One Guy's View

The conference I am attending in Varanasi celebrates the 125th anniversary of the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893. At the Parliament, a gentleman by the name of Swami Vivekananda called for a universal religion. He read from a holy text called the Shiva Mahimna Stotra which stated, "As the different streams having their sources in different places all mingle their water in the sea, so, O Lord, the different paths which men take, through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee!"  Listen to a pretty compelling reenactment of the speech here. 

As an American, I was struck by Vivekananda’s message. A cultural gulf exists between his message and the American public school context. American schools are founded on the principle of the separation of church and state. At the same time, the culture in America and in India appear to overlap regarding the central role of community in promoting spirituality. My own personal religious tradition, Unitarian-Universalism, stands for acceptance of different faiths but it has faced an overwhelming challenge attempting to impact the larger American culture in this regard. As an American student of Vivekananda, I have come to understand Hinduism as a wellspring of hope for universal religion. 

The lesson I have taken from my initial foray into Hinduism is this: innumerable generous acts, local traditions, and small gods -- the accumulations of culture, tradition, religious practises, and community gatherings -- accumulate over millennia into something universal. From the miraculous sum of many small truths comes one big truth.