Which all are the bonafide religious practices of the world?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Question from Prashottam Kumar Guru.
Can you please let me know which all are the bona fide religious practices of the world? For example Is Sikhism a bona fide religious practice or not? Answer, there are in spiritual life principles and practices. The principle is given in the Srimad Bhagavatam in 1.2.6 That the soul becomes satisfied when he develops love for Krishna So, that dharma is supreme which enables one to develop love for Krishna. Now for this principle there can be many practices but those practices can be broadly classified into the nine limbs of bhakti which are given by Prahlad Maharaj in 7th canto, 7.5.23-24 This is often quoted verse which describes hearing, chanting, remembering worshipping, offering prayers serving befriending and surrendering as the nine limbs of bhakti.
But the second part is important in this verse which is often not quoted that is 7.5.24 They describe that when these nine activities are offered to Lord Vishnu they become the nine lakshanas of bhakti and what is the result of that? create the bhagavatyadha that one should perform these activities for Lord Vishnu is what I consider I consider that to be the best education. So actually if we look at life the way people live, essentially all the activities that we do can be classified into these nine broad categories actually speaking everything that we do involves some speaking, some hearing and some thinking so about whom are we speaking, hearing, thinking and there can be different ways of speaking, it can be one to one it is one to one discussion between two people it can be a small gathering it can be a mass gathering so different religions can have different religious practices by which these nine limbs of bhakti are implemented. So for example while doing vandanam while offering prayers the followers of the Vedic tradition may hold their hands, the Muslims may hold their hands in front of them in namaz and the Christians may move their hands in a particular way for offering mass, so these are practices but all three are parts of vandanam so just as there can be variations in the practices but the principle is to express one’s devotion to God in a prayerful way that is standard, so that’s why we can’t have a literal falsifiability check that this practice is bona fide and that practice is not bona fide we have to look at the underlying conception that is there for the practice the way people express their affection or their devotion can vary according to culture, can vary according to as we say from the Vedic point of view from time place to time place circumstance or qualification of the person so therefore how do we decide whether a particular religious practice is bona fide or not we have to look at what is the conception and what is the intention, what is the understanding of those who are engaging in the religious practices and then what is their intention, are they intending to develop love for Krishna Bhaktivinoda Thakura has wrote a very beautiful quote which you can find on the website in the article there is much I have to tell you where he says how we should respond to unfamiliar religious practices when we have occasionally presented the place of worship of other religionists at the time of their worship we should stay there in respectful mood contemplating thus here is being worshipped my adorable highest entity God in a different form than that of mine due to different practice of a different kind I cannot thoroughly comprehend the system of theirs but seeing it I am feeling a greater attachment for my own system God is one I bow down before his emblem as I see here and offer my prayer to my lord who has adopted this different emblem so that he may increase my love towards him in the form that is acceptable for me so seeing others devotional practices our devotion to the lord and our appreciation for the lord can increase if the lord has manifested this particular emblem also to accept worship but then we should focus on our own practices our own ways of worshipping the lord so here Bhaktivinoda Thakura gives a very generic prescription and we can apply that on time, place, circumstance to decide whether a particular religious practice is bona fide or not and of course if we are associated with friend, relative who is involved in a particular religious practice about which we have questions then we can consult senior devotees about that specific practice but this is the broad principle regarding Sikhism in the world religion series I have given a class on Sikhism where I deal with it elaborately but here basically historically speaking Sikhism was a response to Hindu-Muslim violence where Guru Nanak adopted elements from both because of the Muslim antipathy for deity worship he avoided that and he also avoided the whole idea of caste system and faith in the Vedas but he still accepted the idea of chanting the names of god he extensively accepted many of the principles of bhakti without the symbols of bhakti so he accepted reincarnation he also accepted karma so in that sense we can say that there are elements within Sikhism that are bona fide and the rejection of deity worship is something which was circumstantial but Sikhs have never been iconoclasts destroyers of deities the way Muslims and Christians and other Semitic religions have been so it is definitely much more in the Dharmic tradition of religions than it is in the Abrahamic tradition of religions these are two broad categories of religions and and Sri Prabhupada went to Amritsar and he went to the golden temple he appreciated the way the humility the service attitude and the dedication as well as the expert management in the way they served free food over there and he said this should be adopted by our by the Krishna consciousness movement also so Sri Prabhupada has talked about Guru Nanak in both ways the speculative part he has disapproved but other places he has talked about him also as a great saint according to some sources which are not necessarily confirmed Guru Nanak met Chaitanya Mahaprabhu also when he came to Puri and they danced together in a Thyatira, this wildness has come down in the Gaudiya tradition, it has not been explicitly mentioned in any of the primary biographies of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu that’s why we don’t have to explicitly endorse or reject that but to a large extent many of the practices are quite devotional and there is a book written by one Mataji Radhika Devi Dasi from Delhi who was born in a Sikh family and then she became a Krishna devotee with an Asian devotee so she has written about the similarities that is a good preliminary introduction to many similarities that are there in the Guru so yes we can consider Sikhism to be a bona fide religion to the extent that it endorses practices that encourage love for God and make us more devoted to God