All You Need to Know About Hinduism

THE CONCEPT OF GOD IN HINDUISM

noreply@blogger.com (Himalayas) — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 12:15:00 +0000

Trimurti

The earliest statement of the Nature of Reality occurs in the first book of the Rig-Veda: Ekam Sat-Viprah Bahudha Vadanti. “The ONE BEING, the wise diversely speak of.”

The tenth book of the Rig-Veda regards the highest conception of God both as the Impersonal and the Personal: The Nasadiya Sukta states that the Supreme Being is both the Unmanifest and the Manifest, Existence as well as Non-existence, the Supreme Indeterminable.

The Purusha-Sukta proclaims that all this Universe is God as the Supreme Person— the Purusha with thousands of heads, thousands of eyes, thousands of limbs in His Cosmic Body. He envelops the whole cosmos and transcends it to infinity.

The Narayana-Sukta exclaims that whatever is anywhere, visible or invisible, all this is pervaded by Narayana within and without.

The Hiranyagarbha-Sukta of the Rig-Veda declares that God manifested Himself in the beginning as the Creator of the Universe, encompassing all things, including everything within Himself, the collective totality, as it were, of the whole of creation, animating it as the Supreme Intelligence.

The Satarudriya or Rudra-Adhyaya of the Yajur-Veda identifies all things, the high and the low, the moving and the unmoving, the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly, nay, every conceivable thing, with the all-pervading Siva or Rudra as the Supreme God.

The Isavasya Upanishad says that the whole Universe is pervaded by Isvara or God, who is both within and without it. He is the moving and the unmoving, He is far and near, He is within all these and without all these.

Brahama

The Kena Upanishad says that the Supreme Reality is beyond the perception of the senses and the mind because the senses and the mind can visualise and conceive only the objects, while Reality is the Supreme Subject, the very precondition of all sensation, thinking, understanding, etc. No one can behold God because He is the beholder of all things.

The Kathopanishad has it that God is the Root of this Tree of world existence. The realisation of God is regarded as the Supreme blessedness or Shreyas, as apart from Preyas or temporal experience of satisfaction.

The Prasna Upanishad says that God is the Supreme Prajapati or Creator, in whom are blended both the matter and energy of the Universe. God is symbolised in Pranava, or Omkara.

The Mundaka Upanishad gives the image of the Supreme Being as the One Ocean into which all the rivers of individual existence enter and with which they become one, as their final goal.

The Mandukya Upanishad regards the Supreme Being as the Turiya, or the Transcendent Consciousness, beyond the stales of waking, dreaming and deep sleep.

The Taittiriya Upanishad regards the Reality as the Atman, or the Self, beyond the physical, vital, mental, intellectual and causal aspects (sheaths) of the personality. It also identifies this Atman with the Supreme Absolute, or Brahman.

The Aitareya Upanishad states that the Supreme Atman has manifested itself as the objective Universe from the one side and the subjective individuals on the other side, in which process, factors which are effects of God’s creation become causes of individual’s perception, by a reversal of the process.

The Chhandogya Upanishad says that all this Universe is Brahman Manifest in all its states of manifestation. It regards objects as really aspects of the one Subject known as the Vaishvanara-Atman. It also holds that the Supreme Being is the Infinite, or Bhuma, in which one sees nothing else, hears nothing else, and understands nothing else except the Self as the only, existence.

Vishnu

In the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad we are told that the Supreme Being is Pure Consciousness, in which subjects and objects merge together in a state of Universality.

The Supreme Being knew only Itself as ‘I-Am’, inclusive of everything. As He is the Knower of all things, no one can know Him, except as ‘He Is’.

The Svetasvatara Upanishad says, ‘Thou art the Woman’, ‘Thou art the Man’, ‘Thou art Girl’, ‘Thou art Boy’, ‘Thou deceivest us as the old man tottering with the stick’, ‘Thou movest everywhere, in the form of everything, in all directions’, ‘Thou art the dark-blue Butterfly, and the Green Parrot with red eyes’, ‘Thou art the thunder cloud, the Seasons and the Oceans’, ‘Thou art without beginning and beyond all time and space’, ‘Thou art That from which all the Universes are born’. ‘That alone is Fire. That is the Sun. That is Air, That is the Moon, That is also the starry firmament, That is the waters, That is Prajapati, That is Brahman.’

That Divine Being, who, though Himself formless, gives rise to various forms in different ways with the help of His Supreme Power for His own inscrutable purpose, and Who dissolves the whole Universe in Himself in the end—may He endow us with pure understanding.

He is the Great Being who shines effulgent like the Sun, beyond all darkness. Knowing Him alone one crosses beyond death. There is no other way of going over there.

The One God, Creator of the heaven and earth, is possessed of all eyes, all faces, all hands, and all feet in this Universe. It is He who inspires all to do their respective functions, as if fanning their fire into flames of movement.

Manu says in his Smriti: In the beginning, all this existence was one Undifferentiated Mass of Unmanifestedness, unknown, indefinable, unarguable and unknown in every way. From this Supreme Condition arose the Universe of name and form, through the medium of the Self-existent Creator, Swayambhu.

The Mahabharata says that Narayana alone was in the beginning, who was the prius of the creative, preservative, and destructive principles, the Trinity known as Brahma, Vishnu and Siva—the Supreme Hari, multi-headed, multi-eyed, multi-footed, multiarmed, multi-limbed. This was the Supreme Seed of all creation, subtler than the subtlest, greater than the greatest, larger than the largest, and more magnificent than even the best of all things, more powerful, than even the wind and all the gods, more resplendent than the Sun and the Moon, and more internal than even the mind and the intellect. He is the Creator, the Father Supreme.

The Bhagavadgita in the Mahabharata, says: The Supreme Brahman is beyond existence and non-existence. It has hands and feet everywhere, heads, mouths, eyes everywhere, ears everywhere, and it exists enveloping everything. Undivided, it appears as divided among beings; attributeless, it appears to have attributes in association with things. It is the Light of all lights, beyond all darkness, and is situated in the hearts of all beings.

Shiva

He is the sacrifice, He is the oblation, He is the performer thereof, He is the recitation or the chant, He is the sacred fire, He is what is offered into it. He is the father, the mother, the grandfather, the support, the One knowable Thing, He is the three Vedas, the Goal of all beings, the Protector, the Reality, the Witness, the Repository, the Refuge, the Friend, the beginning, the middle and the end of all things. He is immortality and death, existence as well as non-existence. He is the Visvarupa, the Cosmic Form, blazing like fire and consuming all things.

According to the Bhagavata and the Mahabharata, God especially manifested Himself as Bhagavan Sri Krishna, who is regarded as the foremost of the divine Incarnations, in whose personality the Supreme Being is fully focussed and manifest.

Srimad Bhagavata says: He is Brahman (the Absolute), Paramatman (God), Bhagavan (the Incarnation).

According to the Pancharatra Agama and the Vaishnava theology, God has five forms: the Para or the Transcendent, Antaryamin or the Immanent, Vyuha or the Collective (known as Vasudeva, Sankarshana, Pradyumna and Aniruddha), Vibhava or the Incarnation, and Archa or the symbolic form of daily worship.

According to Saiva tradition, God is Pati, the Lord who controls the individuals known as Pasu, with His Power known as Pasa.

According to the Sakta tradition, God is the Divine Universal Mother of all things, Adi-sakti, or the original Creative Power, manifesting Herself as Kriya-Sakti or Durga, Ichha-Sakti or Lakshmi, and Jnana-Sakti or Sarasvati. But the Supreme Mother is beyond all these forms. She is One, alone, without a second.

According to the Bhakti tradition, God is the Supreme Object of Love, in respect of Whom love is evinced as in respect of one’s father, mother, friend, son, master, or one’s own beloved, in the five forms of affection, known as Shanta, Sakhya, Vatsalya, Dasya and Madhurya.

To the Vaishnavas, God is in Vaikuntha as Vishnu. To the Saivas, God is in Kailasa as Siva, or Rudra. To the Saktas, God is in Manidvipa, as the Supreme Sakti or the Divine Mother. To the Ganapatyas, God is Ganesa, or Ganapati. To the Sauras, God is Surya, the Sun. To the Kaumaras, God is Kumara, or Skanda.

To the saints like Tulasidas, God is Rama; to those like Surdas, He is Krishna. To those like Kabirdas, He is the Impersonal, Attributeless One, known by various names for purposes of worship and meditation.

All the Vaishnava saints worship Him as either Rama or Krishna, Narayana or Vishnu. The Saiva saints worship Him as Paramasiva. The Saktas worship Him as Adisakti. The philosopher-saints worship Him as Brahman, the Absolute, as Isvara, Hiranyagarbha, and Virat or the Cosmic Being.

The Virat-Saivas worship God as Siva, especially manifest as the Linga (symbolised in the rounded sacred stone which they wear round their necks).

The symbol of Vishnu is the Saligrama, the symbol of Siva is the Linga, and the symbol of Devi is the Yantra (sometimes, a Mantra).

According to the Nyaya and Vaiseshika schools, God is the instrumental cause of creation, like a potter fashioning a pot of clay, but not the material cause of creation.

The Samkhya school holds that there are only two Primary Principles, Purusha and Prakriti, and creation is only a manifestation or evolution of the constituents of Prakriti due to the action of Purusha’s consciousness. There is no other God than these two Principles.

The Yoga school of Patanjali accepts God’s existence as a Special Purusha free from all afflictions, Karma the effects of Karmas and impressions or potencies of a binding nature. But this Purusha, known as Isvara, according to Patanjali’s Yoga System, is not the creator of the world, but a Witness thereof. Nor is He the goal of the aspirations of the Jivas or individuals.

The Yogavasishtha defines Reality as the Consciousness which is between and transcends the subjective and objective aspects in perception and cognition, etc. Consciousness is the Absolute, Brahman, the only existence, of which the world is only an appearance.

The Brahmasutra states that God is That from Whom this Universe proceeds, in Whom it subsists, and to Whom, in the end, it returns.

Kalidasa, in his Raghuvamsa and Kumarasambhava, points out that God is the Supreme Being, is prior to the forms of Brahma, Vishnu and Siva, who are three aspects or phases of God, and that Brahma, Vishnu and Siva, being three forms of one and the same Reality, are equal to one another in every respect, without inferiority or superiority among them.

Bhartrihari prays to that Infinite Consciousness, which is Peaceful Effulgence, which is undifferentiated by the interference of space, time and causal relation, etc., and whose essence is Self-Experience alone.

Madhusudana Sarasvati blends Advaita Vedanta and Bhakti-Rasa, and he is the author of the most polemical and authoritative Advaita text, known as the ‘Advaitasiddhi’, and of an unparalleled compendium of the various processes and stages of devotion to God, known as ‘Bhaktirasayana’. His commentary on the Bhagavadgita is a monument of a fusion of knowledge of the Impersonal Absolute with devotion to the Personal God.

Religions are founded on a metaphysical rock-bottom. There is a philosophical import behind every ethical canon.

Generally, the tradition of worship of Deities in India is according to a sort of protocol which the devotees associate with the importance of the Deities. For instance, worshippers of a particular Deity, such as Ganesa, Siva, Vishnu, Surya or Skanda, will place their own Deity as the first in importance and every other Deity as secondary. There is another tradition according to which the order of worship places Ganesa as the first, to be worshipped on any occasion, and then Devi, Siva, Vishnu, Surya and Skanda. This order may get slightly changed in different circles of religious belief. But the discourses recorded in this book do not follow any of these patterns but a chronological arrangement according to the festivals that come one after the other, seriatim, during the course of the calendar of the year, that is, from the beginning of the year to the end of the year. The functions and festivals repeat themselves every year on specific days or dates. Thus, the order in which the functions or the Deities of worship are mentioned here follow their calendar-wise chronology.

Time & Astronomy

noreply@blogger.com (Himalayas) — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 10:03:00 +0000

TIME AND ASTRONOMY IN HINDUISM

Time in South Asia is an ominous being, always-moving forward, stronger than any force. Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism all contain long accounts detailing cyclical time. The Hindu system is based on four main time cycles: yugas (periods of dharma), manvantaras (periods of man), kalpas (periods of the universe), and lives of Brahma (periods of the supreme universe). The Buddhist notion of time is based on a similar structure of antarakalpas, asankhyeyakalpas, and mahakalpas. Slightly different from these two are the Jainist idea of a wheel of time; with each spoke marking a period of increasing or decreasing happiness. The amounts of time described by these systems are vast, from periods as short as ten years to oceans of time lasting billions of years. Very precise calculations are given in the texts to find these durations.

The main focus of this paper is the cyclical time of Hinduism. Specifically, the calculations needed to find the durations of the different levels of ages. By comparing the numbers for different levels, it is possible to draw conclusions on how they are related to each other during their development. Once the lengths of these different ages are calculated, it is then possible to find how much time has elapsed within the given system. This can be done by finding the starting point of a yuga using astronomy from the Gupta period. Lastly, once all these calculations are made, an interesting observation can be made by comparing these numbers to that of modern science. The first step in this is exploring the core system of time.

The Hindu system of time is very detailed and contains many levels. What will be discussed in this paper are mainly the Puranic concepts, specifically what is described in the Vishnu Purana.

Twelve thousand divine years, each composed of (three hundred and sixty) such days, constitute the period of the four Yugas, or ages. They are thus distributed: the Krta age has four thousand; the Treta three thousand; the Dvapara two thousand; and the Kali age one thousand: so those acquainted with antiquity have declared. The period that precedes a Yuga is called a Sandhya, and it is of as many hundred years as there are thousands in the Yuga.

Time is divided into four different yugas (ages). The names of these yugas come from a dice game popular in the Vedic period. These yugas are known as the

(4) Krta Yuga,

(3) Treta Yuga,

(2) Dvapara Yuga, and

(1) Kali Yuga.

The Krta Yuga is named after the best roll and the Kali Yuga after the worst. The current age of course is the worst, the Kali Yuga. The length of each yuga is based on its dice roll. In other words, the lengths of the Krta, Treta, Dvapara, and Kali Yugas are in the ratio 4:3:2:1. Each yuga contains a small time period before and after the yuga known as sandhi. These periods are also in the ratio of 4:3:2:1.

Years will now be applied to these ratios. Traditionally the Kali Yuga is 1,000 years plus two sandhi periods of 100 years each, giving an age of 1,200 years. Applying the 4:3:2:1 ratio, the lengths of each yuga are 4,800 (KÎta), 3,600 (Treta), 2,400 (Dvapara), and 1,200 (Kali). The four yugas together make a mahayuga (great age). The length of the mahayuga is 12,000 years. For reasons discussed later, it was decided that these years are not mortal years, but divine years. A divine year or a year of the gods is 360 mortal years. So the above numbers must by multiplied by 360. This produces yugas of the lengths 1,728,000 (KÎta), 1,296,000 (Treta), 864,000 (Dvapara), 432,000 (Kali) and a mahayuga of 4,320,000 years. These numbers are summarized in the table below.

		Divine Years		Mortal Years
Yuga	Life Span	Length Sandhi	Total	Length Sandhi Total
KÎta	400	4,000 400	4,800	1,440,000 144,000 1,728,000
Treta	300	3,000 300	3,600	1,080,000 108,000 1,296,000
Dvapara	200	2,000 200	2,400	720,000 72,000 864,000
Kali	100	1,000 100	1,200	360,000 36,000 432,000

Mahayuga 12,000 Mahayuga 4,320,000

It is important to take a step back and note the importance of several numbers. The first is the yuga ratio of 4:3:2:1. If this ratio is used, a mahayuga will have a length of 10 (4+3+2+1) in respect to the duration of the Kali Yuga. This can be seen as symbolic because the number 10 is often used to represent perfection. The length ofthe mahayuga in divine years is also interesting, 12,000. Twelve is often a desired number because it represents the number of months in a year.

Curious is the use of 360 for the length of the year. During the late Vedic period, it was known that the solar year had a length of 365 and a fraction. This can be seen in the Krsna Yajurveda: Taittiriya Samhita sections 7.2.6 and 7.1.10. The latter mentioning, “5 days more were required over the Savana year of 360 days to complete the seasons, adding that 4 days are too short and 6 days too long.^"

Of great importance is the number 432. It can be reached in a number of ways. The simplest is 108 x 4. This begs the question, why is 108 significant? It is an expanded version of 18, which is another lucky number. Examples of the use of 18 are the 18 chapters in the Mahabhaata and that Krsna lives for 36 (18 x 2) years after Parksit is born. 108 can also be seen as:

_∏ _iⁱ

i=1

For n = 3, we get 1¹ x 2² x 3³ = 108. There are also 108 beads on prayer necklace. Another interesting interpretation of 432 involves the use of an alternate numerical base. The Babylonians used base-60 (also known as the sexagesimal system). Their use of base-60 is why there are 60 seconds to a minute and 60 minutes to an hour. In this system, 432,000 can be simply expressed at 2,0,0,0 (2 x 60³). It is also known as the period of the kings who reigned before the Flood.

The next level of time is the kalpa. While the yugas mark the rise and fall of dharma, the kalpas mark the creation and destruction of the worlds.⁸ It is said that 1,000 mahayugas form a kalpa (or a day of Brahma). A day of Brahma can also be reached through the use of manvantaras, as the following passage from the Visnu Purana illustrates:

Seven Rishis, certain (secondary) divinities, Indra, Manu, and the kings sons, are created and perish in one period; and the interval, called a Manvantara, is equal to seventy-one times the number of years contained in the four Yugas, with some additional years: this is the duration of Manu, the (attendant) divinities, and the rest, which is equal to 852,000 divine years, or to 306,720,000 years of mortal, independent of the additional period. Fourteen times this period constitutes a Brahma day.

A manvantara is period of Manu. Seventy-one mahayugas make up a manvantara. Fourteen manvantaras make up a kalpa. A simple multiplication shows a problem. Using this method, a kalpa contains 994 mahayugas (71 x 14). However, above it was noted that 1,000 mahaugas make up a kalpa. This is a difference of six mahayugas. To make up the difference, it is said that each manvantara contains one sandhi period equal in length to the Krta Yuga (1,728,000 years). In addition to this, another sandhi period (also equal in length to the KÎta Yuga) is added at the beginning of the kalpa. This is a total addition of fifteen Krta Yugas (15 x 4 x 432,000). In the method with no additional sandhi periods, the length of a kalpa is 4,294,080,000 years. Using the method with additional sandhi periods, the length of a kalpa is 4,320,000,000 years, which agrees with the previous calculations.

No additional sandhi
Mahayuga Length	4,320,000
Manvantara Length (mahayuga x 71)	306,720,000
Kalpa Length (manvantara x 14)	4,294,080,000

With additional sandhi
Mahayuga Length		4,320,000
Manvantara Length (mahayuga x 71 + KÎta Yuga)		308,448,000
Kalpa Length (manvantara x 14 + KÎta Yuga)		4,320,000,000

The addition of a sandhi period shows another example of two traditions meeting. There clearly was a tradition of kalpas being based on 1,000 mahayugas and a tradition of kalpas being based on 14 manvantaras. In an attempt to reconcile the differences between the two, the addition of a sandhi period was added.

The next level of time above the kalpa is lives of Brahma. One kalpa is a day of Brahma. A day and night for Brahma is therefore two kalpas. Brahma’s life is understood to last for 100 years. A life of Brahma must be 4,320,000 x 1000 x 2 x 360 x 100 or 3.1104 x 10¹⁴ or 311.04 trillion years.

It is interesting to note that a life of Brahma lasts 100 years. It is said that the lifespan of men varies according to the yuga. The life span is proportional to the dice roll of the yuga multiplied by 100 (which is also equal to the sandhi period of the yuga). According to this system, Brahma’s lifespan is as though he were living in a Kali Yuga (keeping in mind 100 years for him is still a vast ocean of time). Does this mean the gods are living in some sort of Kali state? I think that conclusion would be incorrect. In Vedic times, before the Puranic concepts of yugas developed, life spans of men were said to reach one hundred years.

For man has a life of a hundred (years)

It weighs a hundred (grains), for man has a life of a hundred (years), and a hundred energies¹²

Only a hundred autumns are before us, O gods, wherein you have allotted the aging of our bodies, wherein our sons become fathers

May I attain a hundred winters, O Rudra, through the most comforting remedies given by you!

It can therefore be assumed that if men live for 100 of their years, Brahma would live for 100 of his. I believe that, as the Puranic ideas of time were forming and the idea of a kalpa being a day of Brahma was created, it simply adopted the Vedic idea of Brahma living 100 years. This is another perfect example of tracing how different myths develop and where they meet.We now know the lengths of yugas (durations of dharma), manvantaras (periods of manu), and kalpas (periods of partial destruction and creation), lives of Brahma (periods of total destruction and creation). It would be interesting to find out where we are in the scheme of things. Because these numbers are so vast, of particular interest is to discover how much time is left until yuganta, which is the partial destruction at the end of a mahayuga and marks the coming of a new Krta Yuga. If we could date the start of this Kali Yuga, it would be trivial to find how long until yuganta. This is precisely what Gupta period astronomers did.

There are five main periods of Astronomy in India. They are:

(1) Vedic (lasting from ca. 1000 BCE to 400 BCE),
(2) Babylonian (lasting from ca. 400 BCE to 200 CE),
(3) Greco-Babylonian (lasting from ca. 200 CE to 400 CE),
(4) Greek (lasting from ca. 400 CE to 1600 CE) and
(5) Islamic (lasting from ca. 1600 CE to 1800).

Of particular interest to us are the Vedic, Greco-Babylonian, and Greek periods. The first provides astronomers a basis for their theories and the latter two coincide with the development of the Visnu Purana (fifth century CE) and the rise Gupta Empire (fourth century CE).

During the Vedic period, ideas were being formed which would be greatly exploited during the Gupta period. One such idea was the significance of the conjunction of planets. The following is a passage from the Jyotisa Vedanga:

Svar akramete somarkau yada sakaÑ savasavau

Syat tadadi yugam maghaÒ tapaÒ Úuklo ‘yanam hy udak

When the Sun and the Moon occupy the same region of the zodiac together with the asterism sravistha, at that time begins the yuga, and the (synodic) month of Magha, the (solar seasonal) month called Tapas, the bright fortnight (of the synodic month, here Magha), and their northward course (uttaram ayanam).

In this Vedic passage, only a simple conjunction of two planets, the Sun and the Moon are required to mark the start of a new yuga. A short discussion is necessary on the history of the term yuga. In the evolution of the term, there were four main stages

(1) early Vedic,
(2) middle Vedic,
(3) late Vedic and
(4) Puranic.

During the early Vedic period, the term yuga was originally used to mean one human lifespan. In the middle Vedic period, this idea was changed to being just a period of two, three, four, five or six years. As the late Vedic period approached, it became more common for the term yuga to be a “five-year, soli-lunar intercalation cycle.” So in the JyotiÛa Vedanga, the term yuga is referring to this five-year cycle, not the Krta, Treta, Dvapara, Kali, or mahayugas of the Puranas. However, this text does show a basis for later more complex ideas of conjunctions of planets marking beginnings of yugas.

The idea of conjunctions of planets being significant was very popular in the Mediterranean. This came down to India during the Greek period of influence (early fifth century) and mixed with the Vedic ideas described above. The old theory was heavily expanded upon. It was now said that the beginnings and ends of a kalpa are marked by a conjunction of the planets at the beginning of Aries. This was later simplified so that the beginnings and ends of a mahayuga are marked by a mean conjunction of the seven planets. The last such conjunction was at 6 AM on February 18, -3101 Julian (3102 BCE). This is believed to be that start of the current Kali Yuga.

Knowing the start of the Kali Yuga allows for some interesting calculations. The four that will be examined here are:

(1) the age of the current mahayuga / how long until yuganta,
(2) the age of the current manvantara,
(3) the age of the current day of Brahma, and
(4) the age of the life Brahma.

For the first set of calculations, I shall count the divine years as years of men. The Kali Yuga, including both sandhi periods, has a length of 1,200 years. This added to the start of the Kali Yuga, 3102 BCE, yields 1902 BCE. This marks

(1) yuganta,
(2) the end of the mahayuga and
(3) the start of the Krta Yuga.

In the early fifth century when Gupta period astronomers made these very same calculations, they must have discovered something very odd. According to these numbers, a Krta Yuga had started approximately twenty-three centuries prior to them. This clearly could not be the case because it was firmly established that “this” was the Kali Yuga.

Where could there be an error? The text cannot be incorrect and neither were the calculations so the only room for error was in the interpretation of the text. I propose that this was one of the reasons the use of divine years was popularized. Using divine years, the length of the Kali Yuga is 432,000, and this added to 3102 BCE yields 428,899 CE. Using this new interpretation, it was shown that they were not living in a new KÎta Yuga, but were still in just the sandhi period of the current Kali Yuga (the sandhi period lasts until 32,899 CE). Assuming that today is February 18, 2003, this Kali Yuga has an age of 5,104 years with 426,896 years remaining. While this is depressing because it shows there is a long way until the next KÎta Yuga, it was an easier number to believe because it proved yuganta had not taken place. Knowing that start of the Kali Yuga, it is possible to find the age of the mahayuga:

k = 432,000

Age of the mahayuga = (4 + 3 + 2) x k + 5104 = 9k + 5104 = 3,893,104 or approximately 3.9 million years

Knowing the age of the current mahayuga, it is simple to find the age of the current manvantara. Twenty-seven complete mahayugas have already taken place during the current Vaivasvata Manvantara. In addition to this is the partial mahayuga calculated above.

k = 432,000

Age of the Vaivasvata Manvantara = (27 x 10 x k) + (9k + 5104) = 279k + 5104 = 120,533,104 or approximately 120 million years

The next calculation will be to find the age of the current day of Brahma. Of the fourteen manvantaras that constitute a day of Brahma, we are in the Vaivasvata Manvantara (or the seventh manvantara). Of the Vaivasvata Manvantara, we are in the 28^th mahayuga. Of the current mahayuga, we are in the Kali Yuga. Of the current Kali

Yuga, 5,104 years have already passed. A simple addition of these numbers will provide the age of current day of Brahma:

k = 432,000

6 Manvantaras = 6 x 71 x 10 x k = 4260k

7 Manvantara Sandhis = 7 x 4 x k = 28k

27 Mahayugas = 27 x 10 x k = 270k

Krta Yuga + Treta Yuga + Dvapara Yuga = (4 + 3 + 2) x k = 9k

Current Day of Brahma = (4260 + 28 + 270 + 9) x k = 4,567k + 5104 = 1,972,949,104 or approximately 1.9 billion years

It is interesting to point out that the current day of Brahma, not including the Kali Yuga is 4,567 times the length of the Kali Yuga. As noted earlier, symbolic numbers occur often in these texts and this sequential sequence may be another example of such a number.

Our last calculation is to find our location in respect to Brahma’s life. It is said that one half of Brahma’s life has already passed. We are living in the first day (the Varaha Kalpa) of Brahma’s second fifty-year period:

k = 432,000

50 Years of Brahma = 2 x 10 x k x 1000 x 360 Days x 50 Years = 360,000,000k

Age of Brahma

= 50 Years of Brahma + Current Day of Brahma

= 360,000,000k + (4,567k + 5104)

= 360,004,567k + 5104

= 155,521,972,949,104 or approximately 155 trillion years

These are all very interesting numbers; they show the large cyclical timescales in which ancient Hindu philosophers and astronomers dealt. In Carl Sagan’s book, Cosmos, he writes:

[Hinduism] is the only religion in which the time scales correspond, no doubt by accident, to those of modern scientific cosmology. Its cycles run from our ordinary day and night to a day and night of Brahma, 8.64 billion years long, longer than the age of the Earth or the Sun and about half the time since the Big Bang. And there are much longer time scales still.

In this spirit I will now compare a few of the Hindu ages with modern science. The current mahayuga started around 4 million years ago. This means a yuganta (and with it natural catastrophes) had also taken place 4 million years ago. According to modern geology, a major Ice Age is said to have taken place around that same time. This is interesting but one must remember that the natural catastrophes involved with yuganta are ones found in India, such as heat, rain, floods, strong wind, and earthquakes, not extreme cold.

The manvantara corresponds to the age of man and as calculated, it started roughly 120 million years ago. This is in sharp contrast with popular science where it is generally accepted that modern man (Homo Sapiens) evolved 100 thousand years ago.

During a day of Brahma, he wakes up creates the universe and when he sleeps at night, the universe is dissolved. Therefore a day of Brahma equals the age of the universe. As calculated earlier, the current age of the day of Brahma is around 2 billion years. This is also off from popular science, which dates the start of the universe as 15 billion years ago.

The fourth calculation made, the age of Brahma has no clear counterpart. Before the Big Bang occurred, it is theorized by Carl Sagan that “all the matter and energy in the universe was concentrated at extremely high density – a kind of cosmic egg ... the entire universe, matter and energy and the space they fill occupied a very small volume.” Perhaps when our universe is in this egg it can be likened to when Brahma is asleep and when he wakes up, the egg is cracked open and the universe is created.

The point of these connections must be understood. It would be ridiculous to look at all these numbers and think they mean more than they do. Man was not created 120 million years ago, nor was the universe created 1.9 billion years ago. Then what is the significance of working out these numbers? By analyzing the numbers from different calculations, it is possible to find how the myths were formed and how they relate to each other. But more importantly, these calculations offer perspective. We believe we know everything. Our science tells us when monkeys became men, it tells us how all energy was created from a single point, and it tells us this with such great certainty. There are many careful equations and practices to find this information. But looking back at the ancient astronomers, their tools were incredibly precise as well. They must have felt with great certainty that their conclusions were correct because all the numbers supported them, yet all that they believed is now considered incorrect. Chapter 8, Verse 17 of the Bhagvadgita:

Sahasrayugaparyantam ahar yad Brahmano viduÒ Ratrim yugasahastrantaÑ te ‘horatravido janaÒ

Those who know the day of Brahma, Which is of duration of a thousand mahayugas And the night which is also of a thousand mahayugas They know day and night.

Perhaps knowing the day of Brahma does not mean knowledge of the durations of periods, but of the fact that time is constantly being cooked, and that whatever one may know now may not exist tomorrow.

Brahmanism & Early Hinduism

noreply@blogger.com (Himalayas) — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 10:34:00 +0000

The Aryans worshiped nature gods, which represented such things as rain, the ocean, and the sun. Their most important gods were Shiva, Indra, Varuna, and Surya. Indra was both the god of war and the storm god. Sacrifice to the gods was an important part of the Aryan religion, which we call Brahmanism. The priests, called Brahmans, were responsible for conducting the religious rituals correctly. If they failed to do so, the Aryans believed their gods would not answer their prayers. Then there might be floods, famine, disease, or other natural disasters. People paid the Brahmans to make these sacrifices and to conduct the rituals. Over time, the Brahmans came up with more and more rules about the sacrifices and rituals. Brahmans also taught the idea of an afterlife.

Over hundreds of years, the Aryans’ ideas of Brahmanism blended with the ideas of the people already living in the Indus Valley. These ideas formed a set of beliefs and practices known as Hinduism. Like the Aryans, Hindus (people who follow Hinduism) believed that people were born into a particular social class, or caste. They also believed in an afterlife. Unlike Aryans, however, Hindus believed in reincarnation. This meant that Hindus believed people in lower castes were being punished for sins they had committed in earlier lives. Hindus believed that if people accepted their position in life and lived correctly, they would be reborn in a higher caste in their next life. Hindus believed in many different gods, but the chief god was Brahman. The other gods were the different faces of Brahman. For example, Shiva was the face of Brahman the destroyer. Hindus believed Brahman’s major powers were to create, preserve, and destroy.

Mahatma Gandhi and Buddhism

noreply@blogger.com (Himalayas) — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 09:59:00 +0000

An Encounter with Buddhism

MAHATMA Gandhi considered religion, spirituality, morality, and ethics, in fact, all activities of life, whether personal or public, to be integrated into the search for self-realization. He said in the introduction to his Autobiography; “What I want to achieve... what I have been striving and pining to achieve for 30 years—is self-realization, to see God face to face, to attain Moksha.” In this search, he felt instinctively inspired by the life and teaching of Lord Buddha. He did not see Buddhism as a new religion but, historically, as the most daring effort made to reform and revitalize the sanatan Hindu tradition of India. He saw it as the most revolutionary attempt to propagate the doctrine of ahimsa, or nonviolence, in its widest sense.

His concept of Truth as God and ahimsa as a sense of identification with all creation, attained through self-purification, was in line with the teaching of Lord Buddha. He wrote at the end of his Autobiography; “... a perfect vision of Truth can only follow a complete realization of ahimsa... identification with everything that lives is impossible without selfpurification... God can never be realized by one who is not pure of heart.” Did not Siddhartha also say when quitting his family and palace:

This golden prison where my heart lives caged, To find truth, which henceforth I will seek, For all men’s sake, until truth be found. Since there is hope for man only in man, And none hath sought for this as I will seek, Who cast away my world to save the world.

The first two religious books that Gandhiji studied during his student days in London (1888–1891) were Sir Edwin Arnold’s English translation of the Bhagavad Gita—The Song Celestial (1885)—and The Light of Asia (1879)—which depicted the life and philosophy of Gautama Buddha. He writes in his Autobiography; “I read it [The Light of Asia] with even greater interest than I did the Bhagavad Gita. Once I had begun it, I could not leave off... My young mind tried to unify the teaching of the Gita, The Light of Asia, and the Sermon on the Mount. That renunciation was the highest form of religion appealed to me greatly.” Much later in India, while denying that his ‘philosophy’ was an indifferent mixture of Tolstoy and Buddha, he had written in 1925 that he owed much to Tolstoy and Buddha but he fancied that his philosophy represented the true meaning of the teaching of the Gita, and further that the source of his inspiration was of no consequence as long as he stood for unadulterated truth.

