Aim:
To understand the common thread that runs through the garland of world religions.
Introduction:
Unity of Faiths is not to do with the formation of one religion but is concerned with raising the awareness of the individual so that one
recognises the common thread that binds all religions. This can only be done initially through the understanding of interfaith and the experience
of interfaith. Begin first by understanding your own faith, and through your own faith find the common echo in other faiths.
Lord Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita states: "However man approaches me even so do I welcome them for the paths men take from every side are mine"
Quotations:
"Let the different faiths exist, let them flourish, let the glory of God be sung in all languages in a variety of tunes.
That should be the ideal. Respect the differences between the faiths and recognize them as valid so far as they do not extinguish the
flame of unity."
- Sri Sathya Sai Baba, The Embodiment of Love, page 215
"All the religions in the world are different pathways, different approaches to God. The aim of all of them is to link up and restore
affinity and rapport between ourselves and God. For this purpose, all religions prescribe disciplines, which help to restrian our passions, purify and refine our
impules and instincts, and direct the faculty of our reason to the Godward path and on the path benificial to ourselves and to the society at large. The mind,
which is the breading ground for selfishness, desires, attachments and ambitions, has to be cleansed and properly oriented. Religion thus is ment to
straighten and strengthen the mind, and to illumine the intellect."
- J.Jagadeesan, Unity of Faiths, page 55
"Mankind is one community, and so God sent (unto all sections of them) Prophets as bearers of good tidings and as warners and revealed therewith
the Scripture with the truth, that it might judge between mankind concerning that wherein they differed."
- The Holy Koran-2.213
Activities:
1. Discuss the above quotes, the idea of God and common features of various faiths.
2. Mini Project: To extract the fundamental teachings of ach faith. Each youth to research thair own faith plus another faith.
3. Discuss the mini projects to find the common eacho amongst all the various faiths.
4. Mini Projects to be created into a poster (A1). The common features of the faiths to be used creatively to bring the posters together.
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