Friday, January 23, 2009

Who'd have thought!

I am taking a religions of the world class at my school and I am learning so very interesting things. In church we always talk about how like most religions contain at least some portion of the truth, but for some reason in my head that translated to, most christian religions contain truth. But i have now changed my mind on that note. I am currently learning about Hinduism and to some degree I was shocked at the major connections and parallels between, Hinduism, and Mormonism. Although from the exterior it may appear that Hindus worship many different gods, in reality they believe that you can worship whichever god you choose as long as it leads you too the ultimate reality of Brahman. Brahman is a sense of complete unity with everyone around you, an idea that I believe connects exactly with the LDS desire to create zion. Zion is sometimes thought to be a literal place but in actuality, it is more of a oneness in heart between all people who believe in what we know to be the true reason for our existence. Also, we believe we are all brothers and sisters as part of one eternal family which I find to be a great parrallel between the two. The last connection that I have thus far discovered, is between the idea of the veil in mormonism, and Maya in Hinduism. The veil and Maya are both ideas that we have forgotten the true purpose for our existence, and that our time on earth is to be spent rediscovering that truth. It is amazing to me how close those similarities are. I know of course that there are many differences between the two churches but that does not mean that they cannot share some of the same core beliefs, and why shouldn't they? Any desire for goodness is commendable and differences in approach are not ours to condemn.

3 comments:

A Few Tacos Shy... said...

Corinne, I love you. You are wise beyond your years!

Jo Lynn said...

That is so awesome, I LOVE learning about different religions! Casey felt very very strongly towards Hinduism when I met him and he still cherishes so much of there core beliefs of trying to find the inner peace.
That's really awesome Corinne!

FiddleWiz said...

It's true, Rin! I first realized it when I took a trip down to the Hare Krishna temple (in Spanish Fork) with a bunch of friends in 9th grade. We went to one of their worship services, chanting and vegetarian food and incense and all, and it was INCREDIBLE. Weird as it sounds, I felt the spirit in their temple. There really are SO many similarities....there are just a few differences, and a few missing pieces of truth, but the core beliefs are the same. It's really a beautiful thing. I'd like to go down there again sometime for one of their services. You should come with!