How do Hindu's see life and the troubles and stresses that it can bring? What are the explanantions for war, suffering and friendship etc? What or who is God and what is our purpose? I'm pretty new to it all and am still trying to get my head around all the concepts!
Hindus see life as eternal, death and birth are a part of life of a soul that continues from one life to the next. Troubles and stress are a natural part of life, according to what I know of hinduism, one needs to come to an understanding by which he/she is not agitated too much by stress and troubles by maintaining a calm cool state of mind. God is the omnipotent , omnipresent , omniscient being who is the very principle of existence. So, our existence is because of God. In bhagavad gita, it is said that everything we see before us is dependent on God as pearls are dependent on a string (if existence was analogous to a pearl necklace).
God is the immanent absolute, the changeless state of Sat-Cit-Ananda, which means Being-Consciousness-Bliss. These words are the qualitative definition of this absolute state that as Jedi says, is basically existence. But, there are two basic existences, one this physical plane, you in it, and the consciousness you possess in order to navigate it. The second existence is what one would call the divine self, and this divine self is in possession of the experience of heaven, and is this sat-cit-ananda plane that, due to how our finite consciousness functions, we are screened from the awareness of. Yoga, which is the spiritual science which basically underlies the general thesis of Hinduism, is the means by which your finite individual consciousness is merged with this heavenly realm, in which your experience of self is replaced with the experience of this divine self, as your self. Then, you are in heaven as an actual embodied being. This is the actual goal of authentic yoga, which is technically termed "Yoga Tantra". The word Yoga means union, the individual consciousness in union with the mind of God, which is our only true nature anyway. Namaste, Yogin Bhairava Atmabhoda Sarasvati
