Video Transcript: Hinduism Lecture 1

Today we cover Hinduism, we start it at least, cover Hinduism, couldn't do that in one entire day. But we're going to do our cover our introduction. And I remind  you of the schema that I had introduced last time in which the ultimate Hindu  view, or one that's going to develop, as we trace that is that everything is divine,  the divine encompasses all things, and what in the world that we experience of  things that are not divine, because they come in being passed away, they  change, and so on, that that's the world of our experience. And that's called  Maya. The illusion, because it makes us think, leads us to think that this is what  is real, and this is all there is when in fact, the being of these things is not like  them. The being of all these things is Brahman Atman, the divine.it is not a thing. But the being, that is in everything, the Beingness. Now, Hinduism, of course,  arose in India, arose out of religious traditions that are older, and that were very  dualistic. And did not at all, subscribe to this schema. The pagan religions that  were already there were ones who had had gods of the earth and the sky in the  storms, the usual panoply of concentrations of the divine in gods. And it was  centered around an idea of sin, misdeeds, how do I make up for my misdeeds?  How, how is it that the divine will not hold me hold me responsible, or punish me for things I've done wrong. And so there arose in this in this pagan religion, a  priesthood, a group of people devoted to interceding between you and the divine between the average Joe and the divine for forgiveness of sin. And the priests  there had a practice of drinking what they called Soma, it's a, an alcoholic  beverages, they would sit around, they'd get high on this, and they would have  hallucinations, and go into trances, and come out with information about the  divine. They believe strongly in magic, in what I explained last time, is kind of  that leftover divinity that's free floating, and not concentrated in this God or that  and, and that the priests knew the mantras, which are the formulas for getting  hold of that magic and making it work for them. So they had a system of  sacrifices. What do you do if you've done something wrong, you go to the priest, you tell him, You give him so much money, you could get a sacrifice together,  and you make the sacrifice and the priest intercedes for you, and prays for you  and so on. But it expanded into more than that. Because the priests were  viewed as having access to the maya in to this leftover divine power, they could  do you big favors. There was an old saying, in India, that the because the priests had access to the gods, the priests were gods. I mean, that's, that's what he  that's who you have to curry favor with. And so what arose was that elaborate  practice of sacrifice in which people could come and ask for things they really  wanted, say, the priest, make her fall in love with me. I need a really good crop  this year. I'm trying to work this business deal, make it work out for me,  whatever. Until you and this and they were, the sacrifices were arranged in the  kind of hierarchical order, so that you could if you did the last one, the greatest  one, you're guaranteed to get what you want. Guaranteed, but it required the  slaughter of 400 horses. And then, of course, if you slaughtered the 400 horses 

that you are wealthy enough to be able to do that, and you paid off the priests,  and you didn't get what you wanted the song We must have done something  wrong somewhere off to do it again. 

Well, that's the kind of thing that was going on there. But there was also  reflection on religion of reflection on the divine on the nature of the Divine going  on among the priests. And they began to write hymns called Vedas. Some of  them go back a long way, some people think as far as 1500 years before Christ.  Anyway, in these writings, these hymns, we get more and more theological  thinking reflected till finally we come to a famous one called the Rig Veda. And in the 129th hymn of book 10, we get this and it's a remarkable change and  development in the theology. Then there was neither being nor non being, there  was no air, no firmament beyond it. Was there a stirring? Where the beneath  what cover? Was there a great abyss of unplumbed water? The assumed  answered all those questions No, there's nothing else. There was no death or  anything immortal, nor any sign dividing night from day that one thing, breathing, no air, was yet self breathing. Isn't the one thing the one reality is self sufficient.  No second thing existed whatsoever. Darkness was hidden in deeper darkness,  and all of it was as a sea without dimensions, the void still held unformed, what  was potential, until the power of warmth, produced the soul one. Then, in that  one desire stirred into being, desire that was the earliest seed of spirit.  stretching their line across the void they pondered was ought above it, or ought  below it, bestowers of the seed were there, and powers free energy below and  above swift action, who truly knows, and who can explain it? whence it was  born, or how this world was fashioned, the gods came later than the Earth  creation, who knows then out of what the world issued, whether the world was  made, or self made, he knows with full assurance, he alone, who in the highest  heaven guards and watches, he knows, indeed, but then again, perhaps he  doesn't. It's, it's a remarkable passage, because it's a transition from seeing  forces in the earth, at or in within the world, as divine, to a divine that in back of  everything, and there's only one and it existed when there was nothing else. The line is no second thing existed whatsoever. And because of that, it's it's there's  an implied pantheism if it's the only reality, then what is this world going to be  made out of, it's going to be made out of the being of that divine reality. And  that's the schema we have here. The non Divine is made out of whatever this is, this is being itself. And that is being itself disguised as transient, different beings, beings with differences of quality, quantity, place, time, and so on, all of that  being illusionary because it's all going to go away and be reabsorbed into the  divine. Well, the after the Vedas, there were commentaries on them. And this is  more theological, yet. These commentaries were called Upanishads . And in that we get the development of what now is Hinduism proper. The Vedas were  finished about 300 years before Christ, and the Upanishads took over began to 

be written. And there's a lot of theological reflection the rig veda is remarkable,  standout among the Vedas, but the Upanishads regularly do this kind of stuff.  Let's get some terms down here so that we don't confuse ourselves as we go  along. 

