Download REL 100--Lecture 13.rtf

In this session I want to try to get a little bit of understanding about what
Hinduism is. I mean, we talked about this tolerant and diverse, but really what is it?
What are the things that happen within Hinduism? What are some of the basic beliefs
of Hinduism? So we’re gonna try to talk about that. I’m primarily gonna construct that
through the construction of this chart. So in your notes, if you want to draw the basic
outline of this chart that you see, we’ll fill it in and as we fill it in I’ll be able to relate to
you an understanding of Hinduism.
So what you’ll see is there’s three different paths that I’ll mention and talk about
here, and for each path we’re gonna talk about the origin of that path, a text that might
be most closely associated with the teaching of that path, what’s the basic practice or
mode of practice for that path, what’s the concept of the divine within that path, and
what’s the goal of that path.
Now, having you construct this chart and saying there’s three paths, I want to
step back now and make a disclaimer. These might be better called tendencies than
paths. Because it’s not this cut and dried. These aren’t like denominations or
divisions within Hinduism. They’re more like strains of thought or strains of belief
within Hinduism. And most Hindus that you encounter are gonna kind of be some
blending of these three strains of thought or belief or practice.
I think about these as like three different rivers. Sometimes they all three flow
distinctly, sometimes two of them flow together, sometimes they all three flow together.
If you put people swimming in all this, they could all be Hindu. Some are a
combination of these paths, some are pretty tightly within one of these paths, and most
Hindus may be familiar with these different paths. But this is more of a way for us as
outsiders to look in and try to understand some of the basic concepts of Hinduism. So
let’s construct this chart and through that hopefully get an idea about some of these
tendencies that you find within Hinduism.
The first path or tendency is one that is called the path of ritual action. This
would be the oldest path of Hinduism. This would be the path that you could trace
back to that Aryan civilization we talked about in the last lecture. It began sometime
pre-18th century B.C.E. Now, again, Hindu philosophy would say, “Well, it doesn’t
have a beginning. It’s always been.” But we know it was around by the 18th century
B.C.E. As far as the beginning, pre-18th century B.C.E.
Now, the mode of practice on this path. I’m gonna give you a description of the
mode of practice. I guess it’s my summary of that. You’ll note that it’s not that
academic or textbook sounding, but I think it’s accurate. I think as we construct these
three, you’ll see that these make it easy to remember what they’re each about.
But this path of ritual action, the mode of practice is doing enough of the right
stuff. That’s the mode of practice. My words again. Not that academic sounding, but I
think it’s accurate as we define some terms here. So if you follow the path of ritual
action, you want to do enough of the right stuff.
Now, some of you are familiar enough with Hinduism from a social studies class
or maybe a world religions class you had in high school that you could speculate with
me that the goal of this path — if someone on this path does enough of the right stuff in
this life, what will happen to them in the next life? Well, they’ll be reincarnated, right?
And particularly they would be reincarnated into a higher caste. So the goal of this
path is reincarnation into a higher caste.
Now, let’s step back and define some terms because we’re starting to cover
some of these terms on that terms list in your materials packet. So let’s make sure we
can define them. Reincarnation. The word, when you break it down, literally means to
take on flesh — carne, or incarne — to take on flesh again. So reincarnation is to take
on flesh again. Or rebirth. And often rebirth into a different form.
Caste. As probably you’re pretty familiar, but caste — or just levels of society.
And more particularly within Hinduism, there are levels of society that are determined
by actions in previous lives. Levels of society that are determined by actions in
previous lives.
Now, let’s try to define some more terms here. We’ll knock off a bunch of the
basic terms of Hinduism and also some of the basic terms on your terms list. Let’s talk
about caste a little bit. What does caste regulate? Well, it regulates jobs. Certain
castes are expected to perform certain functions in society and are not allowed to
perform certain functions in society. So it regulates jobs. It regulates marriage. In a
caste system, in a caste worldview, you marry within your caste. It regulates social
relations. There are some castes that don’t associate with other castes. You don’t
have meals with people of lower caste.
It often ends up affecting economic level. I mean, if it affects the kind of jobs you
can have and the kind of social network you can move around in, then it’s probably
gonna affect the economic level in which you live. And it’s determined by previous
lives’ actions and we’ll talk about that a little more here in a minute.
