Information please!

[Tanya Sharma]

Hello people,

My name is Tanya Sharma and I'm from India. Being a Hindu, my ideas about Catholicism, Heaven, Hell and Purgatory are a little vague. A Potrait is a trifle heavy reading anyway without being bogged down by large chunks which are totally outside my scope. I need some information about this. Another thing which I'd like to know about is Joyce's upbringing and the prevelent socio political environment of Ireland at the time discussed in the novel.

Grateful for any help, links to the info, whatever possible. Thanks!

Tanya

[Scheherazade]

Welcome to the Forum Tanya!

Many of us here are ESL/ESOL speakers. Coming from different social and religious backgrounds, we share your concerns and problems in understanding English literature so you are not alone

The Book Club read this book a few months ago and you might find the discussion thread useful: http://www.online-literature.com/for...ead.php?t=3408

Good luck with your studies!

[amuse]

um, what's ESOL?

[Scheherazade]

ESOL = English for Speakers of Other Languages

[Sitaram]

I will by happy to try and help. I have posted a lot during the past 6 years on Christianity from a Hindu perspective, as well as Hinduism from a Christian perspective. Don't hesitate to message me, or post a thread, with specific questions. I shall try to get a copy of the book this weekend. Actually, at home, I have a Roman Catholic book entitled "Hinduism 101", written for Catholics who would like to understand Hinduism. What we need is the converse of that book.

I just had an exciting idea. I realized that I can search the text of the book on the forum for key words like Jesus, Christ, Spirit, Soul, Hell, Heaven, Prayer, Faith, Bible, etc. etc... and quickly assemble key passages pertaining to Christianity for discussion:

(some examples may be found in the post following this post) ...


In an effort to render Christianity more understandable for Hindus, it is helpful
to outline the similarities and differences between the two religions.

I am going to paraphrase some important verses from the Gita (Bhagavad-gita) from memory and will provide the chapter and verse numbers later.
Actually, all quotes in this post, for now, will be paraphrased from memory, so Biblical quotes may not match the King James word for word.

Krishna is considered an avatar, or incarnation of God. The word avatar
means "one who has come down". Krishna is analogous to Christ, as God who has incarnated (taken flesh), and assumed human form.

Lord Krishna says, "Whoever offers to me, with sincerity and purity of heart,
a leaf, a flower, a fruit, or water; that offering I shall surely accept."

Lord Krishna says, "I am both the priest who makes the offering (pours the ghee butter), I am also the offering which is poured (I am the ghee butter), AND I am the fire into which the offering is poured (I consume the offering).

Notice the similarity of these passages to the Christian liturgy of the
Eucharist, the bread and wine, which becomes Christ (God), which is offered
to God, but which becomes God in the process, and then is consumed by the
worshippers.

J.D. Salinger capitalizes cleverly on such Hindu concepts in his short story Teddy (about a Hindu holy man, reborn as a prodigy child), when Teddy says that "I suddenly saw my little sister, drinking a glass of milk, and I understood that it was God pouring God into God."

At the end of the Greek Orthodox Christian liturgy of the Eucharist (the bread and wine, communion), the following prayer is recited: "Thine own, of Thine own, we offer unto Thee, for the sake of all." Once again, we see the resemblance to the Gita, in which the offerer, offering and the one offered are one and the same.

Another prayer is recited with comes from the Epistle of James in the New Testament: "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above and comes down from Thee, the Father of lights, in whom is no change or shadow of a variation." Ancient theologians reasoned that ever GOOD gift denotes necessities of life, such as food and water, but that every PERFECT gift denotes the Eucharist/communion of bread and wine, become body and blood.

Actually, it is quite fascinating to consider all the parallels between the Gita and the Gospels (hey, a catchy title). By the way, Bhagavad-gita literally means "The Song of God." Bhagawan is one of the many terms in Hinduism which may be used to denote God. Bhagawan means, "He who possess every wealth, perfection, opulence." Evangelia, the Greek word for "Gospel" (New Testament), literally means "Good News". "Eu" is a prefix which means "good", and angelos means messenger, and also means angel (angelos), since angels, like Gabriel (Gabreel) are essentially messengers from God to human beings.

Now, in a nutshell, one might say that the "good news" of the New Testament, is that God became man, in the person of Jesus, and was crucified in order that all who wish to accept will be cleansed of their sins and saved from the suffering of eternal punishment.

