R u an atheist?
I don't know about u all but I personally belive that all the crap in the world is somehow related to your faith, just wanted to know what u guys thought about it ?
do u even care about ur' faith ? have u read or ever tried to read gita or some of our other religious books

i once had a great conversation with a very good friend of mine, who spend his first 16 years of life in dharmashala, india. we were talking about faith and theism.. and he said, to be an atheist is theist, because not believing or faith is believing something. so, we cannot argumentatively consider theism as part of spirituality. btw, i have read the gita, the qoran and the bible. whether monotheism, or polytheism, i think dogma is only an illussion of human kind to fear us, perhaps the best known way to evolution and developement. i think everything DIVINE is created by us. we created them, but we are not them either. so, i think we should be more careful concernign living our lives happily without hurting anyone, and lead a life free from suffering. but, bhakti is considered the best and most beautiful way to moksha, however easiest. well, go figure, there are over 5 billion serious adherents to some faith. you may take the path of karma or gyana or raja, but no matter what, you always thrive for that ultimate bliss of painless life free from materialism and/or abstraction, but just plain happiness.

sujanks,
where can i find a good quran (translated of course in either nepali or english) ?

i've read gita several times and almost done with bible now. just wanted to know what is in the quran also so that i don't miss out what a large population on earth believe in.

i'm however not atheist or theist strictly speaking. i 'm fine with either beliefs (or no beliefs hehe).

this is the best one i have found so far. reason being the simplicity that they've focused than teaching.
http://www.islamicity.com/mosque/SURAI.HTM

Sujanks,
reading ur thoughts above, I can imagine u have a sound knowledge about religion.
As our hindu's Gita teaches us to be dutyful and says "One who performs his duty without attachment, surrendering the results unto
the Supreme Lord, is unaffected by sinful action, as the lotus leaf is
untouched by water." And Buddhism' bottomline is all about non violence.
I was wondering what Quran says. what is the main theme of Allah.
would u plz clearify it for me.
well not only Sujanks but everyone can post if they know about Muslim religion and theme of allah as well as quran.

well, as much as i know, christianity and islam are just the same. the only difference is accepting who the last phrophet is before the resurrection, or the final judgement day, when God punishes evil and rewards the good. the way it is defined is that you must accept teh authority of God/Allah and acccept it as the only creator, and submit completely.

in islam you cannot utter anything holy such as Allah, Bismillah without being complete adherent or attempt to accept teh faith. i think it is called blasphemy(spell??). that if you CANNOT, not really a sin like killing cow in hindu faith. killing pig is not sin in islam, but considered really really dirty, so dirty and ominous that you cannot do it. All the books before the time of muhammad are accepted as the book of Islam such as the testaments and torah, however they believe that holy quran is the purest for the words are said to have directly come to muhhamad by Allah. They must pray five times facing the Mecca, go to haj in mecca and fast in ramadin and there are i think 5 in total that they must perform to become a pure muslim.

In short, you submit yourself in the mercy of Allah, just like Christianity when you submit yourself to God, because it is the judgement day that we must all fear. Complete monotheism, as oppose to the concept of Gods and Goddeses of Hinduism and ancient Pagan religions. Another difference is that Islam and Christianity have Hell, Hinduism do not, and Buddhism doesn't even accept the concept of God or Goddesses (just the Mahayana and Bajrayanas later started tantrism using various forces of nature as deities and concept of Bodhisatvas).

This is probably the best source to 101 of all the faiths.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Religious_faiths%2C_traditions%2C_and_movements

sujanks.. thanks for the thought... just curious.. what made u read all these stuff? i mean normally when we r growing up in Nepal nobody really tells u that u shud read the Gita.. like muslims and christians do.. to tell u the truth i became interested in it only after i came here.. i was surprised to see how much the non-hindu community knows about hinduism and I didn't know as much as these ppl did.. it's only now that I am trying to make myself read Gita...
I read a lot but not the religious stuff.. i read some christian books not the bible..Mere Christianity was a good book for a start just in case anybody is thinking about expanding their horizon and I am just looking forward to reading the Gita..

and... to my knowledge, or rather to me hinduism is not REALLY monotheistic as everybody claims.. true we have several gods and godesses which does make it seem like it's polytheistic however if u get to the core there is one Atman - purna brahma parmatma who is the god of all the gods.. that was my practical layman understanding.. i mean when my grandmother used to pray she used to tell us that that's who u pray to -purna brahma pramatma.. am i perceiving things the way they are not supposed to be ???

Well, this website is helpful to know various spiritual belief ( Religion)

http://www.beliefnet.com

the best book that i have read is called "Religion of Man" by Huston Smith. I think it is out of circulation because it is made into a larger volume caled the "Word Religion". It is a small book about 250 pages, and contains the core of all the religion in alphabetical order. so, smith informative at very depth. i wasn't interested in raja yoga until after i read smith's book and a friend of mine presented me with the raja yoga by vivekananda. that's when i really got interested.

someone who'd really want to know hinduism, should read gita. because it covers all the concepts of bhakti, karma, gyana and raja. and when you read gita, read the translation version without any purports or explaination. you want to read it to yourself than someone else telling what each line would mean. you know like my dr. friend in nepal said, "never submit to an authority. you are your authority".

in some parts gita becomes dogmatic when krisna declared himself to be the god head, as did jesus saying that he was the son of god, other than that, gita is just a way of life, just like what buddha did years ago. because he focuses more on this life than the life of yesters or of tomorrows. as oppose to many other faiths focusing on life after this life - resurected, hell etc.

I haven't read The Religion of Man but i know that book.. I used it for my religion paper!
i'll surely try to get hold of it..

thanks for the info sujan

i don't give damme to any religions. Tomrrowland is waiting my khappar n having done work on time is my religion. La ja!

Thanx for the fruitful information .

i had only recently created a blog regarding the concepts of inner yoga that one must have to be free body spririts mind and soul. if you could please comment or add. it would be great. any suggestion, criticism and opinions are very very welcome. and i do not have control over the comments, so they never get deleted (at least i don't want to).

i thought of entering in sajha, but they are long articles.. so.. i don't know what to do. please let me know if anyone would like to participate.

it may look undone.. but it is a continuous process. i thought once a week article will suffice.

When talking about faith, one must make a differentiation between faith as trust, and faith as blind faith.

Religion is not a result of faith, but of manipulation and ignorance. That is the birth of religion, a mongrel construct totally unnecessary and often times crippling to mankind.

No OneJi,

You seem to have gone through the best explanation on how Hinduism is also Monotheism. This concept (Purna Brahma Parmata) was probably first described by Swami PrananathJi. He is in fact the greatest saint after GuruNanak and Kabirji. I guess one needs to go through his critical analysis on both Hinduism and Muslim (considering Buddhism evolved from Hinduism and Christianity from Muslim and Judaism) to have complete understanding of major religions of the time. I think, Prananathji, Gurunanakji, Mahabir and Saint Kabirji spent several years critically analyzing all religions to come up with their understandings/hypothesis about the God and the religions and means to get into them.

As someone above said read all the holly books by yourself but also don't forget to take a look on thoughts of great saints of all time.

the greatest GURU is your Atma, the greatest scripture is your Buddhi, most importantly, use your brain as a guidance and your soul as your teacher.

it is you who will interpret and understand what 's in any holy scripture like Gita, the scriptures by itself is just kaalo akshyar bhaisi barabar. no matter how hard somebody tries to teach you something it is you who gets the full credit of understanding however.

Go ask that question to a monkey !! If the monkey says there is religion and god....SO BE IT. ha ha ha If not then y'all are blind. he he