Hinduism for Dummies

[Monroee]

I've tried to read about Hinduism to see what its all about but I can't seem to get a clear picture of it.

Can anyone here simplify it for me?

[Harneet]

Here watch this documentary on youtube, looks useful =)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKE7enkhZyo

Sorry, i'm not Hindu, so I don't know much about it.
But i do know that they believe in a cast system, they have many gods, one of the oldest religions, weddings are long but beautiful, and the believe in reincarnation (like you come back as a human if you have good karma and you come back as a warm or something if you have bad karma.)

[Love Minus Zero]

I like to lurk on a forum that's all about religions, maybe you can check out the Hinduism section of the forum, I think there's a basic Hinduism guide on there. http://www.religiousforums.com/forum/hinduism-dir/
One thing I've learned from lurking, is that Hinduism is very vast and there aren't any exact set of rules because there's so many different ways.

[heroin]

I was raised as a Hindu. I'm an atheist now.

One major difference between Hinduism and the Abrahamic faiths is that Hinduism doesn't have a central authority, like a book or an official church. It is mostly made up of rituals and traditions instead of a philosophy to build your life around. As long as you follow the rituals and tradition, you are a Hindu.

You can't "convert" to Hinduism as no such concept exists in the religion. The reason for this is the belief that God knows best and since he birthed you into a Christian/Muslim/other religion household, the best thing for you is to follow that religion. That basically means that if you're Christian, the way you can be a good Hindu is to follow Christianity the best you can. Which might sound bizarre to some people, but it's true.

But then, since there is no central authority who can say that you can't "convert"? There are people who don't mind converts, there are others who think you have to be born a Hindu.

The underlying foundation is the concept of "dharma". Which means righteousness. As long as you're righteous, you are a good Hindu (regardless of the religion you follow), in philosophical terms. In real terms, as long as you follow the rituals and traditions and celebrate the festivals and go to a temple every once in a while, you are a Hindu.

Being righteous means doing the right thing. What the "right thing" is changes with time and the mores of the society.

It really doesn't require much effort. People would consider me Hindu because I was born in a Hindu family, but I am an atheist and don't pray or have faith or anything.

[Monroee]

Thanks for the responses everyone. I'll check out the links.

Heroin, thanks for the detailed response! So what you're saying is that Hinduism is more of a lifestyle & way of being raised with the culture than an actual religion with set beliefs that I can learn? Interesting.

I guess I'm just curious because I'm trying to learn about Buddhism as well, & that seems to have some substance to it in way of what to follow & meditate on. & Since Buddhism came out of Hinduism in India I thought that maybe there would be more similarities. Except of course that Hinduism has gods.

[LALoner]

Originally Posted by Monroee

Thanks for the responses everyone. I'll check out the links.

Heroin, thanks for the detailed response! So what you're saying is that Hinduism is more of a lifestyle & way of being raised with the culture than an actual religion with set beliefs that I can learn? Interesting.

I guess I'm just curious because I'm trying to learn about Buddhism as well, & that seems to have some substance to it in way of what to follow & meditate on. & Since Buddhism came out of Hinduism in India I thought that maybe there would be more similarities. Except of course that Hinduism has gods.

The earliest Hindu books are the four Vedas and the stuff that comes after that is called Vedanta. In a lot of ways Buddha created his religion by just taking Vedanta and cutting out the Vedas. Almost everything thats in Buddhism was already in Hinduism.

[Scorpius]

I would recommend going to this site and reading through the free E-books there..

Check the first book titled " All About Hinduism"

http://www.dlshq.org/download/download.htm

[heroin]

Originally Posted by Monroee

Heroin, thanks for the detailed response! So what you're saying is that Hinduism is more of a lifestyle & way of being raised with the culture than an actual religion with set beliefs that I can learn? Interesting.

Yes, to the bolded part.

There are certain "Hindu organizations" (like denominations in Christianity) that have some sort of formal approach towards practicing the religion, but 99.999% of Hindus aren't affiliated with them.

