What is Hinduism and what do Hindus believe?

TWO CORE BELIEFS OF HINDUISM

Hinduism is not really one religion, but many religions that interact and blend with one another. There is no known founder of Hinduism, no creedal statements of faith to sign and no agreed‑upon authority. In fact, one can be a good Hindu and believe in one god, many gods or no god at all! This is because, for Hindus, contradictory ideas are not a problem. All reality, contradictory or not, is seen as "one." There are, however, two foundational assumptions that almost all Hindus believe without question: reincarnation and karma.

Reincarnation is the belief that the atman, a person's uncreated and eternal soul, must repeatedly be recycled into the world in different bodies. In some forms of Hinduism, souls may be reincarnated as animals, plants or even inanimate objects. Reincarnation is the process that takes the Hindu through the great wheel of samsara, the thousands or millions of lives (all full of suffering) that each atman must endure before reaching moksba ‑ liberation from suffering and union with the infinite.

Karma ("action") has to do with the law of cause and effect. For the Hindu, karma means merit or demerit, which attaches to one's atman (soul) according to how one lives one's life. Karma from past lives affects a person's present life, and karma from this life will determine a person's station in the next life.

PATHS TO MOKSHA

For Hindus, the great spiritual challenge is that the soul, or atman, is separated from Brahma (Ultimate Reality) and trapped in samsara, the seemingly endless process of being reincarnated over and over. Moksha, which is liberation from samsara and reunion with Brahma, is the goal. In Hinduism, there are basically three paths to moksha: the path of works (dharma), the path of knowledge (inana) and the path of passionate devotion (bbakti).

When following dharma, the path of works, a person has a set of specific social and religious obligations that must be fulfilled. He must follow his caste occupation, marry within his caste, eat or not eat certain foods and, above all, produce and raise a son who can make a sacrifice to his ancestors as well as perform other sacrificial and ritual acts. By fulfilling these obligations, the person using the path of works may hope to attain a better reincarnation and perhaps, after thousands or tens of thousands of reincarnations, achieve moksha.

In the East, Ultimate Reality is thought of as attainable within each individual by realizing intuitively that the "self" is Divine, or at least part of the Divine. God is, for the most part, seen as an impersonal, unifying force who takes no personal interest in individuals. The idea of a creator having authority over the universe and making universal moral demands is, by and large, rejected.

ORIGINS AND BACKGROUND OF HINDUISM

The word "Hinduism" comes from the Indus River, which flows through what is now Pakistan. In the third millennium B.C., the great civilization of Mohendo‑jaro flourished there, populated by the darkskinned Dravidians. From what archaeologists have been able to discover, the Dravidians had a polytheistic fertility religion that centered upon worship of the forces of nature and use of rituals, merging human sexuality with the hope for abundant crops.

About 2000 B.C., the light‑skinned and warlike Aryans came over the Caucasus Mountains and conquered the people of the Indus Valley. The Aryans also had a polytheistic religion, and some of the most popular Dravidian gods received new Aryan names but retained their old functions. The Aryans wrote down their hymns, prayers, mythic stories and chants into the Vedas, Brahamanas, Aranyakas and Upanishads, composed between 2000 and 700 B.C., and known as the Vedic literature.

These writings are considered by Hindus to be supernaturally inspired and are as sacred to them as the Bible is to Christians.'

Dravidian polytheistic fertility religion and the early Aryan Vedic polytheistic religion laid the foundations of what later became Hinduism. While the earliest Vedas were blatantly polytheistic and devoted to rituals and sacrifice, the later Vedas showed a movement toward pantheism (from the word "pan," meaning "everything," and "theos," meaning "God"). According to pantheism, God did not create the world; God is the world, along with everything in it.

Although the earlier Hindu scriptures had mentioned many gods, the highest goal, according to the later Vedic literature, was union with Brahma, the impersonal absolute. The priests of Brahma became known as the Brahmins, who performed the ritual duties for the community, which were demanded in the early Vedic writings to appease the many gods. The Brahmins also maintained a monopoly on the higher truths of pantheistic Brahmanism. Brahmins grew more and more powerful until they became the highest social class.

Around 500 B.C., still more writings were added to the Hindu scriptures. Their purpose was to establish Varna, a rigid caste system, or social hierarchy. One hymn tells how four castes of people came from the head, arms, thighs and feet of the creator god, Brahma. The four castes were the Brahmins (priests); the Kshatriyas (warriors and nobles); Vaisyas (merchants and artisans); and Shudras (slaves). Each caste was then subdivided into hundreds of subcastes, arranged in order of rank. Only Brahmins, Kshatriyas and Vaisyas were allowed to take full advantage of all that the Hindu religion has to offer, but the Shudras were not allowed to hear the Vedas or to use them to try to find salvation.

