Religions, by definition, disagree as to the truth - a reality that cannot be overcome by demanding that one or the other faith repudiate its claim to truth.
One point of difference between Hinduism and other religions is that in Hinduism we pass from truth to truth-from a lower truth to a higher truth-and never from error to truth.
Having been brought up with a definition of faith as adherence to a set of beliefs, I have more and more begun to turn instead toward a definition of faith as openness to truth, whatever truth may turn out to be.
All religions have some truth in them, but none has the whole truth; all are created in time and finally decline and perish. Mahomed himself never pretended that the Koran was the last message of God and there would be no other. God and Truth outlast these religions and manifest themselves anew in whatever way or form the Divine Wisdom chooses.
If we maintain the open-mindedness of children, we challenge fixed ideas and established structures, including our own. We listen to people in other denominations and religions. We don't find demons in those with whom we disagree. We don't cozy up to people who mouth our jargon. If we are open, we rarely resort to either-or: either creation or evolution, liberty or law, sacred or secular, Beethoven or Madonna. We focus on both-and, fully aware that God's truth cannot be imprisoned in a small definition.
Scientific method is the way to truth, but it affords, even in
principle, no unique definition of truth. Any so-called pragmatic
definition of truth is doomed to failure equally.
Eyes blinded by the fog of things cannot see truth. Ears deafened by the din of things cannot hear truth. Brains bewildered by the whirl of things cannot think truth. Hearts deadened by the weight of things cannot feel truth. Throats choked by the dust of things cannot speak truth.
A truly religious man should think that other religions also have many paths leading to the truth.
One should always maintain an attitude of respect towards other religions. Dispute not, as you rest firmly on your own faith and opinion, allow others also equal liberty to stand by their own faith and opinion.
Truth is truth, not the explanations of Truth. Truth is a living, moving process. Truth is constantly undulating and vibrating. You can become one with the Truth, but you cannot adequately explain it.
Truth is always stranger than fiction. We craft fiction to match our sense of how things ought to be, but truth cannot be crafted. Truth is, and truth has a way of astonishing us to our knees. Reminding us, that the universe does not exist to fulfill our expectations. Because we are imperfect beings who are self-blinded to the truth of the world’s stunning complexity, we shave reality to paper thin theories and ideologies that we can easily grasp – and we call them truths. But the truth of a sea in all it’s immensity cannot be embodied in one tidewashed pebble.
I wish I could be honest and true, but truth as I see it is not something abstract, a pious generality---It is justice at work, righteous, demanding, disciplined, sincere and unswerving; otherwise, it is not, it cannot be truth at all.
Since faith rests upon infallible truth, and since the contrary of a truth can never be demonstrated, it is clear that the arguments brought against faith cannot be demonstrations, but are difficulties that can be answered.
Belief, as I use the word here, is the insistence that the truth is what one would "lief" or wish it to be. The believer will open his mind to the truth on condition that it fits in with his preconceived ideas and wishes. Faith, on the other hand, is an unreserved opening of the mind to the truth, whatever it may turn out to be. Faith has no preconceptions; it is a plunge into the unknown. Belief clings, but faith lets go.
There is faith in every serious doubt, namely, the faith in the truth as such, even if the only truth we can express is our lack of truth.
Christianity is not a series of truths in the plural, but rather truth spelled with a capital 'T.' Truth about total reality, not just about religious things.
Biblical Christianity is Truth concerning total reality - and the intellectual holding of that total Truth and then living in the light of that Truth.
Christianity does not claim to convey merely religious truth, but truth about all reality. This vision of reality is radically different from a secularist vision that wants Christianity to scuttle into the corner of the hearth by the coal shovel, conveniently out of the way of anything but private religious concerns
I cannot classify the other, for the other is, precisely, Unique, the singular Image which has miraculously come to correspond to the speciality of my desire. The other is the figure of my truth, and cannot be imprisoned in any stereotype (which is the truth of others).