Hinduism

"I am neither the mind nor the intellect nor the ego nor the mind-stuff; I am neither the body nor the changes of the body; I am neither the senses of hearing, taste, smell, or sight; Nor am I the ether, the earth, the fire, the air. I am Existence Absolute, Knowledge Absolute, Bliss Absolute- I AM HE, I AM HE...I am in everything, I am the basis of the universe; everywhere am I."

"Six Stanzas On Nirvana" Vedanta

Hinduism, one of the oldest of the common religions, has no founder and no prophet. It has no particular ecclesiastical or institutional structure nor set creed. The emphasis of Hinduism is on the way of living rather than on a way of thought.

Hinduism embraces a wide diversity of religious belief.

The vast majority of Hindus believe in God in some way or other, but there are some who don't.

Some Hindus believe that a respect for all living creatures demands they be vegetarian; others will sacrifice animals at the temple and joyfully share in a roast by the riverside.

Some Hindus worship Shiva; others Vishnu or his incarnations (avatars), most notably Krishna or Rama; others again are worshippers of the goddesses.

The inhabitants of one village do not share in the precise focus of worship which will unite the villagers in another place.

The individual Hindu may revere one god, a few, or many, or none at all.

The Hindu may also believe in one god and in several gods as manifestations of the one deity.

An individual may express the ultimate in personal or impersonal terms.

The Hindu thinks of the flow of life through many existences. This lies behind the notion of samsara, which expresses this flow from birth to death and then on to rebirth, and so on. Linked with the notion of samsara is the concept of karma. Karma literally means work or action, but also indicates the consequences of actions within one existence which flow into the next existence and influence its character - and so the chain goes on. Hindu hope, therefore, is for release (moksha) from this chain or cycle.

The Hindu religion encompasses many different texts. Foremost of these is the Upanishads, a teaching which began from those within the Vedic heritage, but has in fact reshaped Hinduism as a whole. The teachers of the Upanishads were not involved in pleading with the gods or ritual sacrifice. They were more concerned to discover the ground of the universe, the Reality (Brahman) which was prior to all other existence. At the same time they were concerned to explore the nature of human consciousness. They came to the conclusion that what was basic to the individual self (atman) was none other than the Reality which undergirded the cosmos.

Although the Upanishads are speaking of the ultimate there is a great deal of personalised language which could later be brought into devotion (bhakti). We are told that "Brahman dwells within all and outside all - unborn, pure, greater than the greatest, without breath, without mind" and yet Brahman is "ever present in the hearts of all - the refuge of all and their supreme goal". "In Brahman exists all that moves and breathes." Brahman is seen as the "adorable one". To "know" Brahman is to find one's being within Brahman.

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In the Veda the ultimate or absolute is Brahman, defying all attempt at definition. Brahman is neutral and impersonal - the origin, the cause and the basis of all existence. In it are to be found:

pure being (sat)

pure intelligence (cit)

pure delight or bliss (ananda)

Brahman is the unknowable one. But the only way he can be considered is in terms of a personal deity. So it was natural for the Indians to see the several attributes or functions of divinity manifested in a multiplicity of forms. Thus the various forms or Gods that are the Hindu faith.

Along with the Upanishads, there are the Vedas and a collection of other sutras from renowned spiritual masters. The progress of Hinduism follows, that the Vedic tradition ended with the Upanishads and the emergence of the notion of the identity of the individual self (atman) with the Absolute (Brahman). The next step was to see the identity of every individual with every other individual and so to postulate that there is only one reality. This understanding of existence is called monism. It is the basis of Vedantic philosophy, and it became the main philosophical tradition within Hinduism, though with a great variety of interpretation. This variety was partly due to the attempt to systemise Hindu thought - done first during the period of the epics (such as the Ramayana and the Mahabharata - which includes the Bhagavad Gita), when Hinduism in its classical form was emerging. A number of sutras (collections of aphorisms) emerged, but they were often too brief to be intelligible, and so a commentary was needed. The production of commentaries led on the one hand to a tradition of interpretation, and on the other to several variants in interpretation. The Brahma Sutra (belonging to the 6th century CE) sought to sum up the teaching and so came to be known as the Vedanta Sutra.

The Path to Salvation

For the Hindu, the great goal is moksha. The word speaks of release - deliverance, emancipation and liberty. To become Enlightened.

The desire for freedom was not political, but spiritual, and the Upanishadic tradition stressed release from the bonds of ignorance. It was ignorance which tied a person to the round of birth-death-rebirth which was expressed by samsara. Release would be attained as knowledge replaced ignorance - when reality was properly understood and the transient or illusory rejected.

This was, basically, the way of knowledge (jnana-marga) towards moksha. It would involve yoga and the ascetic practices associated with it. It was thought that the control of breath would allow the self to escape from the body by closing the artery from the heart to the forehead - the path by which the self was understood to move to its home in the heart. The special knowledge is attained through meditation, accompanied by yogic discipline and the repetition of a special mantra- oftentimes the word "OM" which represented the ultimate in all its fullness. 

The later songs in the Rig Veda saw humans groping in darkness, but becoming conscious of the unfathomable mystery at the very centre of being. Nevertheless, bit by bit, they become assured of reality and light in the world around them, and so reach out for moksha.

"From the unreal lead me to the real! From darkness lead me to light! From death lead me to immortality!"

The Bhagavad Gita sees moksha as involving liberation from evil, from the body, from lusts and anger, from decay and death, from karma and from maya (illusion). In other words, moksha speaks of release from bondage however conceived. The rapture is to be experienced at the level of emotion, for moksha involves a sense of security and assurance.

But there is also the way of action (karma-marga). This path to release recognises that we live our lives in the world, where there is work to be done and there are obligations to be met. Our status in society involves duty. We are not to opt out of the ethical demands of which we are conscious. The Bhagavad Gita indicates that it is "not by mere renunciation that we attain supreme perfection. Action is greater than inaction and so there is the command to perform your task in life".

Faith comes in with the way of devotion or love (bhakti-marga). It is in commitment to God that we accept the leap from the temporal to the eternal, the realm of limitation to the boundlessness of what is ultimate and absolute. This path accepts the truth that the absolute confronts us in personal form - so there can be human response to divine grace. In place of an impersonal Brahman, God is seen as approachable, evoking within humanity a spirit of adoring faith.

Extracts taken from "A Lion Handbook, The World’s Religions", various editors, ISBN 0745937209

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