Video Transcript: Hinduism Lecture 3

We continue our sessions on Hinduism by talking about the four stages of life in  the Hindu doctrine. four stages of life, of course, has in mind, a Brahmin, a male, who is born in the high caste, the highest of the castes, and what his career  should look like. And it becomes starts with being a student, and then being  married and establishing a household. And then finally, when someone gets  older, they should become a hermit in their old age, go away and live on their  own, support themselves, concentrate on their spiritual welfare, try to divest  themselves of attachments to the world of illusion, Maya, and then finally,  become a mendicant, a begging monk, who has severed every tie with earth  and every other person and is longing only to achieve nirvana. The four goals  are ways of life. Corresponding the three methods of attaining Nirvana. And the  three main ones are the way of works, the way of knowledge, and the way of  worship in any one of these ways, is supposed to be equally good with any other in fact, that the way of knowledge has kind of edge, and then has a historical  superiority. But it wasn't open to everybody to follow this to meditate on the  Vedas and the Upanishads, the holy writings, and devote oneself to achieving  through meditation, that state, which happens in a flash and in a trance, and in  which someone sees the truth, that there is only Brahman Atman, and that all  things are really one, and therefore loses attachment to the illusory world, and is guaranteed, then, that upon death, they will not be reborn into yet another life, in that wheel of fate called samsara. They these are ways of three ways, I said are  given equal status, officially, but unofficially, this way of of, of being a monk, and  from the beginning and the priest is regarded as superior. The way of works  allows the average person to have hope of achieving nirvana. And there is a  code for this. It's called the code of Manu. It's mostly about how a Brahmin  should conduct his life, how a man should proceed, in order to achieve Nirvana  and try to escape the wheel of rebirth. But it has some things in it, that are very  remarkable about the role of women, which shows what I was saying last time  about the women being on the very lowest scale of beneath the lowest caste. It  said, pretty shocking stuff. But here's how some of it goes. There is no other  God on earth for a woman than her husband, the most excellent of all good  works that she can do, is to seek to please Him by manifesting perfect  obedience to Him. Even if her husband is deformed, aged, infirm, offensive,  even if he sick, immoral, a drunkard and a gambler. Even if he visits prostitutes,  and lives with them, has no affection for his home, behaves like a raving lunatic,  lives without honor. Even if he's blind, deaf, dumb, crippled in a word, no matter  what his defects are. A wife must always look upon him as her God and lavish  him with all her affection and care, paying no heed whatsoever to his character,  or his actions. Pretty fantastic stuff. And of course, the final thing is the code of  Manu is that if her husband dies, then they go to burn his body she's to jump  onto the funeral pyre and commit suicide as the final act of devotion to Him. In  the act called satee, sacrificing herself. And that guarantees that she will be 

