Thoughts on the East by Thomas Merton

Author:Thomas Merton [Merton, Thomas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780811212939
Google: cKXUAwAAQBAJ
Amazon: 0811212939
Barnesnoble: 0811212939
Goodreads: 501686
Published: 2011-06-06T08:13:18+00:00

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ON HINDUISM

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Hinduism

One of the world’s oldest religions, Hinduism is practised by the vast majority of the people of India. With dozens of sects and very little ecclesiastical organization, Hinduism, uniquely, claims no single historical founder. A synthesis of the religions of the Aryan invaders of India (c. 1500

B.C.E.) and the indigenous Dravidians, Hinduism has evolved over a 4,000-year period into a devotional and philosophical polytheism. The goal of believers (achieved, perhaps, over the course of many lifetimes) is union with Brahma, Infinite Being. Tolerant and inclusive, there are many variations of Hindu religious practice. As Nehru said,

” Hinduism, as a faith, is vague, amorphous, many-sided, all things to all men. It is hardly possible to define it, or indeed to say definitely whether it is a religion or not, in the usual sense of the word. In its present form and even in the past, it embraces many beliefs and practices, from the highest to the lowest, often opposed to or contradicting each other.

Its essential spirit seems to be to live and let live.”

A social system as well as a religion, Hinduism depends as much on what a believer is and does-that is on, on birth rank and social conduct-as on any one belief. Hindu expressions of faith cut a wide swath from exacting intellectual taxonomies and high spiritual discipline to theatrical pageantry and lingam worship, but all paths to Brahma are respected, and include the worship of images enshrined in temples, the making of pilgrimages, belief in the efficacy of yoga and of asceticism, and great respect for a personal guru. The two most general features of Hinduism are the caste system and acceptance of the Vedas, the most ancient sacred scriptures. The Upanishads, mystical and speculative works that expand and deepen the Vedas, state the doctrine that Brahma, the absolute reality that is the self of all things, 55

Thoughts on the East

is identical with the individual soul, or atman .

Hinduism in all its forms also accepts the doctrine of kanna (or causality), according to which the individual reaps the results of his good and bad actions through a series of lifetimes. Also universally accepted is the goal of moksha

�iberation from suffering and from the cycles of rebirth), which can be attained by eliminating the passions and through knowledge of reality and finally union with God.

The first phase of Hinduism was the religion of the priests (or Brahmins) who performed the Vedic sacrifice, by which proper relations with the gods and the cosmos were established. By about 500 B.C.E., Brahminism was challenged by non-Vedic systems, notably Buddhism and Jainism. The Brahmin elite responded by creating a synthesis that accepted yoga (an eight-stage discipline of self-control and meditation aimed at achieving “the cessation of the modifications of consciousness”) and recognized the gods and image worship of popular devotional movements. Post-Vedic Puranas (a class of narrative poems which follow the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, the two greatest epics of India) also elaborate the myths of the popular gods.

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