Some of you also may be familiar with the idea that there are four different caste
levels within Hindu society. The highest are the priests or the Brahmins, and then you
have the warriors, then you have the merchants, and then you have the servants. All
four levels of society. And these are often pictured — which may sound a little bit like
something that you find in Christian theology — these are often pictures of parts of the
body. That the priests are the head. They are the thinkers, the educated, and the
educators in a society. The warriors are the shoulders. They’re the strength of the
society and the protection of the society. The merchants are the hands. They’re the
ones that transact business. They’re like the movers and shakers of the society. The
servants are the feet. Without them, society can’t stand. You need the laborers.
You might compare the merchants maybe to white-collar type professional
workers and the servants more like blue-collar laborers. You wouldn’t find that true
across the board, but to kind of make a generalization about what those look like. But
those are all parts of society that people operate in.
Now, you may also be familiar with another level called the untouchables and
they are actually below the servants. By many, not even considered a caste. Outcast.
People that — they’re people, but they’re like the lowest level of humans. Now, if the
caste level that someone is in in a lifetime is determined by previous lives, then what’s
the understanding of, say, someone in one of these lower castes, particularly of an
untouchable? Well, it’s their own doing that got them there. They did things in a
former life that brought them into that level of society in this life.
One of the other stipulations about caste is that whatever caste you’re born in,
you die in. It doesn’t matter how good of an untouchable you are, how good of a
servant, how bad of a priest. Whatever you’re born, you die. But in the next life things
are balanced out. So you were a jerk of a priest in this life and you’re probably not
gonna be a priest in the next life. You’re probably gonna be reincarnated in some
lower caste. So you were an awesome servant in this life. Well, you’re probably
gonna be born into a higher caste in the next life, is the understanding of castes.
Now, caste law was made illegal in the 1940s. Yet, most people, especially in
the rural areas of India, still live under caste law. You can’t throw people in jail
anymore. You can’t persecute people for not following caste, but most people follow
caste even though it’s not civil law. Why is that? Well, there’s a whole spiritual
mindset about it. It doesn’t matter what government says. But if there’s a spiritual law
that says “If I want a better life in the next life, I’ve gotta be a really good servant in this
life. I’m gonna try to be a really good servant in this life.” Regardless of whether by
civil law I have to follow that or not.
The caste system is one place where you see that Marxist theory of religion
really played out. That people are kept in classes because of spiritual beliefs. Not
because of civil law, not because of governmental law, but because it’s a religious
belief. There’s this social structure that’s set up that keeps lower classes where they’re
at and keeps upper classes where they are. So everyone is in a level of society
determined by previous lives.
One other term that’s probably important here is the term atman. Atman might
best be translated as the soul. The Atman is the part of someone that’s eternal. The
Atman is what is reincarnated. The Atman is the part of any person that will live on into
successive lives. It’s the soul.
A few more terms. Let’s talk about the right stuff. We said — or I said that to
follow this path of ritual action you’ve gotta do enough of the right stuff. Well, the right
stuff — there’s a term for that: dharma. Dharma means duty or obligation. It’s the right
stuff. It’s the thing you’re supposed to do. Some Dharma is based on caste. The caste
that you’re in regulates the things you’re supposed to do. Some Dharma is based on
gender. Women aren’t that affected by caste duty. Certainly women have to marry
within caste and be supportive of what their husbands do within that caste, but by and
large women’s responsibility is the private home sphere of life. So being a wife, being
a mother, all that is — providing for the family, all that is Dharma for women.
Then there’s just broader ethical laws that’s part of Dharma. What’s duty, what’s
obligation. And so if someone does the right stuff, then that accumulates something
called Karma. And all this kind of falls into Karmic law that we talked about a little bit in
the discussion on suffering earlier. Karma is the belief that you never escape the
consequences of your actions. That whatever you do, good or bad, comes back to
you. So to talk about this very simplistically, you have a soul. This soul is born into
flesh, into a human body, in a particular caste. And when this soul is born, from its
birth on, there’s really two parts of life from a Hindu mindset or a Karmic mindset.
There’s what you do and what happens to you, and that’s really it. And what happens
to you is caused by what you do.
And so you go through life and, based on what you do, either good or bad
Karma attaches to your Atman, to your soul. And then as you go through life, things
happen to you. Good things happen and so some of that good Karma is satisfied. It’s
balanced out. Some bad things happen to you and some of that bad Karma is
satisfied. So it’s like it no longer has hold on your soul anymore.
But the belief in this system of understanding is that nobody dies clean, that
every soul, every Atman, has Karma that it’s still carrying after the body dies. And that
Karma determines the next incarnation. If there’s more bad Karma than good Karma
that needs to be satisfied, then they’re probably gonna be born into a lower caste. If
there’s more good Karma than bad Karma, then they’re probably gonna be born into a
higher caste.
