Oldest Religion of the World
Hinduism, the religion of over a billion people, is the world’s oldest religion and probably the most confusing one to non Hindus. Some say it isn’t even a religion, more a way of life.
Hindus themselves call it the Sanatan Dharma, the eternal tradition. So what is Hinduism?
Hinduism is the world’s oldest active religion. It’s the result of the merging of the ancient in this valley civilization and the nomads that came into India around one thousand five hundred B.C., some scholars say, could even go back many more thousands of years.
But we won’t have to deepen the dates because dates in Hinduism are very, very controversial. But one thing is certain. Hinduism is old.
Hindu and India even come from the same word. Sanskrit was the ancient language of the Hindus, and the Sanskrit name for the Indus River is Sindhu. The ancient Persians who sat across the Indus tended to switch their S’s to h.s. So Sindhu became Hindu. So the people living across the river became Hindus.
Hinduism has a long, long history, but we will be focusing on just the core beliefs of Hindus. Hindus are a diverse group, so are strict, dedicating their lives prayer while others don’t believe in any gods, but still follow Hindu philosophy to make things easier to understand.
Core beliefs of Hindus
Let’s break Hinduism down into seven core beliefs. Hindus believe in a universal soul known as Brahman, a formless, genderless source of all reality. Brahman is the universe and the material that makes up the universe. It’s an intriguing concept, but think of Brahman as an ocean and everything else as drops propelling out of that ocean separate for a time, but still the same thing that makes sense to belief in an immortal individual soul.
In Hinduism, souls are known as Atman, actions of the soul have effects on that in next life. When you die, your soul moves to another new body. This is called transmigration, the kind of body the soul inhabits.
Next is determined by Karma tree. Karma is action usually good or bad actions that affect society for Hindus. Karmic actions in the past affect us today and our actions today affect our souls future for belief in moksha. The goal in Hindu life is to somehow get back to Brahman.
If a Hindu can do this, they will be freed from the cycle of life and death. This is called Moksha. You can achieve moksha by realising your oneness with Brahman. For this reason, Hindus pray lead us from the unreal to the real.
Hindu Belief in the Vedas
The vedas are Hindu sacred books of knowledge. There are four Vedas Hindus believe, that all four were divinely revealed to ancient Hindu sages.
Hindu Belief in Cyclical Time
There are no beginning’s or endings. Time is a series of cycles. Each cycle containing four ages Satyuga, Treta Yuga, Dwapar Yuga and Kalyuga. Together, the four ages totally about 4,3 million years! At the end of each cycle, declining human morality leads to the total destruction of reality. Hindus believe that we are in the fourth and final Kaliyuga.
Hindu Belief in Dharma
Dharma is a difficult word to translate to English. Proper behavior is the best that we could come up with. Dharma maintains balance in the universe as long as everything in the universe like animals, plants and humans follow their dharma and everything will be fine.
If they break from the Dharma, though, things will be not fine. Each being has its own drama, a lion’s drama is to kill and eat antelope, a king’s dream is to rule. For Humans, their specific dharma is usually based on their age and their caste.
Priest would have a very different dharma than a young merchant, for example. So those are the seven core beliefs of Hinduism. With them you can understand the Hindu mindset.
Hinduism is a non-profit Organisation
Unlike Christianity or Islam, Hinduism is a non-profit organization. There is no Jesus or Mohammed. For Hindus, there is no Bible, Koran or Torah. Instead, they have a bunch and we mean a bunch of different sacred texts.
The four Vedas form the basis of the Hindu faith. So let’s take a look at them. One The Rigveda. The Rigveda is a collection of songs that praise and discuss ideas like Truth, Reality and the Universe, along with discussions on war, weddings and rituals to the aggravate the usual way.
The covers stuff such as sacrificial rites and rituals treat the Saam Veda. The Saam literally means sweet song that destroys sorrow. It is mostly songs dedicated to praising gods. It’s different than the rest of the Vedas because it’s set to music for the attack of them them.
Upanishads, which are like a sequel that makes the original vedas more valid. They were probably written down between 800 B.C. and 500 B.C. during a time when some Hindus started to question the Vedas, their ideas became the Upanishads.
Upanishads are books on philosophy like we would expect from Plato or Aristotle. They’re all about questioning doubt, debate and finding the answers to life’s difficult questions. A theme in the Upanishads is that people are not their minds or bodies or egos, but they’re atman. Your soul is you. Everything else is unreal and temporary.
After the holy texts like the Vedas and the Upanishads are other, less divine but still important texts. These include stuff like the Puranas, the Bhagwatgita and the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.
Purana and Holy Books
The Puranas are like encyclopaedias of Hindu beliefs. There are eighteen well known Puranas. The Purana cover things from yoga to army organization to taxation to the caste system to hell gods and everything in between.
The Bhagavad Gita, Gita for Short is one of Hinduism’s most important texts, the gita takes place on a battlefield where Arjuna, a great warrior, refuses to fight, Krishna steps in to urge Arjuna to fight. And their discussion covers things such as Dharma and how to live your best life.
