Following is a conversation i wanted to have with my close friend and x-colleague regarding someone named Ramu we both use to work with -->
That was interesting what you mentioned about Ramu, we can take that as a perfect example to demonstrate the basic problem with Hindu practices.
You mentioned Ramu recited Hanuman Chalisa almost all the time, morning when he woke up, later during the day anytime when he was tense or before he was going to an important meeting. Ramu said doing so made him very calm and equanimous and he was better able to deal with whatever situation it was that he was facing through the day.
But we know another aspect of his personality, he use to cheat a lot, lie a lot and never felt that it was wrong. He was very happy to try to muscle through to get the interview questions (or even pay money) that his friend would face during the interview, we all suspected that is how he got good marks in a prestigious educational institution he came from since he himself did not seem to have much academic capability. Also he was from Bihar and in that culture (like most ancient cultures around Asia) telling lies bribing officials and other such activities are almost considered a normal part of life, these practices are not considered wrong.
Another trait such people usually have which i am not sure he personally had is that they do not have a problem physically beating someone (as a favour to a friend or asking a friend to participate in a fight as a favour to himself) as a method of removing grudge, it could also be a grudge towards someone purely for being of a certain race and not a personal grudge. These qualities are often seen in people who chant lots of mantras and participate in rituals. They also seem to exploit weak people in their surroundings and doing anything for personal gain does not seem immoral to them.
Most of these qualities today seem to be deeply ingrained in the Indian psyche and is one of the reasons why white people (who themselves come from strict Christian values of honesty and hard work and American values of equality) look down at brown people. No one trust anything that an Indian or Pakistani restaurant owner says, but had it been a word of a Scandinavian one would automatically accept it to be true.
So you see there is a huge gap between spiritual practices and morality.
And what i want to point out is that for a person on the path of Buddhist meditation (I do not mean people who just go pray in monasteries or chant Pali scriptures, I mean people who actually sit in one place for hours in a day doing buddhist meditations) such immoral behaviour becomes unacceptable.
The reason being because in Buddhist meditation the purpose is to clean the mind of any defilements get rid of the egocentric world view become detached from the final results of the actions and accept everything with equanimity (incidentally all these qualities are also the goal of all other spiritual traditions but as we have seen they rarely manifest).
In contrast all practices in the Hindu tradition are designed to create layers of bliss and peace over the mind (hence not dealing with the defilements within the subconscious mind but leaving them their suppressed deep inside). Such practices while giving a practitioner great control over the elements of nature like walking on water, flying in air, being in more then one place at a time, living literally for hundreds and hundreds of years (we have saints in Kumbh mela who have without doubt lived for over 250 years and some claim even 700 years), be able to read peoples mind and plant thoughts, teleport, manifest objects from the other side of the globe, live without eating, create whatever smell from nothing, create fire simply by uttering few words and on and on, do not bring morality in one's own way of thinking and acting and neither are they able to get rid of their attachments.
Such people might not have attachment to their physical body since they identify more with the spirit, they are usually aware of their previous incarnations and consider the body itself as nothing other then a piece of cloth one wears, such people still do have lot of self interest and attachment to their family or deity or method they follow and they consider nothing wrong in doing something immoral to protect what is of value to them. They will go to any extend to help someone like their son or father and do nothing to help someone they do not personally know, in contrast a buddhist practitioner would not make any difference between a family member and a complete stranger.
For a buddhist practitioner performing any of such immoral activities is not conducive because the very practise of meditation they follow is trying to remove all the defilements of the subconscious mind and allow the natural flow of their karmas to manifest hence becoming lighter and lighter as they move towards complete dissolution.
All traditions have very high level practitioners who seem to have gotten rid of all their cravings and aversions and are fully realised themselves and all traditions have very high level practitioners who are still stuck in their cravings and aversions but on the whole what I am suggesting here is that Buddhist practitioners especially the ones who are at the start of their journey like me seem to be pushed into getting their morality sorted from the very beginning. Among very advance Buddhist practitioners the only school which seems to be faltering is the Vajrayana tradition because they are probably more Tantric than Buddhist.
