Swami Chinmayananda – What Is Sanatana Dharma?

Devotee : “Swamiji, who is the founder of Christianity?”

Swami Chinmayananda : “Jesus”

Devotee : “Who is the founder of Islam?”

Swami Chinmayananda : “Mohammed”.

Devotee : “Who is the founder of Hinduism?”

Swami Chinmayananda : “……………..”

Devotee : “What Swamiji, your religion doesn’t have a founder?”

Swami Chinmayananda :

“There is no one particular founder for Hinduism as its not an outcome of one personality’s knowledge.

Let me put the same question to you. Who is the founder of Chemistry? Physics?

You cannot answer, because these are sciences which had contributions from plenty of scientists.

In Hinduism, our Rishis were the scientists”.

Devotee : “…”

Swami Chinmayananda :

“If you ask a Christian to give book on Christianity, he gives you Bible.

If you ask a Muslim to give book on Islam, he gives you Quran.

But if you ask me to give book on Hinduism, I will say, “Welcome to my Library!”

More precisely, it is सनातन धर्म (Sanatan Dharma) with no precise comparable term in English and that is why most of the world is unable to understand the concept. They need to learn some Sanskrit and some of the ancient history of Bharat to understand this.

Closest rough translation in English would be Eternal Character / Properties. It is neither Hindu nor religion. It is an ever evolving science of the character and properties of Universe including lessons for mankind on how to live a complete life aligned to the principles of Universe.

Hence, most of our ग्रंथ (granthas, NOT scriptures, closest translation “volumes”) like Vedas, Upanishads, Aranyaks, Brahmanas, have no author, for, the Rishis saw these, not as their creation, but revelations of nature through them, ever evolving.

They also do not have a date for they have evolved over millennia and keep evolving. Date is applied to static things or things with short duration. How does one apply dates to eternal and ever evolving.

And in this sense, every human on earth, irrespective of his/her belief or religion, whether they agree or not, is a Sanatani….

Be proud of being a Sanatani (eternal).

This is Sharanagathi…