Author: Rajiv Malhotra
Publication: Huff Post Religion
Date: April 29, 2011
URL: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rajiv-malhotra/the-hindu-good-news-you-a_b_854904.html
Occasionally, a small group of evangelists
-- well-dressed and well-groomed young men and women from a local church --
walks around my neighborhood ringing doorbells to spread Christianity. I always
like to invite them in, offer them chai and engage in a relaxed conversation.
Even though I went to a Catholic school and know the proselytizing game well,
I pretend I'm the naive immigrant eager to ask basic questions. After a few
minutes of small talk, one of them usually breaks open the topic by asking,
"Have you been saved?"
I try to look surprised, and respond by saying,
"I was never condemned to begin with!" My young, charming guests
usually get thrown off. They expect me to claim that I have already been saved,
and their training has equipped them with the rhetorical skills to assert
that their ability to save me is superior to my present faith. I usually find
them taken by surprise by my posture that I do not need to be saved in the
first place.
Christian salvation is a solution to the problem
of Eternal Damnation caused by Original Sin. But that problem does not exist
within the dharma traditions. Imagine someone asking you if you have been
pardoned from your prison sentence, and you respond by saying that you were
never condemned for any crime and, hence, such a question is absurd. The implication
here is that for a dharmic person to say he has been saved would imply that
he accepts Christianity's fundamental tenet that every human is born a sinner
and remains so until he surrenders himself to Jesus Christ. Even when the
church acknowledges other faiths as having merit, no other path can substitute
for Jesus when it comes to being saved.
The closest the dharmic traditions come to
salvation are the concepts of moksha in Hinduism and nirvana in Buddhism,
both of which can be loosely translated as "liberation." But there
are crucial differences between dharmic liberation and Christian salvation.
Receiving assurance of salvation is the key
moment in the spiritual life of most Christians. It comes as a gift of grace
and its source lies outside the individual. It does not come as a result strictly
of merit, spiritual practice, prayer or asceticism. Although these may be
helpful in its attainment, and even necessary in many denominations, they
are not sufficient in and of themselves. That's because the potential to achieve
salvation is not innate in us.
In Jewish and Christian traditions, death
is the consequence of sin. The freedom of the soul in Christianity entails,
in the End of Time, the freedom of the body as well: There will be a resurrection
of the dead in a "glorified" physical form, and the boundary between
heaven and earth will be erased or made permeable. For most people, the full
realization of this salvation can come only after death.
Dharmic liberation, on the other hand, can
be achieved here and now in this very body and in this very world. Moksha
is similar to salvation insofar as it is concerned with freedom from human
bondage; but the nature of this bondage is quite different. Moksha really
refers to living in a state of freedom from ignorance, pre-conditioning and
karmic "baggage." According to the Bhagavad Gita, the state where
one is desire-less, ego-less and beyond the drives of human nature is the
first major milestone; it opens the door to further evolution and eventual
liberation in the fullest sense.
Salvation, on the other hand, does not entail
expanded awareness or consciousness, esoteric/mystical knowledge or physical
practices (though these may attend it). Nor is it necessarily derived from
complete renunciation, as is the case in Buddhist nirvana. It can be experienced
only by surrendering to the will of God, and God here is specifically the
God of the Bible.
There is yet another state described in Sanskrit
which has no equivalent in Christianity. One who has attained moksha may choose
to remain in the world and continue to do spiritual work -- that is, free
from past actions (i.e., karmic bondage) and yet active in the world. This
person is called jivanmukta. He (or she) can, at will, either turn away from
the world or turn toward it and deal with it without being touched or limited
by it. The Buddhist equivalent of a jivanmukta is a bodhisattva.
The New Testament calls this "being
in the world, but not of it." There is an opening here for a potential
development of a Christian jivanmukta, and St. Paul says several things about
himself that would indicate he had at least tasted this state, as had other
Christian saints. But the important thing is that there is no word for it
in biblical metaphysics; that's because the state was not examined, understood
or cultivated through systematic techniques. The words "saint" and
"prophet" do not suffice, nor even does "mystic." When
Christians experienced such a state, it was not as a result of following a
yoga-like systematic process; neither was it seen as bringing salvation. Hence
such a person would still be, according to the Vatican document Dominus Jesus,
"in a gravely deficient situation in comparison with those who, in the
Church, have the fullness of the means of salvation."
As the evangelists leave my home, I always
hope our conversation has challenged their assumptions about the people they
are preaching to, and that perhaps they will re-examine the idea that all
people outside of their church are in a state of spiritual deficiency. But
until they do, I will continue to welcome them into my living room, offer
them chai and share with them the good news that there is no such thing as
Original Sin. We are all originally divine.