One interesting theory is that Hinduism/India has imported prudishness from Islam and Christianity. So while 6th century Hindus wrote the Kama Sutra and carved sexually explicit statues on their temples, today's Hindus are total prudes.

[Ape in space]

There is a lot of misinformation out there about Hinduism because a lot of the sources used by westerners are based on old colonial sources that have an agenda to subjugate Hinduism to Christianity and to 'westernize' the Indian people. So it's not surprising that it would be confusing. Generally you should be skeptical of any source that claims that caste is a fundamental part of the religion. It is really nothing more than a class system of the type that existed everywhere in ancient times, which became more rigid especially during the period of foreign rule. There is nothing sacred about it and the Hindu tradition itself recognizes the fluidity and changeability of social orders.

As for some main points of Hinduism:

There is one fundamental ground of reality, known as Brahman, which forms the essence of all existence. This one principle manifests in all the various forms of the universe, including life and ourselves. We see the universe as divided and ourselves as separate from it and others due to illusion; in truth, everything is one. The object in Hinduism is to go beyond the ego which is the root of our illusion, and to merge our limited consciousness with the fundamental consciousness of the Brahman which is impersonal and limitless, not bound by time or illusion.

The deities in Hinduism shouldn't be understood as personal gods as one would find in the Abrahamic religions, but as representations of various powers and functions of consciousness and the universe. For example, the elephant-headed god Ganesha is not actually some elephant-headed entity in the sky, but rather a representation of the function of removing obstacles on the spiritual path. The elephant head represents removal of obstacles, since elephants clear forests with ease. In a more accurate sense, Ganesha is the power to go beyond the creations of the mind, as can be seen from the name, which in Sanskrit means 'master of categories'. Other gods represent other such powers, and their physical representations are symbols of these powers. Once you see the gods in this light, it becomes clear how atheists can be Hindus as well, since the idea of god is more of an impersonal reality, not a literal sentient being.

There are various practices like meditation (of many types) and devotional techniques whose ultimate aim is to go beyond the limitations of the ordinary mind and to realize the ultimate oneness of reality. There is really no dogma that one must believe, no heaven and hell as rewards or punishments for good or bad 'behaviour', as the objective is not to please some god but to realize one's own essence. Diversity of practice is encouraged, as each person must ultimately find his/her own path to this realization. This is why the practice of other religions is acceptable.

There's a lot more to say, but this should give an idea of the essence of the religion. I've linked to a good online book below, which gives an overview of Hinduism, if you're interested:

http://www.hindubooks.org/david_fraw...uism/index.htm

[heroin]

**** SKIP IF YOU DON'T LIKE READING LONG POSTS, OR DON'T CARE FOR HINDUISM, RELIGION IN GENERAL, ETC. ****

Originally Posted by Ape in space

Generally you should be skeptical of any source that claims that caste is a fundamental part of the religion. It is really nothing more than a class system of the type that existed everywhere in ancient times, which became more rigid especially during the period of foreign rule. There is nothing sacred about it and the Hindu tradition itself recognizes the fluidity and changeability of social orders.

There's a lot of confusion about Hinduism and the caste system, and it is actively promoted by (who else?) Christians and other adherents of proselytizing faiths (Islam, Buddhism). Normally I just shake my head at the ignorance and move on since I don't really care to discuss the matter with a bunch of fanatics, but I'll just put this out there in an attempt to clear the waters.

So let me attempt to clear this up a bit.

First things first, it is illegal in India to discriminate by caste. It was made illegal a loooong, loooong time ago, and officially outlawed in the Indian constitution when India gained independence. This was around 1947-50, when Americans were still segregating Black Americans and lynching them. I usually burst into hysterical laughter when I see a typical American baptist blather on about the caste system. It's like me telling a modern American "yeah we know lynching non-white people is your pastime". Only worse, because not only was the caste system outlawed way before non-white discrimination was legally outlawed in the West, but the Constitution of India is written by a man who was a Buddhist convert and a member of the lowest caste when he was born. That's like the Constitution of America being written by a Black American who is a member of the Nation of Islam. Let that sink in. Heck, I doubt that present-day americans would even let an amendment from a black or non-christian interest group be added to their constitution.

