Hinduism

The philosophies to be described are religious in essence.

Their main aim is the direct mystical experience of reality. Such an experience is religious by nature.

More than for any other Eastern tradition this is true for Hinduism*, where the connection between philosophy and religion is particularly strong.

It has been said that almost all thought in India is in a sense religious thought and Hinduism has not only influenced, throughout many centuries, India’s intellectual life, but almost completely determined her social and cultural life as well.

Hinduism cannot be called a philosophy, nor is it a well defined religion. It is, rather, a large and complex socio-religious organism consisting of innumerable sects, cults and philosophical systems and involving various rituals, ceremonies and spiritual disciplines, as well as the worship of countless gods and goddesses.

The many facets of this complex and yet persistent and powerful spiritual tradition mirror the geographical, racial, linguistic and cultural complexities of India’s vast subcontinent.

The manifestations of Hinduism range from highly intellectual philosophies involving conceptions of fabulous range and depth to the nai’ve and childlike ritual practices of the masses.

If the majority of the Hindus are simple villagers who keep the popular religion alive in their daily worship, Hinduism has, on the other hand, brought forth a large number of outstanding spiritual teachers to transmit its profound insights.

The spiritual source of Hinduism lies in the Vedas, a collection of ancient scriptures written by anonymous sages, the so- called Vedic ‘seers’. There are four Vedas, the oldest of them

being the Rig Veda. Written in ancient Sanskrit, the sacred language of India, the Vedas have remained the highest religious authority for most sections of Hinduism. In India, any philosophical system that does not accept the authority of the Vedas is considered to be unorthodox.

Each of these Vedas consists of several parts which were composed at different periods, probably between 1500 and 500 B.C. The oldest parts are sacred hymns and prayers.

Subsequent parts deal with sacrificial rituals connected with the Vedic hymns, and the last, called the Upanishads, elaborate their philosophical and practical content. The Upanishads contain the essence of Hinduism’s spiritual message. They have guided and inspired India’s greatest minds for the last twenty-five centuries, in accordance with the advice given in their verses : Taking as a bow the great weapon of the Upanishad, One should put upon it an arrow sharpened by meditation.

Stretching it with a thought directed to the essence of That, Penetrate that Imperishable as the mark, my friend.’ The masses of the Indian people, however, have received the teachings of Hinduism not through the Upanishads, but through a large number of popular tales, collected in huge epics, which are the basis of the vast and colourful Indian mythology. One of those epics, the Mahabharata, contains India’s favourite religious text, the beautiful spiritual poem of the Bhagavad Gita. The Gita, as it is commonly called, is a dialogue between the god Krishna and the warrior Arjuna who is in great despair, being forced to combat his own kinsmen in the great family war which forms the main story of the Mahabharata.

Krishna, disguised as Arjuna’s charioteer, drives the chariot right between the two armies and in this dramatic setting of the battlefield he starts to reveal to Arjuna the most profound truths of Hinduism. As the god speaks, the realistic backgrouna of the war between the two families soon fades away and it becomes clear that the battle of Arjuna is the spiritual battle of man, the battle of the warrior in search of enlightenment. Krishna himself advises Arjuna

Kill therefore with the sword of wisdom the doubt born of ignorance that lies in thy heart. Be one in self-harmony, in Yoga, and arise, great warrior, arise.2 The basis of Krishna’s spiritual instruction, as of all Hinduism, is the idea that the multitude of things and events around us are but different manifestations of the same ultimate reality. This reality, called Brahman, is the unifying concept which gives Hinduism its essentially monistic character in spite of the worship of numerous gods and goddesses. Brahman, the ultimate reality, is understood as the ‘soul’, or inner essence, of all things. It is infinite and beyond all concepts; it cannot be comprehended by the intellect, nor can it be adequately described in words: ‘Brahman, beginning- less, supreme: beyond what is and beyond what is not.‘3- ‘Incomprehensible is that supreme Soul, unlimited, unborn, not to be reasoned about, unthinkable.‘4 Yet, people want to talk about this reality and the Hindu sages with their charac- teristic penchant for myth have pictured Brahman as divine and talk about it in mythological language. The various aspects of the Divine have been given the names of the various gods worshipped by the Hindus, but the scriptures make it clear that all these gods are but reflections of the one ultimate reality : This that people say, Worship this god! Worship that god!-one after another-this is his‘[Brahman’s] creation indeed! And he himself is all the gods.5 The manifestation of Brahman in the human soul is called Atman and the idea that Atman and Brahman, the individual and the ultimate reality, are one is the essence of the Upanishads: That which is the finest essence-this whole world has that as its soul. That is Reality. That is Atman. That art thou.6 The basic recurring theme in Hindu mythology is the creation of the world by the self-sacrifice of Cod-‘sacrifice’ in the original sense of ‘making sacred’-whereby Cod becomes the world which, in the end, becomes again God. This creative activity of the Divine is called Ma, the play of God, and the world is seen as the stage of the divine play. Like most of Hindu mythology, the myth of Ma has a strong magical flavour.