The term Brahma Brahma originally met a prayer. And the divine then became  called, came to be called Brahman Atman. Now sometimes, and to speak, just  of Brahman, and just of Atman. And I explained this before, Brahman is the  Divine. It's in everything else. And Atman is divine in the human self. So  sometimes we just want to talk about humans, you talk about Atman. If you just  want to talk about the divine as it is, this and all the rest of nature, its Brahman. 

All that is not to be confused with I have to do is mess it up. be confused about  exactly what I'm trying not to confuse you, a Brahmin. a Brahmin is a priest.  Brahman was the divine Brahma is a prayer originally, and it gets a second use,  you'll see in a moment. And then there are three main Hindu gods that are  thought of as embodying the Brahman Atman, or conveying Brahman Atman to  the, to the average person, and one of them is Brahma again, with just the a on  the end, creator and Shiva destroyer so this word pairs again in a second use.  And then there are these three gods Vishnu, of course, is preserver. Now, as the this pantheistic theology is developed, the priests are going to take the position  that Brahman Atman, the unknowable being itself is the real divinity. When  people worship local gods in their villages, or when they rise to something  higher than that, and they think of the creator, preserver and destroyer in these  three, what representations it's still the truth is there's only Brahman Atman. So  for a Brahmin priest, these are myths. And they are no more literally true than or  is it true that this local village has this god over here, and that local village has  that god over there and so, but but in Hinduism, the the priests, the Brahmin  priests, take a very benign and an easy view of these other religious practices.  Why? Well, because they believe as is part of the theology here, that people are born and reborn and reborn and reborn. And that wheel of rebirth is this called  some Samsara. And since we are all in that wheel of rebirth, people come back  with better abilities than they in their previous than they had in their previous life. If someone's given the spiritual insight to see the truth of this basic pantheistic  schema, that this is unthinkable, unknowable unspeakable and it's really all  there is and the rest of us are all really already parts of it. If we can detach  ourselves from our troubles with this world, which is only an illusion anyway,  then we can escape Samsara. Moksha is the deliverance and we can be  absorbed back into it, which is nirvana. So the priest has the idea that if the  person is worshiping the local village god, that's the best insight they have in this life and next life, they may have more. So encourage the guy. Go give your  blessing, participate in it. Encourage people because then they'll have more 

insight in their next life. Maybe they'll rise to these three Maybe in another  lifetime, they will be reborn as a Brahmin priest, and know the real truth. And  that brings me to another point that all of this is mightily tied up with what we call the caste system. Somewhere around 1500 BC, India was invaded by Aryans  from the north. And it was a migration, you know, I say invaded, because  sometimes it was violent, and they repressed the people that were already  there. But it wasn't an invasion that took months to do or something because  many, many years of migrating down that the Indian subcontinent from the west.  And what arose was a system in which people considered themselves better  than others, just by what family they had been born into. The people that they  repressed the Dravidians were the lowest of the castes, and are considered and later came to be called untouchables. You don't even touch this one, you don't  talk to them, you don't deal with them. They're beneath you. And the castes  came went all the way up in a hierarchy until you came to the to the Maharaja  the king and the priest. And the court was in question for a while whether the  priest or the Maharaja will be at the top. But you know how that came out. It's  the Brahmin priests that are at the top of the caste system. And so this the, as I  was explaining the typical Brahmin priest attitude toward this other sort of folk  religion, it was one of benign acceptance and encouragement, because that  person is not going to probably not going to have the insight to be able to  believe this until they're reborn a Brahmin. The caste system regarded the  Dravidian as the lowest they're The Untouchables. But lower than that, was to  be born a woman, a woman that waits only to be reborn as a man, even an  untouchable. And then people will by their good works and their devotion and  their insight, they will be raised in the successive rebirths. So higher and higher  castes, until finally, when you're born reborn as a Brahmin, you know, then that  this is the last lifetime, you're not going to be reborn again, by samsara. You're  going to now be reabsorbed, you're going to make it to Nirvana. The idea of  nirvana is an interesting one, it comes from a term, the root of which means to  blow out a candle to be snuffed. And originally, as that's what Hinduism  promised, it promised deliverance from this life, deliverance from pain and  suffering, by being snuffed out. Hinduism of course, is a very adaptable, and  eventually that became not just annihilation, but a life of, of bliss. Still, in  Nirvana, the individual is reabsorbed. Like a drop of water, it's reabsorbed in the  ocean. In other words, you as an individual don't exist anymore. And they try to  say that this is a life of complete bliss. That especially happened after contact  with Christianity and Islam. Because Christianity and Islam are talking about a  heavenly life, an eternal life with God in which you survive, you are resurrected,  you go to be with the Lord forever. And that sounds a lot better than being  snuffed out by being absorbed like a drop in the ocean. So this this developed  into Oh no, it's means a life of a bliss and happiness. It's difficult to understand  how you could have a life of bliss and happiness if you the individual is gone. 