We can find similar message in the Gita, though not precisely equivalent to the Gospel. Lord Krishna (who, remember is thought to be God Almighty) explains to Arjuna that, among other things, anyone who becomes a devotee will quickly make spiritual progress and be purified. More about this in a moment. Krishna also says in the Gita that all who worship, whether ancestors, or ghosts, or demons or demi-gods, are in reality worshiping Krishna-Vishnu, although they are ignorant of the truth about where their worship goes. In India, in the Temple of Sri Vinkanteshera, which has been the wealthiest temple in India for almost 1000 years, there is an inscription on one wall which makes the same claim, namely, that all worship everywhere of any kind, comes to Vishnu. I should explain that Krishna is an incarnation of Vishnu, and furthermore, Vishnu is a member of the Hindu Trinity of Bramha-Vishnu-Shiva, known as Creator-Preserver-Destroyer. Here is one essential difference between Hinduism and the Abrhamic religions. Hinduism describes the universe as in a continuous state of creation and destruction, with each instance of a universe spanning four vast "yugas" or ages, which are measured in billions of years. By contrast, Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) stress that each soul is born and dies only once (no reincarnation) and that the universe is created and destroyed only once, in the case of Judaism, the universe is measured only in thousands of years (appx 6,000) rather than in billions of years.

Lord Krishna states, in the Gita, that whatever each person seeks or desires, they will achieve. If they worship demons (jinn), they will after death go and dwell among the demons, if they worship demi-gods, the will go there, but if they worship Vishnu, then they will come to Vishnu. We may see a similarity to this in Psalm 18:20-26, in the Bible:

20 The LORD rewarded me according to my righteousness; according to the cleanness of my hands hath he recompensed me.
21 For I have kept the ways of the LORD, and have not wickedly departed from my God.
22 For all his judgments were before me, and I did not put away his statutes from me.
23 I was also upright before him, and I kept myself from mine iniquity.
24 Therefore hath the LORD recompensed me according to my righteousness, according to the cleanness of my hands in his eyesight.
25 With the merciful thou wilt shew thyself merciful; with an upright man thou wilt shew thyself upright;
26 With the pure thou wilt shew thyself pure; and with the froward thou wilt shew thyself froward.



We see God being described, in this Biblical Psalm, like a mirror, reflecting back to each person after the fashion and manner in which each person deports themselves: i.e., merciful with the merciful,
froward with the froward*, etc.

(*Note: froward
adj : habitually disposed to disobedience and opposition syn: headstrong,
self-willed, willful, wilful)

There is a scene in the Srimad Bhagavatam (which is the redacted oral traditions surrounding Krishna, much like the Talmud of the Jews, or the Hadith of the Muslims), one episode in which Krishna appears in the courts of the wicked King Kamsa (Kamsa was the Hitler of his day). A miracle takes place and the one-and-the-same Krishna appears radically different to different people. To his parents, he appears as an adorable child. To King Kamsa, Krishna appears as a horrifying destroyer which strikes terror in the heart. To the young maidens, Krishna appears as a desirable husband. To the young cowheards, he appears as their good companion and friend in passtimes. We see a somewhat similar phenomenon in the Gospels (though not precisely the same.) Jesus appears on Mt. Tabor, to a few select Apostles, in all his radiant splendor, as God Almighty, but then, after some moments, resumes his ordinary appearance. Christians call this the "Holy Transfiguration" (or in Greek, Metamorphosis). In the Gita, Krishna performs exactly the same kind of transformation beheld only by Arjuna, and to no one else, showing Arjuna the Lord's infinite and glorious, multidimensional form (or Satsvarupa, true-form or Universal Form). You may, at this juncture, enjoy reading various excerpts from literature and scripture which illustrate this notion of Universal Form, or Spatio-Temporal montage, if you will:

http://toosmallforsupernova.org/page019.htm

I must update page 19 to include the wonderful example in Thomas Pynchon's "The Crying of Lot 49."

http://toosmallforsupernova.org/pynchon.htm

"There are a number of frail girls . . . prisoners in the top room of a circular tower, embroidering a kind of tapestry which spilled out the slit windows and into a void, seeking hopelessly to fill the void: for all the other buildings and creatures, all the waves, ships and forests of the earth were contained in this tapestry, and the tapestry was the world."

