just asking

[curious]

I have a question..... what does hinduism say about things like adultery, fornification, homosexuality, drugs and alcohol. I've asked my hindu friends and they don't know. Also, another question.... is dating not allowed. I mean, my hindu friends don't date but they said that they don't think it's religious but cultural. Juss asking.

[animesh]

> I've asked my hindu friends and they don't know.

 

Well, this sentence indicates that you follow some other religion. It is good that you want to know about the religions of others. But, why search in a religion about what is wrong? No religion calls a wrong thing as right. After all, why is it that religious books are considered as sacred? Because they teach us good things. Imagine that some religious books teach us to steal, do all sorts of crime, then shall we (and should we) consider them as sacred?

[curious]

Yes, I am part of another religion and I'm interested in many religions. I'm pretty sure that all of those things (adultery, etc.) are wrong in ur religion. I didn't ask if they were wrong or right but I wanted to know what ur religion says ABOUT them. On what grounds, any exceptions, how, or any references that u have from sacred books.

[curious]

Sorry if I am going to say nething to offend u. How do u no if sumthing is "good"? It's the religious books that tell u that sumthing is good or bad so that would mean that all religious books r sacred right. If the religious book (which u r sure of its authenticity) say that stealing is good, then who r u 2 say that it isn't. Right?

[animesh]

We can use our conscience to know what is right and what is wrong. If there are some books which teach us things which are obviously wrong, then they will not be considered as sacred.

[animesh]

Some verses from Bhagwad-gita

 

3.36

Arjuna said: O descendant of Vrsni, by what is one impelled to sinful acts, even unwillingly, as if engaged by force?

 

3.37

The Blessed Lord said: It is lust only, Arjuna, which is born of contact with the material modes of passion and later transformed into wrath, and which is the all-devouring, sinful enemy of this world.

 

3.38

As fire is covered by smoke, as a mirror is covered by dust, or as the embryo is covered by the womb, similarly, the living entity is covered by different degrees of this lust.

 

3.39

Thus, a man's pure consciousness is covered by his eternal enemy in the form of lust, which is never satisfied and which burns like fire.

 

3.40

The senses, the mind and the intelligence are the sitting places of this lust, which veils the real knowledge of the living entity and bewilders him.

[shvu]

Hi Curious,

 

-------

Adultery, fornification, homosexuality, drugs and alcohol.

-------

 

All these are social and cultural issues. Strictly speaking, they have nothing to do with religion, which is a whole different thing.

 

Some of the semitic religions mixed up both, so that people would avoid these vices out of fear of a God who would punish them. That is the reason why we see them mentioned as evils in some religions. That way the Hindu religious books are clear about their scope. They deal only with religion.

 

To answer your question, all the above issues are condemned as bad by the Hindu society.

 

Dating was unheard of in India until perhaps this century. Even now there are several people who will frown on dating. Originally Hindu families were conservative and used to marry their girls off early. But now gradually things are changing with Western Influence. People are getting to be more open and broad-minded.

 

Cheers

[sushil_kanoria]

Hare Krishna Curious,

As my friends have alredy answered that all those things which you have asked, are not allowed in our religion. Actually In Hinduism since our childhood we are taught to remain "Brahmachari" means away from sex & gals, because if one is in contact with any of them they will degrade to much extent, thats why better to be away from girls.

The versus picked by Animesh from Bhagwadgita clearly indicates that we are supposed to be away from lust.So never try to think also about dating & other things which are the first step toward degradation.

 

Hari Bol,

Sushil

 

[animesh]

>thats why better to be away from girls.

 

Well, I don't think so. Being away from dating, lust etc. is not the same as being away from girls.

 

[Jahnava Nitai Das]

I really can't figure out what people here consider as Hinduism. For example to say "Hindu religious books deal only with religion" just doesn't make any sense at all. The dharma shastras such as manu-samhita and parashara-samhita deal with every aspect of daily life. Perhaps these books aren't considered as Hindu religious books by some, go figure.

 

The reality is Hindu religious books do set out what is right to do and what is wrong to do. It is known technically as yama and niyama - or rules and regulations. Positive and negative activities are delineated clearly.

 

 

 

[shvu]

Dear Jndas,

 

Manu Samhita also known as Manu Smriti is not Sruti. And yes, it is not a religious book. It is about social living in detail.

 

However there may be portions in the Vedas, whic htalk about how a person should live and what he should not indulge in. I may not be aware of that.

 

Cheers

[Bhakta Shakta]

Previously posted by Sushil_kanoria:

"So never try to think also about dating & other things which are the first step toward degradation."

