hinduism

Hinduism is a way of life, an Indian tradition that encompasses several religious beliefs, cultural practices and ideologies. The exact date of Hinduism's origin is not known, though estimates vary from 3200 BC to 2500 BC. It is the world's oldest major religion. It is also the third largest religion with a following of approximately a 1.2 billion people. The Indian subcontinent is home to 98% of this populace. The Himalayan kingdom of Nepal is the only nation which has Hinduism for its state religion. The term Hindu itself derives from the name of the Sindhu river.

Hinduism comes under a branch of religions known as the Dharmic religions. The Dharmic religions are less prone to dogma and offer generic universal truths. Such universal truths serve as general guidelines for their follower's philosophies and actions. They remain open to interpretation, adaptation and enrichment at any date and in any age. This core makes Hinduism flexible in accommodating even contradictory opinions seamlessly within its fabric. Hinduism provides several paths to the common goal of divine bliss. The choice of a particular path is left to the ability, discretion and temperament of the follower.

Experience of the divine supreme knowledge, known as moksha, is the core concept of Hinduism. Hinduism teaches its followers the ability to differentiate between the pure actions of virtue and the wrongful actions of evil. The concept of karma lays forth free-willed human actions and how such actions can lead both to moksha and to the cycles of birth and death. The soul is ever thirsty for this divine knowledge and it accumulates knowledge through all human experiences. Virtuous actions take the soul closer to the divine supreme, Brahman. Realization and experience of the divine bliss makes all the soul's desires redundant, including the desire for another worldly-experience-giving cycle of birth. Evil hinders recognition of the Brahman and misleads the Atman (soul) to seek knowledge through experiences in various forms of worldly life. All human actions leave their imprint on the soul. They affect and even decide the form and circumstances of life sought by the soul in its next cycle of birth.

Origins of Hinduism

Hinduism is eternal with no beginning and no end. Current thinking suggests that Hinduism was formed somewhere between 3200-2500 BCE. The date of approximately 3102 BCE comes from the Mahabharata epic, where the exact positions of the stars were recorded at Sri Krishna's birth. The later dates come from linguistic and literary dating of the Rig Veda, the oldest of the Hindu spiritual texts.

The origin of Hinduism cannot be ascribed to a single founder, a single time and a single place of foundation. The Vedas (regarded as the earliest piece of written Hindu work) are the spiritual laws binding upon all of creation and even upon God. Each Veda was written by multiple enlightened beings (Hindus) over a period of time. The term "Hinduism" is derived from of the word Sindhu, which literally means "dweller in the Sindhu (Indus) Valley". Hinduism is more of a federation of loosely banded conventional religions and cultures. It is non-organizational and does not seek or encourage collectivism.

According to Hindus, certain spiritual principles hold eternally true, transcending man-made constructs, representing a pure science of consciousness. This consciousness is not merely that of the body or mind and intellect, but of a supramental soul-state that exists within and beyond our existence, the unsullied Self of all. Religion to the Hindu is the native search for the divine within the Self, the search to find the One truth. Truth sought with faith shall yield itself in blissful luminescence no matter the race or creed professed. Indeed, all existence, from vegetation and beasts to mankind, are subjects and objects of the eternal Dharma. This inherent faith, therefore, is also known as Arya/Noble Dharma, Veda/Knowledge Dharma, Yoga/Union Dharma, Hindu Dharma or, simply, the Dharma.

What can be said to be common to all Hindus is belief in Dharma, Karma, and Moksha (liberation) of every soul through a variety of moral, action-based, and meditative yogas. Still more fundamental principles include ahimsa (non-violence), the guru/chela dynamic, the Divine Word of OM and the power of mantras, love of Truth in many manifestations, and an understanding that the essential spark of the Divine (Atman/Brahman) is in every human and living being, thus allowing for many spiritual paths leading to the One Unitary Truth.

Bindis are worn by Hindu women on their forehead to symbolize the opening of their spiritual third eye. An example of the pervasiveness of this paramount truth-seeking spirituality in daily life is the laltika which is a religious symbol denoting marriage. It is sometimes also said to symbolize the need to cultivate supramental consciousness, which is achieved by opening the mystic "third eye." Men, too, will bear on their foreheads the equivalent tika (tilaka) mark, usually on religious occasions, its shape often representing particular devotion to a certain main deity: a 'U' shape stands for Vishnu, a group of three horizontal lines for Shiva.

