Karma is sufficient explanation of my present state. So in the case of Jesus himself. We know that his father was only a carpenter. We need not go to anybody else to find an explanation of his power. He was the outcome of his own past, all of which was a preparation for that Jesus. Buddha goes back and back to animal bodies and tells us how he ultimately became Buddha. So what is the use of going to stars for explanation?
vol.9, p 420
Religion, like everything else, progresses in waves; and at the summit of each great wave stands an illumined soul, a mighty spiritual leader and teacher of men. Such a one was Jesus of Nazareth.
**********
Swami Vivekananda At The Los Angeles Home
(New Discoveries, Vol. 5, pp. 218-20.)
[Unity, February (?) 1900]
vol.9, p 729
We had a lecture on Christmas day from the Swami entitled, "Christ's Mission to the World," and a better one on this subject I never heard. No Christian minister could have presented Jesus as a character worthy (of) the greatest reverence more eloquently or more powerfully than did this learned Hindoo, who told us that in this country on account of his dark skin he has been refused admission to hotels, and even barbers have sometimes objected to shave him. Is it any wonder that our "heathen" brethren never fail to make mention of this fact that even "our" Master was an Oriental?
**********
Perhaps Jesus never existed!
vol.9, p 536
"At that rate, then, you accept Catholic ritual as Aryan!"
"Yes, almost all Christianity is Aryan, I believe. I am inclined to think Christ never existed. I have doubted that ever since I had my dream — that dream off Crete!* Indian and Egyptian ideas met at Alexandria and went forth to the world, tinctured with Judaism and Hellenism, as Christianity.
"The Acts and Epistles, you know, are older than the Gospels, and S. John is spurious. The only figure we can be sure of is S. Paul, and he was not an eyewitness, and according to his own showing was capable of Jesuitry — 'by all means save souls' — isn't it?
"No! Buddha and Mohammed, alone amongst religious teachers, stand out with historic distinctness — having been fortunate enough to have, while they were living, enemies as well as friends. Krishna — I doubt; a Yogi, a shepherd, and a great king have all been amalgamated in one beautiful figure, holding the Gita in his hand.
**************************************************
To follow with Swamiji's views on Christianity and the Bible in the next post. Members may add value with anything else they could find about Swamiji's expressions on Jesus and his men.
Last edited by saidevo; 19 March 2009 at 12:50 PM.
रत्नाकरधौतपदां हिमालयकिरीटिनीम् ।
ब्रह्मराजर्षिररत्नाढ्यां वन्दे भारतमातरम् ॥
To her whose feet are washed by the ocean, who wears the Himalayas as her crown, and is adorned with the gems of rishis and kings, to Mother India, do I bow down in respect.
--viShNu purANam
Originally Posted by atanu
Bookmarks