reborn in the next life as a man. It's that practice that the British tried to suppress when they ruled India. Under the Raj, they made it illegal. But it was still  practiced in remote areas. And it survives to this day. It's again, it's it's has had  official rejection, sometimes from Indian governments. But no one has really  tried to stamp it out with any great success. So that's has to do with the way of  works. And the way of knowledge is that of the scholar, meditating on the holy  writings, and devoting himself to achieving nirvana by this trance. And then  there's also the way of worship, which was again, a way of opening up to the  average person, the hope of achieving a higher rebirth and or achieving nirvana, or at least a higher rebirth. And that worship comes mainly through writings like  the Bhagavad Gita, and in the worship has to do with being focused on Avatar  such as Krishna. Now this idea of an avatar is fairly unique to Hinduism. And it's  one I've had Hindu. priests say to me, that only Hinduism and Christianity saw  the need for embodyment of God to appear on earth. And he was equating  avatar with incarnation, I'll have some more to say about that when we get to  Christianity, and we talk about the Incarnation, there are remarkable and  important differences between the two. But there is a common idea there. An  avatar is the appearance of a god in the form of a human. The human isn't real. I mean, it's not really, really a human, it's illusion, like the rest of the illusory world  in which we live. But it is the appearance of a god. And that's what Krishna is  taken to be. And that all the stories about Krishna have to do with his mediating  knowledge of the divine and the divine way to people, being able to manifest it  by appearing to them in human form, and engaging in them with them in in very  human ways. Of course, in one sense, the whole of the our common sense  reality, all the world that we live in, is an avatar of Brahman Atman. Because  there the claim is that the this is all appearance, but it's an appearance of what  is really only Brahman Atman. Brahman is the only reality and all the things that  we experience that are different, that have different qualities and different sizes  and locations and shapes and things change that come into being passed away  and all that that's all Maya, it's all mere appearance, illusion, because the being  of those things is really Brahman Atman. That is inconceivable and changeless.  And so in that sense, the whole reality is already an avatar of Brahma, Brahman  Atman, but the avatars are regarded let's such as Krishna are great regarded as having a special status, because they appear in the world in order to make the  divine known. And the rocks and trees the mountains of clouds don't do that. But Krishna does. So, they have to do with achieving a better reincarnation and of  course, I mentioned last time that reincarnation could also demote you. If you  live a wicked and selfish and cruel life, then you may come back as something  much worse than what you lived in this life. And one of the worst things you  could come back as in Hindu opinion is a jackal. The Indians look down on  jackals is not not honorable, are admirable animal. But you could come back this worse than that. You could come back as an insect or some such. So there is 

always that threat. As they, as time went on, Hinduism came in greater contact  with other religions, particularly Christianity. And then later again, Islam. Some of the ideas of Nirvana changed. There were thinkers who proposed that they  conceive of nirvana not as just a drop. being reabsorbed into the ocean, not the  individual person passes into nirvana is just absorbed into Brahman Atman. And  so escapes, pain and suffering, and woe. But some thinkers changed this idea  Ramanuja, for example, and Madhva, and in the Middle Ages, what are the  Middle Ages in the West, I thought of it more as passing into the presence of  Vishnu. And a life that's happy and free from sorrow. It's virtually the Christian  idea of Heaven transposed over into Hinduism. Because the Christian idea  sounded much more attractive than just being snuffed out, and absorbed, and  escaping from sorrow and trouble. But you promised a, an everlasting life of joy,  and happiness and peace, and in the presence of God, and then that's exactly  what these thinkers proposed as a change a version of Hinduism. So it's always  the Hindu tradition has always been very flexible, and very ready to absorb new  ideas, and to change. And, in the late 19th century, another thinker,  Ramakrishna is a theologian of great ability. And he rethought these Hindu  doctrines and proposes that they be altered and thought of in new ways, as well. And what he comes up with is very, very close to Christianity. There is that about the divine, that's inconceivable, but there's that which is knowable as well. And  he explains the relationship between the, the world the common sense world in  which we live and the divine, as the this world was less real, but it is real. And it  has reality of its own. It isn't just Brahman Atman. It's an it borders very closely  on the Jewish Christian doctrine, of creation. And, and it takes, in many ways,  many steps close to that. Present day popular Hinduism continues to be a very  great mixed bag, there's still the Hinduism of the Brahmin priests, the the old,  call it pure Hinduism. Of there's Brahman Atman and that's the only reality in  this, this world is illusion, and you have to have been reborn into the Brahmin  caste, to have the spiritual insight to see the truth of that. And then you will, if  born into that caste and you did the proper meditations and so on, you will be  absorbed and you will not be revealed review reborn, you will not be  reincarnated. But the popular Hinduism is all over the place. There are local,  tribal, or village Gods there are there the three big ones for in official Hindu  theology, Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. And there, these are worshiped. People  kind of find their own way. And it says, I've often remembered what a Hindu  priest said to me one time, our holy writings aren't like yours. He said to me  talking to me as a Christian. So they're not binding but they are there to help me  have the experience that I'm seeking and to achieve nirvana. I read them and I  hear what they say. If they don't help me so much the worse for them, I find my  own way. I that's, that's what it's there to encourage me to find my own way. And they're there. They're not binding that they're there as AIDS only. And so I think  that's typical, of of what we find these days. And the path to towards The world 