Hinduism and Buddhism

During his long formative period in South Africa (1893–1914), where he organized a struggle against racial discrimination, and evolved his theory and practice of satyagraha, he made his first statements in appreciation of Lord Buddha and his teachings. In an ‘open letter’ addressed to the Members of the Legislative Council and Assembly at Durban [1894], while asserting the greatness of India, he wrote; “Add to this the facts that India has produced the Buddha, whose life some consider the best and the holiest by a mortal, and to some second only to that lived by Jesus.” In Durban, he once upset his hostess when he said that Gautama’s compassion was extended to all living beings while one failed to notice this love in the life of Jesus. He repeated this conviction in a letter written on July 2, 1913: “It is difficult to say who was the greatest among Krishna, Rama, the Buddha, the Jesus, etc.... In point of character alone possibly the Buddha was the greatest. But who can say?”

Speaking in a lecture on ‘Hinduism’ in Johannesburg on March 4, 1905, he explained the indissoluble link between Hinduism and Buddhism. Gautama Buddha came into this world when Hinduism had become too rigid. He taught that animal sacrifice was despiritualizing and that toleration of all life was the highest form of love. Buddhism was to Hinduism what Protestantism was to Catholicism; a movement of reform. The jealousy of the Hindu priesthood having been aroused, Buddhism as a formal creed declined but its spirit remained in India and actuated every principle professed by the Hindus. Gandhiji reiterated this view later in his life.

Paying homage to the Buddha for his renunciation of worldly attachments, Gandhi wrote in the Indian Opinion on July 7, 1907, how in the sixth century B.C., Lord Buddha, after “suffering many privations, attained self-realization... and spread ideas of spiritual welfare among the people.”6 In letters written on January 28, 1909, July 19, 1913, and June 10, 1914, he praised how the Buddha had left his wife and parents and brought deliverance to them as well; and how they were admired by the world for this act of sacrifice and also how his own freedom from attachment with Kasturba (his wife) permitted him to serve her better. In a letter dated August 23, 1911, he praised his own state of voluntary poverty, as this was the state of the Buddha and the way to self-realization.

After returning to India in 1915, until his imprisonment in 1922, Mahatma Gandhi had led local satyagrahi in Champaran, Ahmedabad, and Kaira, an all-India movement against the Rowlatt Bills, and the noncooperation movement. During this period, his first public reference to the Buddha’s teachings was made in his speech at the Missionary Conference in Madras, given on February 14, 1916. He said that Hinduism was a mighty force because of its underlying swadeshi spirit and that it was erroneous to think that it had driven out Buddhism; it had in fact absorbed it. He repeated in a speech given on October 21, 1917 that Buddhism cherished the same ideals as Hinduism.

In a number of articles written during this period,9 he said that it was unmanly and against the Buddha’s teachings to be afraid to die because we are unable strike. Both the Buddha and Christ had taught us how to nonviolently resist what was wrong by direct action, taken with truth and love, against the arrogant priesthood, the hypocrites, and the Pharisees. The Buddha, “with a lamb on his shoulder,” did not spare the cruel Brahmins engaged in animal sacrifice, but he was “all love at heart.” Says Gandhiji, “Who am I in comparison with these? Even so I aspire to be their equal in love in this very life.” During an earlier visit to India in 1901, too he had spoken against “this cruel form of worship” to a friend in Calcutta but was told, “The sheep don’t feel anything.” Writes Gandhiji, “I thought of the story of Buddha but I also saw that the task was beyond my capacity.”

In a speech he gave on July 27, 1916, he said that had the Buddha and Christ not spent years in the wilderness preparing themselves for their mission, they would not be “what they are.” Again in his famous speech given at the Muir College Economic Society in Allahabad on December 22, 1916, he said that “the Buddha, Jesus, and other great religious leaders ... had deliberately embraced poverty,” and we would only go downhill if we make “materialistic craze as our goal.”

Practice of the Buddha’s Teachings

After his release from jail in 1924, Gandhiji delivered speeches on Buddha Jayanti at Bombay on May 18, 1924, and at Calcutta on May 7, 1925, in which he explained that his book-knowledge of Buddhism was confined to Sir Edwin Arnold’s The Light of Asia, which he had “devoured from page to page” and “with deep veneration,” and one or two other books. He said, “Many friends consider that I am expressing in my own life the teachings of Buddha. I accept their testimony... I am trying my level best to follow these teachings.” He emphasized the following points in those speeches:

(a) He drew “no distinction between the essential teachings of Hinduism and Buddhism.” The Buddha had “lived Hinduism in his own life.” The “blind Brahmins” had “rejected his reforms because they were selfish.” But the masses, who are “philosophers in action,” had recognized in the Buddha the true exponent of their own faith. And being himself one of the masses, he found that “Buddhism in nothing but Hinduism reduces to practice in terms of the masses.” Buddhism was not banished from India. Its every essential characteristic was translated into action in India much more perhaps than in countries that “nominally profess Buddhism.”

(b) The Buddha had taught Hinduism “not to take but to give life. True sacrifice was not of others but of self.” He made the Vedas a living word but “the priests clung to the letter and missed the spirit.”

(c) The reformation that the Buddha attempted has not yet had a fair trial. The Buddha taught us to “trust in the final triumph of truth and love.” He “lived what he taught.” “Each one of us should see how much of the Buddha’s message of mercy and piety we have translated into our lives.”

(d) The Buddha was not an atheist. Buddhism teaches humility and the masses approach God in all humility.

During the same period, in various other references also, he continued to insist that Buddhism was a “mighty reform in Hinduism. Buddhism rightly insisted on internal purity. Its appeal went straight to the heart. It broke down arrogant assumptions of superiority.” The Buddha renounced pleasures as they “become painful.” To have anything was a torture to him. He said that Buddhists were not atheists nor agnostics as we all may have different definitions of God: “God is that indefinable something which we all feel but which we do not know.”

In 1926, Gandhiji delivered a series of discourses on the Gita in the Sabarmati ashram in which he explained that there was no difference between the nirvana mentioned by Lord Buddha and the nirvana of the Gita. They referred to the same state. He related how once the Buddha had fainted while fasting and a woman placed a few drops of milk on his lips... “Did the milk rouse his appetite? No; on the contrary, he realized God soon after.” The Buddha’s nirvana was only “a seeming inertness,” not shunya [nothingness]. It is “perfect disinterestedness.” He had written in a letter earlier that he drew “no distinction between Buddhistic nirvana and the Brahama nirvana of Shankara,” as he believed in the complete annihilation of one’s individually as being “an absolute condition of perfect joya and peace.”

He wrote on January 4, 1926 that he wanted to propagate ahimsa as a religion of the brave kshatriyas, as the Buddha, Mahavira, Rama, and Krishna, all votaries of ahimsa, were kshatriyas. “Ahimsa is the extreme limit of forgiveness. But forgiveness is the quality of the brave. Ahimsa is impossible without fearlessness.” Soon after returning from Ceylon, he said at Sabarmati that forgiveness was a quality of the soul, and that the Buddha had asked us to “conquer anger by non-anger.” And nonanger meant “the supreme virtue of charity or love.”

As time passed, Gandhiji tended to link even more issues with the teaching of Lord Buddha. During his Presidency of the Belgaum Congress in December 1924, he had unequivocally responded to a Ceylonese deputation’s plea that possession of the historic Buddha Gaya temple should be vested in the Buddhists and called the reported animal sacrifice in it a “sacrilege.” In a speech at Gaya, he said, if untouchability was not removed, the Hindu society, and to him it included Buddhists, might all perish altogether. Again, the contrast between the palaces built in New Delhi for wealthy people and the miserable huts of the laborers reminded him of the shock received by Gautama Buddha when he saw such miseries and which also transformed his life and the fortunes of the world.

Buddhism and the World Religions
During his two-week visit to Ceylon in November 1927, he addressed a large number of Buddhist, Hindu, and Christian groups, as well as other public forums. In every speech he referred to the Buddha’s life and teaching. The main points covered by him in those speeches are summarized below:

(a) The Great Master had taught the Right Path. Its first maxim is truth, and the second “to love all that lives,” and it teaches “personal purity of life.” This is what we have to learn, even in a college.

(b) As for the return of the Buddha Gaya temple to Buddhists, he had done everything humanly possible but there were several obstacles preventing this from happening.

(c) Some people had “accused” him of “being a follower of the Buddha” and of “spreading Buddhistic teachings under the guise of sanatan Hinduism.” But he felt proud of it and he owed much to the inspiration he had derived from the Buddha’s life.

(d) The Buddha’s teaching formed an integral part of Hinduism, which “owes on eternal debt of gratitude to that great teacher,” who was “one of the greatest Hindu reformers,” a “Hindu of Hindus.” He never rejected Hinduism but broadened its base. He made some of the words of the Vedas yield meanings more relevant to the age. What Hinduism did not assimilate was not an essential part of his teaching. In fact, his teaching was “not assimilated in its fullness” outside of India.

(e) For a complete study of Buddhism they should study Sanskrit scriptures and observe the five yamas [vows], viz., celibacy, truth, ahimsa, non-stealing, and non-possession.

(f) The Buddha, Mohamed, and Jesus were Asiatic. All that is permanent in Hindu culture is also found in their teachings. If we search for the greatest common measure in all great faiths, we come to the very simple factor, viz., “to be truthful and nonviolent.”

(g) The contention that the Buddha did not believe in God “contradicts the very central fact of the Buddha’s teaching.” He justly rejected the “base things,” like animal sacrifice being done in the name of God. He “redeclared the eternal and unalterable existence of the moral government of this universe... the law was God himself.” From this also arose the confusion about the meaning of nirvana. It is the “extinction of all that is base in us... vicious in us... corrupt and corruptible in us.” It is not the “dead peace of the grave” but the “living happiness of a soul.”

(h) The Buddha had an “exacting regard for all life, be it ever so low.” But as Buddhism traveled abroad, “sacredness of animal life” had not that sense, as if we could avoid the effects of our own acts. “It is an arrogant assumption to say that human beings are lords and masters of lower creation. On the contrary, being endowed with greater things in life, they are trustees of the lower animal kingdom.” Further, “If animals could not be sacrificed to the gods above, how could they be sacrificed to the epicure in us?” The Buddha wanted us to sacrifice ourselves, our lust and worldly ambition, and not other life.

(i) “The Buddha renounced every worldly happiness, because he wanted to share with the whole world his happiness, which was to be had by men who sacrificed and suffered in search of truth. A time is coming when those who are in the mad rush today of multiplying their wants, vainly thinking that they add to the real substance, real knowledge of the world, will retrace their steps and say: What have we done?”

(j) The Buddha’s spirit lies in treating life not as “a bundle of enjoyments and privileges, but a bundle of duties and services.” That is what separates man from the beast. Hence, the ‘drinking’ habit was “totally against the spirit of the Buddha.”

(k) Untouchability, being practiced in Ceylon also, was “wholly against the spirit of the Buddha,” who had “abolished every distinction of superiority and inferiority.”

(l) To render something unto the Buddha for his “great message of mercy,” they must wear khadi.

Buddhism and Nonviolence

Gandhiji visited Burma [Myanmar], another Buddhist country, in March 1929, and spoke at a number of public and religious meetings in which he emphasized the following points:

(a) He felt honored when Buddhists in Ceylon, Burma, China, and Japan claimed him as their own, because “Buddhism is to Hinduism what Protestantism is to Roman Catholicism, only in a much stronger light.”

(b) Speaking in a pagoda he said he was glad that the Phoongys [Buddhist monks] were leading the political movement in Burma, but they must remain “pure beyond suspicion” and combine with the movement “great wisdom and great ability,” and may Lord Buddha’s spirit guide everyone in the movement.

(c) They had “one of the greatest truths that the world can ever have uttered by one of the greatest teachers of mankind, viz. ahimsa.” They should put it to practice in every act of life. Used wisely, it could become their “own saving and the saving of mankind.” It was the most active force in the world. “It radiates life and light and peace and happiness.” But it appeared that this message had “only touched but the surface of the heart of Burma.” For example, “when the law of ahimsa reigns supreme, there should be no jealously, no unworthy ambition. No crime.” But the incidence of murder was common in Burma. India perhaps had taken the Buddha’s message more fully.

(d) The Buddha undertook tapasya, i.e., penance, to overcome the oppression, injustice, and darkness around him. The priests sitting there must also lead others through penance, bringing out the spirit of the scriptures. Then they would realize that taking animal life, smoking, drinking, and being afraid are inconsistent with the Buddha’s doctrine of love.

(e) Those following the Buddha’s teaching could not afford to pass a single moment in idleness.

Later, he could not comprehend how the followers of Buddha could give themselves up to savagery during the riots in Burma in 1938, in which even the priests took an active part. Similarly, when the Burmese leader Gen. U Aung San and his comrades were assassinated in 1947, he considered it “a great tragedy.” He said that the terrorists who committed such political murders, considered the victims to be criminals. But one who thus took the law into his hands, “commits violence against the people.” He enunciated a vital principle of public life: “Only an elected Assembly can dispense with the obligation to be nonviolent.”

After returning from Burma, Gandhiji was again thrown into the hectic arena of politics, the campaign against untouchability, and a series of satyagrahi and imprisonments. After his release in 1944 and until his assassination, he was ever more deeply involved in the post-war political and communal problems in the country. But even during these periods, he continued to make frequent references to the Buddha and his teachings. In 1929, he had written and said that prophets such as the Buddha had preserved their religion “by breaking down bad traditions.” They had stood alone but had “living faith in themselves and their God.” He reiterated this statement in 1932 and said that they had stood against the world but “were humanity incarnate. To have such humility, one must have faith in oneself and in God.” He explained to N.K. Bose in 1934 that in the teaching of prophets like the Buddha, there was a permanent portion and an impermanent one, the latter being suited to the needs of their time. As we try to sustain this latter portion, we find so much distortion in religious practice today.

While propagating the virtue of ‘bread labor’ or manual work, Gandhiji said that Jesus was a carpenter and the Buddha lived on charity— however, “a roving ascetic” also had a lot of manual work to do. He himself preferred the Gita’s gospel of work to that of contemplation and was “never attracted by the idea of complete renunciation,” but said that there “may be some like the Buddha whose mere thoughts would influence the world.”

The Efficacy of Prayer

He was a firm believer in the efficacy of ‘prayer.’ He said that the Buddha, Jesus, and Mohamed had found illumination through prayer and could not possibly live without it. In a dialogue with Charles Fabri, a Buddhist, who thought that Buddhism had taught him that some spirits could do without belief in God, Gandhiji had said; “But Buddhism is one long prayer.” Those who could not pray should be humble and not limit “the real Buddha.” Skepticism and intellectual conception do not help in critical periods of life. But “to know the meaning of God or prayer,” one must “reduce oneself to a cipher.” In difficult times when spiritual conception alone helps, then we have a glimpse of God. “That is the prayer.” Buddha, Jesus, and Mohamed had also fasted to see God face to face.

A Japanese sadhu who came in 1935 to Gandhiji’s Wardha ashram, had stayed on and the evening prayer always commenced with his mantra ‘nam myo ho renge kyo,’ meaning “I bow to the Buddha, the giver of true religion.” When World War II broke out and the police were taking him away, he recited this mantra and left his drum with Gandhiji. Since then, morning and evening prayers at Sevagram ashram would start with the same mantra as a reminder of Sadhu Keshav’s “purity and single-eyed devotion.”

Gandhiji reiterated that, along with Vivekanand, he believed that “Shankara never drove Buddhism from India for he was himself a prachhanna [in disguise] Buddha. He merely rid it of the bad things that were creeping into it, and prevented its alienation from Hinduism.” In any case, the substance and purity of the Buddha’s teaching had been best preserved in India. As “a Hindu of Hindus, he [the Buddha] gave a new orientation to Hinduism.” Nor is Buddhism realized, said Gandhiji, “by getting to know its externals.” In a letter to the Dalai Lama, he wrote that he had asked his friends to give up “secretiveness and superstition if Buddhism is to live.”

One of the many things for which Gandhiji revered the Buddha was “his utter abolition of untouchability, that is the distinction between high and low.”

Had not the Buddha said;

Make all fresh kin. There is no caste in blood Which runneth of one hue, nor caste in tears, Which trickle salt with all; neither cometh man To birth with tilak-mark stamped on the brow, To sacred thread on neck. Who doth right deeds Is twice-born, who doeth ill deeds vile. Similarly, while propagating khadi, he had emphasized the Buddha’s concern for the poor.

Practice of Nonviolence

He said in an interview [1937] that the effects of the Buddha’s nonviolent action “persist and are likely to grow with age,” while those of Hitler’, Mussolini’s and Stalin’s violence though immediately visible were transitory. He had the greatest veneration for the Buddha, one of the greatest preachers and warriors of peace. The Buddha—and 600 years later Jesus—had taught us the love that was “essentially a social and collective virtue,” not a mere personal one. In another context, he said that in the Buddha’s time, the present day type of politics did not exist and hence the Congress experiment in practicing nonviolence in the political sphere was a new one.

When he saw a leaflet published by the Madras Provincial War Committee saying that World War II was being waged for “great ideals,” including that for peace, “as exemplified in the teaching of Lord Buddha and Mahatma Gandhi,” he asked for this clause to be removed “as being untrue.” He said, “If Lord Buddha was on earth in the body at this moment, such a war would be impossible” and “Ashoka is perhaps the only instance of a great king having voluntarily abandoned war.”

When communal violence erupted in Bihar in 1947, he was so anguished that “the hallowed land of Lord Buddha and King Janak and Lord Rama” was seeing the “devilish dance of violence.” It could only retrieve its ancient glory by means of nonviolence. He commented similarly about corrupt practices in Bihar.

Gandhiji could not subscribe to the doctrine of Asia for the Asiatics. There was the imprint of Buddhistic influence on the whole of Asia including India. Asia has to relearn the Buddha’s message and deliver it to the world. The flower of nonviolence, which seemed to be withering, must come to full bloom. Later addressing the Inter Asian Relations Conference in 1947, he said that wisdom had come to the West from the East—the Buddha and other prophets all had come from the East. “The West is today pining for wisdom. It is despairing of the multiplication of the atom bomb ... It is up to you to tell the world of its wickedness and sin,”—that was the teaching of our teachers.

Finally, during the last period of his life with violence and hatred prevailing all round, Gandhiji denied that he could be “a modern Buddha.” The Buddha and the later prophets “had gone the way they went in order to stop wars.” They could establish peace and happiness. The fact that he could not do so was “proof positive” that he had no such power. He was no divine person since “I am not able to establish peace.”

Liberation

noreply@blogger.com (Himalayas) — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 15:15:00 +0000

Hinduism, as a religious tradition, has many strands of faith that differ in nearly everything. Combined, these various strands form an illusion of a single, cohesive set of rituals, beliefs, and morals much like a cable made up of many smaller strands. While the various Hindu paths intertwine, agree in some areas, disagree in others similar to “family resemblance,” nearly all strands believe in the cycle of death and rebirth—samsara—as well as the escape from that cycle: moksa. In order to understand the concept of moksa—even in a general sense, one must understand its context within samsara as well as the concept of the self. These concepts, once understood, will provide clarification for understanding how Hindus understand and relate to moksa. We will be able to examine some of the early texts which give some definition to the concept of moksa as well as early philosophers who flesh out the concept. Through looking at the development of moksa and some of its related beliefs within the Advaita Vedanta school as well as the more recent Neo-Vedanta school, we will gain a better understanding of how moksa plays out in theology as well as society.

Before looking at moksa, we must first provide a contextual frame, preferably one that has been stable over time and similar across Hindu paths. Possibly the widest frame we can discuss is the concept of samsara. In early thought, Hindu thinkers posited a soul, the atman, that was in every person. This soul is embedded in the world of experience and is entangled in an eternal cycle of death and rebirth: samsara. There are traces of samsara as far back as the Rg Veda, but it is not a firmly established belief until the Upanisads: “the subject, the 'performer of action which bears fruit,' wanders in the cycle of transmigration according to his actions (karma).” At the level of ultimate reality is a singular soul, Brahman. As the concepts develop, it is agreed that Brahman, as the ultimate reality, must be equivalent with the multiplicity of atmans that are experienced phenomenally. In other words, we have a dichotomy between what is real and what is experienced; this can be labeled as dualism. It is through maya (or “illusion” in the sense of a false reality) that this singular soul “assumes...a body and becomes finite and individualized, but this individualization is neither final nor real.” Maya, whether a goddess or not, brings about this dualism. It is through realizing that one is Brahman at the level of ultimate reality that one ceases to act with consequences and, consequently, attain release from the cycles of samsara. These notions begin to be developed in the Upanisads: “The one with understanding, mindful, ever pure, attains that place from which he is not born again.” By the time the Bhagavad Gita is written, this idea of escape is firmly planted in Hindu thought. It is through this context of samsara that we should begin to look at the concept of self-identity in Hinduism in addition to looking at the concept of liberation in some of the key texts.

Classical Views

In the Mahabharata, we can see two separate views of the self that intertwine with each other in its subsection-made-into-a-separate-book the Bhagavad Gita. One of these views is of the individual that exists within samsara and continuously interacts with the phenomenal world. The other view is that of the eternal, unchanging, singular Soul that exists at the level of ultimate reality. In the Gita, these two intertwine and are seen as being the same. The Mahabharata, possibly the greatest epic story in Hindu literature, is a lengthy story centering on five brothers (the heroes) and their battle with their evil relatives. Behind this, though, is the backdrop of the gods battling along the same sides of good vs. evil. Yet there is the added “bonus” in that a single god (Vishnu) is the supreme Brahman who sees everything clearly. For instance, at one point in the story, we find Draupadi asking Krishna about her current situation and Krishna responds by saying

We are now on the wheel of life that turns and turns, we wander forever from one birth to another. Here we are kings, there we live out all our life on the tip of a blade of grass. But we always live. Nothing can stop that well. Nothing and no one will make us lose that life, whatever happens. During the course of this conversation, Krishna does suggest that her current situation may not be real. By this suggestion, we can see some evidence of supporting the kind of dualism mentioned above.

Within the Bhagavad Gita, however, we get a glimpse of the view from ultimate reality, sub specie aeternitas. Approximately halfway-through, Krishna reveals to Arjuna his all-encompassing form, and Arjuna's response tells all: “Why should they not bow in homage to you, Great Soul,...,Shelter of All That Is, you are eternity.”Arjuna continues in his praises interjecting suggestions, like above, that Krishna is the ultimate Soul as well as being the creator of all the multiplicities of the phenomenal world. Further into the Gita, Krishna declares while speaking of the two spirits of man that “Other is the supreme spirit of man, called the supreme self, the immutable lord who enters and sustains the three worlds” and that Krishna himself is “known as the supreme spirit of man.” In other words, Krishna is equating himself—as the ultimate soul Brahman—with the soul of man at the level of ultimate reality. Furthermore, Krishna states that upon “realizing it, one has understanding and his purpose is fulfilled,” a simple definition of moksa. Krishna does elaborate on how to attain this state, and that it is a long a difficult task that includes acting without attachment and becoming totally devoted to serving and worshiping Krishna.

The concept of liberation suggested in both the Mahabharata and the Gita is developed much more systematically around the beginning of the 9th century CE by the Indian philosopher Sankara. His view of the self reinforced what we can find only suggested in the earlier texts. Yet, Sankara also provided some additions to these: illusion and ignorance. Sankara finds an answer as to why the Soul thinks in multiplicities even though it is a singular entity. It is the power of illusion (maya) that fools the Soul by superimposing “what is not the self onto the self.” Illusion also gets help from the Soul through doubt once it has believed the illusion and has become ignorant about its true nature. It is through discernment, a quality lauded in texts such as the Ramayana, that one can discover ultimate reality.

However, Sankara also saw liberation as being possible while one is still living. This concept, called jivanmukti, was only a rough idea for Sankara that was developed later by his followers. Later thinkers began to perceive liberation as a disembodiment or transcendence and not necessarily freedom from a physical body. Upon attainment, one would have perfect knowledge—even while still living. For these thinkers as well as Sankara, jivanmukti is not a “complete” liberation because it still awaits the final liberation which occurs at death. What keeps one living is simply the residual karmic effects of one's life prior to reaching the stage of living liberation. Because of this, Sankara argues that only those who have achieved living liberation could truly teach it. This is similar to Buddhist thoughts on enlightenment in that it can only be transmitted by those who have experienced it and these Buddhas are living out their lives on their residual karmic effects of previous actions.

In contradistinction to Sankara, bhakti devotion was also a prominent classical view. The literature of the bhakti movement was more often poetic and filled with emotion than a structured epic (e.g. Mahabharata) or philosophical writing (e.g. the Upanishads). As a result, it is more difficult to determine what theological beliefs the movement held to from its writings. Yet one thing is certain: the movement was based strongly on emotional devotionalism. One of the earliest bhakti groups, the Alvars, can find its roots in some earlier “possession cults” in which the devotee would become possessed by the god and begin “weeping, dancing and singing.” By devoting oneself entirely to the god believed to be the consummation of all things (e.g. Siva, Vishnu, etc), one can attain liberation. Bhakti is not contradictory to Sankara's view, but does typically personalize the divine, which places it, then, outside the gates of Sankara's ideal, attribute-less absolute. In the bhakti path, the divine is seen more as a lover to pursue until one can pursue no longer—a maddening love. And this is exactly how some (if not most) outsiders saw the earliest devotees on this path. Unlike other traditions (e.g., Christianity), all of these paths have survived in at least one form to the modern era.

Later Developments

In more recent expressions of Hinduism, there is a strand of thought that has reinterpreted the Advaita Vedanta ideas and has created a new school of thought labeled Neo-Vedanta. This particular school of thought has taken the Advaita Vedanta school started by Sankara and mixed it with “Western premises and categories.” This has become “the primary interpretive model in modern Indian scholarship on Advaita.” Some, like Ramana Maharshi, take Sankara's view to an extreme. According to Andrew Fort's analysis, Ramana's view can be reduced to an attributeless Self and ignorance. This is further amplified by his claim that there is “no bondage (or liberation), no 'doer' or karma.” For Ramana, moksa is simply removing ignorance, something we have in Sankara's thoughts but in a more condensed form. Additionally, Ramana rejects bhakti as a path towards moksa because, like Sankara before him believed, ascribing qualities to the divine Self is embedded in ignorance: the Self has no qualities or attributes. But in a vein similar to the bhakti view, knowledge alone is insufficient, yet it is not devotion to a personal God but experience of a transcendent God that leads one to liberation. Through living liberation, however, Ramana does believe that one exemplifies the characteristics of “impression (vasana) free devotion and detachment,” or devotion to the detached, attribute-less Self.

Unlike Ramana, other followers of Sankara have stayed closer to what they perceive as his original teachings; the best example being Candrasekharendra Sarasvati. Calling themselves sankaracaryas, these thinkers believe to be walking in the same path as their namesake Sankara. One of Candrasekharendra's primary concerns was differentiating between Hinduism as “religion” in the broad sense and Hinduism as a “social system” in the narrow sense. This allowed him to be open to ecumenical dialogs while also supporting conservative practices, such as supporting Brahmin and wives' submission to their husbands. But, his more “liberal” side supports bhakti as a beginning towards liberation even though he agrees with Ramana and Sankara that the ultimate Soul is without qualities. There is also agreement on defining jivanmukti as being disembodiment and not necessarily a lack of a physical body. Lastly, Candrasekharendra believes that the root cause of caste conflict is “when 'one cast consider[s] itself superior to another,' for which 'there is no justification.'” As we shall see below, this is a relatively rare position in the conflict.

With the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), there has been attempts to bridge together the two contrary positions noted above. The founder of ISKCON, Swami Bhaktivedanta, argues that knowledge alone (i.e. Sankara's suggestion) is not enough for liberation. One must also have complete devotion, the supreme knowledge and practice, to gain moksa. This view can be seen in the way devotees worship and participate in religious services. While there is focus on studying texts like the Gita, there is more emphasis on devotion to Krishna. Devotees use the name of Krishna (and other incarnations of Vishnu) as their mantras. The most important part of this, however, is that Bhaktivedanta maintains that the universal soul (Krishna in this case) is personal and has qualities.

ISKCON is based on the work of Caitanya, the first to promote Krishna bhakti. Caitanya is regarded as an incarnation of both Krishna and Radha in one body! Caitanya did not create any kind of movement; his “legacy” was primarily a commentary on the Brahma Sutra. The Krishna bhakti movement that ensued and is present today in ISKCON pictures liberation as “the constant, ecstatic experience of the divine love-play (lila) between Radha and Krishna in a spiritual or perfected body.” Additionally, Krishna is not simply an incarnation (avatara) of Vishnu, but is the true supreme Lord. With different views of liberation comes different views of identity in relation to liberation. Some paths of Hindu thought see the self as an illusion while others see it as being as much of a reality as the ultimate Self. These differing views also influence how one identifies with the caste system, society at large, and modernity.

The bhakti tradition imagined itself as a communal society and, more often than not, on the outskirts of “normal” society. With a stronger push towards allowing all castes, genders, etc into their fold, the bhakti devotees were the 13th century equivalent to 1960s hippies. They followed the path of renunciation that earlier ascetics tread; the bhakti devotees would create their communities in the forests, a place associated with the “wild” and nature. Many within the bhakti tradition identified themselves in terms of their personal God (e.g. Basavanna's Lord of the Meeting Rivers) as a devoted follower of such. All other types of identification were less important (if at all) for the devoted. As a result of this, we can see how Mahadevi was accepted into the bhakti community as a fellow saint and later as the most poetic of the saints there. Yet this “revolutionary” mindset dissipated and gave way to more institutional ways. The caste-less group returned to the caste system. By the 18th century, bhakti groups adhered to the caste system by denying initiation to “unclean” groups or restricting the privilege to become a guru to those of Brahmin birth. In the West, however, ISKCON fell away from the caste system rather quickly as it was aimed at converted Westerners to the bhakti strand of Hinduism. As a result, it seems that bhakti devotees in the West escaped the caste system that has existed in Hinduism and India. This is not something that the Advaita Vedanta paths have been able to escape—even in the West.

According to the classical position of Advaita Vedanta, one should identify oneself with the ultimate. They also thought that identifying oneself with a body and phenomenal experience is “an adventitious superimposition that ceases upon Brahman-realization.” Additionally, with their emphasis upon knowledge as a prerequisite to experiencing moksa, “those of nontwice-born birth (Shudras, untouchables and non-Hindu aliens or mlecchas) are automatically debarred from access to this 'salvic' knowledge.” Identification with Advaita Vedanta thought, then, correlated with an upper class. In some ways, Advaita Vedanta was not for the common person. Neo-Vedanta thinkers downplay this class distinction, and some even argue that it was never used by classical Advaita Vedanta devotees. For these newer thinkers, not only is class distinction wrong but it also goes against their beliefs on social service. Social service goes hand-in-hand with jivanmukti. Neo-Vedanta thinkers ignore Sankara's commentary on sutra, Caste, Society, and Politics in India from the Eighteenth Century to the referring to “texts indication a sudra hearing the Veda should have his ears filled with lead” and other such androcentric beliefs. With this stress on social service, the Neo-Vedanta followers (especially the gurus and teachers) identified with the welfare of others. Swami Vivekananda once told his disciples, “Look upon Man as God. If your conception of God includes the idea that He is All-Pervasive, then why can't you see Him in all creatures?”

In contemporary India, caste identity, fueled in part by one's relation to moksa, reciprocates into national politics. Upper caste society has a tendency towards antagonism with regards to the lower caste. Yet the lower caste are not innocent either because they have been able to present themselves to state agencies as having a “history of injustice at the hands of Forward or high-caste 'oppressors.'” In other words, each caste uses it to their advantage while claiming the other castes are abusing the system. There is also a more global scale in which Hindu identity is not as tied up in the caste system, national politics, and the “caste wars.” Instead of conflict, Hindus outside of India work together in their own subculture in which they identify with their host country's sociopolitical system while still holding to the caste system, yet in a less violent manner. For these people, moksa is still the goal, but they sometimes tend toward interreligious dialog and bringing others towards liberation as well.

Pleasant Release The last aspect of liberation that is worth mentioning is its position as a goal. Is liberation “worth it”? Is it pleasant? As Vatsyayana wrote: About liberation (the idea), that is indeed gruesome, consisting of a cessation of all activity. With such a liberation which divorces us from everything, so many good things of like would be finished. How, therefore, can any intelligent person find that sort of liberation characterized by absence of all the pleasures and even of consciousness at all palatable?

What is it that makes liberation seem so different from this? The standard position adopted by Advaita Vedanta (and more likely most strands of Hinduism) is that “the soul really feels an intense, unrelieved, perpetual bliss in being liberated” because (depending on if one is a strong follower of Advaita or bhakti) one's veil of ignorance is removed or one is in the presence of one's personal Lord. This argument seems to win time and again because it speaks directly to one's particular path to liberation. In other words, liberation is the “finish line” for the race of life, something that must be better than remaining in the race.

The argument against liberation depends on one of two criteria being met: (1) samsara is not that bad or even good, or (2) moksa does not have any joy in it (and thus, not any better than samsara). Both of these must be discredited in order for there to be some benefit to liberation. The first point comes in two distinct versions: hedonism and avoiding suffering. The hedonistic version argues that samsara is good—that the pleasure easily outweighs the suffering. This version, however, fails to notice the amount of suffering that is part of the process towards any kind of pleasure. In other words, pleasure will always have suffering with it while the opposite ( suffering always has pleasure) is not true. Because of this, it would seem likely that the pleasure does not, in fact, outweigh the suffering. The second version is simply the avoidance of suffering. Taking into consideration the argument against hedonism, it would seem likely that to avoid suffering completely, one should escape samsara. Hence, the first argument against liberation does not stand against typical Hindu belief.

