Hindu Reacts to Sufi Muslim Imam speaking at BAPS!

Hello and welcome to the Bearded in Mystic, Reacts. And today I'm reacting to Celebrating Interfaith Harmony, which was done by the BAPS in New Jersey at the Robbinsville Centre. Today we'll be listening to a Sufi Imam and we will hear his views and let's see how it goes. This video was shared to me by Sky Guardian, my good friend Vinay, and thank you very much for sharing it. So let's get down to what this is all about. Sufi Imam is a prolific writer who has written three books on Islam and its place in contemporary society. Sufi Imam. I would now like to request you to give your benedictions. Very beautiful background. The backdrop is beautiful. I begin by invoking the name of the Almighty God, the one God creator of the heavens and the earth, and all is between them whom we Muslims call Allah and whom Hindus call Brahman. Or Nirguna Brahman whom the Katha Upanishad describes as one absolute beyond name and beyond form, time, space, and causality, eternal, immutable, and immutable. While we agree that God is such as indescribable. Muslims and Hindus also agree that God is describable and we Muslims have ninety-nine. So-called beautiful names of God and Hindus denote the describable God as Saguna Brahman I can see here that he's obviously done his homework. Mentioned the Katha Upanishad. Brilliant. One of my favorite Upanishads and one, the one Upanishads that most of us have at least read or heard of. The other thing is I, although I think his description of Allah and Nirguna Brahman being the same one and the same, I think he's a bit stretched, but I can actually go with that and think, you know, in terms of the harmony aspect, yes, the Allah does have both of the Nirguna and the Saguna. So it was nice of him to go through that. Very wonderful. Of man in all our religions and his highest achievement is to attain the bliss of consciousness of the absolute reality of God. Hmm. And Hindus has have a term called Satchitananda, which is a compound term of three words. Bliss-Ananda consciousness-chit of the absolute reality sat to my dear Swami Maharaj ji, and all of the Swamis here whose names I have. It's been challenged in getting down and to all my friends in the audience, I congratulate you on the inauguration of this magnificent, I wouldn't call it even a temple. It's like a, like a complex of temples, of this Mahamandir here in Robbinsville, New Jersey. So that is obviously Mahant Swamiji Maharaj, who is the leader of the BAPS Swaminarayan Sampradaya. So my humble namaskar to him via this video. But just to go back a bit on what the Sufi Imamji said. Was I liked how he explained satchitananda and the only thing I would say is that Sat is existence, because it has to embrace all that is seen and perceived as well as that is non perceivable. It's that truth that is beyond both. But otherwise, the way he explained it that the ultimate purpose of man is bliss. Spot on. I love that. Really, really good. Let's get back to the video. I pray that it serve as a focal point of all the mandirs that your community has established in America to help your community and the faith community at large to attain Satchitananda. The Hindu tradition is an ancient one, and your insistence on maintaining your architectural and cultural tradition of building this Mahamandir as a traditional stone temple of millions of pieces of handcraft, limestone, and marble is a powerful witness to your insistence on maintaining what is important and internal and eternal to your tradition. And translating it and conveying it to the modern world in the here and now. Totally agree. We have a Mandir here by the Swaminarayans in Atlanta and it's beautiful. I haven't been there yet, but I plan to, but I've been outside it. I've driven past it a few times, but I've been to the BAPS Mandir in Neasden in the UK. Very beautiful. But I've seen pictures of, the Mandir that they're talking about New Jersey, and it's pretty epic. I know today that, on February 14th, they had the grand opening of the akshardham in Abu Dhabi, which I think is again an amazing thing and the Prime Minister of India inaugurated it. So yes, absolutely agree that they've created beautiful, they do create beautiful temples that still have the beauty of the ancient, I must say, I really like what they do there. I also pray in the spirit of harmony that the Swami who spoke earlier talked about and enhanced that the positive relations that we nurture and build between the Muslim and Hindu faith communities here in the United States will serve to improve Hindu-Muslim relationships throughout the world, and especially in India. May our work together and cooperation together help such harmonious aims and may the one God we both worship help you and help us in attaining this shared objective and enhancing the future relationship and cooperation between our faith communities. Amen and I bless you all in the name of God. Peace be upon you as-salamu, alaykum. That was a short one, but pretty impactful in the sense that you can see from there it was about harmonizing, but the very beginning was completely Advaita. Vedanta. I don't think it's actually aligned to the Sampradaya of Swaminarayan, but regardless if it, if it's truly is about interfaith harmony, one, there has to be interfaith, harmonious relationships within the Sampradayas in Vedanta. So whether that's Advaita, Vedanta, Vishishtha Advaita, or Dvaita, or any other sampradaya that is out there. That's one thing that should be understood here. The other aspect that I find amazing is he really understands. And has done his homework on what the similarities are. We can always look at differences and, critique and, and it can become close enough to, towards hatred and, really horrible kind of conversations and discussions and debates where it can become condescending and ridiculous really. We only have to have a look at some of the debates that we can find on YouTube where it has gone down that route. And you can just see the obnoxiousness, when we try to defend certain faiths and when we try to defend what we believe in. But what I really like here is that it's about harmony. It's about togetherness. It's about being connected. It's about being one. It's about seeing and maintaining those relationships throughout the years, and not only just throughout the years and here and now, but to make sure that they are strong and that we see what unites us more than what divides us. Although these messages, I don't think people like, I think, you know, if you wanna be popular on Twitter or X or on social media, it's best to be negative and best to hate. But actually, if we had more voices that looked to unite and say, okay, yeah, there are specific philosophical differences, but there's this, that's common and we can agree upon this. Yes. we do agree that both, or all religions should respect each other and ensure that we live harmoniously with compassion, with peace and most of all, that we are calm and collected when we communicate with each other. So I absolutely agree and I loved what the Sufi Imam said. I think it was on point and it shows the oneness of what God is. Now I know in Advaita we say that it's basically there's only really Nirgum Brahman. Saguna brahman in the end is, you know, a reflection, but. to be fair, it's the attributes that connects us in the very beginning. It makes sense to have faith towards something that has attributes, that is compassionate, that is kind, that is loving, and having that Bhakti that you know, that devotion is essential. And without that devotion, the jnana element of Nirguna doesn't settle as easy, if we ignore the Bhakti side and. I'm a strong believer that Bhakti matters more than anything. Bhakti is more important. Bhakti is the thing that binds knowledge and devotion together, and it goes hand in hand. You also need to have Jnana with devotion, knowledge with devotion, so. That's one thing I wanted to just address, and ultimately he mentions Sat-Chit-Ananda. That's the ultimate understanding. That is what Nirgum Brahman is. So, Sat meaning existence, Chit meaning consciousness, and Ananda meaning bliss, essentially. That is what we are. The only thing that he didn't mention, which is the most important aspect of all of this, is that there is no real separation between us and God. In fact, we will go far to say that there is only God and what we are, are mere kind of waves in that ocean. It's still water, it's still the same essence. The essence remains the same, but we are essentially just water. We are still essentially the ocean. So. Really, really great video. I really enjoyed, reacting to this, responding to it, giving my final thoughts and essentially, what we have to understand here now, what I would like to see more of on social media. And I have reached out to different sampradayas to communicate and have conversations. And the reason for that is because I want us to get along. I want us to converse with each other, see what is similar, and just have a nice chat instead of, you know, doing this thing where I found, when I used to do TikTok lives, it was about me defending Hinduism, or specifically Advaita Vedanta. But really it should be about us connecting but yeah, really great video. I hope you liked it. Let me know if there's any more videos you want me to react to and I shall see you again very soon. Thank you for watching. Take care. Namaste.