Arjuna eventually fought after Lord Krishna taught him the truth about Dharma. As a member of the warrior caste Arjuna’s, Dharma was to fight against evil.
The lesson of the Geeta is that everyone faces difficult choices, but they must act on them according to their dharma, no matter how unpleasant.
Ramayana and the Mahabharata
Along with all these philosophical texts, Hinduism has to action packed epics that Ramayana and the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, the earlier of the two texts, tells the story of Prince Rama in the epic.
You find out about his 14 year long exile, the abduction of his wife Sita, his battle with the evil demon Ravana and Hanuman.
The second epic, the Mahabharata, is the longest poem in the world, five times the length of the Bible and eight times the length of the Iliad and Odyssey combined, it rivalled any soap opera you’ve ever seen when it comes to drama, murder, betrayal, love, love, murder and giant battles, the Mahabharata has it all.
Theme of Ramayana and the Mahabharata
The theme running through the Ramayana and the Mahabharata is that Dharma must be followed for society to function. In Hinduism, there are four golds a person should aim for to have a good life. The first of these is Dharma, followed by Artha, the pursuit of prosperity and good reputation, karma, pleasure both in body and in mind, and a moksha release from the cycles of rebirth.
Hindus should practice Artha and Karma with Dharma in order to achieve moksha. There are also six temptation’s Hindus should try and avoid karma, lust and materialism.
Karma Philosophy
This karma is different from the good karma mentioned above. By following their dharma and avoiding these six temptations, a Hindu can break the cycle of rebirth and have their soul merge back into Brahman. But even though everything comes from Brahman who is the one real thing in Hinduism, Hindus do, after all, have thousands of gods.
Trinity of Hindu Religion
So let’s take a look at them first. There’s Brahma, the creator. He created everything in the universe, but he is not the universe itself because that’s Brahman. They aren’t the same thing. That last letter changed a lot. Apparently he has four heads. The heads face each of the four directions to represent the four Vedas, which he created and the four Yugas. He also holds a book which represents knowledge.
Vishnu, the preserver is the second member of the Hindu Trinity. He preserves the world created by Brahma until it is eventually destroyed by Shiva. He holds a discus, which he used to cut down anyone that tries to mess with his dharma, along with a conch, which symbolizes victory and the five elements.
Vishnu has many, many avatars such as Krishna or Rama, who he uses to defend Dharma on Earth. He rides a giant eagle named Garuda. Vishnu has two consorts, the goddess Lakshmi and Devi, who is the Earth goddess, and Lakshmi is the goddess of good fortune and wealth.
The third one is Shiva, the destroyer, the third member of the Hindu Trinity. It’s his job to destroy the universe in order to prepare for its renewal at the end of each cycle of time.
The most identifiable of his features is his third eye, which almost always keeps closed. If he does open it and you are in front of him, then you will have your face melt it off when not on making existence.
Shiva enjoys long walks with his bowl named Nandy. At the end of the Kali Yuga, the fourth age of the world, Shiva will perform a dance that destroys the universe. Parvati or Satti is Shiva consort. Shiva also has two sons, Kartikeya and Ganesha.
Ganesha is worshipped as the remover of obstacles and Murugan is the God of war. Ganesh holds a very special place in the heart of Hindus due to him being that remover of obstacles, the elephant head is the most obvious clue to identifying him.
He was actually born with a human head, but after Shiva cut that one off, he kind of had to make do with an elephant.
If you’re a Christian or Muslim, you’re aware that your religion has a bunch of different denominations like Catholics or Protestants, Sunni and Shia. Hinduism has four major denominations, some of which have their own subdivisions. Vaishnava and others primarily worship Vishnu and Shaiva primarily worship Shiva and Smarts follow sacred texts like the Puranas, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata rather than the Vedas.
They worship five gods and goddesses Ganesha, Durga, Surya, Shiva and Avatars of Vishnu. Shaakts worshipped the goddess Devi. Devi as the ultimate and eternal reality like a feminine Brahmin. Even though there are all these variations and more, the core beliefs of Hindus remain mostly the same.
Hindus believe that Dharma keeps the balance in the universe. If the scales between good and evil start tipping towards evil, then something needs to intervene to fix the universe’s dharma. This divine intervention is known as an avatar.
The literal meaning of the word avatar is descent. Avatars are gods that descend to Earth to intervene whenever help is needed to restore Dharma. For example, when the Earth was dragged underneath the ocean, Vishnu descended to Earth as the avatar a and dragged the earth back out. In other cases, fissioning was born on Earth as a human avatar like Rama or Krishna, where he spent his avatar life fixing Dharma.
So the caste system, if you only know one thing about Hinduism, this is probably it. People see it as an oppressive system that locks people in place based on their birth and for a huge part of history. That’s all it’s been, unfortunately.
Let’s do a quick explanation of what the caste system is in Hinduism. There are four castes or classes that you can be born into. There’s the Brahmin, the priest, the Kshatriya, the Warriors, the traders and the manual labourers.
The main basis for the caste system can be found in the back. Veda and the Rigveda. Krishna says in the Gita, I have created a four fold system in order to distinguish among one’s qualities and functions.
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