Understanding Hinduism - Good one

[Guest guest]

Understanding Hinduism

 

A sermon by Reverend Roberta Finkelstein Sunday November 29, 1998

1998 Roberta Finkelstein and the Unitarian Universalists

of Sterling

 

http://www.uusterling.org/sermons/1998/sermon%201998-11-29.htm

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People are different. This simple statement sums up the genius of

Hinduism. People are different. They have different needs, different

learning styles, different life experiences. Therefore religion needs

to be a rich amalgam of sounds, images, smells, tastes, rituals and

disciplines. If people are different, the face of God must look

different to every person. Therefore religion needs to be a huge

tapestry into which thousands of faces and voices can be woven in a

dynamic and ever-changing pattern. People are different. The worth

and value of each person cannot be assessed by what they produce, or

how much money they make, or how many degrees they have. Religion

therefore must be the framework within which we can learn to see and

honor the intrinsic worth of every individual.

 

Unitarian Universalism is the quintessential Western, post-

enlightenment, American faith. Reason is the cornerstone of our

truth. We sit still, we listen to carefully crafted words, and we

guard our individual freedom of expression religiously. Hinduism is

the quintessential Eastern, timeless, Indian faith. It's

practitioners have, literally, thousands of names for their gods,

each with images that are painted or carved and carried in pageants,

prayed to, chanting about, in what we would consider very emotional

displays of faith. Yet at our core, Unitarian Universalists and

Hindus share understandings about humanity and divinity that are so

similar we cannot help but see ourselves reflected in the Hindu way.

 

Hinduism is the oldest of the major religions, with roots going back

to primeval times. The Upanishads, the most holy scriptures of the

faith, were written around 700 BCE. The major subject of the

Upanishads is the Brahman, the life force or divinity that dwells in

all living things, and between all living things. It is the existence

of this life force in all creatures that calls Hindus to respect the

worth and dignity of every person, and of animals as well. One cannot

but respect a receptacle of divinity.

 

The Bhagavad Gita, the other scripture of Hinduism, was probably

written around 200 BCE. It is the better known and more often

translated. The Gita was written originally in Sanskrit, and is part

of a longer epic poem about the battle between two armies, with

Krishna as the divine teacher, providing information about right and

effective actions in the context of this epic battle.

 

>From it's scriptures, and from millennia of practice, Hinduism offers

its adherents a very simple reward for faith: you can get what you

want out of life. The question is, "what do we really want?" The

Hindu world view allows for a very complex answer to that question.

Over many lifetimes, we move along a path from the most basic of

desires (reminiscent of Abraham Maslow) to the most sublime. Early in

a soul's spiritual development, the Path of Desire beckons. This path

includes seeking after wealth, fame, pleasure and power. As a soul

matures, the limits of these things become obvious. Pleasure is too

private; it cannot be shared. Wealth and fame, the indicators of

worldly success, provide a person with dignity and self respect. But

in the end they are subjective and exclusive. At the end of the Path

of Desire, a person is bound to ask, "Is this all there is?"

 

It may take several lifetimes for somebody to arrive at that

question. When they do they leave the Path of Desire for the Path of

Renunciation. This path first recognizes the importance of human

community, and emphasizes duty to family, neighbor and country. But

then . . . `There comes a time,' says Aldous Huxley, `when one asks

even of Shakespeare, even of Beethoven, is this all?" This critical

point on the spiritual journey is the one that the Hindu sage waits

patiently for, and then answers, "Yes there is more. There is the

possibility of an infinite degree of awareness, of infinite being,

and of infinite joy. It is all attainable. In fact it is already

present."

 

Access to all of this comes through awareness of the Brahman, the

Utter Reality, whose chief attributes are being, awareness and bliss.

According to Huston Smith, "Hinduism advises persons not to try to

think of God as the supreme instance of abstractions like being or

consciousness, but think of God instead as the archetype of the

noblest reality they actually encounter in this natural world." The

Braham is the beyond that is within. This may seem contradictory to

the rational Western mind. But in India, the world view is not

dualistic; India assumes an integration of body, mind and spirit. It

also assumes an integration of the sacred and the secular. It assumes

a willingness to suspend rational judgment, and to experience

ultimate reality as it makes itself known in each individual life. It

assumes a spiritual, mystic approach to the questions of life – an

approach that is only possible when the desire to intellectualize and

categorize has been renounced. We must let go of what we know before

we can really Know.

