Let's Talk Religion

by Laura Ellen Shulman - Dec. '85   "Why do bad things happen to good people?" is a common question asked by Westerners. This situation is cause for much religious doubt in traditions based on a concept of an all good and just God. "If God is good why is there evil in the world which God created?" It is not justice when good people suffer. Job asks the same question and discovers that "his is not to reason why, his is but to do or die" without questioning what he cannot comprehend. The question is asked by all people in all times and places. Our solutions to the problem are diverse. When the philosophers of ancient India asked the question they came up with a much more psychologically satisfying answer. The Indian answer to the question is the basis of all later Indian religious development (including Jain and Buddhist as well as Hindu) while the Western "answer" continues to make religion very hard for many people to hold on to.   Indian Wor...

Understanding the relationship between the ONE and the MANY: Is Hinduism monotheistic or polytheistic? With over 330 million deities it surely looks  like a polytheism. Yet Hindus say they are monotheistic.* How are we to make sense out of this apparent contradiction? This is the classic philosophical problem of the one and the many: what is the relationship between the one overarching singular ultimate reality vs. the many things that appear to the eye? In Hinduism, the one is the Brahman while the many are the personified deities or manifest forms (murtis) of the One. Regarding the question of Oneness in relation to all beings... Perhaps this analogy will help: Compare the One and the Many to a Forest and the trees. One forest is comprised of many trees. We can look at the whole (forest) or the individual trees (many).  If you are in  the forest, among the trees, it is hard to see the forest. You tend to only see many trees. You are too close to see how they are all jus...