Who Is A Hindu

[Guest]

Sunder guroo,

Please go ahead. We are a little short on mods right now, so please lead the discussion in a direction where little or no moderation is required. Also it would be nice if somebody from ISCKON (like Carl) participates in this in order to make discussion more fruitful. So I guess more then us, it is their availability that is important ?

Thanks.

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All,

Lets try and keep this thread focussed on "who is a hindu" theme and at a higher level. This isnt really about vaishnavism v/s advaita v/s shaktism etc.. This discussion has been going on for god only knows how many centuries (or millenia) and we are unlikely to settle this in a thread here. What we can discuss and hopefully get more insight in are some higher level issues like

- Why is it that hindu society is a cross-section of all creeds (per Carl) and why isnt any other society like that ? And despite all these 'creeds' what ties a hindu to another hindu ?
- What does it mean when a 'creed' or an acharya debates and defeats another acharya ? Does that mean the defeated acharya was 'false' ? If he was 'false' then was his experience 'false' ?
- What does 'absolute truth' mean ?
- etc..

IMVHO hindu society has provided a rich and fertile ground like no other. However there does exist a framework within which these 'creeds' come up. What is that framework ? Is this framework the same as it was 50 years ago ? 500 years ago ? 5000 years ago ? How do i evaluate these 'creeds' ? As a neophyte in this field I would like to understand this first before I ever go deep into any of these 'creeds'.

Hope it makes sense... <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif' /><!--endemo-->