And so when a soul is born into an infant, it already had Karma attached to it. I
mean, that’s even a way to explain — so you’ve got a 3-year-old that, you know,
toddles around out in the street and gets run over by a cart and is crippled, and you’re
like “How could something this awful happen to such a young innocent child?” Bad
Karma from a former life. I mean, Karmic law explains that. Because every soul is
born with Karma attached to it from previous lives.
A Karmic system demands reincarnation because Karmic law has to be
satisfied. And so if every person dies with Karma unsatisfied, then they have to be
reborn so that that Karma is satisfied. And so from this oldest path, this path of ritual
action, the best you can hope for is reincarnation to a higher caste. There’s no way
out. You’re caught in this continuous cycle of rebirth. There’s a term for that — it’s on
your terms list — samara. Samara is this continuous cycle of rebirth. And within
Hinduism, that’s the human predicament. That’s the human problem. That’s the
situation that people want some sort of transformation from, is Samara. Because
they’re continually caught in this unending cycle of rebirth, by this path of ritual action.
Now, some of you might be going, “There’s only four castes. How hard can it be
to work up through four castes? Even if you give yourself 20 lifetimes, surely you can
work up through four castes.” But, in reality and in different schools of Hinduism would
have some different ways this breaks out. Every caste has sub-caste. One author that
I’ve read talked about that there’s as many as 3,000 sub-castes. That every major
caste has 700 or 800 sub-castes. So it’s a tedious system. The belief, then, in this
oldest path is that you’re always caught in that.
So what’s the concept of the divine from this oldest path, this path of ritual
action? This is probably where you could most closely associate polytheism. Most
people that follow this path of Hinduism believe there are many gods and goddesses,
maybe 330 million like I mentioned in the last lecture. And each of these deities has,
as I said earlier, a specific function and a specific or a known personality. And they’re
imaged in certain ways.
A Hindu student that I had years ago in class in a presentation one time said,
“We have a god for anything you need.” You can pray — if you’re getting ready to take
a test, there’s a deity that you pray to. If you need money, there’s a deity that you pray
to. If you want to have a child, there’s a deity that you pray to. There’s a god that
functions to meet any need that people have within this.
As far as the text that you could best associate with this path, I would put the
Vedas there, another one of your terms. The oldest Hindu text and so obviously they
would be affiliated with this oldest path. The Vedas were written after the 18th century
B.C.E. but they are the written oral tradition from the Aryan civilization. And then
there’s been things added to the Vedas since that time but the Vedas are the oldest
Hindu text and largely reflect some of the things we’ve just talked about as far this path
of ritual action.
So you should already have a lot of your terms from the terms list but let’s build
on that to these next two paths. Around 1000 years after the Aryans came in to
northern India, there began to be a lot of change happening within Hinduism. I mean,
you’re caught continually in this cycle of rebirth and people started saying, “There has
to be some way to escape.” Samsara. I mean, that’s the human predicament. There
has to be a better solution and at least you can be born into a higher caste. Can’t you
escape it somehow?
And so what you find around the 8th to 6th centuries B.C.E. is a lot of change
happening within Hinduism. You have some people that are part of this Hindu
philosophy who leave Hinduism and begin new religious movements as to way to
answer this predicament. Buddhism would be an example of that and we’ll talk about
that next. Buddha was raised Hindu and it was around the 6th century B.C.E. that he
left Hinduism and started this new path that became Buddhism.
But there were other Hindus that remained Hindu but began thinking about their
Hinduism differently. So there are reform movements within Hinduism and one of
those reform movements, the largest reform movement, is what would be called the
path of knowledge. And so the second path, the path of knowledge, began around the
8th to 6th centuries B.C.E.
Now, if the path of ritual action is about doing enough of the right stuff, then the
mode of practice for the path of knowledge is going to be about knowing enough of the
right stuff. So that’s the practice: to know enough of the right stuff. And if you know
enough of the right stuff, you can escape Samara by this path. That’s the goal: to
escape Samara, to escape the continuous cycle of rebirth. There’s a term for that
that’s on your terms list: Moksha. Moksha means release or escape, and that’s the
idea of being released from, escaping this continuous cycle of rebirth.
Now, part of this coming to know enough of the right stuff — one of the methods
by which that happens is a method called Yoga. Some of you have probably done
Yoga but this is a little bit different from the Yoga you’ve done or that I’ve done. This is
a Yoga that’s a series of physical, mental, and spiritual exercises. It’s a series of
physical, mental, and spiritual exercises through which one comes to know what’s
really real, what’s really true. It’s a series of these exercises through which one is
spiritually enlightened. And so it’s a method of attaining knowledge.
