Is so cool. I'm starting to go to this hindu temple every Saturday, but it's a little out of my way. Right now I'm reading Ramanyana in which Rama and Hanuman fight the king of demons using an army of monkeys. Anyone more familiar with Hinduism than I? My understanding is pretty facile, and right now completely academic.
I think Hinduism is pretty damn groovy. You get to pick and choose the Gods you want to believe in. Like if one God is just totally crazy sounding to you, you don't have to worship them. I'd worship Ganga. She's gorgeous and seems kinda out there, and I like that.
i really dig hinduism. i got a few books on it i want to read up on the eventually. i know a bit but not everything i took a religion class that went over it
Well, it's very complex. I defiantly feel like I can't have a full understanding of it without a bit of immersion in the culture too. There are things I don't like of course, like karma.
Well, Hinduism is ancient and has many, many different followings and interpretations. The only one I really know anything about is the school of Advaita Vedanta.
i like karma. i believe in eye for an eye normally. it is complex, my brother wants to take me to india when he gets out of jail, that could probably help a lot.
not as far as i'm aware. there are all sorts of varieties of hinduism, but afaik there is always one God, and lesser gods are merely different manifestations of THE God. therefore, worship of another god is worship of God, if that god is a manifestation of God..... shiva, vishnu, and krishna may all be recognized as the supreme god as far as i am aware, but there may be others. it depends on the school and doctrine. there may well be some varieties of hinduism which do not have this cosmology, where all the gods are seperate with no supreme god, or a supreme god unrelated to lesser gods.
Several things. I mean obviously actions have natural consequences. But I disagree those consequences are handed out by divine mandate. They aren't, their just natural consequences. If I break the law, I'll probably go to jail. But a lot of people get away with bad things forever. I don't also like the fact that the notion that you should only do good things because you'll be rewarded for them. You don't need a reason to help people. And I especially don't like the fact that Karma is tied to the hip to the chaste system, which is the most enduring system of slavery on the face of the planet.
From what I've been reading (and this is within the past week) there are some schools of hindu docterine which are completely polytheistic, and do not view the gods as manifestations of one god. But again, it's a complex religion, and admittedly, my understanding is simplistic. .
you realize karma is much more than that? that your attachment to action is what generates karma? (whether it is deemed a 'good' or 'evil' action) and also i dont think the majority of the hindu world still uses the caste system? it is understood that there was a time of society when it was acceptable...but not any more. though i know of many of the sadhu still cling to the old caste system the bhagavad gita is very interesting if you get a chance to read it
this is a corruption of all religious/spiritual descriptions of karma with which i am familiar. karma is not decided and meted out by individuals, karma is an unavoidable and infallible law of the cosmos, and more often than not accrues and alters events over the course of lifetimes. one guy robbing someone, and the victim chasing him down and beating him to within an inch of his life and taking HIS wallet is not karma. its just badassery. i like some aspects of the concept of karma. what i don't like about it is the (probably oversimplified) understanding i have of it as taught in much of buddhism and hinduism wherein your karma can determine what variety of body you incarnate in various lives. i cannot accept that there is a hierarchy of better or worse creatures, that a dog is a dog because his soul had worse karma than i did. i don't know any dogs that are as bad as most humans i know. and the whole of life is broken up into more and less worthy, so a dog who isn't good could become a lesser creature still, as i understand it. say a beetle. and that beetle could become a lesser creature yet. but how does a beetle be a bad beetle and accrue bad karma? what makes humans so lofty? this may be a very ignorant or oversimplified understanding of the belief, and i suspect it probably is. but i AM certain that karma is a cosmic principle doled out over lifetimes and only sometimes within a single lifetime, but is not "an eye for an eye" or justification for trying to take matters into your own hands.
i think it's generally more henotheistic/pantheistic, but i am not intensely familiar with it on an academic level and am certainly an outsider in terms of actual practice.
What, about Advaita Vedanta? It's a very "no frills" version of Hinduism. It's very purist and is the basis of the teachings in the Bhagavad-Gita. A very concise explanation of it one said to me was something like "its authentic form represents the essence of spirituality liberated from any superfluous mental constructs or "process-based" teachings." I guess the best way to put it is that the salvation that Advaita Vedanta offers is the realization of One-ness and enlightenment, the discovery of the unity of atman and brahman. And the way this is accomplished is not through yoga, hours upon hours of meditation, chemicals, or any sort of "new-agey" weird stuff, it's more of a questioning into your existence, an introspection, a constant probing and delving into your own consciousness that will ultimately lead you to the discovery of the illusion of maya, the liberation from the Self, and the cessation of suffering. I tried to keep that as grounded as possible, sorry if it sounds "out-there" but this is spirituality we are talking about after all.
