hinduism jouranl 2

For your Hinduism journal, I would like for you to answer the following questions:

1. What were your expectations of this religion? Before we started studying Hinduism, did you have any previous knowledge or experience with this religion?

2. What were the most interesting things you learned about this religious tradition?

3. Was there anything about this religion that really surprised you? Or that defied your expectations?

4. What is one thing that you appreciate or respect about this religion? This could be an attitude, a practice, a belief, a ritual, etc.

5. Which of the two readings did you find the most interesting? Why? What did you learn about the religion from the reading? Was there anything that you agreed or disagreed with in the reading?

6. What would you like to learn more about in this religion? Or what questions do you still have about this religion?

Your journal should be at least 600 words long and contain at least two direct quotations from the readings(one from each reading) along with the page number (if available). There are no right or wrong answers for this assignment. You will be graded on the completeness of your journal and whether you followed the assignment instructions. The journal is not due until we finish studying Hinduism, but you are welcome to start working on it as we are learning about it. Hi, everyone, so we are going to get started on Hinduism, Hinduism is going to be our first religious tradition that we look at in this course, and that’s because, of course, it is the oldest of the traditions that we’re studying. We’re going to go somewhat in chronological order throughout the semester. But really, it’s our course is going to be divided up into Eastern religions and Western or monotheistic religious traditions. So we’re starting with Hinduism because it is incredibly ancient. It’s one of the oldest religious traditions that is still practiced in the world. That’s still a lived religion. Right? People still practice it. People are still Hindu. So there are other older religious traditions, but not many that are still sort of thriving alive and vibrant like Hinduism is. So we’re going to start with just a little bit of an introduction to the religious tradition of Hinduism. So I have an image here that we’ll talk a little bit about, and then I have a quote. So for each of the religious traditions, I start with a quote from one of the sacred texts of that religious tradition. That’s sort of a good jumping off point to sort of have a little taste, a little intro into what this tradition is all about, what sort of maybe one of its central teachings or theological principles is something like that. So for Hinduism, I chose this quote here, the quote that you can see on the screen, it says, The truth is one, though it is known by many names. This is a quote from the most sacred text of Hinduism, which is known as the Vedas. Hinduism has many different sacred texts, but the Vedas are really the they are the oldest, the most ancient sacred text and really the most theologically important sacred text. And if you think about this quote, right, what do you think this quote might mean? The truth is one, though it is known by many names, this is really a central teaching in the religious tradition of Hinduism. There is an affirmation of truth, right? There is one higher reality. There is one higher purpose. There is one higher truth that really permeates the entire world, the entire universe. But it’s known by many names. So there’s not just one name for truth. There’s not just one path towards truth in this religious tradition. So one thing to keep in mind as we start learning about Hinduism is that Hinduism is a religious tradition that manages to sort of balance both unity and diversity. So there is a unity of truth, right? The truth is, one, there is one sort of central reality, central purpose, central meaning to existence. But there is a diversity of understandings of that truth. That truth is called many names. It’s understood in many different fashions. It’s sought after in many different ways. So this this balancing of unity and diversity, which is something that that Hinduism does very well. It’s one of the strengths of Hinduism, as we’ll see, you know, as we go through the course, different religious traditions have things that they do very well and things that they struggle with as well. So Hinduism really, really does a great job of as as Houston Smith, who’s a famous writer, a scholar of religion, said Hinduism is great at recognizing that people are different, but not everyone is the same. People have different interests. They have different passions. They have different strengths and weaknesses. And Hinduism is sort of tolerant and flexible enough to accommodate that. So as we’ll see in Hinduism, there are many different ways to do Hinduism. There are many different ways to be a good Hindu. There are many different ways to understand Hinduism. There is not one central, you know, one central anything in Hinduism. There’s no central authority, there’s no central leader. There’s no single central text. All of that in Hinduism. There are many right there. There are lots of different ways to do Hinduism, to believe in Hinduism, to be a Hindu. So there’s this emphasis on diversity or the acceptance of diversity is very strong within Hinduism. The truth is one, though, it is known by