Most Hindus believe in a Supreme God, whose qualities and forms are represented by the multitude of deities which emanate from him. God, being unlimited, can have unlimited forms and expressions. God can be approached in a number of ways and a devoted person can relate to God as a majestic king, as a parent figure, as a friend, as a child, as a beautiful woman, or even as a ferocious Goddess.
Each person can relate to God in a particular form, the ishta devata or desired form of God. Thus, one person might be drawn towards Shiva, another towards Krishna, and another towards Kali.
Many Hindus believe that all the different deities are aspects of a single, transcendent power. In the history of Hinduism, God is conceptualised in different ways, as an all knowing and all pervading spirit, as the creator and force within all beings, their 'inner controller' antaryamin and as wholly transcendent.
There are two main ideas about Bhagavan or Ishvara:. For convenience Hindus are often classified into the three most popular Hindu denominations, called paramparas in Sanskrit. These paramparas are defined by their attraction to a particular form of God called ishta or devata :. The terms guru and acharya refer to a teacher or master of a tradition. The basic meaning is of a teacher who teaches through example and conveys knowledge and wisdom to his disciples.
The disciple in turn might become a teacher and so the lineage continues through the generations. One story that captures the spirit of the teacher is that a mother asks the teacher to stop her son eating sugar for he eats too much of it. The master tells her to come back in a week. She returns and he tells the child to do as his mother says and the child obeys. Asked by the mother why he delayed for a week, he replied 'a week ago I had not stopped eating sugar!
Gurus are generally very highly revered and can become the focus of devotion bhakti in some traditions. A fundamentally important teaching is that spiritual understanding is conveyed from teacher to disciple through a lineage and when one guru passes away he or she is usually replaced by a successor. One guru could have more than one successor which leads to a multiplication of traditions.
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This page has been archived and is no longer updated. Find out more about page archiving. Atman Atman Atman means 'eternal self'. Dharma Dharma Dharma is an important term in Indian religions. Now exhibited in the Horniman Museum, London.
The four classes are: Brahmans or Brahmins - the intellectuals and the priestly class who perform religious rituals Kshatriya nobles or warriors - who traditionally had power Vaishyas commoners or merchants - ordinary people who produce, farm, trade and earn a living Shudras workers - who traditionally served the higher classes, including labourers, artists, musicians, and clerks People in the top three classes are known as 'twice born' because they have been born from the womb and secondly through initiation in which boys receive a sacred thread as a symbol of their high status.
The ashrama system is as follows: Brahmacarya - 'celibate student' stage in which males learned the Veda grihastha - 'householder' in which the twice born male can experience the human purposes purushartha of responsibility, wealth, and sexual pleasure Vanaprastha - 'hermit' or 'wilderness dweller' in which the twice born male retires from life in the world to take up pilgrimage and religious observances along with his wife Samnyasa - 'renunciation' in which the twice born gives up the world, takes on a saffron robe or, in some sects, goes naked, with a bowl and a staff to seek moksha liberation or develop devotion Correct action in accordance with dharma is also understood as service to humanity and to God.
Purushartha Purushartha Hinduism developed a doctrine that life has different goals according to a person's stage of life and position. Brahman and God Brahman Brahman is a Sanskrit word which refers to a transcendent power beyond the universe. God Most Hindus believe in God but what this means varies in different traditions. There are two main ideas about Bhagavan or Ishvara: Bhagavan is an impersonal energy.
Ultimately God is beyond language and anything that can be said about God cannot capture the reality. Followers of the Advaita Vedanta tradition based on the teachings of Adi Shankara maintain that the soul and God are ultimately identical and liberation is achieved once this has been realised. This teaching is called non-dualism or advaita because it claims there is no distinction between the soul and the ultimate reality. Bhagavan is a person. God can be understood as a supreme person with qualities of love and compassion towards creatures.
On this theistic view the soul remains distinct from the Lord even in liberation. The Gods revealed to the rishis in their deepest meditations the answers to these puzzling questions. All Hindus know that they take many births and receive the results of their own actions in this and future lives. Karma is the law of action and reaction which governs life.
