| Awaken Bharata |
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| Books By David Frawley |
| THE HINDU RENAISSANCE AT A TURNING POINT | |
| Not
surprisingly Western followers of Hindu gurus seldom consider that
they are Hindus, they may not consider that their guru is either.
Many of them regard Yoga as a universal tradition apart from
Hinduism or even opposed to it, an idea that some of their Hindu
gurus may allow. They may try to take whatever yogic teachings they
have received and modify them according to a Christian or Western
intellectual models, which can easily distorts the teachings with
theological dogma, on one hand, or dry intellectualism, on the
other.
This lack of traditional identity in the teachings of a number of modern Hindu gurus has had a more harmful effect in India than in the West, where after all, people do not have a Hindu background to draw from. One could argue that such an amorphous approach was necessary in the West, particularly prior to the nineteen sixties, when Western countries were still quite closed religiously. One could say that this vague Hindu universalism has had some benefit as an international policy, particularly in a world dominated by religions that are hostile to Hinduism, but it does have severe limitations as a national policy. It has alienated Hindus from their own tradition. While this trend started with Hinduism being put in a more communicable modern form, it ended with Hinduism becoming scaled down in the image of other religions, to the extent that whatever in Hinduism that was objectionable to other religions had to be discarded. Naturally this had a consequence not so much of communicating Hindu Dharma as of eroding any distinctly Hindu teaching. |
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