Dervish wrote:
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... no reason to pit your tan carpenter versus someone's blue cowherder.
Guess I need to add a little clarification here. I was in no way promoting any religion as being more sound than the particular form of Hinduism in question here. And how you've come to believe that I was promoting Christianity in particular is a mystery to me. Please see my posts in the thread "Christianity and Religion in General's Inherent Problems" and you will find that I would be among the last people here to do so.
For an amusing look at the practice of preaching one religion over another, see God Wars:
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www.geocities.com]
BhaktaMax wrote:
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I'd like to say to the person who said that the process of meditating on God has the same effect as a street drug, you are sadly mistaken. The reason that people feel that extreme bliss and joy when, even for a split second they feel the true unconditional love of God is the Absolute Truth, it is not the effect of some street drug, it is only Truth.
If the love of God is unconditional, then why do you have to chant and meditate for hours on end, day after day to experience it? Chanting and meditating is a condition to be fulfilled in order to feel this fleeting high that you speak of here. It's [i:290e1bbafa]very[/i:290e1bbafa] conditional and high maintenance as Corboy mentioned in his first post in this thread.
You better have answers to these questions (because it's your life and you have to live it whatever you make of it) -- real answers -- you can't just throw out sparkly phrases like "Absolute Truth" and "Unconditional Love" and "Santa has a workshop at the North Pole". These ideas are cute and all, but they don't even come anywhere close to providing reasons as to why you need to fulfill conditions in order to experience the unconditional.
You can hang out at airports all day and try to convince the whole world that some blue fellow from the Srimad Bhagavatam (a poorly written story book) is real and fills our stockings with goodies if we praise him enough, but what it all comes down to is your life. It doesn't matter what I think or what the others here that have posted think, or even what the people at the airports think. It's your life and you need to seriously consider if you want to live trapped in a fantasy world along with the pains (as it bumps against the stone wall of reality) that eventually result.
People will believe whatever they want to believe and will look for confirmation of those beliefs and will find them when they do so. But this is a self-deluding approach. A responsible approach (as used when the scientific method is properly carried out step by step) is to try your best to [i:290e1bbafa]disprove[/i:290e1bbafa] your beliefs -- that's the real test. Then you're left with something real in your hands with which you can build computers and send rockets to the moon with. Chanting "Hare Krishna" with mind-numbing repetition is not going to help you find out if he is real or not. Start with some common sense then look into the steps of the scientific method. Find out what's real then you can make a tangible difference with that knowledge.
While we're all rolling around on the floor mumbling "Krishna, Krishna, Krishna", let's try to come to a stop for just a minute to consider who exactly this Krishna guy is. Wouldn't that be reasonable? Let's take a look at some of the scripture we find him in:
“The lord Krsna, lord of all masters of yoga, came there with his friends of the same age in order to grant them the object of their rites. He took their clothes and quickly climbed a Nipa tree, and laughing with the laughing boys he told what the joke was: 'Girls, let each one of you come here and take her own clothes as she wishes. ... Slender-waisted ones, come one by one or all together and take your clothes.' When the cow-herd girls saw what his game was, they ... looked at one another in shame ... Flustered and embarrassed by Govinda's (Krsna's) words and by his jest, they sank down up to their necks in the icy water, and, shivering, they said to him, 'You should not have played such a wicked trick. ... Give us our clothes, for we are trembling. ... give us our clothes or we will tell your father ... The lord said to them, '... do as I command ... come here and take back your clothes ...' Then all the girls, shivering and smarting with cold, came out of the water, covering their crotches with their hands. The lord was pleased and gratified ...” -- Srimad Bhagavatam 10
Ummm, your Krishna Consciousness cult may find this story cute, but in the civilized world this is called sexual harassment. A comeback here might be to say that he was teaching the girls some type of twisted spiritual lessons, but if that was the case, why does he say: "Slender-waisted ones, come one by one or all together and take your clothes"? Aren't the heavy-set girls worthy of this wonderful Divine lessons as well?
“One day Narada came to Dvaraka to see Krsna. All the Yadu boys received him with respect, but Samba, proud of his young beauty and deluded by the fated, inevitable force of the curse, disregarded Narada. To teach Samba a lesson, Narada told Krsna that all of Krsna's sixteen thousand wives were in love with Samba. Samba was summoned, and the women, whose minds were blurred by wine, showed unmistakable signs of passion when Samba appeared. Furious, Krsna cursed them to be carried off by barbarians after his death, and he cursed Samba to be afflicted by leprosy.” -- Samba Purana 3
Real pleasant guy, your Krishna. I thought Krishna was suppose to be [i:290e1bbafa]unconditionally[/i:290e1bbafa] loving? But it's quite clear that he flies into a violent rage if one of his harem girls dares to even look at another man.