The path of passionate devotion to a god (bhakti) is the most popular way to achieve moksha. This path is described in earliest form in the epic poems of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, composed somewhere between 300 B.C. and A.D. 300. Bhakti is also found in the Puranas, folktales and erotic stories composed between the fourth and sixteenth centuries A.D.

According to the way of bhakti, a devotee may choose any of the 330 million gods, goddesses or demigods in the Hindu pantheon and passionately worship that particular god. In actual practice, almost all Hindus following the way of bhakti worship Vishnu or Shiva.

Most popular is the god Vishnu, who has many names and has appeared as avatars (saviors‑the incarnation of deity) in the form of a giant turtle, as Gautama Buddha (see chapter 7) and as Rama and Krishna, the two important heroes of Ramayana and Mahabbarata. Vishnu also has many sexual consorts (wives), as does Shiva, who is worshiped by other millions of Hindus. Shiva can be linked to the ancient pre‑Aryan fertility god of the Dravidians. Rituals performed by Shiva worshipers are not unlike the worship of the Canaanites, whom God commanded the Israelites to destroy (see the book of Joshua).

The way of bhakti appeals to the lower classes (the vast majority of the inhabitants of India) and offers a much easier path for their souls to progress to higher forms of birth through reincarnation ‑ and eventually to reach moksha. Through bhakti the worshiper bypasses going through as many rebirths and lives as the other paths demand. There

A more difficult way to achieve moksha is the path of knowledge (inana), which includes self‑renunciation and meditation on the supreme pantheistic reality of Hinduism. This very aesthetic path is open to men only in the highest castes, and it is described in the Upanishads, a series of philosophical treatises composed beginning around 600 B.C. The Upaninshad texts teach that the world as we experience it is mere maya (illusion) and that Brahma is the only thing that really exists and has meaning.

The path of knowledge most often includes the practice of yoga (yoking, or union). Yoga is the attempt to control one's consciousness through bodily posture, breath control and concentration, to the extent that one comes to understand experientially that one's true self, one's undying soul (atman), is identical with Brahma. This leads to the famous Hindu saying, "Aham asmi Brahma" ("I am Brahma").

Regarding God and Jesus Christ: Hindus do not believe in a personal, loving God, but in Brahma, a formless, abstract, eternal being without attributes, who was the beginning of all things."' They believe that Jesus is not God but just one of many incarnations, or avatars, of V'shnu. Christians believe that God is an eternal, personal, spiritual Being in three persons ‑ Father, Son and Holy Spirit (see Matt. 3:13‑17; 28:19; 2 Cor. 13:14). Jesus Christ is God as well as sinless man and He died for our redemption (see John 1: 13,14; 1 Pet. 2:24). Regarding sin and salvation: Hindus call sin "utter illusion" because they believe all material reality is illusory. They seek deliverance from samsara, the endless cycle of death and rebirth, through union with Brahma, which is achieved through devotion, meditation, good works and self‑control. Christians believe that sin is prideful rebellion that leads to eternal separation from God after living only one life, not many (see Rom. 3:23; Heb. 9:27) and that salvation is gained only through believing in the sacrificial death and resurrection of Jesus Christ (see Rom. 3:24; 1 Cor. 15:3).

The Bible flatly contradicts Hindu ideas of reincarnation and karma. Hinduism teaches that the atman (soul) is uncreated and eternal. The Bible teaches that each person is created by God, will die once and then be resurrected once at the judgment (see John 5:17‑30; 1 Cor. 15; Heb. 9:27). Hinduism teaches that the atman is perfect, free and unlimited, and no matter how many lives it takes, eventually each and every atman will realize its divine nature. The Bible teaches that each person has one life to live, and after this comes the judgment (see Heb. 9:27).

Along with their rejection of God as sovereign creator of the world, Hindus also part company with Christianity on the critical issue of Jesus Christ as God's incarnate Son. Hindu worshipers of Vishnu, for example, believe that God has become incarnate many times in the past." The Bible teaches that God became incarnate only once in human history (see John 1: 14). Jesus came not to teach humanity various "ways" to salvation, but to be "the way and the truth and the life" (John 14:6) and "to take away the sins of many" (Heb. 9:28).

Buddha did accept the Hindu teachings on reincarnation, along with karma (the soul gains merits or demerits according to how one lives his life) and dharma (the duty one has to perform according to his station in life). Buddha taught that one could be reborn as a human, an animal, a hungry ghost, a demon or even as a Hindu god. He also incorporated yoga and meditation, which were highly developed skills in Hinduism, into his teachings.