 

There is no reason to repress the sexual-impulse. Just as there is no reason to repress the defecation-impulse, the eating-impulse, the sleeping-impulse, the defensive-impulse. Wouldn't our lives suck if you had to hold your feces in your rectum every time you had to take a *hit!

The same applies to the sexual-impulse. I'm not trying to imply that we should all indulge in overt lechery, but rather that we should accept, appreciate, and love the sexual side in us and channel it in health ways.

 

We need to understand our sociopsychological nature and act in appropriate methods. That's why Krishna set up the varnaashrama-dharma (sp?) system...

 

If someone is hellbent on suppressing the sexual-impulse then there are yogic methods of eliminating sexual desire. But this is a Vaisnava forum not a Yogi forum. Anyway, meditation was the yuga-dharma for another age not Kali-Yuga. Chanting was established as the Yuga-dharma by Krishna, so lets follow him. Trying to control your sex-desire with your voilition will only torture you body. Why do you want to torture you body when it is a temple resided by Paraatman? Krishna bitterly scolds these people in the Gita, saying the these type of people are in tamas-guna.

 

In conclusion, I believe, that for must of us, engaging in a monogamous sexual relationship in a marriage is beneficial to the spiritual life not detrimental.

 

Anyway, a wise person once said 'Regulations will win you zero bhakti-points.'

[Jahnava Nitai Das]

I seem to have misunderstood the meaning of "hindu religious book", as I took these words at their literal meaning. Hindu Religious books, if we go by the literal meanings, refer to all books found in the Hindu religion. This would include Shruti, Smriti and Nyaya categories of texts. As such, books such as Puranas, the Gita, the Mahabharata, and the Manu Samhita, etc., could be called as Hindu religious books.

 

We could even ask ourself a simple question like:

 

Is the Bhagavad Gita a Hindu religious book?

 

According to your definition it isn't, as it is not a part of the Shruti texts. But according to 99.99% of the Hindus in the world it is a Hindu Religious book. Even the encyclopedias and school text books accept it as such. The same is the case for the other categories of books mentioned above. So if we take words to mean what words mean, then the meanings become commonly understandable. If not, there can be no such thing as communication or language, just noise.

 

 

 

[shvu]

Hi Jndas,

 

You are right. There is religious content in Smriti too. But I am still not clear about why Manu Smriti should be classified as a religious book.

 

I would be interested to know what is religious about Manu Smriti.

 

Cheers

[Jahnava Nitai Das]

I will try to answer that question in tomorrow (no time immediately), but just a point to ponder.

 

The category of books such as manu-samhita and parashara-samhita are technically called "dharma-shastras".

 

I think most people would accept "religion" as a very rough and crude translation for "dharma". And "shastra" could be translated as "scripture". Thus this category of book (dharma-shastras) would be as literally close as you could get to the english phrase "religious books".

 

They may not be as philosophical as other books, such as the Upanishads, the Gita, etc., but that is another topic.

 

Why does it really matter what we consider as religious books? Many people (though I havent heard it here in these forums yet) like to say Hinduism is a do whatever you like religion, and that there is no right or wrong in Hinduism, and there is no such thing as "sin". They like to cliam that sin is a Christian concept. But in reality there are more rules in Hinduism than in most other (probably all) religions in the world. The concept that everyone can just do whatever they like, and ultimately we all end in the same place is not very philosophical, nor is such a concept accepted in the scriptures.

 

For that reason I feel it is important to show that books such as Manu-samhita are indeed Hindu religious texts.

 

 

[venkatesh]

hi curious,

 

see, here the religion does not involve. whatever u think that would be the result. we are living in a maya world. if u think it is bad then it is bad or if ur going to take it in a positive way then it is good. everything depends on U and ur mind. for instance, a thief may justify that what he does his right, but u might think that what he does his wrong. the answer is given from ur mind. u dont know for what reason he has become a thief.

[animesh]

I do not know if curious is still reading the posts in this forum. If he is, then I think, what I am going to write below may be of some use to him. Because he says that he is interested in knowing about many religions.

________

 

The knowledge given in sacred books of hindus is so vast that even though I am a hindu by birth, I have got a very small fraction of that knowledge. But, based on whatever knowledge I have got, I will try to explain what hinduism is.

