| Awaken Bharata |
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| Books By David Frawley |
| THE HINDU RENAISSANCE AT A TURNING POINT | |
| Hindu
teachers to the West generally left the Hindu Gods and Goddesses
back in India. Perhaps in the West such teachers were afraid of the
charge of idolatry from the Christian majority and so created a
teaching that had no Hindu images, apart from the picture of the
guru, who like Christ, could be accepted on a personal level. But
this had the unfortunate consequence of leaving much of the power of
the religion behind and discouraging a deeper study of its
practices, which could simply be dismissed as cultural rather than
spiritual.
Hindu teachers called themselves Yogis or Vedantins, and the first word was found to have the greatest appeal in the practically minded West, and avoided emphasizing the Hindu background of their teachings. Though this may have been a necessary strategy to communicate with the people in the West, it had other long reaching consequences. Not surprisingly the impression arose that Yoga or Vedanta were something other than or even opposed to Hinduism and little was done to challenge this view. The same ideas began to surface in India as well. Hindu teachers often discarded or at least put into the background Hindu forms, particularly the Gods and Goddesses, in order to gain a hearing from members of other religious groups who might be offended by these pagan images. Now there is an important spiritual basis behind this position that should not be ignored, however distorted it might have become. |
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