And what a lot of that knowledge involves is coming to know what’s real and
what’s not real, and in a sense to detach yourself from the things that are not real.
There’s another term on your list — Maya — which means illusion or things that aren’t
real. In Hindu philosophy Maya basically refers to the physical realm of life, the
material realm of life. That might be what’s visible and tangible, but that’s not what’s
most real. For us as people, there’s only one part of us that’s not Maya, that’s not
illusion, and that would be the [inaudible]. Everything else about us is Maya. It’s an
illusion; it’s not real.
And so in this enlightenment you come to really grasp that and come to know
the most real thing that there is, and that’s where we could put the concept of the
divine. And in the concept of the divine, you can put one of our terms, Brahman. Now,
this is a little bit of a challenge to define because the Hindu philosophers would say
you can’t. It’s the undefinable. If you define Brahman, then you no longer have
Brahman because you can’t define it. You can’t put it in a box, the definition. But
you’re gonna have a test where that’s probably gonna show up, so I need to give you
some way to define the undefinable. So it’s one thing you could say — it’s the
undefinable. It’s the truest reality. It’s a reality that permeates all of life and that all of
life permeates.
The text that you could put for this path is the Upanishads, a more philosophical
text collected around the 8th to 6th centuries B.C.E. And in the Upanishads — again,
this is a more philosophical text and that’s probably sufficient for a definition — in the
Upanishads there’s a section about the Brahman or the universal self, as it’s called in
that case, and it says this about the Brahman in trying to understand what it is. It says
that the universal self or the Brahman is that by which you see but you cannot see it.
It’s that by which you hear but you cannot hear it. It’s that by which you speak but you
cannot speak it. It’s that by which you think but you cannot think it. So it’s like it
permeates us in all things. It propels things. But yet it’s never really quite attained or
spoken or touched by us. It’s the undefinable. It’s a pervasive reality that permeates
all things.
And so as you come to know the Brahman, then that — and you’re enlightened
to that, then you can escape samara. And what happens, then, to the soul when it
escapes samara is the soul, the atman, is united with the Brahman. It’s a part of this
larger ocean of reality. It’s a part of this undefinable, impersonal power that’s out
there.
So of you may be familiar with Star Wars movies, probably far more than I am.
But especially in the early Star Wars movies there was a lot of Hindu, eastern
philosophy principles that were drawn upon in the development of a lot of the concepts
and characters in Star Wars. There’s an element within Star Wars that’s supposed to
be reflective of the Brahman and that’s the force. So for those of you who are Star
Wars buffs or familiar with Star Wars, the force is a Brahman type concept to give you
something to latch onto there.
So by this path, if you come to know enough of the right stuff, you can escape
samara. And what you come to know, the right stuff is Brahman and then your atman
is united with that. You might remember back to one of the early lectures. I talked
about how in all religions you kind of have this larger epic story of how back there
somewhere there was a unity, there was a harmony, there was a oneness, and then
that was lost and that the path of religion is the restoration of that.
Well, with Hinduism, there’s a lot of different ways that that story is spoken of,
but one is the idea that all reality was one at one time. Brahman was — everything
was in Brahman and Brahman was everything and it was all united and harmonious.
And then that was disseminated. And so now the journey of Hinduism is bringing all
these atmans, these souls, back home to Brahman united with this universal self. And
so this path kind of illustrates that idea.
Well, the third path is a path called the path of devotion. This path developed
around the 2nd century B.C.E. to the 2nd century C.E. Now, the path of ritual action is
about knowing enough of the right stuff — excuse me — the path of ritual action is
about doing enough of the right stuff. The path of knowledge is about knowing enough
of the right stuff. Then the path of devotion is going to be about being devoted enough,
particularly devoted enough to God.
This path might be a little easier to grasp for most of us in the Western mindset.
Because the idea of this path is that you’re devoted enough to God in this life and
some of that devotion is illustrated by fulfilling dharma and fulfilling caste, but if you’re
devoted enough to God then when you die you don’t have to be reborn. You can go
and be united with God in a paradise, heaven type place. This sounds more like a
Judao-Christian understanding of spirituality. Live your life devoted to God and you’ll
spend eternity with God in heaven or in paradise. That’s basically the thrust of the
path of devotion.