So, it is really quite tiresome to see people from the West go on and on about the caste system. I don't even have the energy to argue with someone who is obviously that stupid.

Now a few things about the Vedas, Upanishads, etc.

1. The first thing to remember is that the Vedas are not prescriptive, i.e. they do not explicitly tell you what to do and what not to do. They are descriptive of their times and mostly contain mythology, hymns, and instructions for the proper way to carry out rituals. They are nothing like 'the book' in the 'book religions'. There is no THOU SHALT NOT and THOU SHALT stuff in there. They are not manuals to live your life by. They are manuals to conduct rituals and prayer.

2. There is a difference between 'Hinduism' and the 'Vedic religion'. They are very similar in practice, but quite different in beliefs. Hinduism mostly comes from around the 3rd or 4th century CE and texts like the Bhagvad Gita and the Puranas. The Vedic gods and mythology are somewhat different from that of Hinduism. There is some overlap, but much of the stuff in the Vedas is not done now.

3. With that established, there is a caste system being described in the Vedas, it's called varna (वर्ण). Which is really not that surprising because the Vedas are super old and society back then was like that. But, there is no prescription that this system must be maintained and is applicable to all times blah blah blah. It is just mentioned because the text comes from a society where that system was applicable.

4. There is prescription of the caste system in the Manu Smriti, which is a text from around the 3rd century CE, i.e. thousands of years after the vedas. What is important to note is that 99.999% of the practitioners of Hinduism don't even know of the book, and it has practically no authority in mainstream Hinduism. Books in general have little authority, since the religion is not organized.


Of all these books, the average Hindu has read about 0 of them. I was raised a Hindu upto the age of 17 (after which I saw religion as a pointless annoyance) and I might have seen one copy of the Bhagvad Gita in my life, which of course, I didn't care to read.

Hindu gods are not like the Abrahamic god. You don't have to worship all of them or whatever. Basically, Hindu mythology is a soap opera (that has already happened, isn't continuing now), there are gods, their families, their enemies, their emotions, betrayal, backstabbing, death, rebirth and all that crap. And yes, they even have teh secks with their honeys.


Another thing to consider when listening to a typical baptist whine about demon worship in India, India has had a relatively tolerant society for a long time. This mosque is apparently from the time when Mohammed was alive. Believed to have been constructed by the earliest proselytizing Muslim traders. There was a population of Jewish refugees from before the construction of the second temple, i.e. 2500 years ago. Ironically, the people who discriminated against them most were their own kind. They recently migrated to Israel, and Israel was suspicious that they were "fake jews" because of course, they don't look like the Ashkenazi or Sephardi jews. There is a community of Zoroastrian refugees, from the time of the Islamic conquest of Persia. Apart from these there are pre-Catholic church Christian (Syriac Christians) refugees and settlers. Who were again, ironically, persecuted by their own people instead of the locals. Proselytizing was never banned. Buddhists have been hawking for converts since half a millennium before Christianity was even born.

One thing to stress about this is that none of these populations were ever told to assimilate, like you hear so frequently today in the modern Western countries ("foreigners don't bother to assimilate, if they want to live like that why don't they go back to where they came from"). They were never forced to marry or mix outside their own community. The Zoroastrian community I mentioned above has significant problems with finding suitable partners because the community is so closely knit and inbred. And it was their own decision to keep themselves racially "pure". Their own clerics will testify to that fact.



In a nutshell, all I wanted to say is that yes India is a ****hole and a crap place to live in, yes Hinduism is definitely as bat**** as other religions, and no it is not paradise over here. But, Indian society is far more tolerant and accommodating of aliens than any other I've seen. I don't have a patriotic bone in my body, and don't care for nationalism, but it just smacks of ignorance when some chump from the West decides to bring up the caste system to try and occupy the moral high ground. The feeling I get when I hear someone say something like that is like I'm having my skull bashed in with a sledgehammer of stupidity.


Sorry about the rambling, but I like talking about religion. I don't follow religion, but I do find it intriguing in an academic sense and I like to learn about it and how it shapes society and culture.