HINDUISM AND SANATANA DHARMA

Should Hindus Be Proud of the Their Tradition?

Hindus should be proud of their spiritual tradition, which is the oldest and most comprehensive in the world. They should be proud of the many great sages and yogis it has consistently produced through the centuries, in both periods of material abundance and those of poverty and foreign domination. They should be proud of their great modern teachers who show that the experience of God is not the rare gift of a prophet or single savior but the birthright of all human beings.

What other religion of this century has produced such figures as Ramana Maharshi, Sri Aurobindo, Paramahansa Ramakrishna, Anandamayi Ma, Paramahansa Yogananda, and Mahatma Gandhi? Yet look at how few modern Hindus have put their teachings into practice. While Hindus should be proud of their spiritual tradition, they should not be proud of themselves if they don't follow this tradition in their daily lives.

Hindus should not be proud of the backwardness and illiteracy of many Hindus. Nor should they be proud of modern Hindus who have abandoned their spiritual tradition for modern materialism, for leftist ideologies, or for some sort of religious dogma. Above all, Hindus should be proud of Hinduism's basis in Sanatana Dharma or the universal tradition and its refusal to cast itself into the mold of exclusive, particularized, and therefore divisive religious identities. But to do this Hindus must also manifest the universality of their tradition by how they live.

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