--The Crying of Lot 49, Chapter 1

This little passage is not from "Gravity's Rainbow" but rather from "The Crying of Lot."

But this little passage is an entire novel in itself. It is a nuclear explosion, a tsunami, a Krakatoa.

[Sitaram]

CHRIST

- Chapter 3
under the two species of bread and wine if jesus `christ be present body and
blood, soul and divinit


- Chapter 4
s a flippant word: it was they who had taught him christian doctrine and urged him to live a good li


- Chapter 5
e what you will.the homely version of his christian name on the lips of his
friend had touch


- Chapter 4
d sacrament of the altar, friday to the suffering jesus, saturday to the blessed virgin mary.

SALVATION

- Chapter 3
one thing alone is needful, the salvation of one's soul. what doth it profit a man

- Chapter 4
n question, stephen, because on it may depend the salvation of your eternal soul. but we will pray t

- Chapter 5
en born and bred among serious dissenters, seeing salvation in jesus only and abhorring the vain pom

HELL

- Chapter 1
re the gas was lowered so that he might not go to hell when he died. he rolled his stockings off and

- Chapter 2
ys and he was drifting amid life like the barren shell of the moon.art thou pale for wearine

- Chapter 3
ears, the drawling jargon of greeting:-- hello, bertie, any good in your mind?-- is

- Chapter 4
st hasty confession wrung from him by the fear of hell had not been good? perhaps, concerned only fo

- Chapter 5
the animal craving for warmth fire is a good. in hell, however, it is an evil.-- quite so,

HEAVEN

- Chapter 1
y nation.clongowes is my dwellingplaceand heaven my expectation.he read the vers

- Chapter 2
br>art thou pale for wearinessof climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,wandering compa

- Chapter 3
the morning star, bright and musical, telling of heaven and infusing peace, it was when her names w

- Chapter 4
ciousness could be made to revibrate radiantly in heaven; and at times his sense of such immediate r

- Chapter 5
glow the choirs of the seraphim were falling from heaven.are you not weary of ardent

PRAY

- Chapter 1
not: and so he longed for the play and study and prayers to be over and to be in bed.he dra

- Chapter 2
clothes and on the floor of the porch. while he prayed he knelt on his red handkerchief and read a

- Chapter 3
otion had gone by the board. what did it avail to pray when he knew that his soul lusted after its o

- Chapter 4
at the side-altar, following with his interleaved prayer-book the murmur of the priest, he glanced u

[Sitaram]

Here is an excellent page which I just now found in google.com , all about James Joyce and Religion and "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man"

http://www.english-literature.org/essays/joyce.html

By the way, I purchased an inexpensive paperback copy tonight, after work.

And here is a wonderful page at sparknotes.com which answers your questions about Joyce and Ireland.

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/portra...st/themes.html

(excerpt from Sparknotes)

Brought up in a devout Catholic family, Stephen initially ascribes to an absolute belief in the morals of the church. As a teenager, this belief leads him to two opposite extremes, both of which are harmful. At first, he falls into the extreme of sin, repeatedly sleeping with prostitutes and deliberately turning his back on religion. Though Stephen sins willfully, he is always aware that he acts in violation of the church's rules. Then, when Father Arnall's speech prompts him to return to Catholicism, he bounces to the other extreme, becoming a perfect, near fanatical model of religious devotion and obedience. Eventually, however, Stephen realizes that both of these lifestyles—the completely sinful and the completely devout—are extremes that have been false and harmful. He does not want to lead a completely debauched life, but also rejects austere Catholicism because he feels that it does not permit him the full experience of being human. Stephen ultimately reaches a decision to embrace life and celebrate humanity after seeing a young girl wading at a beach. To him, the girl is a symbol of pure goodness and of life lived to the fullest.

[Sitaram]

It is now 4:30 a.m. and I am looking over this thread, and gathering together my thoughts of last evening, regarding Joyce and Ireland and Christianity.

I do have here an exhaustive ENCYCLOPEDIA of James Joyce, from A to Z. I have a similar volume for Virginia Woolf. I will be looking up some things in the Joyce Encyclopedia, with regard to the questions raised.

After glancing at the wonderful sparknotes page, I get the feeling that Joyce wants nothing to do with either the "good news" of Christianity, or with Ireland. What Joyce wants to do is sprout wings like Daedalus in the ancient Greek myth and fly away. But whither shall he fly? Daedelus of the myth flies too close to the sun and is destroyed. An artist seeks omnipotence and immortality in a flight of fancy, but inevitably meets with dissatisfaction and falls into despair. I often think of e. e. cummings line "the mind is its own beautiful prisoner."

