WHAT IS HINDUISM?
An ancient and venerable analogy for this
understanding of the Divine is the analogy of an ocean. An
ocean is the source of all countless different life forms that
arise and dwell within it – all of which are formed from the
very substance of the ocean. Yet this does not mean that
the ocean itself and as a whole has the nature of any of the
life forms it gives birth to. It does not mean that the ocean
is one enormous God-fish for example. Yet that is just
what so many different schools of religious belief imply.
These schools of religion can be compared to different
types and schools of fish, each of which conceive their own
ultimate or divine source – the ocean – as just one great big
God-fish, albeit a fish of their own particular type of course
- a great God-shark for example. They disagree only on
what type of Great God-Fish the ocean is. Thus one
religion may, on this analogy declare the ocean to be a
Great God-Shark – but certainly not a Great God-
Swordfish.
Clearly an ocean, just because it is the source of all fish,
is not and need not be thought of as the ‘mother of all fish’
- a type of God-fish. Similarly however, though all beings
arise from and within a divine ocean of awareness, this
does not mean that this ocean, though the ‘mother of all
beings’ needs to be conceived of as a single supreme God-
being.