Dr. John Young                                                                                                            2/3/08

UUCJ

 

Hindu and UU Pluralism

 

            One aspect of pluralism, the idea that there are several right ways to believe or live or do something, is widely understood in America, although many find it hard to keep practicing. We realize that people differ. Americans theoretically welcome our diversity and support our varied communities, while also maintaining a shared government and celebrating a society with supposedly equal opportunities and responsibilities. In practice, often, we remain a self-segregated society with unequal opportunities. Most people underestimate their personal and sub-cultures’ responsibilities. All too often, when people say ‘their community’ they mean ‘their own sub-culture, their in-group’ instead of actually believing in and feeling themselves to be genuine Americans. When you say to yourself or to your friends, my or our community, what do you mean? Do you really mean all Americans or just your in-group?

 

The United States is now the most diverse nation in the world, not just in ethnic backgrounds as an immigrant nation, but in religious affiliation. There are more Jews in the United States than in Israel. There are now more Muslims than Jews in the United States, and several million of those are African-American Muslims whose ancestors were Christians. There are 5 million Buddhists, and half of them did not grow up as Buddhists and do not have parents from a Buddhist culture. There are a million and half Hindus in the United States. Probably 1/5 of Americans do not have any active affiliation with a religious community; they may be spiritual, and most of their ancestors may have been Christians, but they are not actively involved in any organized religion. A majority of Americans may identify themselves as Christians, but the United States is not a Christian nation. It is the most pluralistic nation in the world.

 

A growing proportion of Americans can not be put easily into any single sub-culture. For instance, there are now more Hispanics than African-Americans in the United States, but those Hispanics all share only one thing which is the Spanish language. Within a generation a majority of Americans will probably be people of color, but they’ll have ancestors from all over the world. Most American extended families are now mixed racially, ethnically, religiously, economically, socially, and educationally. People may have a strong individual identity, but they cannot, and very often, do not want to be explained away into a single sub-culture that does not fit them. My father did not graduate from high school; my children are bi-racial, and my son-in-law is Jewish. This sort of variety is becoming typically American.

 

            We are fast becoming the most advanced third world nation. Millions face hunger, more than 10% are poverty-stricken, more are imprisoned than any other nation, about 20% are without appropriate health care, more than 5% are unemployed, and millions in the middle-class are facing economic crisis and social insecurity. At the same time, the number of billionaires has multiplied; the rich control more of the savings than at any time since the end of the 1800s. A radically conservative minority increasingly manipulates not only the economy but the political and social arenas. In this context, we need to understand pluralism correctly, and we need to empower pluralism if it is to remain more than an unrealized ideal.

 

            Hinduism is the world’s oldest religion, and it is the world’s third largest in identified membership after the 1.5 billion Christians and the 1.25 billion Muslims. Hinduism has about 1 billion participants, the great majority in India which is the world’s largest democracy, now with more than 60 years as a multi-party democracy. India is also an extremely diverse nation. 80% are Hindu, but India has the third largest Muslim population about 13% of its population. Its Prime Minister is a Sikh, the fifth largest religion in the world, and India also has tremendous racial, ethnic, and cultural variety. India is more diverse than the whole of Europe.

 

            In the rest of this sermon, I want to talk about the similarities and differences between Hindu and Unitarian Universalist pluralism. I think that if our diverse and fast-changing world is going to flourish in the 21st century that it must learn to embody much of the pluralism that Hinduism and Unitarian Universalism, at their best, present and reflect.

 

            Pluralism’s 19th century philosophical or spiritual meaning was that there was more than one ultimate reality. This is one of those definitions from the outside looking in, and it is inaccurate for either Hindu or Unitarian Universalist pluralism. Both Hindus and Unitarian Universalists believe that there is a single ultimate reality. We both think there is one real world on Earth, and we both think there was a single ultimate Creator and is a single evolving Creation. We also both believe that the most essential nature of all human beings is transcendent. Unitarian Universalists argue that we are all children of God or of Creation, and Hindus argue that the divine may take many forms but it is ultimately a single spiritual reality, Brahman, and that all human beings are at their core, portions of this essential spiritual nature, they are atman.

 

            In spiritual terms, both the Hindus and the Unitarians see reality as one with a single source, but both realize that people perceive both reality and the single source in many forms and therefore believe in pluralism, not because reality is actually in chaos or people ultimately evil or lost but because no one can perfectly understand what is ultimately real or embody what is completely good or true. We are Universalists because we believe that each religion or ideology has part of the truth, but that no religion or ideology has all of the truth. We are Unitarian Universalists because we believe that God or Creation is good and Jesus and the other spiritual guides personify love, and that everyone can find meaning in life and will find peace in death. We think you gain salvation not by sacred dogmas or magic blessings but by realistic thinking and by loving, ethical, responsible actions.

 

            Hindus has understood for thousands of years that people are different from one another; and that everyone is on a life-long spiritual search. They are fond of saying that Hinduism is a way of life, because everyone discovers a yoga or way of practicing spirituality in their daily life that hopefully suits them and allows them to live up to their dharma, their divinely given reasons for being alive and serving Creation. If they do their dharmas well, they build up positive karma from their actions, and if they fail too consistently to live up to their sacred potential, they build up negative karma, and they are reincarnated indefinitely until they do their lives adequately. Some individuals may become secular scientists or principled business owners or politicians and others may concentrate on humble careers or spend much of their lives in meditation. The point is to live up to your own potential and to do well within the situations in which you are blessed to live, whatever they are.

