I was in a hurry last night when I responded to your comment about Hillel the Elder's teaching, and I wanted to respond to the above, but ran out of time.

I'm quite pleased you're reading about Hinduism simply because it opens up "new avenues" beyond the basic teachings found in the Abrahamic religions. A very close friend of mine spent an entire summer in India on a study of Gandhi's effect on Hinduism that was sponsored by Eastern Michigan University. He came back amazed. Even though he's Catholic, the effect on him from Hindu teachings is very evident, and he has made presentations on Gandhi and Hinduism to various church groups.

As you have discovered, Hinduism is very far from being monolithic and, as a matter of fact, many prefer to simply define "Hinduism" as the "religion of the Indian people". There are so many different schools with variant teachings, which is considered all fine and dandy. As one who is a non-theist (no belief in a creator-god) that follows Buddhist dharma quite closely, I found out for the first time last year that there were and are Hindu schools that are non-theistic as well.

I have long considered Gandhi to be my mentor, and I still do, even though he was much more theistic than I. Let me highly recommend a book to you that I'm quite certain you'll enjoy: "The Essential Gandhi: An Anthology of His Writings On His Life, Work, and Ideas" edited by Louis Fischer. It arranges Gandhi's teachings by topic so, for example, if you want to see what he thought of other religions, just turn to that chapter and you can read what he wrote or spoke about that particular item. Excellent book!

Good luck with your research.

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"The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge."-- Einstein