 

Before explaining what hinduism is, let me first tackle the most common miscoception about this religion in the minds of followers of other religions. Many times, I have found followers of other religions claming that there is no one God for hindus. Rather they believe in many gods. It is true that there is concept of many gods (mark lowercase 'g') in hinduism. But there is also concept of a single supreme God (mark uppercase 'G'). God is considered as omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent. But these attributes are not applicable for so many gods. The gods can be more knowledgeable and more powerful than many human beings. But they are not, by any means, all knowledgeable or all powerful. You can consider these gods as intermediaries between human beings and God. Just like, we approach a police person if something is stolen, a doctor when we do not feel well, a shop owner when we want to buy something, a software engineer when we want a software to be developed; similarly, there are different gods for providing different kinds of material needs. But, in hinduism, none of them can be considered as comparable to the single supreme God.

 

Apart from being omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent, God is also eternal. He is considered to be ever present, i.e. he did not come into being some finite time in the past and also He will never go out of existence. The gods (Indra, Varun etc.) live for a much much longer time than human beings, but they also have to die one day.

 

Let me talk about the incarnation of God as mentioned in hindu scriptures. It is said that whenever virtue declines and vice increases to an extreme, then God manifests Himself in order to save virtuous people and destroy sinful people. Based on situation, He can manifest in any form: boar, fish, human form etc. He can manifest with all his attributes or a part thereof. Now one question can be asked here: If He manifests with all his attributes on earth, then who takes care of the rest of the universe? The answer is that He does not leave the rest of the universe even when he incarnates. Because God can and is present in a large no. of forms and at different places (in fact all places) at the same time.

 

Some scholars consider God as sagun which means having form and attributes. Others consider Him as nirgun, which means without form and attributes. Well, God is both. Whenever He needs to do anything which requires form, e.g. creating universe, fighting with cruel, coming before devotees to give them blessings or to impart some knowledge to them, then He has form. Now different deeds may require different forms. So, at any time, He is present in a large no. of forms. So, he is also known by large no. of names. You can consider formless God as something like energy (this may not be a very good analogy, but it will do for the sake of explanation). He is present as impersonal (formless) Brahman throughout the universe. (Please do not confuse the word 'Brahman' with a caste called 'brahman'; the former is pronounced as brahm and the later as braahman).

 

There is concept of rebirth. It is said that whatever happens to any living being is a result of what he did in this life as well as his previous lives. There are doctrines of dwait and adwait. Both of them talk about a large cycle of births and rebirths. But dwait talk mainly about God having form and advait about impersonal Brahman. Dwait teaching is that once any jivatma (soul of a living being) has no longer to go through the cycle of births and deaths, then it goes to God and serves Him etenally, even though he remains different from Him. Advait teaching is that the jivatma becomes one with impersonal Brahman, i.e. there does not remain any difference between jivatma and impersonal Brahman. Even though both these doctrines may seem to be contradictory, it is possible for both of them to be true, because it is possible for God to take large no. of forms and also be present throughout iniverse as formless (impersonal Brahman). Dwait doctrine teaches us that we are not the actual doer anything we may seem to do. So, we must not have ego. It also teaches that we are not the real owner of anything in this world as the actual owner is God. So, we must not cry and must not have attachment with anything in this material universe. Advait doctrine teaches us that since the souls of all beings

are same as impersonal Brahman. This in turn tells us that we are all equal. So, we should love other beings as if there is no difference between us and them.

[shvu]

 

Hi Animesh,

 

Just a thought.

 

Ther are 2 ways of referring to Brahman.

 

Nirguna Brahman [without attributes]

Saguna Brahman [with Attributes].

 

Brahman without one of these 2 tags is simply Brahman, making it impossible to describe it any further.

 

Impersonal - cold, detached, aloof, withdrawn, etc...

 

As you can see, 'Impersonal' comes nowhere close to Nirguna or Saguna. Describing Brahman as Impersonal has no meaning. That was a description by the dualists to make it sound distasteful in an effort to do away with the formless Brahman concept.

 

Since you are talking about Hinduism in general, in my opinion it would be more apt to refer to Brahman as simply Brahman.

 

Cheers

 

[animesh]

Hi shvu,

Thanks for the correction. This is how I will know if my knowledge is correct. In fact, when I used the word 'impersonal', I did not know that it had any distasteful meaning. In fact, I was under impression that impersonal meant "without form".

[shvu]

 

Yes, since we have some basic idea of dualism amd monism, we relate impersonal to formless. However for someone who has no idea about Hinduism and reads that Brahman is impersonal, it takes on a different meaning. Reminds me of the Christians who refer to other religions as idol-worshipping. If you ask them why they pray to a statue or photograph of Jesus, you will get a funny reply.