many names. Right? So this unity and diversity is kept in balance. Hinduism is an incredibly diverse religious tradition. Many people probably know or have heard that Hinduism is polytheistic. A lot of times my students don’t have that much background in Hinduism, but one thing that they maybe they’ve heard before or they think they understand from from learning about it, reading about it beforehand is that there are many different gods, right. That it’s a polytheistic religious tradition. And you can see looking at this image. Right. This is an image that a lot of people would automatically associate with Hinduism. Oh, yes, there’s lots of different gods and goddesses. And yes, that is true of Hinduism. There are many different gods and goddesses within Hinduism. And actually, well, we’ll talk about over the course of this unit, there is an official number for how many gods and goddesses there are in Hinduism. And that official number is three hundred and thirty million. So there’s lots of them, right? Lots of different gods and goddesses and people within Hinduism. They worship different gods, different goddesses. They are devoted to to a wide variety of gods and goddesses. So there is an acceptance of diversity. There’s not one, you know, one specific God or goddess that you have to worship or have to be devoted to. And there’s not only one way to worship a God or goddess, right? There’s many ways to show your love and devotion to a particular God or goddess. So Hinduism is really this very tolerant, this very flexible religious tradition. And because of that, a lot of times scholars don’t like to even call it by a single name. They like to say that it’s more of a collection of religious traditions or religious practices and beliefs that that all sort of loosely fall under this term, Hinduism, to try to kind of keep keep some of that put together as we go through this. Right. We’re going to look at, of course, some of the most mainstream beliefs and practices among Hindus, although Hinduism varies greatly. Right. There are lots of different types of Hinduism. So we’re going to look at some of the more mainstream beliefs. We’ll talk about different areas where Hindus disagree, have different styles, different practices, according to different traditions. But as we move forward. Right. Is important to keep this balance in mind that that Hinduism excels at, which is that Hinduism affirms that there is one truth, there is one reality, but it’s known by many names. So different Hindus have different ways of understanding that truth. They call that truth by different names and they strive to understand that truth in different ways. OK. So I hope you are now interested and excited to learn about Hinduism. So the next thing we’ll talk about is the historical overview, the history of the Hindu tradition.All right, so today we’re going to talk about the history of Hinduism, focusing on really the origins of Hinduism, where and when in the world did this religious tradition start? So if you remember from the previous lecture, the introduction to Hinduism, Hinduism is an incredibly ancient religion. It’s one of the most ancient religions in the world and it’s the most ancient of the ones that we study in this course. So its origins, right. What we know about sort of how Hinduism started is a little bit more murkier because a little bit less precise than all the other religious traditions that we’re going to study. Right. And it’s simply because Hinduism is so incredibly ancient and it doesn’t have like a single founder or as we’ll see, a single text. So to talk about the history, the origins of Hinduism, we’re going to look at the civilizations that went into the making of this religious traditions. We’re going to kind of talk about sort of the broad historical trends and civilizations that we believe went into the making of this religious tradition. So so that’s what we’re going to start talking about in terms of the historical overview of Hinduism. So the first thing there’s more to start with this one first. So really, Hinduism starts in the Indus Valley civilization. So most of you might know already that Hinduism is the religion of India. It is the indigenous religion of India. Most most Indians today are Hindu, although definitely not all Indians are very religiously diverse country. But Hinduism did originate in India, or we would more precisely say the Indian subcontinent. That would include today the modern nation state of India as well as Pakistan because of those two used to be, you know, used to be one country. So that entire geographical region. Right. The the Indian subcontinent. So what we know about the origins of Hinduism, we we start with the oldest civilization that we know of in the Indian subcontinent, which is the Indus Valley civilization. So the Indus Valley civilization is an incredibly ancient civilization that we don’t know a lot about that existed in India as far back as 2500 BCE. Again, we don’t know too many specifics about this culture, about the civilization. We really the most that we know about them comes from the uncovering of two different cities. One is named Harakah and one is called Mahendradatta. One is in the the country of India today. One is just over the border in Pakistan. And the image right below me is actually of I believe this one is of Harrap. So it’s these ancient archaeological sites that were uncovered