Yoga Dharma
Hinduism is practiced through a variety of Yogas (spiritual practices), primarily Bhakti (loving devotion), Karma Yoga (selfless service), Raja Yoga (meditational Yoga) and Jnana Yoga (Yoga of discrimination, pronounced Nyāna). These are described in the two principal texts of Hindu Yoga: The Bhagavad Gita and the Yoga Sutras. The Upanishads are also important as a philosophical foundation for this rational spiritualism.

The four goals of life
A major aspect of Dharma that is common to all Hindus is that of purushartha, the "four goals of life". They are Kama, Artha, Dharma and Moksha. It is said that all humans seek kama (pleasure, physical or emotional) and artha (power, fame and wealth), but soon, with maturity, learn to govern these legitimate desires within a higher, pragmatic framework of dharma, or moral harmony in all. Of course, the only goal that is truly infinite, whose attainment results in absolute happiness, is moksha, or liberation, (a.k.a. Mukti, Samadhi, Nirvana, etc.) from Samsara (a.k.a. Reincarnation), the cycle of life, death, and existential duality.

The four stages of life
The human life is seen as four phases called "Ashramas". They are Brahmacharya, Grihasthya, Vanaprastha and Sanyasa. The first quarter of one's life, Brahmacharya (literally "grazing in Brahma") is spent in celibate, sober and pure contemplation of life's secrets under a Guru, building up body and mind for the responsibilities of life. Brahmacharya is the phase where a human obtains knowledge of God and the world, while learning to keep strict control of his mind, senses and body. Grihastya is the householder's stage, in which one marries and satisfies karma and artha within a married life and professional career. Vanaprastha is gradual detachment from the material world, ostensibly giving over duties to one's sons and daughters, spending more time in contemplation of the truth, and making holy pilgrimages. Finally, in sanyasa, the individual goes off into seclusion, to find God through Yogic meditation and peacefully shed the body for the next life.

Views on God

Within Hinduism a variety of lesser deities are predominantly, are seen as aspects of the one impersonal divine ground, Brahman. Brahman is seen as the universal spirit. Brahman is the ultimate, both transcendent and immanent the absolute infinite existence, the sum total of all that ever is, was, or ever shall be. Brahman is not a God in the monotheistic sense, as it is not imbued with any limiting characteristics, not even those of being and non-being, and this is reflected in the fact that in Sanskrit, the word Brahman is of neuter (as opposed to masculine or feminine) gender. Vedanta is a branch of Hindu philosophy which gives this matter a greater focus. Yoga is the primary focus in many ways of a Hindu's religious activities, being somewhere between meditation, prayer and healthful exercise.

Some of Hinduism's adherents are Smarta monists, seeing in multiple manifestations of the one God or source of being. It is seen as one unity, with the personal gods being different aspects of only one Supreme Being, like a single beam of light separated into colors by a prism, and are valid to worship. The great Hindu saint, Ramakrishna, a monist, was a prominent advocate of this traditional Hindu view. He achieved the spiritual high of other religions besides Hinduism and came to the same conclusion proclaimed by the Vedas, "Truth is one, the wise call it by different names."

Contemporary Hinduism is divided into four major divisions, Vaishnavism, Shaivism, Shaktism, and Smartism. Hindus believe in one God but differ in their conceptions. The two primary form of differences are between Vaishnavism which conceives God as Vishnu and Shaivism, which conceives God as Shiva.

Hinduism grew out of the religion described in the Vedas. The earliest of these, the Rigveda centers on worship of the gods Indra and Agni, and on the Soma ritual. The Ashvamedha was the most important sacrifice described in the Yajurveda, possibly performed for the last time by Samudragupta in the 4th century. The age and origins of the Vedas themselves are disputed, but it is clear that they were transmitted orally for several millennia. They show strong similarities to the language and religion of the Avesta, which are sometimes traced back to the influence of the 3rd millennium BC Saraswati Valley Civilization.