INTERFAITH  ETIQUETTE  GUIDE    Dalai Lama's Letter    Links    RELIGION IN THE NEWS    Contact Us

HINDUISM

            Hinduism is a blanket term for the indigenous religious tradition of the Indian subcontinent. To be considered "within the fold," one must nominally acknowledge the authority of the four Vedas. These ancient religious texts express concepts and values bearing little resemblance to current Hinduism, much as the first five books of the Old Testament express a religious ideology at variance, on many points, from that of current Christianity. Indian religions that reject the authority of the Vedas-- particularly Jainism, Buddhism, and Sikhism-- are regarded as non-Hindu. However, what is left over even after these other religions are subtracted is a broad diversity of beliefs and practices that, at their extremes, bear little resemblance to one other. A villager sacrificing a goat during a Kali festival in Bengal is as much a Hindu as the office worker engaged in quiet meditation in his suburban Bombay home.

            Hinduism's sometimes mind-boggling diversity is at least partially a result of India's complex history. Over the millennia, the Indian subcontinent has been subjected to innumerable influxes of different peoples. Rather than serving as a "melting pot" in which various ethnicities were completely submerged into the preexisting culture, India has tended to allow each new group of migrants to maintain at least some of their distinctiveness. A new social grouping (subcaste) was created for each group, a social institution that simultaneously incorporates and draws a boundary around intruders. Thus new ideas, practices, and gods could be at least partially retained within the invaders' communities, thereby contributing to Hinduism's complexity.

            Another trait of the Hindu tradition is that earlier strands of spiritual tend to be retained rather than discarded as new religious forms emerge. Thus in the wake of a devotional reform movement, for example, certain segments of the population might be persuaded to abandon older practices and ideas in favor of something new, but other members of the community will continue in the old ways. As a result of this characteristic, ideas and practices that are very ancient--sometimes thousands of years old--are still practiced by at least some contemporary Hindus

            .While there are many other ways of organizing Hindu religious history, for the purpose of discussing beliefs and practices we will distinguish only the three "layers" of the Hindu tradition outlined above, namely: Vedic ritualism, Upanishadic mysticism, and devotional salvation. Around 800 B.C.E. and afterward, Vedic Hinduism, with its heavy dependence on ritualistically knowledgeable priests, was challenged by a more individualistic form of spiritual expression that rejected many of the basic views and values of Vedism. This emergent view was expressed in a set of religious texts collectively referred to as the Upanishads. The differences between Vedic and Upanishadic Hinduism are quite marked. For example, in contrast to the risky, tenuous afterlife body that it was the function of certain Vedic rituals to create and maintain, the Upanishads postulated an eternal, changeless core of the self that was referred to as the Atman. Atman appears to have originally referred to the breath. (As the invisible part of the person that stopped once life had departed, the breath was often associated with--and sometimes even identified with--the soul in many different world cultures.) This soul or deep self was viewed as being identical with the unchanging godhead, referred to as Brahman (the unitary ground of being that transcends particular gods and goddesses). The equation of the deep self with the ultimate is expressed in innumerable ways, such as in the Upanishadic formula Tat tVam asi ("Thou art that!"), meaning that the essential "you" is the same as that indescribable ("Wherefrom words turn back") essence of everything:

                        He who, dwelling in all things, yet is other than all

                        things, whom all things do not know, whose body

                        all things are, who control is all things from within.

                        He is your soul, the Controller, the Immortal.

            Untouched by the variations of time and circumstance, the Atman was nevertheless entrapped in the world of samsara. Samsara is the South Asian term for the world we experience in our everyday lives. This constantly changing, unstable world is contrasted with the spiritual realm of Atman/Brahman, which by contrast is stable and unchanging.  Samsara also refers to the process of death and rebirth (reincarnation) through which we are "trapped" in this world. Unlike many Western treatments of reincarnation, which make the idea of coming back into body after body seem exotic, desirable, and even romantic, Hinduism, Buddhism, and other South Asian religions portray the samsaric process as unhappy: Life in this world is suffering. 

            What keeps us trapped in the samsaric cycle is the law of karma. In its simplest form, this law operates impersonally like a natural law, ensuring that every good or bad deed eventually returns to the individual in the form of reward or punishment commensurate with the original deed. It is the necessity of "reaping one's karma" that compels human beings to take rebirth (to reincarnate) in successive lifetimes. In other words, if one dies before reaping the effects of one's actions (as most people do), the karmic process demands that one come back in a future life. Coming back into another lifetime also allows karmic forces to reward or punish one through the circumstance in which one is born. Hence, for example, an individual was generous in one lifetime might be reborn as a wealthy person in her or his next incarnation. Moksha is the traditional Sanskrit term for release or liberation from the endless chain of deaths and rebirths. In the south Asian religious tradition, it represents the supreme goal of human strivings. Reflecting the diversity of Hinduism, liberation can be attained in a variety of different ways, from the proper performance of certain rituals to highly disciplined forms of yoga. In the Upanishads, it is proper knowledge, in the sense of insight into the nature of reality, that enables the aspiring seeker to achieve liberation from the wheel of rebirth.

            What happens to the individual after reaching moksha? In Upanishadic Hinduism, the individual Atman is conceived of as merging into the cosmic Brahman. A traditional image is that of a drop of water which, when dropped into the ocean, loses its individuality and becomes one with the ocean. While this metaphor is widespread, it does not quite capture the significance of this "merger." Rather than losing one's individuality, the Upanishadic understanding is that the Atman is never separate from Brahman; hence individuality is illusory, and moksha is simply waking up from the dream of separateness. The most that the classical texts of Hinduism say about the state of one who has merged with the godhead is that she or he has become one with pure "beingness," consciousness, and bliss..

http://www.hinduweb.org

http://www.hindu.org

ttp://www.hinduism.co.za/

http://www.hinduismtoday.kauai.hi.us

References Basham, Arthur L. The Origins and Developments of Classical Hinduism. Boston: Bea con Press, 1989.

Rood, Gavin. An Introduction to Hinduism. London: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Hopkins, Thomas. "Hindu Views of Death and Afterlife.. in Death and Afterlife: Perspectives opf Worl Religions. Edited by Hiroshi Obayashi. Wesport, Conn,: Greenwood Press, 1992, pp. 149-64

Kinsley, avid R.  Hinduism, a Cultural Perspective. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1993

Klostermaier,Klaus K. A Survey ofHinduism Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989