really only in the early 20th century that showed how advanced this civilization was. It’s known as the Indus Valley civilization. And that really just means right. This is the indigenous civilization of the Indian subcontinent. But the people themselves, the culture themselves are known as the dosis. And I have that all. I’ll just put a couple of the bullet points up here. So the indigenous people of the Indian subcontinent are known as the dosis with the Dawson people. And these are the people who created this Indus Valley civilization. If you look at the picture below me, right. You might be able to see this archaeological site that it looks like kind of like there’s a grid pattern there. And that’s because these cities, they were actually cities with thousands of people living in them and they had city planning. They had, you know, houses that were built on grids. They had, you know, sewage sort of, you know, water coming in and out of the city. So it was a very advanced civilization. It was incredibly advanced civilization for the time. And they, of course, did have a religious tradition. They there have been found these like these figurines kind of these small clay dolls that look similar to some of the Hindu gods and goddesses that are worshipped today. So, you know, historians, archaeologists assume that this was somehow a part of their religious tradition. So they did have a religious tradition that seemed to focus on these God and goddess like figures. And they also had a written language. They have found, you know, these stone tablets that have kind of a hieroglyphic style, a pictographic style writing on them. But no one’s been able to translate that that written language yet because it’s so ancient, it’s been lost to history. It’s not a contemporary language that anyone speaks or understands. So the. Those are a bit of a mystery, and, you know, historians and archaeologists hope to learn more about this civilization, more about this culture, but all we really know about them is that it was this very advanced civilization. They have these large cities on the earth, very large for that time and place. And they had a written language and they had a religious tradition that most likely was polytheistic. Right. Meaning that they worship many different gods because of these these figurines, these small figurines that have been found. So that’s kind of the first element or ingredient of what later becomes Hinduism is this ancient indigenous culture and people of the Indian subcontinent. The next step in this this sort of progress, this process are the arrival of a people called the Aryans. So most of you have probably heard this word before. You’ve heard people talk about the Aryans or Aryan people. And unfortunately, most likely the context that you’ve heard it in has something to do with Hitler, with Nazis, with white supremacists, with white nationalists. Right. All types of horrible ideologies and, you know, ideas like that. So what’s important to know is that there really were a historical people that archaeologists call the Aryans. But what modern day either Nazis or white supremacist white nationalists, whoever those folks are. Right. What they think about this term and what they’ve sort of changed this term to mean really has no historical or archaeological connection with the real Aryans, with the actual people that are known as the Aryans. And we’ll go we can go a little into that. History is kind of a complicated history. We’ll just say that. So the Aryans archaeologists believe that these these people called the Aryans or the areas they came from somewhere in Central Asia, somewhere probably near to modern day Iran or Afghanistan, somewhere in that region of the world, and then eventually migrated south, migrated down into the Indian subcontinent and ended up sort of, you know, merging and mingling with the Dorson culture to create a new culture. The reason that that term became sort of the twisted, strange, false idea that it is today in terms of white supremacy and white nationalism and things like that, of course, goes back to Hitler. It goes back to Nazi ideology. Basically, some fragments with Aryan symbols on them were found by archaeologists in some parts of Europe. There was an original theory that the Aryans had conquered the Dorson people and that they then they had come and conquered the early European people, Germans for some reason. Hitler, for some reason decided that they were the ancestors of the Aryans so that they were the ancestors of this conquering people. And that’s how the idea kind of got twisted and changed. But as you can see, it really has no historical or archaeological connection to the real actual Aryan people who were from Central Asia and migrated south down into the Indian subcontinent. So important to separate that term from the sort of falsehood that it’s become to the the actual historical archaeological evidence for this this group of people. We don’t know that much about the Aryans other than that they probably live somewhere north of India and then they probably migrated down into India. We know that there was this other people that came from farther north because of the language that they brought with them. They did bring a different written language with them. That language is called Sanskrit. So you can see it down here. One of the next bullet points, it’s a written language called