The second argument, however, is a bit stronger. If liberation includes joy (or pleasure), then one may be seeking liberation for a reason other than escape from samsara. In other words, the desire for liberation when motivated by the desire for joy would be the very hindrance to achieving liberation. Therefore, the argument goes, liberation cannot have any kind of emotional quality to it regardless of how favorable it may be. This argument fails on a technicality: we cannot know with certainty whether or not complete liberation brings any level of joy. It may well do, but we have no way of being certain about it because one must experience it, which places that one outside of samsara. There is no way of telling what may happen after this life in terms of liberation because it is outside the bounds of our human experience. As a consequence of this, it should not be taught to devotees that liberation has some kind of joy in so that they may pursue moksa for the sake of liberation.

Because the two arguments against liberation being worthwhile cannot stand with any amount of certainty, we can only conclude here that liberation is worthwhile because either it “feels like a sheer absence of any feeling of pain of any sort,” it “feels like a great positive state of boundless ecstatic joy,” or “the sheer absolute absence of suffering feels like the greatest joy possible.” This only supports the idea that liberation is a central aspect of many Hindu paths. We have traced its development through some of the early Hindu texts, as well as in some of the more known thinkers of the past. We have seen how it has affected social identity in the caste system as well as in humanitarianism. Lastly, we briefly looked at why liberation is a worthwhile goal for the Hindu. While this was in no way exhaustive, it can serve as a basic primer on moksa and its influences on Hinduism as a religion and as a culture.

Hinduism, Followers of the Veda

noreply@blogger.com (Himalayas) — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 13:45:00 +0000

1. What Is Hinduism?

A Christian, visiting India from the West, would surely think it strange if he or she was told by an Indian, "You are a follower of Jordanism." Christianity, along with Judaism and Islam, hails from the region of the Jordan river. But it is unlikely that Christians, Jews and Muslims would like their faiths being lumped together under such an artificial, unscriptural category as "Jordanism." Yet just this sort of thing was done to the followers of the indigenous religions of India. The word "Hinduism" is derived from the name of a river in present-day Pakistan, the Sindhu (also known as the Indus). Beginning around 1000 AD, invading armies from the Middle East called the place beyond the Sindhu "Hindustan" and the people who lived there the "Hindus". (Due to the invaders' language, the s was change to h.) In the centuries that followed, the term "Hindu" became acceptable even to the Indians themselves as a general designation for their different religious traditions. But since the word Hindu is not found in the scriptures upon which these traditions are based, it is quite inappropriate. The proper term is vedic dharma; the next two paragraphs briefly explain each of these words.

The word vedic refers to the teachings of the Vedic literatures. From these literatures we learn that this universe, along with countless others, was produced from the breath of Maha-Vishnu some 155,250,000,000,000 years ago. The Lord's divine breath simultaneously transmitted all the knowledge humankind requires to meet the material needs and revive his dormant God consciousness of each person. This knowledge is called Veda. Caturmukha (four-faced) Brahma, the first created being within this universe, received Veda from Vishnu. Brahma, acting as an obedient servant of the Supreme Lord, populated the planetary systems with all species of life and imparted the Vedic scriptures as the guide for spiritual and material progress. Veda is thus traced to the very beginning of the cosmos.

Some of the most basic Vedic teachings seen within modern Hinduism are:

* Every living creature is an eternal soul covered by a material body.

* The souls bewildered by maya (the illusion of identifying the self with the body) must reincarnate from body to body, life after life.

* To accept a material body means to suffer the fourfold pangs of birth, old age, disease, and death.

* Depending upon the quality of work (karma) in the human form, a soul may take its next birth in a subhuman species, the human species, a superhuman species, or may be freed from birth and death altogether.

* Karma dedicated in sacrifice as directed by Vedic injunctions elevates and liberates the soul. Dharma is the essential nature of the Veda. The term dharma is translated as "duty," "virtue," "morality," "righteousness," or "religion," but no single English word conveys the whole meaning of dharma. The Vedic sage Jaimini defined dharma as "a good the nature of a command that leads to the attainment of the highest good." Now, there are different opinions as to what the highest good is that the Veda commands mankind to attain. These different opinions are the basis of the multifarious kinds of religious worship seen today within so-called Hinduism. From out of the gamut of Hindu piety, three great religious traditions emerge: Smarta-brahmanism, Shiva-shaktaism, and Vaishnavism. Each tradition is associated with one of the tri-murtis, the three main deities of Vedic dharma: Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu.

The Smarta-brahmanas or hereditary priests preside over the religious affairs of millions of ordinary Hindus. These priests conduct the services for the different devatas (demigods) that bless common people with material benedictions (wealth, family happiness, good health and so on). The Smarta-brahmanas are grouped in gotras (families) that are said to descend from Caturmukha Brahma. They uphold and defend the caste system (jati-vyavastha) which determines a person's social position in Hindu society. For a Smarta-brahmana, the main qualification of brahmanism (priesthood) is birth in a brahmana-gotra.

The Saivites and the Shaktas worship Shiva and his feminine energy Shakti, who is addressed by names like Devi, Durga, Parvati and Kali. While Brahma is the lord of cosmic creation, Shiva is the lord of cosmic devastation. Shakti is the goddess of the total material nature, or prakriti. Because Shiva is very easily pleased, those who desire rapid material advancement for little effort are especially interested in worshiping him and Shakti. The worship of Ganesha and Muruga (Kartikeya) is associated with Saivism, because they are both sons of Shiva. Also associated with Saivism and Shaktaism are left-and right-hand tantra.

Vaishnavism is the worship of Vishnu, the controller of the sattva-guna, the mode of goodness, by which everything is maintained. Brahma controls rajo-guna, the mode of passion, and Shiva controls tamo-guna, the mode of ignorance. Of these three states of material existence, goodness is topmost. The universe is created and destroyed again and again. These cycles of work by Brahma and Shiva are maintained eternally by the goodness of Vishnu. The name Vishnu means "all-pervading." Lord Vishnu dwells in the hearts of all beings as the Supersoul, as well as within every atom. He is also the total form of the universe (visvarupa) and the origin of Brahma and Shiva. Beyond the universe, Vishnu has His own transcendental abode called Vaikuntha, the spiritual world. The original and most intimate form of Vishnu is the all-attractive, ever-youthful Sri Krishna. Lord Krishna, the eternal, omniscient, and incomparably blissful Supreme Personality of Godhead, is the speaker of the Bhagavad-gita, the most important text of the Hindu religion. The Bhagavad-gita rejects caste by birth and any form of worship motivated by material desire. Complete surrender to Krishna is said to surpass all other commands of dharma in the Vedas (see {Bhagavad-gita 18.66}). Surrender to Krishna delivers the soul from the cycle of repeated birth and death (samsaracakra) and returns the soul back home, back to Godhead.

2. What Is Vedanta?

The highest degree of Vedic education, traditionally reserved for the sannyasis (renunciants), is mastery of the texts known as the Upanisads. The Upanisads teach the philosophy of the Absolute Truth (Brahman) to those seeking liberation from birth and death. Study of the Upanisads is known as vedanta, "the conclusion of the Veda." The word upanisad means "that which is learned by sitting close to the teacher." The texts of the Upanisads are extremely difficult to fathom; they are to be understood only under the close guidance of a spiritual master (guru). Because the Upanisads contain many apparently contradictory statements, the great sage Vyasadeva (also known as Vedavyasa, Badarayana, or Dvaipayana) systematized the Upanisadic teachings in the Vedanta-sutra, or Brahma-sutra. Vyasa's sutras are terse. Without a fuller explanation, their meaning is difficult to grasp. In India there are five main schools of vedanta, each established by an acarya (founder) who explained the sutras in a bhasya (commentary).

Of the five schools, one, namely Adi Shankara's, is impersonalist. Shankara taught that Brahman has no name, form nor personal characteristics. Shankara's school is opposed by the four Vaishnava sampradayas founded by Ramanuja, Madhva, Nimbarka, and Vishnusvami. Unlike the impersonalist school, Vaishnava vedanta admits the validity of Vedic statements that establish difference (bheda) within Brahman, as well those that establish nondifference (abheda). Taking the bheda and abheda statements together, the Vaishnava Vedantists distinguish between three features of the one Vastu Brahman (Divine Substance):

* Vishnu as the Supreme Soul (Para Brahman).
* The individual self as the subordinate soul (Jiva Brahman).
* Matter as creative nature (Mahad Brahman). The philosophies of the four Vaishnava sampradayas dispel the sense of mundane limitation ordinarily associated with the word "person." Vishnu is accepted by all schools of Vaishnava vedanta as the transcendental, unlimited Purusottama (Supreme Person), while the individual souls and matter are His conscious and unconscious energies (cidacid-shakti).

3. What Is Siddhanta?

Each Vedantist school is known for its siddhanta, or "essential conclusion" about the relationships between God and the soul, the soul and matter, matter and matter, matter and God, and the soul and souls. Shankara's siddhanta is advaita, "nondifference" (everything is one; therefore these five relationships are unreal). All the other siddhantas support the reality of these relationships from various points of view. Ramanuja's siddhanta is visistadvaita, "qualified nondifference." Madhva's siddhanta is dvaita, "difference." Vishnusvami's siddhanta is suddhadvaita, "purified nondifference." And Nimbarka's siddhanta is dvaitaadvaita, "difference and identity."

The Bengali branch of Madhva's sampradaya is known as the Brahma-Madhva-Gaudiya Sampradaya, or the Chaitanya Sampradaya. In the 1700s this school presented Indian philosophers with a commentary on Vedanta-sutra written by Baladeva Vidyabhushana that argued yet another siddhanta. It is called acintya-bhedabheda-tattva, which means "simultaneous, inconceivable oneness and difference." In recent years this siddhanta has become known to people all over the world due to the popularity of the books of His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. Acintya-bhedabheda philosophy maintains the same standpoint of "difference" as Madhva's siddhanta on the fivefold relationship of God to soul, soul to matter, matter to matter, matter to God, and soul to soul. But acintyabhedabheda-tattva further teaches the doctrine of shaktiparinamavada (the transformation of the Lord's shakti), in which the origin of this fivefold differentiation is traced to the Lord's play with His shakti, or energy. Because the souls and matter emanate from the Lord, they are one in Him as His energy yet simultaneously distinct from Him and one another. The oneness and difference of this fivefold relationship is called acintya, or inconceivable, because, as Srila Prabhupada writes in his purport to Bhagavad-gita 18.78, "Nothing is different from the Supreme, but the Supreme is always different from everything." As the transcendental origin and coordinator of His energies, God is ever the inconceivable factor.

4. Shankara and Buddhism

Sometimes Shankara's advaita-vedanta commentary is presented in books about Hinduism as if it were the original and only vedanta philosophy. But in fact Shankara's philosophy is more akin to Buddhism than vedanta. Buddhism is a nastika, or non-Vedic, religion. Before 600 AD, the time of Shankara's appearance, most Vedantist scholars did not endorse a doctrine of impersonalism. Evidence gathered from the writings of pre-Shankara Buddhist scholars shows that their Vedantist contemporaries were Purusa-vadins (purusa = "person", vadin = "philosopher"). Purusavadins taught that the goal of Vedanta philosophy is the Mahapurusa (Greatest Person). Bhavya, an Indian Buddhist author who lived centuries before Shankara, wrote in the Madhyamika-hrdaya-karika that the Vedantists of his time were adherents of the doctrine of bhedabheda (difference and nondifference). That Shankara borrowed Buddhistic ideas was noted by the Buddhists themselves. A Buddhist writer named Bhartrhari, a contemporary of Shankara, expressed some surprise that although Shankara was a brahmana scholar of the Vedas, his impersonal teachings resembled Buddhism. This is admitted by the followers of Shankara themselves. Pandit Dr. Rajmani Tigunait of the Himalayan Institute of Yoga is a present-day exponent of advaita-vedanta; in his book, Seven Systems of Indian Philosophy, he writes that the ideas of the Buddhist Sunyavada (voidist) philosophers are very close to Shankara's. Shankara inserted into Vedantic discourse the Buddhistic idea of ultimate emptiness, substituting the Upanisadic word brahman ("the Absolute") for sunya ("the void"). Because Shankara argued that all names, forms, qualities, activities and relationships are creations of maya (illusion), even divine names and forms, his philosophy is called mayavada (the doctrine of illusion).

However, to compare Brahman with the void is philosophically untenable. The Vedanta-sutra defines Brahman, not Maya, as the cause of everything (janmadyasya-yatah, Vedanta-sutra 1.1.2). How can that which lacks name, form, quality, and activity be the cause of that which possesses these features? Nil posse creari de nilo: "Nothing can be created out of nothing." Mayavadi vedanta avoids the issue of causation by arguing that the world, though empirically real, is ultimately a dream. But dreams also have elaborate causes.

5. Differences Among the Four Vaishnava Sampradayas

The four Vaishnava sampradayas all agree that Vishnu is the cause, but they explain His relationship with His creation differently. In visistadvaita, the material world is said to be the body of Vishnu, the Supreme Soul. But the dvaita school does not agree that matter is connected to Vishnu as body is to soul, because Vishnu, God, is transcendental to matter. The world of matter is full of misery, but since Vedanta-sutra 1.1.12 defines God as anandamaya (abundantly blissful), how can nonblissful matter be His body? The truth, according to the dvaita school is that matter is ever separate from Vishnu but yet is eternally dependent upon Vishnu; by God's will, says the dvaita school, matter becomes the ingredient cause of the world. The suddhadvaita school cannot agree with the dvaita school that matter is the ingredient cause, because matter has no independent origin apart from God. Matter is actually not different from God in the same way an effect is not different from its cause, although there is an appearance of difference. The example of the ocean and its waves is given by suddhadvaita philosophers to illustrate their argument that the cause (the ocean) is the same as the effect (the waves). The dvaitadvaita school agrees that God is both the cause and effect but is dissatisfied with the suddhadvaita school's standpoint that there is really no difference between God and the world. The dvaitadvaita school says that God is neither one with nor different from the world --He is both. A snake, the dvaitadvaita school argues, can neither be said to have a coiled form nor a straight form. It has both forms. Similarly, God's "coiled form" is His transcendental nonmaterial aspect, and His "straight form" is His mundane aspect. But this explanation is not without problems. If God's personal nature is eternity, knowledge, and bliss, how can the material world, which is temporary, full of ignorance, and miserable, be said to be just another form of God?

6. Reconciliation of the Four Vaishnava Viewpoints

The Chaitanya school reconciles these seemingly disparate views of God's relationship to the world by arguing that the Vedic scriptures testify to God's acintya-shakti, "inconceivable powers." God is simultaneously the cause of the world in every sense and yet distinct from and transcendental to the world. The example given is of a spider and its web. The web emanates from the spider's body, so the spider may be taken as the ingredient cause of the web. But that does not make the spider and the web one and the same. The spider is always a separate and distinct entity from its web. Yet again, while the spider never is the web, the existence of the web cannot be separated from the spider.

There is a further lesson to be learned from this example: while the spider is clearly different from its web-creation, it nonetheless is acutely conscious of every corner of it. In philosophical terms, we could say the spider is transcendental to the web by its identity, yet simultaneously immanent throughout the web by its knowledge. This is a simple yet powerful demonstration of acintya-bhedabheda-tattva. Lord Krishna, in Bhagavad-gita 9.4 and 5, says He pervades the whole universe by His complete awareness of the spiritual and material energies that make up the creation. Yet at the same time, in His identity as the source of everything, He stands apart from the cosmic manifestation.

The web is compared to God's maya-shakti (power of illusion), which emanates from the Real but is not real itself. "Not real" means that the features of maya (the tri-guna, or three modes of material nature: goodness, passion, and ignorance) are temporary. "Not real" does not mean the material world does not exist. The essential ingredient (vastu) of the world is real, because it is the energy of God. But the form this energy takes at the time of cosmic creation is temporary. Therefore the maya-shakti is said to be unreal. Reality is that which is eternal: God and God's svarupa-shakti (spiritual energy). The temporal features of the material world are manifestations of the maya-shakti, not of God Himself. These features of maya bewilder the souls of this world, but they cannot bewilder God. God appears within this material world as the supreme person, yet He is not bound by this world, exactly as a spider moving anywhere in its web-creation is not bound by it.

7. Sanatana-dharma

Brahman, the Absolute Truth, the goal of vedanta, may be achieved in two ways. One way is by vedanta-darshan, or the philosophical comprehension of the conclusion of the Vedas, as described previously. Another way is by sanatana-dharma, the eternal religion of vedanta. Both darshan and sanatana-dharma are taught in the Bhagavad-gita, spoken by Sri Krishna to His disciple Arjuna 5000 years ago at Kuruksetra.

Darshan is explained in Bhagavad-gita 7.19:

bahunam janmanam ante jnanavan mam prapadyate vasudevah sarvam iti sa mahatma su-durlabhah

"After many births and deaths, he who is actually in knowledge surrenders unto Me, knowing Me to be the cause of all causes and all that is. Such a great soul is very rare."

Sanatana-dharma is explained in Bhagavad-gita 18.66. This verse is the culmination of the entire text:

sarva-dharman parityajya mam ekam saranam vraja aham tvam sarva-papebhyo moksayisyami ma sucah "Abandon all varieties of religion and just surrender unto Me. I shall deliver you from all sinful reactions. Do not fear."

In both darshan and sanatana-dharma, surrender to Krishna is the goal, because Krishna is the goal of the Vedas, as confirmed in Bhagavad-gita 15.15: vedais ca sarvair aham eva vedyo vedanta-krd veda-vid eva caham, "By all the Vedas, I am to be known. Indeed, I am the compiler of vedanta, and I am the knower of the Vedas."

What is the difference between religion (dharma) that is eternal (sanatana) and religion that is not eternal? The noneternal religion, which in Bhagavad-gita 18.66 Krishna asks us to give up, is of two types: bhoga-dharma and tyaga-dharma.

Bhoga-dharma, the religion of work (karma) for sensual pleasure in this life and the next, is summed up in Bhagavad-gita 2.42-43 thusly:

"Men of small knowledge are very much attached to the flowery words of the Vedas, which recommend various fruitive activities for elevation to heavenly planets, resultant good birth, power, and so forth. Being desirous of sense gratification (bhoga) and opulent life (aisvarya), they say that there is nothing more than this."

Tyaga-dharma, the religion of withdrawal from karma, is rejected by Lord Krishna in this verse:

"Not by merely abstaining from work can one achieve freedom from reaction, nor by renunciation alone can one attain perfection." (Bhagavad-gita 3.4)

Sanatana-dharma, the eternal religion, is bhakti-yoga, the yoga of devotional service to Lord Krishna. Shunning both work for selfish pleasure and the stoppage of all work, the bhaktiyogi works only for Krishna's pleasure. Bhakti-yoga liberates the soul from entanglement in the web of tri-guna (the three modes of material nature) and transfers the liberated soul to Krishna. Krishna's transcendental personal form is the source and basis of the impersonal Brahman effulgence (brahmajyoti), which shines forever beyond the darkness of material nature. This is all confirmed in Bhagavad-gita 14.26 and 27:

"One who engages in full devotional service, unfailing in all circumstances, at once transcends the modes of material nature and thus comes to the level of Brahman."

"And I am the basis of the impersonal Brahman, which is immortal, imperishable and eternal and is the constitutional position of ultimate happiness."

Sanatana-dharma is exemplified in the lives of the mahatmas, or great souls. Their religious practices are described in Bhagavad-gita 9.14 and 15:

"O son of Prtha, those who are not deluded, the great souls, are under the protection of the divine nature. They are fully engaged in devotional service because they know Me as the Supreme Personality of Godhead, original and inexhaustible."

"Always chanting My glories, endeavoring with great determination, bowing down before Me, these great souls perpetually worship Me with devotion."

Krishna spoke the Bhagavad-gita shortly before the beginning of the Kali-yuga, the present age of darkness, sin, and quarrel. After Krishna departed this world, mayavada philosophy became prominent. Because mayavada philosophy denies that Krishna is the eternal, transcendental Personality of Godhead, and because it distorts His teachings on bhakti-yoga with impersonal speculation, it thwarts both the method and goal of sanatana-dharma. Modern Hindus, confused by mayavada ideas, think mundane politics and social work are the method of dharma. And they think the goal of dharma is the impersonal jyoti (light). The mayavadis claim the jyoti is the truth behind God's personal form. But this claim is in direct opposition to Bhagavad-gita 14.27. Thus the path of the mahatmas given in the Bhagavad-gita is lost in much of Hinduism today.

Taking compassion upon the unfortunate, misguided souls of Kali-yuga, Lord Krishna descended again, only 500 years ago, to show mankind by His own example how to practice sanatana-dharma according to the Bhagavad-gita. This incarnation of Krishna is the Golden Avatara, Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. Lord Chaitanya accepted initiation from Isvara Puri of the Madhva Sampradaya. From Madhva's school, Lord Chaitanya accepted two principles: (1) opposition to and defeat of mayavada philosophy, and (2) worship of the transcendental form of Lord Krishna as the path of eternal religion. The first principle is darshan, and the second is sanatana-dharma. These two principles are the philosophical and religious foundation of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), established by His Divine Grace

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada.

In Bhagavad-gita 4.2, Lord Krishna declares that the principles of eternal religion are handed down via the guru-parampara (disciplic succession). The parampara system protects eternal religious principles from corruption by unauthorized teachers who, without following the principles themselves, interpret the Bhagavad-gita through their speculative opinions. The disciplic succession of Madhva and Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu is known as the Brahma Sampradaya, because it originates with Brahma, who received Vedic knowledge from Krishna at the beginning of creation. Brahma's disciple is Narada, and Narada's disciple is Vyasa, who composed the Vedanta-sutra. After Lord Chaitanya accepted this sampradaya as His own, it was called the Brahma-Madhva-Gaudiya Sampradaya. In our time, this disciplic succession and its teachings of sanatana-dharma are represented to the whole world by ISKCON. Following in the parampara tradition, members of ISKCON refrain from adharma (irreligion) in the form of meat-eating, illicit sex, gambling, and intoxication, and follow sanatana-dharma as shown by the mahatmas.

8. The Avataras of Godhead

After explaining that eternal religious principles are handed down via guru-parampara, Lord Krishna then told Arjuna that from time to time, the system of disciplic succession breaks down. This is called dharmasya glanih, the disruption of dharma. When dharma is disrupted, humanity's very purpose is disrupted. The Vedic scriptures state, "Both animals and men share the activities of eating, sleeping, mating and defending. But the special capacity of the humans is that they are able to engage in spiritual life (dharma). Without spiritual life, humans are no better than animals." (Hitopadesa) In order to save humanity from the animalism of irreligion, Lord Krishna says tadatmanam srjamy aham: "At that time I descend Myself."

(B.g. 4.7)

When Sri Krishna descends from the world of spirit into the world of matter, His appearance here is called avatara. The Sanskrit word avatara is often rendered into English as "incarnation." It is wrong, however, to think that Krishna incarnates in a body made of physical elements. The seventh and eighth chapters of Bhagavad-gita distinguish at length between the material nature (apara-prakrti), visible as the temporary substances of earth, water, fire, air and ethereal space, and God's own spiritual nature (para-prakrti), which is invisible (avyakta), eternal (sanatana) and infallible (aksara). When the Lord descends, by His mercy the invisible becomes visible. As Krishna states in B.g. 4.6, "I descend by My own nature, incarnating in My form of spiritual energy" (prakrtim svam adhisthaya sambhavamy atma-mayaya). In 4.9 He declares, janma karma ca me divyam, "My appearance and activities are divine." Only fools think Krishna takes birth as does an ordinary human being (B.g. 9.11).

God has many incarnations. But of all of them, that form described in Bhagavad-gita 11.50 as the most beautiful (saumya-vapu) is God's own original form (svakam rupam). This is the eternal form of Krishna, the all-charming lotus-eyed youth whose body is the shape of spiritual ecstasy. The Srimad Bhagavata Purana confirms that Krishna is the original form of Vishnu: ete camsa-kalah pumsah krishnas tu bhagavan svayam indrari-vyakulam lokam mrdayanti yuge yuge, which means, "All of the incarnations of Vishnu listed in the scriptures are expansions of the Lord. Lord Sri Krishna is the original Personality of Godhead. All avataras appear in the world whenever there is a disturbance created by the atheists. The Lord incarnates to protect the theists." (Srimad-Bhagavatam 1.3.28)

The Srimad-Bhagavatam provides us with the authorized list of scheduled incarnations of Godhead, of whom the dasavatara (ten avataras) are particularly celebrated. The ten are Matsya (the Lord's form of a gigantic golden fish), Kurma (the turtle), Varaha (the boar), Sri Nrsingha (half-man, half-lion), Parasurama (the hermit who wields an ax), Vamana (a small brahmana boy), Sri Rama (the Lord of Ayodhya), Baladeva (Lord Krishna's brother), Buddha (the sage who cheated the atheists), and Kalki (who will depopulate the world of all degraded, sinful men).

There are two broad categories of avataras. Some, like Sri Krishna, Sri Rama and Sri Nrsingha, are Vishnu-tattva, direct forms of God Himself, the source of all power. Others are individual souls (jiva-tattva) who are empowered by the Lord in one or more of seven ways: with knowledge, devotion, creative ability, personal service to God, rulership over the material world, power to support planets, or power to destroy rogues and miscreants. This second category of avatara is called shaktyavesa. Included herein are Buddha, Christ and Muhammed.

The Mayavadis think that "form" necessarily means "limitation." God is omnipresent, unlimited and therefore formless, they argue. When he reveals His avatara form within this world, that form, being limited in presence to a particular place and time, cannot be the real God. It is only an indication of God. But in fact it is not God's form that is limited. It is only the Mayavadis' conception of form that is limited, because that conception is grossly physical. God's form is of the nature of supreme consciousness. Being spiritual, it is called suksma, "most subtle." There is no contradiction between the omnipresence of something subtle and its having form. The most subtle material phenomena we can perceive is sound. Sound may be formless (as noise) or it may have form (as music). Because sound is subtle, its having form does not affect its ability to pervade a huge building. Similarly, God's having form does not affect His ability to pervade the entire universe. Since God's form is finer than the finest material subtlety, it is completely inappropriate for Mayavadis to compare His form to gross hunks of matter.

Because they believe God's form is grossly physical, Mayavadis often argue that any and all embodied creatures may be termed avataras. Any number of "living gods" are being proclaimed within India and other parts of the world today. Some of these gods are mystics, some are charismatics, some are politicians, and some are sexual athletes. But none of them are authorized by the Vedic scriptures. They represent only the mistaken Mayavadi idea that the one formless unlimited Truth appears in endless gross, physical human incarnations, and that you and me and I and he are therefore all together God. And since each god has a different idea of what dharma is, the final truth, according to mayavada philosophy, is that the paths of all gods lead to the same goal. This idea is as unenlightened as it is impractical.

When ordinary people proclaim themselves to be God, and that whatever they are doing is Vedic dharma, that is dharmasya glanih, a disturbance to eternal religious principles. Therefore Krishna came again, 500 years ago, as the Golden Avatara, Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. He established the yuga-dharma, the correct form of sanatana-dharma for our time. Sri Chaitanya's appearance was predicted in Srimad-Bhagavatam 11.5.32: "In this Age of Kali, people who are endowed with sufficient intelligence will worship the Lord, who is accompanied by His associates, by congregational chanting of the holy names of God."

The Avatara of the Deity and the Holy Name

The transcendental vibration hare krishna, hare krishna, krishna krishna, hare hare / hare rama, hare rama, rama rama, hare hare is the avatara of the Lord in the form of the holy name (kali-kale nama-rupe krishna-avatara, from Chaitanya-caritamrta Adi-lila 17.22). Anyone can prove to his own satisfaction that the Lord and His name are not different simply by chanting this spiritual sound constantly. The proof is the transcendental bliss (kevala-ananda) that envelops the soul the more the holy name is chanted. This higher taste renders insignificant the taste for degraded material pleasures like illicit sex, meat-eating, gambling and intoxication. Anarthopasamam saksad bhakti-yogam adhoksaje: the eternal religion, or the yoga of pure devotion (bhakti) to Krishna, is evinced by the disappearance of sinful habits (anarthas.)

As Krishna appears in the sound of His holy name, so also He appears within the arca-avatara, His incarnation as the Deity worshiped in the temple. The central focus of every ISKCON temple around the world is the worship of Krishna's Deity form as represented in stone, metal, wood or as painted pictures. Through ceremonial services (puja) conducted according to Vedic tradition, the devotees fulfill the Lord's injunction in Bhagavad-gita 9.27: "Whatever you do, whatever you eat, whatever you offer or give away, and whatever austerities you perform --do that, O son of Kunti, as an offering to Me." This puja purifies the minds and senses of the devotees and connects them to Krishna in an attitude of love.

Mayavadis decry service to the Deity as idol worship. They argue that God is not present within the Deity, because He is everywhere. But if He is everywhere, then why is He not within the Deity as well? Moisture is also everywhere, even within the air. But when one needs a drink of water, he cannot get it from the air. He must drink the water from where water tangibly avails itself to be drunk: from a faucet, a well, or a clear stream. Similarly, although God is everywhere, it is in His Deity form that He makes Himself tangibly available for worship.

9. Liberation in Krishna Consciousness

"Back home, Back to Godhead" --what does it mean? It means the return of our consciousness to Krishna. Consciousness is the symptom of the soul and the reservoir of our desires. As conscious souls, each one of us is a tiny aspect of Krishna's personal spiritual potency (see Bhagavad-gita 15.7). Just as Krishna is eternally a person, so are we. But now our original personal nature is covered by Maya (illusion). Maya diverts consciousness away from Krishna. The temporary forms of the material world then become the objects of our consciousness and all its desires. Thus prema (the soul's love for God) is perverted into kama (lust for material sense gratification). As long we confuse lust for love, we must take birth in this world again and again. For a devotee of Krishna, the method of liberation from birth and death is the method of purifying consciousness and desires until the ecstasy of pure Krishna consciousness is achieved. As the word ecstasy indicates (Greek ekstasis, "outside the body"), Krishna consciousness transports the soul beyond identification with the material body.

All the great religions of mankind teach that this present life is meant to cultivate the afterlife of the soul. Among the various sects within Judaeo-Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism, two paths of cultivation can be discerned: 1) the path of elevation, and 2) the path of salvation.

1) The elevationists aim for an elevated state of material happiness in the afterlife. Their hope is to join their family and friends in the celestial realm known as heaven in the Bible and svarga in the Vedas. The Bhagavad-gita warns that although life in heaven is much longer than on earth, it is not eternal: "When they have thus enjoyed vast heavenly sense pleasure and the results of their pious activities are exhausted, they return to this mortal planet again. Thus those who seek sense enjoyment by adhering to the principles of elevation achieve only repeated birth and death." (Bhagavad-gita 9.21)

2) Salvationists, on the other hand, aim to be saved from their mortality. Buddhists, Mayavadi Hindu Vedantists, as well as Judaeo-Christian and Islamic Sufi mystics, often speak of salvation as the surrender of the mortal self to the eternal light that is Nirvana, Brahman or God. Some speak of salvation as a state of unbroken prayerful contemplation upon a personal deity. These are descriptions of impersonal Brahman and Paramatma realization. Impersonal Brahman, as explained in previous articles, is the formless effulgence of Lord Krishna's personal form. Mystics and yogis who are able to negate their minds' attachments to the world of material form may lose themselves within this formless light. Paramatma is Krishna's form as the Supersoul, who dwells within the hearts of all living beings as the overseer and permitter (see Bhagavad-gita 13.23). Paramatma realization is semi-personal, because the salvationist's relationship to the Supersoul in the heart remains passive. More than wanting to serve God, the salvationist wants to be saved from death and rebirth. Thus impersonal Brahman and semi-personal Paramatma realization are incomplete.

A famous verse in Srimad-Bhagavatam explains how complete realization of the Personality of Godhead is to be cultivated.

sravanam kirtanam visnoh smaranam pada-sevanam arcanam vandanam dasyam sakhyam atma-nivedanam

"Hearing and chanting about the transcendental holy name, form, qualities, paraphernalia and pastimes of Lord Krishna, remembering them, serving the lotus feet of the Lord, offering the Lord respectful worship with sixteen types of paraphernalia, offering prayers to the Lord, becoming His servant, considering the Lord one's best friend, and surrendering everything unto Him (in other words, serving Him with the body, mind and words) --these nine processes are accepted as pure devotional service." (Srimad-Bhagavatam 7.5.23)

After the steady practice of these nine processes awakens the ecstasy of love of Krishna in the devotee's heart, Krishna appears before the devotee. At that time all the senses of the devotee (the eyes, nose, ears, tongue, sense of touch) become the receptacles of the auspicious qualities of Krishna: His supreme beauty, fragrance, melody, youthfulness, tastefulness, munificence and mercy. The Lord reveals first His beauty to the eyes of the devotee. Due to the sweetness of that beauty, all the senses and the mind take on the quality of eyes. From this the devotee swoons. To console the devotee, the Lord next reveals His fragrance to the nostrils of the devotee, and by this, the devotee's senses take on the quality of the nose in order to smell. Again the devotee swoons in bliss. The Lord then reveals His sonorous voice to the devotee's ears. All the senses become like ears to hear, and for the third time the devotee faints. The Lord then mercifully gives the touch of His lotus feet, His hands and His chest to the devotee, and the devotee experiences the Lord's fresh youthfulness. To those who love the Lord in the mood of servitude, He places His lotus feet on their heads. To those in the mood of friendship, He grasps their hands with His. To those in the mood of parental affection, with His hand He wipes away their tears. Those in the conjugal mood He embraces, touching them with His hands and chest. Then the devotee's senses all take on the sense of touch and the devotee faints again. In this way, the devotee attains his rasa (spiritual relationship) with Krishna. There are five rasas: santa (passive awe and reverence); dasya (servitude); sakhya (friendship); vatsalya (parenthood); and madhurya (conjugal love). The most fortunate salvationists can attain only the santa-rasa. The four higher rasas are reserved for Krishna's pure devotees.