That was interesting what you mentioned about Ramu, we can take that as a perfect example to demonstrate the basic problem with Hindu practices.
You mentioned Ramu recited Hanuman Chalisa almost all the time, morning when he woke up, later during the day anytime when he was tense or before he was going to an important meeting. Ramu said doing so made him very calm and equanimous and he was better able to deal with whatever situation it was that he was facing through the day.
But we know another aspect of his personality, he use to cheat a lot, lie a lot and never felt that it was wrong. He was very happy to try to muscle through to get the interview questions (or even pay money) that his friend would face during the interview, we all suspected that is how he got good marks in a prestigious educational institution he came from since he himself did not seem to have much academic capability. Also he was from Bihar and in that culture (like most ancient cultures around Asia) telling lies bribing officials and other such activities are almost considered a normal part of life, these practices are not considered wrong.
Another trait such people usually have which i am not sure he personally had is that they do not have a problem physically beating someone (as a favour to a friend or asking a friend to participate in a fight as a favour to himself) as a method of removing grudge, it could also be a grudge towards someone purely for being of a certain race and not a personal grudge. These qualities are often seen in people who chant lots of mantras and participate in rituals. They also seem to exploit weak people in their surroundings and doing anything for personal gain does not seem immoral to them.
Most of these qualities today seem to be deeply ingrained in the Indian psyche and is one of the reasons why white people (who themselves come from strict Christian values of honesty and hard work and American values of equality) look down at brown people. No one trust anything that an Indian or Pakistani restaurant owner says, but had it been a word of a Scandinavian one would automatically accept it to be true.
So you see there is a huge gap between spiritual practices and morality.
And what i want to point out is that for a person on the path of Buddhist meditation (I do not mean people who just go pray in monasteries or chant Pali scriptures, I mean people who actually sit in one place for hours in a day doing buddhist meditations) such immoral behaviour becomes unacceptable.
The reason being because in Buddhist meditation the purpose is to clean the mind of any defilements get rid of the egocentric world view become detached from the final results of the actions and accept everything with equanimity (incidentally all these qualities are also the goal of all other spiritual traditions but as we have seen they rarely manifest).
In contrast all practices in the Hindu tradition are designed to create layers of bliss and peace over the mind (hence not dealing with the defilements within the subconscious mind but leaving them their suppressed deep inside). Such practices while giving a practitioner great control over the elements of nature like walking on water, flying in air, being in more then one place at a time, living literally for hundreds and hundreds of years (we have saints in Kumbh mela who have without doubt lived for over 250 years and some claim even 700 years), be able to read peoples mind and plant thoughts, teleport, manifest objects from the other side of the globe, live without eating, create whatever smell from nothing, create fire simply by uttering few words and on and on, do not bring morality in one's own way of thinking and acting and neither are they able to get rid of their attachments.
Such people might not have attachment to their physical body since they identify more with the spirit, they are usually aware of their previous incarnations and consider the body itself as nothing other then a piece of cloth one wears, such people still do have lot of self interest and attachment to their family or deity or method they follow and they consider nothing wrong in doing something immoral to protect what is of value to them. They will go to any extend to help someone like their son or father and do nothing to help someone they do not personally know, in contrast a buddhist practitioner would not make any difference between a family member and a complete stranger.
For a buddhist practitioner performing any of such immoral activities is not conducive because the very practise of meditation they follow is trying to remove all the defilements of the subconscious mind and allow the natural flow of their karmas to manifest hence becoming lighter and lighter as they move towards complete dissolution.
All traditions have very high level practitioners who seem to have gotten rid of all their cravings and aversions and are fully realised themselves and all traditions have very high level practitioners who are still stuck in their cravings and aversions but on the whole what I am suggesting here is that Buddhist practitioners especially the ones who are at the start of their journey like me seem to be pushed into getting their morality sorted from the very beginning. Among very advance Buddhist practitioners the only school which seems to be faltering is the Vajrayana tradition because they are probably more Tantric than Buddhist.
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