About the Book One Religion Too Many is a Hindu pilgrim's progress through the world's religious traditions. An eminent scholar of comparative religion, Arvind Sharma provides a firsthand account of how he came to be a party to the dialogue of religions - first with his own religion, then with the comparative study of religion, and finally with the religious universalism he has come to espouse because of this heritage. Starting with an account of the Hinduism of his family in Varanasi, India, Sharma then heads west, finding himself initially dumbfounded by the Christian Eucharist, wondering if there is a "Hinjew connection," grappling with Zen in Massachusetts, and pressed into service to teach about Islam. Sharma writes with a light touch, but even when his encounters and perceptions are amusing, they are always insightful and provoking. Western readers, in of particular, will enjoy seeing their own traditions through the eyes of an Easterner who has come to know them well. Sharma's ultimate perspective on religious universalism is a welcoming vision for the globalizing world of the twenty-first century.
"Arvind Sharma has a charming ability to simultaneously recollect his encounters with other religions from an initially naïve viewpoint and also reflect upon them from his by now very well-informed perspective as one of the world's great scholars of comparative religion. Narrating his voyage of discovery with disarming humor. He leads us through all the minefields of differing beliefs and practices in ways that expose and tend to dissipate misunderstanding of religion-both our own and others","
Preface I try to tell the story of my engagement with religion within the covers of this book, but to a certain extent, it is an undercover operation. One has to spy on oneself to talk about one's religion as well as that of others. There are obvious pitfalls in doing so. One could display understanding without information in talking about one's religion-and information without understanding in talking about that of another. Only the reader can tell whether and to what degree these pitfalls have been avoided.
Introduction As one goes through life, one first acquires implicit knowledge of the diversity of one's own tradition and then the explicit knowledge of the diversity represented by the world's great religions. This book is an account of the changing attitudes of a student of religion toward religion in its internal and external variety. But it is also much more. It hints at the possibility that in the end one might emerge with the tacit knowledge of being the legatee of not just one's tradition (in this case Hinduism), however tolerant, or the various religious traditions of humanity, however diverse-but of the entire religious heritage of humanity as a whole.
.Book's Contents and Sample Pages