That's that's where it stands. I said that I'll be critical and I will be and of  Christianity as well when we get there. 

So here are some basic terms. Here's the basic schema, you get the theological lay of the land here. Let's make sure that this is all clear. Brahman Atman is the  divine. It's not a being, it's not a person. It's not someone you can it's not a  person you can't pray to Brahman Atman. Brahman Atman, doesn't hear prayers or grant and requests. Understand, this is just being itself the being that is in  everything. And for reasons we don't understand it has somehow generated  within itself, this world of illusory Maya, Hinduism contains the doctrine that  every so many 100 million years, Brahman Atman, destroys the the world of  illusion and makes a new one generates a new one within it. This is what we  would call the observable universe. It's where we live and move and have our  being but everything that we experience comes into being and passes away, we  can't, we don't encounter anything that could just last forever, or be completely  non dependent. And yet, something's got to be non dependent. So they're  saying this exists within the non dependent in one sense, the being of Brahman  Atman, is what this illusory world is made of. But what gets made in it are these  come into being and pass away transient things like galaxies, planets, like the  ocean, people, continents, everything comes into being and passes away and  changes all the while it's there. That's how you know it's not the divine. A  Brahma was originally a prayer but later became one of the three big gods of  Hinduism, if you've got to believe in gods, you can graduate from the lower ones in the villages to the the three great creator, destroyer preserver, but these are  again, just mythological representations of the force of Brahman Atman.  Brahman Atman is the divine a Brahmin as a priest. samsara is the wheel of  cycle or rebirth. And that is driven by fate. There's one in the same time, the idea that humans are responsible for what they do. So the Hinduism condemns evil.  You don't murder people, you shouldn't rob them and lie to them, and so on the  good, same moral insights that you find all over the world. But you're fated to be  reborn as this or that or the other thing? It's a it's a funny combination. Because  if you if you really have the freewill to make the choices you do, then you're  responsible for what you do, if you don't have it. If fate drives you makes you do  something whether you want to or not, then how can you be punished or  rewarded for what you do? It wasn't you that made the decision. It was driven by fate, but that they combine these and without resolving them. I think by  comparison, Christianity teaches that people absolutely do have free will, and  are responsible for what they for their choices and their actions. Moksha is the  term for the deliverance from that cycle of rebirth. That happens by being  enlightened, and we'll talk about that in the next session, how one gets to be  enlightened, and therefore escape from that wheel of rebirth. And nirvana is  what happens to you if you are it's, it's what your state of being becomes. If you 

do escape from samsara, then you're reabsorbed in the in the Brahman Atman.  That's the state of nirvana. And the expression is as a drop of water is absorbed  into the ocean. And and there you have the the basic background, the what's  wrong with people, how it's going to be solved. their ultimate fate against this  theological arrangement. And this free of this religious belief the doctrine of  samsara also includes that if you're wicked, you can be reborn further down the  chain of beings. So, it's possible that if you're wicked enough, you can in the  next life, you'll be reborn as a jackal. They consider jackals dirty animals, and  that would be a punishment, or maybe even an insect. Or, I mean you, there's  almost no limit there to what, what might happen to you. And, of course,  because all this is tied in with a caste system, they believe that the main body of Hindu thinkers is always held at you have to be reborn up the castes. And it's  only when you get to be a Brahmin that you can expect, not to be reborn and to  escape samsara and be and achieve nirvana. Some have relented a bit and  said that, that it's possible for somebody to get enlightenment and at a lower  level, and perhaps make it to nirvana but it's not open to any woman that's too  low on the scale of beings, that's the scale of humans is higher than any animal,  but the lowest step on the scale of humans is woman, then untouchable and  then on up to Maharaja and then Brahmin priest. The Brahmin caste can be  recognized in the there are certain family names that automatically tell you tell  them what caste someone belongs to in the Brahmin caste is readily  recognizable, as produced the remarkable number of brilliant people, scientists,  poets, writers of all kinds. So if they, it just helps to reinforce the notion that there is a superior class caste. When the British ruled India, under the Raj, in the 19th  century, they tried to get the practice of widows throwing themselves on the pyre of their husband's body being burned. They tried to get repressed that said, You  can't do that anymore. And they repressed a lot of it, but not all of it. And since  India's independence, some of it is resurged. It's one of the nastier things that  since the wife is at the lowest, below all the castes, in the lowest stage of being  reborn, she can do one final act of devotion to her husband, and throw herself  on the burning on the pyre that's burning his body, he has died. And she  commits suicide and therefore will be reborn as a man. We'll go into that some  more next time when we talk about the specific recommendations for how  people should stand in proper relation to the Divine and achieve nirvana. And  we'll talk next time about the stages of of life and the the goals of life and the  ways to achieve Nirvana and so on. But I've so what I want you to do is do the  reading for next time. Do the reading for this one. Do the reading for the next  one. Right? You were supposed to have done the reading already for this one,  then you it's reading lecture reading. Say when I read that stuff for this one  again, then you want to read the introduction of the next one. Then I'll have the  lecture and then read that again. Right. Remember what I hope you remember  and do that and I think we'll be fine. So we'll see you next time.