 

Cheers

[animesh]

I really do not understand why idol worshipping is so much ridiculed by some. If an idol helps someone concentrate, it is perfectly OK to do this. Those who ridicule idol worshipping usually say that an idol is not the actual God and that the idol is made of some materials like stone, soil etc. But if the same people are asked to tear into pieces a photograph of someone whom you love, then they won't do it. Afterall what is photograph? Just a piece of paper. Then why be afraid of tearing it off?

[Love]

We need to clarify a few misconceptions that we all have about Hinduism here.

1). Hinduism is not a religion no matter how hard the pundits have tried to make it that way for their personal gains. Hinduism is a dharma. Dharma is defined as that which is the path leading to the Truth (again no chance to confuse this Truth with facts of life, etc). Your and my Truths can be different superficially but eventually if we both are on the right track our paths will converge. That is the basis on which multiple faiths evolved in India - Buddhism, Jainism, among many others. They are all dharmas. However, as all these dharmas follow the basic philosophy of life as defined by Hinduism, all Jains, Buddhists, etc are as much Hindus as the so-called Hindus. Just to give you a flavour of what dharma is, here goes a story:

Buddha after attaining Nirvana (enlightenment) sat down under a tree and the world, even the gods,w ere sitting in His presence, to gain insight into dharma. Just as about Buddha was about to speak, a bird started singing a song (poetic way of saying) and Buddha kept quiet. Once the bird had finished with her song, Buddha said that his sermon was over. He explained that the bird had described what dharma is more beautifully than any words ever could. Basically, what the story is implying is that dharma is that spring of joy in us that does not ever dry out. It was that joy in the bird that made her chirp in such a pure joy.

2).It is correct that Hinduism does classify things as virtuous, or bad or sinful just as any other philosophy in world. But that is a statement borne of something larger. And that is - Hinduism does not grant independent existence to evil/ sinful act as other philosophies do. For other philosophies evil is something separate of good. In Hindu thought, if I may draw an analogy, just as two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen each sacrifice their individualities to integrate and form water, man has the capability to command evil that he faces within himself to combine and re-integrate into the good that was constituted of it. For this reasoning, India has a saying that evil cannot win over good ever. It is because, thoose who know the way of the dharma know the yogic path of neutralising the atomic evil in themselves by the method of self-sacrifice and recombining into their parent compound of goodness. You may not agree with this philosophy, but I think it is a pretty powerful concept and if we can find a way within ourselves to be able to let dharma guide us this way we will be able to define for ourselves what is a broken down matter in us and what is not and then find a way of rebuilding the majestic structure from the rubbles in which the human personality today lies.

3). If you get the idea of dharma, then you will understand that a person who find dharma in himself and then finds the way to recombine his broken matter into the orginal matter, he will attain a personality so integrated that he will not need the support of sentiments to find a partner in life. He will then actually find the life partner made for him based on emotions and very quicly find a way to turn the somatic love into psychological and then spiritual love. So, this may not exactly be dating as per the Western concept, but none-the-less it was freedom to choose your partner. Sita did marry Rama by her choice. Her parents did not force her. It id modern Hindu that is so confused that he has gone down into the area where he has allowed his atavistic force/ the force of the forefathers command him. He has forgotten that this force is rotten and dead when placed inside his mind. He has to find a way to remove this force (if I expand further, this force is the parental force as well that teaches conservative ways or ways that bind you)from his rational self and re-establish it in his heart, where it will become dharma. Today, this force lives in the minds of the Hindus and is adharma. So, you see so many social evils in india today borne of so-called traditions. However, the Western concept would not be approved of for the reason that dating does not strive to flower beyond being somatic love and so it leads to nothing more than a love for the world ONLY. There is nothing wrong with worldly pleasures at all. The problem is when you get lost within them and forget what your dharma screams inside you. Dating in its current form is nothing more than a pleasure-seeking practice whereby you are not strving to yield something higher out of it. In ancient India it would not have been looked down upon but looked at with pity for its ignorance and short-sightedness. But modern Hindus try and prohibit it for the reason they have their parental force living in their brains as adharma and so they have forgotten that they need not react to it. When you react to something in life, it attaches itself to you. However, compassion is one emotion that lets you look and anything in the world and would not affect you. But for that one needs to grow oneself in that direction. PLease bear in mind I am not implying a spiritual path, but a very much somatic path where by you find ways to integrate sentiments into emotions.

 

I apologize for not being able to write in a more neutral gender tone as I was in a hurry to write. It is weekend and I have gotta go and pick my kid up from the nursery. So, please forgive me for any male bias in my sentences.