By flooding the senses with eternal nectar from the original, pure source of pleasure --God Himself --love of Krishna completely liberates the devotee from attraction to temporary material sense pleasures. Thus the consciousness of the soul completely takes shelter of its original position as an eternal associate of the Lord in the spiritual world. As long as he or she still possesses a physical body, the fully Krishna conscious devotee is called jivan-mukta, liberated while still within the material world. When he or she gives up the physical body, the fully Krishna conscious devotee remains forever with Krishna in the spiritual world. This is videha-mukti, liberation that transcends the material world altogether. According to the kind of rasa achieved, the soul in liberation displays a spiritual form as Krishna's eternal servant, friend, parent or conjugal lover. Just as our present material body permits us to engage in karma (physical activities), so the spiritual rasa-body permits us to engage in lila (Krishna's endlessly expanding spiritual activities).

HINDUISM REVISITED THE RELEVANCE OF GANDHI TODAY

noreply@blogger.com (Himalayas) — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 12:27:00 +0000

Sati and the Chaste Wife Syndrome

Religions are based on the construction of ideal types which lead to the wide acceptance of what a `good’ man or `good’ woman should aspire to be. This primordial concern with what contemporary discourse views as understandings of masculinity and femininity has resulted in desirable role models as well as in views on what men and women should not be. Political thinkers and social reformers have been quick to seize upon these images in their search for legitimacy and influence. There have, however, been notable exceptions : in the present century, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi gave a new interpretation to accepted Hindu notions of femininity and masculinity. In the process, women became active political and social agents in a vital phase of India’s history. That today revivalist forces are aggressively demanding a return to well established models is due in large part to a decline in the sociopolitical climate, and the inability of traditional religion to accept innovation which questions the dominance of a male godhead. Gandhi exploited brilliantly Hinduism’s ambivalence towards the female principle and in the process redefined the parameters of political action. The Gandhian trend of selfquestioning and analysis is now being picked up by the women’s movement which denies the universality of incarcerating stereotypes. At the same time, religious revivalism finds easy acceptance among a much larger section of the population; using myth, folklore and tradition it is able to break fresh ground and threaten attempts at the projection of a counterideology. The recent incident of Roop Kanwar’s death in Deorala illustrates the efficacy of a successful propaganda campaign which is a skillful mix of the old and the new.

Around 1352, somewhere in Rajasthan, Rani Sati Narayani Devi was said to have immolated herself on the funeral pyre of her husband, Tandhan Das. As will be discussed later in this paper, the notion of sacrifice is vital for an appreciation of femininity in the Indian context. In time, in the district of Jhunjhunu, the local trading community, with help from its kin in other parts of the country, built a large opulent edifice, the Rani Sati temple. The temple is an ode to the ideals of sacrifice, dedication and subordination. Sati exemplifies the feminine virtues of sacrifice and selfabnegation. Each year, in September, the temple and its environs wear a festive look during the annual mela (fair) of Rani Sati. Families from all parts of the country (and abroad) come to Jhunjhunu to pray and celebrate a recommitment to traditional values, symbolised by a woman’s unnatural death. Generations internalised what was and is told to them presumably unquestioningly, only to enforce these norms in their homes when the time and occasion arose.

Then, on September 4, 1987, in Deorala, also in Rajasthan (not far from Jhunjhunu), Roop Kanwar, a young collegeeducated Rajput woman, was burnt on her husband’s funeral pyre. This time there was a nationwide uproar; women’s groups, political activists, academics, journalists, religious leaders and others feverishly argued for and against sati, its essential meaning, presentday implications and so on. Roop Kanwar has now passed into the realm of mythology, of legend, of interpretation and deconstruction; yet the incident led to action and controversy. A body of opinion argued that she had been dragged and forced on to the pyre; she had been murdered, they pointed out, and the heinous act was now being legitimised in an aura of martyrdom. Forced to take some steps, the Government passed a legislation entitled the Commission of Sati (Prevention) Act, 1987. While it penalises the glorification of sati, at the same time this legislation treats the event itself as suicide. Thus the onus of responsibility is placed on the individual woman, thereby minimising the role of force and intervention by other agents and interested individuals.

Though full of loopholes, the Act helped the district authorities in laying down some restrictions for the sati fair at Jhunjhunu. In addition, schools run by the same trust which established the temple have stopped the hitherto standard practice of young girl students ritually worshipping Rani Sati. On September 21, 1988, the Supreme Court, responding to a petition by 6 women’s organisations stayed the Gita recital readings from the Bhagavad Gita to commemorate the first barsi (death anniversary) of Roop Kanwar and Mall Singh, at Deorala. The petitioners pointed out that the Dharam Raksha Samiti (Organisation to Protect Religion) which was formed after Roop Kanwar’s immolation had been distributing a variety of literature in support of sati.

Nonetheless, the next day, thousands of villagers participated in the Gita path (recital) including several women, and a few politicians; the district administration’s inability to enforce antisati legislation as well as the Supreme Court ruling has been explained by some as a “tactical understanding” to avoid confrontation and violence. After the Gita path, glorification of sati began “as those attending the path including the parents and inlaws of Roop Kanwar started raising prosati slogans”. Women are reported to have raised slogans such as “jo sati ko satayga, zindaqi bhar pachitayega” (he or she who troubles sati will regret it all his or her life). While on the following day 45 arrests were made, the incidents only highlight the strength of deepseated social attitudes towards femininity. Of particular relevance is the participation of women in the glorification of sati; at the same time, the documentary film on sati, “From the Burning Embers”, provides us with accounts of articulate village women who felt that Roop Kanwar had been forced on to the funeral pyre. They also questioned why men were not expected to various indignities and forms of anguish. It would be simplistic to attempt an analysis of the variance in these women’s attitudes as clearly different situations evoke different responses; of importance nonetheless is the fact that in parts of rural Rajasthan, the woman’s essential role became a matter for some debate.

A few months later, in January 1988, Shakuntala Devi, a twenty four year old woman, was reported to have killed herself on her husband’s pyre in Uttar Pradesh. There was, however, a vital difference between this event and the incident at Deorala: as Shakuntala Devi’s husband had been cremated 48 hours earlier, had she committed sati or suicide? A woman is regarded as a sati if she immolates herself simultaneously with the burning body of her husband. While the government authorities argued that it was suicide by an estranged wife, the local community treated Shakuntala Devi as a sati. Though clearly not on the scale of Deorala, for a few days worship at the cremation spot followed. Once again, a woman’s death in this case clearly voluntary became a symbol of purity and virtue. Accordingly, she was temporarily deified as her soul was regarded as worthy of propitiation.

The Sanskrit noun sati means good, virtuous and devout. It does not include the practice of widow immolation, though, by implication, a woman who chose to die with her husband could be nothing but pure and chaste. The fact that in the last century several women were forced on to their husband’s funeral pyres for reasons which had nothing to do with their innate qualities have been discussed at length elsewhere. What is important here is the strength of a religious tradition which, even in the late twentieth century, needs or uses extreme acts of violence to reinforce its validity. The ideal of sacrifice is not unique only to Hindu constructions of femininity. However, it is here that, through a peculiar mix of religiosity and realpolitik, it has acquired in the present century, a particular intensity and legitimacy. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s ability to reach out to women by using the ideal of sacrifice has brought into focus the political uses of tradition in a manner unknown before; advocating a counterideology, this frail man involved thousands of men and women in the political mainstream. In doing so, he made judicious use of established views on feminine roles, reflected in religion and mythology.

When western education came to India at the beginning of the last century, early recipients were boys and men. Particularly in the urban areas, school and collegegoing became increasingly popular and whitecollar jobs the preferred goal. Introduction to an entire literary tradition encouraged the growth of a reading population which also soon took to writing and public speaking. As learning for girls involved a completely different set of responses and necessitated special arrangements and a separate curriculum, the issue became an area for considerable debate in the print media, discussion groups and in homes. Consequently, while supposedly liberating women from unshackling customs and ways of life, education was nonetheless limiting in a number of respects. It stressed the importance of a learning geared to the creation of intelligent wives and good mothers. In certain senses, the idea of sacrifice was implied in a system where a woman’s primary duty was to be more effective in socially constructed roles and obligations. Individual aspirations were to be contained within this framework of a maleordered society. It is easy then, to see a connecting thread between this point of view and the ideal of feminine obedience and docility; that women occasionally questioned if not resisted comes through in a reading of their writings. At another level, they were involved in a number of militant peasant struggles in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Several decades later, though in a very different manner, Gandhi encouraged and inspired women to seek an identity and sense of self.

A Youth of Desire and Dedication
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi remains a subject of intense fascination to a wide crosssection of people; activists, philosophers, psychologists as well as politicians have sought to understand the man and what he stood for. It is not an easy task, for Gandhi means different things to different people. His life and work have inspired a body of writing ranging from somewhat hagiographical biographies to searching analyses and psychoanalytical studies. Expectedly, his views on femininity have been of some interest, not only because of what these imply for women but also because they underlay his political philosophy as well as his activism.

In this paper, I shall briefly examine Gandhi’s attitude to Putlibai, his mother, and the assumption of a maternal role towards his ailing father and later his grandniece, Manu, as these were important in shaping his attitude towards women and their roles. His early marriage, confessions of “carnal desires” towards his child bride, Kasturbai, and commitment to celibacy at the age of 37 were all vital influences in the evolution of an unconventional male person. Some facets of this man and his unusual views will be analysed. Nonviolence (I shall look at relevant Sanskrit terms a little later), sacrifice, dignity of labour through spinning and communal living were all essential elements in his philosophicalcumaction plan; these were and continue to be qualities associated with femininity in the Indian situation. Thus, I shall argue that, in the contemporary context, any comprehensive analysis of Gandhian thought and action must include an understanding of his views on women and their roles. For instance, in present day revivalist Hinduism, sacrifice of the sati, of self, of selfeffacing denial is glorified. Mahatma Gandhi too lauded the chastity of women; yet for him sacrifice and denial were sources of empowerment and not instruments of oppression in an unequal social order. He was, in the sense described by Eric Hobsbawm, “inventing tradition”, in this case a tradition of a new femininity; while establishing “continuity with a suitable historic past”, M.K. Gandhi visualised a contemporary role for women. Thus the Gandhian woman was to use her traditional qualities to build a new positive image of action, resistance and change.

Karamchand (Kaba) Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s father, was a Prime Minister of the princely state of Porbander in the Kathiwar peninsula of Gujarat. He married four times, and Mohandas was the youngest son of his last wife, and on the first page of his autobiography, My Experiments with Truth (published in 1927), Mohandas writes that “to a certain extent he (his father) might have been given to carnal pleasure”. On the other hand, his mother was the embodiment of Hindu womanhood. He commented:

The outstanding impression my mother has left on my memory is that of saintliness. She was deeply religious. She would not think of taking her meals without her daily prayers.... She would take the hardest vows and keep them without flinching... To keep two or three consecutive ... fasts was nothing to her.

As is well known, the fast and, in the political context, the hunger strike became important in Gandhian methodology: involving denial, suffering and even pain for the protester, ideally they made her or him stronger. The opponent was often at a loss on how to cope with these aspects of nonviolent protest. There is of course a substantial difference between the fast as a religious observance and the hunger strike and fast as political tools. In the former case it is more a shortterm purificatory act and a sign of devotion; in the latter while selfpurification is important, it is not the chief aim. Nonetheless, in both the notion of sacrifice is implied. Whatever the reason, a fast is unlikely not to have an effect on others as well, even when it is not politically motivated. For instance, though this is not expressed in his autobiography, clearly the sensitive young Mohandas felt guilty and anxious as his mother went without food on several days. While fasting is not unusual for certain categories of both Hindu women and men, the range and occasions of women’s fasts and rituals are far more frequent. These are regarded as socially valued activities of the women’s domain.

Putlibai, who used to spin and wore coarse homemade cloth, was apparently a strong and respected woman. Wellversed in “all matters of state”, the “ladies of the court thought highly of her intelligence”. In 1887, when it was time for Mohandas to go to England, Putlibai was clearly uneasy. Her “minute enquires” had led her to conclude that there was every danger of her son taking to drink and meateating. The Gandhis were Modh Banias brought up in the strict tradition of Vaishnavism, and were abstemious in their food habits. It was only after Mohandas had taken vows “not to touch wine, women and meat” before a Jain monk that his mother gave her “permission and blessings”. That Putlibai was a strong influence on her son’s future life is apparent from a close reading of Gandhi’s writings. His respect for women and a belief in their ability and tenacity arose from an early exposure to another strong woman: married at thirteen to Kasturbai, a strongwilled young girl, who “maid it a point to go out whenever and wherever she liked”, Mohandas had tried to educate her. But Kasturbai was resistant. In the early pages of his autobiography, Mohandas makes several references to his “lustful love” and “carnal desire” for his wife.

The incident of Kaba’s death and his son’s selfconfessed guilt at having left his dying father to be with his wife has been a subject of considerable analysis. Of relevance here is the easy and willing assumption of the role of nurse and attendant by the youthful Mohandas. At the same time, “every night whilst my hands were busy massing my father’s legs, my mind was hovering about the bedroom”. The young man’s sense of duty and obligation vied with a desire for his wife. The influence of these early experiences are evident in the adult Gandhi’s repeated stress on the need to be caring, gentle and selfsacrificing. His adoption of celibacy was perhaps not unrelated to his remorse at having treated his wife as an object of lust. Regretting that he had not persisted with his plans to educate an obdurate Kasturbai, Gandhi wrote

I am sure that, had my love for her been untainted with lust, she would be a learned lady today; for I could have conquered her dislike for studies. I know that nothing is impossible for pure love. (emphasis mine.

To him nurturance, purity of heart and body, and forbearance were constitutive of a strength essential for the development of purposeful opposition to colonialism. Putlibai and Kasturbai had convinced him that women as much as men were capable of assertiveness, determination and goaloriented behaviour. At the same time, he felt that their feminine natures and inclinations made them especially suited to nonviolence and sacrifice.

Gandhian Methods: Femininity, Nonviolence and Empowerment
Accordingly, in his early writings and speeches Mahatma Gandhi emphasised that while both men and women were equal, “women’s education should differ from men’s as their nature and functions do”. Home management and the care of children were of vital importance, and while women were not to be kept in ignorance, “it is tyrannical to burden them with work which is ordinarily done by men”. Ideally girls were to be trained to be good wives and nurturant mothers; “gradually”, wrote Gandhi in 1917, “it should be possible to introduce women to the subjects of politics and social reform”. It was thus not long before Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was asking women who had gathered to hear him speak to give up wearing foreign material and dedicate themselves to the principles of swadesh (of one’s country). Spinning yarn on the charkha or indigenous spinning wheel was an effective way of doing one’s duty or dharma. Speaking at a women’s meeting at Nadiad (Gujarat) in 1919, Mahatma Gandhi told those assembled that “to spin for the good of India sitting in the home, and that too not for money this is the highest dharma.

At a time when Indian politicians were busy devising strategies and debating British policy and methods among themselves, Gandhi took his message of mass participation to the country’s women. His approach for the goal of largescale involvement was simple and straightforward. Using an idiom with which his audience was familiar, Gandhi asked women to develop talents they were best suited to : they were to spin, rear their children in the spirit of swadesh, nonviolence and dharma, and be fitting companions to their husbands who may or may not be actively involved in politics. His commitment to celibacy and stress on a nonconfrontationist denial appealed to women who were familiar with the cultural language he adhered to. However, Gandhi’s emphasis on sacrifice and denial were not merely a reaffirmation of stereotypical notions of a woman’s nature. For him, sacrifice was a powerful instrument, requiring a particular state of mind which not many could attain. That it was, and continues to be, regarded as a symbol of a woman’s subordinate position within the home and in the public sphere is hardly a position Mahatma Gandhi would subscribe to. if anything, by stating that women were best suited to bring about his kind of society that women were best suited to bring about his kind of society Gandhi was according them the dominant position in his political scheme. The current swing towards violence against women is in part a reflection of a change in sociopolitical and religious ideologies. To understand the present context better however, it is essentials to try and see how the Gandhian past was different.

In his introduction to My Days with Gandhi anthropologist N.K. Bose points out that “it was by becoming a woman that he tried to circumvent one of the most powerful and disturbing elements which belong to our biological existence”. Bose was referring to Mahatma Gandhi’s celibacy and the feminisation of his personality through the adoption of the maternal, nurturer role. Though Gandhi took the vow of celibacy in 1906 (with the consent of his wife), he had been trying to achieve this state from 1900 onwards. An analysis of the implications of celibacy in general, and more specifically the Mahatma’s commitment to it, fall outside the scope of this paper. Nevertheless, it clearly was of great importance to his philosophy of nonviolence and respect for femininity. For him, celibacy was only a part of the concept of brahmacharya. Gandhi wrote in his autobiography “brahmacharya” means control of the senses in thought, word and deed. Every day I have been realising more and more the necessity for restraints of the kind I have detailed above”.

It was with the taking of the vow that the ground for satyagraha was laid. In her detailed study of the Gandhian philosophy of conflict, Joan Bondurant discusses reservations over the use and definitions of this term. From the day that he began using the word during his South African experience to the last months in Delhi, Gandhi was apparently deeply involved in an understanding of this term. In his own words “satyagraha” is the force which is born of truth and love or nonviolence”. It was thus, he concluded, much more than passive resistance, a phrase which he had used in the early years. Using effectively noncooperation, boycott and the strike, satyagrahis (or those committed to satyagraha) were successful on a number of occasions; between 1917, when Gandhi used satyagraha for the first time on a largescale during the agitation of the indigo workers of Champaran and his death in 1948, there were hundreds of mass satyagrahas throughout the country. Thus a decision in a highly private area of the Mahatma’s life was an essential influence in the evolution of his political philosophy of nonviolence. For if Indians were to work effectively against British rule, direct negotiations and protests by politicians had to be backed up by mass action. Violence against the might of the British Empire could have only a limited impact, as was evident from the experience of terrorism. Nor did it have wide public support. On the other hand, a plan of action with roots in an easily comprehensible philosophy had a far greater appeal.

As already pointed out, the Gandhian vision of sacrifice and nonviolence operationalised by the effective tools of the strike, fast and boycott represented a particular view of the Indian personality. In many senses, it was the feminine personality which was the archetypal Gandhian personality. His `mothering’ of the orphaned Manu, was indicative of his belief that nurturance was not only a feminine characteristic. Clearly, his days of nursing his father had given him a certain deeprooted satisfaction. He enjoyed the company of children and on his return from England in 1891, took charge of all the children in the family and greatly enjoyed his walks and interaction with them. He felt that after his vow of celibacy he was liberated in his attitude towards women : a woman was “the mother of man. She became too sacred for sexual love. And so every woman at once became sister or daughter to me”. In his psychoanalytical study of Gandhi, Erik Erikson points out that the Mahatma probably saw a running thread in male violence, be it against the Blacks in South Africa or men against women. This led to “a deeper identification with the maltreated, and a stronger aversion against all male sadism”. A recurrent theme in Gandhi’s autobiography is his regret at having used Kasturbai as an object of lust and how after he became a celibate his attitude towards her changed.

The self control which the life of a brahmachari implied involved the practice of ahimsa, literally translated to mean nonviolence. Yet, for Gandhi, ahimsa was much more; it was “a comprehensive principle” where compassion and selfrestraint were of paramount importance. Recognising that it was not always easy to attain this state, he nonetheless urged his supporters to strive towards the life and philosophy of a brahmachari or brahmacharini. For him, women were ideally suited to his kind of mobilisation and public activity. On the other hand, “dharma has always been preserved through women. Nations have won their independence because women have brave men as sons”. On the other, women themselves, as embodiments of the ideas of ahimsa and sacrifice, were to participate in satyagrahas. They were, however, not to become “aggressive civil resisters” as their strength lay in ”dignified suffering”.

The Gandhian emphasis on purity of the soul and body, essential if ahimsa was to succeed, had specific implications for the movement as well as for a sexual division of functions within it. Based on various experiments, both in his personal life as well as in the ashrams where he often lived with his followers, had convinced Gandhi of the value of selfcontrol, cooperative effort, and the ability for men and women to live harmoniously in a collectivity. Mahatma Gandhi was particularly sensitive to the position of women and hoped that their sense of self would be strengthened through participation in a movement which accorded them a vital place. He was opposed to child marriage and felt that “the rights or latitude allowed to widowers should also be allowed to widows .... enforced widowhood is to be condemned” as it “leads to promiscuity”. As far as rights to property were concerned, he was “uncompromising in the matter of women’s rights” and sons and daughters were to be treated equally.

That Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi spent considerable time thinking about the position of Indian women, their existing situation and potential role is evident from his speeches and writings. Though he wrote only two full length books, he was a voracious writer of articles and letters. As already pointed out, his personal history was in part responsible for an early commitment to a belief in women’s competence and superiority as well as for his efforts at developing some `feminine’ qualities. It was not surprising then that women from a range of class, caste, religious and ethnic backgrounds flocked to the Mahatma. The brief descriptions of the Dandi salt march and sustained campaign for prohibition show how important areas of the movement depended on women’s participation. In addition, spinning khadi yarn on the charkha, which involved a far larger number of women than men, was a major component of a movement committed to selfreliance and discipline.

The Dandi Salt March and Prohibition
In February 1931, Viceroy Irwin admitted to the Mahatma “you planned a fine strategy round the issue of salt”. He was referring to the Dandi march or salt satyagraha of the earlier year, when together with 71 ashram members from all over the country, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi asked Indians to manufacture and auction salt after he had picked the first handful. this was on march 11, before he began his 385 kilometer march to Dandi on the Gujarat sea coast. J.B. Kriplani, one of Gandhi’s trusted lieutenants, described the historic event as follows:

From March 12 to April 5, Gandhiji and his band of Satyagrahis tramped from village to village. Wherever they went, they received an adoring welcome by the people with flags and garlands. Gandhiji addressed meetings everywhere and spoke to the crowds at his prayer gatherings, morning and evening. As he marched on, the crowds of marchers swelled. Thousands joined him. The local administration started crumbling. Nearly 400 village headmen resigned.

Historian Sumit Sarkar has pointed out that like the sustained campaign for involving the masses in khadi production, the manufacture of salt had an enormous mobilising effect. For the poor, it meant extra income based on the principle of selfhelp; for the urban participant it offered “the possibility of a symbolic identification with mass suffering”. Extrapolating from this I would add that more specifically it gave women, traditionally denied access to political processes and decisionmaking, a sense of personal commitment to the country’s freedom. When the Mahatma was arrested on May 4, 1930, widespread unrest and strikes followed; peaceful though strong nonviolent protest characterised the leader’s incarceration in Yeravada jail. The Dandi salt march received much publicity and attention; the might of the British empire was challenged by those seeking purna Swaraj or total independence. Widespread support for the march which took entire families to the sea shore, soon involved women in more than only spinning within their homes.

though mobilisation for prohibition (against liquor) did not always hit the headlines it was sustained for a longer period and women had an important role to play in locallevel organisation and planning. Writing in April 1930, Mahatma Gandhi justified his choice of deciding on an important role for women in this activity. He wrote,

But why should I involve women in this tangle? At this juncture I merely offer to women the field of prohibition without entering into discussion of any other field of activity...... Countless women should prepare themselves and the activity should increase a hundred fold....All men should step aside. They should only do such work as is allotted to them. But the principal work of picketing, of persuading people, of pleading with them and of taking deputations to liquorbooths should be done by women alone.

While women were free to work out the details, Mahatma Gandhi provided certain guidelines such as ensuring that trained women started satyagraha units at various places, picketing liquor booths as well as going to the homes of addicts. Interestingly, in the same article, Gandhi felt that while he understood “the impatience of women to take part in civil disobedience”, he felt that there should be an “exclusive field” for them. Opposition to the salt law was not fitting as it was dominated by men; on the other hand, prohibition, which was aimed at men, was far more apt. Once again, feminine capacities to persuade, cajole and gently pressurise were viewed as appropriate. In fact, in 1921, picketing of liquor shops and foreign cloth shops by men had failed because “violence crept in”.

A few days later in a speech at Dandi, the Mahatma reiterated that picketing of liquor and cloth shops was to be “the special field of women”, as they could easily practice nonviolence and renunciation. He asserted on more than one occasion that women were to resist interference by men. Responding positively to Gandhi’s suggestion a group of upper middle class, urban Gujarati women decided to write to the Viceroy, informing him of their intention as well as pointing out that it was the duty of the state “to prohibit traffic in intoxicating drink”. The letter was drafted by the Mahatma, though the women followed it up with a covering letter to their Gujarati sisters asking them to sign the letter and work with the Committee so formed. The new recruits were also given the option to form their own committees and of deciding where they were to picket. That the Mahatma’s belief in the ability of women to overcome the obduracy of men was naive became evident in a few days. In Surat and Jabalpur women picketers were abused in foul language and clods of earth were hurled at them. While admiring the endurance of the women, Gandhi was appalled at the indiffference of men. Those incidents of violence brought to light the proverbial Archilles heel of women their physical and sexual vulnerability. Fearing for his satyagrahis, Gandhi rebuked the very men whom he had earlier asked to stay away from this area of women’s activism. In doing so he was indirectly admitting that meaningful participation was possible only in the hothouse environment of the ashram, or where women cooperated with men. At that point of time, an allwomen’s initiative was fraught with inherent dangers.

Gandhi had believed that purity of heart and body would prove a perfect foil to male aggression. His individual capacity to feminise himself combined with the rigours of celibacy and denial had led him to develop a somewhat myopic notion of male and female natures. Even if his idealised myopia was politically convenient in an environment where conventional options and strategies were being questioned and rejected, expediency was certainly not a primary goal. Few would question his belief in the ability of Indians to utilise effectively methods which would first strengthen them personally and then help them to organise collectively. Ironically, in the ultimate analysis it was also a commitment to nonviolence which brought great anguish to the Mahatma in his last years. The violent events leading to the partition of the country in 1947 negated much of what Gandhi has spent a lifetime working for; at a more fundamental level, it meant a rejection of his assumptions regarding human nature and the capacity of women to be selfreliant in an increasingly hostile world.

The Last Years and Beyond
While the education conference in Wardha (Gujarat) in October 1937 endorsed Mahatma Gandhi’s proposal for basic education through emphasis on productive labour, it was clear that an increasing number of politicians were growing somewhat impatient with Gandhian methods and policies. Over the next couple of years his role in the internal politics of the Congress Party was also the subject of some unease. By 1940, Muslim separatism had gathered momentum, though partition was not explicitly mentioned. Though World War II placed Gandhi in a peculiar position, as it went against his commitment to ahimsa, the Congress Working Committee decided to go ahead and support Britain. The expectation was that the British would be prepared to discuss a postwar independence pledge. However, as the situation did not seem t o augur any talks on purna swaraj, the congress passed its `Quit India’ resolution on August 8, 1942. This asked for á mass struggle on nonviolent lines on the widest possible scale”. Apprehending widespread trouble, the Government arrested important leaders in the early hours of August 9. What followed was hardly nonviolent protest: as countrywide militance was matched by police oppression, it became increasingly clear that commitment to nonviolence had to be reviewed in the light of a fast changing environment.

With the war, communal unease and increasing incidents of aggression, the Mahatma’s continued emphasis on the woman’s purity of spirit seemed increasingly anachronistic. He had realized this as well. In response to a letter written by “a sister” in March 1942, which asked specific questions on a woman’s situation at being assaulted by a soldier, he wrote,

It is my firm conviction that a fearless woman who knows that her purity is her best shield can never be dishonored. However beastly the man, he will bow in shame before the flame of her dazzling purity. There are examples even in modern times of women who have thus defended themselves. I can, as I write, recall two such instances. I therefore recommend women who read this article to try to cultivate this courage. They will become wholly fearless, if they can, and cease to tremble as they do today at the mere thought of assaults. It is not, however, necessary for a woman to go through a bitter experience for the sake of passing a test of courage. These experiences mercifully do not come in the way of lakhs or even thousands. Every solider is not a beast. It is a minority that loses all sense of decency....Parents and husbands should, therefore, instruct women in the art of becoming fearless.

Interestingly, he added, her primary duty is self protection. She is at liberty to employ every method or means that come to her mind in order to defend her honor. God has given her nails and teeth. She must use them with all her strength, and if need be, die in the effort......If old, decrepit and toothless as I am, I were to plead nonviolence and be a helpless witness of assault on the honour of a sister, my socalled Mahatmaship would be ridiculed.

Even as Gandhi asked women to use violence in self-defence, he continued to hope for the resurgence of the “courageous spirit” which would protect the country from disaster.

It was this hope which took him to the religiously divided villages of Bengal and Bihar. From August 1946 onwards, Calcutta, Noakhali in East Bengal and later, in Bihar, Hindus and Muslims killed each other, raped women and looted and destroyed property worth millions. From October 1946, the old man of 77 “with undiminished courage decided to stake his all in a bid to vindicate his life long principles of change of heart and nonviolence”. Nirmal Bose reported that his presence often acted like “a magic spell”; families who had left their homes, in panic returned as “suspicion and a feeling of insecurity” were gradually dispelled. Infinite patience and sensitive cajoling combined with a well thought out understanding of what was needed helped to restore confidence. Bose’s meticulous and detailed account of the Mahatma’s stay in Bengal and Bihar during those disastrous months of 1946 and 1947 helps us to recreate the last years of a man who had rejected conventional forms of political participation. Once again, as he lived surrounded by his followers, women were involved in planning and action. Denial and sacrifice were as important as speeches and individual talks, and communal tension in Calcutta was dispelled in September by Mahatma Gandhi’s fast unto death. Once again, shortly before his assassination in January 1948, he had gone on a fast as Hindus massacred Muslims in Delhi in retaliation for the carnage in Punjab. During his stay in Bengal and Bihar, Nirmal Bose reported that the Mahatma kept indifferent health and was also mentally greatly troubled. Bose often heard him saying under his breath, “main kya karoo” or “what am I to do”.

When Nathuram Vinayak Godse shot Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi on January 30, 1948, this was not the isolated act of a lone, demented man. Godse represented that important section of Hindu India which rejected Gandhi, his ideals and methods, and above all his interpretations of Hinduism and Hindu malehood. Further, as psychoanalyst Ashis Nandy has pointed out, there was increasing resentment against the Mahatma’s “attempt to change the definition of centre and periphery in Indian society”. His involvement of the untouchables, women and Muslims in his movement was viewed as threatening by Hindus reared in the tradition of upper caste hegemony. It was not inconsequential then that Godse was a Chitpavan Brahmin from Maharashtra; known for their valour, the Chitpavans “combine the traditional prerogatives of the priestly Brahmans and the kindly Kshtriyas”. The Gandhian movement threatened those with a stake in preserving the established order. Specifically, this meant Hindu superiority the caste system and male domination.

In many senses then , the murder of the Mahatma symbolised the death of a very specific world view and programme of action. There are enough history books and historians to tell us that by the beginning of the forties mainstream congress leaders were a little tired by Gandhi’s at times idiosyncratic views. Clearly he was not unaware of this disenchantment, and in fact he too had gradually distanced himself from much that was happening. Partition of the country into India and Pakistan and the communal holocaust had pained him deeply; nor was he really at home with the gradual bureaucratisation and impersonalisation of a country on the make. His violent death symbolised the end of a welldefined yet shortlived traditional of nonviolence as a way of life for scores of Indians.

In India, forty years after his death, a reassessment of the Mahatma’s essential beliefs is relevant particularly as violence appears to be acquiring the political and social status that nonviolence did in the early decades of this century. Gandhi `invented’ a tradition of nonviolence and mass participation using an idiom with which the people were familiar. In large part, his philosophy, depended on an eclectic religiosity and mythology. Today, the never absent tradition of violence and domination has taken over using another set of social, religious and mythological images. Rape and sexual assaults are a case in point and clearly require for greater analysis and understanding. Clearly, essential for the present day power brokers is a reassertion of an aggressive, selfif not community and religiouscentred, individualism. In this the political system is encouraged by religion and religious revivalism for which Nathuram Vinayak Godse must remain an abiding symbol.

Mahatma Gandhi’s use of religious icons and images particularly in the context of femininity, was ingenious and convincing: the successful Gandhian woman was not only pure in body and spirit but also strong and determined. Often, her convictions took her into the public sphere. Combining both aspects of desirable and accepted femininity, she was sati as well as shakti. Those aspects of shakti which threatened men were taken care of by the emphasis on chastity, and whenever possible, the spirit (if not the actual practice) of brahmacharya. Gandhi was helped by a shortlived political environment which was somewhat sceptical of aggression. Soon sporadic events of violence culminating in the horrors of the forties had considerable implications not only for the Gandhian way of life but also for women’s roles. The tensions inherent in encouraging women to participate and organise sociopolitical action came to the fore during the campaign against prohibition; more generally, during the communal riots, sexual assaults on women became symbolic of an assault on the selfrespect of the rival community. As women became pawns in this terrible scenario, a heartbroken Gandhi had to rethink his position on human nature. It could not have been easy for him, particularly as his entire life had been devoted to the encouragement and growth of the androgynous personality. Having achieved a great measure of personal success in this sphere, he had hoped that his own life could serve as an example to others. That in the long run he was not successful was more a reflection of the resurgence of factors beyond his control than of his own failure.