 

The Upanishads treat the subject of the Braham in great detail, and

the Gita provides extensive advise on right living. In the end,

however, Hinduism teaches that each person must ultimately find their

own particular path to knowing and bliss. Proceeding from the basic

assumption that people are different, there are four different paths

to the divine. All of these paths require some basic beginning

attributes. First is detachment from the infinite self. Day to day

existence is not forsaken; awareness simply transcends the

limitations that boredom and frustration bring to daily life.

Practitioners are not asked to withdraw from life, neglect work or

family responsibilities. They are asked to integrate these into the

larger spiritual quest.

 

The second attribute is knowledge. The elimination of ignorance

requires, according to the Upanishads, " . . . knowing that knowledge

which brings knowledge of everything." This knowledge is

transcendent – it is not the accumulation of facts or theories. Just

the opposite, it is a kind of knowing that renders much of learning

irrelevant. Smith describes it as " . . . some blinding insight which

so illumines the cosmic scene that it's stupendous point is laid

bare. In the presence of this shattering vision of wholeness, to ask

of details would be as irrelevant as asking the number of atoms in a

particular patch of blue in a Picasso."

 

The third attribute is the ability to overcome finitude. In order to

understand this Hindu concept, you must understand a different sense

of the boundaries of the self. Not only does Hindu spirituality

transcend the spatial limitations of human existence, it also

transcends the temporal. The boundaries of the self extend far beyond

a particular body occupied in a given lifetime. Western psychology

has convinced us that much of what goes on in our minds happens

outside of our conscious awareness. Hindu psychology is convinced

that much of goes on in our souls also happens outside of what we

understand to be the conscious mind. Again quoting Smith, "The mind's

hidden continents spread until they reach infinity. Infinite in

being, infinite in awareness, there is nothing outside them waiting

to be known. Infinite in joy too, for again there is nothing external

or contradictory that would interude their eternal self content."

 

Four paths to this state of awareness – four different methods of

training, four different yogas. Each one designed to meet the needs

and styles of different people. The first is the Way of Knowledge.

This paths is designed for those of a philosophical bent, those for

whom ideas are the primary mode of interacting with reality. This is

said to be the shortest path to enlightenment, but also the steepest

and most difficult. The second path, the most popular is called

bakhti yoga, the Way of Love. On this path people are urged to the

adoration of God, a turning outward rather than inward. Many Hindus

view Christianity as a form of Bakhti yoga. The third path, Karma

yoga, is the Way of Work. This path is for the active person who

finds fulfillment in productive physical activity.

 

The final path is Raja yoga, the royal road to re-integration. This

path, also for the select few, takes one on an inward journey of self-

experimentation. The Raja travels through the physical body, the

conscious mind, the individual unconscious mind, and then finally to

the final layer, the infinite unthwarted eternal being which dwells

within. It sounds Jungian, does it not? This is the mystic path that

many of us think of when we think of Hinduism, the path that leads

it's practitioners to an understanding of divinity described in the

Gita this way. Says Krishna, "I am smaller than the minutest atom,

likewise greater than the greatest. I am the whole, the diversified-

multicolored-lovely-strange universe. I am the Ancient One. I am

humanity, the Lord. I'm the Being-of-Gold. I am the very state of

divine beatitude."

 

Divinity indwelling in all creatures, the recognition of human

diversity, multiple paths to enlightenment – this is the basic

philosophy of Hinduism. Last month in the service on Islam I talked

about the difference between the philosophy of a religion and the

institutional religion. The corruptions that inevitably creep into

any religious institution are always betrayals of the initial

philosophical understanding. The caste system is such an example in

India. One might ask, how did a religious faith with such an open

hearted philosophy create a system so exploitive, deterministic and

destructive to human dignity as the caste system? Originally

conceived as a way to organize society in recognition of legitimate

human differences – to assure that everybody had a useful role that

fit their particular temperament, it degenerated into a system for

keeping the rich rich and the poor poor.

 

Mahatma Gandhi rejected the excesses and evils of the caste system,

pointing out that allowing caste to determine economic rank was a

corruption of the concept of karma. Karma means that decisions and

behaviors have unavoidable consequences – cause and effect is the

determining principle of life on our world. But the caste system

turned karma on it's head, blaming poor people for being poor and

preventing them from advancing. Karma is a call to each individual to

take responsibility for their own choices and actions. The caste

system condemns entire classes of people, generation after

generation, to lives of poverty and misery.

 

I could actually talk forever about Hinduism – I have barely

scratched the surface – but I want to end where I began. People are

different. This is a fact to be celebrated, a reality to which

religion must accommodate itself. In our differences are our

strengths. We are all different, and we can all have what we want in

our life.