Sanskrit. And Sanskrit is the it’s an Indo-European language, meaning that it has linguistic similarities to both some European languages as well as languages of the Indian subcontinent. So we know that it came from a people that lived closer to where European languages were spoken. Right. So it’s it’s a people that came from somewhere north, somewhere farther west, and then came down into the Indian subcontinent. And whoever the Aryans were, they made their way down. They started to intermix to intermingle with the Dorson people and the language that they brought with them. The Sanskrit language does end up becoming the same. Language of Hinduism, so the Aryan people definitely had a strong influence on the religious beliefs, the religious practices of the Indus Valley civilization of that Dorson culture. So the idea is really that when we look at the origin of Hinduism, we want to look at the merging of these two different people, the merging of these two different cultures. Right. We have this indigenous Dorson culture and then we have this Aryan culture. And again, as you can tell, this is all kind of historical theory and speculation. We don’t have a lot of concrete knowledge about these people, but there are some theories that the Dorson people, as I mentioned, the dossing people were likely polytheistic. They worship many different gods because of the figurines that had been found in Harapan Dodaro. And there are theories that the Aryans were monotheistic. They worshipped one God, one supreme God. And that’s because of theories that the Aryans that actually some of the Aryans ended up migrating farther west and became the ancestors or became Zoroastrians, which is another ancient monotheistic religion. And that’s something if you want to know more about, you can take my scripture class where we talk about Zoroastrianism. But anyways, there are theories that the Aryans were more of a monotheistic culture. So when these two cultures start to intermix right, when they start to share ideas, share beliefs, share religious practices, that that merging gives rise to the early forms of Hinduism, that that’s a way that we can understand really this balance, this flexibility that exists within Hinduism, that on the one hand, Hinduism affirms this unity, this oneness of God, oneness of truth, oneness of reality, and on the other hand, is still very flexible and accepting of diversity, diversity of ideas, diversity of gods and goddesses, diversity of practices. And that maybe that can be explained because of this merging, this intermingling between the Dorson people and the Aryan people. But really, it’s still sort of lies in the realm of historical theory, archaeological theory. But that’s all we can say is kind of the origins of Hinduism in terms of a specific date. Right. As you can tell. Right. This is very ancient cultures. This is more sort of looking at long term progress of how Hinduism gave rise or how these the situation gave rise to Hinduism. But in terms of like a specific starting date for Hinduism, a lot of people look to the Vedas. So that’s my next large bullet point here. The Vedas, the Vedas are the most ancient and most sacred text of Hinduism. Hinduism has multiple sacred texts. There is no there’s not a single Bible or Koran or Torah. Right. Not like some of our later religious traditions. Hinduism has many different sacred texts. Hinduism doesn’t really have one of anything has many of most things, including sacred texts or scriptures. But the Vedas are the most ancient and definitely the most the most sacred. The Vedas, though, should be noted, the Beatles aren’t a single text, right? It’s not like you can just buy the Vedas and sit down and read the Vedas. The Beatles are really a collection of texts. If you were to put them all into book form, it would be probably about 100 hundred books with a couple hundred pages each in them. So it’s still an incredibly large collection of texts, of stories, of hymns. But the Vedas are a good starting point for when. When can we say that Hinduism started? Hinduism started, as far as we know. Right. We sort of date it to the oldest copies that we have of the Vedas and some of the oldest Veda’s copies of the Beta’s data, about 1500 BCE. So if we wanted to give Hinduism a starting point, we could say that Hinduism started around fifteen hundred B.C. But of course, Hinduism is most likely much, much older than that. Right. By the time sacred texts get written down, they’ve usually been passed down orally for hundreds of years. Right. People have told, you know, their their children, their grandchildren, the stories, the prayers, the hymns, the songs that eventually get written down into sacred scriptures. So, of course, Hinduism is much, much older than that. But in terms of a firm specific date, we can say that that Hinduism, in its official sense, started around 1500 BCE with the publication of the Vedas. And the Beatles, as I mentioned, are the oldest and they’re the most sacred text of Hinduism. Hindus are very different, as we mentioned in the last lecture. There are many different ways to be Hindu, there are many different gods and goddesses that Hindus worship, but the videos are sort of seen as a unifying factor. If you believe that the Vedas are sacred, if you see the Vedas as a sacred text, then you are Hindu. You are a part of this family, this collection of beliefs and religious