there is a question that's going to arise which is saying how does hinduism relate to
other religion or the concept of god in hinduism relate to the concept of god in other religion
this is now the new syllabus so how would you relate you see hinduism with this very open
pluralistic approach allows variety of different ways to relate to the idea of spirituality
it allows for a monotheistic approach relating to a monotheist a superb personality called god
it allows for that it recognizes this limitation but he says look if he satisfies you
this is how you want to become spiritual by relating to vishnu or shiva or mother goddess
or ram or krishna go for it my friend recognize this limitation see the scope of your enterprise
and also recognize various where your limitation comes so when philosophic challenges come you will
you're going to hit your limitation be ready for that but it appeals to you that's your pathway
suppose you're more esoteric hindu and you prefer this kind of non-theistic approach
seeing and serving god in man is a way of saying non-theistic hinduism not god
in heaven seeing and serving god in man you see seeing shiva in jiva and serving jiva as shiva
is the idea of known thesis see i'm using the word shiva still and yet i'm saying spirit
is this non-theistic hinduism and this is very lovely material it relates well with buddhism
jainism almost parallel there is no distinction so when you look at say concept of god in hinduism
and concept of god in other religions this is what you say you say the theistic approach the
monotheistic approach relates extremely well say with the other monotheist religions with other
relig of the other worlds world religions like say christianity islam and judaism
we see this resonance the only place where we part company say with the monotheist religions
of say the abrahamic traditions is they have got an exclusivist angle they say only our
way of thinking about god and approaching god is right the rest of you are doomed
there the hindus will part company and say no we are pluralistic and within hinduism we already
recognize a variation of approaches variation of godheads so in the same way we can extend our idea
to say you can also be religious by thinking of god as jesus find this your way go for it
you will think of god this this way abrahamic way that's fine so we relate well except we challenge
the exclusive ideology of the abrahamic religions but otherwise we have no difficulties so you
must recognize the parallel and the point of departure saying this part we disagree with you
and this idea of challenging exclusive is so crucial otherwise we have fighting in the name
of religion even within the abrahamic religion because there are three of them saying we alone
have the right path the rest of you are wrong and if we didn't even even say within christianity
you've got these 190 denominations and there are some which you say the rest of you are wrong even
catholic religion we said anglicans are wrong so they can't even sit with each other because this
exclusive strand does not allow them to sit well with people of their own religion forget about
other religion while the pluralistic idea of hindus is such a powerful thought such a powerful
prescription of not allowing different hindu approaches to sit side by side but to allow for
hindu approaches to sit well with the christian or the muslim approaches we don't feel worried we say
this is the way you like to think of god go for it pluralism so exclusive agenda have to be addressed
this is the inclusivist nature of the hindu religion so we relate to the other
monotheist religion and we also relate well with a non-theistic religion like buddhism and jainism
because we say this is similar to the esoteric ideas of atman and brahman in the hindu religion
so it's nice to see these linkages and also a point of point of departure you