Understanding World Religions in 15 Minutes a Day by Garry R. Morgan

Author:Garry R. Morgan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: REL017000, Religions
ISBN: 9781441259882
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group

An Extra Minute

The Baha’i emphasis on world peace and unity of all religions appeals to many and contributes to steady growth. The struggles of maintaining high moral standards in today’s world create one of Baha’is’ greatest challenges: that of attrition or members leaving the faith in discouragement.

21

Hinduism: Origins

Hinduism, the world’s third largest religion, has about 850 million followers. Most Hindus live in India, although the Indian diaspora (Indians joke that the country’s biggest export is people) has taken the religion around the globe. Sizeable Hindu populations live in the United Kingdom, Canada, the U.S., East Africa, and on the island of Bali in Indonesia.

Unlike most religions, Hinduism has no identifiable founder or “starting point.” The available evidence suggests it has developed out of one or more ancient indigenous religious systems in India, plus outside influences brought by invaders who called themselves Aryans, meaning “noble ones.” They entered India from what is now Iran, about 1500 BC. Even within India, the religion exhibits tremendous variety. In some ways, the label Hinduism is a convenient Western term, now adopted by India itself, for the great variety of Indian religious expressions. Hinduism also gave birth to three additional religions: Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism.

Religious expression is influenced not only by the underlying belief system but also by the culture in which it develops. This is most clearly seen in comparing faiths that began in the Middle East (Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, Islam, and Baha’i), which are all monotheistic, with those that began in India (Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, and Sikhism), which are, with the exception of Sikhism, polytheistic or agnostic, and far more contemplative. With Sikhism again as the exception, the monotheistic faiths believe humans live once and are judged by God after death; the others believe in reincarnation, giving humans multiple tries to improve their spiritual condition.

Hinduism is probably best known for its many gods and goddesses, represented by a huge variety of colorful statues, sometimes called idols. But this is just the surface of Hindu worship. The core beliefs that underlie all the various Hindu expressions are karma and reincarnation.

Karma is often described as “the law of cause and effect”: What you sow by your deeds in this life you will reap in the next. In another life here on earth, that is, not an eternal state (monotheistic heaven or hell). And not determined by a conscious, personal God, but by an unconscious, automatic process. One might say it’s just the nature of the universe, “the way things are.”

In the West, karma and reincarnation have become something of a fad. Recent polls show that nearly 40 percent of Americans believe in reincarnation, and discovering what one was in a past life has become a popular pastime. At a fortunate circumstance, a person will joke that they “must have had some good karma.” But in Hinduism, where the concepts come from, reincarnation is a curse to be escaped. And because karma is what keeps a person chained to the wheel of endless deaths and rebirths, all karma is bad.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.