practices. The Vedas were written in Sanskrit and as you mentioned, this is the language that the Aryans brought with them. It’s an Indo-European language and it is the sacred language of Hinduism. Sanskrit is no longer a spoken language. It’s a language that that people learn in order to to read the Vedas and other Hindu sacred texts. But it’s no longer like a live spoken religion, sorry, the spoken language. And then the the next bullet point that I have here is the Upanishads. The Upanishads are the next sort of layer of sacred texts. As I mentioned, invader’s are very old. They they focus a lot on different gods and goddesses, different rituals that were practiced for for many hundreds of years in Hinduism. But the Vedas themselves are actually not that popular anymore. It’s kind of a strange contradiction for people in other religious traditions where the sacred text is very important. There’s only one sacred text and everybody kind of reads it. The Vedas, although they are the oldest and they are the most sacred text within Hinduism, they are the least read. They are not easy reads. They contain rituals, they contain hymns. Sometimes they contain phrases to gods that are not necessarily worshipped anymore. So they’re a very important ancient layer of Hinduism and a sacred layer of Hinduism, but they’re not actually that popular among Hindus. Today, many more Hindus read another sacred text called the Upanishads. The punishments were written about a thousand years after the Beatles, or they were written down at least about a thousand years after the Vedas and the Upanishads are much more philosophical in nature. They take the form of conversations, usually between a father and son or a teacher and student, where the father or the teacher tries to teach a philosophical lesson, a lesson to teach sort of the essence, the core meaning of Hinduism. So Hinduism has this sort of ritualistic and devotional aspect to it, but it also has a strong philosophical aspect to it. And we’re going to talk in the next lecture a lot more about sort of what are the main philosophical ideas of Hinduism and how one is supposed to go about trying to understand those philosophical ideas. So that’s what the Upanishads are all about. So just important to know those two different sacred texts, the Vedas and the Upanishads. And then the last thing that I have down here is just sort of how many Hindus there are in the world today. So Hinduism is an incredibly large religious tradition. It’s the third most populous religious tradition in the world. Christianity is the most popular religion in the world. Islam is second and then Hinduism is third. So there’s about somewhere between nine hundred million and a billion Hindus in the world. Although Hinduism did start in the Indian subcontinent, Hinduism now, of course, is a global religion, right? It’s one of our world religions. Hindus live in every single continent around the world. Right. Hinduism has been exported to many, many different parts of the world, all different parts of the world. So it is a global religion. It is a thriving religion today. And I think that you will enjoy learning more about the beliefs and ideas of Hinduism, which is what we’re going to do next. All right, so the next thing we’re going to talk about with Hinduism are the myths of origins and for the myths of origins. We’re going to be talking about how Hinduism views the origin of the world, the origin of the universe of all that is, as well as the origin of humankind. So those are the two things that we’re going to talk about in this lecture. So I put the first there we go, the first bullet point up there. So the very first thing that we need to talk about when we start talking about what Hinduism is and what its beliefs are, is the concept, the idea of Brahman, OK, Brahman or all. I’ll say it, you know, in my non great, not great accent, just Brahman is that of Brahman or Brahman. So Brahman, I will start by saying, is God in Hinduism capital G God Brahman is if we can you know, we’re going to start by using this term and then we’re going to kind of take it apart. But Brahman is God, Brahman is the capital G God, the high supreme God in Hinduism. In a way, Brahman is the origin of everything. Brahman is the origin of Hinduism. Brahman is the origin of the universe itself, of everything that we see. And as we will see as we get further and talking about what Hinduism is, we will see Brahman is also the goal. Brahman is the ending point of Hinduism. So in Hinduism, everything begins and ends with Brahman or Brahman. So Brahman. As I said, we can start by saying, is God the capital G hi God in Hinduism? But when we use that term, it’s important to ask ourselves what we mean when we say, God, you know, what are we talking about when we say that is God, he or she is God? It’s a question that we don’t really ask ourselves enough, right. How do you define that term? What is God? What do you mean by the word God? And it’s important for us to think about that term and think about what that term means. Because when we say that Brahman is God, it means certain things, but it also doesn’t mean certain things. So if you are more familiar with a Judeo-Christian tradition, sort of Judeo Christian or monotheistic background. Right. If you when you think of the word God, you are more familiar with the concepts of God from Judaism, Christianity or Islam, then