(excerpts)

http://www.english-literature.org/essays/joyce.html

When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets.

In her paper Rebellion: Types of rebellion, Rosalie Wagner states 'Rebellion against society can also occur when people feel too oppressed or feel a need to stand out.' The political and cultural atmosphere of revolutionary Ireland was volatile and dangerous. Any opinion Stephen voiced was usually met with mixed feelings, reflective of the divided political and religious factions. Stephen felt the need to rebel: to break into a new setting-one in which he could be free to express all his thoughts.

As I browse through my volume of "Joyce A to Z", one paragraph in particular catches my eye, in the article on "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man."

Joyce is reckoned as one of the foremost POSTMODERNISTS to write in English. Postmodernism is skeptical of the ability of individuals to act as the proper arbiters for ethical conduct. Instead it assumes the view, sometimes with nihilistic overtones and sometimes with an enlightened sense of liberation, that there are no valid objective standards against which to measure human behavior.

We are all in the thralldom and bondage of one thing or another, I suppose.
The Irish were oppressed under British rule. The rules and regulations of the Roman Catholic Church are quite restrictive. But an Artist, who flees the prison of religion and motherland is a slave to his desparate urge to create that which is different and profound, and yet popular and attractive; a slave to truth and beauty, but an UNCONVENTIONAL truth and beauty, for genre and conventional style is restrictive.

Suddenly, I am thinking about Sartre and Freedom. I strain to remember a quote about being everywhere in chains. I search in google.com and find this excellent page, which says something regarding freedom which sheds light on the flight and destruction of a Daedelus.

http://globalexpress.initiativesofch...5/paradox.html

'Man is born free, but is everywhere in chains,' wrote Karl Marx in the middle of the last century, inspiring millions to sacrifice everything for a new world order. Yet, while great strides have been made in some areas, freedom remains elusive.

The truth is that freedom means different things to different people. For the ethnic Albanians of Kosovo it means an end to Serbian rule. For Marxists it means an end to economic exploitation when the workers own the means of production. For black people living in countries where power is held by the whites, it means equal rights and opportunities, regardless of colour. For many adolescents it simply means an end to parental tyranny.
The late Sir Isaiah Berlin wrote that there are basically two types of understanding of freedom - negative and positive. The first kind sees freedom as the absence of some kind of restriction - freedom from something. The second sees freedom as an actual condition - for example Marx defines it as 'realised necessity' - having (and knowing) what you need, while some religions have defined freedom as serving God. Berlin preferred the first option, pointing out that the second has led to totalitarian regimes in places like Russia or Iran.

There is an old Sufi proverb that when God wants to drive a man insane he gives him what he wants. When you stop to really think about it, it's obvious - because what we want is never really straightforward. Things we want often contradict each other. I want to eat that chocolate, but I don't want to get fat. I want to get good grades but I'd rather go out and party than study. I want the government to spend more on the things I care about, but I don't want to pay more taxes. Short-term desires often oppose long-term goals. This is a vital moral lesson which we learn as children - in fact it's more than a moral lesson, it's a life-skill. And you only need to look around you to see that it's equally true for institutions - whether governments, businesses or sports clubs.

So, if freedom means to do what we want, then we first need to know what we really want. What are our values? Many of our most important goals in life involve other people. Despite the Western myth of individualism, we are not superheroes who can manage on our own. Whether we know it or want it, we are playing a team game.

When people play football it is vital they know the rules. Without them there is no shared understanding of what the aims are and nothing makes sense - one person might be trying to sit on the ball, another might be ignoring the ball and trying to swing from the goal. The rules are not there to stop people from enjoying themselves, they are simply part of the game. In the game of life, instead of 'rules' we have morality and values.

We see the artist as Daedalus in Hemingway and Virginia Woolf. Both rebel and flee the bonds of convention, take wings and fly towards the sun of literary perfection, and fall to their suicidal deaths.

Perhaps the worst form of slavery is freedom itself, the illusion of freedom, the fantasy that we are not free, but that we COULD be free, if only we did this or that, and that IF we were free, then surly we would be happy.

Humans are more free than God is. Humans can choose to be atheists. What choice does God have?