The supreme has a name, a face, and a preferred flower.
For most Hindus God is not an abstraction but a person — Vishnu, Shiva, or the Goddess — and each stream holds that its own is supreme and the others are lesser or dependent forms. The philosophical claim that they are all one is sincerely held and is not what is said inside the temple.
This is where the page has to be careful. The formula that all deities are forms of one God is genuinely held — Smartas make it doctrine through the panchayatana arrangement of five deities on one plate — but it is a theological position, not the water everyone swims in. A Srivaishnava does not regard Shiva as an equal alternative form of the supreme, and will say so; a Shakta holds that Shiva without Shakti is a corpse, which is a doctrinal claim and not a compliment. The polite English sentence that Hindus worship one God in many forms papers over sectarian arguments that filled centuries of Sanskrit polemic and occasionally produced riots. What softens it in daily life is that the same person will visit the Ganesha temple on the way to work, keep a Lakshmi print in the shop, and consider themselves a Shaiva without any sense of conflict.
The same ground, other faiths
claims that share this one's ideasSign in to open the first thread. Everything here is attributed.