May 29 2009, Los Angeles, California: Kshamabuddhi dasa’s apparent search for the Absolute Truth has led him down the rabbit hole of myth-appropriations. Jesus, according to Kshamabuddhi dasa’s coterie of crack historians, is the centuries old hallucination of an entire Western hemisphere. Srila Prabhupada, however, fantasized inaccurately about the historical facts of that insistent legend. The Acaryas consistent take on the myth was also an authorized mistake. Why does he stop there? If the otherwise learned Vaisnavas could be so misled, how can we be sure of their reports of the ancient Krishna lilas questionably documented in the Puranas? Could it be that the Bhagavad-Gita was thoroughly interpolated? Some Indian historians might back him up on that one. Kshamabuddhi’s infallible mythifying laser should be trained on the Indian mystery otherwise known as Vedic tradition. Look how confused Hindus are about it, hodge-podging their way through Ganesh worship and Adwaita.
In order to debunk Christianity, Kshamabuddhi dasa has to take down the Vaisnava sampradaya and the Fathers of the Church. In short, he has to establish himself as the guru of all dharmas. But in order to be a seer, he needs to remove the blinders of his anti-Christian prejudice spawned by some personal problem. That is, he needs at least to get his facts straight.
The word ‘Christos’ is cognate with the Hindi ‘Krista’. It means alternatively, the shining one, the Sun God or to Vaisnava Indians, Krishna. Krista in Latin, however, means ‘the follower of Christ’. These parallels are steeped in linguistic history and are nobody’s invention. What Kshamabuddhi dasa does not know, and no article could be long enough to treat that subject, is that Isa was the name for Jesus in first century India, when the apostle Thomas Didymus traveled to the South of India and converted many Indians in what is now the state of Kerala.
The Iso-Upanishad or Isavasya Upanishad is claimed variously by Saivites, Vaisnavas and Christians, depending on whom one takes the name Isa to designate. So there are etymological and historical roots to the connection between Christianity and Indian Vaisnavism that only dedicated prejudice would choose to ignore.
History is not dogma. Its facts must be understood in proper cultural, literary and religious contexts. The commandment not to kill, for instance, is actually a commandment not to murder. Religiously, it could not include animals, since the Levite priests were sacrificing animals as indeed were the Vedic Brahmins. The point that Srila Prabhupada was obviously making is that properly understood, all living entities are ‘persons’ and killing any of them is murder. But survival depends on it, unfortunately and he has made it clear that such necessity is no reason to maintain slaughterhouses. Even an atheist could understand that. God’s commandment was promoting the religious principle of ‘ahimsa’ or non-violence. Trying to squeeze insight from word wrangling is as pointless as trying to get gold from iron filings. One must have the unifying vision, the light without which sense impressions and words are just fodder already chewed for petty minds to keep chewing on.
vidya-vinaya-sampanne
brahmane gavi hastini
suni caiva sva-pake ca
panditah sama-darsinah
“The humble sage, by virtue of true knowledge, sees with equal vision a learned and gentle brahmana, a cow, an elephant, a dog and a dog-eater [outcaste].”
Bhagavad Gita 5:18
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