The Constitution of postIndependence India is committed to a secular democracy; indeed in the early Nehruvian years, policies and programmes were geared to the development of a modernising economy based on state initiative. The centre was in control, displacing the Gandhian periphery. Despite a simmering resentment towards Pakistan, religion was not a focus of mobilisation or activism. The rule of Indira Gandhi saw the early beginnings of distinct communal, ethnic and caste tensions; her deathagain a violent assassination brought to the fore religious sentiments. This time it was a hatred unleashed against the Sikhs of the Punjab. Women once again became victims of a drama being played out mainly by men. Since 1984, there has been no going back; India is today riven by caste, religious and ethnic divisions. Central to the claims of most contending groups is a militant masculininity and the demand for an acquiescent femininity. Muslim women in the troubled state of Kashmir are forced behind the veil and in 1987, Roop Kanwar, temporarily acquired the status of a minor goddess.

As the original tradition of a Hindu India reasserts itself, feminine power or shakti is once again seen as essential for male supermacy and success, and not as vital for a meaningful feminine identity. it is the sati who cares, nurtures and subordinates herself in countless homes who is to be deified. The Gandhian woman who spun within the home yet was prepared to face police brutality is not the ideal anymore. While feminine sacrifice remains a coveted virtue, it has lost much of the moral authority it enjoyed in the Mahatma’s scheme of things. It is now viewed much more as legitimate denial for the benefit of the family collectivity. it may be argued that the Gandhian emphasis on a woman’s capacity for sacrifice did in fact cast her in a mould, where she was expected to tolerate pain and welcome denial. The validity of this point of view has to be juxtaposed with the Mahatma’s belief in the moral and spiritual superiority of women and the empowering nature of sacrifice. That for him women and not men were the more honourable, and admirable sex is clear from his own efforts at becoming as much like a woman as he possible could.

Though the dominant male world view has little place for feminine selfexpression, evidence from the post 1975 women’s movement indicates that the Gandhian experience was not in vain. Mobilising themselves on a range of ecological, quasipolitical and social issues Indian women are looking once more to Gandhian alternatives and to his view of religious and social tolerance. Significantly, unlike the Mahatma, activists do not ascribe to religiomythological prototypes. Instead, using effectively proven tools of social and political protest women are becoming an influential force in specific areas. In doing so, they are reestablishing their links with not only Gandhianism but also with early peasant and tribal struggles. The success of the women’s movement is not only to be gauged in terms of goals attained: It has also to be viewed in a perspective which questions the increasing consolidation of stereotypes and restricting role models. It hopes to legitimise a trend which Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi spent considerable effort on; in the process it also denies the validity of a religious fundamentalism which espouses a strict dichotomisation of sexual roles and functions, based on male domination and authority.

Conclusion

In 1932, reacting to male aggression against women, Gandhi wrote

the man who allows the modesty of a woman to be outraged will be regarded as a coward. He will be a partner in violence because violence is implicit in cowardice.

He was writing of course before violence overtook the Indian scene, when the spirit of nonviolence and amity still prevailed in public life as well as in overt religious discourse. Within a few years, the Second World War, largescale disturbances following the Quit India Resolution in 1942, and finally the communal violence of the midforties reopened questions of political method, human nature, as well as, at a more personal level, relationships between men and women. The ascendance of religion and religious symbols soon acquired tremendous significance in a country which was to be violently divided on the basis of differing faiths.

The events in the years before the Mahatma’s death led inexorably to a dilemma as many of his beliefs were challenged. They also marked a shift in Indian sociopolitical life towards a never absent tradition of aggression and dominance. I have argued in this paper that such a tradition which, for a few decades was displaced by the power of a new creed asserted itself firmly and irrevocably by the forties. In the heady early years of Independence, politicians and the intelligentsia strove to create a secular, democratic country; by the midseventies, however other trends were clearly visible. Today, as religious and ethnic fundamentalism threatens the unity of the country, it is quite clear that essential to these divisive forces is not only a militant aggression but also a belief in male strength, power and authority. There is little or no place for Gandhi’s androgynous personality and for his belief in a woman’s superior “moral power and greater courage”. Instead as the women’s movement struggles to make itself heard, retrogressive forces assert the legitimacy of feminine docility and subordination, and masculine dominance. Nonetheless Roop Kanwar’s death was after all not in vain: while it may have enraged many women, the event has continued to mobilise fundamentalists as well as those opposed to religious revivalism. For despite a somewhat ambivalent environment, movements inspired by the Gandhian counterideology of gender equality and fairplay are growing in strength and influence.

Hinduism and Christianity

noreply@blogger.com (Himalayas) — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 05:07:00 +0000

Hinduism and Christianity

There is no monolithic, consistent religion called Hinduism. There is an immense diversity of religious beliefs and practices among the various peoples who call themselves Hindus. It is impossible therefore to capture Hinduism. What follows is but a preliminary and inadequate attempt to get some basic feel for the most elusive world religion. We finish with a rough and ready comparison and contrast of Hinduism and Christianity.

Introductory Facts

1. The name “Hindu” comes from Persian pronunciation for the river Siddhu, now known as the Indus.

2. The Indus Valley civilisation dates around 2000 BC. Statues have been unearthed of a mother goddess, suggesting observance of a fertility cult. One figure shows a man sitting cross-legged and surrounded by animals. This is possibly an early form of Shiva.

3. The Aryans (“the noble people”) moved into India around 1500 BCE. They were nomadic, but eventually settled down building cities in the heart of northern India especially along the river Ganges. The Aryans are responsible for the Rig-Veda, the earliest of the Scriptures now venerated by Hindus.

4. Hindus believe their religion is the “eternal religion” (santana dharma), without beginning or end.

5. Hinduism has about 1 billion followers and is a family of religions with four principal denominations:

a. Saivism: devotees worship Lord Shiva as the supreme deity

b. Shaktism: devotees worship goddess Shakti (or Devi) as the supreme deity

c. Vaishnavism: devotees worship Vishnu as the supreme deity

d. Smartism: devotees regard all gods as expressions of the same God and permit worship of any god

6. Common ground on which all four Hindu denominations stand:

a. Belief in karma

b. Belief in reincarnation

c. Belief in a supreme being who is both form and pervades form and who creates, sustains and destroys the universe, then recreates it afresh in never-ending cycles

d. Belief in the importance of temple and image worship

e. Belief that there is no inherent evil

f. Belief in illusion (maya), with some variations of conception

g. Belief in the ultimate goal of liberation of the soul from rebirth (moksha)

h. Belief in the principle of not harming any living being (ahimsa)

i. Belief in the need of a spiritual guide (satguru)

j. Wearing of the sacred marks (tilaka) on their foreheads as sacred symbols (though each wears a distinct mark)

k. Preference for cremation of one’s corpse in the belief that the soul will inhabit another body in the next life

l. According highest authority to the Vedas and Agamas

Explanations

Brahman

“Place this salt in water and come to me tomorrow morning.”

Svetaketu did as he was commanded, and in the morning his father said to him: “Bring me the salt you put into the water last night.”

Svetaketu looked into the water, but could not find it, for it had dissolved. His father then said: “Taste the water from this side. How is it?”

“It is salt.”

“Taste it from the middle. How is it?”

“It is salt.”

“Taste it from that side. How is it?”

“It is salt.”

“Look for the salt again, and come again to me.”

The son did so, saying, “I cannot see the salt. I only see water.”

His father then said: “In the same way, O my son, you cannot see the spirit. But in truth he is there. An invisible and subtle essence is the Spirit of the whole universe. That is Reality. That is Truth. THOU ARE THAT!” (Bhagavad-Gita)

The Caste System

a) The Origin of the Caste System

The origin of the caste system is traced back to myth. There are three versions:

The Rig-Veda Myth

In the Rig-Veda 10.90 the first creature is Purusha, who possessed a thousand heads, a thousand eyes and a thousand feet. All other creations are emanations or products of Purusha.

Purusha was created to be the first sacrificial victim. Traditionally, Indian sacrifices are made using ghee. According to the Rig-Veda, when Purusha was sacrificed the spring season served as ghee, summer provided the sacrificial fuel and autumn the oblation. Purusha was sprinkled with sacred water upon the sacred grass. The sacrificial oblation itself gave birth to sacred verses, chants, meters and formulae. It also gave birth to horses, animals with upper and lower teeth, cows, goats and sheep.

Different parts of Purusha’s body gave birth to different natural phenomena:

1. His moon from his mind

2. The sun from his eye

3. Indra and Agni from his mouth

4. The wind from his breath

5. The atmosphere from his navel

6. The heaven from his head

7. The earth from his feet

8. The quarters (cardinal directions) from his ear.

When Purusha’s body was divided up, different body parts gave rise to different social classes. So, his mouth became the brahman (the priestly class); his two arms were made into the rajanya (the warrior class); his two thighs the vaishyas (the merchant class); from his two feet the shudra (the peasant class) was born.

His mouth became the Brahman.

His arms became the Kshatriya

His thighs are the Vaisya,

The Sudra was produced from his feet. (Rig Veda 10:90.12)

The Manu Myth

Brahma created Manu, the first man. From Manu came the four different types of people. From Manu’s head came the Brahmins, the best and most holy people. Out of his hands came the Kshatriyas, the rulers and warriors. The craftsmen came from his thighs and are called Vaisyas. The remainder of the people came from Manu’s feet and are known as Sudras. As time progressed over 3000 subcastes came into existence. The Indian government has outlawed the caste system but it has made little difference to everyday life for the vast majority of the Hindu population.

The Brahma Myth

According to the Laws of Manu (c. 1500 BCE or 250 BCE?) the Brahman priestly class emanated from Brahma’s mouth at creation (Law 93). Law 87 speaks of how Brahma assigned separate duties and occupations to those who sprang from his mouth, arms, thighs and feet: the Brahmanas, Kshatriya, Vaiya and Sudra respectively.

b) The Importance of the Caste System

Until a century ago the acceptance of the caste system was considered by the orthodox to be the sole effective criterion of whether one was or was not a Hindu. Hume comments, “Amid the unequalled variety of religious belief and practice which has prevailed in Hinduism, caste is the only feature which has been present through all its historical phases and successive scriptures.” Contrast this with the Christian church, e.g., James 2. The biblical Christian community rejects a hierarchy of status and insists on the priesthood of all believers.

c) The Exclusivism of Caste

In classical Hinduism caste groups married within each group and ate only with that group. Except for unusual cases, caste is immutably fixed at birth; it limits a Hindu’s choice of occupation, marriage partner, dress, eating habits, religious practice, and his freedom to move about.

d) The Hierarchical Nature of Caste

The Brahmins topped the system and the untouchables (harijans) lay at the bottom, being consigned to specially polluting tasks, e.g., leather work, butchering, brewing, cleaning latrines, fishing, etc. A Hindu regards those in castes below him as ritually impure. In some matters the lower castes have more freedom; a Sudra may eat meat and his widow may remarry – options forbidden to orthodox Brahmins.

A Brahmin, no matter how thirsty, may not accept a drink of water from a Sudra. He cannot even dine with his own son until after the child is invested with the sacred thread.

e) Ethical Implications of Caste

In the Bhagavad Gita Krishna’s first word to the desperate Arjuna appeals to the caste system as the basis of the ethic Arjuna should act upon in deciding whether it is right for him to wage war against his own relatives. He is exhorted not to yield to an ignoble manliness unworthy of a warrior. For the warrior caste “there exists no greater good than a war enjoined by duty.” Indeed such a war is “an open door to heaven.”

Purpose of Life

The word purusharthas is used to refer to the four Hindu goals of life. This a compound of “human being” (purusha) and “object/objective” (artha), hence “human objectives”. The purusharthas may be thought of as a ladder with four rungs. The Hindu is urged to achieve four main objectives: religious piety (dharma), material gain and standing (artha), pleasure (kama) and liberation (moksha).

The first rung on the Hindu ladder is dharma. This is a complex word which defies easy translation. It refers to that which upholds the entire universe, a natural law or reality which is responsible for all existence, but which is inherent in the natural order and invisible. The pursuit of dharma is a quest for order and harmony both within oneself and with the environment within which one lives. Dharma also means all thought and action that is in sync with this natural law. Hindu scriptures such as the Bhagavadgita or the Upanishads, it is believed, enable a person to distinguish between right or harmonious (dharma) and that which is wrong, that is, out of kilter (adharma). Consequently, the aim of dharma incorporates understanding the teachings and doctrines of Hinduism and also individual religious duty and virtue.

Since dharma is foundational to all existence it follows that it must be the first aim of the aspiring Hindu. If a person accumulates wealth (as per the second goal) or indulges in sexual passion (as per the third goal) without observing dharma then the consequences are dire both to others and to oneself.

The second rung on the Hindu ladder is artha, a Sanskrit word that especially describes worldly status and material prosperity. Provided Vedic moral principles are observed it is considered to be a worthy aim to seek fame, high social status and the accumulation of wealth. This is because Hinduism sees that such prosperity effects human happiness and well being. Indeed, without money a person may not be able to perform his religious duties and fulfil his dharma.

In recent centuries India has been riddled with mass poverty and, as a result, this poverty-consciousness has actually distorted this key Hindu goal. Hinduism does not glorify poverty, yet many Hindus refuse to accept any saint or sage as a true yogi if he is not living a life of abject poverty. Many Hindu scholars believe this common mentality is an unfortunate effect of Buddhist influence.

The word kama (“desire”) comprehends all forms of sensual gratification. However, in Hinduism there is often a focus on the narrow meaning this word may assume, namely “sexual desire”, as advocated in the famous Kama Sutra. Since even animals seek physical pleasure this third aim is the most inferior of the four. Hinduism does encourage ordinary people to fulfil their sexual passions, provided this is in keeping with dharma. However, it also urges sexual abstinence for students and ascetics who devote themselves to the study of Hindu scriptures and the pursuit of Brahman.

The ultimate goal of Hinduism is moksha (“liberation”). This involves terminating the cycle of death and rebirth. The transmigration of the soul ends when consciousness of time, space and causation is transcended. At this point the self no longer exists as an egoistic personality and when all its passions are stilled (nirvana).

There are various ways of explaining the relationship between these four aims. One way is to view dharma as a person’s legs, walking on earth, thoroughly connected with the natural order. Artha and kama are a person’s arms which are active in the middle region. Moksha is a person’s head resting in heaven.

Another image is that of a wheel, with dharma representing the hub, artha and kama the two spokes and moksha its circumference.

If dharma is the center of the wheel of human life, artha and kama are the two spokes and moksha is its circumference. If dharma is at the center of human life, beyond moksha there is no human life, but only a life divine.

The four Purusharthas are also like the four wheels of a chariot called human life. They collectively uphold it and lead it. Each influences the movement of the other three, and in the absence of any one of them, the chariot comes to a halt.

A common approach is to view right, well-ordered living (dharma) as primary, since, it is argued, it is this which enables a person to acquire wealth and worldly standing (artha) which benefit others and self. It is further reasoned that such prosperity enables a person to enjoy sensual pleasure (kama) in a way that benefits the other and self. However, eventually, a person comes to recognize that physical gratification is a fleeting pleasure and then seeks liberation (moksha).

Some Hindus, taking the view that the desire for liberation is itself an expression of selfishness, encourage adoption of a fifth goal termed “love of God” (prema) or “eternal loving service” (nitya-lila).

Liberation (moksha/mukti)

Moksha actually means absence of moha or delusion. This can be achieved through three paths:

a) The way of knowledge (jnana marga). Human suffering is due to ignorance. It is erroneous for a man to see himself as a separate and real entity. In reality there is only Brahman. It is when we continue to see ourselves as a separate entity that we are chained to the wheel of birth, death and rebirth. The way of knowledge leads to liberation once once attains to the ultimate moment of liberation in which one fully realises on is actually part of the ultimate Brahman and not a separate entity. In other words, liberation occurs when one comes to comprehend that all of reality is essentially pantheistic.

b) The way of devotion (bhakti marga). Devotion to a particular deity reflected in acts of worship, both public and private. The devotee also expresses his love for the deity in his love of family, master, etc. This way has to be learned from a guru who can explain from the sacred scriptures the nature of Brahman, Atman, the universe, and people’s place in it.

The way of devotion has largely centered around the deities Vishnu and Shiva. In Death of a Guru, Maharaj recalls that his grandfather, “Nana”, killed his first son, offering the tiny baby as a sacrifice to the gods. “This was not an uncommon practice, but it was never spoken of openly. Nana’s favourite deity was Lakshmi, consort of Vishnu the preserver. Goddess of wealth and prosperity, she demonstrated her great powers when Nana rose at almost one leap to become one of the most powerful and wealthy men in my native Trinidad.”

c) The way of ritual works (karma marga). The path to salvation through religious duty, that is, the performance of prescribed ceremonies, duties and religious rites. The practitioner hopes to be reborn as a Brahmin on his way to liberation.

Creation

The first of the four Yugas is called Satya Yuga (Age of Gold). At this point humanity is in an original state of Godlike innocence.

The second Yuga is called Treta Yuga (Age of Silver). In this Age spiritual awareness has decreased by one fourth from its original state.

In the third Yuga, Dvapara Yuga (Age of Copper) negativity has reached a level of 50%.

In the fourth and final Yuga of this particular cycle, Kali Yuga (Age of Kali, Age of Iron) righteousness wanes to but one fourth of its original state. It is commonly believed that Kali Yuga began 3102 BC and is scheduled to last a total of 432,000 years, leaving 427,000 years to go. At the end of Kali-yuga the world will be reborn and there will be another four part yuga-cycle. This will begin with Satya-yuga, the Age of Truth.

The Vishnu Purana is one of the most ancient of Indian Scriptures. It says about Kali Yuga:

The leaders who rule over the Earth will be violent and seize the goods of their subjects. Those with possessions will abandon agriculture and commerce and will live as servants, that is, following various possessions. The leaders, with the excuses of fiscal need, will rob and despoil their subjects and take away private property. Moral values and the rule of the law will lessen from day to day until the world will completely perverted and agnosticism will gain the day among men.

The end of Kali Yuga is not an absolute end. It is the end of a whole Manvantara (a Hindu division of time of immense length), but this is simultaneously the beginning of another Manvantara. The so-called “end of a world” is but the end of illusion. This ancient Indian philosophy concerning the cycles of ages centres around Vishnu, the preserver God. The “end” comes when the world is absorbed into Vishnu himself before being born again. It is believed that Vishnu has already saved humanity on many occasions and that he has appeared as a Saviour in many different forms. He is believed to have incarnated in 10 avatars of whom the last three have been Rama, Krishna and the Shakyamuni Buddha . The expectation is that he will appear again as Kalki ‘the avenger’, riding a white horse. He will destroy the present world (the corrupt age of the goddess Kali) and take humanity to a different, higher plane (the golden age of Krita).

In the fourteenth chapter of the last canto of the Paramahamsa Samhita portion of the Vayu Purana, named Sri Gauranga Candra Udaya, Lord Brahma prays to the Supreme Lord Sri Hari thus:

In the age of Kali, people are spontaneously attracted to sinful activities and are devoid of the regulations of the scriptures. The so-called "twice-born" are degraded by their low-class activities and those who are born in low-class families are always hostile to brahminical culture. The twice-born are low-class by quality and do business by selling mantras. These so-called learned men are absorbed in their intestines and genitals and their only identification is the thread they wear. Indulging in over eating, absorbed in bodily consciousness, lazy, intellectually dull and greedy for others properties, they are consistently against God-consciousness. Due to being overly inclined towards false paths without essence, they manufacture their own processes for self-realization. Neglecting their actual duties they are expert in blaspheming You (the Supreme Personality of Godhead) and the saintly persons; hence again Mother Earth is in tears due to this burden. Therefore, Oh Lord of the Universe, destroyer of the miseries of the destitute, please mercifully do what is befitting for the protection of the Earth and the living entities.

In the Bhagavata Purana Kali-yuga is further described:

The unmanifested forces of time are so powerful that they can reduce all matter to oblivion in due course. In Kali-yuga, the last millennium of a round of four millenniums , the power of all material objects deteriorates by the influence of time. In this age the material body of the people in general is reduced, and so is the memory. The action of matter has also not so much incentive. The land does not produce food grains in the same proportions as it did in other ages. The cow does not give as much milk as it did formerly. The production of vegetables and fruits is less than before. As such, all living beings, both men and animals, do not have sumptuous, nourishing food. Due to want of so many necessities of life, naturally the duration of life is reduced, the memory is short, intelligence is meager, mutual dealings are full of hypocrisy and so on.

We also read in the Bhagavata Purana (1.3.43):

In the Kali-yuga the population is just a royal edition of the animals. They have nothing to do with spiritual knowledge or godly religious life. They are so blind that they cannot see anything beyond the jurisdiction of the subtle mind, intelligence or ego, but they are very much proud of their advancement in knowledge, science and material prosperity. They can risk their lives to become a dog or hog just after leaving the present body, for they have completely lost sight of the ultimate aim of life.

It is further stated:

Beef is forbidden in the scriptures, and the bull and cows are offered special protection by the followers of the Vedas. But in this age of Kali, people will exploit the body of the bull and the cow as they like, and thus they will invite sufferings of various types.

Illusion

A popular way of illustrating maya involves using Shankara’s famous illustration. A man is walking along the road at twilight. He sees something lying in the dust just ahead of him. In the poor light he imagines it to be a snake and in terror looks around for something to defend himself with. Then suddenly he realises his eyes have been playing tricks on him. It is not a snake at all, but a piece of old rope. He relaxes, laughs at his mistake and continues on his journey. Hindus explain that ultimate reality is like the old rope. People imperfectly perceive this reality, just as the traveler mistakenly superimposed the image of a snake upon the unperceived reality of the old rope. Liberation is achieved when this ignorance is corrected.

Hinduism and Christianity Contrasted

	Hinduism	Christianity
Founder	None	Jesus Christ
Authority	No single scripture binding on all Hindus, though the Vedas are often particularly venerated	The Bible is the inspired and infallible Word of God binding on all Christians
Creation - its future	The universe is periodically created and re-created and each time passes through four Yugic cycles. In each Yuga the quality of life moves further away from dharma. We are presently in they final cycle, the Kali Yuga.	The universe was created by God, but human sin and divine judgment means that it is subject to decay. However, ultimately it will be replaced by a new created order. Christians live in “the last days”.
- its reality	Hindus say the world is maya, illusory. But as long as it appears real we must accept it seriously as such. However, reality is not as it appears to be. There is no inherent impetus in Hinduism to develop science.	Christians see the world as having objective reality with its source in the creative will of God. However, Satan has blinded the eyes of sinners so that they do not see reality as it really is and fail, therefore, to recognize the revelation of God’s glory.
God - reality	Essential belief in Brahman as the ultimate reality – indefinable, impersonal and unknowable.	Essential belief in God as the ultimate reality – uncontainable, personal and knowable through his self-revelation.
- Trinity	Many Hindus regard Brahman as an eternal Trimutri or a Three-In-One-God (the Hindu Trinity): Brahma, the Creator, Vishnu, the Preserver, and Shiva, the Destroyer. But these are different forms of Brahman (often iconographically represented as a three-faced deity).	God is a Triune God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. These are not three forms of God (a heresy called Sabellianism) but three persons, though there is still but one God.
- Revelation	Hindus place enormous emphasis on rituals (pujas) involving images (it is popularly said that Hindus worship 33 million gods). Brahmins invite deities to infuse these images with their presence and breath and thus become manifest in and through the image.	The use of images or man-made representations of God are utterly abhorrent. God solely reveals himself in and through his Word. Also it is people who image God by their God-made constitution. Jesus supremely manifests God as the ultimate Word and Image.
- Scripture	The range of writings is immense. Some of the major Scriptures are the Mahabharata (100,000 verses), the Bhagavadgita (The Song of the Lord; Gita), the Puranas (18 major; 18 minor; 400,000 couplets in all Puranas), Ramayana (24,000 couplets), the Vedas (includes Brahmanas and Upanishads; the Rig Veda alone is 5 times the size of Psalms)	There are 66 inspired books forming the Bible, divided into Old Testament (39 books) and New Testament (27 books). There are many Christians who read the entire Bible each year.
Purpose of Life	In classical Hinduism there are four ends of life: 1. Pleasure (kama), with sex as the most intense of the pleasures. 2. Economic gain (artha) 3. Virtue or action in accord with the Dharma (dharma) 4. Liberation (moksha)	People are created to glorify God and enjoy him forever. This involves being transformed into the likeness of God/Christ.
Humanity - and “God”	An extension of the Being of “God”; part of “God”; manifestations of the impersonal Brahman without individual/self worth.	Created in the image of a personal God, but separate and distinct from him, yet having immense individual/self worth.
- and relationships	People are not allowed to form friendships and intimate, loving relationships with all fellow human beings. The caste system places severe limits on such relationships.	Jesus commands loving one’s neighbour and, indeed, even one’s enemy. Jesus refused to follow social norms and freely related with “untouchable” lepers, socially ostracized tax collectors and the lowest social classes – “sinners” and prostitutes.
- and individual worth	Historically, the orthodox have regarded the caste system as the sole effective criterion of whether one is a Hindu or not. Individual worth is assessed according to this hierarchical system.	The biblical Christian community rejects a hierarchy of status and insists on the priesthood of all believers and the creation of all people in the image of God.
- and suffering	A person’s life is a trap set by actions one performed in countless previous incarnations. Those who are greatly suffering are frequently deemed to be experiencing the consequences of bad karma. This worldview discourages compassionate social action.	Predestination is not determinism. People are responsible for their own actions and salvation in Christ is offered to all. Sin ultimately explains suffering, but individual sufferings are often not directly caused by that individual. Even evil people are immensely loved. This motivates actions to alleviate suffering and meet human need.
The Basic Problem	Ignorance	Sin. Ignorance of God is culpable.
	Hindus believe in the transmigration of the soul. The soul is trapped in a seemingly endless cycle of birth, death and reincarnation (samsara).	People live and die and after that comes judgment. Because all people are sinful all people stand under divine condemnation.
The Solution	Liberation (moksha) from illusion and ignorance and thus from samsara	Forgiveness and reconciliation with God
The Means	Detachment from desire; intuiting oneness with “God” through self-effort	Solely achieved through Christ’s saving work and responded to with repentance and faith
	Hindus may follow either of three paths to liberation: 1. The way of knowledge (discovering one is part of Brahman) 2. The way of devotion (worshipping a particular deity) 3. The way of ritual works (practicing religious duties)	Sin so thoroughly pervades all human thought and action that it is impossible to please God. Sinners cannot achieve salvation. Through God’s undeserved grace, Jesus alone has been provided as the way to salvation.
- pilgrimage	For Hindus, pilgrimage (yatra), is so important that there are somewhere between 58,000 to 64,000 places of pilgrimage places for Hindus, usually located on the banks of rivers, coasts, seashores and mountains.	God’s presence is no longer associated with any particular place but with his people.
The Outcome	The individual disappears as “he” or “she” merges into the Oneness.	Eternal fellowship with God as a treasured individual in community.

RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE AND HINDUISM

noreply@blogger.com (Himalayas) — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 16:03:00 +0000

Hinduism is the world's oldest religious tradition; it goes back to the very dawn of history. The hymns composed some 5,000 years ago are still recited today.

Hinduism is the third largest of the world's religions, after Christianity and Islam. Nearly 800 million people or one-seventh of humanity call Hinduism their spiritual home. Millions more in South and Southeast Asia and in the Far East trace their spiritual roots to Hinduism.

Hinduism is also the world's largest pluralistic tradition. A multiplicity of spiritual paths and ways are recognized as valid in Hinduism. Hinduism is not based on the teachings of a single Prophet or a single Book. The teachings of many different sages and saints find home within Hinduism. God may be worshiped both in male and female forms. Hinduism has much in common with the earth based religious traditions of the world.

Hinduism is not a creedal religion, based on dogma. Its emphasis is not on correct belief but on search for the Truth. The scripture describes several paths to spiritual development. The mountain peak may be reached by taking any of the several paths.

Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950), the great Indian seer of the first half of the twentieth century declared that Hinduism (also known as Sanatan Dharma or the eternal tradition) was rising not for India alone but for the world. Arnold Toynbee in his A Study of History was of the view that Hinduism will gain the status of a world religion in the new century. What lies behind such tall claims for Hinduism?

The events of September 11 have made clear the extraordinary importance of religious tolerance for peace in the world. I will describe here a few of the Hindu precepts as they relate to religious tolerance. I will also comment on the impact of Hinduism on democracy and economic development in India.

HINDU THEOLOGY

Hindus believe that Reality is One- Ekam Sat. This Reality is everywhere, in everything, in every being. It is One and Many at the same time and it also transcends them both. At the popular level, the One Reality is worshipped as the Trinity: Brahma the creator, Vishnu the preserver and Shiva the dissolver. Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva are not different gods, but they represent different faces of the One Supreme. Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva have their respective female consorts: Saraswati, Lakshmi and Durga. Even though God is One, Hindus worship God in a number of both male and female forms. Ram Swarup puts the matter this way:

Spiritual life is one but it is vast and rich in expression. The human mind conceives it differently. If the human mind was uniform without different depths, heights and levels of subtlety; or if all men had the same mind, the same psyche, the same imagination, the same needs, in short, if all men were the same, then perhaps One God would do. But a man’s mind is not a fixed quantity and men and their powers and needs are different. So only some form of polytheism alone can do justice to this variety and richness. - - The Word As Revelation: Names of Gods, 1980.

THE AVATAR. The Avatar is God in human form. When God takes birth in Human body, He is known as the Avatar. The Hindu scripture Bhagavad Gita States that God descends when religion is on the decline and immorality is on the rise. The Avatar comes down to earth from age to age.

Yada yada he dharmasya glanir bhavati Bharata abhyuthanam adharmasya tad atmanam srijami aham paritranaya sadhunam vinashaya cha dushkritam dharam sansthapan arthaya sambhavami yuge yuge
“Whenever there is decline in religious values and increase in unrighteousness, at that time I take birth. For the establishment of the good, for the destruction of the evil-doers, for the enthronement of the Right, I am born from age to age.”-- Bhagavad Gita, 4:7-8

The Avatar helps mankind move to a higher level of consciousness. Rama and Krishna are popular Hindu Avatars. Buddha is accepted as an Avatar, even though he was a dissenter and a critic of the ritualism and caste distinctions of the Hindu system of his day. Many Hindu teachers accept also Jesus Christ as an Avatar. This is typical of the inclusiveness of the Hindu teachers.

FOUR PATHS. Hinduism prescribes four ways of spiritual salvation, depending on the personality of the seeker.

• For the active person, there is Karma yoga, the path of selfless works.
• For the contemplative and intellectual person, there is Jnana Yoga, the path of Knowledge.
• For the emotional person, there is Bhakti yoga, the path of love and surrender. Bhakti yoga is said to be similar to the Christian path of love.
• Finally, Raja yoga is the path of meditative exercises including concentration and one-pointedness. This path focusing on meditation has become popular in the West.

Pluralism and tolerance of diversity are built into Hindu theology.

India's long history is a testimony to its tolerance of religious diversity. Christianity came to India with St. Thomas in the first century A.D., long before it became popular in the West. Judaism came to India after the Jewish temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D. and the Jews were expelled from their homeland. In a recent book titled Who are the Jews of India? (University of California Press, 2000), author Nathan Katz observes that India is the only country where the Jews were not persecuted. AThe Indian chapter is one of the happiest of the Jewish Diaspora.@ p. 4. Both Christians and Jews have existed in a predominant Hindu India for centuries without being persecuted.

Zoroastrians from Persia (present day Iran) entered India in the 7th century to flee Islamic conquest. They are known as Parsees in India. The Parsees are an affluent community in the city of Bombay without a sense of having been persecuted through the centuries. Among the richest business families in India are the Parsees; for example, the Tata family controls a huge industrial empire in various parts of the country. Mrs. Indira Gandhi, the powerful Prime Minister of India (1966-77; 1980-84), was married to Feroz Gandhi, a Parsee (no relation to Mahatma Gandhi).

HINDUISM AND DEMOCRACY
The impact of religious values on democracy and economic development are topics of interest in our period. The failure of democracy in the Middle East is often attributed to the authoritarian nature of Islam.

There is indeed a close connection between religious beliefs of a people and their system of government. Absolutist religions give rise to absolutist regimes and pluralistic religions give rise to pluralistic regimes. It is no wonder that absolutist Ayatollah Khomeini established a theocratic Shia dictatorship in Iran in 1979. For the same reason, Calvinistic Geneva was an absolutist theocracy in Europe in the 16th century. The relative success of democracy in India owes to the pluralistic nature of Hinduism.

Modern political science scholarship has emphasized the impact of economic development on democratic success. Research articles by S. M. Lipset, Dean Neubauer, Phillip Cutright, and Bruce Russett have demonstrated a statistical relationship between economic development and democracy. Democracy is more common in countries which are economically developed. In this research, the level of economic development is treated as the independent variable, and democracy is treated as the dependent variable, the effect. Statistical analysis shows a strong positive correlation between the level of economic development and democracy. India, however, is an exception to the rule. India is poor and underdeveloped and also riddled with vast amounts of corruption. Yet it is democratic. Fourteen free and competitive national elections have been held in India. Peaceful change in government has been a regular feature of political life so far. India's record of democracy is unsurpassed in the developing world.

Political scientists have paid less attention to the influence of values on democracy. The role of values in understanding democratic success in my view is paramount. The failure of democracy in the Middle East cannot be attributed to poverty, as most countries in the region are petroleum rich but to values. Democracy in Europe succeeded only after the values of secularism and religious pluralism were established. Indian democratic success can be explained in terms of the pluralistic nature of its majority religion.

HINDUISM AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
India today is poor and underdeveloped. One often hears the argument that Hinduism is responsible for India's poverty. This conclusion is unwarranted. One cannot condemn Hindu teachings for the poverty in India any more than one can condemn the teachings of Christ for the many wars fought in the European continent. One cannot condemn the teachings of Bhagavad Gita for Indian squalor any more than one can condemn the Sermon on the Mount for the high crime rate that exists in the United States.