 

 

            Hinduism has had 5000 years or more to evolve; so, it contains amazing wisdom and provides practical insights into growing spiritually throughout our lives. At least since the time of the Buddha’s Hindu reform movement 2500 years ago, Hinduism has been trying to outgrow the racism and class-ism of the caste system and the weight of iconography and ritual in a priest and guru led faith. In many ways it has and continues to succeed brilliantly. After all, 60 years ago, it had outlawed the caste system in India’s Constitution and set up an elaborate and continuing program of systematic affirmative action to eliminate the caste system’s bigotry and expropriation. Hinduism evolved and adapted, making the Buddha a reincarnation of Vishnu, the preserver of the Universe, accepting Jesus as a useful prophet and locating his grave in Kashmir, allowing millions to find God in their individual ways and to evolve to fulfill their spiritual needs throughout their lives. Hinduism is, at its best, an individualistic, evolving faith that recognizes a shared divinity and a shared human destiny but also recognizes that each person will need to find their own ways to this divine reality and to fulfill within themselves this divine potential in their particular mix of yoga, dharma, and karma.

 

Unitarian Universalists began their ideas at the beginning of Christianity. The unity of God and the universality of salvation in a world with a good God and a loving Jesus may have been Jesus’ own intentions and could have become Christian orthodoxy instead of heresies. Officially, our denomination began at the beginning of the Protestant reformation more than 400 years ago. Since then we have argued for a faith that embraced reality using the best current human standards and a life of ethical activism based on being as fair and loving to everyone as we can grow to be. By the time of the Transcendentalists in 19th century America, Unitarians were arguing that we needed to learn from all the great world religions. Emerson and Thoreau were reading the Hindu classics as well as the Bible, and challenging each individual to discover the mystery and wonder in their own lives. We are still doing so today.

 

            Few of us have the abundance of physical manifestations of the divine as the average Hindu home or temple. Unfortunately few of us have as consciously developed a daily and annual spiritual practice as the more devoted Hindus. In these and other ways, I think that Unitarian Universalists have much to learn from Hindu pluralism. For fifty years now I have benefited greatly from beginning my day with Hatha yoga asanas, and some Hindu devotional practices as well as my more Western and Judeo-Christian spiritual practices. Some of the Hindu classic scriptures have informed me as deeply about the truths of life and the depths of the spirit as anything I have read in Western philosophy or science or in the Christian Bible. The Hindus have a multitude of penetrating insights about how to live a good life and how to be a good person, and I am grateful for their teachings and examples.

 

            Not surprisingly, I believe that Unitarian Universalist pluralism can in at least four ways be a model for millions of people in the 21st century. I am not arguing that they everyone needs to become Unitarian Universalists denominationally, but I think that our basic spiritual insights are the foundation that people need if they wish truly to live that aspect of pluralism on which modern democracies depend. If humanity is going to survive and flourish in the 21st century, and allow the good Earth to flourish, people must quickly learn how to become pluralists. This means celebrating our individuality and appropriately respecting and honoring the sub-cultures of our birth and upbringing, but it also means learning to concentrate on becoming an integrated global family.

 

 

 

I think those spiritual insights would include:

 

  1. Be proud of the best of you who are, but concentrate on being a good person in ways that will sustain the Earth and empower the whole human family, not just yourself, your clan or your sub-culture.
  2. Continue to grow in personal wisdom, evolving in ways that dispense with the selfish and short-sighted, the arrogant and egotistical, the violent and angry. By becoming a good character, you will do a better job of living up to your spiritual potential.
  3. Always remember that no one and no group ever has all of the truth or a corner on righteousness. Creation made individuals different and allowed many groups to grow and flourish. Obviously, pluralism is not only real but it reflects the divine intention.
  4. Celebrate each day of your life as a divine gift, and remember that you are a portion of the infinite. If you don’t do the best you can, some of the good karma and divine grace in the universe will be lost, and that will be your responsibility.

 

            It’s fine to be a Kikuyu in Kenya or a Russian secular Jew in Israel or a Southern Baptist or Unitarian Universalist in Jacksonville , Florida. We need to respect our race, gender, ethnicity, religion, age, class, sexual preference, nationality, region and neighborhood, but none of these is essentially who we are or what our lives need to be about. Our real community is the human family, and in that family every human being is part of the community, is one of the neighbors that we need to learn to love and understand. Every realistic religion and ideology realizes that there is ultimately a single Creation. We are all citizens of this good Earth, dependent upon its flourishing. If you trash your portion of this Earth, you are not respecting anybody, and that bad karma will come back to haunt you and your descendents. If you don’t take responsibility for your own actions, and miss the opportunities we each have to reflect the divine intentions and the human justice and love in this world, you will waste the precious gift of your life.

 

It is not enough to be a proud Black man or a proud white woman, or a self-righteous Hindu or Christian. We need to grow beyond our sub-cultures. It is time for human tribalism to become historic entities like slavery or the oppression of women or child labor or incest or cannibalism. Every one of these was at some time in human history were not only common human practices, but they were also religious rituals. Pluralism is a necessary spiritual practice in the 21st century, and the ancient religion of Hinduism and the 400 plus year old denomination of the Unitarian Universalists can help to show the way, but only if we more consistently live up to the best of our pluralistic ideals.