and how real it is. We've seen in the old, original, it's kind of pure Hinduism, this  is all illusion. And then you have somebody like Ramakrishna saying, Well, no,  it's just that it's less real than the divine, but it has its own integrity has its own  reality. It's worth investigating. That attitude has prevailed among especially the  intelligentsia and like, the Brahmin class, and many of them have become very  distinguished scientists, the world is worth investigating the world is worth  finding out how it works. And technology is not to be despised science is to be  pursued, and so on. And that it's a very open attitude toward that. And I'm  emphasizing that because these are some of the ways Hinduism differs from  Buddhism from the next religion that we're going to take up. I also want to point  out that all these doctrines in Hinduism, are not historical in the sense that  Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are historical. And I mean by that, the stories  about Krishna, and the avatars and the the holy men and so on, don't depend  for their value on whether they actually took place. Historically, if it turns out that  these are just stories, so what the stories are there to tell us this truth. And it  doesn't matter whether they took place historically, Judaism is very different from this. It in history, God has intervened into the world has come into the world and  contacted people, in order to redeem them, he's come to seek and to save  people who are lost, and make them his own, and redeem them from death. And it happened here and here, and with this person, that this person that's very  historical. And it's true if and only if those events took place in Hinduism is not  like that at all. If none of those events ever took place, the truth that they want to convey would still be conveyed. and stuff. So it's not historical in the same  sense, as others are going to be Judaism and Christianity and Islam. But the,  that doesn't mean the Hindu doesn't think that's true, thinks that what is taught is true, certainly. So it's one of the major differences, and I'm emphasizing it now,  because I'll explain more about it, we'll come back to it when we cover the  others. This is a very complex and complicated tradition. It varies very much  from place to place, even within India, the practices, the Holy Days, and so on.  Getting into the Ganges River to purify one of sin and so on, is a practice locally, they're not found in other places in India. And the whole idea of evil and sin is  very different from what you're going to find again, in Judaism, Christianity, and  Islam. Here, evil, that is that being sinful, is tied to regarding this world is real.  The great sin is to see this as the reality. If you do, you'll value it, you will put all  your value on it, if you think it's that this world is is real, then you're going to  want things and you're going to want money and you're going to want comforts  and honor and prestige and, and all that if you live for that, then you're just going to bind yourself to this illusory illusion. It's either total illusion, or its least rest  less real than the divine, which is what you want to be entered into in Nirvana.  And you're going to come back as something worse, or, at or at best, the same  level, to try again. You have to achieve that insight that it's being attached to  things of this world. That is the source of evil. That again, is radically different 

from what you find in Judaism and Christianity and Islam. You find their  Abrahamic religions, that sin comes out of a lack of love. In Jesus summary,  were to love the Lord our God, all of our heart, soul, mind and strength and our  neighbor as ourselves. There's the religious The moral and the immoral, evil  results from lack of love of one's neighbor. It's has nothing to do with being  attached to the world the world's real enough the world's okay. It's God's good  creation. But you do evil when you act unlovingly and unjustly to other people.  So it's but in Hinduism, it's the sources seen as something very different. It's  regarding it as real at all, and becoming attached to it. And that's what what one  tries to detach oneself from what in the advanced age of life when one becomes a hermit, and then a wandering mendicant trying to achieve the meditative  trance that will transfer form that person, ushered them into nirvana and out of  the cycle of rebirth. So I hope that these differences have been made clear,  sufficiently clear, is a great, great deal more to be said about this tradition. This  is by way of the most cursory introduction of some of the main doctrines and the doctrinal differences that we're going to encounter between it and other  traditions. But if you are interested in this, you know, there's plenty that are  available to read, that will bring you more and more and more detail and I hope  that you do pursue it and read it in much greater detail.