Contrary to stereotypical information in the West, Hinduism is not life-negating, other-worldly or pessimistic in its philosophy. It does not condemn material success. It does not forbid the enjoyment of legitimate needs. The four legitimate wants allowed in Hinduism include: Artha, Kama, Dharma and Moksha.

• Artha is material prosperity
• Kama is pleasure
• Dharma is righteous conduct
• Moksha is spiritual liberation

Dharma and Moksha come after Artha and Kama.

Indian poverty cannot be blamed on Hinduism. Nor is Hinduism opposed to science and rational thinking. Ancient India contributed handsomely to mathematics, astronomy, the physical and the medical sciences.

Poverty is a recent phenomenon in the long stretches of Indian history. It dates to the period of colonization. India fell to colonial exploitation first by certain Muslim dynasties originating in Central Asia and then by the British in the 18th century. The invaders and plunderers were drawn to India’s wealth. When Muslim adventurers ransacked India in the 11th and 12th centuries, it was the richest country in the world. When the British left India in 1947, it was the poorest.

THE INDIAN DIASPORA
Hindus have migrated to many lands. The US Census counted 1.6 million people of Indian origin living in the United States in the year 2000. This number is likely to be more than 2 million in the year 2005. Hindus also have settled in Britain, East Africa, Fiji, Trinidad, Jamaica, Singapore, Malaysia, and in smaller numbers in many other countries. Wherever Hindus have settled, they achieve high economic and professional success. In the United States, Hindus enjoy among the highest standard of living. Their religion does not come in the way of their material prosperity. India has the third largest number of engineers and scientists in the world, after the United States and Russia. Its export of computer software engineers now is global in scale.

GOD AND NEIGHBOR
I return to the theme of religious tolerance. Ram Swarup, an Indian thinker puts the matter eloquently this way:

"In the spiritual realm there are two categories: God and your neighbor. And correspondingly there are two ways of looking at them: you could look at God through your neighbor or at the neighbor through your God. In the first approach, you will think that if your neighbor has the same needs and constitution and impulses as you have, then his God , in whatever way he is worshiped and by whatever name he is called, must mean the same to him as your God means to you. In short, if your neighbor is as good as you are, his God also must be as good as yours.

"But if you look at your neighbor through your God, then it leads to an entirely different outlook. Then you say that if your God is good enough for you, it should be good enough for your neighbor too. And if your neighbor is not worshiping the same God in the same way, he must be worshiping Devil and qualifies for conversion or liquidation.

"The first approach promotes tolerance, though it gives plurality of Gods and varieties of modes in worship. The other approach gives one God and one mode of worship, but breeds intolerance.@ - -The Word as Revelation: Names of Gods, 1980
Mahatma Gandhi's favorite hymn, chanted regularly at his evening prayer meetings, says:

Raghu Pati Raghav Raja Ram Patit Pavan Sita Ram Ishwar Allah tere Naam Sabko Sanmati De Bhagwaan
“The Lord God is One, people call Him by different names. Some call him Ishwar; others call him Allah. O Beneficent Lord, bestow on humanity the peace of Thy Harmony.”

The globe has shrunk and is now a much smaller place. Thanks to the Internet and the mass media, people in distant lands are now our neighbors. We cannot have peace in this shrunk globe so long as we insist that we are in possession of the truth and all others are groping in the darkness. Every method of spiritual growth and worship is worthy of respect. Hinduism has much to contribute to build a pluralistic global system that is peaceful and compassionate.

I will conclude with the words of Radhakrishnan, the philosopher President of India (1962-67):

What counts is not creed but conduct. By their fruits ye shall know them and not by their beliefs. Religion is not correct belief but righteous living. The Hindu view that every method of spiritual growth, every path to the Truth is worthy of reverence has much to commend itself. - - The Hindu View of Life, 1962.

Hinduism versus Monotheism

noreply@blogger.com (Himalayas) — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 15:56:00 +0000

Today there are about 800 to 850 million Hindus in the world, and most of them are concentrated in India. In fact, historically, geographically and culturally, the idea of Hinduism is closely bound with the idea of India. The diaspora -- the Hindus living outside India -- try to preserve the traditions they took with them from India to their new homes. Any changes or “movements” in Hinduism originate in India.

Hinduism almost defies definition—so much so that a famous Indian author once quipped that Hindus are those that call themselves Hindus. In addition, beliefs and practices vary from region to region in India and, within the same region, from caste to caste, and from even sub-caste to sub-caste. As a result, a Hindu cannot assert with certainty that all Hindus observe any specific ritual or doctrine without exception. Any Hindu who, therefore, ventures to write about Hinduism has to begin with a warning or caveat that other Hindus are likely to disagree with him/her on several points. Hence, I need to emphasize that the following description is my individual interpretation, my personal take on what Hinduism is all about.

Let me first attempt to describe what Hinduism is, and then what it is not. Incidentally, it is very important to talk about what Hinduism is not because that is easier to do and also easier for a non-Hindu to grasp because its complexities will become clearer that way. Since most of my readers are likely to be Americans, that is, followers of monotheistic religions, I think that a comparison of Hinduism with the Abrahamic faiths may enrich non-Hindus’ understanding of Hinduism.

WHAT IS HINDUISM?

Even though tradition is more important to Hindus than doctrine (rudhihi shaastraat baliiyasii), there are some commonly shared beliefs among Hindus. Hinduism works on at least two levels: one is the spiritual or “transcendental” level—the teaching of the Upanishads that the individual soul (atman) and the universal soul (param-atman) are identical. Such understanding leads to salvation or release (moksha or nirvana) from the round of existences, termed “samsara” in Sanskrit. On this level, there is neither god, nor need for one.

On the second, more “practical,” level where most Hindus lead their daily lives, they worship many gods and goddesses. One may trace the origin of these Hindu deities in the sacred texts called the Vedas, the Puranas, and the two famous ancient epics of India – the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Not monotheism but multiplicity of deities is the reality of Hindu faith. Hindus pray to them and make offerings to them for specific favors, for averting bad luck and disease or achieving sound health and general well-being. In this respect, Hindu deities are rather similar to Catholic saints. Hinduism is openly and unashamedly transactional: One good turn deserves another. Hindus are constantly striking bargains, entering into contracts, with their gods: “I will pray to you, worship you, make offerings to you, etc. if you grant me such and such boons.” And, in my opinion, that is the way it should be. A character in a famous Sanskrit play of almost 2000 years ago (The Little Clay Cart—Mruchhakatikam) says to his friend, “What good is worshiping the gods if they don’t reciprocate, if they don’t show any favors?” This example demonstrates that Hinduism has been transactional for thousands of years, virtually from its very beginning.

This kind of worship also includes the path of strong devotion (bhakti) to the deity of your family, your caste, or your personal preference. In devotional songs and prayers, the Hindu devotee looks upon the deity of his personal preference, not as someone to be feared (as the Deity in the Old Testament), but to be loved as a friend, a counselor, a mother and, at times, even as a lover. Some gods and goddesses are more commonly worshiped all over India, like the elephant-headed Ganesha who wards off disasters and the goddess Durga (especially in Bengal), also known as the demon-killing warrior deity, Kali, in many of her manifold names and manifestations.

Most Hindus (and Buddhists) believe in Karma, the idea that people’s present life is influenced, even determined, by their actions in their past lives. Some Christians may find an echo of predestination in the concept of Karma. But the ideas are different in that people are responsible for their Karma, while God determines arbitrarily (?) who is going to be saved and who is not. Hindus, therefore, do not go through crises of faith as some Christians or Jews seem to go through, troubled by thoughts such as “Why do bad things happen to good people? If God is kindly, why does he allow evil to exist and even prosper?” (Apparently, the notion of “free will” does not squelch such doubts among at least some monotheists). Hindus ultimately hold themselves -- that is their Karma (not deities) -- responsible for what happens to them. They, however, believe that though Karma is destiny its undesirable effects can be mitigated through fasts, pilgrimages, or ritualistic vows.

One must admit that, over the centuries, Hindu upper castes abused and misappropriated the concept of Karma to justify and perpetuate their discriminatory practices directed toward the lower castes and, particularly, to maintain the exploitation, and close-to-slavery status of the former untouchables by arguing that they had none to blame but their own Karma. But when the Dalits (the oppressed) began their “revolt” from the early decades of the twentieth century, they were able to argue that it was (now) the upper castes’ Karma to be revolted against, their payback or reckoning time.

Besides the all-pervasive power of Karma, other concepts guiding Hindu beliefs and behaviors include the cycle of births, deaths, and rebirths (reincarnation); the sacredness of the cow; four major castes; four stages of life; and four goals of human beings. Westerners are somewhat familiar with the institution of caste. Most of them, for instance, seem to know that many Hindus marry within their own castes, but not many Westerners know about the Hindu goals of life: right conduct or duty (dharma), acquisition and consumption of wealth (artha), sexual pleasure and procreation (kama), and release from the cycle of birth and death (moksha). Moksha can be attained by following any of the four paths recommended by the sages: the Path of Knowledge, the Path of Karma or Action, the Path of Devotion (to one’s personal deity), and the Path of Renunciation. Moksha (unlike in the Abrahamic religions) is a result of one’s own personal effort, not a consequence of anybody’s grace or favor. The Upanishads also enjoin every Hindu to venerate his or her mother, father, teacher, and guest (in that order of priority).

The ideal most Hindus strive for is selfless action, duty without hankering after the fruit of action. This is what the Bhagvad Gita (The Song of the Lord), a didactic and spiritual text many Hindus revere, teaches. How many, however, reach this ideal is another matter. The four stages or passages of life include scholar (when celibacy is recommended), householder, retiree, and renouncer or ascetic, the last stage when all desires are extinguished (Not many, however, achieve this last stage).

WHAT HINDUISM IS NOT: COMPARING HINDUISM WITH MONOTHEISTIC RELIGIONS

Hindu society is hierarchically structured and divided in numerous castes and sub-castes; a Hindu’s caste is determined by birth. The origin of castes is mythical and, as such, is inseparably linked with the Hindu religion. Monotheistic societies like Jewish, Christian, and Moslem societies are also divided, but mainly by class. In addition to caste, class too is a divisive factor in Hindu society with attendant intercaste and interclass strife and jockeying for power. However, it does not have doctrinally determined “horizontal” schisms such as Hinayana and Mahayana within Buddhism, Catholicism and Protestantism within Christianity, or Sunni and Shia within Islam. As a result, no war has occurred among Hindus because of differences of dogma or religious ideology. It is true that there were strong tensions until the recent past between, say, the devotees of Vishnu and those of Shiva. Similarly, in the remote past, there were struggles between Hindus and Buddhists. But there are no authenticated reports of any bloody wars on the scale of the wars between Catholics and Protestants or Sunnis and Shia.

Differing interpretations among Hindus themselves of what Hinduism means have been the result of the fact that (unlike Christians, Jews, and Muslims) Hindus do not have one authoritative scripture. They recognize and cite (as expediency dictates or as the mood strikes them) many texts which have gained “scriptural” authority among them over the last several thousand years. The Vedas, the Upanishads, the various Puranas, a number of law books (Dharmashastras), and the Bhagvad Gita (referred to above) are some of them. Add to this the fact (which is the case among the followers of other religions too) that the interpretations of sacred texts vary depending upon who is citing them.

Some Hindus maintain that Hinduism is monotheistic, but I think there is some confusion of terms here. What they mean is that some Hindu philosophers (like Shakaracharya in the 9th century) propounded a theory more accurately named “monism” (advaita). Monism, in rather over-simplified terms, means that the only “reality” is one, namely, Brahman, roughly translated as “the universal soul.” On the other hand, monotheism refers to the belief in one God. Monists (advaita-vadins) assert that when one attains the realization that there is “no two,” that there is only Brahman, the question of worshiping any god does not arise. “You are It” (Tat Twum Asi, meaning “your individual soul is identical with the Universal soul”). But this is the esoteric, transcendental part of Hinduism, the Vedanta. Most Hindus do not dwell on this plane. They believe in many gods and goddesses and, consequently, end their prayers or rituals often with salutations to all their gods. From this perspective, Hindus are indisputably polytheists.

When I examine the first two commandments of the Old Testament (which form two major articles of faith for the three monotheistic religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam), I’m proud to be either a polytheist or an atheist, depending on what mood I am in. The first “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” will strike many Hindus (including me) as the dictate of a despot or autocrat since Hindus believe in many gods. They want a choice. Hindu gods and goddesses are like candidates running for elective offices in a democracy. They all have to promote themselves by claiming that they are the best among what the market has to offer. Similarly, most Hindus would be very disturbed by a god who subjects a man to an unnatural act just to test his loyalty. I am referring to the story of Abraham in the Old Testament where a disaster, a son’s sacrifice, is averted at the last moment. It is beside the point that God sends one of his angels to stop the human sacrifice that He had demanded in the first place. At least in the region where I was born and brought up in India, there is a myth, a legend, that one of the gods has been waiting (for “twenty eight eons”) for his devotee to finish massaging his aged parents’ feet. So here is a God of the monotheists, an instigator of a cruel and unnatural act because He wants proof of His devotee’s faith, because he is so insecure as all tyrants are, while in the pantheon of Hindu deities, there is one who does not mind waiting because his devotee is busy fulfilling his filial duties.

In the same vein, in Hindu eyes, the second commandment “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image” is quite unreasonable and counter-productive because Hindus find concentrating on worship much easier when they have an image in front of them. In addition, they will respond, “If God made man (and woman) in His own image, shouldn’t God look like people? Why not then make likenesses of Him (for instance, like men and women with some additional or “superhuman” features)?”

It is important to note that Hinduism is not an institutional religion; it has no Pope, no bishops, no clergy, no mullahs, or no rabbis. Those who chant the mantras and assist at worship in Hindu households on religious festivals or ceremonies such as weddings, or those who narrate and sing the stories and myths of gods and goddesses in temples do not necessarily represent any institutions. These “service providers” are paid fees piecemeal for their work, though some wealthy temples and households “retain” Brahmins for this purpose. Among Hindus, there are no weekly scheduled congregational gatherings. There is no Friday prayer at a mosque or no Sunday service at a church. Hindus go to temples when they want to and not as assemblies guided by “leaders.” For Hindus, a daily worship (pooja) in one’s home is the observance that matters rather than attendance at a public place of worship.

As an aside, many Hindus claim to be more “spiritual” than the adherents of other religions. They very carefully omit to define what spiritual means. However, among the Hindus I grew up with (the Kokanastha or Chitpawan sub-caste of Maharashtrian or Western Indian Brahmins), I have seen some people more materialistic and consumption oriented than most Americans I have met in my almost 45 years of stay in this country.

Part of the freewheeling milieu and open attitudes toward belief and doctrine among Hindus can be attributed to the fact there is no doctrinal rigidity in Hinduism. Hence, there is no such thing as doctrinal heresy among Hindus. They do not have to declare that there is no God but God. In fact, they can be atheists and still claim to be Hindus. Nor do they have to recite “The Lord’s Prayer”. One does not have to profess exclusive loyalty to any dogma to be a Hindu. That is why Hindus are not “afraid” to attend a church service, enter a mosque, or go to a synagogue. They are not worried that, as a result, they will lose their anchor, their faith will waver, or they will be lured into another religion.

In fact, over the centuries very few conversions have occurred voluntarily out of Hinduism. Most conversions have taken place through force or coercion and bribery. From approximately the 13th century to the 18th century, political power was so closely associated with Islam at least in Northern India that when a Hindu king or a petty aristocrat (sardaar) converted to Islam his subjects almost automatically and routinely accepted the new religion. Of course, since India’s independence overt coercion has not been a possibility.

HINDU ATTITUDES TODAY TOWARD CONVERSION

Though bribery in various forms and religious institutions of learning are the prevailing modes now used by non-Hindu missionaries to spread their faiths in India, educated and financially well-placed Hindus of today are proof against bribery because they do not need money that badly. They are generally not likely to convert to other religions because they do not think that any other religion is superior to Hinduism in philosophy, doctrine, or practice. They do not therefore freak out just because they happen to like some practice or idea in another religion. They will continue as Hindus while admiring that one particular idea.

Hinduism is not an evangelizing religion; Hindus do not have proselytizing zeal because they believe that all paths to salvation are legitimate and effective. Prior to the arrival of the monotheists in India (Muslims and Christians), either by means of invasions, through migrations, missionary activities or trade contacts, there was no violence caused by religious strife in India because in earlier eras the outsiders coming in were pagans, who worshiped many gods and goddesses. They were not religious zealots; their deities mingled with Hindu and Buddhist deities. India then was a religious and ethnic melting pot.

Monotheistic iconoclasts (attacking Hindu gods and goddesses) and polytheistic idol-worshippers, however, do not mix well. Acceptance is not a one-way street. A situation where Hindus tolerate other religions while missionaries from other (monotheistic) religions despise Hinduism and go on converting Hindus cannot last forever. That is why it should not surprise anyone that many modern Hindus resist all forms of covert and overt coercion or bribery that Christian and Muslim missionaries have been employing for ages to convert Hindus, especially the poor, to their religions.

Some may arguably maintain that Hindus did not always in the past resist the aggressive and violent encroachments of other religions against them and that a great number of Hindus were lost to the onslaught of other religions. Be that as it may, I for one cannot get over my admiration for the courage of the Hindus of those times. I am astonished by the historical phenomenon that while the expansive Islam totally extinguished the earlier religions from a wide swath of the then known world – from North Africa to West China – South Asians (by and large) tenaciously and bravely, held on to Hinduism in India and Buddhism in Sri Lanka. It is not any ferocious adherence to dogma but the attachment for a unique way of life that those Hindus were defending.

Because modern Hindus do not take that kind of aggression from other religions quietly any more, we hear about clashes in India between Christian missionaries and Hindu activists. Another reason for Hindu resistance to evangelizing efforts is that these conversion activities have resulted in insurrectional tendencies among the converts who have been demanding secession from India and agitating for new sovereign homelands of their own. No patriot or nationalist in India is going to tolerate secessionist talk. Of course, Hindus (especially the upper caste and the rich) cannot disown or wash their hands of their culpability in neglecting or ignoring the wretched poor among their midst who have no other recourse or relief but to go to the missionaries who are ready to lend a helping hand in exchange for conversion.

CONCLUSION

In my judgment, Hinduism has had the following political and economic consequences for India: After independence, India chose a democratic form of government: Democracy in India is a direct result of Hindu belief in polytheism and acceptance of diversity. For a non-homogeneous country like India, democracy is the most effective and workable polity. Indians avoid extremes: They reject the run-away, unregulated capitalism on the one hand and the innovation/creativity-stifling communism on the other. This moderation or the middle path is a reflection of Hindu contempt for rigidity of dogma. India did not build empires: When Hindus and Buddhists migrated to Southeast Asia and built kingdoms (in parts of what are today’s Malaysia,

Indonesia, Cambodia and Vietnam) starting around the seventh century, the “mother country” did not keep imperial ties with those political entities. India has welcomed various followers of non-Hindu religions seeking refuge over the centuries. Iranians or Parsees in the remote past to Tibetan Buddhists under the Dalai Lama in the recent past are some instances. However, from only in the last few decades have Christians in the West begun allowing the immigration of non-Christians (maybe, with the lone exception of Jews) in their countries. When all is said and done, one observation can be made with certainty about Hinduism: Not just tolerance but accommodation or acceptance of the other is its hallmark. In addition, when several Christian denominations are losing their members and finding it difficult to attract new members and when at least fundamentalist Muslims have to keep Islamic adherents in line with threats of savage punishments, Hinduism has remained dynamic precisely because it allows total freedom of belief and doctrine to those who call themselves Hindus.

Hinduism and Ancient Egyptian Religion

noreply@blogger.com (Himalayas) — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 15:05:00 +0000

A study of the similarities between Hinduism and Ancient Egyptian Religion.

1. EARLY RELIGION

Considering the enormous geographical distance between India and Egypt, ancient Egyptian religion and modern Hinduism have a surprising number of similarities in concepts and practices. This is not to say that other polytheistic religions do not have similarities with each other or with ancient Egypt but not in what appears to be such abundance as between ancient Egyptian and Hinduism. A number of religions do have similarities with Hinduism, such as Buddhism (which was born from Hinduism), and some African belief systems, but as Hinduism is one of the six main world religions the comparisons between this vibrant religion and a long-extinct ancient religion are interesting.

Aspects of Hinduism can be traced to the Indus Valley Civilisation (approximately 2500 BC), when it was at a cultural high point, through the archaeological record, although this religion is not recognisable as the form practised by Hindus today. The Indus Valley Civilisation and their religion is contemporary with the Egyptian Old Kingdom and the religion of the ancient Egyptians was in a fully developed form. How the ancient Egyptian religion developed is unknown as no written records of these developmental stages. Hieroglyphs were not introduced until approximately 3100 BC on the Narmer Palette whereas the Indus Valley civilisation has written texts dating to prior 2500 BC, from the Mohenjo-Daro region. Unfortunately this language has not yet been deciphered (Brockington 1996, 24) and therefore the contents (religious or otherwise) are unknown to us.

However, it is likely that some elements of the Indus Valley religion may have become absorbed into that of the invading Aryans (2500-1500 BC) and therefore into modern Hinduism. The Aryan invasion of India instigated a decline in the Indus Valley Civilisation, and a loss or absorption of the traditional religion into that of the Aryans. The Aryan race recorded their beliefs in Sanskrit, which has been deciphered and has produced a number of religious texts; which are still important to modern Hindus. The earliest known Hindu texts are the Vedas written in approximately 1500-1000 BC (Brockington 1996, 7), which are primarily concerned with the elemental gods (e.g. fire, sun, wind and storms) and the ritual of sacrifice and cosmic balance.

The earliest written religious texts in Egypt, are the Pyramid Texts from the pyramid of Unas (2375- 2345 BC) approximately 1000 years earlier than the Hindu Vedas. Both the Vedas and the ancient Egyptian religion were passed down orally for generations but only remained in a fixed form once they were recorded. However the Vedas, although passed down for centuries through oral tradition, were considered too sacred to permanently record (Brockington 1996, 8) indicating the traditions may have existed for as long as the Egyptian beliefs if not longer before being recorded. Like the Vedas, and indeed many early belief systems the gods of the Pyramid Texts are elemental as the sun (Re) is the primary deity of these texts, although there are also many references to the stars, the river and the environmental elements involved in the creation stories, where deities of the sky, earth, air and moisture are the first created by the sun god (Hart 1990, 10-8).

However most religions include doctrine to explain the local environment and this alone cannot form a basis of comparison between two religions, other than on a very superficial basis. Thorough careful examination of the creation stories and other myths further comparisons can be made to support similarities between the two religions.

2. CREATION MYTHS

There is often a great deal of confusion about the nature of the pluralistic nature of the ancient Egyptian creation stories. There are a number of variations on the story but the basis for all of them is the Heliopolitan myth of creation; all the variations follow this element of the story almost as if this was the ‘original’ legend. There are however numerous elements of the Heliopolitan myth and the Hindu myths which correspond.

Before creation the universe consisted of primordial waters, with no light and no movement. It was a time of chaos, nothingness and darkness, until from these waters the creation of the Universe began.

This description could refer to the time before creation in both ancient Egyptian religion and Hinduism. The ancient Egyptians feared the world falling back into this primordial chaos and this fear saw the development of the solar cult; worshipping the sun ensured the daily cycle of the sun would continue. If the sun failed to rise, Egypt would be plunged into darkness and return to this primordial chaos.

For modern Hindus this idea of primordial chaos is also a very real although an inevitable one. They believe that the earth is in an era called the Kali Age (Yuga), which will last for 4,320,000 years (Zimmer 1974, 15), at the end of which the universe will be destroyed and reabsorbed back into the Supreme Deity residing in the primordial waters. After a further prescribed number of years he will then start the creation of a new Universe.

The time cycles here are not being compared as the Egyptian solar cycle was a daily event, and the Hindu yugas last for thousands of years. What is being compared is the potential of the Universe reverting to a state of primordial chaos; a time of darkness, primordial water and nothingness. For the Egyptians this could happen if the sun failed to rise and was therefore a daily threat on their lives. In the Book of the Dead (spell 175) the creator god Atum describes how he will “destroy all that I have made; the earth shall return to the Abyss, to the surging flood, as in its original state; but I will remain with Osiris” (Faulkner 1972, 175). This indicates that once the earth has reverted back to the primordial chaos it will remain in this state, with no hope of new life, until the sun (Atum) decides to leave the underworld (Osiris). This catastrophe could be averted by rituals, prayers and offerings to the sun god, and there were specialist “Hour Priests” whose role was to ensure that the rituals and prayers were carried out at specific times of the day. For Hindus, reverting back to this primordial chaos cannot be avoided as they believe that at the end of the current yuga the Universe will be thrown back to primordial chaos, and is an inevitable event, which prayer and worship cannot avert.

Once the current yuga has ended the whole creation process starts again. At the dawn of time the Supreme Deity, Vishnu, lay recumbent in the primordial waters and as he awoke the creation of the Universe began. Creation started with a lotus flower, sprouting from his navel, and Brahma, the deity of spiritual awareness and consciousness, is seated in the centre of this lotus. This lotus flower then splits into three petals creating the earth, the sky and the abode of the gods. The outer petals are the inaccessible continents of foreign people and the underside of the petals are where the demons and serpents reside (Zimmer 1974, 51-2). Goddesses in Hindu art are also often shown standing in a lotus, representing self-creation and their fertility aspects. Through these associations with fertility and creativity the lotus in Hinduism is thought to be connected to solar deities, and in early mythology the lotus is closely associated with Surya the solar god (Goodyear 1891:5), or Vishnu who represents the sun and the first dawn of creation.

In Egyptian mythology the lotus is also connected to fertility and associated with solar deities. In the creation myths f a mound of earth rose from the primordial waters and on this mound sprouted the first flower, which in some records is a lotus flower. From this lotus the sun rose, starting the first dawn, and the beginning of all creation (Lurker 1984, 77-8); very similar to the story of Vishnu’s creation of the Universe. In Egyptian art and architecture this mound is often depicted and represents fertility and new beginnings. People are often show making offerings of lotus flowers to the gods, and holding and smelling them at funerary banquets, due to the role as an aid in rebirth of the deceased. There are also images of the king emerging from a lotus flower as the sun god and therefore the creator of the Universe; a direct parallel to Brahma emerging from the flower at the dawn of creation. The most famous Egyptian representation of this is that of the wooden head of Tutankhamun emerging from the lotus flower resting on the mound of creation.

As the lotus flower was a common flower in the environment of the ancient Egyptians and early Hindus the importance of this flower may have developed independently of each other; although it is very interesting that the two religions should have very similar ideology associated with the lotus. It was suggested by Goodyear (1891; 191) that the lotus imagery reached India in the third century BC, and started to appear in the imagery. This is the time when there is clear evidence of contact between Egypt and India, and one nation could have influenced the other although the lotus forms in each region is different and they are depicted in very different manners.

3. COSMIC ORDER

In order to keep the Universal equilibrium balanced it was essential to uphold the cosmic laws, through correct and moral behaviour.

This statement again could apply to both religions, as they both have a concept of cosmic law, truth or balance which needs to be maintained in order to uphold the universal equilibrium and prevent the laws of chaos from gaining control.

In ancient Egypt this cosmic law was called Maat and was personified as a goddess with a feather, the symbol of truth and righteousness, on her head. The most famous usage of this feather is in the ‘Weighing of the Heart’ ceremony in the Hall of Judgement (Book of the Dead spell 125). Here the newly deceased’s heart is weighed against this feather, and if it balances they are reborn into the afterlife. If it does not balance the creature Ammut, standing nearby, will pounce and devour the heart making it impossible for the deceased to be reborn, resulting in an eternal death (Quirke 1997, 66-7).

As this concept of cosmic balance was so central to the beliefs in the afterlife, the concept of Maat also became essential to the everyday life of the Egyptians. The king in particular had to uphold the law of Maat in order to prove his worthiness as king. His main role was to ensure that order was always maintained and that the forces of chaos (e.g. foreign invaders, natural disasters) did not govern during his reign. Each king had a set of tasks that he would try to perform to prove his worthiness and his maintenance of order. These would have included extending the boundaries of Egypt, improving on the works of their father and producing a male heir. These tasks needed to be done to appease the gods who would in turn favour Egypt and allow order and prosperity to reign. Many kings are shown in temple and tomb decoration offering a small figure of the goddess Maat to Amun to show that they live by her rule and that they are governing Egypt fairly and justly. Any kings, who went against the principle of Maat, were erased from the king lists and therefore from history by those who ruled after them. Examples of these would include Hatshepsut the female pharaoh, Akhenaten, who abandoned the gods, and any foreign rulers. Egyptian kings did not want to be connected to those that went against the law of Maat. King lists in general were used to connect the current king to the deities who ruled Egypt at the beginning of time. King lists used in India of the 4th -12th centuries AD were also used to connect the kings of the Mahabharata (text from first millennium BC) with Manu, the first man (Brockington 1996, 192-3), which would also prove their right to rule as well as their divinity; indicating that the ideology of divine kingship was similar in ancient India and ancient Egypt; although that will not be discussed here.

In the same way that Maat was an important concept in the lives of the ancient Egyptians, in the Hindu religion the concept of universal cosmic law is known as rta. Rta has many meanings including order, balance, harmony, law, unified life-energy and the principle of intelligence. If you live your life, as a modern Hindu, according to this cosmic law, it will lay the foundation for morality and intelligence. Everyone has to uphold this cosmic law, gods included, or face the disturbance of the universal equilibrium. To make it easier for this concept to be understood by the individual the everyday Hindu lives according to their personal dharma or duty (Fowler 1997, 105-6). Dharma means “what is right”, and constitutes the specific duties that needed to be performed, according to your caste and stage in life. Even though this is sometimes difficult, if all Hindus uphold the laws of personal dharma, the more universal concept of rta is maintained. If dharma is not carried out correctly, the larger concept of rta is not maintained and the universe will fall into primeval chaos before the end of the kali yuga.

In the Bhagavad Gita (18:47, 3:35), it explains in detail how it is more important to carry out your own dharma even if it seems unimportant than to try and carry out the dharma of another. In the Ramayana, Prince Rama was exiled by his father for something he did not do for fourteen years, but he had to go as his dharma states he should obey his father. Even after he was called back to the palace by his brother, he insisted on staying in exile until the fourteen year period was over. For this reason in the Hindu community Rama is viewed as a virtuous god who Hindus try to emulate.

It is clear that both maat and rta are very similar concepts although maat is something primarily governed by the behaviour of the king, and rta is maintained by everyone through the practice of dharma.

4. THE ONE AND THE MANY

The main similarity between ancient Egyptian religion and modern Hinduism is their polytheistic nature. Both religions have one Supreme Deity, who is seen as the creator of all life. However both religions have a choice as to which deity they chose to worship in this role. The choice of Supreme Deity is often related to political events and is often the state god. In ancient Egypt the Supreme Deity was either Amun, or Ra, (or the Aten in the Amarna period) and in modern Hinduism the Supreme Deity is Vishnu, Shiva or Brahma.

Although both Hindu gods and Egyptian gods exist in their thousands, each is a manifestation of the Supreme Deity and it has been argued that both religions have a monotheistic element. As the Supreme Deities are too complex or too powerful for many ordinary people to comprehend and bring into their lives on a personal spiritual level, they take on different forms, each with different personalities or characteristics, which can be approached for particular things, appealing to different people on many levels. For example Sekhmet, the lioness headed goddess, in ancient Egypt was addressed to cure illnesses (Lurker 1984, 106) as the goddess of epidemics, and in Hinduism before embarking on an exam or a business venture you would make an offering to Ganesha the elephant headed god of removal (and placing) of obstacles (Kanitkar & Cole 2003, 31). The gods however held different roles within the two cultures as the concerns of the population was different due to landscape, social and climatic differences. It has been stated that both religions are in fact henotheistic religions, that is, the worshipping of one chosen god over others. However many Hindus would argue that all gods are in fact a part of the Supreme Deity and therefore essentially the same. In the Memphite Theology describing the Egyptian creation the god Ptah is said to be present in “everybody and is in every mouth of all the gods, all men, all cattle, all creeping things that live” (Allen 1988, 43) and indicates that the ancient Egyptians also argued that one god could be present in all other deities. This debate of One God or Many is one that will continue.

As in ancient Egypt, the Hindu gods have many myths about their lives, relationships, battles and killing, although for both religions it is impossible for a god to actually be killed. They are killed for the purpose of the story but this death is not a permanent state. A perfect Egyptian example is the dismemberment of Osiris by Seth. Although his body parts were scattered the length and breadth of Egypt, Isis and Nephthys were able to resurrect him. After he had impregnated Isis, Osiris became the god of the Underworld, not dead but not permitted into the land of the living.

There is also a dismemberment story in Hindu mythology, when Shiva’s consort Sati died. In his grief, Shiva carried her body the full length and breadth of India. The other gods saw he was inconsolable and decided that he needed to part with the body of his wife in order to grieve and to continue with his life. Vishnu decided to cut up the body of Sati, until there was nothing left in Shiva’s arms. Shiva then retired to a mountain to meditate. Although his wife Sati was dead and dismembered she was reincarnated into Parvati who managed to persuade Shiva to marry her (Doniger O’Flaherty 1975, 249- 51).

In both the Hindu and Egyptian mythology in many places where the dismembered body parts fell onto the earth, there arose a sacred centre or temple, and although the motivation for the dismemberment is different there are clear similarities. Despite the stories’ differences, the deceased in both were reborn into another form, Sati into Parvarti and Osiris into the god of the Underworld. Gods do not die in either religion; they move on and live again.