Brahman is the great magician who transforms himself into the world and he performs this feat with his ‘magic creative power’, which is the original meaning of maya in the Rig Veda. The word maya-one of the most important terms in Indian philosophy-has changed’ its meaning over the centuries. From the ‘might’, or ‘power’, of the divine actor and magician, it came to signify the psychological state of anybody under the spell of the magic play. As long as we confuse the myriad forms of the divine /i/a with reality, without perceiving the unity of Brahman underlying all these forms, we are under the spell of maya. Maya, therefore, does not mean that the world is an illusion, as is often wrongly stated. The illusion merely lies in our point of view, if we think that the shapes and structures, things and events, around us are realities of nature, instead of realizing that they are concepts of our measuring and categorizing minds. Maya is the illusion of taking these concepts for reality, of confusing the map with the territory. In the Hindu view of nature, then, all forms are relative, fluid and ever-changing maya, conjured up by the great magician of the divine play. The world of maya changes continuously, because the divine /i/a is a rhythmic, dynamic play. The dynamic force of the play is karma, another important concept of Indian thought. Karma means ‘action’. It is the active principle of the play, the total universe in action, where everything is dynamically connected with everything else. In the words of the Cita, ‘Karma is the force of creation, wherefrom all things have their life.” The meaning of karma, like that of maya, has been brought down from its original cosmic level to the human level where it has acquired a psychological sense. As long as our view of the world is fragmented, as long as we are under the spell of maya and think that we are separated from our environment and can act independently, we are bound by karma. Being free from the bond of karma means to realize the unity and harmony of all nature, including man, and to act accordingly. The Cita is very clear on this point: All actions take place in time by the interweaving of the forces of nature, but the man lost in selfish delusion thinks that he himself is the actor.

But the man who knows the relation between the forces of Nature and actions, sees how some forces of Nature work upon other forces of Nature, and becomes not their slave.8 7 To be free from the spell of maya, to break the bonds of karma means to realize that all the phenomena we perceive with our senses are part of the same reality. It means to ex- perience, concretely and personally, that everything, including our own self, is Brahman. This experience is called moksha, or ‘liberation’ in Hindu philosophy and it is the very essence of Hinduism. Hinduism holds that there are innumerable ways of liberation. It would never expect all its followers to be able to approach the Divine in the same way and therefore it provides different concepts, rituals and spiritual exercises for different modes of awareness. The fact that many of these concepts or practices are contradictory does not worry the Hindus in the least, because they know that Brahman is beyond concepts and images anyway. From this attitude comes the great tolerance and inclusiveness which is characteristic of Hinduism. The most intellectual school is the Vedanta which is based on the Upanishads and emphasizes Brahman as a nonpersonal, metaphysical concept, free from any mythological content. In spite of its high philosophical and intellectual level, however, the Vedantist way of liberation is very different from any school of Western philosophy, involving as it does daily meditation and other spiritual exercises to bring about the union with Brahman. Another important and influential method of liberation is known as yoga, a word which means ‘to yoke’, ‘to join’, and which refers to the joining of the individual soul to Brahman. There are several schools, or ‘paths’ of yoga involving some basic physical training and various mental disciplines designed for people of different types and at different spiritual levels. For the common Hindu, the most popular way of approaching the Divine is to worship it in the form of a personal god or goddess, The fertile Indian imagination has created literally thousands of deities which appear in innumerable mani- festations. The three most worshipped divinities in India today are Shiva, Vishnu and the Divine Mother. Shiva is one of the

oldest Indian gods who can assume many forms. He is called Mahesvara, the Great Lord, when he is represented as the personification of the fullness of Brahman and he can also impersonate many single aspects of the Divine, his most celebrated appearance being the one as Nataraja, the King of Dancers. As the Cosmic Dancer, Shiva is the god of creation and destruction who sustains through his dance the endless rhythm of the universe. Vishnu, too, appears under many guises, one of them being the god Krishna of the Bhagavad Gita. In general, Vishnu’s role is that of the preserver of the universe. The third divinity of this triad is Shakti, the Divine Mother, the archetypal goddess representing in her many forms the female energy of the universe. Shakti also appears as Shiva’s wife and the two are often shown in passionate embraces in magnificent temple sculptures which radiate an extraordinary sensuousness of a degree completely unknown in any Western religious art. Contrary to most Western religions, sensuous pleasure has never been suppressed in Hinduism, because the body has always been considered to be an integral part of the human being and not separated from the spirit. The Hindu, therefore, does not try to control the desires of the body by the conscious will, but aims at realizing himself with his whole being, body and mind. Hinduism has even developed a branch, the medieval Tantrism, where enlightenment is sought through a profound experience of sensual love ‘in which each is both’, in accordance with the words of the Upanishads: As a man, when in the embrace of a beloved wife, knows nothing within or without, so this person, when in the embrace of the intelligent Soul, knows nothing within or without.q Shiva was closely associated with this medieval form of erotic mysticism, and so were Shaktiand numerous other female deities which exist in great numbers in Hindu mythology. This abundance of goddesses shows again that in Hinduism the physical and sensuous side of human nature, which has always been associated with the female, is a fully integrated part of the Divine. Hindu goddesses are not shown as holy virgins,

but in sensual embraces of stunning beauty. The Western mind is easily confused by the fabulous number of gods and goddesses which populate Hindu mythology in their various appearances and incarnations. To understand how the Hindus can cope with this multitude of divinities, we must be aware of the basic attitude of Hinduism that in sub- stance all these divinities are identical. They are all mani- festations of the same divine reality, reflecting different aspects of the infinite, omnipresent, and-ultimately-incomprehen- sible k&man.