The soul carries with it the mental impressions it received during its earthly life. These characteristics are collectively called the karma of the soul. Karma is not fate, for God endowed his children with the power to act with free will.
Esoterically, karma refers to the totality of our actions and their concomitant reactions in this and all previous lives, all of which determine our future. Try striking the top of a table with your bare knuckles? The harder you strike, the more the pain. Action is followed by reaction. And, the reaction is equal to the action. In a similar way, if you cause pain to someone else, you can be certain that the same pain will come back to you.
It may not return immediately, maybe not even during this lifetime. But it will return in your next life, or even in some life after that. When the reaction to your previous action of causing pain to another being does return to you, you will feel the same pain. If the pain inflicted was mental, mental pain will return.
If the pain inflicted was emotional, emotional pain will return. If the pain inflicted was physical, physical pain will return. Be it mental, emotional or physical. That is why even good people suffer. They may be paying for some action that was done in a past life. If you do good, too, the good will be returned to you somehow. The soul reaps the effects of its own actions. If we cause others to suffer, then the experience of suffering will come to us. If we love and give, we will be loved and given to.
Thus does each soul create its own destiny through thought, feeling and action. Karma is a natural law of the mind, just as gravity is a law of matter. Karma is movement in the mind.
When the mind remains motionless, there is no karma. Every action has a reaction. If you plant eggplant, you can pluck eggplant. If you sow goodness, you can reap goodness. If you sow evil, you will reap evil. You can only reap the fruit, bitter or sweet, of your own actions.
Since each action has a corresponding reaction, the effects of karma-action and reaction-can be helpfully invigorating or fearfully devastating. Therefore the wise govern their lives anticipating the results of their actions, for they know that in causing an action they necessarily cause a reaction.
They want to know what the reaction will be before causing the action. They know that not all reactions are immediate; that they are cumulative and in some cases rebound unexpectedly. The wise understand penance as a self-inflicted karma or prepayment of a reaction expected because of a previous action caused.
Penance well performed intercedes between the action and the reaction, counterbalancing both and smoothing out the karma. Life does not end at the death of the physical body. The body dies but the soul does not. It lives on in a counterpart of the physical body which is called the astral body.
The astral body is made of astral matter and resides in a world not unlike this one, called the Devaloka or Second world. In other words, in order to perfect itself, to spiritually unfold and evolve, the soul lives on in another body after death, the astral body.
At the right time, according to its karma, it is reborn into a flesh body. Thus the astral body, with the soul within it, enters a new physical body. This same cycle is repeated many times until the soul spiritually unfolds and reaches a certain state of perfection or mature evolution.
These repeated cycles of births and deaths are known as samsara. The soul passes from one physical body to another. Each time it does so, the Hindu says, the soul has reincarnated. Therefore, the Hindu does not believe in a single life on earth, followed by eternal joy or pain.
Hindus know that all souls reincarnate, take one body and then another, evolving through experience over long periods of time. To a Hindu death is not fearsome. The soul never dies. It is immortal. Physical death is a most natural transition for the soul, which survives and, guided by karma, continues its long pilgrimage until it is one with its creator, God.
When we die, the soul leaves the first world physical body, it lives for a while in the Devaloka, the Second World, before returning again to earth, the Bhuloka or First World. Reincarnation is many-faceted. Through the ages it has been the great consoling belief within our religion, eliminating the inborn fear of death. Hindus do not fear death, nor do they look forward to it. Karma is also misused as a way to explain sudden hardships. With karma, like causes produce like effects; that is, a good deed will lead to a future beneficial effect, while a bad deed will lead to a future harmful effect.
Karma is concerned not only with the relationship between actions and consequences, but also the moral reasons or intentions behind actions, according to a article in the journal Philosophy East and West. So if someone commits a good deed for the wrong reasons — making a charitable donation to impress a potential love interest, for example — the action could still be immoral and produce bad karma. Importantly, karma is wrapped up with the concept of reincarnation or rebirth , in which a person is born in a new human or nonhuman body after death.
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