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हिंदुओं का इतना धर्म-परिवर्तन क्यों? || आचार्य प्रशांत, वेदांत महोत्सव (2022)
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3 years ago
Sanatan Dharma
Religious Conversion
Brahman
Faith (Nishtha)
Polytheism
Bhagavad Gita
Puranas
Caste System
Description

Acharya Prashant begins by stating that if you are ready to improve yourself, you will immediately feel hopeful that the world will also improve. When someone says that nothing can be done about this world, you should understand that they are saying that nothing can be done about themselves. Similarly, if someone says their wife will not improve, they are actually saying that they themselves will not improve. The one who starts to improve will instantly see that everyone can improve, everyone should improve, and everyone is eager to improve. The taste of purity and innocence is such that you want to share it with everyone. It becomes unbearable for you to be pure while others remain impure. Instantly, hope will arise in you, and beyond hope, faith will arise. A questioner asks why, historically, the religious conversion of Indians, specifically Hindus, has been so prevalent and easy. Acharya Prashant explains that a mistake has been made. The entire Sanatan Dharma is about the worship of the One. Sanatan Dharma is devoted to Truth, and there should be no faith in anything other than the Truth. Truth is one, but along with single-minded devotion to the Truth, polytheism has also been practiced in Hinduism, where all sorts of minor gods and goddesses are worshipped. This had a purpose: since man has to live in the world, he should have a sense of gratitude towards the world. Therefore, everything in the world was considered worthy of worship. However, in this process, Hindus started worshipping the world itself and completely forgot the one Brahman, the one liberation. The elements that were meant to lead you towards Brahman, towards liberation, became the objects of worship themselves. In front of the idol, liberation was forgotten. We considered the idol itself as God. When your faith is divided, it loses its strength. If you look at a common Hindu's prayer room, you will find forty idols, posters, and other things. Faith gets divided. This divided faith lacks power. This is the reason why the religious conversion of Hindus has been the highest in the world and continues to happen. Because of this division, the Hindu has become powerless. The caste system is also linked to this. When you declare your own people as low and downtrodden, why would they want to remain in that religion? They become ready to accept another religion. All other religions in the world at least consider other religions as inferior. Hindus are the only people who say that even within Hinduism, some are superior and some are inferior. This is a remarkable feat that Hindus have accomplished. When you declare some of your own brothers and sisters as inferior within your own house, will they not leave your house? Then why are you surprised? We need introspection. We must ask ourselves why the Hindu is the only person in the world who is so ready to renounce his religion. Your master must be one, and that one must be such that there is nothing superior to it. It must be beyond the beyond. Only then will you get strength from that master. But if you have made your master such that you have created a hundred stories about him, then you will not have much faith in that master deep down. You know that you are the one who created the stories. How much power can such a master have? The one towards whom we should have faith must be such that no story can be told about it. It must be beyond the reach of the tongue, something the eyes cannot see, the ears cannot hear, which has no form, no image, which is absolutely attributeless and formless. Only then will strength come from it. But our devotion is to stories. We have made our deities a subject of our gossip. This will not give you strength. This is a practice that reduces power. The mind is already divided, and religion is for taking the mind towards the One. If religion itself takes you towards many, then such a religion will not infuse you with strength.