HINDUISM

The Aum

Brahman Is Self-Hood

At the hear of Hinduism lies the

idea of human beings’ quest for
absolute truth, so that one’s soul and
the Brahman or Atman(Absolute
Soul) might become one. For the
indians God first created the sound
and the universe and everything that
exists and it continues to hold
everything together.
 According to Hinduism, human
beings have a dual nature: one is the
spiritual and immortal essense (soul);
the other is empirical life and character.
Between the two natures, however, it is
maintained that it is the soul that is
ultimately real. The existence of the
body, in fact, is considered as nothing
more than an illusion and even an
obstacle to an individual’s realization of
one’s real self.
 Hindus generally believe that the
soul is eternal but is bound by the law
of karma (action) to the world of matter,
which it can escape only after spiritual
progress through an endless series of
births. God allots rewards and
punishments to all beings according to
their karma (Puligandla 1997). Similar
to a prisoner enclosed within the wall of
his prison, a human being’s soul can be
said to be temporary encased in his
body. For this reason, humanity’s basic
goal in life is the liberation (moksha) of
spirit(jiva).
 Hinduism holds that humanity’s life
is a continuous cycle (samsara).
While it is the spirit is neither born nor
does it die, the body, on the other hand,
goes through a transmigratory series of
birth and death. Transmigration or
metempsychosis is a doctrine that
adheres to the belief that a person’s
soul passes into some other creature,
human, or animal. If the person has led
a good life, the soul goes upward the
scale. The soul of an evil person, on the
other hand may pass ino the body of an
animal.
 There will be no end to the cycle
unless the individal exerts real efforts to
break away or liberate one’s spirit from
the monotonous cycle. Different Hindu
schools and sects have different views
about the method of release (moksha)
from this transmigration.

Ultimate liberation, that is,

freedom from rebirth, is achieved the
moment the individual attains that stage
of life emancipation, from which
inevitably arises a total realization by
the individual of spiritual nature as well
as the transient character of the body.
 Moksha, thus, is an enlightened
state wherein one attains one’s true
selfhood and finds oneself one with the
One, the Ultimate Reality, the All-
Comprehesive Reality: Brahman,
Ultimate moksha leads the spirit out of
the monotonous cycle of life and death
(samsara) to a state of “nothingness”
(i.e., in the context of physical being)
where the bliss of being one with
Brahman compensates for all the
sufferings the individual underwent in
his erstwhile existence in the physical
world (Andres 1994).
 BRAHMA

This Hindu view of humanity’s

reality places a lot of emphasis on
the attainment of self-knowledge.
The goal of human life as conceived
by the different Upanishads is to
overcome congenital ignorance. The
ideas of the Upanishads are at the
spiritual core of Hindus.
The Upanishads or sometimes referred
to as Vedanta, variously interpreted to
mean either the “last chapters, parts of
the Veda” or “the object,the highest
purpose of the Veda.” The concepts of
Brahman and Atman (soul,self) are
central ideas in all the Upanishads, with
“Know your Atman” as their thematic
focus.
 True knowledge (vidya) consists
an understanding and realization of the
individual’s real self (atman) as
opposed to lower knowledge that is
limited to an interpretation of reality
based solely on the data offered by
sense experience. An individual, by
seriously understanding oneself, comes
to realize the dictates of karma that
point the way toward moral progress
and perfection. Thus, for Hinduism,
one’s whole duty is to achieve self-
knowledge in order to achieve self-
annihilation and absorption into the
Great self.
 In sum, Hinduism is one of the
oldest Eastern traditions, practiced by
Hundreds of millions of people for
about 5,000 years (Velasquez 1999). To
know more about this topic, students
are encouraged to read Bhagavad-Gita,
the Song of the Lord, which is a part of
the great epic Mahabharata that
introduces principal concepts of
Hinduism. Bhagavad-Gita also consists
of beautiful poetry.
 One concept common to all
expressions of Hinduism is the oneness
of reality. This oneness is the absolute,
or Brahman, which the mind can never
fully grasp or express in words. Only
Brahman is real; everything else is
illusory manifestation of it. The concept
of atman, or no self, is a correlative
belief. This means that the “I” or the self
is an illusion, for each true self is one
with Brahman. When we realize this
unity with the absolute, we realize our
true destiny.
 Also common to all Hindu
thought are the four primary values. In
order of increasing importance, they
may be roughly translated as wealth,
pleasure, duty, or righteousnes, refers
to patience, sincerity, fairness, love,
honesty, and similar virtues. The
spiritual value, though, is
enlightenment, by which one is
illuminated and liberated and most
importantly, finds release from the
wheel of existence. Repeated existence
is the destiny of those who do not
achieve enlightment.
 Finally, to understand enlightenment,
one must understand the law of karma,
the law of sowing and reaping. All of us,
through what we do or not do,
supposedly determine our destiny. The
wheel of existence turns until we
achieve enlightenment, after which we
are released from this series of rebirth.
 After understanding Hinduism,
the next section proceeds with another
major Eastern tradition that is not
based strictly on Upanishads and in
some cases, even ran counter to its
teachings. The tenets of Buddhism are
definitely one of the most widespread
dharsanas (school of thought). Despite
its origins, Buddhism is Universalist in
character. It is not preached to any one
single caste or people but to
everybody. Wherever it is spread,
Buddhism has adapted itself to its
environment with a generous flexibility.
 In its spread over Asia, India
itself largely absorbed it into Hinduism.
It exists side by side with Taoism in
China and Shintoism in Japan. In Tibet,
it was greatly altered into a faith called
Lamaism. It was practiced in its purest
form in Burma and Ceylon.