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Jerusalem and Varanasi. The Two Great Religious Visions. Why Jerusalem and Varanasi?. There are many religious traditions in the world that do not necessarily fit in with these two great religious cities.
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Jerusalem and Varanasi The Two Great Religious Visions
Why Jerusalem and Varanasi? • There are many religious traditions in the world that do not necessarily fit in with these two great religious cities. • The majority of the world/universal religions practiced today can trace their roots to one of these two cities. • Many of the other traditions such as Confucianism, Daoism and Shintoism have been influenced by these cities even if they did not originate from them directly.
A Prologue To Jerusalem and Varanasi • Elements of both of these traditions can be found in each other. • There is no religion that is purely “Jerusalem” or purely “Varanasi”. • We can, however, state that one city or the other dominates in a particular religion. • What are the dominate features of each of these religious traditions?
Jerusalem • This religious vision is dominated by the ‘exterior’ or what Dr. Peter Berger calls “Confrontational” religion. • In this religious vision the divine confronts humanity from the outside. • The individual does not look within but is beckoned from without by a deity which is totally other and unknowable.
Jerusalem and the Prophets • This is the experience of the monotheistic religions, namely: Judaism, Christianity and Islam and the Zoroastrians. • The divinity is so beyond the human experience that an emissary is required to reveal the god and make known the divine will. • These prophets are found in all the confrontational religions. Zoroaster, the Hebrew prophets, Jesus and Muhammad.
In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. 2Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. 3And one called to another and said:‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;the whole earth is full of his glory.’ 4The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke. 5And I said: ‘Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!’ 6 Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. 7The seraph* touched my mouth with it and said: ‘Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.’ 8Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Here am I; send me!’ Isaiah 6:1-8
In the Jerusalem vision you cannot merge the Creator and the created. • The Divine stands totally apart from Nature. This may explain why the Hebrew prophets were so adamant about there being only one god and spent so much time railing against the fertility cults of the Ancient Near East. • Humanity now finds itself isolated. The world is no longer divine and humanity now stands alone before a god which is totally unknowable in a cosmos that is real but alien.
Varanasi • If the hallmark of the western Asian experience is confrontation, then the hallmark of the South Asian experience is ‘interiority’. • The divine does not confront humanity as we saw in the Isaiah passage but is to be looked for inside ourselves. • If Jerusalem has a personalized god then Varanasi has a metapersonal divinity.
In Varanasi the divine is beyond all attributes, including those of will and speech. • Once the true nature of the divine is grasped – as the foundation of all being then both man and the cosmos fade into insignificance (maya – illusion). • Individuality is not sharpened but absorbed into the divine. • History is not the stage of divine action, but an illusive and impermanent stage.
"That which is the subtle essence this whole world has for its self. That is the true. That is the self (atman). That art thou, Shvetaketu." Chandogya Upanishad, VI.8.7
It seems that the concepts of samsara-karma have been a part of religious life in India from the earliest times. • More will be said about these later but it is the wheel of reincarnations and the inevitable consequences of human acts over a sequence of innumerable lifetimes. • This wheel is not just for humans, but controls the fates of the gods as well. No one – human nor divine is free from the wheel of Samsara.
The Religions of Varanasi • Although there are a great variety of religions born in India, we will focus on two. • Hinduism and Buddhism are the two great religions to be born on the subcontinent and both share some important characteristics - just as Judaism, Christianity and Islam share important characteristics.
Both religions share the samsara-karma cycle and the interior gaze as well. • Answers to the questions about being are to be found by looking within, not from divine revelation without. • If there is any image familiar to most people about these religions it is the meditating yogi focused inward. • This stands in direct contrast to the confrontational emissary prophet.
Compare and Contrast Jerusalem Varanasi The divine is metapersonal and beyond will. The divine is everywhere and is the ground of all being. People sense and know the divine by looking in through tools like mediation. Many life times. The problem is ‘ignorance’. • The divine has personality, will. • The divine is totally ‘other’ from humanity and nature. • The divine communicates through emissaries such as angels and prophets. • One life time to get it right. • The problem is ‘sin’.