Another Hindu story seems to have been inspired by the Isis/Osiris mythology, and even has the resurrection of the dead god rather than the rebirth, which is a completely un-Hindu idea. The Goddess in this story is Pattini and her husband Palanga is killed. Pattini searches for his body in the same way that Isis searches for the body of Osiris. When Pattini finds her husband she laments over his death, and the power of her grief resurrects him whereas Isis has specific personal powers of resurrection (Fynes 1993, 381-2). Although the stories are slightly different, the similarities could suggest an adoption of ideas.

There is evidence of an exchange of ideas in the form of the Egyptian cult of Isis travelling to India in the Roman period. The Oxyrhynchus Papyrus (1380) mentions Isis in her role of an Indian goddess known as Maia (a derivative of the Sanskrit word for mother);

“You bring forth the flood tide of rivers, in Egypt of the Nile…………in India of the Ganges” It is suggested that although written in Greek it may have been a copy of an earlier text (Fynes 1993, 389), indicating that Isis may have been present in India earlier than the Roman period, brought here by traders and merchants.

Another similarity between the religions is in the relationships that the gods have with each other. In both religions most male deities have a consort or wife and in Egyptian religion in particular form family groups and genealogy. Some of the major deities in Egypt have a “token” consort who do not necessarily hold much importance in the grand scale of the pantheon (Amun/Mut (Karnak), Khnum/Anukis (cataract region), Sobek/Hathor (Kom Ombo), Seth/Neith (Pyramid Age)) and the only major god without a consort is Horus, although he is often worshipped alongside his mother Isis; therefore creating a male/female partnership. It is likely that as Horus and Khonsu are divine children their relationship with their parents is more important than any relationship with a wife/consort.

The general idea behind these relationships is that everything needs a male and female element to be whole, as the females represent the creative power and energy needed for birth and creation. The importance of this female element of the gods in Hindu imagery is sometimes represented by the god being shown as half male and half female. In Egyptian religion this creative element to the divine couples is represented by the production of a child as a means of completing a family unit.

In addition to this idea of the duality of male and female characteristics a further similarity is suggested through the worship of dual snakes. DuQuesne suggests there was a similarity between the uraeus in ancient Egyptian kingship ideology and the the tilaka (red dot on the forehead) in Hindu practice, as they appear in the same position. In Indian tantric rituals the power of enlightenment is reached through the chakras; one of them being in the same position as the tilaka and ureaus. The tilaka represents the third eye of Shiva, providing the protection and enlightenment of the god, and the ureaus represents the goddesses of Upper and Lower Egypt, and places the wearer under their protection. The similarity is slight but interesting. The snake presented in the uraeus, is also an image of importance in Hinduism and Indian tantra. “Serpent power” in tantra is known as Kandalini and is represented by two snakes, a red and white snake and through invoking this power can lead to enlightenment. These dual serpents are also present in the Egyptian religion and are called Mertygoddesses and are red and white, wearing the red and white crowns of dual Egypt, representing the completeness of Egypt (DuQuesne 1995, 55-62). However, although there are certain similarities it has to be considered that symbols as synonymous as a snake or the forehead could have developed independently of each other and do not necessarily suggest a borrowing of ideas.

5. PRACTICE

Worship in both religions also has similarities, with a temple dedicated to a particular deity, and shrines within that temple dedicated to other gods associated with the patron deity. The most important part of the temple in Hinduism and ancient Egypt is the inner sanctum, the main shrine of the patron deity and the centre of the temple. However in ancient Egypt the temples were closed to the public, whereas Hindu temples are open to everyone, and are often the centre of the community.

The statues housed in the temples, were treated the same by both the ancient Egyptians and modern Hindus. Each morning the statue is “woken up”, washed, anointed, and given new clothes. The Egyptians on occasion also applied cosmetics and perfume, before feeding the statue. In Hinduism this consists of fruit, flowers, or sweets, and in ancient Egypt it consisted of fruit, vegetables, meat and wine. In modern Hindu temples the god blesses the food and it is given back to the devotees to eat and is called prashad or ‘blessed food’ (Kantikar & Cole 2003, 9). In ancient Egypt symbolically the god ate the food, getting nourishment from it, and whatever is left was taken by the priesthood and eaten. This ensured the priesthood in ancient Egypt ate well, especially at festival times (Sauneron 2000, 23). At the end of the day the statue is again dressed and washed and given an evening meal, before being sealed in the shrine until the morning rituals.

In Hindu religion rather than these rituals solely being carried out by the priests, in a temple environment, they are carried out on a daily basis in the home generally by the women of the household. Despite this more informal location the same rituals are carried out, including prayers, offerings and washing of the statues. In ancient Egypt there was also an emphasis on worship at home as the temples were unavailable to the general populace. Most of the houses at Deir el Medina for example would have contained a household shrine dedicated to local deities and the ancestors, and prayers and offerings were made on a daily basis.

Another similarity between the religions are the processions through the streets of the statues of the deities. In the Hindu religion one of the most important things about worship is what is known as darshan, which means “to see”; the worshipper seeing the god and the god seeing the worshipper (Eck 1998, 3). This reflects an interaction and a relationship between the worshipper and the god and is something that has also been adopted by monotheistic religions as well. These processions in India are a way for many people to see the statue of the god and offer prayers and devotion to it, as Hindus believe the god is actually present in this statue for the duration of the procession and therefore it is important to take part. This is in fact one of the fundamental similarities between the two religions; the belief that the statue was not a representation of the god but in fact housed the spirit of the god and was essentially divine.

In ancient Egyptian processions the deities were hidden in a shrine, so viewing the statue was not possible for the general populace. However it was considered important, and even an honour to approach the god, even in the shrine. They offered prayers and devotions as the god was carried past and it was also a time to ask the god for help in the form of an oracle, asking for advice and answers to various problems (Quirke 1997, 100). Although they could not physically see the statue they conversed with the god, albeit via the priests, but this relationship between worshipper and god was an essential part of the procession, and was an opportunity for the ordinary people to be close to their gods.

6. DISCUSSION

There are many more similarities between these religions, which can be explained through both the Egyptian religion and the ancient religion of the Indus Valley being very accommodating. Both religions absorbed local deities into the main pantheon, as well as local practices and myths. Most ideas were not rejected (Brockington 1996, 209) therefore creating the colourful and varied religion of the modern Hindu, and also of the ancient Egyptian which were very similar, as we can see from the few examples cited. The question therefore arises, “is there a common source for the religion and if so, where or what is this source?”

There is evidence from the archaeological record that Egypt was trading directly with India from at least the Ptolemaic period, which was many centuries after both religions were fully formed, although evidence suggests there may have been indirect contact from an earlier date. During the pharaonic period spice may have been imported from India for use in the temples and a number of Indian products including indigo, and tamarind wood, bearing the names of eighteenth dynasty kings (Wilkinson 1994, 237) have been found in tombs. However this does not necessarily mean they were trading directly with the Indian continent.

More concrete contact between India and Egypt comes from the sixth century BC when the northwestern part of India came into contact with Egypt when they both became part of the Persian Empire, although the extent of the contact is uncertain (Asthana 1976, 165). However it appears that during the Persian period (535-405 BC) in Egypt an Indian colony may have grown in Memphis (Asthana 1976, 170), a major harbour site and centre of trade in Egypt. The so-called ‘foreign quarter’ is believed to have been on the east side of the city near the river in order to be close to the trading harbour (Petrie 1909, 4), although it has also been suggested that the “foreign quarter” did not exist, but has only been identified as such due to a concentration of foreign figurines discovered in one place (Jeffries, 1985, 39). These foreign figurines including examples of Indian dancing girls which are thought to date to the first or second century AD and not the 300-200 BC date assigned to them by Petrie (Harle 1989, 375). These figures are similar to Buddhist carvings although the purpose of manufacture seems to be different; the Buddhist custom of modelling heads was to represent the people Buddhism was preached to, and then were presented at a great festival before being discarded (Gordon 1939, 37); the Indian dancing figures appear to have a different purpose. They show traces of colour (white slip and black, red, blue and green paint) (Harle 1989, 377), and it is thought these Indian dancing figures may be connected to the cult of Harpocrates, who is often shown with a side lock of hair, a finger to his mouth and wearing the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt (Harle 1989, 377). These figures may represent an early androgynous form of Harpocrates or perhaps they could represent the dancing girls participating in cult ritual (Harle 1989, 383). This therefore suggests that there were Indians living in Egypt at the time these figures were manufactured.

The earliest evidence of Indians physically present in Egypt is from a record of the royal procession of Ptolemy II Philadelphos (approximately 250 BC) (Gordon 1939, 37), which included Indian women, hunting dogs, cows and camels. The Indian women included in this procession possibly resided in Egypt, and may have been the same women who danced for the cult of Harpocrates giving the procession an element of spirituality. The saloon in the yacht belonging to Ptolemy II was also lined with Indian stone (Asthana 1976, 189) indicating that there were definitely trade expeditions at this time to India.

7. TRADE ROUTES

One of the most substantial indirect trade relationships was between Egypt and Mesopotamia and this started in the pre-dynastic period. There were two passable routes between Egypt and Mesopotamia, the northern route through Syria Palestine using both land and sea routes, and the southern route by sea through the Persian Gulf, around Saudi Arabia up the Red Sea to the Wadi Hammamat, then by land to Naqada (Mark 1997, 3). Due to increasing trade between the regions a third route was introduced via the eastern coast of the Red Sea in the late third to early second millennium BC.

In later periods, trade routes from the Indian sub-continent throughout the Near East including Mesopotamia, Afghanistan and Syria, were also used by religious functionaries. The formed close links with trading groups, and this saw an exchange of ideas and the spread of Buddhism, Hinduism and Christianity. The cult of Pattini, for example, primarily worshipped by Buddhists and Jains and connected to the cult of Isis may have reached India via Roman functionaries. The Roman cult of Isis was then adapted into the cult of Pattini (Fynes 1993, 386). The other similarities between the ancient Egyptian religion and the Hindu traditions and practices could also be due to contact between these functionaries and Egyptian traders in the region of Mesopotamia, and possibly even Afghanistan during the earlier periods of Egyptian and Indian history.

Evidence of direct trade between India and Egypt is clear from the late Ptolemaic and the Roman period in particular. Along the Egyptian Red Sea coasts, are various ports of trade, one of the richest in archaeological remains being that of Berenike. The trade passing through Berenike into Egypt were of a luxury nature and consisted of black and long pepper, fragrant roots and oils, indigo, coconuts, Job’s tears and teak wood that may have been used for ship building (Cappers 1998: 311 & 347-8). The teak wood, as an expensive import has only been discovered in the form of objects and not un-worked or charred (Sidebotham 2000: 133).

It is also suggested that Sesame oil, produced from locally grown sesame seeds, were originally imported to Egypt in the early Ptolemaic period and domesticated. The cordia myxa (Indian cherry, or plum) a stone fruit has also been discovered at Berenike but may have been imported to Egypt during the pharoanic period, as evidence has been found at Saqqara dating to the third dynasty, and Deir el Medina from the eighteenth dynasty (Cappers 1998: 311 & 2000: 318) although not on an extensive scale. Non-food stuffs imported from India include in addition to teak wood, glass, semi precious and non-precious stone beads, cotton and pottery. There is also evidence of wheat being exported from Egypt to India which may have been destined for Egyptian traders situated there (Sidebotham 1998: 306) indicating that in the Ptolemaic and Roman period at least the trade may have been regular necessitating Egyptian envoys to be placed in Indian ports. Fynes suggests that it is via this trade that the cult of Isis travelled to India, in her role of “Goddess of the sea and navigation”. Her main cult was at Coptos, where goods were received into Berenike and then sent for distribution throughout Egypt (1993, 379).

8. INDIRECT TRADE

Indirect trade was a legitimate way for Egyptians to obtain goods from outside of their political jurisdiction and was common throughout their history. There are numerous Mesopotamian objects in Egyptian tombs from all periods indicating this relationship was maintained for many years. There are also numerous examples of lapis lazuli objects in funerary contexts from as early as the Naqada II period. These goods are found alongside other foreign goods, and they may have come along the same trade routes. The only source of lapis lazuli was Afghanistan, and whilst it was abundant in Egypt in this early period it appears to be rare in Mesopotamia and Palestine and therefore it may have reached Egypt via the Red Sea (Mark 1997, 38) perhaps through direct trade with Afghanistan. The archaeological record suggests that there was a Harappan outpost on the Amu-Darya giving access to the lapis lazuli mines of Sar-i-sang, Badakshan and the Egyptian expeditions may have had contact with them directly although evidence for this has not yet been found.

9. MARITIME TRADE

The introduction of maritime trade saw the first direct contact between Egypt and India. Maritime trade in India started in the second to third millennium BC and was driven by entrepreneurs and a regular demand for coarse cloth, timber, and agricultural products rather than for exotic goods (Ray 2003, 82). Maritime trade in Egypt however only increased in the seventh century BC with the Greek settlement in Egypt and saw increased maritime activity between the regions (Mark 1997, 84).

There are three maritime trading centres mentioned in Mesopotamian sources; Dilmun (on the Arabian Gulf in Saudi Arabia), Magan (southern Iran), and Meluhha (in Pakistan) and all are mentioned in a text by Sargon of Akkad (2334 – 2279BC). In the seventh century BC the neo Assyrian king also mentions these three trading places indicating a continued trade between the areas.

DILMUN was one of the most important trading partners of Mesopotamia in the third millennium BC, and acted as a centre for the shipment of goods from further a field. The Indus weight system was possibly adopted from this region as it was known as the ‘standard of Dilmun’ by Mesopotamians suggesting continued contact. The main resource of Dilmun and the Magan region was copper, that the Mesopotamians traded for wool, silver, fat, milk and cereal products. As these goods are primarily ‘invisible’ there are very few Mesopotamian goods in the Indus Valley, although numerous goods have been found in Mesopotamia from this region (Possehl 2002, 227).

Old Akkadian texts refer to the commodity lists of MELUHHA which include carnelian, lapis lazuli, pearls, wood, plants, fresh dates, copper, gold, cats and dogs (Ray 2003, 87), and carnelian and lapis were popular in Egypt throughout its history. A number of etched carnelian beads have been discovered in Mesopotamia, manufactured using a technique perfected by the Indus Valley Civilisation, although lost after the collapse of the civilisation following the Aryan invasion (Possehl 2002, 222). Again this indicates that the Mesopotamians were not just trading in raw materials but also in finished goods, and crafts.

As Mesopotamia was trading with these regions, so close to India, and the Egyptians were trading with the Mesopotamians, an indirect route with India was available to the Egyptians, which could have included a trading of ideas, crafts in addition to commodities.

10. CONCLUSION

Although it is clear from this study that there were numerous similarities between ancient Egyptian religion and Hinduism, the reasons for these similarities are uncertain. As a number of the similarities are environmental it is probable that these aspects of the religions developed independently based on their own environment and spiritual needs.

There is enough evidence from the material culture to suggest that trade held an important part of the contact between India and Egypt, and shows the development of their relationship. This contact falls into three categories.

1 – Indirect trade – passage of goods via Mesopotamian merchants (pre-dynastic period onwards)

2 – Contact through trade – the travelling of Egyptians and Indians to Mesopotamia or Afghanistan where they may have met and conversed (pre-dynastic period onwards)

3 – Direct trade – with Egyptians travelling directly to India and Indians travelling to Egypt (Ptolemaic Period onwards).

The direct trade started in the Ptolemaic period and then dramatically increased in the Roman period. This increase in trade saw the cult of Isis introduced to India, even if it was for the use of the Egyptian merchants residing in India; but then appears to have influenced the cult of Pattini, a local Indian goddess (southern India and Sri Lanka). This cult may have been exported intentionally from Egypt to India or may have travelled there via the religious functionaries traversing the trade routes with a mind for evangelism. Although at present no conclusions can be made regarding how much one religion may have affected the other, if at all, and it is possible that the similarities between the religions may be due to a combination of borrowed ideas and the natural, independent development of both religions due to similar environment and similarity of need.

Spirit of Hinduism

noreply@blogger.com (Himalayas) — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 07:23:00 +0000

Satyagraha for Conservation: Awakening the Spirit of Hinduism

…Until very recently, the role of our cultural and spiritual heritages in environmental protection and sustainable development was ignored by international bodies, national governments, policy planners, and even environmentalists. Many fear that bringing religion into the environmental movement will threaten objectivity, scientific investigation, professionalism, or democratic values. But none of these need be displaced in order to include the spiritual dimension in environmental protection. That dimension, if introduced in the process of environmental policy planning, administration, education, and law, could help create a selfconsciously moral society which would put conservation and respect for God’s creation first, and relegate individualism, materialism, and our modern desire to dominate nature in a subordinate place. Thus my plea for a definite role of religion in conservation and environmental protection.

From the perspective of many world religions, the abuse and exploitation of nature for immediate gain is unjust, immoral, and unethical. …[But] no culture has remained immune from human irreverence towards nature. How can we change the attitude of human beings towards nature? Are religions the answer?

I believe that religion can evoke a kind of awareness in persons that is different from scientific or technological reasoning. Religion helps make human beings aware that there are limits to their control over the animate and inanimate world and that their arrogance and manipulative power over nature can backfire. Religion instills the recognition that human life cannot be measured by material possessions and that the ends of life go beyond conspicuous consumption.

As a matter of fact, religion can provide at least three fundamental mainstays to help human beings cope in a technological society. First, it defends the individual’s existence against the depersonalizing effects of the techno-industrial process. Second, it forces the individual to recognize human fallibility and to combine realism with idealism. Third, while technology gives the individual the physical power to create or to destroy the world, religion gives the moral strength to grow in virtue by nurturing restraint, humility, and liberation from self-centeredness. Directly and indirectly, religion can be a powerful source for environmental conservation and protection. Thus, we need a strategy for conservation that does not ignore the powerful influence of religions, but instead draws from all religious foundations and cultures.

World religions, each in their own way, offer a unique set of moral values and rules to guide human beings in their relationship with the environment. Religions also provide sanctions and offer stiffer penalties, such as fear of hell, for those who do not treat God’s creation with respect. Although it is true that, in the recent past, religions have not been in the forefront of protecting the environment from human greed and exploitation, many are now willing to take up the challenge and help protect and conserve the environment. But their offer of help will remain purely rhetorical unless secular institutions, national governments, and international organizations are willing to acknowledge the role of religion in environmental study and education. And I believe that environmental education will remain incomplete until it includes cultural values and religious imperatives. For this, we require an ecumenical approach. While there are metaphysical, ethical, anthropological and social disagreements among world religions, a synthesis of the key concepts and precepts from each of them pertaining to conservation could become a foundation for a global environmental ethic. The world needs such an ethic.

The Religion and Environment Debate

In 1967, the historian, Lynn White, Jr., wrote an article in Science on the historical roots of the ecological crisis. According to White, what people do to their environment depends upon how they see themselves in relation to nature. White asserted that the exploitative view that has generated much of the environmental crisis, particularly in Europe and North America, is a result of the teachings of late medieval Latin Christianity, which conceived of humankind as superior to the rest of God’s creation and everything else as created for human use and enjoyment. He suggested that the only way to address the ecological crisis was to reject the view that nature has no reason to exist except to serve humanity. White’s proposition impelled scientists, theologians, and environmentalists to debate the bases of his argument that religion could be blamed for the ecological crisis.

In the course of this debate, examples from other cultures were cited to support the view that, even in countries where there is religious respect for nature, exploitation of the environment has been ruthless. Countries where Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism and Shintoism have been practiced were cited to support the criticism of Thomas Derr, among others, that “We are simply being gullible when we take at face value the advertisement for the ecological harmony of non-Western cultures.” Derr goes on to say: even if Christian doctrine had produced technological culture and its environmental troubles, one would be at a loss to understand the absence of the same result in equally Christian Eastern Europe. And conversely, if ecological disaster is a particularly Christian habit, how can one explain the disasters non-Christian cultures have visited upon their environments? Primitive cultures, Oriental cultures, classical cultures—all show examples of human dominance over nature which has led to ecological catastrophe. Overgrazing, deforestation and similar errors of sufficient magnitude to destroy civilizations have been committed by Egyptians, Assyrians, Romans, North Africans, Persians, Indians, Aztecs, and even Buddhists, who are foolishly supposed by some Western admirers to be immune from this sort of thing.

This chapter challenges Derr’s assertion with respect to the role of the Hindu religion in the ecological crisis. We need to understand how a Hindu’s attitude to nature has been shaped by his religion’s view of the cosmos and creation. Such an exposition is necessary to explain the traditional values and beliefs of Hindus and hence what role Hindu religion once played with respect to human treatment of the environment. At the same time, we need to know how it is that this religion, which taught harmony with and respect for nature, and which influenced other religions such as Jainism and Buddhism, has been in recent times unable to sustain a caring attitude towards nature. What are the features of the Hindu religion which strengthen human respect for God’s creation, and how were these features repressed by the modern view of the natural environment and its resources?

The Sanctity of Life in Hinduism

The principle of the sanctity of life is clearly ingrained in the Hindu religion. Only God has absolute sovereignty over all creatures, thus, human beings have no dominion over their own lives or non-human life. Consequently, humanity cannot act as a viceroy of God over the planet, nor assign degrees of relative worth to other species. The idea of the Divine Being as the one underlying power of unity is beautifully expressed in the Yajurveda:

The loving sage beholds that Being, hidden in mystery, wherein the universe comes to have one home;

Therein unites and therefrom emanates the whole;

The Omnipresent One pervades souls and matter like warp and woof in created beings (Yajurveda 32.8).

The sacredness of God’s creation means no damage may be inflicted on other species without adequate justification. Therefore, all lives, human and nonhuman, are of equal value and all have the same right to existence. According to the Atharvaveda, the Earth is not for human beings alone, but for other creatures as well:

Born of Thee, on Thee move mortal creatures; Thou bearest them-the biped and the quadruped; Thine, O Earth, are the five races of men, for whom Surya (Sun), as he rises spreads with his rays the light that is immortal (Atharvaveda 12.1-15).

Srsti: God’s Creation

Hindus contemplate divinity as the one in many and the many in one. This conceptualization resembles both monotheism and polytheism. Monotheism is the belief in a single divine Person. In monotheistic creeds that Person is God. Polytheism, on the other hand, believes in the many; and the concept of God is not monarchical. The Hindu concept of God resembles monotheism in that it portrays the divinity as one, and polytheism in that it contemplates the divinity as one in many. Although there are many gods, each one is the Supreme Being. This attitude we may call nondualistic theism. …

All the Hindu scriptures attest to the belief that the creation, maintenance, and annihilation of the cosmos is completely dependent on the Supreme will. In the Gita, Lord Krishna says to Arjuna: “Of all that is material and all that is spiritual in this world, know for certain that I am both its origin and dissolution” (Gita 7.6). And the Lord says: again “The whole cosmic order is under me. By my will it is manifested again and again and by my will, it is annihilated at the end” (Gita 9.8). Thus, for ancient Hindus, both God and Prakriti (nature) was to be one and the same. While the Prajapati (as mentioned in Regveda) is the creator of sky, the earth, oceans, and all other species, he is also their protector and eventual destroyer. He is the only Lord of creation. Human beings have no special privilege or authority over other creatures; on the other hand, they have more obligations and duties.

Duties to Animals and Birds

The most important aspect of Hindu theology pertaining to treatment of animal life is the belief that the Supreme Being was himself incarnated in the form of various species. The Lord says: “This form is the source and indestructible seed of multifarious incarnations within the universe, and from the particle and portion of this form, different living entities, like demigods, animals, human beings and others, are created” (SrimadBhagavata Book I, Discourse III: 5). Among the various incarnations of God …He first incarnated Himself in the form of a fish, then a tortoise… As Rama he was closely associated with monkeys, and as Krishna he was always surrounded by the cows. Thus, other species are accorded reverence.

Further, the Hindu belief in the cycle of birth and rebirth where a person may come back as an animal or a bird gives these species not only respect, but also reverence. This provides a solid foundation for the doctrine of ahimsa—nonviolence against animals and human beings alike. Hindus have a deep faith in the doctrine of non-violence. Almost all the Hindu scriptures place strong emphasis on the notion that God’s grace can be received by not killing his creatures or harming his creation: “God, Kesava, is pleased with a person who does not harm or destroy other non-speaking creatures or animals” (Visnupurana 3.8.15). To not eat meat in Hinduism is considered both an appropriate conduct and a duty .Yajnavalkya Smriti warns of hell-fire (Ghora Naraka) to those who are the killers of domesticated and protected animals. …

By the end of the Vedic and Upanishadic period, Buddhism and Jainism came into existence, and the protection of animals, birds and vegetation was further strengthened by the various kings practicing these religions. These religions, which arose in part as a protest against the orthodoxy and rituals of Hindu religion, continued its precepts for environmental protection. The Buddhist emperor, Ashoka (273-236 BCE), promoted through public proclamations the planting and preservation of flora and fauna. Pillar Edicts, erected at various public places, expressed his concerns about the welfare of creatures, plants and trees and prescribed various punishments for the killing of animals, including ants, squirrels, and rats.

Flora in Hindu Religion

As early as in the time of Regveda, tree worship was quite popular and universal. The tree symbolized the various attributes of God to the Regvedic seers. Regveda regarded plants as having divine powers, with one entire hymn devoted to their praise, chiefly with reference to their healing properties (Regveda 10.97). During the period of the great epics and Puranas, the Hindu respect for flora expanded further. Trees were considered as being animate and feeling happiness and sorrow. It is still popularly believed that every tree has a Vriksadevata, or “tree deity,” who is worshipped with prayers and offerings of water, flowers, sweets, and encircled by sacred threads. Also, for Hindus, the planting of a tree is still a religious duty. Fifteen hundred years ago, the Matsya Purana described the proper ceremony for tree planting:

Clean the soil first and water it. Decorate trees with garlands … Offer prayer and oblation and then sprinkle holy water on trees. … After such worship the actual plantation should be celebrated. He who plants even one tree, goes directly to Heaven and obtains Moksha (Matsya Purana 59.159).

The cutting of trees and destruction of flora were considered a sinful act. Kautilya’s Arthasastra prescribed various punishments for destroying trees and plants. … The Hindu worship of trees and plants has been based partly on utility, but mostly on religious duty and mythology .Hindu ancestors considered it their duty to save trees; and in order to do that they attached to every tree a religious sanctity.

Pradushana: Pollution and Its Prevention in Hindu Scriptures

Hindu scriptures revealed a clear conception of the ecosystem. On this basis a discipline of environmental ethics developed which formulated codes of conduct (dharma) and defined humanity’s relationship to nature. An important part of that conduct is maintaining proper sanitation. In the past, this was considered to be the duty of everyone and any default was a punishable offence. …

Hindus considered cremation of dead bodies and maintaining the sanitation of the human habitat as essential acts. …

Water is considered by Hindus as a powerful media of purification and also as a source of energy. Sometimes, just by the sprinkling of pure water in religious ceremonies, it is believed purity is achieved. That is why, in Regveda, prayer is offered to the deity of water: “The waters in the sky, the waters of rivers, and water in the well whose source is the ocean, may all these sacred waters protect me” (Regveda 7.49.2). …

Still today, many rivers are considered sacred. Among these, the river Ganges is considered by Hindus as the most sacred and respectable. Disposal of human waste or other pollutants has been prohibited since time immemorial:

One should not perform these 4 acts near the holy waters of the river Ganga: i.e., remove excrement, brushing and gargling, removing cerumen from body, throwing hairs, dry garlands, playing in water, taking donations, performing sex, attachment with other sacred places, praising other holy places, washing clothes, throwing dirty clothes, thumping water and swimming (Pravascitta Tatva 1.535).

Persons doing such unsocial activities and engaging in acts polluting the environment were cursed: “ A person, who is engaged in killing creatures, polluting wells, and ponds, and tanks and destroying gardens, certainly goes to hell” (Padmapurana, Bhoomikhanda 96: 7-8).

Effectiveness of Hinduism in Conservation

The effectiveness of any religion in protecting the environment depends upon how much faith its believers have in its precepts and injunctions. It also depends upon how those precepts are transmitted and adapted in everyday social interactions. In the case of the Hindu religion, which is practised as dharma—way of life—many of its precepts became ingrained in the daily life and social institutions of the people. Three specific examples are given below to illustrate this point.

The Caste System and Sustainable Development

The Hindu religion is known for its elaborate caste system, which divides individuals among four main castes and several hundred sub-castes. Over the centuries, the system degenerated into a very rigid, hereditarily determined, hierarchical, and oppressive social structure, particularly for the untouchables and lower castes. But the amazing phenomenon is that it lasted for so many millennia even with centuries of domination by Islamic and Christian cultures.

One explanation by the ecologist, Madhav Gadgil, and the anthropologist, Kailash Malhotra, is that the caste system, as continued until the early decades of the twentieth century, was actually based on an ancient concept of sustainable development which disciplined the society by partitioning the use of natural resources according to specific occupations (or castes); and “created” the right social milieu in which sustainable patterns of resource use were encouraged to emerge. The caste system regulated the occupations that individuals could undertake. Thus, an “ecological space” was created in ancient Hindu society which helped to reduce competition among various people for limited natural resources. A system of “resource partitioning” emerged whereby the primary users of natural resources did not worry about encroachment from other castes. At the same time, these users also knew that if they depleted the natural resources in their own space, they would not survive economically or physically because no one would allow them to move on to other occupations.

Religious injunctions also created the psychological environment whereby each caste or sub-caste respected the occupational boundaries of the others. In a sense, the Hindu caste system can be seen as a progenitor of the concept of sustainable development.

But the system started malfunctioning during the British Raj when demands for raw materials for their fast-growing industrial economy had to be met by commercial exploitation of India’s natural resources. As traditional relationships between various castes started disappearing, competition and tension grew. The trend kept on accelerating in independent India, as each caste (or sub-caste) tried to discard its traditional role and seize eagerly any opportunity to land a job. When this happened, the ancient religious injunction for doing one’s prescribed duty within a caste system could no longer be maintained; this caused the disappearance of the concept of “ecological space” among Hindus. There is no doubt that the caste system also degenerated within and became a source of oppression; nevertheless, from an ecological spacing view point, the caste system played a key role in preserving India’s natural riches for centuries.

Bishnois: Defenders of the Environment

The Bishnois are a small community in Rajasthan, India, who practise a religion of environmental conservation. They believe that cutting a tree or killing an animal or bird is blasphemy. Their religion, an offshoot of Hinduism, was founded by Guru Maharaj Jambaji, who was born in 1450 CE in the Marwar area. When he was young he witnessed how, during a severe drought, people cut down trees to feed animals but when the drought continued, nothing was left to feed the animals, so they died. Jambaji thought that if trees are protected, animal life would be sustained, and his community would survive. He gave 29 injunctions and principal among them being a ban on the cutting of any green tree and killing of any animal or bird. About 300 years later, when the King of Jodhpur wanted to build a new palace, he sent his soldiers to the Bishnois area where trees were in abundance. Villagers protested, and when soldiers would not pay any attention to the protest, the Bishnois, led by a woman, hugged the trees to protect them with their bodies. As soldiers kept on killing villagers, more and more of the Bishnois came forward to honour the religious injunction of their Guru Maharaj Jambaji. The massacre continued until 363 persons were killed defending trees. When the king heard about this human sacrifice, he stopped the operation, and gave the Bishnois state protection for their belief.

Today, the Bishnois community continues to protect trees and animals with the same fervour. Their community is the best example of a true Hindu-based ritual defense of the environment in India, and their sacrifices became the inspiration for the Chipko movement of 1973.

The Chipko Movement

In March 1973, in the town of Gopeshwar in Chamoli district (Uttar Pradesh, India), villagers formed a human chain and hugged the earmarked trees to keep them from being felled for a nearby factory producing sports equipment. The same situation later occurred in another village when forest contractors wanted to cut trees under licence from the Government Department of Forests. Again, in 1974, women from the village of Reni, near Joshimath in the Himalayas, confronted the loggers by hugging trees and forced contractors to leave. Since then, the Chipko Andolan (the movement to hug trees) has grown as a grassroots ecodevelopment movement.

The genesis of the Chipko movement is not only in the ecological or economic background, but in religious belief. Villagers have noted how industrial and commercial demands have denuded their forests, how they cannot sustain their livelihood in a deforested area, and how floods continually play havoc with their small agricultural communities. The religious basis of the movement is evident in the fact that it is inspired and guided by women. Women have not only seen how their men would not mind destroying nature in order to get money while they had to walk miles in search of firewood, fodder and other grazing materials, but, being more religious, they also are more sensitive to injunctions such as ahimsa. In a sense, the Chipko movement is a kind of feminist movement to protect nature from the greed of men. In the Himalayan areas, the pivot of the family is the woman. It is the woman who worries most about nature and its conservation in order that its resources are available for her family’s sustenance. On the other hand, men go away to distant places in search of jobs, leaving women and old people behind. These women also believe that each tree has a Vriksadevata (tree god) and that the deity Van Devi (the Goddess of forests) will protect their family welfare. They also believe that each green tree is an abode of the Almighty God Hari.

The Chipko movement has caught the attention of others in India. For example, in Karnataka state, the Appiko movement began in September 1983, when 163 men, women, and children hugged the trees and forced the lumberjacks to leave. That movement swiftly spread to the adjoining districts. These people are against the kind of commercial felling of trees which clears the vegetation in its entirety. They do recognize the firewood needs of urban people (mostly poor) and therefore do not want a total ban on felling. However, they are against indiscriminate clearing and would like to see a consultative process established so that local people are able to participate in timber management.

These three examples are illustrative of the practical impact of Hinduism on conservation and sustainable development. While the effectiveness of the caste system to act as a resource partitioning system is no longer viable, the examples of Bishnois and Chipko/ Appiko are illustrative of the fact that when appeal to secular norms fails, one can draw on the cultural and religious sources for “forest satyagraha.” (“Satyagraha” means “insistence or persistence in search of truth.”) In this context, the term “forest satyagraha “ means “persistence in search of truth pertaining to the rights of trees.”

