Religious Metaphors Misinterpreted
All Religions Have Same Purpose
The differences that split religions result from variant uses of metaphors that portray concepts. Also, use of different names for Deity causes confusion; for example, Allah, Divine Mother, Ultimate Reality, Supreme Intelligence, Emptiness, Absolute, and Over-Soul represent some of the terms used to name the Unnamable.
A misunderstanding of Hinduism arises from the many Hindu names for the Supreme Soul. But instead of actually signifying different "Gods," the names signify different aspects of God. Hinduism is monotheistic, as Christianity and Islam are.
Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have in common a basic faith, but each religion describes the nature of its faith differently. All have prophets, who interpret God's ways, and scripture.
Hinduism
Hinduism’s scripture is the Bhagavad-Gita; the major prophet is Krishna. Hinduism is probably the world’s oldest religion, and it also has the Vedas, which were not written down for many centuries.
But in recent history the foremost scripture containing the explanation for existence and the guide back to God is the Bhagavad-Gita, whose central narrator is Krishna.
Buddhism
Buddhism’s scripture is the Dhammapada, and its major prophet is Gautama, who became Buddha. Buddhism began around 500 B.C. in India, when the prince Gautama abandoned his young wife and child and entered ascetic life. According to legend, he sat beneath a tree and determined to remain there until he had attained enlightenment.
Buddhism is similar to Hinduism; both focus on meditation to achieve “enlightenment,” which is called “nirvana” in Buddhism, “samadhi” in Hinduism. Both describe the nature of God, the Absolute, pantheistically.
Judaism
Judaism’s major prophets are Old Testament prophets, especially Moses; thus, its scripture is the Old Testament or Torah consisting of the Five Books of Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
Since Judaism does not recognize the New Testament, it does not recognize the “old” testament as such, but simply as the Torah.
Christianity
Christianity’s major prophet is Christ, whose major scripture is the Sermon on the Mount, part of the New Testament. Like most prophets, Christ appeared at a time of great turmoil and strife.
Mankind had forgotten its inward divinity, and the Christ appeared to remind people that “the kingdom of God is with you.”
Islam
Islam's prophet is Muhammad, and its scripture is the Quran. In addition to the Quran, devout Muslims follow Sunnah, an account of the prophet's life and the activities he approved.
Muhammad was born April 20, 571, to a wealthy family of Mecca. His father died a few days before his son was born, and his mother died when he was six-years-old. His grandfather then cared for the boy but died when Muhammad turned nine. Then, he was looked after by an uncle. The world in which the young boy lived was chaotic, often "barbaric.” Muhammad was a gentle boy, sensitive and compassionate in his dealings with others.
At age twenty-five, he entered a wealthy widow‘s caravan business; they later married. Fifteen years later, the man Muhammad became transformed into the Prophet, but the transformation occurred gradually. According to Huston Smith, Muhammad would meditate long hours in a cave outside Mecca, and “[p]eering into the mysteries of good and evil, unable to accept the crudeness, superstition, and fratricide that were accepted as normal, ‘this great fiery heart, seething, simmering like a great furnace of thoughts,’ was reaching out for God.”
Meditation to Touch God
According to spiritual leader, Paramahansa Yogananda, when an individual develops intense yearning for God, God sends evidence of His love. Yogananda explains that when evil is overcoming good, God sends a prophet to lead people back to God.
Muhammad, a gentle, compassionate soul, developed his soul qualities, and by meditation in the cave at Mount Mira touched God's heart, and God spoke to him, not only to satisfy Muhammad, but God also used Muhammad to inform those crude, superstitious, fratricidal brothers of a better way of life.
Zealots Distort Message
All great religions have suffered distortion by ignorant interpreters. In the name of Christianity, devastation ravaged the world in the Middle Ages during the Crusades, then later in the Spanish Inquisition, and even in the colonial America during the Salem Witch Trials. Even Hindu zealots turned the Caste system into an oppressive ordering of society that is inimical to Hindu scripture.
Many Western adherents are attracted to Buddhism based on the misunderstanding that Buddhism is an atheistic religion. But the foremost interpreter of Buddhism, D. T. Suzuki, explains: “If God after making the world puts Himself outside it, He is no longer God. If He separates Himself from the world or wants to separate Himself, He is not God. The world is not the world when it is separated from God. God must be in the world and the world in God.” In Buddhism, God is often referred to as Nothingness or Emptiness, or the great Void.
Islamists’ Distortion
Islamists who distort the meaning of jihad demonstrate the horror that can result from misunderstanding of scriptural metaphor. All great religions teach compassion and love, and the misguided zealots who try to conquer others in fraudulent holy-wars do not represent the majority of devotees who practice their religions responsibly.
Reference:
The Religions of Man by Huston Smith
Latest Articles