Baba Lokenath (indian yogi lived 160 years)

[Benjamin]

Just because you 'spend time in the himalayas' doesn't make you into a god-man-child that we should pray to after death.

Agreed. Though to be fair, it seems he did more with his life than simply exist in the himalayas. Certainly nobody is praying to Edmund Hillary!

The guy was made of water (70 odd percent) and the rest earth (and all its elements), wind and fire.

Now he is evaporated and brought back to the dust.

There is nothing to pray to.

I think this is a bit of a materialist reduction, and an oversimplification of sorts. Is everything material? Is karma material? The canon is full of references to prayers to devas and whatnot. I think the assertion that there is "nothing to pray" to isn't quite right, though I don't think it's central to liberation or a substitution for good ole jhana practice. Of course, regarding this man specifically, maybe prayer to him is impossible and/or useless. Certainly doesn't seem like anything I'd place my faith in.

It says a lot that India willingly chose Brahminism and Shivaism over Buddhism because it could have turned out quite a bit differently.

I don't think this is a fair critique, in that it's not as if India was shown three doors of there future at some point and didn't like the look of the Buddhist one. It's more or less how history played out, and at one point there was a seriously large Buddhist civilization. Shankara clearly did a number on it, but he was smart enough to know that he couldn't change the message too much. Add a bit more Upanishads here, sprinkle a little smarta-esque deity worship there, and boom!

[Manopubbangama]

I don't think this is a fair critique, in that it's not as if India was shown three doors of there future at some point and didn't like the look of the Buddhist one. It's more or less how history played out, and at one point there was a seriously large Buddhist civilization. Shankara clearly did a number on it, but he was smart enough to know that he couldn't change the message too much. Add a bit more Upanishads here, sprinkle a little smarta-esque deity worship there, and boom!

When it was a Buddhist country it was a successful country much like Korea, Japan, Singapore, and other places with strong Buddhist ethos.

Now....just look at it.

Don't make me post articles about worshipping rats, human sacrifice, murder of starving people killing the wrong kind of 'sacred' animal, rampant racist apartheid, aka 'varna', not to mention a government that is fully committed to glorifying the religion that has made it into perhaps the most filthy third world cesspool in the history of the world where humans deficate on the streets like animals.

How else can you describe the success of Buddhist countries to create civilized living spaces for its human inhabitants compared to India?

I would rather live any place in Africa than in India and what does that say about voodoo compared to Hinduism?

Unless someone here takes the racialist view that South Asians are inherantly unsanitary (and I will fight them all the way on this accusation) there needs to be something to explain the way the chips have stacked up.

I lay the blame squarely at the feet of the Pharisees aka 'Brahmins' who created this racist dystopia. These beings who are so holy that they cannot even defecate without expecting others to clean up for them, and then spitting on those people they force to clean.....

Arrogance beyond anything I could ever have imagined.

The worship of some kind of david koresh man-god on a massive scale is further evidence of the continual decline of this once great culture.

[Sam Vara]

... the continual decline of this once great culture.

I've known Indians be equally complimentary about Western cultures!

There's no end to fault-finding and criticism of other people and places. Better to look for the positives which there are everywhere. And, of course,

[Manopubbangama]

... the continual decline of this once great culture.

I've known Indians be equally complimentary about Western cultures!

There are millions of Westerners pouring out of Europe to live and work in India and not the reverse?

I think fault-finding with bad ideas is at the root of logic and common sense.

India is a horrible failure for all except the ruling class.

Regarding our own failures in the West its from going 180 degrees from imperialist racists to self-deprecating spineless virtue-signallers who don't really believe a single word of what they say. There IS a middle way: its called the golden rule. Don't exploit people, but also don't insult their intelligence.

If anyone says that all cultures are equal, let them give up their passport for such an equal passport.

Lets start trading in our passports of Britain, France and Germany for India, Somalia and North Korea.

Because I guarantee you the people trading from the other side will give you a very strange glance while the trade is taking place.

Speaking is cheap. Trading passports is the only thing that really matters.

If we 'just speak about the positives' of a place, such as India, we are ignoring the discrimination that the Dalit Buddhists face every day.

There is no real Virtue in virtue-signaling.

Voting with your feet is what tells the truth, not the mouth about the glories of equality.

Where is the compassion for the people who are so incredibly poor and uneducated that they believe in such nonsense as the worship of rats?

[Sam Vara]

There is no real Virtue in virtue-signaling.

But there is in focusing on the topic, rather than evincing cultural preferences.

I think we've heard enough nasty talk about political preferences, so any more of it will be removed.

[SarathW]

Study argues Jeanne Calment, 122, was actually only 99-year-old who assumed mother’s name to avoid tax.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/worl ... 08271.html

[Manopubbangama]

Study argues Jeanne Calment, 122, was actually only 99-year-old who assumed mother’s name to avoid tax.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/worl ... 08271.html

Why didn't I think of that?

I may go skinny dipping in the Ganges and see if I can pull out an I.D. from one of my pals there.

[No_Mind]

So much anger .. all about a naked sadhu who lived in a cave for most of his life (and then in a bamboo hut) ..

I wonder if this is what the Buddha taught? I don't think so.

[SamKR]

Either way, I don't think there is such a thing as "Hinduism." Its an umbrella term for the protean Brahman view of animal sacrifice, combined with some South Indian Dravidian paganism that includes human sacrifice and cow worship. There is basically a different "Hinduism" per each Hindu village.

I don't see any consistency in it other than the idea of the Caste System and a bunch of vague, poorly defined ideas along with the belief that memorization and not logical inquiry is the way to knowledge (despite some texts saying otherwise). I read the upanishads and bhagavad gita and didn't get much of it.

Of course, my view could be considered.....extremely wrongheaded and superficial..... And while I will always call a spade a spade I have been known to change my mind when presented with a superior viewpoint to my own.

Yes, I agree, I think your view on Hinduism is extremely wrongheaded and superficial. But I won't try to change your mind, because based on my experience, our views and opinions may keep changing over years on their own, but this single view "(this time) I am right and everything else is wrong" tends to stick.