Loss of Respect for Nature

If such has been the tradition, philosophy, and ideology of Hindu religion, what then are the reasons behind the present state of environmental crisis? As we have seen, our ethical beliefs and religious values influence our behaviour towards others, including our relationship with all creatures and plant life. If, for some reason, these noble values become displaced by other beliefs which are either thrust upon the society or transplanted from another culture through invasion, then the faith of the masses in the earlier cultural tradition is shaken. As the foreign culture, language and system of administration slowly takes root and penetrates all levels of society, and as appropriate answers and leadership are not forthcoming from the religious leaders and Brahmans, it is only natural for the masses to become more inward-looking and self-centered. Under such circumstances, religious values which acted as sanctions against environmental destruction do not retain a high priority because people have to worry about their very survival and freedom; hence, respect for nature gets displaced by economic factors.

That, it seems, is what happened in India during the 700 years of foreign cultural domination. The ancient educational system which taught respect for nature and reasons for its preservation was no longer available. On the other hand, the imported culture was unable to replace the ancient Hindu religion; consequently, a conflict continued between the two value systems. The situation became more complex when, in addition to the Muslim culture, the British introduced Christianity and Western secular institutions and values. While it is too easy to blame these external forces for the change in attitudes of Hindus towards nature, nevertheless it is a fact that they greatly inhibited the religion from continuing to transmit ancient values which encourage respect and due regard for God’s creation.

The Hindu religion teaches a renunciation of worldly goods, and preaches against materialism and consumerism. Such teachings could act as a great source of strength for Hindu societies in their struggle to achieve sustainable development. I detect in countries like India and Nepal a revival of respect for ancient cultural values. Such a revival need not turn into fundamentalism; instead it could be based on the lessons learned from environmental destruction in the West, and on the relevant precepts enshrined in the Hindu scriptures. That should not cause any damage to the secularism now practised in India. As a matter of fact, this could develop into a movement whereby spiritual guidance is made available to the secular system of governance and socioeconomic interaction.

Hope for Our Common Future

Mahatma Gandhi warned that “nature had enough for everybody’s need but not for everybody’s greed.” Gandhi was a great believer in drawing upon the rich variety of spiritual and cultural heritages of India. His satyagraha movements were the perfect example of how one could confront an unjust and uncaring though extremely superior power. Similarly, the Bishnois, Chipko, and Appiko people are engaged in a kind of “forest satyagraha” today. Their movements could easily be turned into a common front—“satyagraha for the environment”—to be used against the forces of big government and big business. This could include such other movements as Mini Bachao Abhiyan (save the soil movement), Van Mahotsava (tree planting ceremony), Chetna March (public awareness march), Kalpavriksha (voluntary organization in Delhi for environmental conservation), and many others. The Hindu people are accustomed to suffering a great level of personal and physical hardships if such suffering is directed against unjust and uncaring forces. The minds of the Hindu people are slowly being awakened through the Chipko, Appiko, Bishnois, Chetna March, and other movements. Satyagraha for conservation could very well be a rallying point for the awakened spirit of Hinduism.

Hindu culture, in ancient and medieval times, provided a system of moral guidelines towards environmental preservation and conservation. Environmental ethics, as propounded by ancient Hindu scriptures and seers, was practised not only by common persons, but even by rulers and kings. They observed these fundamentals sometimes as religious duties, often as rules of administration or obligation for law and order, but either way these principles were properly knitted within the Hindu way of life. In Hindu culture, a human being is authorized to use natural resources, but has no divine power of control and dominion over nature and its elements. Hence, from the perspective of Hindu culture, abuse and exploitation of nature for selfish gain is unjust and sacreligious. Against the continuation of such exploitation, the only viable strategy appears to be satyagraha for conservation.

Sabda

noreply@blogger.com (Himalayas) — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 08:29:00 +0000

Shabda: Acoustical and Spiritual Aspects in Hinduism

Shabda occupies a very important place in Sanatana Dharma (Hinduism). Understanding and realization of Sabda is said to be the goal of life itself. The Amrta Bindu Upanisad proclaims that

Dve brahmani veditavye sabda bramha param ca yat
Sabda bramhani nisnatah param bramhadhi gacchati

Which means, “There are two Bramhans to be realized, Shabda and Param Bramhan: one who has realized and well versed in Shabda Bramhan will realize Param Bramhan.” Also it is noted by Laksmana Desikendra in Sharada Tilaka Tantra, that the essence of all beings is itself the shabda bramhan.

Caitanyam sarva bhutanam shabda bramheti me matihi

Thus, the above statements from Hindu scriptures indicate that shabda is an integral part of our life. In Vedic literature, it is given that the Shabda Bramhan is omni present through the sound of ‘Om’. The philosophical analysis of this Om (A+U+M) is dealt in several Upanishads.

The modern scientific inquiry of sound, which is also termed as acoustics has shown that sound plays an essential role virtually in all aspects such as earth sciences, engineering, life sciences and arts. Sound in modern scientific view refers to the audible range, with infra and ultra sound covering the inaudible molecular vibration of the medium. Similarly, in Hindu scriptures, shabda originating from the vibratory cause is termed as ahata shabda. This article will only deal with this type of shabda (sound). In addition Hindu scriptures also refer to self-sustaining sound, without vibratory cause, termed as anahata sabda which is experienced only in higher states of yoga.

Thus it is seen that shabda (sound) encompasses the life itself. Broadly we can categorize the role of shabda in spirituality, speech, music, and literature.

Shabda and Spirituality
In Hinduism or Sanatana Dharma, spirituality includes philosophy, yoga, tantra and agama. The source of all these branches of knowledge is the Vedas. Veda is also described as shabda. The orthodox systems of Hindu thoughts are based on the Vedas as authority or shabda pramana. Here shabda refers to the spoken words as mantras. In the process of creation, the first element is space and this allsurrounding space can only be described by shabda. The scriptures say, ‘Shabdaikagunamakasam’ which means ‘only sound qualifies space’. However, sound propagates through other elements, namely air, fire, water, and earth. The sound as only property of space can also be observed in terms of acoustical quality of space in rooms. It is known that the sound quality of a room space is described by the reverberation characteristics. Thus it is seen that the sound plays a major role in the universe composed of five elements.

Sabda and Speech
Shabda as speech is extremely important for human speech is regarded as a gift to human beings. The goddess Saraswati is the deity of speech. The infinitely large Vedic literature in the form of mantras depicts the spiritual effect of sound or sabda. The intonations termed as swaras bring out the sounding effect. The speech seed sounds are generated at various chakras located in the human spinal cord, namely Muladhara, Swadhishthana, Manipura, Anahata and Vishuddhi. The seed sounds generated at the chakras take the form of vowels and consonants in the mouth with the help of the throat, tongue, jaws, teeth, and lips. The space variation in the mouth cavity with exhaling air will enable the production of words. Hence, word is also known as shabda. Shabda as the underlying energy in speech production plays an important role in human life.

The complete process of production of speech is mysterious. It is said in Rgveda that the process has four stages. These four stages are Para, Pasyanti, Madhyama and Vaikhari. The first three are internal and yogic and can be experienced by yogis. The fourth stage is Vaikhari is the audible speech, which is used by all human beings.

Catvari vakparimita padani tani vidurbramhana ye manishinaha
Guha trini nihita nengayanti turiyam vaco manushya vadanti

Shabda and music
Music can be described as a universal language of emotions shabda in addition to the well-known form of seed sound and words takes another important form called nada. The nada refers to the flowing energy of sound, which also refers to the expressions of caitanya or consciouseness. Saranga deva in sangita ratnakara says

Caitanyam sarvabhutanam vivrutam jagadatmana
Nada bramha tadanandam advitiyam Upasmahe

Which means that ‘we worship nada-brahman, that incomparable bliss, which is intrinsic in all the creatures as consciousness and is manifest in the phenomenon of this universe’. Thus, the nada and sabda direct to the same entity, which is consciousness.

However, nada relates the emotional expressions through music, whereas shabda as sound and word emphasized the philosophical inquiry. In the process of describing the origination of nada, Sangita Ratnakara gives :

Nakaram prananamanam dakaramanalam viduh
Jatah pranagnisamyogattena nadah abhidhiyate

Which means’ it is understood that the syllable ‘na’ represents the vital force and ‘da’ represents the fire. Thus, being produced by the interaction of vital force and fire it is called nada’.

This nada which manifests as seven notes becomes the vehicle of emotional expressions through the nine rasas in the form of music and dance. The nine rasas(sentiments) are love(erotic), heroic, pathetic, marvelous, comic, odious, terrible, furious and peaceful. The words of a song denote the sabda(pada) while the singing tune (raga) denotes the expressing of nada. Thus it is seen that sabda and nada are connected by music. It is true that music and dance are integrally related.

Shabda and Literature
A literary work is essentially a composition of words to express the inner feelings tof the writer. In the Hindu view, this writer or Kavi, after experiencing the theme, expresses it through the proper assembly of words. This choice of words indicate the role of shabda. For example: the premier poet Valmiki has demonstrated the effect of poetry and Sabda in Ramayana. It is well known that the Sanskrit language has several unique effects of sound or shabda. The poems in Sanskrit are easy to memorize due to the explicit sandhi (union of alphabets) effect. The large number of vowels and consonants as basic sounds enable the language to deal with many expressions; the metrical details in Sanskrit also bring the sound effect. The infinitely large literature in Sanskrit has been carried throught generations by oral traditions not only because of its intrinsic values for life but also for the joy of sound that it provides the reader and listener with.

Concluding Remarks
Thus, shabda undoubtedly plays a key role in all aspects of life including both scientific and spiritual. Shabda or sound encompasses life itself. As Saranga Deva in Sangita Ratnakara puts it,

Nadena vyajyate varnah padam varnat padat vacah
Vacaso vyavaharoyam nadadhinamato jagat

Which means nada manifests the letters, letters constitute the word, and words make a sentence; so the entire business of life is carried on through language, and therefore, the whole phenomenon (the world) is based on nada.

In the words of Sriranga Sadguru (a seer-yogi, the founder of Astanga Yoga Vijnana Mandiram, Mysore, India, “the two essential aspects of spiritual development are in realization of the identity between ‘Spoken Word-Object’ (Pada-Padartha) and the integral cause – effect relationship of ‘Seed Sound-Word’ (Bija-Vriksha)’.

Frequently Asked Questions about Hinduism

noreply@blogger.com (Himalayas) — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 02:13:00 +0000

Where does the word “Hindu” come from?
Hindu is a name given to people living east of the river Indus in India. Thus “Hinduism” became the term used to describe the religion practiced by these people. Those who practice Hinduism usually refer to the religion as “sanatana dharma” (eternal truth).

Who is the founder of Hinduism?
There is no single founder of Hinduism in the way that Jews can trace the beginnings of their religion to Abraham and Muslims can trace the historical beginnings of Islam to Mohammed.

What country has the most followers?
India has the most followers, with an estimated 700 million Hindus out of the total population of 1 billion. Nepal, although having a population of only 25 million, is the only official Hindu state in the world. Approximately 13 per cent of the world’s population is Hindu.

What is the holy text of Hinduism?

The basic texts are collectively known as the Vedas and were compiled in Sanskrit. They are: Rig Veda—hymns and chants of praise Yajur Veda—liturgical prose Sam Veda—readings for chanting Atharva Veda—chants and songs for correct living Hindus believe that the Vedas have no authorship and have been eternally existent. Hence they are called apaurusheya—not authored or made by anyone. The Vedas do not owe their authority to anybody, they are themselves the authority, being eternal—the knowledge of God. This knowledge is what is meant by ‘the Vedas’ (‘Vid’—to know). Other epic texts are also central to understanding Hinduism. These include the Mahabharatha (which deals with the life of Lord Krishna) and the Ramayana (which deals with the life of Lord Rama).

Are there different sects of Hinduism?

Hindu philosophy is contained in the end portion of the vedas and is called the Gnana Kaanda or Knowledge portion or Vedaanta. This has been interpreted differently and many schools of thought emerged but Advaita,Visishtadvaita and Dvaita are the most well known schools of thought on Hindu philosophy. According to Advaita the creator and the created are the same. The created is a part of the creator according to Visishtadvaita and as per Dvaita the creator is different from the created. The practice of Hinduism and worship of particular gods varies tremendously both within India and in other parts of the world.

What do Hindus believe?

The spiritual goal of all Hindus is to overcome the cycle of birth and death and become one with the Paramathma. All Hindus believe that there is a soul (atman) within every living thing and that this soul is part of the Universal Soul (Paraman), which is formless but can nevertheless manifest itself in any form it desires. Thus, the aim of the atman is to seek reunion with the paraman, and thereby get out of the cycle of births and rebirths (samsara). This is also called Moksha. The quality of one’s past deeds is known as karma. When one’s karma is of sufficient quality, he or she will escape the cycle of birth and rebirth and rejoin the Universal Soul. Hindus believe in ahimsa (not doing harm to other living things), and since this includes not killing living things, a staunch Hindu is generally a vegetarian.

Although they believe in the Supreme Being, Hindus generally pray to a pantheon of Gods in various forms and which are both male and female. Central to this pantheon is the trinity of gods Brahma (Creator) Vishnu (Preserver) Siva (Destroyer) Hindus pray to a multiplicity of Gods and Goddesses depending on their aspirations and goals. For example, to avoid obstacles they pray to Ganesha. For wealth they pray to Lakshmi and for learning they pray to Saraswathi. Hindus also believe in the reincarnation of the Supreme Being as avatars (the descent and incarnation of a deity). Two of the most well-known reincarnations Rama and Krishna.

What are the holy places of Hinduism?

They are found all over India, from Khasi and Varanasi and Banares in the North to Cape Comorin and the various temples for Lord Muruga (son of Lord Siva), known collectively as the Aru Padai Veedu (Six Incarnations temples). As for Lord Ganeshs, the elder son of Lord Siva, temples of worship housing his statue are found in almost every nook and corner of India and other countries where Hinduism is practiced. These places of worship are associated with the different gods who were deemed to have come down and lived with the people, and they are therefore the sacred original abodes of these gods.

Where do Hindus worship?

Hindus generally worship either at their homes, where some of them build elaborate altars, or in temples big and small, simple as well as elaborate.

How does a Hindu worship?

Worship is called puja. One can worship either in Sanskrit or in the other Indian languages, by reciting ancient mantras and/or chanting the names of the deities. Much worship takes place in the home at a shrine or alter dedicated for such a purpose. Generally, there is an invocation, followed by addressing the specific god and presentations of offerings (usually flowers, fruit and delicacies) at the altar. Elaborate rituals are associated with the different Gods and Goddesses.

Are there any special dietary practices?

A staunch Hindu is a vegetarian and will also abstain from alcohol. Other Hindus may include milk and milk products (butter, cheese, ghee), as the cow is considered sacred and dairy products are admissible as permitted food. Because the cow is considered sacred, Hindus may not eat beef.

What are some Hindu rituals?

Birth Birth is a special event, whereby the astrologer is immediately summoned and commissioned to chart the child’s horoscope. After 11 days, the priest and astrologer are part of those invited for the official child naming ceremony. After 30 days, there is a bigger event, involving family members and friends, to put the child in the cradle. At the end of 1 year, the child’s head is shaved and prayers offered at a temple, usually for Lord Muruga. Weddings For weddings there are also elaborate rites, starting from the matching of the bride’s and groom’s horoscopes by astrologers. Once, there is a match, an auspicious date for the wedding is fixed that is in harmony with the stars of the couple. The wedding may last as long as three days, with numerous rituals conducted by the priest and community elders. On the wedding day proper, the bride and groom take seven steps (sapthapathi) around the sacred fire (agnihotra) while the priest chants Sanskrit mantras from the Vedas. Finally, the groom ties a sacred thread with the thali (symbol of marriage) around the groom’s neck. After this, the couple is blessed by elders and friends. This is usually followed by vegetarian lunch/dinner.

Death.

Death ceremonies are also elaborate. The priest lights the sacred fire (agnihotra) and chants Sanskrit mantras. The eldest son/ brother or other male then uses a tinder from the fire to light up the heart of the dead person’s body, and the body is then cremated. (Since only the soul is needed for reincarnation, cremation is the standard practice among Hindus.) On the 13th day, friends and relatives gather for a cleansing/thanksgiving ceremony, inclusive of food. Subsequently, the death anniversary is remembered through prayers at a temple dedicated to Lord Siva.

How are Hindus organized?

There is no strict organization or hierarchy as one would see for example in the Catholic church. There are Hindu Sangams, either as voluntary bodies or as statutory bodies which oversee the administration of the temples and make rulings on some issues, but they are not binding and are usually restricted to the geographical area in which the temple/sangam is located. Many sects have their own organization and rules. In the Sangams, the leaders are called Swamis, while in the temples, the priests are called acharya (North India) or pandaram (South India). Rituals are usually performed by the priest caste known as Brahmins.

What are the special days or times of the year?

Hindu New Year is the most widely celebrated. It falls on the first day of the month of chithirai, and goes according to the Hindu (lunar) calendar. Another popular festival in both north and south India is Deepavali or Diwali, which is the festival lights that commemorates the triumph of good over evil. In South India, Malaysia and Singapore, the popular festival is Thaipusam, a festival to make offerings (and penance) to Lord Muruga. Penance takes the form of carrying kavadis and piercing parts of the body with skewers. Another popular festival is firewalking, which is carried out in temples that worship Goddess Mariamman.

What happens after death?

On the fall of the physical body the athma merges with the Paramathma if the karma has been completely extinguished. Otherwise there is travel for the Subtle and Causal body bundle till it finds a suitable womb to lodge itself for the next birth and the type of womb depends on its karma palan which it has to go through.

Is Hinduism similar to other religions?

Siddhartha was a Hindu, who attained enlightenment and became Buddha. He was also one of the ten avatars of Vishnu. Mahaaveera, also a Hindu, was the founding saint of Jainism, an important religion in India. Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism are sometimes called the Vedic Religions.

Hinduism & National Socialism

noreply@blogger.com (Himalayas) — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 08:32:00 +0000

I embraced Hinduism because it was the only religion in the world that is compatible with National Socialism. And the dream of my life is to integrate Hitlerism into the old Aryan tradition, to show that it is really a resurgence of the original tradition. It’s not Indian, not European, but Indo-European. It comes from back to those days when the Aryans were one people near the North Pole. The Hyperborean tradition.

Well, I’m not a full Hindu. I’m a National Socialist. To me it’s quite sufficient. I’m a European heathen. I’m one of those who would’ve fought Christianity in the fourth and fifth centuries. The great man I admired in my youth was Alexander the Great, my first love. My second love is Emperor Julian. Adolf Hitler is the third one. I put him above the others, but chronologically he’s the third. The first book I wrote in English in India is called A Warning to the Hindus.42 It was written in ’37. It was translated into six Indian languages. It’s not dedicated to an Indian. It’s dedicated to Divine Julian, Emperor of the Greeks and Romans, 360-363, the one who wanted to bring back the old Greek and Roman religion after Christianity had been ruling for— well, I don’t know—say fifty years. The Christian religion was instituted as the religion of the Roman Empire in 313. It was too late in 360. It was too late.

Now I must tell you something that I recently read this morning. I have a French friend. Well, she could be my daughter or, according to Indian standards, even my granddaughter. She’s much younger than I, thirty-eight. And she’s now in the South at her guru. She has a guru. Or rather the disciple of a dead guru. Her guru is dead. And she was visiting the ashram of the famous Ramana Maharshi.43 Ramana Maharshi is really the greatest, or perhaps one of the greatest, one of the first or second of the two or three greatest sages of modern India. An extraordinary man. He did not teach. He taught only through his radiations. He was perfectly silent. He was vowed to perfect silence. That’s a very queer thing to say, but he did teach like that. I know people who saw him and who said, “If silence can have meaning, that man shows it.”

Anyhow, he used to speak sometimes, of course. He was not silent completely. This woman asked his shishya, his disciple, “What did Ramana Maharshi say about Adolf Hitler? Did he ever mention him?” And the disciple answered, “Yes, he considered him as a jnani.”44 A jnani is something extremely high. A jnani and a rishi are the same thing, or practically the same thing. They’re Sanskrit words. Jnani has the same root as gnos, the Christian sect, the Gnostics, the people of knowledge. A jnani means a man who has complete knowledge, who knows everything, infused knowledge, intuitive knowledge, if you like. He is divine through his intuition. Like God, he knows everything through intuition. Well, I was extremely pleased to hear that said by a very great rishi, a very great Indian man, a sage, about our Führer.

It’s not what you have in Europe. Here in India, nobody says anything against him, except people who are brainwashed by European ladies. Apart from that, the masses of India don’t care. It’s something foreign. They have their own little, small, petty lives to think of, the poverty and the struggle from day to day. Some of the intellectual Indians like him very much. My landlord likes him very much. My landlord’s son likes him very much. Or else they have an idea like this. Satyananda Swami was the founder and head of the Hindu Mission, for which I worked for years, fighting Communism, fighting any religion of equality and especially Christian missionaries, in the name of Hindu tradition. Satyananda Swami used to say, “Adolf Hitler is the reincarnation of the god Vishnu.” Vishnu is the aspect of the Hindu trinity who goes to keep things from rushing to destruction. To keep them back, to go against time. Time is destruction. You have to destroy in order to create again, but there are forces that try to postpone destruction. And he said Hitler was the reincarnation of that force. And he was. He was. But it’s a nice thing to hear, a very refreshing thing to hear from a Hindu sage.

I told him, “I came here because I’m really a pagan, a worshipper of the sun, and I believe in the pagan reaction of Emperor Julian. And I came to India to get, if possible, a sort of tropical equivalent of what we had in Europe before Christianity. And I am not a disciple of any Indian, I’m a disciple of Adolf Hitler.” He said, “Good, good. Adolf Hitler, he’s as much a Hindu as any of our Hindus. He’s an incarnation of the god Vishnu.” There you are. It was extremely surprising and refreshing to hear that in 1936. And he said it during the war too. In Kubila he gave a speech in ’42. He openly said, “What we need here in India, as everywhere in the world, is National Socialism.” He openly said so. And I said to him, “Satyananda Swami, you’ll get into trouble with the British police.” He said, “I couldn’t care less if I did. I told them the truth.”

In fact, Hinduism is for the Aryans of India a means to be able to rule. According to tradition, the Aryans should rule here. They don’t, because tradition has been abandoned for years and years and years. India is going away from tradition, like the whole world. We are in the Dark Age, and India is going to the dogs, and the whole world is going to the dogs. Except a minority who are fighting against time, against the current of time. And I hope that we’ll win. We will have to win. We can’t help winning. But I don’t know whether we’ll win just now and if the avenger Kalki, as the Hindus call him, is going to come very soon or whether he’s going to come in centuries. Because centuries are also very soon in the infinity of time. A century is nothing. And ten centuries are nothing. In fact I feel that myself. When I feel the struggle of Christianity to master Europe fifteen hundred years ago, I resent it as though it were now. I feel the struggle of Widukind as though it were now.

41 Savitri accepted the theories of Bal Gangadhar Tilak, The Arctic Home in the Vedas (Poona: Kesari, 1903). 42 Savitri Devi, A Warning to the Hindus (Calcutta: Hindu Mission, 1939). 43 Ramana Maharshi (1879-1950). His ashram is located in Tiruvannamali in Tamil Nadu, South India. For a vivid description of Ramana Maharshi as well as photographs, see Paul Brunton, A Search in Secret India (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1935), esp. 138- 142 and 280. 44 For more on the Ramana Maharshi’s opinion of Hitler, see Savitri Devi, “Hitlerism and the Hindu World,” The National Socialist, no. 2 (Fall 1980): 18-20,

Jewels of Hinduism

noreply@blogger.com (Himalayas) — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 15:47:00 +0000

The Spirit of Vedanta: Hinduism Quotes

“Most humbly we bow to You, O Supreme Lord.
At Your command moves the mighty wheel of time.
You are eternal, and beyond eternity.”
(Artharva Veda)
--------------
“The one who loves all intensely begins perceiving in all living beings a part of himself…
He becomes a lover of all, a part and parcel of the Universal Joy.
He flows with the stream of happiness, and is enriched by each soul.”
(Yajur Veda)
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“The human body is the temple of God.
One who kindles the light of awareness within gets true light.
The sacred flame of your inner shrine is constantly bright…
The experience of unity is the fulfillment of human endeavors.
The mysteries of life are revealed.”
(Rig Veda)
--------------
“Sing the song of celestial love, O singer!
May the divine fountain of eternal grace and joy enter your soul.
May Brahma, (the Divine One),
Pluck the strings of your inner soul with His celestial fingers,
And feel His own presence within.
Bless us with a divine voice
That we may tune the harp-strings of our life
To sing songs of Love to you.”
(Rig Veda)
--------------
“Of everything he is the inmost Self.
He is the truth; he is the Self supreme.” (Chandogya Upanishad)
--------------
“Meditating on the lotus of your heart,
in the center is the untainted;
the exquisitely pure, clear, and sorrowless;
the inconceivable;
the unmanifest,
of infinite form;
blissful, tranquil, immortal;
the womb of Brahma.”
(Kaivalyopanishad)
--------------
“Those in whose hearts OM reverberates
Unceasingly are indeed blessed
And deeply loved as one who is the Self.
The all-knowing Self was never born,
Nor will it die. Beyond cause and effect,
This Self is eternal and immutable.
When the body dies, the Self does not die.”
(Katha Upanishad)
--------------
“The whole mantram AUM
Indivisible, interdependent,
Goes on reverberating in the mind…
Established in this cosmic vibration,
The sage goes beyond fear, decay, and death
To enter into infinite peace.”
(Prashna Upanishad)
--------------
“O Almighty!
You are the infinite; the universe is also infinite!
From infinite the infinite has come out!
Having taken infinite out of the infinite, the infinite remains!
O Almighty! May there be Peace! Peace! Everywhere!”
(Ishawashya Upanishad)
--------------
“Meditating on the lotus of your heart, in the center is the untainted; the exquisitely pure, clear, and
sorrowless; the inconceivable; the unmanifest, of infinite form; blissful, tranquil, immortal; the womb
of Brahma.” (Kaivalyopanishad)
--------------
“O seeker, know the true nature of your soul, and identify yourself with it completely.
O Lord, (may we attain) the everlasting consciousness of Supreme Light and Joy.
May we resolve to dedicate our life to the service of humankind,
And uplift them to Divinity.”
(Yajur Veda)
--------------
“O Brahma, lead us from the unreal to the real.
O Brahma, lead us from darkness to light.
O Brahma, lead us from death to immortality…
Shanti, Shanti, Shanti, Om.”
(Brhadaranyaka Upanishad)
--------------
“Look to this day, for it is life, the very breath of life. In its brief course lie all the realities of your
existence; the bliss of growth, the glory of action, the splendor of beauty. For yesterday is only a
dream, and tomorrow is but a vision. But today, well lived, makes every yesterday a dream of
happiness, and every tomorrow a vision of hope. Look well, therefore, to this day.” (Ancient Sanskrit)
--------------
“The highest Self, all endless bliss, the unconditioned limitless consciousness, being realized, whether
through the great texts, or through Yoga, in all experience whatever—let one lose himself in the
ecstasy of Realization, for he has forever lost all touch with bondage of every description.”
(Svarajyasiddhi)
--------------
“This ritual is One.
This food is One.
We who offer the food are One.
The fire of hunger is One.
All action is One.
We who understand this are One.”
(Ancient Hindu Blessing)
--------------
“A particle of Its bliss supplies the bliss of the whole universe. Everything becomes enlightened in Its
light. All else appears worthless after a sight of that essence. I am indeed of this Supreme Eternal
Self.” (Vijnanananka)
--------------
“The knower catches in the ecstasy of his heart the full light of that Brahman (that Divine Essence)
which is indescribable—all pure bliss, incomparable, transcending time, ever free, beyond desire.”
(Vivekachudamani)
-------------
"Bright but hidden, the Self dwells in the heart.
Everything that moves, breathes, opens, and closes
Lives in the Self. He is the source of love
And may be known through love but not through thought
He is the goal of life. Attain this goal!"
(Mundaka Upanishad)
-----------
“All is change in the world of the senses,
But changeless is the supreme Lord of Love.
Meditate on him, be absorbed by him,
Wake up from this dream of separateness.”
(Shvetashvatara Upanishad)
---------------
“O mysterious and incomprehensible Spirit!
“In the depths of my heart, there is only You—You, for all time.”
(source unknown)

Hinduism at a Glance

noreply@blogger.com (Himalayas) — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 07:36:00 +0000

# The original name of Hinduism is Sanatan Dharm. ‘Sanatan’ means eternal and ‘Dharm’ means those actions, thoughts and practices that promote physical and mental happiness in the world and ensure God realization.

# Sanatan Dharm eternally exists in God, is revealed by God, describes the names, forms, virtues and the abodes of God, and reveals the true path of God realization for the souls of the world.

# There are three eternal existences: soul, maya, and God. Souls are unlimited in number, infinitesimal in size, Divine in quality but eternally under the bondage of maya. Soul does not belong to maya or the mayic world. It has a natural and eternal relationship with God.

# Maya is a lifeless power of God having three qualities: sattvic (pious), rajas (selfish) and tamas (impious) that represent its existence when it is evolved into the form of the universe. The universe has two dimensions -- material and celestial. The Divine dimension of God lies beyond the field of maya.

# Hinduism is monotheistic. There is one single God Who represents the various aspects of His unlimited Blissful charm through many forms such as Krishn, Vishnu, Shiv and Shakti and the impersonal aspect. Out of these Krishn is the absolute supreme form of God which includes all others. God is an eternal, omnipresent, all-Blissful, all-Gracious, all-kind and all-loving Divine personality.

# Hinduism explains that the soul is eternally yearning for perfect, unlimited and everlasting happiness. But the soul is mistakenly searching for this happiness in the mayic world where one finds only transitory pleasures followed by disappointments.

# The illusion of finding perfect happiness in the mayic world is the cause of souls reincarnation. The soul, since uncountable lifetimes, has been taking birth into the 8.4 million species of life where it undergoes the consequences of actions (karmas). Perfect happiness is neither a feature of the mind nor a nature or quality of the mayic world. It can only be attained by God realization.

# The human form of life is the only chance for a soul to attain God realization, if one understands the disappointing nature of the illusive attractions and attachments of the world and sincerely proceeds on the path of God realization by completely trusting in the causeless kindness of God.

# The aim of human life is to attain God realization. The means of God realization is bhakti and Gods Grace.

# Humble, loving and wholehearted submission to a personal form of God is called bhakti. Bhakti evokes the Grace of God and ensures God realization. Upon God realization the soul is released from the bondage of maya and achieves unlimited Divine Bliss forever.

# Sattvic practices such as austerity, intellectual study of Vedant, practice of renunciation and meditation, on their own, can only evolve the sattvic quality of persons mind to a certain extent. They can never be the means of God realization. When one begins to do bhakti, these practices, with the Divine uniting factor of bhakti, are then classified as karm yog or gyan yog. Only when these practices are performed with bhakti, can they become the means of God realization, because only bhakti unfolds Gods Grace.

# A personality who has the Divine knowledge of all the scriptures and who is God realized is needed to guide, protect and Grace the souls on their path to God realization. Such a Divine personality is called Guru. It is the Guru who imparts the Divine vision or Divine love of God to a dedicated soul when they reach a stage of complete surrender through bhakti. Divine personalities are always present on the earth planet to guide the souls.

# In addition to sending Divine personalities from His abode to the earth planet, God Himself descends on the earth planet from time to time to establish and protect Sanatan Dharm, to reveal His absolute Blissfulness through His Divine actions (leelas) and to show the path of bhakti to the souls. The descension of God into the material (mayic) realm is called avatar in Sanskrit.

# The Divine scriptures of Hinduism include the Vedas, the Upvedas, the Vedangas, the Smritis, the Darshan Shastras, the Upnishads, the Puranas, the Itihas (Ramayan and Mahabharat), the Gita, the Bhagwatam and the writings of Jagadgurus, acharyas, and Saints.

# The vast collection of Bhartiya scriptures are a systematic line of teachings. They provide the guidelines for all kinds of people, having varying levels of purity of mind and receptivity for God, and lead them towards God realization.

Do you know...

# The Bhartiya (Hindu) scriptures also reveal the scientific axioms that are valuable in the research and development of modern science. They reveal the sequence of the procedure of creation of the universe, the exact model and working of the universe, as well as the science of defense, medicine and aviation, whatever is required by the society for daily living.

# That Bhartiya scripture -- the Upnishads and the Bhagwatam give a detail description of 12 step-wise phases of creation of the universe and the exact calculations of the age of sun and earth planet.

# That the Valmiki Ramayan, relating the history of Bhagwan Ram, was written 18.144 million years ago.

# That Bhagwan Krishn descended on the earth in 3228 BC and the Mahabharat war took place in 3139 BC.

# That Sanskrit is the mother of all the languages and it has been in its perfect form since its introduction in the world.

All You Need to Know About Hinduism

THE CONCEPT OF GOD IN HINDUISM

Time & Astronomy

Brahmanism & Early Hinduism

Mahatma Gandhi and Buddhism

Liberation

Hinduism, Followers of the Veda

HINDUISM REVISITED THE RELEVANCE OF GANDHI TODAY

Hinduism and Christianity

Introductory Facts

The Rig-Veda Myth

The Brahma Myth

Creation

Illusion

Hinduism and Christianity Contrasted

Founder

Authority

Creation

- its reality

God

- Trinity

RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE AND HINDUISM

Hinduism versus Monotheism

Hinduism and Ancient Egyptian Religion

Spirit of Hinduism

Sabda

Frequently Asked Questions about Hinduism

Hinduism & National Socialism

Jewels of Hinduism

Hinduism at a Glance