So as far as the God concept or concept of the divine, this path would be a more
monotheistic path within a polytheistic system. So this is where you would find people
who live out their lives devoted to a particular deity. And if they practice that devotion
well, then when they die their soul, their atman, is united with that deity in a heaven,
paradise type place. And again, there could be millions of different deities to be
possibilities.
Three of the major deities — and they’re listed on your Terms list — are
Brahma, Vishnus and Shiva. Some people would call them maybe like the Trinity of
Hinduism. Not so much that they are three in one, but they are three that kind of
maintain the cycle of life. Because Brahma is the creator of all things. Vishnus is the
sustainer or maintainer of the things that Brahma creates. And then Shiva is the one
that destroys things when time for destruction has come. And then Brahma recreates
and Vishnus maintains and Shiva destroys. The cycle continues between the creator,
the sustainer, the destroyer, creator — it’s a cycle of life. But again, there could be
millions of other possibilities for deities there.
As far as an associated text for this path, that’s probably gonna vary depending
on the deity of someone’s devotion. Certainly you’re gonna find the Vedas and the
Upanishads because they bring in basic teachings of Hinduism. Many of these deities
are mentioned in those texts. You might find prayers to those deities in those texts or
songs to those deities in those texts. But then you’re also gonna find texts unique to
the particular deity of your devotion.
But there is a text — it’s probably the most famous text in Hinduism. Regardless
of what deity someone worships or is devoted to, this text is seen as exemplary of how
to live out devotion to be divine. It’s a text called the Bhagavad-Gita, another one of
your terms. The Bhagavad-Gita — it’s a short story within a larger epic story within
Hinduism. In the Bhagavad-Gita there’s two main characters. There’s Krishna, the
deity. So that’s the deity in the Bhagavad-Gita, the same Krishna that was an
incarnation of Vishnu. And then you have Arjuna. Arjuna was a person who was in
the warrior caste. The basic story of the Bhagavad-Gita is that Arjuna was to live out
devotion to Krishna in this life — and again, he was a warrior.
Well, Arjuna was called to go to war. But the war that he was called to go to, he
was gonna have to fight against some of his relatives and this was disturbing to him.
So he went to Krishna and a lot of the Bhagavad-Gita is their dialogue about this.
Where Arjuna is saying, you know, “I know I’m a warrior and I’m supposed to go to war,
but I don’t want to fight against my relatives.” And basically Krishna, I guess you could
say, gives him an ultimatum. “Are you devoted to me or are you more devoted to
relatives? Or, in the larger sense, are you devoted to me who is not maya, who is real,
or are you more devoted to people who are maya? It’s illusion. They are not the most
real.” And so Arjuna has to make this decision about devotion to God or devotion to
these material, physical relatives of his.
Now, obviously, if it’s an exemplary story about devotion to God, he chose
devotion to Krishna and went to war. And so it doesn’t matter whether someone’s task
is devotion to Krishna or Brahma or Shiva or Kali or whoever. This story reminds them
that you choose devotion to God over devotion to things that are not real, and so it’s
seen as an exemplary story. If you’ve been on campus in the past or in an airport
somewhere and someone tried to give you or sell you a book and they may have been
Hari Krishnas, it was probably the Bhagavad-Gita. I have several copies of BhagavadGita because students get copies given to them and they don’t want them, and so they
give them to me. So those are the most popular that are out there and that’s what you
find here. So again, these are strains within Hinduism. But you’ll find Hindus in any
combination of these paths.
Now, I want to make another observation about these paths or ask you to think
about this. When you think about the castes — the priests, the merchants, the warriors,
the laborers — which caste would probably be more affiliated with the path of
knowledge? I mean, which caste would have really the time to devote themselves to
knowledge or the resources to devote themselves to the pursuit of spiritual
knowledge? Probably the priests, right? And as far as this path of ritual action, which
caste is probably gonna be more likely to be associated with that path? Well, probably
the lower castes — the untouchables, the servants. And then the path of devotion
tends to be a more middle class type of path. You’re gonna tend to find that in your
more urban areas in India. The more rural areas is where you’re gonna tend to find
the poorer people and the path of ritual action. And then scattered throughout India
you find your priests, your spiritual people, who are primarily gonna be following this
path of knowledge. So even as far as these tendencies within Hinduism, you can see
them divided in classes to some extent by what’s possible because of your economic
resources, because of your resources of time, or because of educational resources.
Well, hopefully that gives you a little bit of understanding of Hinduism and I think
it will also lay a foundation to understanding the rise of Buddhism that we’ll talk about
in the next session.