you need to understand that your idea of God is different from Brahma. The Hindu idea of Brahman is different from the monotheistic or Abrahamic idea of God. Right. And what are some of the differences? Well, first of all, Brahman is not is not. You could never draw a picture of Brahman. Rahmon does not have a form, does not have any type of, you know, similarity to the human body connection, physical connection to humans. You could never depict Brahman. You could never draw a picture of Brahman. There are in Hinduism. There are lots of images of the gods and goddesses. The picture right underneath me is a picture of the God, Vishnu. So you can draw all of the many, many different gods and goddesses in Hinduism, but you can’t draw Broman, right? Roman has no physical form, has no depiction, you know. No, no physical reality. In that sense, Brahman is is thought of as more of a presence and energy or a force. Brahman is not in a particular location. Right. You can’t like point. So there’s Brahman, Brahman is is viewed as being everywhere. Right. That there is nowhere that you can look. That is not Rahmon. Rahmon is is also oftentimes called ultimate reality, hyperreality the divine ground of all being. If you think back to our first lecture, that quote that we have that said, the truth is, one, that truth is Brahman. Brahman is one Brahman. Is everything right. So Brahman is God, but it’s not a God you can depict. It’s not a God that sort of has a, you know, a physical form or anything like that. Brahman is also not a he or she in in some other religious traditions. Some are more or less comfortable calling God typically a right, calling out a father or or a he rabon. You cannot use gender pronouns. Rahman is not you know, is not a man or a woman is not a he or she. And really Hindus say that Rahman is beyond all human categories. Right. Everything that you that you say to compare Brahman to something from our world is not appropriate because Brahman is beyond all that is beyond all sort of human categories and. Labels and terms and things like that, so Brahman is more of this this force, this energy, the spirit that pervades the entire universe and Bahaman is is the source of the entire universe. Hindus believe that that everything that we see, everything in the natural world sort of emanated out from Brahman Brahman Rahman. Is this sort of eternal divine source that that I want to use the term create. But it’s not really the best term that sort of emanates out arises out of Brownjohn. So our entire universe comes from Brockmann. Our entire universe is sort of saturated, permeated with the spirit of Brahman, the spirit of God. And Hindus believe that the goal of Hinduism is actually to return to Brahma and to return to God. So hopefully by now you’re really confused. You have no idea what Rahmon is. And that’s a good thing. That’s the way Hindus also think of Brahman. You can see the quote that I have here. This is a quote from one of the Upanishads, and it says that Brahman is what cannot be spoken with words. So ultimately, Brahman can never be perfectly described with words. We can try to understand who Brahman is or what Brahman is. We can we can use words to try to describe it. But ultimately, it’s beyond all words. And these are some of the words I have down underneath the quotes, some of the words that that Hindus use, that Brahman is the one or spirit or ultimate reality. And sometimes Hindus also use that word God. But usually it’s something more along these lines. Higher, higher reality, ultimate reality, divine ground of all being the one spirit, ultimate spirit, something like that. So the the goal really, we could say at its core, the goal of Hinduism is to understand and experience Rama, to understand the one the true nature of reality that permeates everything in the universe. OK, and hopefully that’s confusing. Hopefully it also makes a little bit of sense and we’ll continue talking about Brahman. But the idea is that it is a confusing concept, right? Because we cannot perfectly describe Brahman with words. I we we use we can use all these words like God, like Spirit, you know, any any type of God that you can think of. Right. And any way you think of God, everything that you say about God is not quite right. Right. Because there’s always that gap. There’s always that difference between that which is human and that which is God, that which is finite and that which is infinite right there. They’re never aligned with each other. There’s always that gap between them. So we as human beings, we as finite beings, we can try our best to describe God or to describe Brahman. But it’s always doomed to fail because the only thing that we have to describe God or to describe Brahman are our words are human words. Right. And the idea in Hinduism and in all religions really is that, of course, God came first and human words came much, much later. So every word that we use is finite. Every word that we use, we fill that word with meaning from our own world. When I think of the word good, when I think of the word perfect, when I think of the word love, I know what those words mean. But I know what they mean because I know what they’ve meant in this world right in my life. And that’s not going to be the same as what what God is. Right. The love of this world is different from the love of God.

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